### Summary Nuggets from Extracts:

- Many people struggle to afford basic living conditions and face societal pressures to conform, indicating broader systemic and social challenges rather than issues specific to flat-Earth beliefs.

- Societal adaptability is a prominent theme; there’s recognition that we live in a period of “permanent change,” which can make some individuals nostalgic for past certainties, including older or alternative belief systems.

- The collective power of community movements, including grassroots actions, is emphasized.

Grassroots movements are driven by shared goals and deep personal commitment rather than centralized leadership — a pattern also seen in flat-Earth circles.

- Humanity's relationship with the planet is discussed as needing evolution; there’s a call to reject ideas of human centrality and dominance (echoes of rejecting the Copernican worldview), although this is distinct from flat-Earth ideology which is often rooted in a pre-Copernican perspective.

- Narratives (the stories societies tell themselves) are powerful: A unifying narrative can provide identity and hope but also, if misused, can seed destructive beliefs or behaviors.

The way stories are told can reinforce reality or breed alternative interpretations — relevant to conspiracy movements like flat-Earthism.

- There are references to artistic expression and the breaking of intellectual limits, which can be positive but, by extension, can also lead people to question established knowledge in unproductive or conspiratorial directions if not grounded in reality.

- The extracts suggest a general search for meaning, belonging, and agency in a changing world, which are often underlying reasons why fringe beliefs like flat-Earthism attract followers.

- Economic and social frustrations, a sense of exclusion or not fitting into “normal” society, and longing for alternative explanations all provide fertile ground for unconventional, even retrograde, beliefs.

### Summary Nuggets from Extracts:

- Many people struggle to afford basic living conditions and face societal pressures to conform, indicating broader systemic and social challenges rather than issues specific to flat-Earth beliefs.

Title:

Content: What Must Be Done – OpEd

By

Videos produced by The Drawdown Project –a project that appears to be well-funded and to have the support of some (but not enough) powerful institutions—outline what must be done to prevent more climate catastrophes worse than the catastrophes already happening.  The main staff members of the project, including the narrator of the videos (Jonathan Foley) are climate scientists.  What must be done for the most part is in some measure already being done, but it is now done on too small a scale to stop or to reverse humanity´s lockstep march toward self-destruction.

What must be done includes drastic cutbacks in the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels.  Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels alone accounts for 62% of the global warming observed today.  About 40% of climate change is caused by other factors.  Construction using cement to make concrete and deforestation, for example, also add to CO2 emissions without being, strictly speaking, the burning of fossil fuels.  About 11% of today´s climate change is due to deforestation.

Emissions of other gases besides CO2 like methane and nitrous oxide also cause climate change.   Rice cultivation and gas belching farm animals are major methane culprits.  Fertilizer use is a major nitrous oxide culprit.  Fluorinated gases leaked, for example, from refrigeration, are also important.

Going back to the single biggest factor, burning fossil fuels, about 25% of the damage –the largest single component of that factor—is burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.  Food production, industry, and transportation (gas guzzling autos and airplanes) are not far behind.

Another part of the picture is formed by the sinks that take C02 and other harmful gases out of the atmosphere.  Natural sinks that remove CO2 from the atmosphere are found in forests, natural soils, and oceans.  To save itself and the biosphere humanity must, first and foremost, reduce emissions.  And to arrive at the sustainable planet that it is necessary –not optional—to create, humanity must follow up by protecting and enhancing natural sinks.

Without pretending to be social scientists or political philosophers, the climate change scientists at Project Drawdown assert that social justice and protecting the cultural heritage and land rights of indigenous peoples are indispensable components of transitioning to a sustainable world.  Foley (the narrator) confesses to being mystified by the apparently inexplicable tragic spectacle of human beings bitterly divided and hostile to one another, polarized and armed.  Project Drawdown might be heard to be shouting over and over,

“Whatever it is that you are doing that is keeping you from doing what must be done to reverse climate change, stop doing it, and instead do what must be done.”

Some causal connections explaining the social paralysis standing in the way of doing what must be done are not hard to see.  Two examples:

  1. The general objective of South Africa´s National Development Plan (NDP) is to achieve 5% annual economic growth, and then to use the surplus generated by the growth to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.  The NDP pays lip service to fighting climate change, but in the end the overriding goal of growth trumps doing what must be done.  The NDP funds building a new railroad to carry coal from mines to ports in order to create jobs and to grow the economy with the revenues earned by selling coal to India.
  2. Appalachian miners afraid of losing their steady jobs and being dumped into the precariat, rally in support of a populist presidential candidate carrying signs proclaiming, “Trump mines coal.”

These easy to see examples of the frustration of ecology by economics suggest a simple general approach to understanding polarization and paralysis:  economic imperatives inherent in the dominant system clash with what must be done.   It is a simple approach that might be classified, if it must be assigned to a discipline, under the heading “philosophy of history” or “global dynamics,” or “sociological theory” “global political economy” or “International Relations Theory.”  Whatever rubric best suits it, the same approach, I claim, that explains paralysis regarding  doing what must be done a large scale to cope with climate change, helps  explain also paralysis in saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war;  paralysis in stopping organized crime, drug lords, and the steady advance of narco culture; and in general the inability of human beings as a species to work together to do what should be done and must be done.

Whatever the problem, the primary necessity to satisfy investors, where investors are the key decision makers deciding whether the economy stops or starts, is constraint number one.  This constraint further shortens the already short list of possible, as distinct from merely imaginable, solutions to the problem.

Here I do not mean that structural explanations exclude human creativity, rule out conspiracy theories, and deny the existence of conscious decision-making in one great Levi Straussian structuralist straitjacket.   I mean striking a balance recognizing both structural imperatives and conscious agency.

A good example of such a balance is Alfred Marshall´s Law of Substitution.  Whenever a more efficient way to run a profitable business doing or making something, for example generating electricity, is discovered, it will become, ceteris paribus, a substitute that will drive out old-fashioned customary practices.  Emile Durkheim makes a similar point when he gives as an example of a social fact, the fact that a businessperson could, if she or he chose to do so, opt for using obsolete technologies, but to do so would be to invite certain ruin.

