As said before, effecting change means attempting to alter the status quo and as such is not always easily accepted – especially if the status quo is well grounded because of some historical, cultural, or other important reasons. In other words, those who are addressing seemingly unsolvable problems usually find themselves in conflict with the existing attractor. The bigger and more pressing the addressed problems, the more attempts have probably already been undertaken and the more failures have aggregated the magnitude of the existing attractor.

As mentioned in Chapter 7, some activists address problems or conflicts directly, which means that they are engaged in a process of disrupting the status quo. In situations of protracted social problems or conflicts, the result is often neutral (the system over time drifts back to the old attractor; see Figure 1, Chapter 7) or negative (the dynamics of the system may also backfire, leaving damage in its wake).