A role for individuality and mystery in "managing" change

This philosophical paper explores why people have so much trouble understan ding, coping with and managing change. It looks behind the Problem to Cry t o understand its origins. It provides an account of human nature that sugge sts people are "naturally" capable of coping with change but that we have f orgotten how to do so because of our intellectual history. It suggests the pervasive influence of scientific paradigms and rationalism has turned us i nto conformists who are afraid to trust our own individual experiences and who rely on others to validate them and tell us how to respond Change makes it difficult to conform because we do not know on whom to rely for validat ion; we do not know which paradigm is "right" This paper suggests some curr ent management remedies respond to this conformity problem but others may e xacerbate it. It offers its philosophical analysis as a tool to interpret a nd evaluate such remedies from a fresh perspective.