Eric Hobsbawm is one of the world’s great historians. His views on the events of 2011 are worth paying attention to. Those who live through revolutions are usually unaware of the fact that they are in the midst of something significant. Moreover, one can never really predict what the outcome of social movements might be. We all need to be aware of what’s happening and to look for dots to connects that others fail to see.
The spreading of a social movement is a very complex process, although we have tended to obscure its compelxity by attributing mass movements to technologies such as Facebook and Twitter. The Economist published an interesting essay thinking about the Reformation as a social movement and looking at how Luther’s message was transmitted throughout Europe in such a short period of time, unleashing one of the most powerful social movements ever experienced by humanity.
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