Why is change unappealing?
People (in general) notoriously dislike change (in general). They cling to the relationships, jobs, neighborhoods, friends, stores, routes, restaurants, foods, etc., that they already know. Every administrator or manager has encountered strong and frequently emotional resistance to change—though I suppose all resistance originates in emotions, since rational arguments that favor a particular change usually don’t make a dent: people want things to stay the way they are, and if a change—new procedures, equipment, methods, organization, canteen hours, whatever—turmoil must ensue and be endured until things finally settle down. Then the formerly hated change becomes the new status quo, and people will now fight any changes to that.
Some resistance to change in organizations and societies comes from those in positions of power under the status quo: they usually view their power as derived not from themselves but from their position in the status quo, and if the status quo were to change, they fear they will lose power. So these people fight change, and their power often makes the fight effective. But it’s more than that: people will even resist changes that will improve things for them.
On the personal level it’s been observed that people who attempt personal change (to stop smoking, cut back on drinking, lose weight, and the like) are often sabotaged by their closest family and friends, who don’t like things to change (in general). Of course, it’s also possible that these intimates view such changes as an implicit rebuke, but mostly it seems to be a fear of change.
What’s up with that? I was thinking about it and it strikes me it has its roots in fear of the Big Change: death. Death is such a turn-off (both literally and figuratively) that people don’t want to think about it.
The (subconscious) idea is, “If I can just keep everything the way it is now, not allowing any changes, then I won’t die.” Because, of course, the final change for the individual is his or her death. People (in general) avoid looking directly at death—the number of euphemisms may even be greater than those for sex. In social exchanges people seem to embrace a tacit fantasy that death won’t happen. It’s something that people not only avoid discussing, they even avoid thinking about it.
For example, an elderly person complaining about diminished abilities is often reassured with something like, “Oh, you’re going to live forever.” This pathetic reassurance is transparently false, but it at least puts aside confronting the fact of death.
And because we won’t look squarely at death and its inevitably but push all such thoughts aside, away from our conscious mind, those concerns erupt in odd contexts (as in fighting change). I suddenly realize that this is related to the kinds of self-deception discussed by Daniel Goleman in Vital Lies, Simple Truths, a very interesting and highly recommended book.
