Reality of the Paradigm Conspiracy Page 2

Discussion vs. Dialogue

David Bohm, the physicist, whose ideas on dialogue follow the Socratic tradition, believed that dialogue is an art that's distinct from ordinary discussion. Discussion works like ping-pong - opinions are tossed back and forth to see whose views will win out. It's a competitive game of scoring points: one-up, one-down, argument and rebuttal. But, discussion has its limits. In discussion, our options are restricted to the starting point positions of each side. Discussion is not designed to increase options, only to narrow options. Discussion operates on a win-lose model. Dialogue, in contrast, has a different dynamic. It's purpose is not to establish a "victor" or to prove a question, but to "love the truth" and pursue it. We let truth be what it is, whether it happens to fit our paradigm agendas or not. We let out pursuit of the truth spill over our current thought boundaries, drawing us into areas we have not considered before. How does a dialogue response do this? David Bohm mapped out three criteria - three rules of dialogue. These rules cannot be imposed from without or faked. If inwardly we're stuck in a one-up/one-down mode (a control paradigm response), we can try and create a dialogue but it won't happen. The exercise lapses into ping-pong. Real dialogue grows with soul connectedness. In paradigm terms, a dialogue response grows from soul connectedness assumptions and strategies. We simply love the truth and want to explore it in the same spirit with others. Bohm said, "the purpose of dialogue is to go beyond any one individual's understanding. We are not trying to win in a dialogue. We all win if we are doing it right." Bohm's three criteria, listed below, will facilitate a dialogue response:

Suspending Our Paradigms

First, since truth is greater than our concepts about it, loving the truth means loving truth more than any one perspective. Even the best paradigm falls short of reality, which is infinite and surpasses our most advanced ideas. Both parties cannot respond in dialogue and be dogmatic about their respective paradigms. In dialogue, we stay open to exploring our ideas and perceptions from the ground up. Because reality is infinite, there is always room for evolution. The first criterion for dialogue, then, is that participants must "suspend their assumptions". This takes work, because most paradigm assumptions lie in the shadows where we don't notice them. Dialogue begins as we put our models on the table for consideration. A dialogue response doesn't trash what we've assumed so far. It simply keeps our options open, so we can discover the reality lying beyond them. Huxley once said, "Sit down before fact like a child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." Honoring Each Other As Equals - Whereas the first criteria opens the window, the second lets the breeze blow through. The second of Bohm's criteria tackles the control paradigm's response directly, since the most common (and most internalized) barrier to true dialogue is the one-up/one-down model of interaction. We can't have an open dialogue with people who have power over us or whom we perceive as superiors. Bohm observed that "Hierarchy is antithetical to dialogue". Those in dialogue must treat each other as equal partners in the pursuit of truth, working as a team. Responding as colleagues, we support each other and create a space that's safe for exploring the truth - where loving the truth is allowed. During the Challenger disasters in 1986, it was discovered that one of the factors involved was the unwillingness of upper management to listen to the concerns of the engineers who felt that the program was being rushed and insufficient testing time was allowed. Those in charge didn't want to listen to feedback that didn't fit their agenda and used their superior status to block it. Naturally, the process of evolving awareness raises differences. Responding to each other as equal partners does not mean we all must think alike. Differences enrich the process. Instead of using differences to divide us, dialogue uses them to expand the possibilities we're able to consider. According to Bohm, "In dialogue, a group accesses a larger pool of common meaning which cannot be accessed individually. Individuals gain insights that could not be achieved individually. Defending one paradigm or another isn't the focus in dialogue. Broadening our awareness is the focus. The jockeying that goes on in hierarchies through win-lose discussion becomes irrelevant. A Genuine Spirit of Inquiry - Freeing ourselves from internalized ranking is easier said than done. That is why dialogue needs a third criterion. We need to protect the dialogue atmosphere from our own histories of being shamed. One way to do this is through a facilitator who "holds the context" of dialogue and keeps the space safe for exploration and risk taking. Because dialogue requires that we reveal our deepest and most "unofficial" thoughts, it makes us vulnerable. Facilitators keep the factors of shaming, one-upsmanship and official-think at bay. They support the shift from discussion to dialogue by affirming differences and not letting participants become polarized in win-lose contests. With a genuine spirit of inquiry, we don't care who said what or which direction the dialogue takes. We are all on the same side in dialogue, pursuing a common quest for understanding.

