Change: both desired and resisted

Change is a bugger. People often don't want to change even if they are unhappy with their lot. Nobody has described this better than Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in The Leopard, the story of the Sicilian Prince of Salina threatened with change by the arrival of Garibaldi in 1860. “The Sicilians,” says the Prince, “never want to improve for the simple reason they think themselves perfect; their vanity is stronger than their misery.” Moslem imams, King Roger's knights, Swabian scribes, Angevin barons, Catholic Kings, Spanish viceroys, and Charles III's …