Chapter 27.
At a second screening of the film The Line We Crossed, an experience arose: ‘Too Few Are Listening’. Having explored the ‘Web of Power’ and cultivated ‘Human Agency’, the next step is to understand what works to transform societies and galvanise collective action. The frustration of unheard voices or challenges that seem insurmountable can be overcome not by endlessly fighting the old, but by strategically building the new. The pursuit of a better world is a timeless human endeavour, yet the path to social change often feels fraught with frustration and division. We frequently witness efforts consumed by the uphill battle of “fighting the old” – battling entrenched systems, challenging prevailing norms, and opposing powerful interests. While resistance is a vital component of any transformative process, focusing solely on what needs to be dismantled can lead to exhaustion, fragmentation, and a narrow vision of what is possible.
Effective and sustainable social change, however, hinges on three interconnected principles that transcend conventional political divides: “Don’t Fight the Old, Build the New,” the truth that “Political Will Follows Social Will,” and the concept that Action Precedes Value Shift. These principles are amplified by the “They Did It, We Can Do It” paradigm, which highlights the contagious nature of successful innovation. A wealth of behavioural research supports the idea that action precedes values. When individuals engage in initiatives with a collective dimension—such as joining a community energy cooperative or organising a local repair café—they often report stronger environmental and civic values after the fact. This is rooted in cognitive dissonance: to maintain a coherent self-image, we align beliefs with our behaviours. Neurobehavioural studies show that repeated action creates feedback loops that rewire not just habits but identities.
For example, someone advocating for public transportation improvements may soon identify as a person committed to social and climate justice, leading them to engage further. In short, personal behaviour is not just symbolic; it becomes generative when our actions are rooted in supporting collective change. Actions create identity, identity reinforces values, and values fuel broader engagement.
The principle of “Don’t Fight the Old, Build the New” shifts our focus from reactive opposition to proactive creation. Instead of expending energy battling existing structures, movements can strategically invest in developing viable alternatives. This is not about ignoring injustice, but about rendering it obsolete by showcasing superior ways of organising and living. This constructive approach finds its theoretical grounding in prefigurative politics, which posits that social movements should embody the desired future society in their present practices. A related concept, horizontalism, emphasised by authors such as Marina Sitrin, highlights non-hierarchical, decentralised forms of organisation, building power from below by creating spaces where new social relations can flourish.
Across the UK, community energy projects exemplify this principle. Groups like the Westmill Wind Farm Co-operative and Egni Coop have built community-owned renewable energy installations, generating clean power and local benefits. These initiatives demonstrate practical alternatives to centralised energy systems, and the act of collective investment and management shifts participants’ values towards sustainability and shared responsibility. Another area where the new is being built is through circular economy initiatives. M&S, a prominent UK retailer, has implemented circular models, removing best-before dates to reduce food waste and offering clothing repair services. These actions by businesses normalise new behaviours, gradually shifting consumer values towards circularity.
“Building the new” is intertwined with crafting a narrative, a concept illuminated by framing theory. When the Slow Food Movement championed local, sustainable eating, they were not just providing services; they were telling a story about community care and a better way of life, challenging dominant narratives through tangible action that encouraged value shifts. In the UK, figures like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall exemplify this approach through his River Cottage projects, demonstrating how practical engagement with sustainable food production can alter public attitudes.
We can learn much from Friends of St Fittick’s Park, a community group in Aberdeen, Scotland, engaged in a campaign to protect St Fittick’s Park, the last accessible green space in the deprived Torry area. This is not merely a fight for a park; it’s a part of a broader “Just Transition” movement pushing back against what local activists see as a corporate-driven “green” land grab. The group argues that this development is anything but a “just” transition for their community, and that the park is a cost-effective health investment for residents. The group has won in building a unified community and secured funding for an outdoor classroom, demonstrating how action precedes value shift. Originated from a grassroots Facebook page, it remains a community-led effort, illustrating horizontalism. They have mobilised residents through protests and meetings. Beyond opposition, the group cultivates a new vision for the park. The Friends of St Fittick’s Park exemplify the strength of collective agency, collaborating widely with other organisations and using art and media to tell their story. This provides a real-world case study for a UK audience, highlighting how working-class communities can stand against powerful interests to protect their environment.
The principle that “Political Will Follows Social Will” explains how the energy generated by “building the new” eventually compels political institutions to act. A sustained and widespread shift in public opinion creates an environment where political action becomes necessary. This dynamic is central to social movement theory, particularly the “political process model” developed by scholars like Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Compelling global case studies illustrate this principle. The Civil Rights Movement in the USA, through decades of grassroots organising, built social will against racial segregation, ultimately compelling landmark legislation.
The LGBTQ+ rights movement’s push for Marriage Equality worked for decades to change hearts and minds, sharing personal stories and challenging discrimination in courts. This societal shift ultimately compelled political leaders to recognise same-sex marriage, demonstrating how legal change followed a cultural transformation. The Tobacco Control Movement provides a similar example where public concern led to public smoking bans, taxes, and advertising restrictions—policies once politically unimaginable. Within the UK, the Plastic Bag Charge is a more recent example where growing public concern and campaigning led to a policy that reduced plastic waste.