One way of responding that supports a dialogue atmosphere balances advocacy and inquiry. Advocacy presents a position, while inquiry explores it. The more we each do both, the more our responses stay fluid, true to a dialogue context. When we advocate a paradigm perspective, for instance, we also open our thought processes to inquiry. We explain how we arrived at an assumption, strategy, response or goal, and why. We also keep the door open to rethinking our positions from the ground up. We reflect on our own paradigm and invite others to do the same. That way, we don't get stuck "defending one position". When others present a paradigm perspective, we not only inquire into their thought processes but also state our assumptions about what they are saying and acknowledge them as assumptions on our part. "What I'm hearing you say is..." Our assumptions may be preventing us from grasping what others truly mean. The real message often lies behind the words and can by the opposite of what's spoken. What's Normal or Possible for Consciousness? Awareness of paradigms and the possibilities that emerge with changing them carry enormous implications for how we understand consciousness. Are the limits we experience in perception, learning, and knowing absolute, or are they imposed by a paradigm-one that we can choose to have or not? Psychic and paranormal experiences suggest that the limits imposed by materialist philosophy are not absolute. Even one case of powers that defy physical limits proves what's possible, whether these possibilities are commonplace in the current paradigm or not. By challenging paradigms that put our mental powers in straitjackets, we free ourselves to tap powers we've barely begun to imagine. Examples of mental powers defying so-called laws of matter abound. In addition to the volumes of literature on the subject, we've encountered many cases that we find fascinating, and several come to mind: One young woman from Laos, a student of ours, endured several years of harrowing escapes to reach America with her family. She experienced this journey between the ages of 7 and 9. Along the way, she and her family spent many months in concentration camps for refugees, where women and children were abused by soldiers. During this period of constant fear and trauma, she developed the ability to leave her body at will to guard herself and her family, especially when she was asleep. Years later as a college student, she was able to report everything that was said or done in her room or anywhere in the building while she was sleeping. Hers is an interesting case of what is now widely known as out-of-body experiences. During the late seventies, a Swiss colleague of ours told of a little girl in Zurich who was having trouble in school because her vision did not stop with walls. She couldn't see the blackboard because she was seeing through it into the next room, where apparently things were more interesting. Her grades improved only when she was taught to make her vision stop with walls. The story was carried in the Zurich newspapers. Perhaps Mr. Swann or someone else reading this knows more about this case. Then of course there's research begun by Georgi Lozanov in Bulgaria and reported by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder in their books Superlearning and SuperMemory. According to learning studies going on all over the globe, our minds are capable of vastly more than we ever imagined. If we have human brains, we're geniuses, and the only reason we're not experiencing our minds' powers is that they've been shut down by stress, negative programming, trauma, or mind-numbing boredom. Clearly, there's more going on with consciousness and our human potential than the official paradigm acknowledges. Again, the fact that extraordinary powers occur at all proves the possibility of powers that may be latent in all of us.

Seeking Paradigms That Fit Us

Imagine, for instance, a paradigm that describes us as free beings, moving in time, space, and matter through the powers of consciousness, unconstrained by demands for money and unconcerned by the quest for power or control. Imagine further a paradigm that honors us for who we are, that treats human beings-as well as all beings-as treasures of the universe, and that therefore places a priority on nurturing and developing our potential. In the current world where humans are "ownable", exploitable, controllable commodities-useful only insofar as they can either command or generate capital-such models seem utter fantasy. According to spiritual teachings the world over, though, such models more closely fit what they call "True Human Beings." Hindu philosophy, for instance, takes our potential seriously enough to categorize liberation as the fourth basic desire of human beings, the one that naturally arises in us after we've grown weary of pursuing the desires for 1) pleasure, 2) success, and 3) duty. Liberation is the liberation to be who we are in the big picture, not to be narrowed by models that aren't worthy of us. It's the freedom to live from the inside out, to be guided by who we are in our essence, rather than to spend our lives juggling family, social, financial, religious, or other cultural expectations.

