Earthworming

Ursula M. Franklin’s advice for social change

In The Real World of Technology, Ursula M. Franklin shares her “Franklin’s earthworm theory of social change”:

Social change will not come to us like an avalanche down the mountain. Social change will come through seeds growing in well prepared soil and it is we, like the earthworms, who prepare the soil. We also seed thoughts and knowledge and concern. We realize there are no guarantees as to what will come up. Yet we do know that without the seeds and the prepared soil nothing will grow at all. … What is needed is a lot more earthworming.

Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology, pgs. 121–22

Earthworming as a verb—yes!