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Tradition vs Change: Why the Fight Will Never End - FutureIQ

2,548 views Wait, is this logic right? • Nov 07, 2025
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Slog Reference: Embracing Change vs Time-tested Wisdom (Pace Layers)

Description

What happens when tradition collides with change? When Amitabh’s Parampara, Pratishtha, Anushasan meets Shah Rukh’s rebellious romance in Mohabbatein who’s actually right? In this episode of Future IQ, we explore the eternal tension between modern culture and traditional values between the fast and the slow. Why does every civilization need both? Why does friction between the two create progress, not chaos? Through Stewart Brand’s idea of Pace Layers, we’ll uncover how every new idea from fashion trends to GPS technology travels through multiple layers of society before it becomes “normal.” You’ll see why fast-moving innovation keeps us alive, but slow-moving wisdom keeps us stable. So the real question isn’t whether to change it’s how fast to change. Watch till the end to find out why we need both SRK and Amitabh in our heads all the time.

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Videos you may like / referenced in today’s episode:
Why Superstition is Smarter Than Science - Chesterton’s Fence Explained: https://youtu.be/LYdXruXmlng
Are you a Baloo or a Bagheera? Explore vs Exploit Concept: https://youtu.be/Zj4IlAtCwok
Mastering Both Your Brains | System 1 vs System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4

Books referenced in this video:
How Buildings Learn: https://taap.it/5GNWWul

Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Chapters:
00:00 Modern vs. Traditional Values
01:16 Who Was Right In Mohobatein?
03:06 Stuart Brand's Pace Layers
04:00 The Necessity of Friction
07:26 The Six Layers of Change
09:05 GPS: A Six-Layer Example
16:17 Examples: Friends & Hobbies
17:31 The Building Analogy
20:42 Pace Layers and AI

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Follow FutureIQ on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefutureiq/

Source / References:
Book: The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand
Packy McCormick on Pacing Yourself
Pace layers original paper(?): as a mechanism for antifragility
Paper with a good introduction or maybe this is better
Gartner's Pace Layered application strategy
Article applying shearing layers to software architecture: with actionable advice
Reframing Education for the Long Now: contains a crazy detailed pace layers diagram
Tiago's PARA Framework as Pace Layers for note-taking
Pace Layers by a UX guy

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Embracing Change vs Time-tested Wisdom (Pace Layers)

