Reality

What is real?  Who are we?  Why are we here?  These are all questions we have asked ourselves.  No one source has all of the answers to these questions.  No one point of view can sum up the whole truth, for it would only be the truth from that view-point.  All philosophies are but glimpses of a greater truth. 

Within these pages as within others, there are many view points presented.  Some of the statements within, I completely agree with and others I do not.  It is for you to decide which statements and philosophies are true to you.  These pages are an open platform for logical and intuitive debate. 

The thoughts and paradigms presented here are mine and others, opinions and ideas.    They are not presented to convince you of a particular set truth or reality.  They are only here to present you with the opportunity to THINK.
 

The Paradigm War

What is a Paradigm?  Dr. Thomas Kuhn stated that paradigms are essentially scientific theories or ways of looking at the world that fulfill two requirements: they must be "sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity," and they must be "sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve".  In the early 1960's, Thomas Kuhn, wrote a ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , in which he showed that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation - a paradigm - which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm established. In other words, our society tends to obsess upon and fully embrace an answer that can be easily proven, as the whole uncontested truth.  And they will not accept that they might not know the WHOLE truth, or even the CORRECT truth, even after they are proven wrong time after time.

The Mindset

We see today, an insidious state of mind centering on those who control and those who are controlled, pervading our cultural foundations and social icons.  This mindset is created and imposed by those who would control, out of a fear of anarchy and revolt.  If someone, some authority, or a power over us, doesn't control us, society will fall into chaos, or so we're led to believe.

Who controls those who would control you?  What exactly is the life they would have you live?  Is their order one that provides happiness and freedom? Or does it encourage blind obedience; promote addictions, inner stagnation, injustices, economic exploitation, cynicism, chronic stress, and unhappiness?

In other words, is our culture built on a paradigm that is working for us as well as we need it to?  Is our consensus philosophy shaping our institutions to serve us, or are we becoming servants to systems that warp our minds, consume our energies, and turn us into people we never wanted to be?  If you find yourself asking these questions, then it is time to do something about it.  It is time to redesign our social and cultural foundation.   It's time to reclaim our birthrights.

The Problem

Philosophy aids us with this task by accurately naming what's wrong.  If it were true that we're just bad people, if the human race is innately selfish, and power-obsessed, if reality mandates that we are a violent species, then we do not have the ability to change.  If this were true, it's amazing that we as a species have lasted this long.

Certainly we have the potential to be selfish, destructive, and cruel, but philosophy shows that we have other potentials too.  Which potentials develop within us depends on our philosophy, the paradigm we use to create our families, our churches, governments, businesses, culture, and ourselves.
It seems that what is causing all of the trouble is that mindset or paradigm.  We can't necessarily change reality, or human nature, but we can change our paradigm.

Our families, school systems, economic and political systems, our religions and philosophies aren't a given.  They were created.
Our entire culture isn't a given. It was all created, either by ourselves or someone else.  If we take it as a given, we stand before our world passively, allowing others to create our reality.  If, on the other hand, we see the culture as our creation, then we accept our role as cultural creators.

Enemies of Ascension

We can not allow dominator mentalities, control addicts, bullies, or oppressors to create our culture. We must create it. We must see, for example, that justice isn't something that we wait for or expect authorities to deliver. We create justice. Peace isn't what happens when the powerful take a break from war. We create peace.  It's in your power to demand it. Beauty isn't what we buy from celebrated artists or designers. We create beauty by being.

The government institutions during the twentieth century believed that they were in charge of the world and announced their authority through the media like some medieval lord proclaiming his power to the peasants, and demanding conformity, obedience, and gratitude from us for all their efforts. The twenty-first century will see the end of this contemporary feudalism. We are finally beginning to remember that we are responsible for our own actions, decisions, and fate.  That no government, no church, no institution can make these choices for us.  In everything we do as caring and respectful beings, we create more justice, peace, wisdom, beauty, and love than any power structure ever could.

On these foundations, we can build our own families, school systems, economic and political systems, religions and philosophies. We can create something that works for and to the benefit of all.  It's in our power to create what we will if we will just do it.

The Change

What occurs when a paradigm and its most ardent supporters are addicted to the paradigm to the point where they lose the realization that they are even in a paradigm at all? Those who would control us, have equated the survival of the current paradigm with their own personal survival, and will manipulate and control a society in order to prevent any social or cultural advancement out of the existing paradigm. They ignore or suppress public knowledge of anomalies, equating perception of anomalies to "personal abnormality" in order to intimidate populations to remain within the status quo control paradigm. Addiction to a paradigm results in either paradigm extinction or extinction of those who maintain the paradigm.

When anomalies or inconsistencies arise within a given paradigm and present problems that we are unable to solve within a given paradigm, our view of reality must change, as must the way we perceive, think, and value the world. We must take on new assumptions and expectations that will transform our theories, traditions, rules, and standards of practice. We must create a new paradigm in which we are able to solve the unsolvable problems of the old paradigm.

It is human nature to evolve its scientific and social paradigm.  And anyone who thinks that the world is fine the way it is, or that we have reached some sort of pinnacle in the evolution of civilization is just a bystander or a sheep.  Haven't we stood by and watched life long enough.  Or are you content with living your life based on someone else's idea of the way things are and should be?  Do you just accept all of the regurgitated information you were force-fed in college as the ultimate truth or the word of God?  Or are you willing to be one of the few who will choose to shape their own reality, and create something of lasting value for yourself and others?

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