The more things change, the more they stay the same? What does that mean?

Answer 1

It basically means that as times progress and the world becomes more modern, humans still struggle with a variety of the same basic issues.

There are Hate Crime laws in the US now, for instance, but many groups of people still experience violent discrimination. We have widely available contraception, but a dearth of teen pregnancies. In a country fraught with $5 lattes, many people are still struggling to put food on the table.

If you'd like a more romantic idea of what it means, look up the lyrics to, or download an mp3 of 'As Time Goes By' from the movie 'Casablanca'. I can't quote it here due to copyright, and it's a lovely song (better in the context of the movie). Having been written in the early 1940's, it perfectly illustrates what we're discussing, the timelessness of certain things in a changing world.

Answer 2

The physical universe is always changing. Think of how it has changed since the "Big Bang." However, some things change very slowly, so to all extent and purpose, we can regard them as staying the same in our lifetime. As far as our society is concerned, there are patterns of behavior that repeat themselves from time to time. Think of getting up in the morning, getting ready for work or school, traveling by car, bike or walking, etc. However, even these activities are never exactly the same, Traffic may be slower, you may take a different route, etc. The same thing happens with our thoughts. Sometimes we remember an experience, and another time we remember the same experience. However, each time we may focus on different details of the experience that we are remembering.

Answer 3

A lot of the time, its only the physiology of something that is different, but really, the essence of all change is simply following some historical cycle in social evolution.Each change is eventually found to not be so different after all.

Think of it this way: As humans, we look at frogs for example and see them all as pretty much the same. Smallish, greenish, slimeyish. Not too much distinciton there. A frog, on the other hand, must necessarily see variation between each other, at the least for mating. We humans, thinking we're so superior, are able to pick apart each and every one of our differences, and fail to notice how much we're the same. If an alien from another planet dropped down on earth and saw a native African versus a Chinese versus a Scotsman, he/she/it will still most likely say that they look pretty much the same, just as we do with the frogs.

Answer 4

first of all... this is one of those little rethoric tricks... the message is packed into a little conundrum of words... to perk your interest and to make it easi to remember...
this is called an aphorism...now what it means is up to you to a
degree... aphoristicians are like artists with words, they do not always have an actual message, but mostly they want you to think about it, and draw your own conclusions... which is always a worthwhile thing to do.

as for this specific one... it supposedly means, that while things around us change all the time... with increasing speed, too... that what all thses things are about, stays very much the same. us.
we are stil the same kind of animal that we used to be a thousand years ago. or five thousand. our ways of life have changed, but our minds and our attitudes have not. or not much. which means that there will always be the same kinds of social dynamics, the same kinds of human interactions, leading to very much the same patterns in wildly different areas of life.
and while that is not always easily perceptible, it becomes more noticeable when you compare two much differing times, or areas of life, and you see the same patterns of human bahaviour over and over again.

hence the saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same. or the easier it is to see that humans dont really change at all.

Answer 5

Think of it as an illusion is changing, while the thing the illusion hides stays the same. You can see that in full effect when you study the government/politics. Differen't wording to the same problem with no true answer to fix problem, the original problems of the human race still exsist despite the new look that blurs the problem, things like that.

Answer 6

Women for centuries have tried to make themselves more beautiful with makeup, clothes, jewelry etc.

Men have tried to build a better mousetrap.

Despite technological changes, things are still the same. Women are stiil marketed to by the fashion and skin care industries despite the women's lib movement. Men have Home Depot marketing tools to them.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Answer 7

It means that situations and events in history and people's lives often turn back to basics.
Even though new and different issues and ways of doing things arise, the subject matter often reaches the same conclusions as in time past.

Answer 8

While many things change our lives, we do not really live differently. We still have the same basic routines even though we may do them slightly differently than we used to.

Today we have many ways to reach each other, but do we really reach out to each other more than in the past?

Take care,
Troy

Answer 9

Unless we get stabilsed into the process of accepting change, the very process of change remains the same, affecting us all the time, make us run after it to catch up with the change, ceaselessly !

Answer 10

Time is always turning, this is a cause and effect question. Everything happens for a reason and nothing happens for no reason.