Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
Interpretation
Change is a gradual process, often requiring time and multiple generations to overcome deeply held beliefs.
E. O. Wilson's quote highlights the challenge of instigating change in society due to the entrenched nature of old beliefs. Even when these beliefs are proven to be false, transforming them takes time as people are often resistant to altering their established views. This implies that true change is a slow and generational process, requiring patience and persistence.
In practice
This quote can be used during a seminar about social change to illustrate the resistance often faced.
Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms β if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
The worst thing that will probably happen-in fact is already well underway-is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
Who can sum up all the ills the women of a nation suffer from war? They have all of the misery and none of the glory; nothing to mitigate their weary waiting and watching for the loved ones who return no more.
If it's true, why do they leave us to live like this? With the hunger and the killings and the Games?" And suddenly I hate this imaginary underground city of District 13 and those who sit by, watching us die. They're no better than the Capitol.
Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.
I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.
The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change.
All significant breakthroughs are break -βwithsβ old ways of thinking.
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