Nonetheless, Durkheim cannot deny a flip side explicit in Marshall:  It is the conscious and often creative efforts day after day of businesspeople seeking success every day for their business, that drives an overall historical trend that leaves obsolete and inefficient technologies behind.   One could add other trends similarly driven.

So, I allege that the simple fact that in today´s business civilization most humans are on most days doing what they must do, to solve their immediate need to get by, pay their bills, and to keep their business going if they have a business, trying to make sure that in today´s win lose world, they are among the winners and not among the losers,  explains why everybody does not, immediately upon receipt of the news that a green transition is not optional but necessary, just down tools, pick up new tools, rewire brains, and set about doing what the Drawdown Project says humanity must do. This is not a complete explanation, but I do not know of any better approach to a first approximation.

Let´s approach the big picture via Keynes.  It changes everything, Keynes writes, to deny the best-known law in economics, Say´s Law, and to appreciate the far-reaching consequences of a chronic weakness of effective demand.  Its flip side is the chronic weakness of the inducement to invest.  Hardhearted as we have become living in the framework of today´s dominant institutions, we simply take it for granted and see it as natural that employers do not hire people because everybody needs a dignified livelihood, but rather if and when it is profitable to hire them.  Nothing seems more natural than pulling the USA out of a long depression with war spending, and then continuing economic growth led by government deficits featuring a permanent warfare state.  Nothing seems more natural than the elites (i.e., the investors) of the rest of the world counting on U.S. trade deficits to generate profitable trade surpluses for them.   Nothing seems more natural –in today´s dominant warped vision of reality—than reliance on permanent war establishments to generate economic security for millions who would not otherwise have it.

Designing a sustainable world that meets human needs in harmony with nature is not likely to figure as a relevant way to occupy one´s mind to a young person pursuing a military career.   That young person is quite likely to be seen by his or her family as a success compared to siblings and cousins who do low paying part time work at McDonald´s.  The less successful members of the family often tend to drift off into drug abuse and into the regular practice of the seven deadly sins.

It does not take much philosophy to persuade the former, the healthy young people pursuing a military career, that the moralistic rhetoric in the media that portrays her or him as honorably serving high ideals with advanced military technologies, trumps the agenda of the Drawdown Project.  Something that does spark their interest, when push comes to shove, is advancing their careers by accumulating combat hours.

There is not necessarily any coherent relationship between the life-worlds of the many different participants in the drama of history –between what is going on in their heads and what they do every day – and the structural fact that the system only works, with some unstable semblance of stability, when huge and unpayable debts are making up for the chronic weakness of effective demand and for the weakness of incentives to invest.

Looked at from a nonviolent perspective, the preceding simple idea is the flip side of another simple idea: what Mahatma Gandhi called modernity´s lack of dharma.  Gandhi´s coining of the word adharma names the norms that organize the life and define the personality of homo economicus.

Step one of theorizing the dynamics moving history in today´s global economy should, I allege, consist first and foremost of identifying the constitutive rules of markets as causal powers.  They are the generative mechanisms that govern, ceteris paribus, the physical organization of the production of the means of subsistence that makes human life possible in today’s global economy.

It does not follow, however, that what most motivates human beings is the acquisition of the means of subsistence.  For example, there are many cases where the need for dignity and self-respect trumps the need for food.

It does follow that market economies are economies with losers. Many people cannot sell anything at a high enough price to make it possible to sleep legally in some space on the planet and to avoid the humiliation of not being able to play the roles of a normal member of society.  Violence and paralysis are built into the constitutive rules of buying and selling.  And not only because those rules organize and rationalize a world where warfare states are generated by a chronic need to strengthen the inducement to invest.

It follows that Kantian dreams of perpetual peace achieved by enforcing Kantian ethics and Kantian jurisprudence on a global scale are not much different from political realism.  Liberals inspired by Kant or Kant-like ideals, advocate rigid norms legally and morally obligatory everywhere and everywhen.  Often, they call it the rule of law.

The counter-dreams of the political realist define themselves as non-Kantian. Realist prescriptions can be defined as counter dreams (counter to idealistic liberalism).  They tolerate atrocities that allegedly are necessary atrocities. It turns out, nota bene, that using evils to fight allegedly greater evils often is a way to minimize the political risks to investors.  Thus it serves the cause of high economic growth and low inflation.   It rationalizes a global rule of law, a single world market organized by world rules, backed by the military might of a hegemon.  The classic Kantian and realist viewpoints (today joined by several others) turn out to be complementary ways to organize a world order that systematically generates humiliation, conflict, and violence.  Both lend themselves to imagining that the problem (growth) is the solution (growth).   Neither one takes seriously the findings of the climate scientists or aims to liberate humanity from the tyranny of economic imperatives.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS)

Prof. Howard Richards

Prof. Howard Richards is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He is a philosopher of social science and Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, USA. He was educated at Redlands High School in California, Yale, Stanford, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Toronto, Harvard and Oxford. He currently teaches in the University of Cape Town`s EMBA programme. His books include: The Evaluation of Cultural Action, a study of an application of Paulo Freire´s pedagogical philosophy in rural Chile (London Macmillan 1985); Letters from Quebec; Understanding the Global Economy; The Dilemmas of Social Democracies; Gandhi and the Future of Economics; Rethinking Thinking; Unbounded Organizing in Community; and The Nurturing of Time Future. His new book, written with the assistance of Gavin Andersson, Economic Theory and Community Development: Why Putting Community First Is Essential for Survival, is now available from the publisher, Dignity Press, and from Amazon and other major booksellers, as a print book and as an eBook. [email protected]

- Societal adaptability is a prominent theme; there’s recognition that we live in a period of “permanent change,” which can make some individuals nostalgic for past certainties, including older or alternative belief systems.

Title:

Content: By Leonel L. Mitchell

Edited and introduced by Richard Mammana Jr.

