"I alone cannot change the world,
but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples."
– Mother Teresa
All we want to do is change the world. How hard can it be?
First, let’s look at what it means to change the world.
Throughout history, there have been many changes. Some of these changes were spurred on by technological innovations. In 3500 BC, a potter in Mesopotamia realized he could use his pottery equipment for a different purpose, and the wheel was born. In 1712, former Baptist minister turned Industrial Revolutionist, Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine. And in the 1990s, the internet (which had been around in one form or another for decades) finally became both accessible and useful to the average person.
Change goes beyond just inventions, of course. In 1214, King John of England was pressured into signing the Magna Carta, a sort of medieval bill of rights that recognized that people who were not noble were still human beings with certain inalienable liberties. The feminist movement changed things for the better for women. Prior to 1980, a woman in America could not get her own credit card unless she was married…to a man, of course.
Ultimately, it is not the new technology, invention, or religion but the widespread acceptance and adoption of that thing that changes the world.
A good idea, no matter how brilliant, is worthless if no one knows about it. You could invent a device that scrubs CO2 from the air (though trees and a healthy ocean actually already do a good job of that) but if you never take it out of your garage, it won’t help anyone. Only through widespread acceptance of the new and unfamiliar has the world changed in the past. It will remain so in the future as well.
There is a pretty clear cycle that comes along with anything new, be it an invention, a philosophy, or even a religion. First, there is doubt. Then ridicule. And finally, if the new idea/concept/invention is worthy? Acceptance.
“This new (technology) that is so transforming our world and economy is not going to work unless it works for everyone.” – Morinosuke Kawaguchi
Eventually the new thing becomes commonplace in everyday life. If the idea is truly world changing, it will go beyond just becoming a standard in life. It will open up a whole ecosystem of service industries and jobs to support it. But only if widespread acceptance of the idea is achieved.
In other words, a change in the way of thinking and the culture of society is what actually changes the world.
It can seem hopelessly daunting, the idea of changing the minds of the masses. Yet, it happens all the time. If you’re old enough to remember the pre-internet age, you probably scoffed at Google. It was a funny word and a foreign concept. Yet now, it’s not only ubiquitous in everyday life, it’s become a verb. “Why don’t you go and google it?” has become a catchphrase in our culture.
There are still many people alive who can remember when a black man was not allowed to sit in a diner with a white man, or use the same water fountain. Yet now, most people would be aghast at the idea of racial segregation.
How did these changes happen? More to the point, how do we make changes happen in our own time? How do we make the transition from economic inequality, extractionism, and profit above all else to a culture of equity, collaboration, and ecological regeneration?
Even if it seems impossible, it is not.
Believe it or not, there’s a field of science that studies just this phenomenon. It’s called Adoption Theory. According to investopedia.com, Adoption Theory describes the pattern and speed at which new ideas, practices, or products spread through a populace. (Investopedia, 2021.)
In order to advance the changes we need to make, we have to do some things that might not make us comfortable. Things like studying the successes of those that oppose our goals, which will be discussed in detail later.
For now, we’ll boil it down to this:
Innovators (2.5% of a population) are busy creating new solutions and coming up with new ideas, even as you read these words.
Early adopters (13.5% of a population) will champion a new idea, simply because it aligns with their own values (Hirsh, 2022.)
For the early majority (34% of a population) the idea might align with their values but they are still reluctant to adopt it. They prefer not to commit until they see real, social proof of the efficacy of the new idea or invention.
Late majority adopters (34% of a population) will join a movement only when it becomes inconvenient for them not to do so.
And then there are the laggards (16% of a population) called Luddites when it comes to technology, who will never willingly adopt the new idea/concept/invention until they have no other choice.
Purpose-driven leadership can give us some insight into how cultural changes are made (Mooney, 2017.) Boiled down, the strategy is to ignore everyone but the early adopters. Why do this? Because the tipping point is only 16-18%. At this point the early adopters buy in, and once social proof manifests itself you’ll get the early majority on board, as well. Once they start to buy in, everyone to the right of them will begin to fall like dominoes, but only if it’s a good idea.
If you need a real world example, look at former President Donald Trump. Trump quickly garnered a lot of early adopters for his ideas about society and government because he was espousing things they already agreed with. Their values matched up with what he was proposing.
However, Trumpism never really moved past this point of early adoption. This is in part because his ideas were just not that good or effective. The philosophy of Trumpism simply doesn’t match up with the ideals of truth, justice, and the American way, which the majority of people in this country do still believe in.
Trump’s support has dwindled to the same ardent, hardcore followers he had at the beginning. He has failed to convert the masses to Trumpism. If not for the support of the Republican Party, (who will reliably vote for anyone with an R next to their name) Trump would wield even less power and influence.
If it’s a good idea that provides value, it will move beyond the tipping point and catch momentum.
A good example is the Civil Rights Movement, and its integration into public schools. Images of the Little Rock Nine, adolescent black children who had to be escorted to class by the military while throngs of angry white people screamed and hurled insults in protest, remain indelibly branded into many people’s minds.
Looking at those historical pictures, you might think the majority of Americans were against the civil rights movement. However, a Gallup poll from that era shows that this really wasn’t true.
51% of Americans were in favor of integration now
25% were in favor of integration, but wanted to wait a year
16% were never in favor of integration (Gallup, 1964.)
