One of the bitter lessons I have learnt is that those of us who are excited by new ideas are few in number.
Many people feel deeply threatened by them, regardless of their merits or faults.
Many people feel deeply threatened by them, regardless of their merits or faults.
A common response to ideas I suggest for improving the way we might live is: "so you want to dictate to us", followed by invective about being a Marxist/Maoist/fascist/Nazi (sometimes all four in the same sentence).
Engaging with new ideas requires cognitive effort, which we experience as a form of pain. It's a bit like the pain barrier we must breach when we exercise hard. I suspect this is why some people associate novelty with coercion: you’re forcing me to run all that way!
This barrier is compounded by what psychologists call "system justification": a tendency to support and rationalise the status quo, even if it's harmful.
What these tendencies mean is that we will always struggle against conservatism. Any idea for making our lives better will hit a wall of hostility, that has to be climbed even before we can explain them. Long before we are understood, we'll be dismissed as mad.
None of this to say we should stop proposing new ideas. But we should be prepared for the likely response, and should recognise that it doesn't necessarily relate to whether or not the idea is a good one.
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