This morning I was sitting reading my local newspaper, wondering how best to start my Social Power Blog. And there it was—the main editorial. The headline was: “State caught in a cycle chasing crisis after crisis”. It enumerated how, due to insufficient dialogue and planning, the State and its politicians are forced to jump from crisis to crisis, solving none. The problems included: (i) this week’s major bridge collapse, (ii) increasing threat of drought vs the forced staff reductions at the Water Department; (iii) the death of too many children while under the care of the State’s Child Safety Department; and (iv) numerous classrooms lacking a teacher because of lack of funding. When they editorialize in such a manner, it definitely means that the problem barometer is rising, and the status quo is becoming noticeably unstable.

What is this status quo? In the United States for example, we have had a series of situations that display blatant racial injustice, and I have recently blogged about this crisis (blog 3,4,5,). We tend to react with sympathy, but no real solutions. For my state’s looming water crisis—we shake our heads and hope that the experts will be able to solve it. On the international level, a proposed negotiated agreement to solve the Iranian nuclear weapons problem is provoking many politicians to bellow “no”, before even reading the proposed document—we once again shake our heads and commiserate with each other about the other side’s narrow-mindedness. In both our local communities and the far-away camps that host refugees fleeing from war, providing caring and compassionate human services is difficult and becoming ever-more expensive—we sympathize and send a donation.

So, exactly what is it that can change the self-defeating quibbling and troubling lack of meaningful action that we find ourselves entrenched in, wherever we happen to be in the world? As I have explained in earlier blogs (blog 2) the first answer is actually a short one—social integrative power and deep participation. But then the question becomes how do people organize themselves, once they decide to pursue this type of collaborative engagement? The answer to that question is also quite short—new social movements.

Now it is true that many of the experts—academics and activists both—have tended to write off the possibility of success for these types of new social movements. This is because, as several have noted, today’s problems are much more complex. Certainly, when specific types of social injustice occur, defiance and protest are needed. But this type of social movement doesn’t really solve our more complex problems—as both the Arab Spring and the Ninety –Nine Percent movements illustrate. So what does?

The phrase “new social movements” has been utilized over the past decade to refer to those efforts to solve more complex problems. But the ‘new social movement’ that actually works and I am referring to, goes beyond simply applying itself to more complex problems. Instead, it uses the deep participation dynamic. This makes a big difference! Every social movement depends upon collaborative and collective social energy for success. But even in older ‘new social movements’ the collective connection which creates social energy is developed through protest and defiance against injustice. This works if the change that is needed is relatively simple and can be made in a relatively short period of time. But if the problem itself is complex and will take long periods of time to solve—protest against injustice is not enough.

However, if we change the social energy dynamic away from the short-term protest mode and towards the connectedness mode provided by the deep participation dynamic, everything changes for the better. This new dynamic allows us to begin to understand and utilize social integrative power; the power that connects us as friends and family, communities, cultures, and societies of the planet Earth. It is this connective power that constructs and legitimates our shared mental structures, our thought worlds, and our social institutions, within which we live. And this social integrative power, as we will slowly learn as we work within it, can only work within connective, belonging, and trust configurations.

While social integrative power exists in both local and global society, it is limited by its non-recognition. One reason for this non-recognition is that in Western societies we have become accustomed to acknowledging only the importance of individual and her/his actions. At the same time, we ignore politically and economically—as well as theoretically—the importance of the connecting, integrating, and binding aspects of group collective activities. As a result, the concept of legitimacy as emanating from the collective social is usually missed.

Belonging, connection, generosity, and altruism are critical aspects of the deep participation dynamic that can operate within these new types of ‘new social movements. The politics of democracy created awareness of the inviolability of individual rights. But now the necessity of the complex changes our groups and societies require that we go further and create awareness of the inviolability of the connection between and among us. This is particularly true when new social movements and its deep participation dynamic connects with violence.

We don’t expect violence to play such a critical role in actions concerning participation do we? But the difficult realities of violence must be understood if the necessities of “belonging” are to be firmly acknowledged. The impunity with which violence has been historically wielded in areas that were colonized and the practice of violence today, often times in nearby neighborhoods of our cities and towns around the globe, all require a particular type of acknowledgement— and it is within our purview of action to make this acknowledgement.

Certainly, the societal distortions, personal suffering, and historical untruths cannot be immediately erased. While our sighs of sympathy are not enough, commitment is often initially too difficult. But in my experience, “acknowledgement” can provide an important interim step. Based on a true comprehension of both historical and current methods of violence, acknowledgement does begin to tear down some of the barriers created by the enduring suffering of violence, and allows membership and its responsibilities to progress.. New social movements can provide an organizing mechanism for this process to take hold. More next time.