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How to Shift a Paradigm

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wembley can change in 28 days

13:22 / 15.10.03

What it says in the descriptor box.

As an easy example, I can mention the time in high school when a good friend came out of the closet and from then on, I have not made jokes about nor held disparaging opinions about homosexuality, but I did before he announced his homosexuality. When was the last time the way you saw the world changed? What prompted it - a person, a book, technology, an experience? Do you believe paradigm shifts can (not should, but can) be induced? (Will reading Fast Food Nation actually make you stop eating at McDonald's?) How often do these shifts occur in your life?

13:57 / 15.10.03

Reading some Chuck Palahniuk (Choke) I came across a phrase (Intangibles are the only frontier left) that crystallised loads of half formed ideas I had into a 'Whoa!' moment. That's what it feels like I think, and the best way to achieve it is to make your paradigm appealing. A good way to do it is present it in an entertaining form, in a book or a song or suchlike, so that people are less critical and more accepting of it. But there's a billion ways to shift a paradigm, from propoganda to violence to drug use to love.

18:08 / 15.10.03

Well I think the most obvious one for most people who've experienced it is having a child. It's the most monumental earth-shifting thing that can ever happen to a human-being (other than death, which one could argue we are not aware of) and the minute the child is born your entire perception of life changes, and you become completely aware that you can never visit the previous world you inhabited ever again.

That feeling runs alongside the fear of the unknown which also comes almost instantaneously. But for me the most interesting shift was the sudden knowledge that I would always have someone else to consider in everything I did. Up until that point you are engrossed in your own life, your own desires, your own personal selfishness. But then suddenly along comes someone who can make you give up your last morsel of food even if you were starving, just by looking at you.

06:33 / 17.10.03

Am having a bit of a lifechanging time at the moment have a knee injury, got dumped by my boyfriend two weeks ago and lost my job yesterday.

Talk about development through crisis

07:15 / 17.10.03

I thought a paradigm was defined as something on a societal level, not personal?

One person can share a paradigm with the rest of society, and shift between different paradigms during their lifetime. But a change in opinion is a change in opinion. A paradigm shift occurs on a larger level.

So: When was the last time you changed your opinion on a relevant matter to a large degree? How did this happen? (How) Can this be induced in others?

Sorry if I seem pedantic or am misinformed.

09:02 / 17.10.03

According to chaos theory a paradigm is shifted every nanosecond. You're gonna have to be a bit more specific here.

wembley can change in 28 days

10:00 / 17.10.03

BioDynamo, your pedantism is highly welcomed. True, a paradigm shift is something that would not seem to be relevant to the individual level. So let's go for opinion if you like. I believe this all comes out of my bad habit of seeing something weird and saying "oooh, my paradigm just shifted." I reserve the right to my personal paradigm (especially if I'm feeling solipsistic).

Rage: good point, but let's speak about the larger, more easily perceptible changes, lest we have nothing to talk about.

I'm more interested in the moments where you noticed that your set of assumptions and beliefs had changed. Perhaps it can happen slowly - you just do what you do, and then suddenly you're in a situation where you realize that what you used to do/make/say/think is now totally inappropriate, or at least very different. And in that moment you realize that you have changed. That's why I really like the olulabelle's example - and it probably is totally obvious to almost everyone who's had a child. Soul-searching doesn't really count - getting dumped isn't fun and it can change your life quite a bit, but tell us exactly how.

Dictionary time for those who need it:
Paradigm

1)One that serves as a pattern or model.
2)A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the paradigm of an irregular verb.
3)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.

18:45 / 17.10.03

hmmm,
am interested by

'the community that shares them'

what constitutes the community, surely the make up of the community defines the nature of the paradigm to a certain extent, and is the the definition of that in itself a paradigm?

Am being a little silly here I'll admit but it seemedworth considering

14:17 / 18.10.03

I find that paradigms are harder to shift when you have an emotional attatchment to something. Rational or not.

14:15 / 23.10.03

Most paradigm shifts recently have come from technology- the internal combustion engine, Nuclear weapons, the internet.. just a thought.

21:06 / 23.10.03

I think the death of a loved one also provides a paradigm shift, and you become part of the 'those who have experienced bereavement' community. Being bereaved colours everything you do, and (particularly in the case of the loss of a parent) your sense of self is permanently shifted.

