Chapter 6 - Early Indicators of Possible Singularities

Summary

The New Social Movements are characterized by phase transitions, butterfly effects, rare and black swan events, and self-organization. The formation of social capital is characterized as an important lever for growth. Social capital’s features such as bridging, bonding, and weak and strong ties are presented. The conjunction is that a network effect of NSMs may be generated due to the multiple nonlinear interaction effects between individuals and the interplay and feedback loops between individual behavior and social dynamics. New Social Movements generate a new bottom-up culture of mutual support, a new identity with the movement and, finally, joy which charges the batteries: singing, dancing, cultural interests, and joy have accompanied social movements mentioned in the previous chapter. The contribution to NSM’s success is also a specific kind of distributed leadership, empowering others, instead of being leader centered. A prognostic model for identifying possible future singularities and turning points of NSMs is presented. The key elements are the Big Idea, social capital (which supports the networks’ effect), culture, identity and joy, and, finally, distributed leadership. The conjecture is that the cumulative effect of these factors over time increases the likelihood of a singularity occurrence. The chapter concludes with a discussion over the question why some other NSMs (e.g., the Occupy Movement) did not reach a singularity point.