Metathesiophobia. That's the scientific term for fear of change. Most of us have some of it, and some of us have lots of it. Because social change has been accelerating, particularly over the past half century, Behavioral Science has been interested in how the human psyche deals with the unprecedented phenomena. The good news is that most of us are handling it quite well. In graduate school I had the opportunity to examine several case studies of change management. They ranged from highly successful to disastrous.
What we know is that we all encounter change with two types of fears. Type one is the fear that "If we don't make the change, things won't get better." Type two is the fear that "if we do make the change things will get worse." Although we all have some of each, type one or type two is dominant in each of us.
We saw both types at work in the recent proposal to incorporate Oakhurst, which would have brought about both political and social change. The most ardent type one dominants led the effort and supported a yes vote. The most ardent type two dominants led the effort to prevent the change from happening.
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