But if we take the dictionary definition 3)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. and marry that with Quantum's suggestion of paradigm shifts as a result of technology, I second Quantum, and would state that surely the largest one of all is the Internet. As an entire world community our 'way of viewing reality' is forever changed because of it. The impossible has become reality - I can talk to people all over the world, through a microchip and a lot of wire. In having it, I have extended my network of acquaintances, my access to other cultures, my vision of the future, the suggestion of what is possible, by a millionfold.

Big shift, no?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

06:59 / 24.10.03

orignially on 42012/fnord posted here for the purposes of crosspollenation.

For the early part of the day I was a wild man journalist who follows a religion of truth later I started cycling through various incarnations of gnosticism as I was reading The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels and writing an article on The Matrix Trilogy and Gnosticism. I was spending a large amount of time as phil k dick's form of gnosticism as written in Valis or The Divine Invasion. When I was finished my writing for the day and my coffee I started to walk home whereupon I became a mix between Gnosticism and Spider Jeruselum sort of writer with truth being discovered by journalism and created by writing from divine inspiration. On my way home I decided to rent the movie, The Matrix Reloaded and for some time I flipped back and forth between the tunnel of that movie, the tunnel of a critically aware deconstructionist/filmstudent and a position that incorperated both where the art of discernment as shown metaphorically by the code view power of Neo and the act of acknowledging the influences on and deconstructing the movie was the secret to life. After the movie was done I went on the Pro-ana Suicide society web site and entered their tunnel perhaps too thouroghly. When I finished with that I went and had a shower and had a micro rebirth experience which I interpretted gnostically. Then when I was drying I decided to be Wolverine from the X Men. I set about programming him into my consciousness so that I can access him organically on Halloween. I thouroghly programmed him I was Logan I even looked like him. The Spell or Self-hypnosis broke when I failed to sprout foot long claws from my hands.

Then I came back here where I breifly accessed the reporter mode to give you this.

02:38 / 01.12.03

First off, hi everybody. First post here.

Second off, it seems we've strayed from the topic a bit. I got the impression that Wembley wanted the more personal revolutions in our life, the ones that change how we think. Maybe mindset would be a better word? Opinion seems a little too fickle and paradigm is too broad. We've brought the Internet into play here as a paradigm shift (" As an entire world community our 'way of viewing reality' is forever changed because of it."), but it can also apply to the personal level ("I have extended my network of acquaintances, my access to other cultures, my vision of the future, the suggestion of what is possible, by a millionfold."), which seems to be more what the goal of this was in the first place. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

I'm currently in the middle of one of those shifts of mindset. I've been reading some Hermann Hesse lately, and I just finished Siddhartha. It's completely changed how I interact with the world. Not so much externally (like with other people and such), but how I handle my thoughts and things. However New-Age-ish and trite it sounds, I'm more "in tune" with my thoughts. I've gotten to where I can flesh them out a bit more and I don't have to squeeze out a solid idea every time a thought enters my head. I'm learning to just be ("let the river speak to me") instead of actively searching for my Philosophy Du Jour.

Also, unrelated to any particular influence, I find that my thoughts come out more streamlined. I see the connections between things better, like picking up on a through-line in David Mamet's acting theory, John Cage's music theory, and what Taoist philosophy I have studied. Maybe I'm just maturing some intellectually, but its hella fun.

Now, the question of whether or not one can induce such a shift in someone else is a tough one, and seeing that I'm considering teaching as a profession, probably something worth considering. I don't know that induce is the right word though. Induce implies a bit of force. I think we can encourage people to reconsider their current mindsets through discussion, media suggestions (books, music, etc.), and the like (I mean, this is being posted on a message board...), but there has to be a willingness to expand on both ends.

09:06 / 01.12.03

I've been reading some Hermann Hesse lately, and I just finished Siddhartha.
Good example. I think some works are intended to provoke a reaction like that, to change the way you think (Finnegan's Wake, Origin of Species, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, The Invisibles..).
"the question of whether or not one can induce such a shift in someone else is a tough one"
Not really, Hesse did it to you (and many others) so it can be done, but I agree it has to come from both sides, you have to be ready to shift and the means has to be there. You're unlikely to have an epiphany reading 'Hello' magazine (or at least less likely than when reading Italo Calvino say).

16:08 / 01.12.03

"...but I agree it has to come from both sides, you have to be ready to shift and the means has to be there."

