The movement for social, economic and environmental justice is undertaking complex transformations. Moving an economy dominated by oil, coal, gas and nuclear energy to a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy is incredibly complex; moving from a big finance dominated capitalist system to economic democracy, an economy where people control their own economic destiny, communities unite to determine their future and people all have input into the national direction of the economy is equally complex. One of the simpler transformations would be to expanding and improving Medicare to apply to everyone in the United States away from the for-profit, insurance dominated system of today -- but even that is complicated as it is a transformation of 18% of the nation's GDP. These are just a few examples of many transformations we need to make (add to that poverty, loss of jobs due to robotics, ending war, ecological collapse among others) as the nation and world are facing many crisis situations that demand change. While we work for these complicated changes reality is also asserting itself and forcing change upon us.
We are facing "complexity," lots of issues, lots of moving parts, systemic change of a modern, complicated society. There are people who have studied "complexity theory," one of those who have translated the research in this area into language that most of us can understand is Dave Pollard. The essay below is an introductory discussion of complexity in relation to social movement change written on October 10, 2010.
