A Quantum of Action

Our choices matter. Each one is a "quantum of action" that can disrupt harmful patterns or reinforce pathways of trust, integrity, and constructive change.

Making a difference

Yesterday I voted. This was my first vote in a Norwegian parliamentary election since I became a citizen in 2021, and it felt meaningful. Especially at a time when the world needs leadership on policies related to climate change and biodiversity loss, human rights and well-being, and peace and global sustainability.

Norway, a country with 5.572 million people and a sovereign wealth fund worth about 20 trillion NOK (about 1.9 trillion USD), is in a position to lead with integrity. Considering the latest research on the potential collapse of the Atlantic current, this is a position Norway should embrace.

This year’s election reminds me that small actions matter. Tiny, incremental actions are often dismissed as trivial or insignificant. Yet together they form patterns and pathways that shape the future. Transformative change is not an event but a process. Each idea, decision, action, and vote represents a quantum of action.

Principles are foundational

I was talking about this last week at the Transformations Community/Earth System Governance conference. The conference, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, was an engaging event that brought together researchers, practitioners, activists, and artists. This year, there was considerable focus on values, emotions, and the inner dimensions of transformative change.

In a plenary discussion focusing on the failure of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we discussed how they have emphasized outcomes, rather than the process and quality of change. However, it’s clear that we won’t realize SDG 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries without taking equity and justice as the starting point. As one of the principles of transformative change, it must be foundational to all actions and goals.

Hitting home

This was exemplified recently in a breaking news story from the Norwegian Public Broadcasting agency (NRK). Investigative journalists have uncovered the role of Telenor, a Norwegian telecommunications company, in handing over data to Myanmar’s military junta so that it could locate, track, and murder citizens fighting to restore democracy after the February 1, 2021 military coup.

People who are fighting for justice, democracy, and freedom were betrayed by Telenor. According to documents obtained by NRK, approximately 1,300 mobile customers had their digital data handed over or their phones blocked at the request of the military government. Telenor knew that nearly 500 of its customers could face arrest if their sensitive data were shared with the authorities.

“We had no choice”

The CEO of Telenor’s Myanmar operations at the time has defended the decision as regretful, yet claimed it was their only option. “We had no choice.” Is that so?

Decisions have consequences. When we perceive limited options, we operate within a narrow solution space that often translates into business as usual. Telenor, a Norwegian company with 18.2 million subscribers in Myanmar, was worried that their employees in Myanmar would be punished for not handing over data to illegitimate authorities.

What if they had chosen instead to honor the trust that was foundational to their customer relationships, standing firm for both the security of their employees and with all citizens of Myanmar? What if the Norwegian state, which owns 55% of Telenor, put pressure on the military regime and rallied international support for Myanmar’s legitimate National Unity Government (NUG)?

Options are often linked to familiar, comfortable patterns that are the easiest to follow. However, such patterns also tend to perpetuate the underlying causes of many of the problems we are experiencing. Three deeply rooted social and cultural patterns identified in the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment are: 1) the disconnection and domination over nature and people; 2) the concentration of power and wealth; and 3) the prioritization of short-term, individual, and material gains. While appealing to trust, in practice Telenor reinforced the patterns of domination, concentration, and prioritization that underlie many of today’s crises.

People trusted that Telenor would maintain its integrity. Yet the path of integrity takes courage — both to do difficult things, and to do things differently.

Trust quantum mechanics

While “nerding out” after the conference, I noticed a video on YouTube titled Something Strange Happens When You Trust Quantum Mechanics. The video, published by Veritasium, has already been viewed over 12 million times, so I thought I’d check it out. The host starts out with a confession:

As a 42-year old who's spent most of my life studying physics, I must admit that I had a big misconception. I believed that every object has one single trajectory through space, one single path. But in this video, I will prove to you that this is not the case. Everything is actually exploring all possible paths all at once.

He argues that “the fact that we see things on single, well-defined trajectories is, in a way, the most convincing illusion nature has ever devised. And the way it works all comes down to a quantity known as the action.” According to the principle of least action, every possible path contributes to the outcome, but most cancel out through destructive interference (when the peaks and troughs of multiple waves oppose and negate each other). Those closest to the path of least action, however, interfere constructively. They reinforce one another, and that’s the path we see in our everyday, classical world.

The video traces some key breakthroughs in physics that have helped us to understand how and why actions matter. Max Planck, for example, discovered that energy is quantized — directly proportional to frequency, with the constant of proportionality known as Planck’s constant. This constant represents a quantum of action. Because of the quantum of action, classical mechanics is simply what emerges when almost all possible paths cancel out, leaving only the path of least action reinforced.

The point is simple: most paths vanish, but the ones that align reinforce each other, shaping the reality we experience.

All paths exist at once

Quantum mechanics has metaphorical lessons for social change; one is the recognition that all possible paths exist at once. What we experience as “the path” or “our only choice” is not inevitable or determined; it emerges from interference, or from the ways we amplify some patterns so they endure, and disrupt others so they fade.

Our choices, however small, are like quanta of action. They may seem insignificant, but they shift patterns, sometimes destructively and other times constructively. When actions align with the IPBES assessment’s principles of transformative change — equity and justice; pluralism and inclusion; respectful and reciprocal human-nature relations; and adaptive learning and action — they reinforce each other. Such constructive interference creates visible, coherent pathways to our shared goals.

A Quantum of Action

Voting in an election is a small action, but when there is trust in the electoral process, the outcomes can lead to constructive actions that benefit all. Without trust, destructive interference creates the illusion of “no choice.”

My next quantum of action will be to cancel my Telenor subscription, in solidarity with people in Myanmar who are fighting for justice and democracy.

When our choices and actions align with values such as equity, integrity, pluralism, and inclusion, they build trust and shape our future. Trust is the process of choosing integrity over interests, again and again, knowing that every quantum of action matters.

It seems clear that the options we are unaware of are the ones we are least likely to elect.
—Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Image: Barbara Burgess / Unsplash