We are now in a position to consider the possibility as well as desirability of change, that is, are there better ways of understanding and being in the world?

To begin with, the pursuit of change requires significant effort in order to engage with our world in novel ways.  Change requires that we successfully discipline ourselves along new dimensions, so that we perceive the world and conduct ourselves in novel ways.  It amounts to establishing a new way of being in the world and experiencing the world in new ways.  In other words, a change in our understanding of the world goes hand-in-hand with a change in ourselves, in who we are: a changed understanding of the world is accomplished by a changed human being.

However, the possibility of change is not considered in a vacuum.  The question of change cannot be asked in the absence of knowledge, and knowledge is indexical, specific to our socialization, our environment, and our own individual life experiences.  Growing up we were socialized into a particular community, lived and live within a particular environment and social milieu, and experience the world through particular frameworks. We already know, we have been disciplined, were made to know and act in such-and-such a way.  So, here is the rub: our notions of what may comprise a better understanding of our world, what way of life to aspire to, are informed by who we already are, indeed, they are an expression of who we already are.  Not too surprisingly, we might actually wish for incompatible things, we might even be conflicted about our aspirations.

Then, how are we to proceed, how are we to evaluate our current ways, including what we have been socialized into, and decide towards what to put our efforts in?  As I wrote before, our socialization rarely provides us with tools for such an endeavor.  A most important goal of our socialization – our disciplining through socialization – is to mobilize us for the needs of our community: our perceptions of the world and our actions are actively guided and coordinated to produce social organization and ensure its stability. 

The Compass provides specific guidance: we actually know who we are.  We are in a very concrete sense projected onto the world, as we experience reality through features we have been shaped to recognize, to latch on, to orient ourselves and act accordingly.  We can literally see who we are from how we perceive and act.  Being aware of our knowledge, of who we are, allows us to probe how we acquired it and evaluate it.  Was it through our schooling?  From our parents?  From our peers or maybe from some ‘authority’ appearing in the mass media?  And where does it come from?  How much and what kind of human effort went into developing it?  Is what we know an expression of wishful thinking?  Was it something we were inculcated with to facilitate our integration into and mobilization for our community?  Or does it reflect the outcome of human effort, perhaps our own?  Of course, we cannot personally evaluate each and every bit and facet of the human knowledge that maintains our everyday lives, or even our own knowledge that underlies our daily experience.  But we can have a pretty decent sense if not where our knowledge is coming from, at least of how well we understand its origins.  And if we deem something as being of particular significance, we can always probe and look into it further.

Our experience of the world provides the feedback we need for evaluating our efforts towards change.  As we put effort into doing things in a different way, say, learn new skills or make new friends, our knowledge changes, we change, and we can see how we change from the new ways in which we experience the world.  The extent of change will of course be commensurate with the effort, the extent and type of effort, we put into it.  We are what we do.