May 3, 2008
May 17, 2008
June 7, 2008
When Paradigms Clash
First
delivered at UUCB on September 10, 2006
- Mystical: to elicit and support the human feeling of awe when contemplating the mystery of being. Accepting the burdens of life.
- Cosmological: metaphysical study of the origin and nature of the universe. This function explains the unknowns of the universe.
- Sociological: mythologies help maintain social norms and the current political order. This is essentially a mirror that replicates the divine order to explain the mundane order. Chinese folk religion is an excellent example.
- Psychological: Initiate the individual into the order of realities within his or her own psyche. Myths support us through changes in life and this function probably accounts for the similarities among the various world mythologies.
When discussing paradigms I’m going
to focus on the second and third. The cosmological and the sociological
functions of myth. These are the areas I believe are most obvious today when
exploring the phenomenon of both paradigm failure and paradigm clash.
Myth is inherently conservative. It
doesn’t explain how things ought to be, but how they are. Chinese folk
religion is my favorite example of this mirror that reflects the human
experience with a divine realm. The Chinese pantheon is a spectacular
bureaucracy in which gods and goddesses report to other gods and goddesses.
These hearth, village, county and regional deities can be promoted or demoted
depending upon their efficacy.
Mythology is story-telling and it is
through the stories we tell, that we create our normative expectations. Fairy
tales and legends help accomplish the same thing.
Consider the stories we tell our
children.
Girls should be demure beautiful
damsels who calmly accept their fate until rescued by strong handsome prince. No
wonder our adolescent girls struggle so hard during the teen years as they
suddenly find themselves socially forced to become something they are not.
I’m going to throw aphorisms into
this category as well. I grew up in the age were, “finish your dinner, don’t
you know there are children starving in China?” was still uttered from time to
time. I thoughts were probably the same as every other kid’s. Well fine, I’m
more than happy to send them all my brussel sprouts and they can have some of
this squash casserole too. Of course I was missing the point, but I think the
parents were too.
Consider the film “An Inconvenient
Truth.” Many here have seen this film and were appalled at the devastating we
were inflicting on the only home we’ve got. Many come away with a feeling of
helplessness. No imagine someone from a small village in the Africa watching
what the industrialized world is doing to our planet. Now THAT is helplessness!
But this takes us back to myth.
It’s not only the myths and other cultural stories and aphorisms that matter,
the interpretation is critical.
Was man given dominion over the earth
to use its resources for human benefit as we see fit. Or was man given dominion
over the earth to engage in responsible stewardship for the benefit of every
creature and for future generations?
Myths and other cultural stories
matter a great deal. They matter because they are the foundation of our
paradigms.
A paradigm is a set of assumptions,
concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for
the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. It was
originally coined for the scientific community but became used in the social
sciences and now has entered the realm of the buzz word.
If you want a really silly example of
a paradigm, picture a bicycle. Is there any reason a bicycle could not have a
seat on it shaped like a human bottom with a small support around it for the
lower back? Not for recreational biking, but there you have it. Bicycle seats
are triangular shaped torture devices for sensitive behinds because that is our
view of the reality of a bicycle.
Sometimes it’s easier to define
something in dynamic rather than static mode. Paradigms become obvious when you
look at paradigm shifts.
Cosmologically we are all familiar of
the shift from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican conception of our solar system. We no
longer view the Earth as the center of the cosmos, but the sun as the center of
one of many solar systems.
In the sciences, the shift from
Newtonian physics to Quantum physics is another familiar and popular example.
Though I’m not about to try to explain the difference between the two. My
understanding of physics would be just enough to mangle everyone’s neurons and
get us absolutely nowhere. I’m more comfortable with examining sociological
paradigm shifts.
Sixth and seventh century Arabia
underwent an incredibly painful paradigm shift when their worldview moved from
tribal organization to individualist capitalism. The Age of Enlightenment moved
the populace of western civilization from obedience to a monarch to the
responsibility of selecting effective representatives. I doubt many of us in
this room could imagine viewing the world as rightfully governed by a divinely
appointed monarch. It’s simply not the paradigm in which we come of age.
So what is a Paradigm Clash?