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Transcript

Shriant, modern culture versus traditional values, which is more important? Oh wow. Uh tough question man. I mean modern culture is important because that is how we got here in front of all our that's progress. Traditional wisdom is also important because it gives us a framework to sort of progress into the next whatever part of our evolution or existence or whatever you want to call it. So I don't know man. Yeah. I mean because you know traditional values are there for a reason right and they're time tested chest and spence we've done an episode exactly and this question can be applied to other areas of life and at different time scales right mean software engineers stick to
fundamentals like basic programming or jump on new trends like AI and machine learning and the latest JavaScript framework right should schools be teaching fundamentals or they should upgrade update the curriculum every year like for example in third standard do you focus on maths or do you teach AI right oh wo that's actually a question now there is it's a question now and see it's always a question right u and ultimately it boils down to in mobate who was right Amitab Bachan or Shah Ruk Khan right I mean okay that's a very left turn into the conversation but yeah param Champra, Pratishta, Anushasan or Rajarian.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, fashion versus culture, how do you decide? Wow. Well, so first of all, the first thing to establish is that both are needed. Okay. Okay. Usually you will find you know some older people like oh no traditional values is the only thing and all this fashion stuff is you know it just keeps changing and we should just ignore it. And the youngsters will usually be like what are your traditional values? Those are the things that gave us dowi and you know so traditional values are all [ __ ] Yeah.
But both are needed. Okay. Because what happens in a culture is that the fashion which is changing fast that is how you explore and you find things which are good or better than right now. Right? That is how you learn to get rid of the bad things from the past like the dowi. Okay. But the traditional values are what gives you stability, right? Without that you will just be flitting from one fashion to another fashion and there will be no uh you know no core no backbone to the whole thing.
Right. A very weird way. This is reminding me of the explore versus exploit concept that you talked about. It is exactly the explore versus exploit conflict. Fashion is basically exploring different things and once you land on something that makes sense that is actually providing value you exploit that and then that becomes sort of the core the backbone that you talked about and so this basic idea comes from a concept called pace layers by a very smart guy called Stuart Brand. Okay. So I'm going to give a number of different analogies and nice little proverbs that he uses to drive this point home. Right.
Space layers. Yeah. So fast learns but slow remembers both thing. Yes. Right. Fast proposes, slow disposes but not all the time. Right. So every once in a while one of the propositions of fast gets picked up by the slower. Right? So think of it as when I say pace layers, pace is the pace two layers. Fast is your fashion layer and slow is your uh traditional values layer. And these two layers are going at different speeds. The pace is different. So that's why they are pace layers.
So like they're concentric wheels on top of the other. So the slow is the inside wheel which is moving slow and the top is the outside wheel which is moving fast. But that basically means there is going to be friction between the yes we'll come to that the friction is not only unavoidable but it is also necessary right okay but so basic idea is in a durable society this is a steward brand quote right each level is allowed to operate at its own pace safely sustained by the slower levels below and kept invigorated by the livelier levels above right so the level above you is lively, bubbly.
Yes. Exploring, changing, right? So that's what keeps you alive. Otherwise, you will atropy and you will, you know, harden and die, right? Yeah. And but the slow layer below is the one that is giving you safety, right? That doesn't allow too much change too fast because then you might end up in a situation where you can't deal with problems of the world. If everything is in a flux then there is no stable platform for you to stand on and therefore you'll never experience the stability that is needed to understand that everything is in a flux.
So Amitab Bachan and Mahabate Parra Praesh Anushasan that the tradition prestige discipline right that gives the stability. I'm going to clip that out and use it as a meme. I loved it. Yeah. and fast is SRK and the youngsters and who want to do all these interesting things and who actually want to have fun in life right you can't say either of those is unnecessary right so no longived civilization exists without managing this tension between these two layers the friction right because fast has all the attention but slow has all the power right interesting way at it all the songs and dances are pictured on fast, right? But the whole story is controlled by the
constraints of the slow. Yeah. Because the way Amitab reacts is how they make their moves and how they define their uh next actions. Right. And as people get older, I mean, they slowly migrate from the fast parts to the slower parts, right? Because a lot of youngsters are going to hate listening to that because they've been told Okay, etc. So I found a lovely quote on Twitter, right? Basically, which says that culture is invisible to adolescents but a matter of great concern to the elders. Right.
