Social Change as a Subtle Art

Social change is more than people gathered for a purpose: it also involves navigating a wider, interconnected, and constantly shifting global social ecosystem. In this blog, Chris Taylor - the Director of Oasis Foundation - reflects on his evolving understanding of what makes social change possible – and the ‘subtle art’ of sensing when and how to intervene to enable wider transformation.

It seems the pace of change is ever increasing these days. Each time we feel we’ve never seen anything like it, something else happens to shake the world. The rise and fall of authoritarian regimes, war and genocide, the spread of AI technology and underneath it all the steady devouring of the natural world. No wonder so many of us are feeling overwhelmed or uncertain.

What if there were another narrative, a different way to see what’s going on? What if we saw the world as running on two tracks: one being the direction described above and the other heading off in the direction of possibility. What are you seeing, not in the news or on social media, but in the real world? What trends are pointing to a more positive future?

In my world I’m seeing a flood of young people leaving the rat-race and finding ways to build work, community and family closer to nature. I’m seeing rivers being granted legal rights, land being returned to indigenous peoples, “nature” being represented on public and private bodies.

But if the world is “bifurcating” (splitting in two), how will it end? Which story will win out? Or will a third possibility emerge?

To find answers we might be able to identify patterns or echoes in the way the world changes. This has been the recurring inquiry that has dominated my thoughts since the mid-1980s. Over the years, my conception of social change has shifted – from a ‘numbers game’ to an understanding rooted in sensing and moving with shifts in the wider system.

Back then I thought it was largely a matter of power. Whoever holds the most power wins the battle for control. It was just a matter of mobilising enough people behind the right cause (our cause).

Then I began to realise that even if this were true (which I now doubt), it’s not as simple as just getting your organising right. There are so many different ways to see the situation, so many reasons to want change and to not want change (even if it’s in your own best interests). Timing is everything. You cannot manufacture social change. It happens at its own pace when folks are good and ready for it. Not a moment sooner.

In addition to being slightly obsessed with global change, I am also a tai chi practitioner, with nearly thirty years’ experience. Recently I have learnt the art of tui shu or “push hands”. This is where you work with a partner to test each other. It’s a subtle art, the knack is to sense into the other person’s energy, to find where it is weak or off balance and to find the moment to act.

Usually you wait for your partner to exceed their point of balance, then when they’re off-balance, you guide them quickly in another direction so they topple. It feels like social change may be a bit like this at a global scale.

This makes significant, meaningful social change a subtle art: knowing when things are over-extended, out of balance, unrooted. And being able to apply “the power of four ounces to move a thousand pounds”.

This would be complex enough, if it were the whole story. But there’s something else going on too. Human forces are not the only ones at play in the world. For some there are also cosmic influences: the stars and planets, the cycling of the Vedic Yugas, random Acts of God or the Trickster that unsettle the dominant order.

And there are far more earthly forces, seen and unseen, that are changing the world around us. Scientists have recently discovered microbes that have developed the ability to digest so-called Forever Chemicals. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, microbial communities colonising plastic debris appear to be slowly breaking down parts of the material. There are even fungi that can neutralise radioactive material. None of this is to suggest complacency or false hope. It is merely to point out that Nature has a remarkable ability to evolve in order to restore health and harmony.

The Earth is after all a complex interactive system and, to me, it is useful to think of it as seeking to restore balance and to return to a state of dynamic equilibrium. The further human society moves from balance with nature, the more turbulent the processes of rebalancing may become. Perhaps this is what Bayo Akomolafe means when he says “Earth has a say in her own becoming.”

I suspect that social change which tracks and supports natural change cycles will ultimately be the deepest and longest lasting we can imagine. For me, this suggests an invitation to sense into and track much larger and more subtle shifts and trends, both in the human zeitgeist and in the more-than-human world. I think these may help guide us both in the how and the when of the kinds of change the world is calling for.

It’s probably fair to say that this kind of understanding pervades they way that Oasis Foundation goes about its work. Paying attention to what is emerging, sensing possibility, noticing local and global phenomena, and looking for moments when a relatively small intervention can effect a larger shift. We may think that we are only “four ounces”, but at the right time, with the right people, who knows how many pounds can be moved. This approach invites us to pay closer attention to the systems we are part of, how we inhabit those systems, and the potential we have to enact change.

Chris Taylor, Director of Oasis Foundation