Just fished this out for the event page for next week’s #DigitalLunch on “Innovating for Social Change”… it’s a quote from Professor Manuel Castells when he was in conversation with Paul Mason from LSE on Monday. Castells is author of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age:
…the two big powers of our world, people don’t trust where they put their money and they don’t trust those whom they delegate in terms of their votes. All the statistics are there. It is a dramatic crisis of trust. And if there is no trust, there is no society.
There is total distrust in the institutions of finance and politics. So that is the first part. But from there, two things happen. Some people start living as differently as they can. Some because they want alternative ways of love, and because they don’t have a chance.
And it’s the combination always in history of the cultural innovation by some cultural innovators with those who try this particular solution because they don’t have any other solutions, that combination may be what creates social change or a process of social rejection and extremism that tries to go back rather than forwards.
Thoughts anyone? You can find the panel discussion page here in Google Plus.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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