Right. Adolescents are obsessed by fashion and elders are bored by it. Right. Yeah. So this is the tension. This is the friction. But the reason both are needed is that without the fast, the slow will fossilize and rust and die. Right. Right. But without the slow, the fast is like a butterfly which goes from flower to flower to flower and never gets anything actually done. Right. And which is why kids are free to try all kinds of experiments and [ __ ] up sometimes but only because there exist parents as a safety net.
Right. Right. Okay. This is this is a very interesting new perspective into uh the tradition versus modernism debate. But at the same time I also bring up the examples of Amitab and Shahuk in Moab both of them are kind of polar opposites and I wherever I see polar opposites I also think that there is has to be a continuum that connects both of them. Yeah, because it is a continuum, right? I mean, we started with just two layers because that is easier to explain, but in reality, there are many layers, right? Steuart Brand's original concept of base layers actually had six layers.
At the top, he had fashion, which changes all the time. Below that was commerce, business, business, right? Which doesn't change as fast as fashion, but still business keeps changing, right? what you make money from, how you pitch and all of that. Under that is infrastructure, right? The thing that all of society is built on, right? I mean, it is roads, institutions, uh you know, uh I mean infrastructure. Got it. Got it. The buildings, uh the internet. Under infrastructure is governance. Okay. The rules, the laws, right?
Uh and now again you can see this is becoming tradition, right? The rules which everybody has to follow those don't change as fast as business changes or even as fast as the infrastructure changes. Right. Correct. Under that is culture which is usually something from 100 200 500 years ago. And under that is our base nature. Right. So as in base human nature something that is internalized ingrained correct into us. Right. But I mean that was a little too theoretical. So let me take an example to explain right let's see GPS okay okay GPS as in the location global satellites that you on a map so in the '90s it was fashion only like niche hikers and boers had this fancy gadget
which would show them where on the world they are and they're like you know just they want to show it off to their friends it wasn't that useful right right in the 2000s it became commerce logic loistics companies, companies which have trucks being sent all over. They were using it and they were actually uh using it to reduce costs and so on. Right? Then the next decade it became infrastructure. It is there in all our phones. All more and more GPS satellites were put up and now you have maps uh which show your position and so on.
Right? So then it became infrastructure. Now it is everywhere. Right. But notice how it took quite some time to reach that level. Even when trucking companies were using it, the rest of the infrastructure wasn't in place. It takes time. Yeah. There weren't enough satellites. There were a limited number of military satellites that gave up. More than that, the phones and the apps using the GPS weren't there. Right. Correct. Then governance laws around the use of the GPS, the satellite. How many satellites are you allowed to send up?
spectrum rules, anti-jamming policies, right? Because otherwise you can jam the GPS signals and uh that this is critical infrastructure. So all of those rules coming into place. It became critical infrastructure with that much amount of usage because now it is part of the infrastructure and everybody is using it. Right? Correct. So we went from fashion to commerce business to uh infrastructure to now governance. Below that is culture. culture changes slowly, right? Now, for example, nobody asks for directions. Just send me the location pin, right? Uh and share your live location has become a safety thing. I mean, we you you guys just you leave leave the house without any directions, without anything. And oh, you'll figure it out and you will
get in touch. I mean if I wanted to go from here to uh my you know relative's place in a different city the amount of coordination needed was insane because once we left home there was no way to contact there was no location pin there was no and safety was a different level of problem right so all of that has just now become part of our culture and we just changed how we think about this even though there will still be older people Now, who will worry about such things and who will insist on giving you step-by-step directions and then after that there will be a tree and take a left at the tree and just send me a pin,
you have to tell them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And then finally the last one was nature. So I mean enough time hasn't passed for GPS for it to change our nature, right? But I mean you can imagine the next step. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I can kind of imagine uh that although I will have I probably will only know it when I see it on how something goes from culture to nature but I do see that there is very clearly a step of acceptance that requires moving into the next layer. So from fashion to uh business to commerce there is a level of acceptance that has to come within the society so to speak. But that comes with friction.
Yeah. And see I mean before acceptance comes friction and there is always that friction right and that friction is necessary right if the two layers were completely independent of each other and not constantly rubbing against each other not constantly fighting over this I mean if you didn't have Shah Rukh Khan and Amitab Bachan fighting each other what would happen is that Shah Ruk Khan and the youngsters would be living in a different world and Amitab would be living in a different world right and there would be no change the layers don't learn from each other.
