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The Paradigm Conspiracy
The Paradigm Conspiracy
Paradigm Power
We’re concerned about where the culture is going, and what we can all
do to change its course. As we see it, our main power lies with philosophy and t
he force of paradigm shifts. Shifting our mindset doesn’t cost money, it’s democrati
c (we can all do it), it goes to the crux of problems, it’s nonviolent, it’s effecti
ve, it’s not stoppable from without, and it’s our greatest power, though largely unt
apped.
The Problem
We see a pervasive mindset of control and domination permeating our
cultural institutions, a mindset driven by the fear of anarchy. If someone—some au
thority or power over us—doesn’t control us, society will fall into chaos, or so we’re
to believe.
But who controls the controllers? What kind of order do those in pos
itions of power have in mind? Is power-over an order that works—i.e., that creates
social harmony and makes us happy? Or does it create wars, blind obedience, inn
er deadness, Littleton, Colorado nightmares, injustices, epidemic substance and
process addictions, economic exploitation, cynicism, chronic stress, and unhappi
ness?
It doesn’t make sense, for example, that we control children morning t
o night with rewards and punishments and then wonder why they grow up selfish ma
nipulators: “What’s in it for me?” or “Just don’t get caught!” That’s how child-rearing and
hooling methods trained all of us to think. And if people grow up obsessed with
gaining power over others—the chance to be in the one-up position and to control w
ho’s rewarded and who’s punished—where’s the surprise? This is the logical extension of
our cultural paradigm.
In other words, is our culture built on a paradigm that’s working for
us as well as we need it to? Is our consensus philosophy shaping our institution
s to serve us, or are we becoming servants to systems that warp our minds, consu
me our energies, and turn us into people we never wanted to be? When more and mo
re of us find ourselves asking such core questions, it’s time to start rethinking
things from the ground up. It’s time to reclaim our powers.
The Global Crisis of Addictions
Caught in deadly processes. Recovery: it’s not just for “addicts” anymore.
It’s not even just for persons, not when addictive processes permeate every socia
l system we’ve got, from schools to churches to workplaces to governments.
The World Is Managed Through Addiction-Based Dynamics
We’re up to our ears in addict-making processes, and we can’t take two s
teps out of bed without running into them.
Substance addictions. Substance addictions—alcohol, drugs, nicotine, f
ood, caffeine—are just the surface, the outward and visible ways addictive process
es come get us. And they do get us. Drugs (legal and illegal), alcohol, and toba
cco constitute the world’s biggest economic empire. Only the weapons industry riva
ls it. It seems we can’t afford not to be substance-dependent; our economies certa
inly are.
Process Addictions
Next in the line of killers are process addictions, the ones societ
y applauds : addiction to working, winning, high-stress, fast-track jobs, perfec
tionism, relationships, making money, spending and debting, gaining power, getti
ng fame or notoriety, living out family dramas, or—brace yourself—shopping. Sex can
be another process addiction, but it’s not one society looks kindly on, however mu
ch advertising promotes insatiable and manipulative sex as the solution to life’s
challenges. Gambling is another old addiction, coming back now with a vengeance
with all the state lotteries, especially among young people.
Even the most lauded activities—religion, science, academic inquiry, a
nd government service—may take on classic addictive patterns. Religion turns into
obsession. Science turns into dogma, as if collecting enough facts will make up
for a narrow worldview. Academic inquiry becomes an in-your-head addiction—quibbli
ng esoterica with rabid acrimony, fiddling while Rome burns. As for government s
ervice, it’s power addiction from the bureaucrats who throw around their paper-pus
hing weight to the big-timers who become brokers for corporate conglomerates.
Process addictions are every bit as deadly, because they underlie su
bstance addictions—as well as just about every social and global ill we’ve got. They’r
e the invisible killers, the ones we don’t suspect, but the ones that made million
aire Ivan Boesky raid savings and loans to become a billionaire, leaving in his
wake thousands who saw their life-savings disappear. As Boesky was later to admi
t, “It’s a sickness I have in the face of which I am helpless.” Nor was Boesky alone i
n his sickness. Since the ’80s, we’ve witnessed an army of greed-addicted corporate
raiders, who made the jobs and pension funds of millions vanish overnight.