A paradigm clash is related to paradigm failure. Paradigm failure is when
a particular worldview no longer adequately describes or explains reality. The
previous example of sixth and seventh century Arabia is a good example. That
shift was the result of a paradigm clash. Circumstances related to trade routes
and commerce by and large forced the move from tribalism to individualism.
Karl Jaspars first suggested the idea
that approximately 900-200 BCE constituted what he termed, The Axial Age. Karen
Armstrong explores this time period in depth in her most recent book, The
Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions. I highly
recommend it to anyone wishing to gain insight into this pivotal point in human
history.
During this time period,
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Tribal / village culture transforms into city state and empire.
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Collective identity transforms into individual identity
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Struggle for survival transforms into ethic of compassion.
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This is where the Golden Rule arises.
This era is characterized by its
social upheaval, unprecedented violence, spiritual angst and a pervasive feeling
of dislocation from tradition and anxiety about the future. I don’t suppose
anyone recognizes those set of circumstances as being present today.
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Israel transforms from a monolatrous conglomeration of tribes into a community bound by its monotheistic worship through the social justice of the classical prophets and the exile to Babylon
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Greece transforms from polytheistic religion with no ethical basis to the potential to feel other’s pain through Greek tragedy.
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India transforms from a violent sacrificial society of competing chieftans to a respect for the unity of the cosmos and the ability of the individual to participate in worship and reflection rather than relegating that function to a priestly class.
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China transforms from another violent sacrifical society into a meritocracy where the behavior and ethics of the individual supercedes the importance of the sacrificial rites.
This is about as radical a paradigm
shift as humanity has ever experienced. Karen Armstrong argues that the
philosophical and ethical insights gained during this period have yet to be
transcended. Christianity and Islam do not add any breakthrough teaching to the
insights of the axial age. But this shift of the Axial Age did not come easily.
It was a time of immense difficulty and pain because the shifts did not arise
through gradual awareness via cultural exchange or simple study. This wasn’t
like a college student from Euphala, Alabama having the opportunity to expand
her horizons for the first time in her life by spending a year in France. These
were paradigm clashes and I’m going to argue that we are in the midst of a
similar paradigm clash today.
I see two types of paradigm clashes:
1.
Relational: When two operative paradigms give the appearance of being able to
relate but instead result in misunderstanding, typically disastrous.
When Ronald
Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire we all understood what he
meant. While the Soviet Union may have advocated atheism, the Russians had
primarily Christian religious roots. There was no mistaking what was meant by
the term “evil.”
The mullah
proclamations of the 1980s referring to the United States as “The Great
Satan,” engendered a huge misunderstanding that lingers today. Satan in the
Islamic tradition is not analogous to Satan in the Christian tradition. It is
not the anthropomorphizing of unadulterated evil and the opposite of everything
that is right and good. A better translation might have been the accusation that
the United States is “The Great Trivializer.” (Armstrong
2006) The idea was that the U.S, and western civilization in general,
idolizes money and materialism over righteousness. The warning was that our way
of life has it’s priorities screwed up and that bad influence was not welcome
in the Muslim world.
Another
example is the Native American view of landownership verses that of the
Europeans. How do you sell something you have no concept can be owned? How do
you treat a piece of land if you feel it is something you possess rather than
something you are a part of? We’re not just talking about a phrase that
suffers in translation, but worldviews that don’t translate at all!
2. Internal:
When two conflicting paradigms cannot be reconciled within an individual or a
group of people. When internal paradigms clash, one of two things
happens—paradigm blindness or paradigm shift. Paradigm blindness is exalting
one paradigm at the expense of another; usually maintaining a fierce grasp on a
paradigm failure. In my opinion, fundamentalist religions around the world
attempting to control the social and political realm is an example of paradigm
blindness.
Of course
this immediately brings to mind the clash between creationism and evolution. I
personally cannot tell whether the theories of intelligent design constitute
paradigm blindness or the beginnings of a shift.
