Very often – in respect of critical mass in human behaviour – a tipping point is reached along a timeline where there is a substantial element of predictability.
For example, in a sports championship, over a season, a team might be improving match-by-match and a sense, or feeling, comes over the team that they are going to win the championship outright. An away victory, three-quarter’s way through, against particularly challenging opposition might be considered to be the tipping point. Thereafter, little things begin to go their way and their belief reaches critical mass as the weeks turn into months and eventually they win the championship.
Another example might be a political party on the campaign trail, as week by week they gain more and more support to the point where the party’s belief in winning the election reaches critical mass. As momentum builds, there may be an event that people can point to that is significant in swaying public opinion. (In US Politics, this is called ‘The Big Mo‘)!
In the present day, many scientists are speculating that global temperature increase will reach a tipping point sometime soon, and that no matter what we do after that we will be unable to stop the temperature rising to catastrophic levels. It is tragic that we appear to be so helpless in this very predictable sequence of events.
However, an unpredictable event can also spark a tipping point!
Sometimes there are hidden forces that have been building up unnoticed by the vast majority, and an unpredictable event reveals, to everyone’s surprise, just how powerful those forces are, or were. (I gave an example of such an event in footnote [1] in the previous post when I mentioned the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914).
Unpredictability is in everything we experience, starting with our own existence, but also in the world in which we live; e.g. the weather, the ups and downs of the stock market, political life, economics, religion – everything.
For example, in the late 1970’s, when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, very few would have predicted the downward spiral in the status, esteem and power of that most certain and predictable entity when I was growing up, the Catholic Church in Ireland.
The Bishop Casey affair in the early 1990’s (which, from the perspective of the third decade of the 21st Century might be deemed to be relatively innocent) was the unexpected event – the tipping point – that, like a dam bursting, unleashed an unstoppable torrent of negativity not only about the Church itself but about how the Pillars of Irish society were perceived – with, of course – hindsight, to have lived a lie through many decades.
The speed at which anger, cynicism, suspicion and apathy replaced reverence, obedience and respect astounded everyone. Reaching a tipping point implies the point of no return and it is very unlikely that there will be a return to the unassailable status that the Catholic Church held in decades past in Irish society.
Currently the amount of concern about protecting the environment is probably greater than it has ever been.
Take one example – the dangers that plastics pose to our oceans. In this, we can do all the small things we want like recycling plastic but until legislators face down the corporate world and actually force them to do something radical about plastic nothing substantial will be achieved.
And the legislators are people who spring from our communities and are elected by us, the ordinary people. So until a critical mass of society want things to be different – they won’t be – really!
At a different level, and once again, more relevant to our subject matter, all adult males will be familiar with, and will probably have been affected by, the gang or pack mentality, in teenage years, that demands loyalty and can be very destructive and harmful.
Much late night street violence results from this pack phenomenon where a group of young men’s willingness to be violent reaches critical mass, seemingly due to the influence of each other, (that is, it becomes self-sustaining) and one or more or all of them do things that they most probably would not have done had they been on their own.
The butterfly effect is observed here also, as the result (output) of the incident (serious injury or possibly even death) is highly disproportionate to the input, (possibly an innocent remark, a look, or a mistimed joke). The event takes on a life of its own and proceeds with little relevance to the input.
More importantly, somewhere along the timeline a tipping point is reached where there is no going back to rational thought or reasonable behaviour. (Remember the example that I gave describing how a tipping point in such a situation was avoided by compassion, and compassion alone)?
Fashion is not something that we immediately associate with crime, child protection or responsibility! Yet fashion is very influential in human behaviour. This is known to anyone involved in sales and marketing and the word fashion sometimes suggests ostentation or showiness, as if it is only applicable in the world of clothes, advertising, music, etc.
When I was a teenager, the tendency of young male teenagers to wear their hair long, reached critical mass around the middle of the 1960’s. Something that was not at all fashionable became fashionable because one pop group who got very famous (The Beatles) wore their hair long. In addition to their music, this was a very creative (and original) thing to do.
In the context of this discussion fashion could be a common expression or manifestation of critical mass and as such is interesting to us in our discussions on patterns of behaviour in humans.