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9 "Pregnant Teacher Stirs Town," Binghamton Press, December 22, 1982, p.1A.

P2-C06-5

CHAPTER SEVEN

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

"If people were meant to fly, they'd have wings."

"Women voting? Nonsense – voting is men's business."

"I've never worn a seat belt in my life – I'm not going to start wearing one now."

the attitude common to these three statements is resistance to change. Any change, however, slight, represents a break in routine, threatens our established habits, challenges the familiar. It demands that we reconsider older responses.

Just as we prefer patterns of acting that we know, so we prefer ideas that are not strange or foreign sounding, ideas we're comfortable with. When Galileo said, "The earth moves around the sun," people were upset, partly because a thousand sunrises and sunsets told them the sun did the moving, but also partly because they simply had never before heard of the earth's moving. The new idea threatened their fixed belief that the earth was the center of the solar system. They had that idea neatly packaged in their minds. It was a basic part of their understanding of the universe; it was intertwined with their religion. And now this upstart Galileo was demanding no less than that they untie the package, reopen the issue.

When the astronauts first landed on the moon, at least one elderly man expressed total disbelief. "It's a trick thought up by the TV people," he said. "It's impossible for man to reach the moon."

INSECURITY AND FEAR

Why do we resist change? Mainly because the new and unfamiliar challenge our "mine is better" thinking and threaten our sense of security. In many of us that sense is very fragile. Insecurity is the reason some people will go to elaborate lengths to explain away new ideas they cannot cope with. For example, the child whose father is in jail and whose mother steals to support him may believe "all cops are bad." Once that idea becomes fixed he may cling to it. As a result, even years later he may reject the police officer who offers him genuine concern and friendship.1

Another reason people resist change is that they're afraid of the unknown. In some ways this fear may be caused by insecurity; in others it may itself cause insecurity. "Who knows what will happen if…?" they wonder, and they are inclined to suspect the worst. Fired by hat suspicion, they fight the new idea. This kind of fearful reaction is everywhere in evidence – in education and government, in religion, in law, science, and medicine.

As late as 1948, California law prohibited the marriage of an Oriental man and a Caucasian woman. Many people are still mumbling vague warnings about the unspeakable dangers that the racial integration of schools will bring. And a sizeable number of Americans react to the gay liberation movement somewhat like this: "If we allow them to parade their perversion in public, our young people will be corrupted and our value system destroyed."

We might be inclined to think that the problem is peculiar to the United States, but examples of fear-inspired behavior fill the history books. After all, what drove the early settlers of North America from their European homelands was one form or another of intolerance for different ideas and beliefs. Torturing and killing heretics and witches was an established practice at innumerable times and places.

FEAR AND TRADITION

It is probably because of the interaction between insecurity and fear that people hold tradition in such high regard. Many traditions, of course, are worthwhile. They help keep intact the valuable lessons of the past. In many cases, they assist us in defining our loyalties and indeed, our own identities. However, like most good thing, respect for tradition can be shortsighted and unwise. This is the case whenever clinging to tradition represents not careful judgment that something deserves preservation but rather some internal panic. "Anything is worth clinging to, so long as we cling" is not a reasonable attitude.

Surely some