The more and more I think about it, the more and more I see a plausible case for synchronicity.

16:34 / 03.12.03

Other than the large, slower changes in my views of the world and reality and whatnot that came about thanks to the Invisibles, Hesse, and others, another example springs to mind, similar to wembley's. Up until my mid-teens I made the usual inappropriate holocaust jokes and other nastiness, until I read Maus. Which for the first time made me realise the horrors of the holocaust and the camps and all the rest. It really was a split-second *boom* of a mental event/shift.

21:54 / 10.12.03

I have a question:

Is it okay to shift someone else's (as in someone close and known to you) paradigm forcibly? Maybe this is a bit of a magick question, because I have met a fair number of magicky people that think it is their responsibility to go about pushing people's boundries in the name of magick and evolution. Is this healthy? What if that person is not ready?, or the methods employed to make the shift are shifty themselves?

wembley can change in 28 days

11:49 / 11.12.03

moofman and Baz - ta, this is more what I was after. One interesting thought that comes out of this is how do you create a (for example) novel that will change people? And I dig May Tricks' question of whether or not it's healthy/okay to change them. My answer is - of course, so long as you are in the right.

Just kidding. I might think that if someone is not ready to shift, they won't (for instance, conversion to vegetarianism). Unless more aggressive methods are used, which I suppose could be as severe as brainwashing. When a person changes, does it always have a voluntary or involuntary element behind it? Does everyone have the capacity to become a ethnic-cleansing Nazi; or is there a bit of the all-loving capacity in everyone as well?

Although I'm still interested in the small, personal anecdotes for this topic.

17:12 / 11.12.03

Had quite a decent-sized one last year reading that essay Fear of a Vegan Planet in the Disinformation book, Everything you know is wrong (I love these book titles – maybe the next one will be called It’s all bollocks- give it up or something). Haven’t stuck to the veganism 100% mind you but having a crack at it.

I seem to remember having my mind blown by a few things…
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – yes! When I was 17 I read this and it became almost the central structure around which I thought about things for ages.

I’ve kind of gone through one recently, I think, in relation to habits like drugs, booze and fags– quite consciously not doing these things for a bit and have felt my identity and thought-complexes surrounding these things change in a way I would never have predicted. Feeling quite good about being clear-headed and alert, but still quite up for going out clubbing and stuff – this has been a bit of a barrier for me. Not that I want to give up these things totally, just do them a bit more consciously, rather than through habit –familiar themes around here I guess. Anyway, sorry- possibly not strictly a paradigm shift

11:13 / 26.12.03

Paradigms are abstractions of processes. Processes are based on the tools they involve. To shift a paradigm, provide a new tool. If the tool is found useful, it will alter the process and therefore the paradigm.

This is straight out of McLuhan.

The problem then becomes: how do we determine whether a tool will be useful enough to be adopted?

There are many levels of paradigm, defined broadly enough to be useful in this thread. Is the shift of a society-wide paradigm qualitatively different from the shift of a personal opinion? From the shift from one ephemeral thought to another? From the slightest movement of the eye across the visual field? Perhaps the secret is in the encoding of a paradigm, so we recognize it as such, and the shift of the paradigm becomes a tool itself--and hence a new paradigm.

To answer the OP, good books do it for me. If it doesn't do it, it's not a good book (though it could be good to someone else). I can usually guarantee a little shift from reading a classic (like Wordsworth or Crowley or Bacon), but big shifts almost always come by surprise. For example, I found The Structure of Magic, volumes I and II in a dollar bin, and didn't even know what they were. They shifted my paradigm. My girlfriend, who rarely reads anything but science-fiction, lent me The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which I'd never heard of. It shifted my paradigm.

Occasionally I will find a human being who can shift my paradigm, and if we get along I'll call them a good friend. I have trouble calling people friends if they don't shift my paradigm, though I'll associate with them willingly if we get along on a shallower level. And occasionally someone will shift my paradigm and I'll never see them again.

"Let's go back to my place and I'll shift your paradigm."

