Unusually hot, dry, June weather has me thinking about climate change (of course), which brings me to Ursula Franklin and her earthworm theory of social change:

Social change will not come to us like an avalanche down the mountain. Social change will come through seeds growing in well prepared soil—and it is we, like the earthworms, who prepare the soil. We also seed thoughts and knowledge and concern. We realize there are no guarantees as to what will come up. Yet we do know that without the seeds and the prepared soil nothing will grow at all. I am convinced that we are indeed already in a period in which this movement from below is becoming more and more articulate, but what is needed is a lot more earthworming.

Now, how do we do that? First of all, it is necessary to transcend the barriers that technology puts up against reciprocity and human contact. One of the reasons why I dwelt so much on non-communications technologies and on the concept of reciprocity is that one has to realize just how technology makes it very difficult for people to talk to each other. People rarely work together on regular, non-technologically interrupted projects. Because of this we have to make the time to create the occasion—be it on the bus, or in the waiting room—to talk to each other not about the weather, but about our “common future.”

Franklin, The Real World of Technology, page 121

With all respect to Franklin, we absolutely must talk to each other about the weather, because the weather is our common future. But I think it’s also instructive that Franklin connects earthworming to being in unmediated dialogue with one another. That is, you can’t do this work alone or at a remove; you have to be in the dirt with your comrades. It’s through talking to one another that we plant seeds, that we loosen up the soil, that we cultivate the future we want. We do this together or we do it not at all.