Equating 'new' with better is major false assumption of our time: Bird Lovegod

A new way of doing something is assumed to be better than the old way.

And with this constant bias to newness and modernity comes an equal and opposite bias against oldness and tradition. What should this be? Is it true? Or is it an unconscious belief given to us by consumer marketing?

Even if the old survived for thousands of years, and has been tested in the field a hundred million times, somehow the label of ‘old’ as opposed to ‘new’ implies it to be inferior according to modern ‘wisdom’, which is in fact not wisdom at all.

This new phenomena is entirely the making of marketing departments. A product is given a tiny tweak, probably to make it cheaper to produce, then marketed as NEW! and improved and this pattern, repeated ad infinitum, across the entire spectrum of goods and services, keeps people coming back for more.

Frequently this obsession results in new inferior ways replacing established and successfully proven ways.

This phenomena is frequently visible in software, where seemingly unnecessary and confusing updates are made without any customer demand driving them. ‘If it's new it must be better’ is a deeply embedded false assumption of our time.

We have come unanchored from the old and proven and good, and are washed around as flotsam on the tide of marketed inferiority. The mental health of our nation is in decline, and we have forgotten why that is so and how that used to be prevented and healed.

Imagine, if you will, a place you attend, in person, every week, where you receive a spiritual and emotional uplift, where you can share the burdens of life, where you can speak in confidence to a professional regarding your wellbeing, where you can be listened to and counseled and advised, where you can unload from the stress and strain of everyday existence and walk out feeling lighter, clearer, more whole and healed. Imagine experiencing that, every week. How much better would you feel and be?

Imagine the impact that would have on your own life, on your families, and on society, if everyone did the same. It would be totally transformative, individually and collectively. Imagine the social benefits, the reductions in suffering, in medication and substance abuse, in violence and sadness and crime and depression.

In this world we are constantly under negative influence from countless sources, and ‘wellness’ is a multi billion pound industry both adding to the malaise and claiming to be the cure for it, such a free weekly service as described above would, you think, be a miracle, a God send.

And indeed it is. Because it is called a Church.

It is not new. It is ancient. And it has continued through the ages, outliving countries, outliving empires, outliving ideologies, outliving everything that came and went, and still it stands, solid, built on the rock. It is not new. But it renews, and makes new. It does not need to change. Because it works.

Bird Lovegod is a Christian commentator and business consultant.