Joss Whedon speaks at the Equality Now 20th Anniversary Event on the nature of change.

“Good evening. I would like to address the nature of change. There are two constants in the universe: existence and change. Neither of them ever stops. By the time I finish this sentence, the earth will be several thousand miles from where it was when I began it. And my phone will somehow, yet again, be obsolete.

As a society we resist change. I respect that. I liked my phone. We liked things the way they were. But then they very seldom ever actually were the way they were… and we didn’t actually like them that much then. What we mean by that is the way they’re ‘supposed to be’. According to our own ideological comfort zone. Our pin in time’s butterfly that sticks it to this spot, on this wall, in this frame. Everything concentrically that is farther away from this is ‘what’s wrong with the world’.

Religion is a pinpoint. This is not to belittle it, but the great religious texts (the Bible, Qu’oran, Martin Luther’s 95 theses): they were meant to affect radical change. To civilize, to reboot a world that seemed out of joint, seemed mad. And they did. Moving concentrically away through time they become less radical. They become staid, they become an excuse; a reason to ignore change, to fight it, to persecute. Not the fault of the text. This is how we work. We work like this because people think of themselves as separate from change in the way that we are separate from each other. We are blades of grass in an enormous field. The wind blows us this way or that way but it doesn’t affect the field.

When I graduated, amazingly, from university, our illustrious graduation speaker told us “Don’t try to change the world, you won’t, you can’t. The only thing you should try to do is not live off your parents.” I knew even then, he was wrong, he was cynical. I knew that I would find one day, a way… to live off my parents. And then, you know, hopefully get to the change thing. 

For some of us, this point, this pinpoint, is not what we were. It’s up ahead, it’s what we dream of being. Everybody in this room is in that category. Everybody here sees the next great text being written. Wants us to take the next step in the evolution of the human mind. Women and men as equals. Everybody in the world treated with respect. We’re not close. Equality Now works twenty years, more to come, to move us closer. Advocacy, participation, donation, even just listening moves us closer. Everyone here might well think of themselves as an agent of change. I’ll say to you all, from the bottom of my heart: you’re missing the point. You are not agents of change. You are change. It’s not a question of whether you can change the world: you have no choice. There is no world but what we see, no history but a compendium of perspectives. How you see the world will be the world or will become the world. If we see it with fear and hate… Fear and hate will manifest. If we look beyond, if we dream the next text, it will be written. We do not pass through this life, it passes through us. You are not just existing: you are happening, you are an event. You are changing everything.

And that may seem like a bit of a responsibility. “I’m history now? I was gonna have waffles, what does that mean!? How does that affect the timeframe continuum which I’m apparently in charge of?” I can’t help you with that. I would just say that you should understand your power and glory in your place in the chain. That’s where we are. We are standing in a line. Change will inevitably come and we will inevitably be a part of it and we will pass it on to those after us. You are not blades of grass in an enormous field. I cannot thank you all enough for being here, I would just ask that you remember long after this event is over, what all of us really are.”