"Saving the Paradigm"

If we don't experience ourselves or each other as free and great beings, it's not because we lack this potential but rather because the paradigm/cookie gadgets our cultures pour us through aren't equal to our essence. We come out twisted, grasping, angry, and insatiable because we know we're more, yet the cultural paradigm has no room for us. The paradigm can't both acknowledge our innate worth and treat us as objects to be subjugated-objects that must be coerced into systems that violate our dignity and potential by their very structures. Born into the culture, what choice do we have but to be subjugated? Babies and children don't have options but to submit. So we adapt ourselves accordingly. We conform to social systems by adopting the roles that go with them, narrowing ourselves to fit the cultural agenda. We become the competitive, insecure, obedient, brain dead, soul-disconnected creature that our social systems require. If we didn't comply, there'd be no place for social systems to hook into us and control our behavior, which the paradigm says they must do in order to achieve social order. But instead of social order, the paradigm generates violence and suffering-images of which we see everyday on the news and feelings of which we experience as stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or even self-hate. These images and feelings say nothing about which alternative paradigms might better serve human beings or who we might be if we used less narrowing models. They simply give us feedback about our cultural paradigm. But paradigm oblivious, we don't interpret culture-wide pain as paradigm related. We don't trace personal and social suffering back to the cultural paradigm and so set the stage for changing it. Instead, we save the paradigm by believing that humans must be fatally flawed and we ourselves more than most. Accepting the cultural paradigm that excludes what's most valuable about us, we view ourselves in the mirror that social systems give us: a mirror of externals. Our paradigm options go unexplored.

Life in a Paradigm Controlled by External Reward Systems

In a paradigm of externals, externals call the shots. Instead of allowing us to be guided from the inside out (a formula for anarchy, the control paradigm claims), the paradigm controls our behavior through rewards and punishments. We come to think and act like Pavlov's dog, salivating over the next bonus, a bigger kennel to call home, a fancier collar to sport, or a top dog position. The paradigm isn't about developing our talents, abilities, or potential; it's about making us controllable by giving or withholding external rewards. To achieve this control, the paradigm grades each "thing" in a hierarchy of externals. The inner life means nothing compared to the outward characteristics indicated by our species, race, gender, age, status, group affiliation, and income. If dogs possessed the wealth of Bill Gates, for instance, they wouldn't suffer in medical experiments, just as people who have money don't work in sweatshops or sell their children into slavery. That's the problem with externals: they're fine until they become the means for enslavement, which unfortunately they do almost immediately. When a paradigm puts external values first, consciousness dimensions are dismissed out of hand. Small wonder that the potentials of our minds and hearts-and all the values that go with them, e.g., meaning, compassion, justice, or wisdom-go undeveloped. A control paradigm has neither use nor place for them. Closed Social External Control-Based Paradigms Don't Like Discussing This Naming paradigms and their power for good or ill isn't a new insight; it's as old as philosophy. It is, however, an overlooked insight in an age that can't seem to shake a materialistic, control-obsessed paradigm-and for good reason. Reflecting on paradigms is the stuff of change, and changing paradigms is the most fundamental and powerful change we can make. To a paradigm of control, that's not welcome. The sum total of our experience contingent on something as invisible and changeable as a philosophy? Change by paradigm shifts, which anyone can make? Powers of perception and creativity that defy rigid material boundaries? Humans as beings of immense powers and abilities? Once you let these cats out of the bag, there's no telling what mindsets and institutions might be made obsolete. Obsolete is precisely what established institutions of power and control don't want to be. They learned from the fate of carriage and buggy whip manufacturers when cars came along. Established interests now make sure that questioning the neanderthal paradigm of burning things for energy triggers "War-of-the-Worlds" panic about destabilizing the world economy. Even the call for improved public transit systems borders on subversive.