In 1964, Leonel Lake Mitchell (1930-2012) became the first person to receive a Th.D. in liturgical studies from an Episcopal seminary when he completed doctoral work under sometime Living Church editor H. Boone Porter at General Theological Seminary in New York. From 1971 to 1978, Mitchell served as an assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Theology and as director of its M.A. program from 1974 to 1978. He was the first Episcopal priest to serve as a full-time faculty member at Notre Dame. From 1978 to 1995, Mitchell was professor of liturgics at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and lecturer in Church history and liturgy at Seabury-Western from 1978 to 2005, after which he became a professor emeritus. From 1978 until his death he was an honorary canon and canon theologian (from 2008) at the Cathedral of St. James in South Bend, Indiana.

Mitchell was a key reviser of the Book of Common Prayer, producing draft and proposed rites, as well as related catechetical, explanatory, and ceremonial material. His 1985 book Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer has been a standard seminary textbook since its publication. He was a member of the drafting committee of the Standing Liturgical Commission from 1964 to 1979 while serving as a parish priest in the Diocese of New York.

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This essay, distributed in pamphlet form at the 1973 General Convention in Louisville, was published by the former American Branch of the Anglican Society, based at GTS. It had previously been published in an issue of The Anglican quarterly and has not been anthologized to date.

Leonel Mitchell

It has been quite accurately observed that we live in a world of permanent change. Change is, in fact, the only constant factor in the history of our planet. The pre-Socratic philosophers recognized this. The little old lady who complains, “Things just aren’t the same as when I was young,” has recognized it. And it is true.

Although change in the world has always been with us, the rate of change has not been constant. There have been periods of relative stability and of extremely rapid, or revolutionary change. We are, of course, living in a period of rapid change. In the strictly ecclesiastical sphere we hear of “The New Reformation” and “Ferment in the Church.” In the larger world we are confronted with statistics assuring us that 90 percent of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today, or that 85 percent of the drugs on your pharmacist’s shelf did not exist in 1940. It is a staggering thought. Even more staggering is the thought that most children now in elementary school will earn their living at jobs that do not exist at present, or the prediction that by the year 2000 about 80 percent of the population will not have what we call a job at all.

Marshall McLuhan, the English professor turned communications expert, believes that the new electronic media, principally the television and the computer, are largely responsible for the change in environment of the present. Our own ingenuity and inventiveness, he assures us, is responsible for the passing away of “our man-made visual environment” which dates from the fifth century B. C. “Our consternation in facing this development,” he says, “is entirely of the ‘didn’t know it was loaded’ variety.”[1]

“The new electric galaxy of events has already moved deeply into the Gutenberg galaxy. Even without collision, such co-existence of technologies and awareness brings trauma and shock to every living person. Our most ordinary and conventional attitudes seem suddenly twisted into gargoyles and grotesques.”[2]

It is not necessary to follow the intricacies of McLuhan’s logic to recognize that he is accurately describing the world in which we live, and work, and worship.

In a recent paper on the revision of the liturgy, I have suggested that our modern liturgical writers have neglected the three most important events in modern liturgical history: the invention of printing, the mimeograph, and television. I believe this thesis can and should be defended.

“The invention of typography,” McLuhan says, “confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first assembly line, and the first mass-production.”[3] Unquestionably the production of printed liturgical books was accompanied by an insistence on uniformity. The first prayer book of 1549 was accompanied by an Act of Uniformity and had as its avowed purpose the elimination of the “great diversity in saying and singing in churches,” so that, “Now from henceforth, all the whole realm shall have but one use.”

And in Europe, according to the great Roman Catholic liturgical scholar Joseph Jungmann, “The greatest and most consequential innovation of the Mass book of Pius V was the enactment, clearly expressed in its bull of introduction, that this book was to be, from then on, the standard in every church and that no changes were to be made therein.”[4] The issuance of the Pian Missal in 1570 was followed by the founding, in 1588, of the Sacred Congregation of Rites to insure the uniform performance of the Latin rite. The liturgy (both Roman and Anglican) ceased to be alive and became a treasure of the past, to be protected, venerated, and used without deviation.

To quote McLuhan again:

Later medieval visual stress muddied liturgical piety as much as electronic field pressure has clarified it today … With regard only to our new electric technology, it might baffle many to explain why there should be such a profound liturgical renewal in our time, unless they were aware of the essentially oral character of the electric “field” … The merely individual and visual aspects of worship no longer satisfy.[5]

Even if we do not accept Professor McLuhan’s arguments, there can be no reasonable doubt that his conclusions are correct. The liturgy is no longer seen as a printed text to be studied, but as an action to be performed, a celebration in which to join, an event in which all the senses play their part. It is, in fact, alive again. It is the celebration of life by the Christian community.

In 1936 the first television broadcast took place in England. In the previous year, Fr. A. Gabriel Hebert wrote Liturgy and Society, which is in many ways the opening gun of the 20th Century Liturgical Movement in the Anglican Church. “Here is part of the ideal: that all those who live in one place should eat and drink together before God,” he said. “The task of the Church in the future will be to re-create a social life.”[6]

This social emphasis is, perhaps, the distinguishing mark of the 20th Century Liturgical Movement, which sets for itself no less a goal than “to claim every aspect of life for God Himself.” It is nothing less than this, and not tinkering with ceremonial, which is the goal of the Movement. Offertory processions, celebrations facing the people, public baptisms, revision of the Prayer Book, and all of these things are not the goals of the Liturgical Movement, but the means, the tools, by which we seek to fulfill God’s mission to the world through the Church. To put it in other words: worship is not one activity among other activities, it is the environment in which Christians must live.

Sister Corita expressed one aspect of this when she said, “To really see what we ordinarily look at from time to time makes fireworks happen inside us that can’t always be contained when the brightness of a person or a thing is discovered, or uncovered. These moments are small celebrations, daily exercises, that keep us in form for the big ones.”[7]

This grounding of worship in the celebration of life has as its theological foundation the doctrines of creation and incarnation. Perhaps again Sister Corita has given them their simplest modern expression:

Man is called to be like God, as Creator, as Maker. In a sense every man is supposed to be an artist. That’s the word. We are told to go to work and subdue the earth. And we have elsewhere in the same book a description of the earth standing on tiptoe waiting eagerly to be saved, and somehow man has something to do with the saving. The earth is waiting to receive the stamp of man, as he forms it further, because creation was just the beginning. We carry on what God started.

