Social Acupuncture
Acupuncture has been around for many centuries and is a widely accepted practice. Regardless of its real or perceived efficacy, the principles of acupuncture are quite good:
- Energy or Life Force flows through our bodies in the form of Chi.
- Chi flows along certain Meridians along which are very specific and precise nodes or points.
- Health problems arise when Chi is blocked or hampered causing cascading effects.
- By stimulating a point of blockage we can increase the flow of Chi and thus alleviate the condition.
Stick yourself randomly with a needle and you aren’t likely to enjoy the feeling, right? So one thing acupuncturists know is this very mysterious map of where to accurately puncture your skin without producing that same pain—thus the “acu” part of acupuncture. That’s pretty cool and it took thousands of years of trial and error to produce. Apparently they can also perform a type of local anesthesia and block the pain receptors so it it used both to block and unblock as needed. There are also people who swear by other uses of acupuncture such as in the treatment of addiction or afflictions of the mind. Reflexology and Acupressure are other widely used practices that employ similar principles.
I am not trying to make a case for acupuncture vs. western medicine or even advocate for its use but rather to apply the principles on a social level to see whether there might be an analogous Social Chi that can be stimulated to create beneficial effects in the body of society. If that is the case then there should also be very specific points of blockage that can be acted upon to create needed social change.
The Butterfly Effect is a notion that comes from Chaos Theory whereby a very small thing such as the beat of a butterfly’s wing can eventually change something very large such as a weather pattern. This can be modeled on computers very easily and small changes in a seed condition can produce an entirely different outcome that can be easily seen. There are endless examples of such algorithms, fractals and cellular automata.
This principle of chain of causality has been known for centuries as practical wisdom and has been immortalized as a proverb and below is a Ben Franklin variation:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost;
and for want of a horse the rider was lost;
being overtaken and slain by the enemy,
all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.
Frederick Douglass put it on a more human level by simply stating:
It is easier to build strong children than it is to fix broken men.
In building stronger, more resilient, more engaged and happy children we greatly increase their odds of being successful people. This in turn helps society by reducing the burden of having to look after uneducated, angry, dissatisfied and possibly criminal adults. Also, such people are far more likely to contribute to the success of the society at large in various ways. In other words, a school is a much better investment than a prison. One represents an affordable asset to society and represents success, the other an expensive liability representing failure.
In this sense, each individual is a sort of social acupuncture point that if properly stimulated, causes social chi to flow. The costs of not attending to our young children properly are staggering. Each disgruntled individual, having been failed in their youth, become problematic to themselves, their families, their teachers, their neighbors, their employers and more. In extreme cases, they become a lethal poison such as a mass shooter who snuffs out entire lives and spreads misery to thousands of relatives and anguished, caring citizens. Broken individuals are less likely to be politically engaged and if they are they will only consider superficial traits they can relate to and thus will help elect other broken people who are not adequate to the task and who will actually make their lives worse.
Surely each person is an important “nail” in the shoe of society, and surely we have let too many of them down and can’t fix them all so we need to look for more important and consequential upstream nodes to affect in order to eventually change the larger social problems of mass anxiety, dissatisfaction, mental illness, depression, anger and illiteracy. These human nodes are the influencers and leaders. They include:
- Parents
- Teachers
- Clergy
- Community leaders
- Professional leaders
- Non-profit organizations
- Wealthy people
- Famous people
- Writers and artists
- Elected officials
With social media we have numerous platforms for important influencers to be heard from on various topics. While this can have a desired cascading effect, such effects are often negated by the silo phenomenon where people subscribe to and follow the echo chamber of their choosing. Unfortunately, important messages are buried in the noise or not seen because of these silos and the nature of these media outlets. In this sense, social media is inacupuncture and misses its target like the random needles mentioned above.
Parents being most important are also too close to the individual level and they too often are broken themselves and in need of fixing or operate within a broken system without adequate support so we honestly have to move higher up. Social acupuncture would be to identify good parents and get them together with other parents to share their parenting techniques.
Teachers are only a little higher up but they do deal with hundreds of students per year and thus can have a larger effect. However they are often not as well trained as they should be, inadequately equipped, underpaid, work in shoddy, overcrowded classrooms and are restricted from having the real positive impact they should have. Social acupuncture would be to find the best teachers, reward them, support them and try to have them teach other teachers how they do it.
