Attend any meeting
where the objective is to introduce a new concept, procedure or protocol and
you will find the subject of managing change high on the agenda. It is a long
held belief, underpinned by much research, that resistance to change is a
fundamental part of the human condition. We certainly don’t have to look far to
find supportive evidence. Consider the
following:
The woman who agrees that Scotland should be an independent country,
agrees also that an independent Scotland would be a prosperous, fairer and more
equal society and yet remains resistant to the change that would bring this
about. Consider the woman who stays within an abusive relationship,
endangered both physically and psychologically and yet remains because the
familiarity of ‘the devil she knows’ seems a better option than facing the
uncertainty of changing her life.
If resistance to change is innate it would surely imply that
such resistance confers a survival advantage and yet both of these women are
displaying behaviours which are in direct opposition to their survival
mechanisms.
To understand this we have to understand the ways in which
caution can be turned into fear and ruthlessly exploited by those who have much
to lose in the new order and all to gain by preserving the old. Thus , the NO
CAMPAIGN struggling to explain in what way we are better together, resort
instead to veiled threats , irrational scare stories and downright lies.
They do this because they have a vested interest in
protecting the status quo, i.e. their position on the greasy pole of career politics;
their preservation of an organisation who’s previously held ideals and beliefs have
long since been trampled into the dust of the Westminster realpolitik. This use
of fear as a weapon, displays a sociopathic and predatory behaviour which has
common purpose with the abuser who holds the abused woman in his thrall by
undermining her belief in her own worth;
convincing her she can’t manage without him; no one else would want her and that
she does not deserve any better.
Hidden within this resistance, however, lies a great
paradox.
If humans were innately resistant to change, then as a species
they would not have flourished and survived. It was only because humans were
willing to embrace change that led them to leave the relative safety of the
trees; walk upright on the open plains; hunt and gather; follow rivers; cross
open water; meet with and adapt to differing climatic and geographical
challenges and so on.
I would suggest, that fear and resistance to change is not
hardwired into our DNA. It is a taught behaviour and a learned response and one
that can be changed when it is in our interest so to do.
Let us therefore end this nonsense and [to paraphrase
Marianne Williamson] let us liberate ourselves from our own fears and in so
doing, by our presence, liberate others.
LETS JIST DAE IT LIBERATE YOURSELF VOTE
YES.
