Julie Keller has a terrific column in today’s Tribune. I don’t often gush about anyone over at the Trib, but this is perhaps the most intelligent article I’ve read since I moved to Chicago nine years ago. Keller explores both the vacancy and the potency of the concept of “change.” She closes on the eternal ramifications of the word:

The genuine riddles of change, however, long predate 21st Century elections. As Steeves notes, the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus pointed out that one cannot step in the same river twice; the moment passes, never to return, and all is altered. Change is inevitable. Yet to Socrates’ way of thinking, Steeves says, some things must remain stable and eternal.

“The word ‘change’ is tossed around as a buzzword,” Steeves acknowledges, “but there are very ancient questions embedded in the idea of ‘change’: If something is changing, what is the ‘it’ that’s changing? And is there something universal and stable beneath the change?”

Indeed, in our culture, change appears to have achieved its own stability. The economy changes yearly. The pop culture changes daily. And while this gives us great anxiety, it also gives us some comfort that there’s always hope just ahead. Psychoanalysts call concepts like change “enigmatic signifiers,” concepts that have meaning and yet that meaning is always moving and changing. The meaning is enigmatic. Thus, these concepts can play a very powerful role in our psyche. They can become attached to our very identity if we allow them. Think of “justice” and “freedom.” Many of us may even consider dying for such ideals. But how many really understand what they mean?

Of course, Julia isn’t really discussing the psychology of change so much as the politics. In politics we are constantly inundated with calls for change and yet nothing ever does. I wonder sometimes whether this cycle of hope and disappointment will ultimately lead to cultural cynicism or to a heightened sensitivity to the charisma and the rhetoric of change, a sensitivity bordering on mass delusion.

But the change problem is not merely socio-psychological. Because one has to ask whether or not the system is broken such that it can no longer change. And if that is so, how long can Americans really embrace their Democracy as legitimate?

These are all questions without answers. And perhaps what is most impressive about the Keller article is that she doesn’t try to create answers where there are none. Kudos.