00:28 / 29.12.03

Idea to add:
I recon that changing your physical location is one fairly effective way of shifting yr paradigm. Putting yourself into a totally different situation, (possibly entirely with people you haven't met before) the culture may be slightly (or loads) different. This is likely to force you to re-assess your values and what you thought you knew in some way. For example, if you stay in the same place with the same group of people (this might be friends, a town or larger), there may be a tendency for that group to form collective ideas about things and stagnate generally. Hence cultural diversity and interaction with different people can be effective in expanding your mind. This could be done in loads of ways such as (as mentioned above) the internet, and books. I would say mushrooms are also a good, but totally different way

... again in this case i guess the person in question needs to be receptive to having their perception shifted slightly. Though as Ken Kesey said, we need to go 'beyond acid'. This is where I do my impression of Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon:
>"what's your style?"
>"my style? you can call it 'the art of acid without acid'"
>"acid, without acid?... show me some of it"
ok it would be funny if you heard me say it, honestly.. [possibly -ed]

18:25 / 19.01.04

The first book to really condense my ideas into a manageable form that changed me noticibly would probably be 'A Thousand Plateaus' by Deleuze & Gutarri, an amazing book that affirmed all my ideas about reality. There are many other books and things that fascinated me and this book really tided them together. HP lovecraft, and The Invisibles really freaked me out because of their perception of identity in relation to the void, insanity, unconscious, and perception as a self referential characteristic utterly amazing.

All of the D&G stuff is ace.

r

23:56 / 26.01.04

Doors of Perception/Heaven +Hell @ age 14, Talbot's 'Holographic Universe' @ fifteen, Nietzche & Kierkegaard a few years later, most recently, Peter Russell's Global Brain and White Hole in Time.

In the past year, McKenna, Leary, Rushkoff, Norretranders and of course, Mr. Morrison

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:47 / 27.01.04

Wow. It's like a paradigm clearing house. Did you find that they were all shifting paradigms in about the same direction, onem1nd, or did the paradigm shifts occur either without affecting or without involving each other?

Thinking about the presentation of, in this case, books as "tools for shifting paradigms" makes me think about levers and leverage - the suggestion that a paradigm shift is the employment of a particular concept or artefact applied to something else. Is this how it's being seen? Is there such a thing as groundwork for a paradigm shift, or is it part of its nature that it has to be a single action?

09:17 / 29.01.04

I'm actually having one at the moment after getting hold my first issues of The Invisibles. (got 6 issues of series three but went backwards from the last as i didn't know of the backwards numbering.) The only way i can explain it is that it's due to the collection of influences/ideas in the comics and the quality of the story thats at present re-arranging my perception of the world around me. I've had them many times before, some big, some not so big but i'd say that it helps to be creative if your looking to change your own or bring about a shift in yourself.

Musicians/Magicians/Writers/Artists etc are the best at this because they know how to channel their energies into creating what type of paradigm shift they want and can influence it's outcome in this way. Instead of just seeing where the shift leads you, you can have some input yourself in the outcome.

I had one when seeing The Matrix for the first time, also when discovering Buddhism, Kabbalah, Taoism, Magic etc, and of course The Invisibles : Thankyou Universe for letting me in on this. Also one of my main ones is music. If i get a good album it can help to cause a shift and music easily does this as much as many other things, maybe due to the prime sphere of influence here being Netzach in one of it's purest forms. I think it all depends on what you've recently been exposed to and how these experiences correspond to each other that determines how big the shift is.

I sometimes write music, draw, attempt fiction (sometimes succeed with little bits here and there, i'm trying to arrange my better attempts into sometype of story but it's feeling like a jigsaw at the moment so i'm looking forward to seeing the outcome.) so that's where i've got firsthand experience of being able to shift your own, but am the first to admit i'm no expert. Maybe the danger is being to methodical and the best thing to do is be in charge of gathering and soaking in the influences and then let the universe do the rest of the work at whatever time you or the universe appoints. (obviously some shifts arrive without our having any say in the matter, sometimes a nightmare, sometimes perfect.)

09:05 / 16.02.04

Has anybody heard the story of the hundredth monkey? Google "hundredth monkey" for validation. Regardless, it's a cool story.

Apparently, there are many small islands of the larger main islands which comprise the nation, Japan. A specied of monkey lives on these islands, but the monkeys of each islands are due to distance geographically isolated from each other. Apparently, the main source of nourishment of these monkeys is a certain tuber that they pick from the earth. They eat these because that's all there is. They are not particularly fond of them, but mostly because they don't like the taste of dirt. One day, a female youth gets the bright idea of washing the tuber in a river. She loves it! She shows it to all her playmates, who in turn show it to their mothers and fathers and before long, all the monkeys on this islands are washing the tubers. The amazing thing is that once this idea hit a critical consciousness within the monkey population (i.e. when the 100th monkey learned to wash the tuber) the idea leapt islands. Suddenly, monkeys all over the place are washing tubers, when their is no way that the vast majority of them could have seen any of the original monkeys doing this ...