Stiff challenges face a paradigm shift on the simple level of out-there technology, frozen at a stage that Captain Picard sometimes finds among the more primitive human civilizations he encounters. What challenges might we face if we embark on a far deeper level of questioning-on redrawing the paradigms that sort out who we are and why we're here? Plenty. If the cultural paradigm's purpose is not to honor human potential but rather to make it an obedient servant to existing social structures, then nothing could be more threatening to the established order than a paradigm shift regarding our self-conceptions. We fit into society as it is now only as long as we don't remember that we're more and here for

more.

Examples of Control Paradigm

Lack of Interest in Developing Human Potential The agenda for traditional psychoanalytic therapy, for instance, isn't to develop human potential; it's to keep people functional in established social structures, however miserable their lives may be and however abusive or wrong-headed the social structures. "Well-adjusted" becomes a synonym for mental health. But if someone is well-adjusted to being an SS officer in Nazi concentration camps, is that person mentally healthy? In Fire In The Soul, psychoneuroimmunologist Joan Borysenko writes of this narrow aim of therapy: "Sigmund Freud...believed that when a person was cured of neurosis the best outcome that could be expected was return 'to an ordinary state of unhappiness.'" (New York: Warner, 1993, p. 54) Psychotherapy's official job is mopping up the mess that social systems make of our lives by convincing us that the mess is our fault, our failing, our screwiness. If we don't conform, adjust, fit in, and measure up, something must be wrong with us. And psychotherapy has its truth: we may well be frozen in grief or shock and not functioning at our best, but don't the social systems that shape us deserve equal scrutiny, equal critical analysis? Thankfully many therapists reject this paradigm and venture forth with their clients on the forbidden territory of meaning and human potential as well as of critiquing social structures, but it's no easy task persuading insurance companies to come along. Control institutions pay insurance companies to pay health professionals to keep people in their place, serving the established order.

The Agenda for School Systems in a Control Paradigm

Nor are school systems committed to developing the more that we are. Schools are an arm of social structures, whether religious, governmental, or economic. According to the paradigm-defined needs of those structures, tapping human potential doesn't create enough Dilberts to ensure the "efficient" running of corporate, governmental, religious, and educational hierarchies. In this century, business interests have dictated the structure of schools. Henry Ford quickly noticed that creative genius and intuitive knowing aren't useful on factory lines. So he pioneered the "modern" school system that inculcates values and skills appropriate for 20th century work life: being punctual, obeying orders, enduring hours, weeks, and years of boring, repetitive tasks, not talking while working, not resting, keeping to the schedule at all costs. Our minds become casualties of industrialization. Our souls end up casualties as well. Trusting our own judgment, thinking for ourselves, adhering to our values, and having confidence in our innate worth don't make us good foot soldiers for my-way-or-the-highway bosses. Only people with low self-esteem are sufficiently insecure to tolerate abusive work environments. Insofar as we believe we don't deserve better, we adjust, becoming the kind of person that's required to "do the job." Obligingly, school systems produce people with precisely the low self-esteem that's needed for worker "flexibility." Fears of being wrong, of not making the grade are fears confirmed for 90 percent of the population. That's the percentage who are required not to get A's by the bell curve system, guaranteeing that 90 percent of everyone coming out of school believe that they're incapable of excellence. Schools mirror back to students the mass message that "you're just not good enough, but if you do what you're told without question, you may get better and be rewarded." That's a handy message to have installed in the psyches of 90 percent of the population-handy for perpetuating corporate, religious, governmental, and professional tyrannies, that is. All this modern schooling goes against what we know about the human mind and how we learn-and have known for decades. Studies in learning show that we learn best when we're most relaxed, yet schools maximize stress through fear of failure. Studies show that children learn most easily through cooperative learning, yet schools impose a competitive model. Studies also indicate that students' beliefs about their own learning abilities affect their performance-if they believe they're good learners, they learn easily; if not, learning the simplest things becomes difficult-yet schools systematically undermine students' confidence. In these and many other ways, school systems perform virtual lobotomies on our psyches, producing graduates who've long since lost their joy in learning, who believe they must be right all the time and "know it all" or be condemned to outer darkness, and who experience post-traumatic stress symptoms at the thought of having to learn new things on the job.

