You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World

John Horgan describes humanity as “matter that yearns to matter.”1

Quantum social change describes a conscious, nonlinear, and non-local approach to transformations that is grounded in our inherent oneness. It recognizes that we are entangled through language, meaning, and shared contexts, and that our deepest values and intentions are potential sources of individual change, collective change, and systems change.

Quantum social change does not require us to wait for some remarkable leader or hero to introduce solutions that will save us – it is about each of us acting right now, within our own dynamic context and spheres of influence, to generate new patterns and relationships.

Agency exists as a way of life, a reiterative activity of opening or foreclosing different possibilities of materialization of matter, not as a relation of push and pull aimed at imposing force on a mass. We are entangled with, constituted and transformed by the very processes we aim to transform.

Our beliefs influence the perspectives we take on the relationship between self and society, including how we perceive a situation, which actions are considered appropriate, and what the effects or consequences might be.2 Both

Mattering means being important or significant. It also refers to a physical substance, as distinct from mind and spirit.

Feeling safe to talk about feelings, feeling supported when things are hard, being able to safely share about things that really matter when we struggle – these create the sense of mattering that is at the core of PCEs.2

As another example, many indigenous groups did not have any concept or language of ownership of the land they lived on. This was in contrast to empire-building nations that did have such a language, as well as legal concepts to support it. Some scholars claim that this legitimized the argument that such lands did not have any “owner,” and thus coul

“the within of things is consciousness, the without of things is form.”

The role of agents and their subjectivity (i.e., the so-called “interior” world of beliefs, emotions, identities, perceptions, etc.) in consciously shaping physical and social worlds has long been a source of tension between realists and idealists. Very generally, realists maintain that there is a world out there that is separate and distinct from