Further on, we find that God became man and stamped his approval on the whole system into which he came, and which he never left. He took the whole messy bit and worked with it as man. He was a miserable failure and a total success. And so nothing should be unfamiliar to us. Nothing needs to be left out. It can all be taken in. And along the way we can be miserable failures. Hopefully the parallel will carry thru at the end, and we will be total successes in the long run. This is our hope.[8]

This is the gospel which the Church is sent to proclaim. It is one and unchanging, but the world to which we are sent to proclaim it is continually changing, and the gospel needs continually to be translated into terms which the world can understand. This means not only that the actual language of the proclamation needs to be translated from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to English, or Spanish, or Japanese, but also that it must be translated into thought forms which our culture can comprehend. We human beings, as many writers from St. Paul on have noted, are engaged in running a race.

God is the start and finish, but the course we travel is through the world of the 1960s. This means that our compass settings may well differ substantially from those of someone who ran in another time and place. Indeed, one of the mistakes of the forerunners of the present Liturgical Movement was to seek to re-establish the worship of an earlier age by withdrawing from the present to live ideally in the past.

But liturgy must be an expression of the life of the actually existing community which offers it as worship. Our worship must be the offering of our lives to God, not the lives of fourth- or 15th-century Christians, for the world in which we live is very different from that of the early Church or of the Middle Ages.

The best figure I have heard to describe this difference is that of Cinerama and the stereopticon. The stereopticon gives us a very accurate picture of the world. It gives it in color and 3D, but it is a still picture — something which we can observe, and about which we can reason. In many ways this is the picture reflected in the worship of the Book of Common Prayer, the Pian Missal, or any of the great Reformation church orders. On the other hand, Cinerama places us in the center of a three-dimensional movie. It produces an environment which moves and changes. In that sense it is a more accurate picture than the other, for reality does not stand still for us to observe it. I believe that it is this second view of the world which underlies the new approach to liturgy at the present. It is dynamic rather than static, an experience rather than a visual effect, McLuhan rather than Gutenberg, Teilhard de Chardin rather than Thomas Aquinas. It is what is happening, and it is a new environment. As McLuhan reminds us, “New environments inflict considerable pain on the perceiver.”[9]

Certainly the pain is evident today as the Church groans and travails under the New Theology, the New Morality, the New Liturgy, Sensitivity Training, and all the other “new things” which have burst upon our ecclesiastical lives. When confronted with a new environment man has a tendency to try to live in the past. We watch World War II movies, or Bonanza, and talk about the simple pleasures of grandfather’s day. We forget that “Most of us today would vigorously object to living in the house or doing the job our great-grandfathers did. The fact is that most people’s great-grandparents were dirt-poor and lived in hovels.”[10]

In Church too we want to see everything the way it was. We picture the Church of our childhood, conveniently forgetting its weaknesses, and try to recapture it at its best. But this is a different world. We can no more live in 1928 or 1948 than in 1549 or 325. What was appropriate then may be impossible now.

More specifically, I would say that worship, to be effective in the modern world of rapid change, must have four principal qualities:

  1. The first is clarity. We must not bury action under an avalanche of words, and the words we do use must be such that the average intelligent man can understand them without special training. Ceremonies and symbols should illuminate the words, rather than require further explanation. The great sacramental symbols carry a built-in authenticity. We eat the Bread, we drink the Wine, we wash with the Water.
  2. The second quality is corporateness. Liturgy means the work of the people, and it must be the action of the whole Christian people, rather than something done for them by the priest. In both Protestant and Catholic worship the priest or minister has tended to become a performer, and the congregation, the priestly people of God, have been reduced to an audience. The Church is not the same as the hierarchy, however, and baptism, not ordination, is the mark of the Churchman.
  3. The third quality is flexibility. It is perhaps an overstatement to say, “Gutenberg made it possible to put Prayer Books in the hands of the people; A.B. Dick made them obsolete,”[11] but it is on the right track. The mimeograph and the Xerox have made the loose-leaf prayer book and Hymnal a possibility. The idea of uniformity in worship is a part of that later medieval visual stress which we are only now getting away from. Cranmer, in his laudable desire to simplify the rubrics, removed almost all of the variety and flexibility of the older rites. The necessary things for Christian worship are few indeed. From Christ himself come the use of Bread and Wine for Holy Communion and Water for Baptism, the Lord’s Prayer, and the framework, or shape of the Eucharistic liturgy (and that has undergone universal modification). A great deal of flexibility about everything else is possible, even within the traditional framework.
  4. The final quality is celebration. Even Christian penitence should end on the note of joy in forgiveness. The gospel is, after all, Good News. In Baptism we pass from death to life. In the Eucharist we are banqueters feasting at the table of the conquering King. Even at funerals we celebrate the resurrection and our continued fellowship in the Communion of Saints.

Too often the Good News seems to come out, “Life is damn serious business, we’re here to let you know it.”[12] But the Christian life is a love affair with God, and worship is meant to be its celebration. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb.”[13]

What we must strive to do is not to revive the worship of some other age, nor to perpetuate that of the immediate past, but rather to offer God our best. The modern expression “doing our own thing” is exactly what is necessary: not a pale copy of Geneva, or Sarum, or Renaissance Rome, or even of Nicaea or Jerusalem, but our celebration of our life in God and with one another in Him.

[1] War and Peace in the Global Village, p. 13

[2] The Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 278f.

[3] ibid., p. 124

[4] Mass of the Roman Rite, Vol. I, p. 138

[5] The Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 137f.

[6] op. cit., p. 183

[7] Footnotes and Headlines, p. 171

[8] ibid., p. 20ff

[9] War and Peace in the Global Village, p. 7.

[10] Cox, Harvey, The Secular City, p. 52.

[11] White, J.F., “Worship in an Age of Immediacy,” in The Christian Century, Vol LXXV, No. 8 (2-21-68), p. 229

[12] Berrigan, D., in Footnotes and Headlines, p. 11

[13] Revelation 19:9

About The Author

Richard Mammana is a lay church historian, author, beekeeper, father, husband, and communicant of S. Clement’s Church, Philadelphia.