The effectiveness of both “building the new” and influencing “political will” is amplified by the “They Did It, We Can Do It” paradigm. This describes how the visible success of a social change effort in one context inspires others to adapt similar strategies elsewhere, reducing perceived risk and providing concrete blueprints for action. This paradigm is rooted in Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, which posits that individuals learn by observing others, boosting their collective efficacy. Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations theory further explains how successful “social innovations” spread through a social system, with observability and trialability being key factors. This paradigm is illustrated by the journey of Nonviolent Resistance. Mahatma Gandhi’s successful application of nonviolent civil disobedience in India provided a “they did it” moment. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement explicitly studied and adapted Gandhian principles, thereby embodying the “we can do it” spirit that led to their own breakthroughs. The Serbian youth movement Otpor!’s overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in 2000 became a global template for nonviolent action.
Closer to home, success stories of pioneering Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and Housing Cooperatives have led to the diffusion of these models within the UK. CLTs like Granby Four Streets in Liverpool or those supported by East Cambridgeshire District Council demonstrate how communities can acquire land and develop affordable homes. This tangible evidence of success reduces the perceived risk and provides practical guidance for replication across the country.
Applying these principles to the issue of climate change reveals a clear path for effective action. The “new” we are looking to build in climate action extends beyond simply reducing emissions; it encompasses the creation of entire sustainable systems. This involves the development of renewable energy infrastructure, smart grids, and the transition towards a circular economy. Each step in building this new infrastructure—from community solar projects to urban greening initiatives—serves as an action that can precede and cement value shifts towards sustainability. Crafting a narrative that galvanises “social will” for climate action requires a focus on actual progress and the co-benefits of a sustainable future, such as job creation and healthier communities. The UK’s phase-out of coal power serves as a powerful “they did it, we can do it” example, demonstrating how a major economy can transition away from a historically dominant fossil fuel.
This view meets resistance from many in the climate and degrowth movements. Their concern is that small actions can be misused. In the policy world, incrementalism is often not a stepping stone but a tool to delay transformation. These individual climate actions can create a sunk cost trap, locking us into status quo systems. The Climate Action Literacy study warns of an unintended consequence: focusing exclusively on individual interventions risks reducing support for collective action. This “negative spillover” occurs due to phenomena like (moral licensing) and (focus narrowing). The danger is that small actions become pacifiers, rather than catalysts.
Moral licensing is a psychological phenomenon in which a person’s good deed in one area gives them a subconscious permission to be less virtuous in another. In the context of your chapter, taking a small action like recycling a plastic bottle could make an individual feel they have done enough for the day, allowing them to ignore more impactful actions like campaigning for systemic change or confronting corporate power. It becomes a pacifier for their conscience, satisfying their desire to do good without requiring further effort.
Focus narrowing, on the other hand, is when a person’s attention is so intensely concentrated on one small part of a problem that they lose sight of the bigger picture or the systemic nature of a problem. By focusing exclusively on individual habits, such as their personal consumption or carbon footprint, a person can become blind to the structural and political levers needed for large-scale change. The danger is that these small actions, which should be the first step in a broader effort, become the only step.
When these two phenomena combine, they create a negative spillover effect. The small action (or pacifier) provides a sense of accomplishment (moral licensing) and consumes all of their focus (focus narrowing), which ultimately prevents them from taking on the larger, more challenging actions that could be truly catalytic for social change.
The tension arises not because either side is wrong, but because they operate from different leverage points. Behavioural scientists study the individual level, where small actions can lead to internal shifts. Policy experts and system theorists, by contrast, work at the structural level. The paradox deepens when we confuse these two scales. To break out of this contradiction, we need to reconnect individual behaviour with collective goals—not just personal virtue, but public power. The way out of this trap is to reorient small acts so they contribute to large-scale transformation. We need to make individual action political again—not in the partisan sense, but in the collective sense. This means starting with collective action to reshape personal behaviour.
Join a movement to ban cars from city centres, and you’ll find yourself biking more. Campaign for a four-day workweek and a green job guarantee, and you may naturally reduce your working hours. These are collective actions that lay the foundation for a new economy. When people come together to drive systemic change, their personal behaviours follow. They move from guilt to agency, from isolation to belonging, from consumer to citizen. There is a distinction between individual action and incremental policy. The former, when directed toward collective outcomes, can change the world. The latter, when captured by corporate interests, can solidify the status quo. The mistake is not in acting small. The mistake is in thinking that small acts within broken systems amount to change.
We need a new theory of catalytic action—one that recognises the power of individual behaviour, but refuses to let it be co-opted. Such a theory would start with personal behaviour changes aimed at collective actions for systemic change, use individual behaviour to build shared values, and mobilise people not just to consume better, but to confront power. Want to change the world? Start a food co-op. This is not just a personal choice; it’s building a new economic system that redefines food production. Organise a repair café. You’re not just fixing items; you’re demonstrating a circular economy in action and inspiring a community to value repair over disposal. Launch a community housing initiative. Turn your private concern into a public good. These acts may seem small, but they create the scaffolding for something bigger: a society where the default behaviour is regenerative, the systems support human and planetary flourishing, and the gap between values and structures finally begins to close. In the end, it’s not a question of either/or—either small action or systemic transformation—but both/and. The key is alignment. When individual action serves systemic change, and systemic change enables individual action, the feedback loop becomes not only positive, but revolutionary.
Next Chapter: Emotional & Mental Resilience: Reclaimed
Bibliography
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Baumgartner, Frank R. and Jones, Bryan D. Agendas and Instability in American Politics.
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Boggs, Carl. Gramsci’s Marxism.
Climate Action Literacy study.
McAdam, Doug; Tarrow, Sidney; and Tilly, Charles. Dynamics of Contention.
Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations.
Rowbotham, Sheila. Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World.
Sitrin, Marina. Horizontalism: People Power and the New Politics.