A less
obvious internal clash is found within members of denominations of monotheism
that posit God as a Divine Monarch while functioning as citizens of a
representative democracy. If you’ll recall, mythology holds up a mirror that
reflects society and the divine realm. I suppose it is no surprise that
fundamentalist Christians are the loudest proponents of the political theory of
a unitary executive. They are struggling desperately to coalesce their religious
paradigm with a social paradigm. They very likely do not recognize the dangers
inherent in a president who can not only interpret law, but also make it and
exempt himself from it because that is their paradigm of authority. They truly
are blind to the socio-political paradigm of accountability in a representative
democracy. Their myths have reinforced such blindness.
Ian Heath explains there are both positive and
negative functions of myth. And in his writing, I think myth and paradigm can be
used interchangeably in many ways.
Positive Function of Myth
The positive function of myth is to facilitate the development of new states of mind. A myth has many roles embedded in it. The purpose of these roles is that they allow the person, by adopting particular ones that he needs, to gain the experience that he seeks. He adopts a particular role by identifying with it. Identification is always with a role within a myth. The particular advantage of a role is that it has boundaries to it. A role is primarily the exercise of particular rules within one or more particular boundaries. For example, if the role is ‘parent’ in a nuclear family, then a relevant boundary is that of giving social learning only to one’s own children. But if the role is ‘parent’ in a communal family, then the boundary changes so that one gives social learning to other people’s children.
This combination of rules and boundaries within any particular role develops particular values, values that are necessary to that role. Boundaries are essential to living a harmonious life.
Negative Function of Myth
The negative
function of myth allows the person to live his life on automatic pilot. This
occurs once the roles within the myth have become stereotyped. Now the mythic
scenario has ceased to be rewarding and creative, and has become restrictive to
any new energies that the person may still have. The person still makes
decisions within his role, but these decisions are part of the myth. The
limitation of living a myth is that the person functions in a role without
having much understanding of why that role is chosen, or its purpose. The person
has little understanding of his place in life and little understanding of the
purpose of his life. So the central criticism of mythical living is that the
person has no real awareness of what he is doing.
The reason
that we have so little free will is because we have so little ability to step
outside of myth. And to step outside of a myth we first need to identify and
analyse it. (Heath 2003)
This is not easy!
Mass media, secular education, religious instruction, fairy tales, government agencies all combine to create a cultural milieu that makes our paradigms transparent. We cannot see them because we are within them.
The urge to freedom and the creative instinct allow us to break free of a paradigm…granted we must create a new and meaningful one otherwise we fall into lethargy and pointlessness.
How many times have you suggested a change only to hear, “But we’ve always done it this way.” That’s paradigm!
It is the urge to freedom that provides the excitement and energy by which the person can orientate to a new way of life. Our great teachers of history arrived when a mass change in consciousness was needed, when the current paradigms had failed. Inevitably, their new teachings resulted in paradigm clash, but ultimately we saw a shift. Do we really encounter any mentally and emotionally healthy people today who think compassion is a social evil?
But I certainly don’t want to leave
with the idea that there is no hope. Eventually, paradigm clashes and paradigm
blindness must give way to a paradigm shift.
I think this is the absolute essence
of the tolerance we hold so dear in Unitarian Universalism: the urge to freedom
that breaks us out of our personal myth.
We strive for the ability to
recognize that we do exist within a perspective of governing paradigms. We
strive for the willingness to expend the effort to try to see reality from
another governing paradigm. We pray for the courage to shift our paradigm if
necessary to avoid the tension of paradigm failure.
We have already taken the step that
many of the religious faithful struggle with all around our planet. Can deeper
values contravene revealed scriptural truths? For us, they can and do. For
others, it is a painful and traumatic endeavor as we face a new axial age.
We are not shifting from tribe to
empire, but empire to global community. Will we be the new sages who give the
spiritually suffering hope by telling new stories of a planet with a healthy and
loving future?
Copyright © 2006
Ann Fuller, September 2006
Citations and Resources
Armstrong, Karen. 2006. The Great Transformation: The
Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Santa Ana, CA Books on Tape.
Unabridged Edition.
Campbell, Joseph. 1964. The
Masks of God Vol III: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books.
Hall, James. Philosophy of Religion, The Great Courses from The Teaching Company. Course No. 4680.
Heath, Ian. 2003. Myth and Role. http://www.modern-thinker.co.uk/3%20-%20myth%20and%20role.htm, accessed August 01, 2006.