Stages of change
About
Any desired social or political change must go through several stages before becoming the new status quo. These stages are often lumped together under the heading "how", but the answer to the question "how can we do this" is substantially different depending on which stage(s) one is asking about.
- vision: there is consensus about one or more social goals
- logistics: there is a plan for achieving a subset of those goals, given adequate resources
- the plan will need to specify what resources are needed and what actions should be taken
- for example, "here is a law we could pass, if enough Congress members would vote for it"
- commitment: a number of people agree to commit effort towards implementing the plan
- provisioning: those who would implement the plan obtain the resources to do so
- ...either by convincing those in power to implement it, or by a change in regime, or by some intermediate method (e.g. electing people who favor the plan, or gathering resources by some other means)
- implementation: the plan is implemented
- survival: the plan must survive attempts to subvert or reverse it
"Consensus" in this context means that a majority find something desirable and nobody has any reasonable objections to it.
Fallacies
Much confusion arises from failure to distinguish between these phases. Proposals intended to address one phase are often criticized for their failure to address another, without any acknowledgement that these are different problems. Logistical stage proposals, for example, will often be criticized for lack of provisioning.
Proposals involving allocation of resources are particularly subject to this kind of conflation. For example, a proposal regarding how resources should be distributed (conception or logistics stage) will be criticized for wanting to "take" or "steal" resources from their current owners -- when in fact the proposal says nothing about the mechanisms whereby such redistribution might take place (provisioning). The provisioning stage might be, for example:
- creating a microsociety in which the proposed rules would be applied and therefore involving only voluntary redistribution
- changing the incentive structure of the existing economy so as to encourage voluntary redistribution along the lines proposed
Links
Discussion
- 2013-03-27 Google+: open proposal of this breakdown