Process addictions aren’t limited to movers and shakers, though. Ordin
ary folks following the right diet and taking the right exercise are dropping de
ad at age thirty-five from workaholism, relationship addiction, anxiety, and str
ess. If all these substance and process addictions don’t afflict us, they nonethel
ess affect us. While addictions to drugs, food, alcohol, sex, or work hit us one
by one, addictions to money, control, divisiveness, status, and official-think
oppress us together. We can’t have power-addicts running the world and not experie
nce the consequences. Even when we try to claim it’s business or government as usu
al, we find ourselves suffering from global plagues made invisible by their fami
liarity.
But a familiar plague is no less deadly. As Anne Wilson Schaef point
s out, a deadly virus is a deadly virus, even if the entire population has it. A
lcoholics Anonymous holds that addiction is a “progressive, fatal disease.” Schaef b
elieves—and we agree—that this is true, no matter what form the addiction takes. Our
lungs may give out from tar and nicotine, or our hearts may give out from stres
s. We may die from the greed that destroys the environment or from a nuclear cha
in reaction set off by a someone’s power play. Addiction—substance or process, acted
out privately or on the world stage—is a fatal illness that we ignore at our peri
l. Not that this is news. We can’t read the papers or watch TV without wondering:
What on earth is going on? We have the knowledge and technology. We have the res
ources, human and natural. We even have the desire. Why can’t our social, economic
, and environmental problems be solved? Why do we live from crisis to crisis?
Addict-making systems. Neither substance nor process addictions are
limited to one race, sex, economic class, region, or occupation. Rich and poor,
conservative and liberal, male and female, Hispanic, European, African, Asian, a
nd Native Americans share the same disease.
When something so deadly cuts across society, we have to look at wha
t we share: our social systems. In her 1987 ground-breaking book, When Society B
ecomes an Addict, Schaef suggests family dynamics, school rules, workplace polic
ies and practices, corporate hierarchies, government workings, media messages, a
s well as cultural and religious belief-structures all operate in ways that set
us up to behave addictively. In fact, society itself, Schaef writes, “is an addict
ive system.”
That’s a strong statement, yet the more we understand addiction, the m
ore it seems like an understatement. Award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto, fo
r instance, pulls no punches about the messages schools send through their struc
ture: “I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences,
the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all th
e rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someo
ne had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax t
hem into addiction and dependent behavior.”
In When Money is the Drug, counselor and writer Donna Boundy sketche
s a similarly addict-making picture for corporations. The level of thinking-dist
ortion that takes over people in these systems is astonishing.
The Paradigm Conspiracy
What’s going on? Why are systems betraying their service to us? Instea
d of performing their rightful functions of educating (schools), nurturing (fami
lies), promoting public good (governments), managing the shared household (busin
esses), and inspiring us to find and fulfill our life’s purpose (religious institu
tions), they’re abusing us and turning us into people we never wanted to be. Why?
Enter “paradigms.” Back in 1962—so long ago John Kennedy was still alive—his
torian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn gave an analysis of how systems ch
ange (or don’t) in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that rocked
the intellectual world. He wasn’t talking about addictive systems but about the sy
stem of scientific research, which has its own brand of obsessive-compulsive beh
avior.
Introducing the term “paradigm,” Kuhn said that scientists operate from
mental models—paradigms—that shape everything they think, feel, and do. How scientis
ts perceive and interpret experience is shaped by their internal structure of be
liefs and concepts—their paradigm. If something is wrong, the paradigm is the plac
e to look to find out why.
To raise paradigm issues is to reflect on the ideas or concepts we’re
using as our map of reality—our world view, life perspective, philosophy, or menta
l model. Whatever we call it, it’s powerful stuff. To look at our paradigm is to l
ook at the blueprint we’re using to build our worlds.
How do paradigms start? They usually begin with some exemplary model—“Ne
wtonian science” or “Einsteinian relativity”—that weaves together theories, standards, a
nd methods in a way that makes better sense than anything else. To share a parad
igm is to share a commitment to rules that define how a scientist acts and react
s. No part of scientific activity is outside the reach of the paradigm’s influence
. It’s as if scientists’ energies get poured through the paradigm’s mold, and whatever
comes out is stamped by that all-encompassing model.