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- The collective power of community movements, including grassroots actions, is emphasized.

Title:

Content: What is a Grassroots Movement?

Grassroots movements have played a pivotal role in shaping societies and driving change throughout history. They are often associated with passionate individuals coming together to advocate for social, political, or environmental transformation. In this article, we’ll delve into the concept of grassroots movements, exploring what they are, their characteristics, and their impact on society.

Understanding Grassroots Movements

grassroots movement is a type of social or political movement that originates from the ground level of society, driven by ordinary citizens rather than established institutions or organizations. These movements are decentralized and often lack hierarchical leadership structures. Instead, they are characterized by the collective action and shared goals of individuals who are deeply committed to a cause. Here are key aspects of grassroots movements:

1. Bottom-Up Approach

At the heart of a grassroots movement is its bottom-up approach. Unlike top-down initiatives that are often led by governments, corporations, or established organizations, grassroots movements are driven by the people themselves. They emerge organically from the concerns and aspirations of individuals within a community.

2. Inclusivity and Diversity

Grassroots movements are inherently inclusive and diverse. They bring together people from various backgrounds, including different ages, races, genders, socioeconomic statuses, and political affiliations. This diversity enhances the movement’s strength and credibility, as it reflects a broad cross-section of society.

3. Lack of Formal Hierarchy

Grassroots movements typically lack formal leadership hierarchies. Instead, decision-making is often achieved through consensus or democratic processes. Leaders may emerge based on their dedication, experience, and ability to inspire others, but they do not hold the same centralized power as leaders in traditional organizations.

4. Passion-Driven Activism

Grassroots activists are motivated by a deep passion for their cause. They are willing to invest their time, energy, and resources because they believe in the urgency and importance of the issue they are addressing. This passion is a driving force behind the movement’s momentum and resilience.

Characteristics of Grassroots Movements

1. Grassroots Mobilization

Grassroots movements are known for their ability to mobilize people on a local and sometimes national or even international scale. They use a variety of strategies, such as community organizing, social media, and grassroots marketing, to reach and engage supporters.

2. Grassroots Funding

Funding for grassroots movements often comes from small, individual donations and volunteers rather than large financial institutions or corporations. Crowdfunding platforms and direct appeals to supporters play a significant role in financing these movements.

3. Grassroots Campaigning

Grassroots campaigns focus on public awareness and advocacy. They use strategies like community meetings, protests, letter-writing campaigns, and social media activism to influence public opinion and pressure decision-makers.

4. Grassroots Impact

Despite their decentralized nature, grassroots movements can have a substantial impact on policy and public discourse. They bring critical issues to the forefront, hold institutions accountable, and often drive tangible change through their persistence and determination.

The Historical Significance of Grassroots Movements

Throughout history, grassroots movements have played a pivotal role in promoting positive social and political change. Here are a few notable examples:

1. Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States is one of the most iconic grassroots movements. It aimed to end racial segregation and discrimination. Led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr., it utilized nonviolent protests, boycotts, and grassroots organizing to challenge systemic racism.

2. Women’s Suffrage Movement

The fight for women’s suffrage, which granted women the right to vote, was another grassroots effort. Women’s suffrage activists organized rallies, marches, and letter-writing campaigns to advocate for their rights.

3. Environmental Movements

Grassroots environmental movements have had a global impact. Examples include Greenpeace’s efforts to protect the environment, the anti-nuclear movement, and more recently, climate change activism led by figures like Greta Thunberg.

4. LGBTQ+ Rights Movement

The LGBTQ+ rights movement has made significant progress through grassroots activism. It has focused on raising awareness, advocating for legal rights, and changing societal attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Modern Role of Grassroots Movements

In the modern era, grassroots movements continue to be powerful forces for change. They have adapted to new technologies and communication tools, allowing them to reach a wider audience and mobilize support more effectively. Here are a few contemporary examples:

1. Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged in the 21st century, is a powerful example of grassroots activism. It advocates for the rights and equity of Black individuals, challenging systemic racism and police violence.

2. #MeToo Movement

The #MeToo movement, driven by social media, has empowered survivors of sexual harassment and assault to share their stories and demand change. It has led to important discussions about consent, gender equality, and accountability.

3. Youth-Led Movements

Youth-led grassroots movements, such as the March for Our Lives, have brought attention to issues like gun control. They demonstrate that young people can be powerful advocates for change.

4. Environmental Activism

Environmental grassroots movements continue to be crucial in addressing climate change and environmental issues. Movements like Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement advocate for urgent action on climate-related challenges.

The Impact and Future of Grassroots Movements

Grassroots movements continue to shape society, and their impact is undeniable. They serve as a counterbalance to entrenched power structures and provide a voice for marginalized or underrepresented groups. The future of grassroots movements will likely see continued adaptation to new technologies, as well as an ongoing commitment to social, political, and environmental justice.

In conclusion, a grassroots movement is a powerful force for social and political change, driven by individuals who are passionate about their cause. These movements are marked by inclusivity, decentralized structures, and a bottom-up approach. Throughout history and into the modern era, they have played a crucial role in addressing critical issues and shaping societies around the world. The future of grassroots movements promises to be just as impactful, driven by the dedication and determination of individuals who seek to make a difference.

Clare Louise

Grassroots movements are driven by shared goals and deep personal commitment rather than centralized leadership — a pattern also seen in flat-Earth circles.

- Humanity's relationship with the planet is discussed as needing evolution; there’s a call to reject ideas of human centrality and dominance (echoes of rejecting the Copernican worldview), although this is distinct from flat-Earth ideology which is often rooted in a pre-Copernican perspective.

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The Well

Why we are the only humans in the Universe and why it matters for our collective future

The acceptance of our cosmic loneliness and the rarity of our planet is a wakeup call.
Key Takeaways
  • For millennia, tribal divisions governed humanity. But what was good for our ancestors and their survival now seeds deeply destructive and predatory behavior. Humanity needs to unite.
  • One way for humanity to unite is to realize that we are the only humans in the cosmos. Even if life exists elsewhere, it won't be like us.
  • Therefore, the human voice is unique in the cosmos. If we ruin our project of civilization, the Universe will once again become silent.