On Cultural Non-Commitment to Human Potential

Alice Miller, a champion of the potential we all possess from birth, pulls no punches in her books-For Your Own Good in particular analyzes the social, cultural agenda of shutting down our potential. As she explains, the traditional rules of child-rearing passed down from generation to generation have nothing to do with developing our potential, either emotionally, intuitively, psychologically, or intellectually. Their one agenda is control: control the child as soon as possible by any means, whether it's by punishment, humiliation, intimidation, beatings, grading, whatever it takes to break the child's will and autonomy. The justification for this agenda is that children raised any other way won't fit into society when they grow up. According to this cultural paradigm-expressed in the rules of child-rearing-learning to forget who we are and to become what others want and expect us to be is the most important survival skill. Our potential as human beings is irrelevant, a side issue, compared to our ability to conform. Of course we're supposed to believe that social systems have our best interests at heart and that obeying them is indeed "for our own good." If we conform properly, our potential will develop accordingly. But is this so? As we've seen, schools and therapy-two systems that you'd think would be committed to developing human potential-have no such commitment. In what system or area of the culture might such a commitment exist? Governments are fully occupied with who has power over whom, who has the biggest budget, where money can be found, who wins which election or vote, etc. Developing the human potential of its citizenry is not a priority. If anything, it's not on the agenda at all. The insider's view that "the masses are asses" is music to ambitious politicians' ears, who then believe it's their manifest destiny to expand their personal power and become benevolent dictators. Dumb masses are easy to manipulate with slogans and half-truths. For their purposes, the less human potential the better. As much as we value spiritual teachings, we can't say that religious organizations have much commitment to developing human potential either, though granted there are exceptions. Adhering to fixed doctrines, building congregations, raising money, meddling in the personal affairs of members, running down sectarian competitors, and using fear and guilt to exact obedience and tithing keep them busy enough. Businesses and corporations certainly don't concern themselves with human potential, even though they sometimes pay lip service to it in the hopes of making employees more "productive." The bottom line is the bottom line, and if human potential comes up at all, it's considered a frill or luxury-"warm fuzzy stuff" that doesn't count in the "real world" of business except to mollify disgruntled workers or help them adjust to higher levels of stress. Scanning the culture, we frankly can't find any system that's consistently committed to exploring human potential. If anything, our social systems regard human potential as an impediment, an annoying feature of human beings that gums up the systems' otherwise efficient workings. If people would just learn their roles and stick to them, everything would work so much better. If we didn't know the paradigm behind these systems, we may find this lack of interest in human potential odd. Developing human potential seems crucial to keeping human civilizations vital and evolving, up to speed with the challenges that continually arise. Technology per se can't save us, since we're not using the alternative technology we already have to remedy social and environmental ills. What we lack is the wisdom and foresight, the honesty, the sense of meaning, justice, integrity, and the good to manage human affairs well. These aren't technology issues but paradigm ones. Wisdom and foresight are precisely the potentials that a paradigm geared to domination and control factors out of us.

Making Some Changes

But no paradigm, even one that's used to having the last word, is the last word. The human spirit, being what it is, doesn't take kindly to soul-lobotomies and develops all sorts of responses. One is to join the lobotomizing dominators: do it to others before any more can be done to you. Another is to adopt roles and play along, to accept one's lobotomized lot in life. Addictions make both responses easier. We can lay off 5,000 employees and numb the pain with a 15 million dollar bonus. Or we can take drugs to make it through the day in our Dilbertesque cubicles. Either way, numbing ourselves with addictions of process (money and power) or of substance (drugs and alcohol) makes us forget the pain of living in a control paradigm culture. By numbing us, addictions serve the established paradigm well: insofar as we forget pain, we don't confront its causes. Lobotomizing systems go unchallenged, as long as we find ways to cope with being lobotomized. That's why recovery from addictions begins with recognizing pain. Acknowledging what we feel in social systems is the first subversive step toward a cultural paradigm shift. A paradigm of control through externals unravels when we affirm the importance of what's going on within. When pain counts with us-when we refuse to ignore it, "to put up and shut up"-the days are numbered for the paradigm that's causing us pain.

