In this video, author Joel Barker provides an Introduction to Paradigms 101………a paradigm is a model, specifically the model we carry in our noggins regarding everything, how life, the world, the Universe all works and does not work ….what we know, don’t know, wonder, react to, value and do not value, what we assume and take for granted, what we question and what we do not question this model of the world we have put together in our brains does something funny: it ‘uses’ us……….we don’t ‘use’ it in the sense that paradigms define us unwittingly and hugely shape how we think, feel and act from serve as a kind of lens through which we see and make sense of the world and of our lives, and from which we act.
A paradigm is our foundational frame of reference, our fundamental framework for making sense of life, which knowing of life is filled with beliefs, notions, experiences, learnings, et. al. and as such shape what we can see and think and even feel and what we cannot, think, feel and act on………….for most of us most of the time paradigms operate without our conscious awareness and they operate most often as t h e t r u t h, our truths, as to the way it is. We sometimes say it is “our personal truth,” “our authentic truth, ” but nonetheless it is given by the rules and boundaries of our paradigms which operate for us as real, t r u e, even definitive (meaning, fixed, in place, and sometimes, absolute). As we humans become aware of paradigms and how these frameworks shape, guide and limit our lives, we can begin to make new discoveries and choices that we were once not permitted to, given the rules and constraints of past paradigms. The earth was seen as flat (it seemed so obvious) , now is seen more as round. Humors in the 1700s in the blood were thought to cause disease so bleeding was the remedy (George Washington was in part bled to death upon contracting flu-like symptoms)….if he did not get better, well then, the model (paradigm) says bleed him some more….and more and more…………..that was then…… now it is germs and viruses (what Pasteur, bridging 2 worlds or paradigms, called “invisible animals”); Newton had supposedly said it all regarding physics til Einstein et. al. and the world of quantum physics introduced the sub-atomic world. These rapid paradigm shifts occur in all fields of endeavor (example: no runner could run a sub 5 minute mile for 2,000 years; then Roger Bannister did it in 1954 and several more runners did so in the next 2 years.).
Consider that our adversary politics is precisely the natural and inescapable, inevitable outcome of the paradigm in which our politics are located……to wit, that life is fundamentally, and absolutely and necessarily given by win/ lose, who has the most goodies at the end WINS, some human beings are just better than others and deserve special treatment, that the world must be governed by force, M U S T, one must be RIGHT at all costs, integrity is optional and of course matters less and is less impactful than opportunism, that the past must determine our future, etc., etc., etc.
None……..not one….of these statements is absolutely, inescapably true………….they are artifacts of ourselves from our more primitive eras…..when we had exponentially more limited capacities to invent or discover or think critically………..or collaborate……….or today, when we can imagine and have fantastic envisionings, possibilities, come to pass by living, working, and thinking with each other, together, even when competing, to make it happen………..my father as one of his projects managed the business of the Apollo project which at that time IBM did all of the computing of (with less than a cell phone’s computing power of today) and they had two foundational values at a time in the 50s and 60s when IBM was said to be the most admired company in the world………..one was: “your word is your bond,” and the second one was simply: t h i n k………..and on every desk……..Not merely have our automatic predictable thoughts we each have as we navigate our more or less predictable days………but rather really be open to discovering something new, perhaps for the first time………….to be awed and taken over by what is possible……to be inspired by life and work as possibility which is where allllllllll creating and innovations begins……what if possibility thinking and discovering can be there for any one so willing to engage?
Here is a brief quickie on the difference between having automatic, reactive thoughts and doing critical, reflective thinking. This is known as the Epimenides Paradox.
Is the following statement true or false:
THIS STATEMENT IS FALSE.
Chew on that a bit. Let me know what you think.
Folks, there is zero shot at a workable politics ….ever………unless and until we re-assess and or re-imagine and or re-create what is a human being anyway? A robot of the past? An animal in a struggle for survival til death do us part? Is it possible………….even observable…….. that we may be the only species or entity that has the wherewithal to invent possibility limitlessly?
What if we were? What would a politics look like for that species?
Photo credit: wayanaditya
