By Alliance President Terry Gips
Happy May Day! It’s a great time to celebrate both Spring and important victories by organized labor, which we highlight in News to Know about VW’s TN auto plant, their last of 14 plants in the world to be unionized.
But we also need to say “Mayday!” for our college campuses, the crisis in Gaza, reproductive rights, our democracy, the planet and so much more. Fortunately, there are positive developments which we share, such as the hopeful Skoll World Forum, breakthroughs on PFAS forever chemicals and opportunities to significantly reduce prostate cancer risk through exercise. It’s time to plant and work together to implement sustainability solutions.
While the UN has struggled to get industrialized countries who’ve generated the most greenhouse gasses to pay into its climate loss and damage fund, we highlight one potential novel approach to the daunting challenge of providing support for developing countries to address climate impacts. Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo has called for a global tax on the world’s wealthiest people and an increase in the corporate tax rate that would go directly to developing countries.
Duflo’s Article Triggers a Discussion About the Importance of Memes
Our Newsletter Team had a major discussion about whether it was worth even mentioning Duflo’s proposal given it will face so many daunting challenges being adopted. While I agreed it may feel like there are overwhelming hurdles, I shared that the Alliance and others have succeeded in taking on many equally tough hurdles over our 40 years.
In fact, the Alliance has often been at the forefront of introducing new “memes”. No, not the popular concept of an amusing captioned image but the original meaning: “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.” Memes are powerful units for “carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another.”
Memes can be transformative and change worldviews. The Alliance has helped create many powerful memes that have helped change our culture, actions and world. These range from the very concept of sustainability and the better performance of socially responsible investments to the fact we can feed the world without destroying it and that organic agriculture and sustainable choices are actually cheaper when all costs are included. These have taken a lot of time and effort but make a profound difference.
Buckminster Fuller’s Concept of Trim Tabs to Bring About Fundamental Change
A valuable metaphor about this comes from famed inventor and thought-leader Buckminster Fuller who spoke about the concept of a trim tab. It’s very difficult for a ship’s rudder to move and then change the direction of a ship due to its size and the force of water. Consequently, at the end of the rudder is a small, moveable edge called the trim tab. Moving the narrow trim tab can set in motion the ability of the rudder to make a much larger change in direction.
In many ways, a meme is like a trim tab. While only an idea or concept, it has a much larger power that can ultimately bring about significant shifts. Memes show us that a new idea can so touch people that they see the world in a new way and ultimately create a tidal wave of support to bring about fundamental systems change. Memes give us hope. Never doubt that a meme can change the world.
As famous perennial polyculture scientist and farmer Wes Jackson has said, “A good idea can travel around the world in three days. A bad idea takes advertising.”