New World Views Bring the Onset of New Worlds

From this springboard begins the journey of transformation by paradigm shift. It took us 360 pages to explore this process in The Paradigm Conspiracy, so that's a pitch both for whoever is reading this to get a copy and for us to close this electronic essay. We'll just say that when we're too tired to explain the book to someone, we call it our revenge on the control paradigm, both for us and on behalf of our readers. But when we're feeling more peppy, we say that the book has a happy ending, or at least holds the promise of one. Refusing to be trapped by dominating institutions on one hand and on the other claiming our essence, who we are in the big picture-what's called the "soul" until a better term comes along-we foment revolution of the most constructive, effective, and powerful sort. Each of us in our own ways participates in creating new worldviews, which in turn create new worlds within and without. We thank you for taking the time to read our thoughts and reflections on this subject, and should you read our book, we hope you enjoy it. We don't pretend to have the answers or to give the "correct" paradigm. Our best hope is that the book gets the philosophical, paradigm-shifting juices going. That's quite enough for us. The rest we leave to the human potential emerging in all of us.

Material Focus vs. Whole-System Focus

Focusing on Things and Materialism

FactorFocusing on Whole Systems Mechanistic model in which observer & observed are seen separate, unrelated and not connected in any way except by virtue of physical perception in closed system entropy universe.PhysicsTaking into account more than a decade of discoveries in quantum physics, and a model in which observer participates on a quantum consciousness level in creating reality as we experience it; takes into account discoveries in science which reveal that we live in an open system entropy universe which is expressed through a definitive “holo-movement” - (Bohm), unfolding—enfolding Control science based sychological system which perpetuates rigid outer roles, social dysfunctionality; who has the power in the hierarchy? Imposition of authoritarian concepts of emotional and mental health; Dictating the healing process.Understanding Mind and BehaviorAuthentic self in dynamic relations; “learning organizations” (Senge); Honoring each person’s inner living process (Schaef); Healing as exploring each person’s own process in the context of spiritual growth Inevitable conflict, Might makes Right; Carrot-Stick systems for control; Justice as reward & punishment; Laws serve those in power"Politics, Law and Justice"Partnerships in evolving systems; Soul-expression instead of brute force; Developing individual potential; "Justice" as each one doing what’s theirs to do; Laws serve the spectrum of human development on a temporary basis as they are replaced by self-responsibility, conscious focus and evolutionary, growth-oriented intent, individually and as a civilization. Authoritarian, domination-control institutions: “Leviathan” solutions; institutions solve problems; the numbers game; institutions exist to preserve their own existence.InstitutionsPhilosophies (maps) make institutions what they are for better or worse; the power of individuals to change institutions—to dance a new dance ; Institutions exist on a temporary basis to solve problems, not to serve solutions. Scarcity focus; economies are “out there,” bound by impersonal, iron laws; the game of “Monopoly” is the model for infinite business expansion, trashing the environment and the population in the process.EconomiesKnowledge & creativity; economies reflect us and the maps we use; we create our economies as evolving aspects of society which contribute toward the evolution of both society and the planet as a whole; allows expansion of the idea of "economy" into other levels. “superstition of materialism” (Chopra), reductionism, value-free, fact-only view of knowledge, etc.Reality ModelSpiritual/holographic models; integrated systems including ideas and the dynamics of consciousness itself.

