Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
Although times and people change, let us examine a few of the oppressive realities that endure, and the opportunities for power they provide:
The Reality : Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot ofnpatience.
The Fantasy : A sudden transformation will bring a total change in one's fortunes, bypassing work, luck, self-sacrifice, and time in one fantastic stroke. Promise a great and total change—from poor to rich, sickness to health, misery to ecstasy—and you will have followers.
The Reality : The social realm has hard-set codes and boundaries. We understand these limits and know that we have to move within the same familiar circles, day in and day out.
The Fantasy : We can enter a totally new world with different codes and the promise of adventure. To bring power, fantasy must remain to some degree unrealized, literally unreal.
The Reality : Society is fragmented and full of conflict.
The Fantasy : People can come together in a mystical union of souls.
· Promise such a union and you can gain much power, but it is a dangerous power that can easily turn against you. This is a fantasy for demagogues to play on.
The Reality : Death. The dead cannot be brought back, the past cannot be changed.
The Fantasy : A sudden reversal of this intolerable fact. Something seems real precisely because the public and the experts as well, so desperately want to believe they are.
The key to fantasy is distance.
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