How do we register change? Change is the recognition of a new normal. A building destroyed is a building that has entered a new state. Change is an instant moment and is not a process. Change as a process can only be seen in reverse or in hindsight. Food has either rotten or not; there is no in-between stage in our normal perception. A device is either on or off. There is no in-between state. The same is true for all change even if it does not appear as such.
Thinking about change requires us to think about the normal. The state before things have changed, the baseline or normative state of being from which change has or can happen.
The notion of change coincides with an idea of linear time. Time moves in a forward direction like a clock goes from one to two and so to does change happen in increments. The time between one or two clock is not a matter of change however as they are simply two different things. There is no in-between state between one or two, it is either one or the other. Each is a time in itself that does not move forward or backwards.
Perceiving change is one of the principles of the sciences that try to understand the process between two states of change. A star is born and a star is no more. How does this happen? This is the study of change of natural processes. Of course what we call natural is a human invention in itself. To study a star we must first agree that there is such a thing as a star. Or that there are objects that we refer to as stars that can be studied. But this is another matter.
There are only two moments in time, movement and rest, or momentum and arrest. Of course rest has been proven to be an illusion in physics as, if zoomed in enough, everything is moving, but our point of reference is the human and its experience of time, objects and being. in this frame of reference movement and rest are actual useful categories for considering objects and the world around us. These two moments relate to change in that rest is associated with the normal and movement is associated with change.
It bears repeating that it is the experience of change, or rather the lack of this experience, that is the focus of this essay. The experience of change by the senses.
One might argue that with the advancement of recording technologies we have been able to record the progression of change. We can see a plant or child grow in a time lapse, is this not change? In a time lapse video time is compressed and the viewer believes that they can see change but what is seen is but an illusion of change for looking at each moment in action–in time and it is gone already and there is only a succession of phases left in our memory, like the film roll that comprises the film is a succession of still images each which does not capture the film itself. Change is experienced in a similar manner where it is compressed and experienced as a moving passage but when reflected upon is like a still image that exists on its own terms. McLuhan in Understanding Media might frame this in his larger argument of electrics and causality. I flip a switch and something happens. It is an instant reaction. If we compare it to analogue-mechanical reactions such as throwing a log into the fire, or shovelling coals into the engine of a steam train, the direct connection between the action and the result (fire leading to heat which leads to light and movement and so on) is not immediate. The age of the electric and certainly the age of the digital is the age of direct causality which affects the speed of change, which is the speed of the shifting normal.
For some matters however we do not notice the movement, this is often true with concepts and culture, where things seem to shift between two normals without any in-between motion. But change is always the shift of state between movement and rest, where change is the resolution between two rests which are different in quality and or quantity. The invention of photography was a momentous occasion for the study of change. The story of horse painters for example who could, through seeing the galloping horse frozen in action, now paint a more accurate picture settling the debate on whether or not all hooves left the ground or not. But this change of state of the galloping horse, in movement and therefore undergoing change on might say, is through photography perceived as a series of normals. And if we look at a galloping horse, or any other object in motion for that matter we too conceive it as a series of normals. Movement as such does not exist but is a series, or interval of changing states of rest. An odd proposition perhaps but as I look now on the letters appearing on the screen as I type them I do not see movement but resting text coming (becoming?) into being and provoking me with their already settled normality. And if I delete these letters then their absence is just as normal as their earlier existence.
Absence however might be a special category through which we could in fact perceive change. While the building once there forces us to recognise it as a thing that was always there, the destruction of the same building after many years does recognise some notion of change as the body remembers there being a thing there. Memory of absences are, in general fleeting while presence is not. Absence is noticeable while sudden presence is accepted as immediate and normal. Someone enters the room and disturbs the scene, they are boisterous and annoying. I can tell this person to go away but even in their absence their entrance has marked a new normal which I am forced to accept.
Change is often considered a consequence of success but failure can be a source of change as well. A revolution is of course a huge change in society and often a marker for historical periods. The before and after the revolution as two distinct moments wrought by a great change. But even the failure of a revolution, and the continuation of the (so called) status quo is in fact a great change, perhaps just as great of a change as if the revolution would have succeeded. How can this be so? This requires understanding of two things. First of gradation of change, and if this is possible for is all change not a simple change that is neither big nor small, but merely is (that is, if there is even such a thing as change). Second, how can the continuation of a (supposed) status quo be a change as big as if a revolution had succeeded? For things to stay the same, many things have to change in order to maintain the status quo. The normal is contingent on continuous change. We live in an eternal normal which is a contingent on eternal change.
But what about degrees of changes? Many would refer to a substantial increase in income as a large (major) change in their life. No more worrying about money, debt, bigger house, luxuries, and so on. This change might be paired with a large changes in ones internal circumstances as well. feelings might be more positive and so on. After some time however, while persistent worries of debt and such might be gone, the general internal atmosphere will likely return to what is, for that person, the natural or default state. The internal change therefore in the larger scope of things turns out to be very little. In fact I would suggest that the internal state at large does not differ all that much throughout one’s life. Call this a person’s aptitude or personality but it seems that major changes of one’s internal states are rare. Of course there are extreme situation which inhibit the natural state of things, let us determine them to be, for most, stability and safety. Stability does not mean one has to earn a lot but earn a lot to live a live that allows one to walk in the forest sometimes, taking a day off, and exist outside of their work relations in what we now might term leisure time. The greatest internal change might be the realisation that one does not need much to be happy. Or that the pursuit of happiness is not the great of goal of live itself, as some philosophers have pointed out. To elevate certain emotions above others is to deny oneself in some situations and pursue that which is ethereal.
Change is the moment from one to another which cannot be captured as the this moment of capture becomes the normal. What we consider change is not change but rather the in-between state of things. The scaffolding that arises to construct a building we can consider a part of change (from vacant lot to building plot). The transitional stage covers most things we consider change. These can cover a long period such as childhood stages where we often consider great changes but these are rather caught as a period of the normal occurring. The change from cooked to cooked egg or cold to boiled water occurs in this transitional stage where we consider things to be happening. There are therefore two things that capture change, the transitional change and the normal wherein bodies are always moving between one and the other. But as noted I concern myself only with that present to human perception. While physics has taught us that everything is in a state of movement, for the human lifespan a door, without any outside interference, will remain a door. Setting the door on fire however moves it to the transitional stage of being on fire, where it moves to a new normal. Of course the being on fire could be considered a normal stage, but sticking to our temporal frame of reference, the fire lasts only a short while, while the states of regular door and burned door seemed to last a long time, if not forever. Would the door burn forever then we would consider that normal as well and not a transitional stage. The Olympic flame might be one example of something (fire) which is usually concerned to be a form of change in the transitional stage but is now perceived to be normal. The sun of course is another example and shows the arbitrary nature of these states of bodies.
Rather than capturing change and the normal as concrete categories they should be considered of as contingent on context. There is no normal and there is no change. They are but categories by which the world is given presence and made sense of. To consider a world without an idea of the normal is to be in a vexed state of mind. Practical categories therefore rather than perfect abstract constructs.
Not Just About Culture 
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