1 dilemma I see with so countless discussions about politics, culture, the economic climate and other locations is the refusal of persons on all sides of the issues to accept the reality of transform. Irrespective of whether it's liberals or conservatives, materialists or followers of religions, they tend to blame the "other side" for the situation and appear intent on returning to a time when points were supposedly improved.
The terms "old paradigm" and "new paradigm" get thrown around rather a bit, and they can mean countless things. A paradigm, nevertheless, normally refers to something important and fundamental rather than just a minor or secondary aspect of a thing. So let's look at some locations where the old paradigm is merely not going to return no matter what anybody does, no matter who gets elected and no matter how much we try to deny it:
*** The Economy -jobs that were produced for the industrial age are fading quick.
*** The Environment - regardless of the lead to, the climate appears to be altering.
*** Culture -the "nuclear loved ones," a planet of distinct and separate nations and races these are currently anachronistic concepts.
*** Dogma -politics, economics, nationalism & religion are increasingly irrelevant.
None of the above are exactly revelations. Everyone sees this occurring proper just before our eyes, but the dilemma is that hardly anyone accepts that it really is certainly happening and that it is irreversible. I propose that, rather than see such things as difficulties, we take them as axioms for the times we're living in and look for methods to make the most effective of them. If we explore these phenomena in a great deal more detail, we can see that this isn't so challenging to do. In truth, when we seriously appear at it, we will need to be glad all of this is happening!
As I write this, there are spreading protests in the U.S., named Occupy Wall Street.
As thousands protest economic inequality and hardship, conservatives condemn the protestors as socialists, anarchists or just lazy hippies (this is from reading actual message boards!). At the same time, we're approaching an highly divisive presidential election where Democrats and Republicans hurl accusations and insults back and forth.
Each sides talk about the economy as though it was either feasible or desirable to go back in time -specifically to the post-Globe War ll era where the industrial economic climate was expanding and the United States was the dominant energy. The fact is, these days are gone forever, and, significantly more importantly, why really should we even mourn them?
Both corporate capitalism and socialism are based on an industrial age model that is much less and less relevant. Rather than asking no matter whether we must trust Large Business or Massive Government to resolve our challenges, is it not time to come up with viable, grassroots alternatives? In fact, the especially notion of economics in the standard sense, or a monolithic abstraction known as "The Economy" need to maybe be abandoned.
Granted, when consumers are facing troublesome economic times, unemployment is a frightening prospect -or reality. Yet, let's be honest. How lots of many people truly want to operate in a factory or in an workplace cubicle? Yet these are the archetypal jobs that had been produced in the industrial age. Regardless of the reigning political ideology, the structure of employment is based on hierarchy, mass production,centralization and conformity.
The identical, of course, is correct for contemporary education, no matter whether public or private. Education is basically preparation for a job in the industrial age economic climate. The prevailing, widespread cynicism with regards to contemporary institutions might possibly be largely due to an underlying, mainly unconscious realization that none of these institutions honestly belongs here any longer.
The apparent mindlessness and narcissism of contemporary well-liked culture is effortless to dismiss as either a symptom of a culture in decline, or perhaps as a conspiracy on the part of the power elite to divert men and women from what's honestly happening. Yet, one more way to look at it is as a reaction and escape from the even a lot more mindless prison of bureaucracy, irrational laws and norms, corporate "culture" and a planet where couple of truly think in the outmoded habits they are compelled to repeat day just after day.
When it comes to power and the environment, it's largely a matter of creating use of emerging technologies that replace the oil based paradigm. This may perhaps or may possibly not leave space for the individual automobile as the dominant form of transportation. At the pretty least, it would seem that this mode of acquiring around will have to be sharply curtailed -not by the big government so dreaded by conservatives and libertarians (with some justification), but by the reality of diminishing supplies of oil and quickly expanding populations.
International warming or, a lot more accurately, climate modify, appears to be a reality, no matter if or not it is mainly caused by humans (this is nonetheless very debatable, even even though it's heresy to say this in a number of circles). Here's yet another region exactly where a paradigm shift in perception is vital. Rather than denying the reality of climate modify (i.e. conservatives) or pretending it is nevertheless possible to reverse it (i.e. liberals, a lot of environmentalists), why not commence accepting it and looking for techniques to decrease the harm and, in some situations, truly benefit from it?
I am no scientist, but prevalent sense dictates that an general improve in the typical temperature cannot be all poor. And those aspects of climate modify that clearly do have dangerous effects -e.g. unstable weather patterns, improved hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on.- must be dealt with, and resources ought to be allocated to prepare for such events.
The realms of culture and dogma are closely related, and it is clear that the ideologies, categories and belief systems of prior centuries are not going to be able to guide us substantially additional into this millennium. Defining oneself based on race, religion or nation of origin is becoming increasingly untenable in a planet exactly where conversations -as well as business transactions- can be conducted immediately by way of intelligent phone, Skype or Twitter messages.
The emerging global culture is hard to define, but it will have to be some kind of smorgasbord -an even larger melting pot than the one America was supposed to embody. As people today travel and emigrate even more and even more (whether or not legally or illegally), intermarry with men and women of other races and religions, and individuals with wildly different and sometimes opposing beliefs are forced to live in close proximity to 1 another, the thought of a single, dominant ideology or dogma becomes impossible.
It is now time to stop trying to prop up aspects of the old paradigm that can't be revived -and that no longer serve us anyway. It's time to question a great number of of the sacred cows of present day society, which includes the corporation, education as an institution, the modern day medical model, the nation state, and even that most sacred of present day cows, revenue. Not that these institutions will be abolished in some kind of Marxist-style revolution. They are, rather, in the process of either dying a all-natural death or morphing into new and alot more suitable (for this time) forms.
There was a time in the not so distant past when none of these issues existed in something resembling their present form. Most likely, whether we like it or not, none of them will exist in their present forms in the not pretty distant future. Rather than seeing this as one thing to dread, portending the end of the world, why not see it as the finish of an outdated paradigm?
