In this episode, we explore a key kind of challenge that will arise with certain types of major change
As we’ve seen many times in this journal, our world is facing some truly enormous challenges, all the way out to existential level at a fully global scale. Some of these, such as climate-change, are becoming more visible - or, perhaps more to the point, are becoming less easy to ignore, or pretend that they don’t exist; though others of these challenges, such as the bald fact that there is no possible means to make the present possession-based economics sustainable and survivable beyond the next few decades at most, are still ‘below the horizon’ for most people.
But what can we do about those challenges? Do we just give up, and allow ourselves to fall into oblivion? Do we just accept a collapse into one or other of the bleak dystopias still so gleefully presented in films and video-games and the like?
Short answer: no. The challenges are real, yet there are ways onward from the current trajectories, that do lead towards more optimistic futures for us all. So yeah, let’s make this work!
Yes, there are changes that will need to be made in how we do things at a socioeconomic level. Seriously-big changes, in maybe most of those cases - though each made up of a myriad of their own small changes, as per the theme of this journal. Some of those changes, such as much of the response to climate-change, can be quite slow-moving, fading in quite gently over a decade or two. But there are some of the others of those needed changes, though - particularly those around the dysfunctions of the possession-economy, the perils of paediarchy, and the inherently-flawed notion of ‘rights’ - that are so incompatible with the way we do things now that the switch will need to take place all in one go. Maybe all over-and-done with in a single day.
What? Change in a day? At large scale? Is that even possible? At all?
Sure, yes, it is. Maybe not easy, of course - few large changes are - but, yeah, entirely doable.
And we know that, for certain, because it’s been done many times before.
So let’s look at some real examples, right here, right now.
First, there’s ‘The Day The Gauge Changed’, as described by The History Guy over on YouTube.
This one’s way back in 1886, in the US South. The railways there had standardised on a 5ft gauge - ‘gauge’ being the distance between the railway-tracks that the train-wheels ran on. The reason for the change was that the railway-owners realised they were being hit by huge costs from having to tranship passengers and freight every time anything needed to move between the South and the rest of the country; and the problem was only going to get worse as time went on and traffic increased. The only way out would be to change the gauge to match the standard used elsewhere. And to minimise disruption, and keep the costs down, they’d need to do all of it - all eleven thousand miles and more of track - all in one go. All in one day.
Okay, in the end, not quite ‘change in a day’, but close. From the start-signal on the morning of Monday May 31st, through to the last track-pin reset on Tuesday June 1st 1886, all done and dusted in just thirty-six hours.
Sure, there was a fair bit of preparation, though not as much as you might expect: just four months to get everything ready to go. As The History Guy puts it, “pre-setting crews and equipment and testing processes was critical; in short, planning guaranteed success”. And the total cost - in monetary terms, at least - was also quite a bit less than you might expect: around US$25million, in today’s money.
Okay, there were of course some things that didn’t work out as well as they’d hoped, though most of those were the kind of outcomes you’d expect to see in a money-based possession-economy. For example, as The History Guy notes, “some lines gave crews bonuses for extra miles converted, although that meant that some of the work was sloppily done”; and also that “the railway owners just pocketed the savings”, so freight-costs remained too high for many would-be buyers, constraining the growth of industry in the South for several decades. Overall, though, a real success, from a real change in a day.
Next, there’s ‘Dagen H’, or ‘Right-drive Day’, in Sweden, on September 3rd, 1967 - switching the entire country from driving on the left side of the road, to driving on the right.
As with ‘The Day The Gauge Changed’, the driver (no pun intended) was the need for compatibility with the neighbouring countries, all of whom were already driving on the right. Likewise, increasing traffic, both within the country and between their neighbours, meant that the longer they avoided making the change, the more the problem would get worse. (Other vehicle-technology changes happening at the time, too, though we don’t need to go into the detail on that here - see the Wikipedia article if you do want to know more.) And also likewise, they needed to get it all done in one go, across the entire country, as fast as possible, otherwise, well, yeah, chaos would ensue. Hence a real requirement for an almost literal ‘change in a day’.
Okay, this one was a lot more complex than just changing the space between railway-tracks and the spacing between wheels on rolling-stock. Every traffic-light had to be change over to the other side of the road; almost every road-marking needed to be changed; the entry and exit layout for many junctions and roundabouts; the position of every bus-stop and tram-stop; the position of every road-sign, and probably the sign itself for most cases - and all of that everywhere across the entire country. Most trams already had entryways on both sides, but most buses didn’t: those all needed to change, too, or new buses bought. Changing people’s minds and habits was probably the hardest part of all. No surprise, then, that planning and preparation for the change took quite a long time: more than four years, rather than just four months.
When the change finally took place, most of it happened in a matter of hours overnight, workers removing covers off the new signs and road-markings, and either covering the old ones or removing them entirely. For most of the country, for anyone actually on the road, the switch itself took exactly ten minutes, from 4:50 to 5:00am, to stop, move slowly to the other side of the road, and wait again before moving on. In a couple of cities the change took a bit longer, with a shutdown from late morning on the Saturday through to early afternoon on the following day; but overall, though, yes, change in a day.
And for a third example, there’s ‘D-Day’: the Allied invasion of German-held France on June 6th, 1944 - organising not just the real landings in Normandy, but also two other fake invasions supposedly towards the Norway coast and across the Pas de Calais in France. The main driver (in military terms, at least - the political issues were, uh, a bit more complex…) was to force a breach of the Atlantic Wall and end the effective stalemate of the war in the West; and it did have to be done all in one go, in order to overwhelm the defences and establish a beachhead from which further offensive moves could develop.
As you’ll know, the preparation was enormous: at least two years, involving millions of people applying a vast array of skills, disciplines, manufacturing, training and more, all across multiple countries. (And all of it needing to be done in secret and to be hidden from sight as much as possible - in that sense, the exact opposite of Dagen-H, which needed to be as public as possible.) Then, in addition to the several thousand ships and several thousand aircraft involved just in the first day, they needed to follow up within the first week with their own floating harbours (‘Mulberry’), delivering a truly fantastic amount of supplies, materiel and men; and later even an undersea-pipeline (‘Pluto’) to bring fuel and more all the way from Britain.
Just on that first day alone, more than a hundred thousand soldiers were landed on the beach, plus tens of thousands of airborne troops, and tens of thousands more as aircrew and naval crew. And yes, the harm done and loss of life was enormous, and it’s perhaps arguable that they didn’t fully achieve any of their intended objectives for that first day - but overall it was still enough to establish the beachhead that they needed, and set the stage for the greater breakthroughs to follow. In that sense, definitely a fundamental change in a day.
Those examples, and so many others like them, do show us that ‘change in a day’ is indeed doable: we know that now. Yet what all of these examples also show is the need for a clear intent and purpose, and some really solid preparation and planning. If we’re to avoid those disasters and dystopias that would otherwise be coming our way, that planning, preparation and purpose ae what we need to turn to now.