We need to change the way we see each other and our relation to our home planet. For thousands of years, tribal divisions have ruled the way we humans have organized ourselves in groups. Unfortunately, what was good for our ancestors and their survival now seeds deeply destructive and predatory behavior.

We don’t care about the other living creatures with whom we share this planet. We don’t care about the planet. We don’t understand what is needed for our survival as a species. As the news tells us daily, we remain profoundly divided, prone to isolate ourselves in groups that define the way we think and behave. Widespread political strife, cultural intolerance, and tribal entrenchment are symptoms of a deeper problem: Our focus on material greed and unstoppable growth is choking civilization and the planet along with it. Civilization is at a crossroads. To move beyond, we need to reframe our connection to other living creatures and to the planet we all share.

A new unifying narrative

We need a new unifying narrative that has the power to awaken humankind to a very urgent truth: that despite our political and religious differences, we are a single species living on a fragile and rare planet. This narrative must break down the tribal walls that separate us; it must make a convincing case that we need to work together if we are to protect our way of life and the planet that harbors it. Scaring people about the dangers of global warming, social unrest, and mass extinctions is not working. We need something new, something that we can all share, that we can all relate to, that can awe and inspire us into action — a positive, constructive, inclusive message that resonates with young and old alike, from Baby Boomers to Generation Z. We need a new narrative of mythic proportions that unites us as a species and brings our planetary fragility to the forefront. We need to restructure our project of civilization.

The essence of this new narrative, which I present in a forthcoming book, is that the Universe has a history only because we are here to tell it. But this story is not just about the Big Bang and the expanding Universe, of myriad galaxies and stars, of electrons and quarks, of planets and moons. It is a story of the interconnectedness of the nonliving with the living, of the uniqueness of our planet and its biosphere, of our cosmic loneliness and its deep moral implications. The way we tell a story makes a difference. And the story of who we are and of our planetary role needs to be retold.

Consider the nascent Earth 4.5 billion years ago, a hot ball of molten matter, bubbling and boiling as it slowly took shape. Debris from leftover protoplanetary matter in the form of comets and meteors collided mercilessly with young Earth, causing major havoc but also delivering life’s essential building blocks: water and a variety of chemicals, including some simple organics (that is, chemical compounds with carbon). We could call this the cosmic angry-gifting era. The onslaught would only quiet down some 600 million years after Earth’s origin, around 3.9 billion years ago. If elements had gathered to make some kind of living creature before then, the poor thing was probably destroyed without a trace. Life may have had many false starts, lost in the dust of time.

We are the only humans in the Universe

To understand the history of life on Earth, we must understand Earth’s life history. This is true for any planet that may harbor life, whether in the past, the present, or the future: The history of life on a planet is contingent on the planet’s life history. And here is the amazing consequence of this fact: given that no two planets have the same history, life is not a repeatable experiment. Even if different life forms share the same biochemical principles across the Universe, being carbon-based and gene-driven by Darwinian natural selection, each world will harbor its own kind of living entities, which will mutate and evolve according to chance and the world’s unique changing environment. The living creatures on a world carry the indelible imprint of the world’s properties and history.

The preceding argument speaks to us directly. Life on Earth is unique: If there is life elsewhere, it will be different. We can state with confidence that we are the only humans in the cosmos. And given that we are, for better and for worse, the dominant intelligent life form on this planet — I do love and respect whales, dolphins, monkeys, dogs, cats, etc., but they don’t write poetry and build radio-telescopes or nuclear bombs — we are unique in our kind of intelligence. If there are intelligent life forms in other stellar systems, “they” will not be like us, even if they may share some of our traits, such as an approximate left-right symmetry. Furthermore, any existing alien life form is so far away that, for all practical purposes, we are alone. This means that the spectacular transformation that has unfolded on our planet from a barren ball of molten rock to a thriving abode for life matters in a very central way, what I like to call biocentrism.

The next time someone repeats the tenets of Copernicanism, that we are nothing in the vastness of the cosmos, that science teaches us how worthless we are, please beg to differ. We matter. We matter for our uniqueness as thinking molecular machines capable of transforming raw materials into revolutionary technologies, products of four billion years of evolution on a planet that matters for its uniqueness as a stable abode for the prolonged existence of life. These two inter-related conditions — the existence of intelligent life and a planet that offers long-lasting shelter for its creatures — are not likely to be encountered with high probability in the cosmos. If there is intelligent life elsewhere, it will be rare.

Biocentrism

We have learned much about where we are and what we are made of. Our amazing tools have greatly extended our vision of the world and of the Universe beyond. We also have learned that there is much that we don’t know, and much that we will never know. Our reach is wide but limited. Nature need not comply with our flights of fancy. Science tells us how nature works and not how it should work. As we began to send probes across the Solar System, we were struck by how different these other worlds were, how magnificent and barren — and how indifferent to life.

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We have longed for the harmonies for too long; we have longed for cosmic companionship — divine or alien — for too long. We must accept that we are alone in the cosmos, if not in absolute terms — as we can never be certain of what lies beyond the reach of our instruments — at least in practice. This makes us very special indeed. And it creates a new purpose for humankind.

Note that this is very far away from a return to an anthropocentric worldview, to pre-Copernican times when the Earth was the center of Creation. (I call it biocentric to make the distinction clear.) Biocentrism is necessarily post-Copernican. I am saying that we are unique and important — but not for having been created by a god, or for being the result of a purposeful cosmic directive.

We are unique and important for being self-aware living entities capable of asking questions about their origin and future. We may not be the measure of all things as Protagoras of Abdera proclaimed long ago, but we are the things that can measure. We experience the world, we measure it, and we tell stories about what we see and what we feel. And what we are finding out is that we may very well be the only ones asking such questions — or, at the very least, the only ones we know of, which effectively amounts to the same thing. Even if “they” exist and tell stories, their stories will not be ours. There is only one human voice in the cosmos. And if we ruin our project of civilization, the Universe will once again become silent.

