Organic Social Change

Ong will talk how the lived experiences of people who are disadvantaged and oppressed can be a resource for deep and creative forms of social change. Out of their own lived experiences, disadvantaged and oppressed people can harness their own powers to think, express the powers of their own feelings, and develop powers to make their own decisions and to act on them. On his account, there is a distinctive kind of social change that comes about through a process whereby the disadvantaged and oppressed drive their own transformation and facilitate a similar transformation in those individuals with whom they interact or cooperate. Crucially, moreover, these transformations are towards new ways of being different rather than towards simply getting assimilated into mainstream society.