Change is disruptive. This is key to understanding our reaction to it. People value stability. Change breaks that stability and forces on us a scramble to find a new stable point around which to base our lives. This process can be painful and protracted but at the same time exhilarating. Changes can come for any variety of reasons and from a variety of causes. Often, the cause is external. Economic conditions, political conditions, social conditions - these are all sources of external change. You think you've got a stable job. You've been working in your organization for over 10 years. You have had great reviews every year. Management has heaped praises and awards on you. Then one day, you are fired. No explanations given. Half an hour to pack your things and get out. This is unexpected, unanticipated change that causes a major disruption. Carefully laid plans for the future are suddenly knocked out of kilter. Consider another scenario. You come home after a hard day's work and your better half wants a divorce. You had missed all signs of dissatisfaction or disaffection. Again, unexpected, unanticipated change that causes a major disruption. Yet another scenario. You discover that you have won the lottery. Suddenly there are over a million dollars in your account. Again unexpected, unanticipated change that will cause a major disruption.
Why do we have nostalgia for the past? Why do we yearn for a past that now seems simpler and more innocent. The time period in question dies not matter. Whether it is the 1970s or the 1980s or the 1990s or some earlier period, the passage of time has lent an aura of innocence and simplicity that we did not appreciate when we were actually experiencing that era. A major reason for this effect is that change brings positive and negative effects in its wake. On the positive side, we have different and usually better, faster ways of communicating, working and socializing. It is now possible to maintain far flung relationships. Life in many respects is easier than previously. But these changes come at a cost of added complexity. There are now much more options to keep track of and figure out. The new and improved ways of communicating, working and socializing also mean that we need to learn new habits and unlearn old ones - an incredibly hard task to do. In addition, the direction of the change is often not clear. Alternate new paths lie open before us. One has to be chosen but there is no guide map. A leap in the dark needs to be undertaken and that is a truly terrifying prospect. And there is no let up. Not only change is occurring, but the rate of change is accelerating. Adjustments need to be made ever faster. By contrast, the past seems definitive, simpler, innocent.
What is true of individuals is also true of nations. Why is there a rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment throughout the world. All the evidence indicates that immigrants have a positive effect on host societies. Most immigrants are by nature more enterprising and hard working than their peers in their native countries. They have to be. It is not easy to leave everything you are familiar with and seek work in a new country with a strange language and strange customs. Most immigrants contribute more to their host societies that they take out. There is an inter-mingling of cultures, customs, styles and modes of expression which result in new modes of expression and new, different goods and services being made available. Countries which experience immigration grow faster than those which do not. Yet immigrants are treated with suspicion and hostility. They are viewed as stealing jobs from the natives even if the jobs are of the type that no native would want to do. Immigrant lifestyles and mores are viewed as threats to native lifestyles and mores. Why? What is happening here? Immigrants bring change in their wake. The people who are hostile seek to hold on to what is familiar. A fear of change provokes a visceral reaction.
As I have written before, change can be viewed through different prisms. However it is viewed, it is the one great constant in our lives. Change occurs on and around us all the time. Why then are we often afraid of change? Why do we not celebrate and embrace change all the time? It is precisely because of its disruptive effects.
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