The New Paradigm

The phrase 'new paradigm' is usually associated with commercial activity, as merchants and entrepreneurs are constantly on the look-out for better ways of doing business. However, the notion has its roots in Science, for which the term 'paradigm shift' was coined by Thomas Kuhn to describe significant, irreversible changes in scientific theories, e. g. the replacement of Ptolemaic Astronomy by Copernican. But the idea can be even more generalized, and can account for one of the fundamental cultural conflicts of the past two centuries. This struggle is between the old paradigm, which might be called 'Humpty Dumpty', and the new, 'Evolvement'. The former conceives of the fundamental cosmological process to be one of a shattering, followed by the effort to put the pieces back together. This paradigm is the main pattern shaping most mythologies, both Occidental and Oriental. It is the structure of any development from an original position of unity and perfection into multiplicity and imperfection, e. g. 'the Fall', 'the Breaking of the Vessels', 'the Big Bang', 'illusory individuation', etc., to recovery and reconstruction, e. g. 'Salvation', 'Dialectics', 'thinking Nothingness', etc. In contrast, 'Evolvement' is sheer ascent from less to more complex, with no prior circumstance conditioning it, and, hence, no upper limit presupposed. The most familiar manifestation of this Paradigm Struggle is, of course, 'Religion vs. Evolution', but that debate is only a more selective, superficial version of what underlies, e. g. usually focusing on the creation of the human race. For, even where common ground is suggested, e. g. 'evolution is the motor of God's creativity', it does not e. g. begin to reckon with the potential Evolutionary emergence of creatures more highly developed than what Religion holds is the 'crown of creation.' But the more subtle manifestations of the Struggle are occuring at the microcosmic level, e. g. between theories of Human Nature as the potential to achieve wholeness, and those which are based on the premise that the fundamental human drive is constant growth. In other words, this Paradigm Struggle has only just begun, because the implications of the New Paradigm are only starting to be understood.