A planetary wakeup call

The acceptance of our cosmic loneliness and the rarity of our planet is a wakeup call, ringing to awaken a new collective consciousness. I believe it to be the new unifying myth of our generation, with the power to go beyond tribal divides and bigotry, to lead us into a new era of human flourishing. But for this to happen, we need to change how we relate to life and to the planet that allows us to exist. We are not above nature, and we don’t own it. We are a part of it and depend on it for our existence.

Life is rare. We are rare. This planet is rare. Treasure life and planet, worship it, learn from Indigenous cultures and their sacred connection to the land. This is the moral imperative of our time, what we owe future generations and the life we share this planet with.

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Up Next

- Narratives (the stories societies tell themselves) are powerful: A unifying narrative can provide identity and hope but also, if misused, can seed destructive beliefs or behaviors.

The way stories are told can reinforce reality or breed alternative interpretations — relevant to conspiracy movements like flat-Earthism.

- There are references to artistic expression and the breaking of intellectual limits, which can be positive but, by extension, can also lead people to question established knowledge in unproductive or conspiratorial directions if not grounded in reality.

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Content: The World We Want to Live in After COVID

The pandemic offers lessons about our local, national, and global communities. Will we listen?

In 1909, the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep published a book called “The Rites of Passage.” In it, he explored the rituals that cultures use to transition people from one stage of life to the next. Birth, puberty, graduation, religious initiation, marriage, pregnancy, promotions, the seasons—we’re always on the threshold of one phase or another. How do communities shepherd individuals from the pre- to the post-?

Van Gennep argued that certain universal principles underlie rites of passage across cultures and eras. First, there’s the “pre-liminal” phase, in which “rites of separation” detach individuals from their earlier thoughts, feelings, and perspectives: the Old You dies. Next comes the “liminal” phase, a volatile interregnum that’s simultaneously disorienting and ambiguous, destructive and constructive, during which “rites of transition” open up the possibility of a new and different future. Finally, in the “post-liminal” phase, the “rites of incorporation” allow one to reënter society somehow changed. A New You is inaugurated. “Life itself means to separate and to be reunited, to change form and condition, to die and to be reborn,” van Gennep wrote. “It is to act and to cease, to wait and to rest, and then to begin acting again, but in a different way.”

Van Gennep’s observations were a landmark in the nascent field of anthropology. “Elements of ceremonial behavior were no longer the relics of former superstitious eras,” the anthropologists Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf later wrote, but “keys to a universal logic of human social life.” In the century since, scholars have applied van Gennep’s framework not just to individuals but to societies in times of turmoil and transformation. Famines, wars, political revolutions, economic downturns, civil-rights movements—societies, too, move from one way of life to another, often experiencing intense periods of renunciation, restructuring, and rebirth.

2020, when the pandemic began, was a pre-liminal year—a headlong, vaccine-less descent away from normality and into calamity. We were torn from our established ways, undergoing separation, loss, and upheaval. 2021 was a liminal year—neither here nor there, not quite normal but not wholly abnormal, either. The inauguration of Joe Biden, the widespread availability of vaccines, and the return of weddings, dining, travel, and sports all coexisted alongside vaccine holdouts, breakthrough infections, new variants, booster shots, and regional surges.

Today, Omicron might make it feel as though we’re still squarely in the liminal phase. But, in fact, we may soon be tipping into a post-liminal paradigm. Omicron’s extraordinary contagiousness—combined with rising vaccination and booster rates—could mean that, in the coming months, nearly all Americans will have some level of immunity to COVID. Repeat infections and breakthrough cases will still occur, but, as our individual and collective immunity broadens, these will become milder and less disruptive. The influenza pandemics of the twentieth century each lasted around two years; now, twenty-one months into our battle with the coronavirus, Omicron is accelerating what could be this pandemic’s final chapter. It’s becoming possible to ask, and perhaps answer, some broad questions: Where will we end up in our attitudes toward ourselves and the social web in which we live? Who will we be on the other side of our transition?

The coronavirus crisis is first and foremost a health crisis, and many of the most obvious changes in our attitudes have to do with health. Some of us have come to reflect more regularly on our age and medical conditions. We’ve gained familiarity with obscure scientific jargon, from PCR tests to mRNA. We meditate on the trade-offs involved in social events, examine the threats we pose to others (and vice versa), and judge people for their choices. Americans differ hugely on what to think and do about all this—the behavior of people in one community can seem unfathomable to those in another—but, at least for now, health has shifted from a narrow individual consideration to a more expansive, social one. Going to work, attending a concert, hosting a dinner party, boarding a flight—if you have a cough, a fever, or just the sniffles, these activities now carry an ethical dimension. Will this remain true after the acute threat of COVID-19 has subsided? We may return to inflicting colds, flus, and various G.I. bugs on one another—or, possibly, we’ll adopt some version of the physician’s oath to do no harm.

The sense that making others sick is an action we’ve taken—and that, conversely, it’s within our power to avoid becoming agents of contagion—reflects a more general paradox of the pandemic. Since COVID arrived, we’ve been both powerless and empowered. Many aspects of our lives have been changed by events beyond our control; at the same time, we have sometimes been pushed to make consequential decisions and chart our own course. Over the past two years, for instance, Americans have quit their jobs in record numbers; in some cases, they’ve been forced to do so—perhaps by medical vulnerability, or unprecedented disruptions in schooling—while, in others, the pandemic’s chaos presented an opportunity to reëvaluate priorities. Regardless, faced with historical circumstances, they made big changes. In this crisis, as in many rites of passage, we don’t just passively recite our lines; we write them, taking vows that may reverberate for decades.

One of the questions we face now is whether we can make such changes on a social level, in addition to an individual one. The pandemic’s school disruptions are the result not just of a novel virus but of years of underinvestment that have yielded underpaid teachers, crowded classrooms, and poorly ventilated buildings. We’ve seen the same pattern in many aspects of our pandemic experience. Decades of investment in basic science allowed American scientists to race from genomic sequencing to an effective COVID vaccine in less than a year—but, during the same period, a public-health system that had been neglected for decades hampered our ability to contain the virus at every turn. We’ve made real changes in our lives. Can we make them in our society, too, building capacity so that our institutions can be more resilient and flexible?