In the decades since, Kuhn’s paradigm-concept has been applied to ever
y discipline, from the arts to business. And rightly so. We experience our lives
the way we do because of the paradigms we carry around. In computer terms, para
digms function like the central operating system of consciousness—the supra-progra
m that transforms undefined perceptions into something we call our experience. T
hey give us the mental tools to make sense of life and survive in it. We may not
be able to summarize our paradigm in ten words or less, but our every thought i
s paradigm connected, even paradigm created.
Development Within A Paradigm
Given the power of paradigms, two kinds of development follow. The f
irst occurs within the paradigm’s framework. The second chucks the paradigm and fo
rges a new one.
“Normal science,” as Kuhn calls it, is the first kind of development. Pr
actitioners operate within their mental model and pursue its implications to the
nth degree. Working inside the prevailing paradigm is the secure, accepted, and
well-rewarded way to do science.
In fact, the paradigm gets so comfortable that scientists forget tha
t it’s there; it becomes functionally invisible. They way they see things is just
the way things are. For them, there is no paradigm between their ideas and reali
ty. Applied to life, the normal-science phase is business as usual, families as
usual, politics, churches, schools, and professions as usual. When we’re ticking a
way within a paradigm’s framework, the norm is well defined, and we conform. Copin
g skills mean finding ways to fit into the norm, whether it’s healthy or not. In f
act, “healthy” is whatever the paradigm says it is. Becoming healthy means adjusting
to the paradigm’s definition.
Paradigm Shifts
The revolutionary development comes when the paradigm reaches a cris
is. It doesn’t solve problems the way it once did. Anomalies—things that the paradig
m can’t explain—start accumulating. Paradigm-health starts making us sick. More and
more, the paradigm doesn’t work. That’s when scientists are challenged to shift para
digms by moving into a phase Kuhn calls “extraordinary science.” But, “extraordinary
science” isn’t easy. In language suited to academia, Kuhn describes how scientists
freak out. Everything they ever learned is called into question. During the revo
lutions in physics early in this century, even Einstein, no slouch in forward-th
inking, wrote, “It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with n
o firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.”
The more the paradigm fails to do its job, the more old-paradigm sci
entists try to make it work. The paradigm is ripe for a revolution, but because
they’ve forgotten that they even have a paradigm, scientists conclude instead that
their world is falling apart. Solutions—alternative ways of doing science—don’t exist
. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve explored all the possibilities, and the only
options they see don’t help. They’re too paradigm-bound to notice that they’re stumbli
ng over the limits of their own models.
Factor
Taking into account more than a decade of discoveries in quantum physics, and a
model in which observer participates on a quantum consciousness level in creatin
g reality as we experience it; takes into account discoveries in science which r
eveal that we live in an open system entropy universe which is expressed through
a definitive “holo-movement” - (Bohm), unfolding—enfolding
Control science based sychological system which perpetuates rigid outer roles, s
ocial dysfunctionality; who has the power in the hierarchy? Imposition of aut
horitarian concepts of emotional and mental health; Dictating the healing proces
s.
Institutions
Philosophies (maps) make institutions what they are for better or worse; the pow
er of individuals to change institutions—to dance a new dance ; Institutions exist
on a temporary basis to solve problems, not to serve solutions.
Scarcity focus; economies are “out there,” bound by impersonal, iron laws; the game
of “Monopoly” is the model for infinite business expansion, trashing the environmen
t and the population in the process.
Economies
Knowledge & creativity; economies reflect us and the maps we use; we create our
economies as evolving aspects of society which contribute toward the evolution o
f both society and the planet as a whole; allows expansion of the idea of "econo
my" into other levels.
“superstition of materialism”
(Chopra), reductionism, value-free, fact-only view of knowledge, etc.
Reality Model
Material Mapping
Economic Reality
Scarcity: "unlimited desires" competing for "limited resources" Re: Monopoly Mod
el, Defunct Malthusian Model
Economic Reality
Know-how and Creativity: Managing creatively what we have and using order to off
set scarcity and evolve more efficient ways of doing things
Strategies
Economic Interaction
Maximizing Ownership of Things: Land, Labor, and Capital
What’s Different: Who owns What or Whom
Hoarding Matter
One-Sided Gain (Win-Lose)
Economic Interaction
Developing Systems of Exchange:
What’s common: Knowledge and Creativity
What’s different:
How we Develop and Use Knowledge
Exchanging differences
Mutual Benefit (Win-Win)
Responses
Purposes