As I ate breakfast the other day, I perused Netflix looking for a short 20 minute T.V. show to watch before having to get ready for the day. I noticed that "The Magic School Bus" was available and, as most anyone who was raised in the 90s will do, I tuned in.
As the theme song began to play a pang of longing for the days when my only responsibilities included household chores such as drying dishes and dusting or picking weeds in the garden came over me.
I sat down feeling quite mature as I sipped coffee, a drink of adults, and became immersed in a memory of my childhood. I had seen the episode before, remembered it from when I was little, and as Ms. Frizzle enthusiastically instructed "Bus doooo your stuff," the Magic School Bus transformed into a rocket ship bound for space. I smiled knowing that when I was younger I was amazed by the adventures and loved learning all they had to offer.
As the episode continued along, with the kids travelling from the sun to the far reaches of the Milky Way, I realized the show not only reminded me of the 90s because I grew up with it, but this episode in particular would always be dated.
As the students on the bus stated over and over, the solar system consisted of nine planets. In my youth, this is precisely the truth, yet, today the "truth" has changed. Fact has since evolved and now there are only eight planets as Pluto's title was taken from it.
Now, when I first heard that Pluto was no longer a planet I was outraged as any other citizen I imagine because we had grown up knowing the sun was at the centre of the solar system and Pluto was the furthest planet from it; but, now this was wrong.
I've since come to terms with the fact that Pluto is now a "dwarf planet" and has been reclassified as such because other objects of approximate size to Pluto were found at the outskirts of the solar system including Eris and Ceres.
It's strange to think how this has now become history, how our world is ever evolving. In the 16th Century it was blasphemy to say that the Earth revolved around the sun, but scientifically minded individuals including Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler helped bring about the Scientific Revolution.
Just as the Catholic Church was set in its ways, taught that geocentrism was correct, that everything in the solar system revolved around the Earth, they were hesitant to change; but, change everything did. Thus, when I first learnt Pluto would no longer be the ninth planet from the sun I thought, "Who are these crazy people making these decisions?"
This change was very subtle and on the grand scale of life rather meaningless, yet, upon learning about the change I felt like something had been taken from me. I had been taught that this was the way it was only to be told that my whole life I was actually completely wrong.
Therefore, on a grander scale, though my experiences are trivial, it goes to show the human psyche and how change, whether for the better or not, can be met with resistance.
It's why larger changes throughout history have been met with great resistance such as the Scientific Revolution or Columbus' "discovery" of the New World. Most people thought the individuals associated with these ideas were crazy at the time, but now we see them as great innovators and great thinkers.
Change, however, is inevitable. We change as we grow. Physically we become older and mentally we expand our knowledge, we're influenced by experiences, and we change. Though I still very much enjoy watching cartoons on occasion, mainly those of my childhood if I do, I know that I have changed greatly since I was young.
The world is constantly in a state of change as well in an array of different ways. For example, Marxist thought as further developed by Friedrich Engels, focuses on "dialectical materialism." This is the idea that economic orders reach a state of maximum efficiency, which causes them to decay ultimately giving growth to new systems as the old ones die out.
In the beginning people were once gatherer/hunters, then they became farmers and traded goods with others, as the world continued to change money was introduced creating Mercantilism, which evolved into Capitalism. According to Marx and Engels the next step for the world would be Communism, but whether the Capitalist structure simply has not reached its maximum efficiency or if the idea of dialectical materialism is unfounded, change does seem to be inevitable.
