Muhammad: Chapters 2 & 3

 Of Quraysh and Change

 Why Are Customs that Aren't Etched in Stone So Hard to Alter?

   In Samuel Beckett's famous play Waiting for Godot, the protagonists, Vladimir, "Didi," and Estragon, "Gogo," embody the in flexibility of human nature to change. In the final conversation between Didi and Gogo in Waiting for Godot, the two characters discuss their plans for the next day: hanging themselves. They tried to do it that day, but they were unsuccessful at even that action. In the scenes leading up to this one, they have not succeeded in making any progress in helping their tragic yet comedic situation. Their last lines read:

 

DIDI: Well? Shall we go?

GOGO: Yes, let’s go.

[They do not move.] (Beckett 83)

 

 Didi and Gogo stay next to the same “low mound” (3) the entire play. The play ends, and they stand where they started, where Gogo takes off his boots, symbolizing the lack of development the characters have in the play.

 

   I think that this is one of the best metaphors for the deep-seeded habit that humans have of resisting change. In the Quraysh tribe, Muhammad challenged the most important values to the Islam culture at his time: tribal loyalty. The leaders of the tribe wanted him to change his message to align more with their traditional beliefs. His recounts of his visions were splitting up the tribe into those that believed him to be the Arab prophet and those that did not. Those that believed him to be tended to be his younger audience. It makes me think of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, where "tradition" lives on merely because that is what the people have always known so they do not challenge it. And, when the schoolteacher shares his beliefs with Tevye's daughters, Tevye does not approve because they go against their "tradition."  
   In both incidences, the youth in the society is more accepting of change than the elder crowd. The elders are used to one thing and then the youth wish to separate themselves from the older generations. This makes sense. Both in media and in religious and/or historical texts, there is evidence to support that humans do not receive change well. My question is: why? What makes human nature so opposed to change?