This Moment Matters
New questions tend to arise during times of crisis. Is it possible to create a world where everything can thrive? Can we consciously change? Do we matter?
Now
What now? Many people are shaking their heads these days, wondering what the current war in Ukraine means for global sustainability. These have been some tough years for everyone who’s concerned about climate change, biodiversity loss, global health, democracy, the well-being of youth, and the state of the world in general.
Not surprisingly, many are starting to feel despondent, as if there are no viable alternatives to a world of polarization, environmental degradation, political ineptitude, oppression, and of course, pandemics.
Yet new questions tend to arise during times of crisis. Is it possible to create a world where everything can thrive? Can we consciously change? Do we matter?
Reality
Yes, yes, and yes. Over the past years I’ve been rigorously exploring a small but intriguing field of research known as quantum social science. It draws insights from quantum physics, which tells us that subjects and objects are not separate, that the observer influences what is being observed, and that we are part of the system that we are trying to describe or change.
As I explore in my recent book You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World, the nature of the quantum world — described by concepts such as entanglement, complementarity, indeterminacy, uncertainty, nonlocality, potentiality, and quantum leaps — invites us to explore what we consider real and how we relate to this reality.
It draws our attention towards the relationships between mind, meaning, and matter and how we can engage differently with social change.
The book is an ongoing inquiry into the relationship between individual change, collective change, and systems change. This inquiry invites us to think about our agency and potential to act in time to make a difference. To do better. To really matter.
Potentiality
If I had to boil the message of the book down to two words, it would be potentiality and now.
The potential for social change exists right here and now because we matter in every moment in a relational, entangled way. This is not merely a feel-good palliative; rather, it calls for responsible actions based on life-affirming values that apply to the entire system.
Equally important, it requires us to focus on what needs to shift. This involves identifying which relationships are not aligned with an equitable and thriving world. Looking around, it’s not difficult to see that global financial systems, weapons industries, oil companies, and other extractive and destructive industries are not working for the integrity of people and the planet. While these may be obvious, it is often less clear to us how we ourselves are linked to these larger systems and their consequences. Instead, we tend to reduce ourselves to our individual actions, failing to see ourselves as entangled with collectives and systems.
Now is when we have the opportunity to do things differently. In other words, we are capable of responding from a wider range of possibilities — what in terms of quantum social change is referred to as “collapsing the wave of potentiality” — in a manner that generates new patterns and relationships.
Integrity
When it comes to these new patterns and relationships, integrity matters. Integrity — as in wholeness, oneness, and diversity — is vital to healthy and thriving people and planet. It does not mean sameness, nor does it mean the end of conflicts, contrasts, tradeoffs, or disagreements. Integrity relates to how we approach our differences.
Recently, an email landed in my inbox with a passage from a 2,500 year-old book called the Tao Te Ching, a title that translates as “the way of integrity.”
The passage said
“Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.”
In other words, integrity in thought and action is not an abstract idea, but a practice — and one that is aligned with a “quantum” approach to social change.
Future targets and goals are not endpoints, but guides to inform what we do right here and now, within our own dynamic context and through our multiple spheres of influence, whether it is our families, friends, communities, groups, cities, nations, or world. Our actions generate patterns that ripple, resonate, and replicate at all scales.
Quantum social change
Though it’s easy to feel despondent these days, millions of people are working here and now to generate an equitable and thriving world. Quantum social change is radical social change, but it means that we have to approach change in a radically different manner, recognizing that this moment matters, much more than you think.
This is the first in a series of perspectives on quantum social change based on my new book, You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World.
