The Masses Change the World

A few years ago I read Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson and this reorganized some of my thinking. I came to appreciate the bottom up nature of the universe. It eloquently demonstrates how signal can come from noise.

Later I read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and he reorganized my thinking about history. I’d been taught the Great Men/Great Moment theory of history. Zinn challenges this by saying it’s massive groups of people that change history. His history focuses on large swaths of people and what motivated them and what changed.

Now I read a review on Salon of Eric Foner’s book Forever Free and I’m reminded that change is made by masses of people.