The pandemic has posed similar questions for the world as a whole. COVID-19 struck during the seventy-fifth anniversary of the creation of the United Nations, and arrived at a moment characterized by a sharp rise in nationalism and a broadening skepticism about the international arrangements that have governed since the Second World War. Even before the virus, the multilateral system of international coöperation was fraying. After the 2008 financial crisis, Americans had grown increasingly suspicious of globalization and frustrated by their leaders’ failure to address its consequences: inequality, job displacement, social atomization. Now the coronavirus has shown that globalization moves not just goods and people across borders but pathogens, too.

In March, the National Intelligence Council released a report arguing that, in the coming years, the world will face global crises—pandemics, extreme-weather events, technological disruptions—with growing frequency. At the same time, greater international fragmentation and tension will impede our ability to respond to them. The report outlined several possible futures. In the optimistic scenario, called the “renaissance of democracies,” the world settles into a new equilibrium characterized by technological progress, rising incomes, and responsive democratic governance, led by the U.S. and its allies. In another future, “a world adrift,” the international system is “directionless, chaotic, and volatile”; global problems are largely ignored, and multilateral institutions lose their influence.

At a global level, as at the national one, the health crisis of the pandemic has put another preëxisting crisis into sharper relief. Effective pandemic response requires coördination across nations; this is the work of the World Health Organization, of which America has long been the largest funder. In 2019, the U.S. contributed more than four hundred million dollars to the W.H.O., but in April, 2020, Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would stop its funding. For much of the year, the U.S. also declined to join COVAX, the world’s primary global vaccine-distribution mechanism. Today less than nine per cent of people in low-income countries have received a single dose of a COVID vaccine; the rise of ever more concerning variants, such as Delta and Omicron, is due, in part, to a failure of the U.S. and other wealthy countries to vaccinate the world.

Recently, the G-20—a forum comprising nineteen nations and the European Union, which together account for ninety per cent of the world’s economic output—proposed key steps for strengthening the global response to future infectious threats: higher and more consistent funding for the W.H.O.; greater collaboration between governments and the W.H.O. on data collection, humanitarian support, and vaccine development; and the establishment of global norms for the reporting of emerging pathogens. Will countries unite in making such changes? That depends, in large part, on their willingness to act multilaterally—to see that their own security is interwoven with the security of others. It’s an issue that’s larger than the virus. COVID-19, like the Second World War, has created a hinge in the history of the world, which could swing either toward greater cohesion or toward disarray.

In 1954, a researcher named Muzafer Sherif conducted what would become one of the most famous experiments in social psychology. Sherif was interested in the dynamics of group conflict: how easily loyalties form; how little it takes for rival factions to quarrel; what, if anything, can be done to repair relations. As my colleague Elizabeth Kolbert wrote recently, in a piece on political polarization, Sherif invited twenty-two fifth-grade boys to a summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park, in southeastern Oklahoma. The boys were all white, from middle-class, Protestant, two-parent households. Sherif and his team divided them into two groups, each unaware that the other was housed in a cabin at another end of the camp. In the first phase of the study, lasting about a week, the groups, which named themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers, bonded over shared interests and activities—hiking, swimming, a treasure hunt with a ten-dollar reward. In the second phase, the groups were brought together in a series of zero-sum competitions: baseball, tug-of-war, touch football. The researchers, who doubled as camp counsellors, orchestrated hijinks. One group was delayed in arriving at a picnic; when they got there, they were led to believe that the other group had eaten their food. Tensions rose. The Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag; the Rattlers raided the Eagles’ cabin. Researchers had to step in to break up fights. Division had set in.

The goal of the third phase was to defuse the animosity. As a first step, the researchers organized a series of noncompetitive activities. The boys shared meals, watched a movie together, and celebrated the Fourth of July. Little changed. Only when the campers were given tasks requiring collaboration on a common endeavor—restarting a stalled food truck, pitching a tent with missing supplies, raising money for a movie night—did conflict decline. In the end, one group bought the other malted milk.

The findings of the Robbers Cave experiment have become a staple of undergraduate seminars and psychology textbooks. But they appear not to apply to our current moment. Never before has it been so clear that our work, behavior, and fates are inextricably linked to those around us. Working together to control the virus should have been the ultimate shared goal. And yet, facing viral invasion, Americans couldn’t agree not to sneeze on one another. While fighting the pandemic, America has remained one of the world’s most polarized nations.

It turns out that the Robbers Cave experiment doesn’t tell the whole story. As Gina Perry explains in her book “The Lost Boys,” Sherif had conducted a near-identical experiment the year before, in 1953. He’d invited a similar cohort of boys to a camp in upstate New York and divided them into groups: the Panthers and the Pythons. The researchers had carried out a similar series of conflict-generating shenanigans: they’d stolen clothes, ransacked tents, and broken a boy’s ukulele. This time, however, the boys caught on—they realized that they were being manipulated. Instead of fighting one another, they turned on the adults. “Maybe you just wanted to see what our reactions would be,” one boy suggested to a researcher. One of the groups decided that their clothes must have gone missing because of a laundry mishap; both sides worked together to restore an overturned tent. As the experiment unravelled, Sherif began drinking heavily. He grew so despondent that he nearly punched a research assistant in the face. The experiment was stopped early; Sherif never published the findings.

In an era of social-media virality, cable-news punditry, and political celebrity, we, too, are being manipulated. The ire we direct at one another is, at least in part, a result of forces that aim to extract political or financial gain by stoking division and appealing to our basest instincts. Despite knowing better, people in power traffic in half-truths, adding to the cacophony of conflict. They reflect our discord but also create it. We don’t yet know what post-liminal life looks like—but recognizing that truth may be the first step to healing the divide.

- The extracts suggest a general search for meaning, belonging, and agency in a changing world, which are often underlying reasons why fringe beliefs like flat-Earthism attract followers.

- Economic and social frustrations, a sense of exclusion or not fitting into “normal” society, and longing for alternative explanations all provide fertile ground for unconventional, even retrograde, beliefs.