What resistance to change protects

From a psychological point of view, resistance to change can be defined as a set of strategies whose purpose is to reduce or eliminate the anxiety that any process of change may generate. Although fear is in itself a normal defence mechanism, it becomes a problem when it prevents us from adapting actively to reality.

The most frequent fears that trigger resistance to change are fear of the unknown and doubt about one’s own capacities. The first produces uncertainty: a little uncertainty can foster creativity (precisely what is needed to adapt to new situations), but a great deal can block us. Doubt about our capacity to adapt can also play tricks on us; and if we hide those doubts from ourselves, if we deny them, we will be even worse placed to face change.

The expectation of change can also be experienced as a loss. The process then resembles mourning, with its traditional phases: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Resistance to change is a phenomenon that can appear at the individual level as well as at the social level. We may experience it when facing personal decisions that involve changes of lifestyle — giving up smoking, changing jobs —, but it can also affect groups, collectives and even whole peoples at the moment of facing changes and taking decisions.

In both cases, the dynamics of resistance to change can always be related to fear and uncertainty, to the handling of feelings such as anger, powerlessness or loss, as well as to the elaboration of arguments meant to justify us or to deny reality. It can also lead to the development of procrastinating behaviour (putting everything off until tomorrow). Failing to acknowledge the complexity of the phenomenon does not help us take rational decisions.

Warding off fear: authoritarianism or humour

Socially, we are going through a crisis that also produces fear and uncertainty. One of the ways of warding off fear, particularly when it is experienced in an aggressive mode, is the authoritarian option. The emotional dynamics of authoritarian organisations rest on the handling of fear and anger. Inwardly, their paternalism contains fear and offers security; outwardly, anger is projected against those considered different — immigrants, for example. This can lead to extremist political options, such as the current European far-right parties. Another way of warding it off goes through humour. If we are able to laugh at our own fear, we take the drama out of it. I do not know whether this has anything to do with the political options led by comedians that have sprung up in Europe of late. I know neither Mr Beppe Grillo nor Hördur Torfason, who led the Voice of the People movement in Iceland; but if a clown and a playwright of the stature of Dario Fo, Nobel Prize in Literature, supports the Five Star movement, we shall have to take the option of humour and creativity very seriously indeed.

Besides, it has so far been the politicians who have brandished the argument of resistance to change against the citizens. According to them, politicians are the architects or the managers of change, and society — or certain of its sectors — is what resists it.

The last two governments have kept telling us that nothing will ever be as it was, that socio-economic reality has changed for good and that instead of resisting and complaining, what we should do is prepare ourselves for the new times. They also tell us that we must be enterprising, that we must take charge of our own destiny without waiting for anyone to come and save us (least of all the State, which will never again be what it was, if indeed it ever was). All of this may be true, but at this stage I am not at all sure that citizens and politicians are thinking the same thing when we speak of fear, change and resistance. It is today a great many citizens who want to change, and the politicians who resist.

On the individual as on the collective plane, bringing about a voluntary change requires three elements: KNOWING, WANTING AND BEING ABLE. The owners of the machinery, the ruling castes of the parties, seem not to know, or not to want to know, what is a clamour in the street and in the polls: that an immense majority of Spaniards have no confidence in them, that they want more transparency, the abolition of privileges, the democratisation of political organisations, transparent funding, exemplary sanctions for the corrupt, and so on. The political hierarchy justifies itself by saying that everything is the consequence of the economic crisis, or else denies the obvious by arguing that these are anti-system slogans. In short, they neither know how to change nor want to.

Some of them, surely, recognise the problems and want to change, but they are caught in the perverse dynamics of their organisations, oriented more towards their own survival than towards their true function of representation. They do not hold power within their parties and do not seem willing, for the time being, to give battle in order to obtain it. In other words: even if they know and want, they cannot, or dare not. If they do not hurry to change, change will run them over.

For citizens, changing means something very different: it means taking back the initiative, not delegating to those they do not trust, being more demanding of themselves and of their representatives, denouncing bad practices within their own organisations. It means revolting against the unjust consequences of a crisis they did not cause. That too is frightening, but some have set out on the road.