If these numbers seem eerily familiar, it’s because it follows almost exactly Adoption Theory and the law of diffusion of innovation.
The innovators were fighting for civil rights for decades, and early adopters were people who joined the fight because it aligned with their values and they thought it was the right thing to do.
By September of 1957, the early majority had already voiced their support for the civil rights movement. Even the late majority acknowledged that integration was all but inevitable. They were the ones who wanted to wait for a year.
Only the laggards remained obstinate. They were the minority, but very vocal. It’s these laggards you see in those photos screaming racist insults at tiny children and throwing stones at them as they walk into school.
The 101st airborne division, the military unit that guarded the Little Rock Nine, was called in before desegregation was made national law, proof that the culture had already shifted. The new idea of racial equality had already been accepted by enough people that the tipping point was achieved.
Now, desegregation is so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine it was ever different for those born after the civil rights era. The new has become commonplace, following the predictable trajectory of adoption theory.
So, what does this tell us about the prospect of building a better world in the face of what often seems like overwhelming opposition? It’s simple. The key to changing the world is to first change the culture.
Culture is a charged word that has multiple meanings. You might think of it as social refinement, i.e., having culture. Or you might think of it in terms of differences. Japanese culture is different from American culture, for example.
But we can break culture down to a simple equation.
Beliefs + Values + Behavior = Culture
It might seem a gross oversimplification, but almost every cultural phenomenon can be explained this way.
Now, you might be asking, why is this important to our fight against climate change, economic inequality, etc.?
Because current, flawed beliefs can be questioned and revised or left behind in the trash can of history. New values can be adopted which replace the old, and this leads to a change in behavior.
How do we change culture?
Changing culture always begins with a new idea. Then, the new idea is put into words and a plan is developed to expand that new idea. The plan is then shared with people already desiring change. These are people whose principles and values are already in line with the changes attempting to be made, our early adopters.
As you read this book, it will become apparent if you yourself are one of the early adopters. Most likely, you read the cover and decided that the book aligned with your own principles and values. You probably also know people who share those values with you.
Those are the people that we want to share our ideas with. Just as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was shared in the early days of American history, our plan can be shared and gain traction and adherents.
A good idea can ignite the imagination and spread it like wildfire…but a good idea is worthless without the courage to act on it.
Just take a look at our past if you need proof. For hundreds of years…literally the majority of the time that America has existed as a country, racism wasn’t just accepted, it was vehemently defended.
All men are created equal…except for Indians, blacks, and women.
The Declaration of Independence, the most ballyhooed document in America that isn’t the Constitution, makes the bold statement that all men are created equal.
Then, the document goes on to say this (for context, ‘he’ refers to King George):
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” – (Declaration of Independence, 1776.)
Yes, the Native Americans facing genocide and the theft of their land were the “merciless savages,” not the unelected, all-male, all-white slave owners who oppressed them. At least in the opinion of the exalted founding fathers, who signed the document en masse.
So racism used to not just be normal, but a matter of government policy. That changed for the better because the culture changed. Slowly and agonizingly, yes, and with a civil war and another hundred years of oppression to follow, but it did change. Is still changing.
Sexism used to be the accepted norm, the status quo, as well. For a long time in this country, women were not permitted the right to vote. They were almost never given positions in government or business leadership roles. While we still have a ways to go on sexism, most people at least pay lip service to the concept of women deserving equality.
Once an idea becomes normalized, it becomes commonplace, and it becomes part of the culture. When we stopped treating racism as perfectly normal and rational, it ended and our culture changed.
But we have to remain clear and vigilant to the fact that the normalization of ideas and values cuts both ways.
Unfortunately, what we’re seeing now is an effort to normalize racism and bigotry once more. The Supreme Court has struck down Affirmative Action in college admissions, and private business owners are fighting for their rights to discriminate against those whose lifestyles they disagree with. There is a concerted and well-funded effort (to the tune of tens of millions of dollars) by the right, to cast anyone in the trans community as “other” and dangerous.
In the same way, there is a grocery list of things that are accepted in our culture that should not be. Starvation wages, crippling medical expenses, corrupt politicians who answer to those lining their pockets, a two-tiered justice system where the wealthy are rarely held accountable, and even the destruction of our environment are seen as normal, even if they are not desirable.
But they don’t have to be. These things are not normal and we need to stop allowing them to be normalized.
There’s nothing in the constitution which says rich people don’t have to go to prison or that poor folks don’t deserve healthcare. And there's nothing at all about politicians being beholden to their donors above the people they’ve been elected to represent.
Who gets to say what’s normal anyway? We do. As in, We The People. We get to say what’s normal, we get to say what’s right and moral. We need to be vociferous, vehement, and vocal in our condemnation of corruption, greed, and grift. We need to denormalize these things and normalize honesty, integrity, and equality instead.
The time has come to challenge the beliefs we’ve inherited from those who came before. Believing in the patriarchy, that men are more intelligent and somehow better suited to rule than women, has to go. We need to have the courage to question our belief in the infallibility of our elders and their unquestioning endorsement of broken, outdated systems that have caused a great deal of damage, in the name of profit for a few.
It’s the information age, and it’s our job to question these ideas and determine what our beliefs are, and what they should be. It is our duty to determine what we truly value in a conscious and informed way.
Then, it is up to us to stand up for those beliefs and values and behave in a way that changes the world for the better.
In the next chapter, we’ll determine if there are new ways to play this very old game.