Resistance

resistanceJennifer Hoffman – Why do we resist change? The simple answer is that it upsets the status quo, takes us out of our comfort zone, we don’t know what’s going to happen when we do change, and we’re scared.

I think if we acknowledge the simple truth that we are scared of change because just don’t know if we can deal with it or what is going to happen to us, we would stop trying to pretend to be brave about it and look at change as a step by step process instead of a chaotic mess that we can avoid by being resistant to change. Continue reading

The Madness of Crowds and What Lies Ahead

Trump Derangement SyndromeJim Daws – In his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Scottish journalist Charles Mackay chronicled the history of the phenomena we now see gripping the Resistance movement to the Trump presidency.  Writing on national delusions, moral panics, economic bubbles, and herd behavior, Mackay observed, “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Mackay documents the manias that made traders turn tulips into the most expensive objects on earth in the mid-1600s, caused Christian communities in the American colonies to torture and execute “witches,” and caused European nobles to sponsor alchemists to turn base metals into gold (and imprison them until they succeeded).  Of these and many other episodes of mass hysteria, Mackay wrote, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” Continue reading