By now, we know the environment has tipping points. Once reached, the momentum towards the predictable outcome is so great it becomes inevitable. Nothing can stop it after it reaches these points. After we reach these points, there won’t be anything we can do to escape something like sea rise because of accelerated ice melt. There will come a time when we won’t be able to stop the Amazon Rain Forest from turning into a savanna. The Rain Forest is twice the size of India by the way. When you come across a tipping point, the message is, ‘Act Right Now or forever hold your peace’.
Tipping points involve time frames, patterns, momentum and permanent change. The same factors create trajectory, which tells you where the thing is going, and what will happen once it arrives at the tipping point. The trajectory provides us with direction, momentum and predicts outcome once the thing reaches it’s tipping point. Time of arrival is a decreasing variable, dependent on degree of information. As an example, our degree of certainty regarding Glacier Melt, has recently been refined due to additional information entering the trajectory. 20 years of satellite images have enabled scientists to place less reliance on cruder and more demanding methods of estimating glacier melt. Before they were looking at glacier melt from the ground up. Now they’re looking down on it as well. A more complete and exacting dynamic can be seen from this new perspective.
Even before satellite images became available, we could and did predict a tipping point on Glacier Melt. The science wasn’t as complete, but we could predict that a tipping point was coming. Predictive tipping points are dependent on current information and based on the current trajectory remaining unchanged. When new information arrives regarding a tipping point, something changes. It becomes more accurate regarding timeline and consequences. Additional information produces urgency to a tipping point, but we identify tipping points of consequence long before they arrive or require response. Then it becomes a question of how much we care. This is what gets us in trouble, because the exact same information that allows us to redefine a tipping point is what sets off a tipping point. Maybe the new information of seeing historical and real time ice melt is enough to get us to act or maybe it’s not. If not, the next piece of information to come our way, will refine the urgency of ice melt.
Things like ice melt are mechanical tipping points. Certain conditions have to be met for them to occur. We can predict these things, and because they’re mechanical, we can fix them too, but It requires a different kind of tipping point to that sparks the action. We need to reach a social tipping point. When we don’t reach these social tipping points, we get blindsided by the next piece of information.
A mechanical tipping point can either be managed or ignored. When managed, the predictable unmanaged tipping point never arrives. An intentional tipping point beats it to the draw. The less desirable outcome of complete glacier melt, which is a reality if nothing changes, never arrives. The opposite occurs through intervention. All life has two realities. The predictable unmanaged outcome, or the opposite. It all depends on whether we set off a social tipping point before the mechanical one arrives.
We already have some information on social tipping points. We know there’s a number. Societal tipping points have been studied, and they’ve found when 10% of the population adopts a belief, the rest will follow. Previous nonbelievers, simply change their own belief if during their last two interactions, the new belief had been adopted by the people they were talking to. Imagine that! We’re kind of easy with the old ‘hard and fast’ beliefs aren’t we? Good thing we don’t give up our virginity that easily….or do we?
A lot can be done with that number. It works over social media, as Facebook has demonstrated. Intentional manipulation of information changes minds without consent, which Facebook has proven because they’re done it. Could there be a more intrusive invasion of one’s life? When we take control of our social tipping points, Facebook will be compelled into great redemption. Something they should start working on right now, if they wish to escape our compelling nature in the near future.
From the Facebook revelation we the people, now know social media is an effective medium to address beliefs. This is important, because, in this circumstance, we the people comprise 5 billion active users. We are social media. We dwarf anything that stands in our way once we act with intention. When we stand and act together, change of state is inevitable regardless of where the minority is currently taking us. We wield so much power that companies like Facebook covet this social management tool and countries like China are intent on taking it away completely. It can be taken away too, and this is another unattended tipping point we’re approaching, with the momentum firmly headed towards our loss. Even though social tipping points are inevitable and unpredictable, the mechanical tipping point of loss of social media, is predictable and can be acted upon. Loss of our democratic voice has a trajectory and is approaching it’s tipping point. Like the environment, it’s something we will regret not acting upon after we lose it.
The ‘Me Too’, movement is representative of a social tipping point. The movement started in 2006. The tipping point arrived in 2017. When it did, it was more like the Wrath of God descending upon the perpetrators than the judicial system. The courts were part of it, but far from all of it. The Wisdom of the Crowd, us collectively acting to bring justice to an unjust situation, meted out it’s own form of punishment.
When the Wisdom of the Crowd’ shows up, it’s so big, we sees everything. It’s like we bring a spotlight. We don’t just see those convicted. We see the perpetrators that escaped conviction due to burden of proof, time limits, and payouts. We also see those complacent towards the abuse, and we shine our light on them too. Everybody involved wishes they had changed when they had the time to make amends. When a social tipping point arrives, they lose that potential. After that, we decide who gets forgiven, and under what circumstances.
Anyone even considered complacent in rape culture was fired, by corporations acting in their best interest. When perpetrators didn’t go to jail, their lives were ruined. No-one or at least not enough of us are going to go to another James Franco or Kevin Spacey for quite some time. Their careers are over unless we allow them back in. Now there are only two avenues available to a perpetrator. Understand the magnitude of your actions. Understand forgiveness of the self and others, requires a life long act of redemption. Their other option is to live forever as an outlier, shunned by the masses and knowing their guilt, even themselves. Die alone in the prison they created. Live always suspecting people see them as the criminal they’ve exposed themselves to be. Pray they don’t carry this state of being into their next existence. Being an outcast and alone in eternity, would be very much like hell.
There are other places where we see the Wisdom of the Crowd appear to restore justice. The Wisdom of the Crowd is the majority of any situation or system, aware and acting in unison on an injustice. They did it on Wall Street. It also appeared during the pandemic when we acted together, and shut down the world for a month. Everything stopped until we had a grasp on what we were dealing with in COVID. We wield an amazing amount of power. Enough to stop the world and turn it around.
It’s important to be aware there are societal tipping points that are often overlooked. You are part of them. If you are aware of the glacier melt tipping point, your are part of the social tipping point that will prevent it. If you get involved, you will bring attention, outrage and change to an injustice that threatens us all. You will be one of the less than 10% who represents the majority. Greta Thunberg is one of the less than 10%. I bet you are too. We know we can change minds through the intentional use of social media. How many more minds are needed to reach our tipping point? If we worked on it, we could get there….right now when the tipping point tells us it’s time to act. Start talking and changing minds. Let the other 5 billion know, we can easily change this world when we act together. 10% of the socially aware are already amongst us. Awareness that if their actions, even vial social media, will bring critical changes to our collective reality, is not. 10% is a small number and it’s already out there aware and waiting to hear from you.