I've been thinking about community improvement and I realise I don't know of any examples where a community had a flaw and fixed it without some deeply painful process.
Often there are discussions of flaws within EA with some implied notion that communities in general are good at changing. Maybe this is true. If so, there should be well known examples.
I would like examples of communities that had some behavior and then changed it, without loads of people leaving or some civil war.
Examples might include:
- Becoming less violent
- Becoming more entrepreneurial
- Improving practises around sexual harassment
- Becoming more open
- Changing the language they used.
Also if anyone knows of literature they trust on the subject I'd be interested in it.
Probably not super helpful/what you're looking for, but one broad category of groups who go from 'doing violence' to 'doing much less or no violence' (often within a short space of time) are resistance organisations that successfully manage the transition, usually after achieving some level of progress. The ANC in South Africa seems like a good example. Sinn Féin in Ireland (established as the political wing of the IRA) is another.