Charles Duhigg author of “From Civil Rights to Megachurches” and Bill McKibben, main speaker from the short film “Do the Math” both have ideas of the changes that have occurred in the country and why it happened. Duhigg goes about this by using the equal rights movement for black people in the United States and analyzes how it became so monumental and effective so fast. His reasoning included “People who hardly knew Rosa Parks decided to participate because of a social peer pressure — an influence known as ‘the power of weak ties’ — that made it difficult to avoid joining in” (90). This was an important piece because according to Duhigg, weak ties make or break everything and it makes sense because they are the ties that are able to tie together many different kinds of people that would normally not be connected. Just like Duhigg, McKibben also believes in weak ties between people in a sense. However, his approach is slightly different. He primarily believes that everyone should just work together in order to prevent the world from going beyond any repair. This is seen in his talk when he says “we’re no longer at the point of trying to stop global warming, too late for that. We’re at the point of trying to keep it from becoming complete and utter calamity ” (3). Nowhere does he say we need to reach out to our weak ties, he just says that we need to do it no matter if we know each other or not. Therefore, while both Duhigg and McKibben believe in people working together, who and how they work together is where the differences are seen.
Jessy Shore
Be the change you want to see in the world
