New Paradigms, Hebrew, God, a sermon - long (with cuffs, please)

[Chris Kloth]

Harrison Owen wrote:

>  
>  
> And reading Wilber and Kuhn wouldn't hurt. Both pretty bright guys. 
> Kuhn doubtless wrote other stuff, but the seminal work is/was "The 
> Structures of Scientific Revolution" -- I think it was published by 
> Princeton, or maybe it was Chicago (University Press). Wilber has damn 
> near buried the world in paper. All of it is good, but some is better 
> than the rest. A good introduction might be something like, "A Brief 
> History of Everything."  He is a wonderful writer, great storyteller, 
> totally outrageous, and a massive intellect. Other than that he is 
> pretty run of the mill. And if you are looking for other good stuff to 
> read, you might check out the section on www.openspaceworld.com 
> <http://www.openspaceworld.com> called "Literature."




"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" [by Thomas S. Kuhn, University 
of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970] had a huge impact on me when I was in 
school in the early 70s.  It is no surprise that Harrison has done a 
fine job of capturing key points from it.  I agree with Harrison that, 
in Kuhn's role as a philosopher of science and historian at a particular 
moment in time, he was more concerned with addressing the barriers to 
breakthroughs, not what would come next.


That said, I would like to elaborate on one aspect of Kuhn's work with a 
slightly different em-PHA-sis. 



In doing so I also want to call your attention to Kuhn's earlier work, 
"The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of 
Western Thought" [Vintage Book/Random House, 1957, 1959].   While there 
is some real astronomy in the book, it is fairly easy to read or skip in 
order to get to the social implications.  He also wrote a book called 
"The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and 
Change" [University of Chicago Press 1977].    This one has less "hard 
science" in it and you will recognize the how science was anticipating 
the social consequences in our lives today.



The reason I think it is important to add The Copernican Revolution is 
that Kuhn suggests that you know you are facing a paradigm shift when 
people defending the dominant belief system are prepared to enforce 
serious sanctions to maintain the status quo.  Both Copernicus and 
Galileo(reference in Scientific Revolutions) faced state enforced death 
to pursue their new views.  They were not "thinking outside of the 
box."   Their thinking, and that of others Kuhn refers to, were so far 
beyond conventional thinking that they were not even acknowledging a box 
that one might think outside of.  They were laying the conceptual 
foundations that were needed for Westerners to reframe what we might now 
call consciousness.  As much as we criticize the linear mechanical 
thinking that spiral dynamics and other models help us escape, their 
models seem to me to have been necessary



In my view, Joel Barker's superficial analysis of Kuhn has trivialized 
what is at stake for people at the time of a real paradigm shift.  In 
both these cases the dominant culture perceived threats to its belief in 
the existence and power of God, to the power that the church had because 
of its connection to god and the power of the rich who filled the 
churches with riches.  The official punishment for such heresy was death. 



I think this is more than just a matter of semantics or an academic 
debate.  Barker has trivialized the potential depth and force of 
resistance change agents (referring to people who see the new reality 
and keep the light on it - be they community members or consultants - 
AKA, outside agitators) must be alert to in systems at the time of a 
real paradigm shift.  Not only must change agents anticipate and plan 
for the resistance, in my view (which I think is consistent with the 
inclusive values of OST), the change agent must understand the fear 
resulting from the perception of what is at stake and embrace their 
resistance (not their beliefs) help create space to find what will be 
required to let go and move on.  If you think some people will resist an 
"outside of the box" solution to a problem when people have at least 
acknowledged there is problem to be solved, wait until you confront 
their fundamental view of reality...something that they did not invite 
anyone to do!   In situations like this I believe OST facilitators need 
to be able to create and hold space in a crucible of considerable 
strength, and hoping people may think outside the box ain't gonna get it.



In the more modern examples provided by Kuhn the proponents did not face 
state enforced death, but they faced potential professional death 
through marginalization, loss of livelihood and other community 
sanctions.   As many of you know very well, there are times in civil 
society around the world today where people may face death for 
challenging the fundamenatal order of society.   My experience is that 
the people who propose "thinking outside the box" in such situations are 
people who have very little insight into what is at stake and are 
probably not going to have to hang around during the implimentation of 
or living of the change.



That does not mean I think people should not engage in the risky work of 
paradigm shifts.  On some level, having discovered the new reality there 
is no going back.   Just know that if it is really a paradigm shift then 
there will be a lot at stake for the people promoting change and those 
resisting it.   I believe OST can and has helped create a container for 
working on such change.  It is why I honor the process and do not take 
my role in it lightly.



A much newer book I am recommending to everyone doing our kind of work 
is "Navigating the Badlands" by a futurist named Mary O'Hare-Devereux.  
While she does not use the term paradigm, she was noticing that, in 
recent years, her tools were not getting her the kinds of results she 
anticipated.  She goes back thousands of years to compare times when the 
world seemed to be evolving or developing or stagnating (behaving in 
predictable ways) and times of transformation...when the whole world 
seemed to get turned upside down (for many decades or more) before it 
returned to some degree of predictability.  For example, the use of 
alphabets changed the world....not one alphabet, or the first 
alphabet...the worldwide use of alphabets, all kinds of alphabets, 
changed everything.



Anyway, she discovered there was a different set of patterns within the 
chaos...order emerges from chaos.  She then applies this to what she 
believes is a change cycle we have all been in for about a decade and 
will continue in for about a decade.  She also provides insights into 
where to look for both the opportunities and resistance.



Finally, an aside.   The term paradigm existed before Kuhn and did refer 
to patterns - especially in language.  It is interesting to me that one 
of the examples of how the term was applied prior to Kuhn was the 
reading of Hebrew.   When Hebrew is printed, like in the Torah, the 
letters that represent what we would call vowels in English are not 
included.  As a result, there are many patterns of Hebrew consonants 
that, without vowels, look identical yet have very different meanings 
and pronunciations.  However, if you are raised in Jewish culture you 
"know" the difference.  You don't notice anything missing and probably 
would not know what someone outside the culture, trained in text book or 
dictionary Hebrew, was confused about. 




I believe that much about true paradigms, like most of what we 
experience as culture, operates on this sub-conscious level...invisible 
to those who are a part of it.  It's not in our head or our heart...it's 
in our blood and DNA.  Thus, some levels of resistance are not conscious 
push back as much as they are confusion, dissonance and fear.  Even some 
of the conscious, intentional resistance may be in reaction to the 
conscious awareness of beliefs rooted in unexamined deeper beliefs 
learned at pre-verbal stages of life...when we were forming our senses 
of reality, not "knowledge" of reality.



I have rambled on far too long...besides, I feel the urge to watch South 
Pacific..."you've got to be carefully taught!"  ;-)



Chris Kloth

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