For my first article of this challenge, I decided to read one of Karen O’Brien’s – «Climate change and social transformations: is it time for a quantum leap?».
https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.413
This is one that I have had sitting in a pile (and yes, I print my climate justice articles, this feels like a strange contradiction and makes me feel guilty, but I really need to see the thing on paper to take it in and I like to scribble my notes in the margins!) for many months and hadn’t given the proper time to get into! Following the inspiring workshop to launch the climate justice challenge, I felt motivated to delve deeper into O’Brien’s ideas.
So, I made myself take half an hour away from my desk (somehow changing physical space felt important) and sit down and read this properly. It was a little bit mind-blowing and I had to close my eyes for ten minutes afterwards to take it all in. In my understanding (which I admit is limited), O’Brien is suggesting that by applying quantum social theory, rather than taking the classical Newtonian approach, the collective actions of sets of individuals can be understood to have far greater potential, due to quantum concepts such as entanglement, complementarity, uncertainty, and superposition. Hence, as collections of individuals we form part of more complex systems and our actions can influence systems and structures that previously appeared entrenched.
This feels so important in thinking about this challenge that we are taking part in (and is of course the theory it is based on). Although each of our actions may feel small, they can combine and interact in ways we may not yet be able to imagine to create big waves of change!
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Maria Pulman commented on Day 3: Kicking off with Karen O’Brien 3 years agoThis is really interesting! And very inspiring to know the small things we do can make a difference. Thanks for sharing :) Respond
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cCHANGE Team commented on Day 3: Kicking off with Karen O’Brien 3 years agoHi Loz, Leonie from cCHANGE here. Great to read your first post about Karen's Wires piece! I love the way you summarize it. I agree these do feel like important new perspectives. They can sometimes be hard to reconcile with the quite Newtonian, classical, and linear way we predominantly operate these days in the UK and Norway. Did you get the link to Karen's new book exploring this even further: "You matter more than you think: Quantum social change for a thriving world" (https://www.youmattermorethanyouthink.com/). You can sign up to the newsletter on the website if you want to keep in touch about this topic. Karen really wants to start an inquiry and conversation on this. We plan to do our own webinars from time to time and you might be able to catch Karen talking about it in various podcasts and webinars she gets invited to. Karen has also written on education, if you want me to send you some of those links. I'm curious, it's Day 11, how is it going integrating this new habit into your life? Have you had to make a big change to your daily schedule? What about people around you, what do they think of this challenge you are doing? Have you shared some of the things you have learnt? Did you know that Yifan and Mercy are also doing similar challenges? Some of their posts contain references and summaries to interesting articles. Look forward to following your journey Loz! Best, Leonie :) Respond
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