17:41 / 16.02.04

Cool but apparently bogus.

17:57 / 16.02.04

And interestingly (well, to me), the woman poo-pooing the 100th monkey syndrome has this to say in her paper:

Instead of an example of the spontaneous transmission of ideas, I think the story of the Japanese monkeys is a good example of the propagation of a paradigm shift, as in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The truly innovative points of view tend to come from those on the edge between youth and adulthood. The older generation continues to cling to the world view they grew up with. The new idea does not become universal until the older generation withdraws from power, and a younger generation matures within the new point of view.
Full article here.

18:22 / 16.02.04

The claim that monkeys on other islands had their consciousness raised to the high level of the potato-washing cult was a lie.

I got this from that link two posts up because i was thinking that it's a bit rough to trash the guy's theory and say it was a lie. Ha, as if they have absolute proof of the opposite! I think that's pretty bad shit to say he made it up aswell.

After all, it could still be true.

Shit, that's a fucked up trashing of someone's theory!!!

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:30 / 16.02.04

Moderator hat: Jack, could you keep your posts engaged with the topic?

One might also look for the same behaviors in schoolyards across a given country, where children seem to develop the same games and rituals despite not having met each other or communicated (back in the olden days when we didn't have the Internet). Is it possible that these children were doing something hundredth monkeyesque, or that there was a sort of common well of possible interpretations of the available culture with the sort of brains kids raised in that environment had, or that they were passed vertically rather than horizontally (by parents rather than peers), or that communication was more effectively communicated somehow than we believed?

These are all possible responses - and arguably the mass shifting of culture becomes easier the more homogeneous and easily available the means of that translation are. The Matrix is a "revolutionary paradigm shifter" but it is also a unit shifter - tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people have an opportunity to experience essentially the same transformative experience, and react as they feel is appropriate...likewise perhaps the dizzying changes in the styles of bodies in the last century...

22:39 / 16.02.04

I did, Haus, it was from the link that meme buggerer put in his/her post.

The link that says 'cool but apparently bogus.' The person was trying to trash the theory about monkey paradigm shifts in the link.

07:52 / 17.02.04

Jack: the papers referred to at the bottom of that Skeptic’s dictionary excerpt are a bit less aggressive and dogmatic

Yeah, there’s quite a few phenomena that appear 100th monkeyesque: the way different inventions or scientific discoveries often unfold in different parts of the world with different people at more or less the same time. But, as Haus suggests, it could be explainable by the idea of minds working in a similar context drawing similar conclusions or whatever. Anyway – a search for “morphic fields” would come up with lots of other stuff on this (I’m sure there’s been discussions about this here in the dim and distant past)
* gazes into the fire and strokes old shep *

16:01 / 17.02.04

Ok cheers meme, i just get wound up when people trash other peoples theories without any evidence, especially when the theory doesn't sound too bad.

Anyway, back to topic. Sorry Haus, and can you reply to my private message please?

15:52 / 20.02.04

I like the introduction of the schoolyard into this. I can remember as a child hearing, telling or even making up a joke in one circle of friends and then in another circle of friends being retold the same joke. Was it possible that this joke had made it cross town in a matter of days? On the internet, we have the ability to watch meme's unfold quickly and in an easily discretized (and presumably more scientific) manner. But does this mean that memes can only unfold along established, "concrete" lines of communication? Memes obviously existed prior to the internet.

00:47 / 22.02.04

93

They certainly did... Wilson talks about stuff like this in Cosmic Trigger. Quantum Theorists say that information can be stored on an atomic level and transmitted across any distance at above the speed of light. This might be a clue to hints about a collective subconscious seen many times (as in the monkey story and one schoolyards, and in the fact that some eskimo shamans dreamed about lizards without ever seeing one) and suggested by f.i. Carl Jung, and indeed a clue to why magick works in general. ( "The Science of an advanced civilisation will seem as magic to any inferior civilization"... But that's getting of original topic a bit.) But collective subconscious-theorys are interesting in the beliefs/values-change discussion as well, don't you think?

93 93/93

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