Rethinking Assumptions, Strategies, Responses and Purposes

By Rethinking Our -Material MappingWhole - System Mapping Assumptions Economic Reality Scarcity: "unlimited desires" competing for "limited resources" Re: Monopoly Model, Defunct Malthusian ModelEconomic Reality Know-how and Creativity: Managing creatively what we have and using order to offset scarcity and evolve more efficient ways of doing things StrategiesEconomic Interaction Maximizing Ownership of Things: Land, Labor, and Capital What’s Different: Who owns What or Whom Hoarding Matter One-Sided Gain (Win-Lose)Economic Interaction Developing Systems of Exchange: What’s common: Knowledge and Creativity What’s different: How we Develop and Use Knowledge Exchanging differences Mutual Benefit (Win-Win) ResponsesRegulatory Response Shaped by Belief in: A Dark End: human nature as inevitably self-destructive, apocalyptic belief systems, a death-oriented cultural model

Self-interest as Selfishness

Competition, Bully Style

Domination of the many by the few; Suppression of knowledge, genocidal actionRegulatory Response Shaped by Belief in: The spectrum of human nature— in process and evolution of awareness and capabilities of the planet. Self-Betterment, enlightened by our relation to the collective good and the spiritual continuum of the universe. Cooperation

Liberty as an Ideal to approximate through Inner and Spiritual Growth

Purposes Goal for acting is: To maximize control/ownership of economies by : Reducing them to fixed quantities of matter and Energy, Controlling Information and Ignoring ideas and values which turns economies into closed systems that run down and self destruct, preserving an elite social class of profiteers which deliberately restrict the evolution of society and the planet for personal gain.Goal for acting is: To evolve economic systems of exchange by expanding them from : Matter to Energy Energy to Information Information to Consciousness and Ideas which works as a method for breaking through limits & pursuing unlimited possibilities in how we manage our “household” individually and as a planet.

The Paradigm Web

The Paradigm Conspiracy

by Denise Breton and Christopher Largent

Paperback - 387 pages

1996 ISBN: 1-56838-208-1 (Paper) ISBN: 1-56838-106-9 (Cloth) $13.95

Reprint edition (May 1998) ISBN: 1568382081

Buy through Amazon.com or order through your local book chain

A True Prescription for Change

Well, as an individual I was the publisher of The Paradigm Conspiracy, and it remains one of the proudest accomplishments of my professional career.

The Paradigm Conspiracy is a brilliant, powerful, and tremendously successful synthesis of what is essentially "wrong" with our culture and its institutions. The authors somehow are able to cast away the ephemera of intellectualism or agenda and simply state what so many of us dared not speak: that there is something essentially wrong here, and that it is only with a completely new vision, accepted with courage, that the wrong can be made right. I am proud to have been one of the champions of this book during my tenure as publisher, and recommend all of Chris and Denise's books to every reader. Only, through this type of understanding personally and culturally can our culture advance. Paradigm Conspiracy provides both the understanding and the means for true transformation. Its reading is required of each of us.

Dan Odegard, July 29, 1999

Page Revised: February 5 2004

New World Views Bring the Onset of New Worlds

From this springboard begins the journey of transformation by paradigm shift. It took us 360 pages to explore this process in The Paradigm Conspiracy, so that's a pitch both for whoever is reading this to get a copy and for us to close this electronic essay.

We'll just say that when we're too tired to explain the book to someone, we call it our revenge on the control paradigm, both for us and on behalf of our readers. But when we're feeling more peppy, we say that the book has a happy ending, or at least holds the promise of one. Refusing to be trapped by dominating institutions on one hand and on the other claiming our essence, who we are in the big picture-what's called the "soul" until a better term comes along-we foment revolution of the most constructive, effective, and powerful sort. Each of us in our own ways participates in creating new worldviews, which in turn create new worlds within and without.

We thank you for taking the time to read our thoughts and reflections on this subject, and should you read our book, we hope you enjoy it. We don't pretend to have the answers or to give the "correct" paradigm. Our best hope is that the book gets the philosophical, paradigm-shifting juices going. That's quite enough for us. The rest we leave to the human potential emerging in all of us.

Material Focus vs. Whole-System Focus

Rethinking Assumptions, Strategies, Responses and Purposes

The Paradigm Conspiracy

by Denise Breton and Christopher Largent

Paperback - 387 pages 1996 ISBN: 1-56838-208-1 (Paper) ISBN: 1-56838-106-9 (Cloth) $13.95

Reprint edition (May 1998) ISBN: 1568382081

Untying