Right? By the end of the movie, Amitab has learned something and the kids have also learned uh something, right? That only comes from friction being forced to deal with the other, right? And so what is happening is that fast and small instructs slow and big by acrude innovation, right? Slowly slowly every innovation every new thing they're trying and over time uh they finally the older people realize okay this kind of makes sense uh that's kind of incremental once in a while there is a revolution needed where you have to actually overthrow them uh and so on right or basically the kids get old and then that becomes their culture so that is what the fast and slow is
doing a fast and small is doing slow and big is controlling the fast by constraint and constancy and sticking to Okay, this is how we do things. So not letting them stray too far from the tried and tested current model. Yeah, too much explore is also not a great thing because then and so these conflicts keep things balanced and resilient, right? So this is constructive turbulence. Constructive turbulence is a nice way to put it. Yeah. And there's a lovely quote sort of only vaguely related to this, but I love it. Right. So F. Scott Fgerald has said that the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time and still retain the ability to function. Right? Wow. So as a society you need to be able to keep all these layers together which are in conflict with each other and still be able to function. That is what makes a society lively and durable. Yeah. And uh a lot of times what happens is either we focus too much on the friction and don't realize that the friction is necessary for those two layers to influence each other. So that the lower layer can tell the upper layer you're going too fast or the upper layer can tell the lower layer you are going too slow. So that friction is necessary.
Our brain is lazy. It doesn't like this tension. It doesn't like keeping multiple ideas and handle it at the same time. Right? So it wants this tension to collapse but managing this tension is what makes you of a straight intelligence. Right? So that I think is the key point of this episode. We are only halfway in the episode but this is the key point. Remember it that you have to manage this tension in your life. You have to adjust things so that you are in both layers at the same time.
Yeah. I mean this is applicable both on an individual level and also on a society level. On an individual level, I can see certain behaviors forming and going through all of these layers slowly within myself even considering the infrastructure and governance from an individual perspective. And I can also see this applicable in a so social construct, social sense. But I mean, you know, it might be useful to just go through a whole bunch of examples of where it is applicable, right? Let's make it more concrete rather just too much theory, right?
Sure. So friendships, right? You should have some new friends and some old friends. Y that gives stability to your life, but also it doesn't just fall into the same old patterns. Okay. You should have some young friends and some old friends. Yes. So the older people give you the balance and the stability and wisdom and the younger people keep you in touch with where the world is going. Right now I know why he's friends with me and now I know why I'm friends with him. So figure out for yourself which one of is the older friend. So in hobbies or you know watching TV or social media again you should have this kind of a
balance that you know some things you are watching from the slow and fast layers fashion some things you're watching from the older layers that is why in this uh in in future IQ we talk about social media and we also talk about karma thing right yes we do so it's like one is from this layer and one is from this layer absolutely agreed yeah So in fact this concept Stuart Brand who came up with this concept originally had applied this to a building. A building yeah a building has all six of these layers.
How does a building have all these layers? See because in a building right all the stuff I mean the pictures on the walls and the furniture and all that right that is the fashion layer that changes very quickly. Yes. Right. the space plan of you know where is what and this is the office and this is the den and this is the study and so on right that one is the commerce layer right how I mean basically your commerce what you are doing like that okay right and that changes much less than the correct fashion is changing right the services in the building the plumbing and the uh you know light and electricity and All
that that is the infrastructure infrastructure. Correct. Notice that that seems like it is constant but you know over a 10-year period that does change. I mean you know my house we had set it up with Ethernet cables going in the walls and Wi-Fi came in right and uh pipes used to be metal now there are but metal pipes get rusted now there are plastic pipes. So things change there right? All right. I'm curious to see where you go with the governance culture and nature here in the building analogy if you are.
Yeah. So, uh governance I have totally forgotten. Right. Just look it up. Look up Steuart brand. But the one layer below that is structure of the building, the beams and so on. Right. That doesn't change for decades. Like 30 40 years the structure of the building remains. But even that changes once in a while. Once in a while you do end up changing that and nature is the site is the foundation itself the location the foundation right correct so yeah he actually did there's a lovely there's a lovely book called how buildings learn how buildings learn I mean you think of a building as a constant but buildings are changing all the time and there are six layers of
