How long does something have to be the way it is, to be considered as 'always like that'?

Question

I wanted to change something, not a massive thing, in my place of work, because I believed the 'current' way was flawed - to be told it has 'always' been like that - was a bit if a shock, and upon investigation, it turned out to not have 'always been like that' at all, and only very recently changed.....during a conversation I asked someone why when snow falls is it white, when water is colourless, and the sky that it falls from is the same - 'it's always been like that' was the reply.....so, how long for something to have been considered 'always like that'?

Answer 1

You have WAY too much time on your hands.

Answer 2

In a very literal sense if something has always been 'like that' then it cannot have been anything but 'that' for all of eternity up until the moment in time you mentioned those words. 'The universe is infinite and it has always been like that' is a reasonable statement.

The problem is the average person doesn't take things THAT literally. Usually when a person says "it has always been like that", they are actually saying "I don't know" or "please go away I'm too busy to commit to this discussion". Most people do not want to be bothered with conundrums like this because they're too busy getting on with their lives - working, watching football, driving, etc.

If you were to ask me why snow was white I would probably say "it has always been like that" even though I do know the reasoning behind it and that the statement I'm making is false. In your literal sense I would actually be lying to you. But if you read between the lines you would find that I was actually saying "go away - I'm busy".

Answer 3

There is a joke that you can tell your colleagues and your boss;
Four monkeys sit in a cage. Above the cage is a banana. Every time a monkey attempts to get the banana all four of them get an electrical shock. End of phase one.
In phase two, the electrical shock punishment is put out. One of the monkeys is removed from the cage and is replaced by a newcomer. Of course the newcomer tries to reach for the banana, but as soon as he moves he gets a beating from the other three.
Phase three: when all the original monkeys have been removed and replaced by "innocent" ones, still any newcomer that tries to reach for the banana gets a solid beating.
Why is that ? BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT.

Answer 4

You can say (e.g.) "I've always been good at maths" and it doesn't mean that you were good at maths 2 million years ago, it just means that as long as you've been doing maths you've been good at it.

Likewise there hasn't always been snow, but snow has always been white (pure snow anyway).

So for something to be considered to have "always been like that", it should have been "like that" for its entire history, since it came into being.

Answer 5

One generation

Answer 6

since it began.

we all get that at work. really annoying it is too. it can mean just about anything from: i can't be bothered. who cares anyway. I'm too scared of change. what if the boss doesn't like it. etc

i usually answer it by saying something like: "what, always been substandard. ?"

Answer 7

...good point...like your question...i guess it depends on what you are referring to and in which context and company...at work are they all stick in the mud's or what....lol.....just comfortable in their own little world and too scared to even move that big plant to another corner because..well....it's always been like that....so are they wimps who are scared of any type of change...too lazy to consider an alternative or just too stupid to wonder why snow REALLY is white....i dunno....guess i will use my mind and think about it for a while...have a great 2007...xxx

Answer 8

It's always been that way is a cop-out answer. They don't know, they just don't want to accept change.

Answer 9

Always since *what*? Since they started working there? Since the building was first furnished? Since the start of time?

There's always a 'since'.

Answer 10

How long the person has known about it !

Answer 11

This could be an example of transcendental way in thinking, if I am ever right to understand the meaning of the word. We can always think of the unthinkable; thinking in this sense is a process of creation that whenever we think of something new, that something new is added to what already exited in the universe. We can always relate matters of most peculiar nature in our observations to things more general and grander in nature, but most of us do not like to do this, as most people like to stay focused within the narrow bounds of the matters at hand where solid solutions can be found, and issues practically resolved. Thinking in abstract and more universal terms always lead up to pure questions that may not have any definitive answers relating to our immediate problems.

Thoughts leading to abstract or universal show a very valuable quality in of human mind indeed that, as I said before, is not very common in people. If you like to soar, and ascend from the mundane, the stereotypical, and what is understood to be right just because it is commonly believed to be right, then you have to leave the security of the ground for a while or the ease and definitiveness of common reason and logic of things already well in place. It is worthy of notice, however, that what we usually lose in surface details can be found through an elevated bird’s eye view. All thinking that involves questioning can entail future thinking but can also be rewarding in the end, if one is able to find an end that is.

We can know things only with the help of things we already know; new information once consolidated into an exiting body of personal or collective knowledge help us to define new facts that we call people, places, things, events and situations. Nothing can be known that is not already known in a slightly different way: I for example go to a place and meet someone for the first time, but hat person I only mange to know because I already know many other people like him or her; and now I can draw up comparisons and see contrasts to find new facts about this new acquaintance of mine that from now on I will know as an individual persona with distinctive facts about him in my mind. Who would I see a person if for example I had been living on a different planet altogether?

The most startling thing about human mind is that it never ceases to explore and know new facts about all things already known - as we tend to believe that we know at least few things, but the fact is we don’t, as we cannot know anything absolutely. When the poem London Bridge was written for example there was hardly a person in London town who had not seen London Bridge, but the poem opened up an entirely new field of view for ordinary people to see again what they have always been seeing and taking for granted; they thought they knew the most important bridge of their town. This is the common feature in all artistic forms - art changes human perception about human environment and human condition itself through novel representation of what has always been present.

The fact is that nothing in the universe is permanent; all things are in a transient state in existence; things change, they grown, ripen, rust, decay, as they continually change in their smallest possible details all the time; nothing totally still can ever exit or be ever be seen; the universe entire is but a constant transformation; and the sense of time we induce by our observation of this constant and consistent change – a change that we hardly notice, as light is but energy in motion in our eyes.