Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m convinced that, in this new year, we’ll see a very great deal go forward in the reconstruction of our world. We’ll need to start small and depend on our wn resources for a while yet. But at some point abundance will begin to flow.
As we approach the building of Nova Earth, we’ll be confronted and perhaps limited by our own views of the situation. I’d like to give an example of that from a historical way we have of approaching the subject of change and see how we can avoid it.
Thomas Kuhn was a historian of science who, after he migrated from science to history, fought a war within himself. He tried unsuccessfully to understand how science progressed through time.
The prevailing theory of the day was that scientific knowledge grew. Later developments added to and amplified earlier developments. The latter-day scientist stood on the shoulders of giants. This was the “accretion” view of the history of science and it was the prevailing view of Kuhn’s day.
Fanned by that belief and implicit in it was the further belief that the present day was the peak of excellence and that all other periods led up to it. It held that ours was the best of all possible worlds and was the heir to and realization of all that had gone before. This view has been called temporocentrism.
Something about these views did not sit well with Kuhn. And in tending to his own discomfort, he had a breakthrough in conceiving change generally.
And that very breakthrough for him brought with it the explanation of how science progressed as well. So he not only solved a difficulty for himself, but came upon the process of scientific progress in general at the same time. Chalk one up for Kuhn and the history of science.
Paradigmatic Breakthrough
The notion Kuhn arrived at was the concept of “paradigms.” I’m not sure if he used the term “paradigmatic breakthrough,” or if I dreamed he did. But the term describes the process he was concerned with and the process he went through.
Put in my own words, he saw that, when cognitive dissonance built up to an unbearable level, the individual dropped the distinctions that he (or she) could not abide, creating room for a moment of real re-appraisal, original thought, inspiration, intuition, etc. This is the moment of breakthrough.
In the space thus created, if all other conditions were right, the individual had a “Eureka!” moment and a new paradigm was born.
The creation of the new paradigm clarified matters for some but for many others it created chaos.
All those whose work was made antiquated by Kuhn’s view – all those who wrote temporocentrically, all those who saw science as progressing by accretion – found that their jobs were in jeopardy, their careers, in question. Kuhn had just introduced a note of chaos into their lives.
And so it is with each paradigm change. Some have been brutal, like the industrial revolution and the age of automation. They produce comfort for some but severe dislocation and impoverishment for others. Those others, however, don’t write our history. Their side of the question tends to go unheard.
The new paradigm of paradigms contains within it the seeds of its own need to be developed further if it’s to be truly useful to an ascended society.
Paradigmatic Breakthrough Creates Winners and Losers
I think Kuhn was right. Social change – scientific or otherwise – proceeds by accretion, to be sure, but the truly significant leaps are made by paradigmatic breakthrough.
But we can no longer simply account for change through a new theory of paradigmatic breakthrough and think we’re done with the matter.
Paradigmatic breakthrough itself creates winners and losers.
It was an answer to a problem for Kuhn; for those impacted by it, it was itself a problem. This was a win/lose, zero-sum answer to the question of how does change proceed?
Let’s look at the example of automation, a paradigmatic breakthrough of the 20th Century.
Magazines in the Fifties envisioned automation as freeing the housewife from vacuuming and the husband from mowing the lawn and allowing them both to vacation in Bermuda. But that isn’t how it worked out.
The paradigm change that automation represented resulted in the creation of a buyer’s market for labor, the loss of jobs and careers, the ending of benefits plans, the loss of pensions, the cutting of the social-safety net, the rise of JIT (Just-in-Time production) and outsourcing.
How many people lost their jobs because of automation? Their careers? How many suffered acute impoverishment because of it?
I believe that labor was broken as an organized force as a result of automation. We as a society didn’t see that the value realized by automation was fairly distributed among the population. It was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Many other paradigmatic breakthroughs like automation have consigned generations of professionals, workers, farmers, and others to obsolescence, causing severe pain.
It’s now time to see to some of the losers in the forward movement of science.
In the future, that which is the solution to one problem should not be allowed to create a problem for others unless the newly-created problem is mitigated.
A universal basic income is an example of a program designed to mitigate the impact of such things as technological innovation.
We Have to Create Change Responsibly in the Future
We need to rethink our refusal as a society to intervene in the process of social change. We now need responsible social development if we’re to build a world that works for everyone.
Yes, we are agents and architects of change. But part of playing that part is being accountable for the process we set in motion if we as a society are to feel comfortable with the rapid change we’ll be creating.
We as a society need to take care of all our members now. (1) That’s how the higher dimensions operate. We may not have the benefit of their vibrations but we can imitate their way of being as best we can.
We’ll be confronted with constantly-changing technology, healing techniques, spirituality, education, history. Each problem that confronts us, we must resolve, one problem at a time. And we’ll have to do it without creating harm or residue.
This time we mustn’t make the mistakes of the past. We must see to the losers, the victims, the obsolesced among the population if we’re to have social change without festering wounds, fears, and, finally, revolt.
Footnotes
(1) Yes, there will be those who take advantage of a mitigation program for non-genuine reasons.
Therefore count in a percentage for the abuse of the program. Those funds will be lost and we may as well adjust to that eventuality at the outset. The lost funds need to be seen as part of the cost of caring for the others who don’t abuse the system.