The Acceptance of New Ideas
All effective mass changes of opinion have historically come about [occurred] by what has been called a social chain reaction. A new set of useful and rewarding ideas is developed by an individual or a small group. These spread throughout the population rapidly relative to the usual slow communication of new ideas or cultural attitudes. Note that these ideas spread rapidly but begin in the minds of an individual or small group in every case. (This is the effective answer to the discouragement patterns which say, “We are so few, what can we do?”)
For a social chain reaction to take place in the past, the old established sets of ideas that governed human relations (whether their guise was religious, philosophical, political, or sociological) had to become so unworkable that they were openly and obviously oppressive and dangerous to the welfare of most people. (This was necessary in the past, but it need not always be so. In the future, logic may replace despair as a motivator of change.)
This condition of unworkability is met by our modern situation where the future appears to be one of despair for most of the world’s peoples if the ideas of the past are to continue to dominate the world.
Secondly, for a set of new ideas to spark a social chain reaction, the new ideas must bring continuous rewards to their possessors. Acceptance of them must bring not just momentary reward, nor yet rewards only after years of adherence, but must bring reward and individual satisfaction to their possessor day after day as long as they are practiced.
The knowledge which we call Re-evaluation Counseling meets this requirement of daily reward. To understand the possibility of freeing oneself from the grip of individual aberrations and limitations, and to use the techniques for doing so, is to be rewarded continuously. This has been the experience of people who have used Re-evaluation Counseling consistently.
These useful and rewarding ideas must also include within themselves a motivation for communicating the ideas forthwith to others, once they are accepted and understood. This is the chain reaction mechanism.
The chain reaction requirement is met in that one’s own enjoyment of increasing rationality, of the rewards of knowledge of Re-evaluation Counseling, is enlarged by the extent to which one has drawn family, friends, and immediate environment into a similar attitude and quest for rationality.
From “The Communication of Important Ideas” in The Human Situation, pages 38 to 39
(Present Time 212, July 2023)