This is the key line in one of my favourite films, Visctonti’s 1963 The Leopard.
Based on the novel of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, the film follows the life of the Prince of Salina during the unification of Italy in the 1860s.
Rather than fight the revolution, he goes with it, because he senses that after the revolution the old power hierarchies will remain.
‘Everything had to change for everything to stay the same’.
This line could sound fatalistic. But I take it as a warning not to be complacent when we see change coming. Change might signal the dismantling of the status quo. Or it could simply mean the current system rearranging itself to maintain power.
How can we tell the difference?
Well, we can spend time thinking about what the future is we want to build. What are values? How is it wired together? What would thriving look like?
In the Toolkit for Regenerative Design, two models help with this”
- Changing Mindsets — how our worldview shapes the systems we create
- Living Systems Blueprint — the characteristics of systems that create thriving over time
When we have clarity, then we can scrutinise the latest novelty and ask:
is it a path to better, or is it a path to more of the same?