Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world. And there's no question that it is a factor, but it's preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
The reality is that a consumer culture which chucks out its iPhones for a new version every nine months is completely unsustainable, because Earth has already reached the tipping point. The General Strike attempts to personalize these issues and encourage listeners to look for a new model.
I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.
Doing the little things can make a big difference.
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.
When well-qualified, upper middle-class blacks or Latinos or Asians move to predominantly white neighborhoods, there's what's called the tipping point. That tipping point is generally 15 percent; at 15 percent you begin to see white flight.
Do they allow tipping on the boat? - Yes, sir. Have you got two fives? - Oh, yes, sir. Then you won't need the ten cents I was going to give you.
There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.
That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.
There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.
Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.
A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.
Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.
If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.
To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.
The answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.
People really feel that, when they go to the gas pump now, that the oil cartel is holding them by the legs and tipping them upside down and shaking money out of their pockets.
We used to go around tipping outhouses over, or turning over corn shocks on Halloween. Anything to be mean.
Every day is an opportunity for a new life. Every day you stand at the tipping point of your life. And on any one day you can change the future – through the way that you feel.
Reminding myself of all that I have to be thankful for really helps ground me and keeps me from tipping over into that negative place.
The South was at the point where the scale was tipping against slavery. It was slowly dawning on the plantation owners that slave labor was not economic, besides being morally wrong. Slavery was destined to be abolished, whether for economic reasons or moral reasons matters not, but the international intriguers were not going to wait for voluntary abolition to rob them of their trump card.
We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
We have at most ten years - not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions... We are near a tipping point, a point of no return, beyond which the built in momentum and feedbacks will carry us to levels of climate change with staggering consequences for humanity and all of the residents of this planet.
The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances.
Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.
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