changes and how this layer of changes affects that layer that's where this idea came from and it is applicable in so many different areas, right? So, Thiago Forte has the par guy par guy. Par framework is a base layers framework. Okay. So, para framework is a system for note takingaking and knowledge management in your life. We've spoken that about uh we've spoken about that in the episode on the power of lists. Go check that out. We'll put it in the description also. Yeah. Basically again it says that the way you collect knowledge should also be you know that's like quick notes being taken that's the fashion layer and then one layer below that so four layers I won't
get into that but yeah I mean now that you think about it you can apply the concept of base layers to literally everything that underos a change in life. Yeah, whether it is a building, whether it is not taking, whether it is remembering things, whether it is friendships which is essentially life itself as in life. I mean see AI right AI is coming in and it is changing and how do you think about it? I mean should you embrace it not embrace it and there again paste layers can give you the answer right yeah that last year chat GPT the right way to use it was for the art fashion you know gibli images and so on
now we have got into commerce I mean chat GBT is going to be used for buying things right you can now pay for things directly inside chat GPT slowly uh it is getting into the commerce uh I In commerce also there are various paid tools. Companies have started adopting it and so on. Next it will go into the infrastructure leveling of buses and self-driving cars and water allocation and all of that. Forget that it will be done by AI. Yeah. it'll go into infra in infrastructure in terms of people uh not realizing that it exists because the way I see it I see I see it slowly disappearing into the background but not exactly more the more
the foundation than the background so everything that we've spoken about eventually starts finding root and becomes the foundation of something correct of the future and then at some point governance will also change because of chat GPT right because rules will have to be made around the usage of chat GPT and then then of course there is that entire question of robots humans intelligence natural artificial and that is an entirely different conversation that we'll have to get into at some point in time because as he said there are tech bros who are like chat GPT and LLMs and AI can do everything why aren't people picking it up and then there is the other side that is saying no it can't do
everything you guys are exaggerating things and then this is the marketing push and all of that and uh there is still stuff that needs to be done. You see right now you are able to see the fact that these guys are sitting on this layer and these guys are sitting on this layer of the paste layers right so I think I want to summarize the takeaway from this right because we just did a lot of theory and a bunch of examples but first of all understand that all of these layers are needed you know you need fast you need slow and you need friction between them these two layers ignoring each other is not the
right thing right You do want Shah Rukh Khan fighting Amitab Bachan, right? That is one. Second is that you should immerse yourself in the latest fashions, right? Uh but always while you are doing that, you should channel your inner Jeff Bezos and ask yourself what is not going to change in 10 years, right? Ah so um both of these things are necessary and some people find one of them easier and the other hard, right? So a lot of people feel oh every new thing that comes along jumping on it is very frivolous but that's not true. You should allocate some time to jump on every new thing but also keep thinking what is going to be constant what is not
changing. Okay also understand which things need to change at which speed right that is important. uh and things that change at similar speeds put them together things that go slower put them together right uh that is the other thing look for things which are sitting in the wrong layer oh right so right now people I mean last year two years back uh people asking for AI laws there should be AI laws let's do this let's do that right that was people trying to put things in the fashion or commerce layer when it should have been in the governance layer and there's a long time to go before we reach the governance layer right now we
are still in the fashion and commerce layer maybe we'll enter the infrastructure layer in a little bit when it comes to chat GPT and AI and all of that there's still time for that right yeah so understand the concept of pace layers understand that why modern ideas move fast and traditional ideas move slow and why both are necessary and why clashes between the who are necessary and why every new thing must percolate through several layers of different kinds of changes before they become second nature. Yeah. And it's not just about Chad GPT. It's not just about Amitab Bachan and Shah Ruk Khan. It's also about understanding that your life also percolates through all of these
layers. As you grow older and older, you will go from the fashion layer to the nature layer. yourself in different ways in whatever context that applies. And the more you're aware of that, the more you'll be at peace with yourself. And if you want to understand how you can make this transition smoother for yourself, I suggest you go and watch this episode called are you a balu or a bira because that's where we've spoken about the explore versus exploit concept that I told you about. And I think that episode in conjunction with this episode will give you answers that you are seeking. But if you still have more questions, you can always ask us in the comments or join the WhatsApp
community that uh we have created for future IQ. QR code is up on your screen. Link is in the description. Uh those of you who have joined, thank you so much for joining. It's a pleasure having you there. Thank you so much. Shriant Naven Future IQ