Rev. Emma Chattin
January 20, 2008
First Reading ~ From Isaiah 43:18, 19
[And God says…]
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Second Reading From Zaid Hassan in The… Axioms of Social Change
Problems are tough because they are complex in three ways. They are dynamically complex, which means that the cause and effect are far apart in space and time, and so are much harder to grasp from firsthand experience. They are generatively complex, which means that they are unfolding in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways. And they are socially complex, which means that the people involved see things differently, and so the problems become polarized and stuck.”
When studying mass social change as a phenomenon there is always a temptation to order events as they happened, in a timeline. Then by implication we assume that one thing follows another and one thing neatly causes another. A very real danger for those wishing to learn from historical social change is the trap of seeing social change in a linear fashion. This is a trap is because we know (for example from research on complex systems) that social change… is less about planning and more about creating the conditions for change. To mangle an old adage, no plan survives contact with reality. Mass social change is messy, unpredictable and often ugly.
Modern institutions are not well suited to the work of catalyzing social change because they suffer from a need for linear and predictable processes. Such processes, in turn, demand that risk be minimized and a plan be proposed, a plan which is often used as a script rather than a point of departure. If we’re being honest with ourselves, then we would recognize the function of a plan is purely psychological comfort in the face of unpredictable and frightening change. Continue Reading »
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General Assembly (GA) is the annual meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. GA is held every year in June in a different city in the USA. Member congregations (and three associate member organizations) send delegates and conventioneers to participate in the plenary sessions, workshops, district gatherings, and worship services.