Clergy tend to be the shepherds of their flocks and have a strong influence but so often is the case that people don’t attend, don’t believe or that clergy have become themselves broken or lost souls who have strayed from the core teachings of their own religions. Social acupuncture would be to identify clergy with the strongest personal bonds to their parishioners and those that were involved in improving lives rather than self-enrichment or political activities and reward and assist them in their volunteering such as those that offer food assistance or shelter for the homeless.
Community leaders can do wonders on a localized level by organizing events and bringing more awareness to important issues or just improving the quality of life. We should look for such leaders and support and reward them so they are encouraged to continue and train others to follow in their footsteps.
Professional leaders are often employers but they can also be people such as doctors or social workers. When these leaders are of poor quality, they cause social chi to be blocked and the hamper social progress and generally are only in it for personal gain. We should learn to identify the best of these who foster positive feelings and produce success both inside their work and outside and such leaders should be supported and their businesses rewarded.
Non-profit organizations come in all shapes and sizes and for all purposes. Often times, they are backed by large donors or boards of them who are engaged in positive social activity and have the money to put into action. We should make an effort to identify the most effective of these at making positive changes for society and also identify those that are not.
Wealthy people are not all created the same. They come by their wealth in various ways. Some inherit their wealth, some build it up through investment or business. Some are engaged politically/socially or environmentally and some are simply in it for themselves and materialism. Regardless, since they have tremendous power to move money into worthy causes or to back horrible causes we should work hard to identify those with higher ethical standards and levels of compassion and try to direct them to causes that will benefit society and also make sure to make those that engage in unethical practices known to the community and not let them operate in secrecy.
Famous people often have more influence than they should because their fame is often a sort of random thing and their skills and knowledge outside their craft are random as well. However, certain famous people have extraordinary integrity and compassion and use their fame for good. These are the ones we should always reward and encourage because we know it will produce more good.
Writers and artists have a huge influence on society because they control the words, the music and the various art forms that are used in entertainment, education and inspiration. These are the folks who can elevate and amplify ideas and memes in ways that others can’t. While some of these are more a matter of taste, we must encourage the artists and writers who support the loftiest of ideals and levels of skill in their craft because these can influence people in ways that transcend words and make the world a better place.
Elected officials have the most influence over our lives because they make and enforce the laws and rules that govern all of the other movers and shakers from parents up to the rich and famous. These people control our relationship to each other, the the environment and to other societies. They wield the power of taxation and warfare and civil rights. They make news happen every day. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to simply replace elected officials with better ones and they often settle in for long incumbencies but to perform the most beneficial social acupuncture, this is where we must concentrate the most energy.
Elected officials have perfected the art of staying in office long after their value has waned and it is very difficult to unseat an incumbent and now has become very costly too. But we must! When a politician spends too much time on getting or staying elected and not enough on doing their job, they need to go or the system needs to change and for that, they need to go! Some such officials are very much like a tumor in the body politic, not only blocking social chi but metastasizing toxic ideas by propaganda, lies and misinformation, doing great harm to society. These are prime targets for social acupuncture. These terrible leaders must be identified!
Society has no time to waste and we see alarming signs of social decay, lack of discourse and critical thinking at a time when we need it most. If we allow low quality leaders to pollute our public discourse, obstruct normal procedures and common sense reforms, we will doom ourselves to further degradation of social cohesion and spiral into chaos.
Upper leaders of society should be held to the highest standards and face the most severe of consequences for abusing their power or causing strife. We must have a zero tolerance policy for uncivilized or obstructive leaders. Social acupuncture requires that these leaders be replaced as soon as possible before they do too much harm. The longer they are allowed to stay, the more of their poison seeps into the public and the less able the public is able or wants to change. In the worst cases, the public itself becomes so corrupted that they actually like crappy leaders or have forgotten what good leadership looks like and might even see good leaders as bad, which is preposterous and dangerous.
Social acupuncture is about identifying good leaders at all levels of society and rewarding and encouraging them and also identifying bad political leaders and eliminating them from office as soon as possible and replacing them with better leaders. IF we can do both of these things on a regular basis, society will greatly benefit and will eventually be on a course of sustainable, peaceful and enjoyable existence—the goal.
