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‘"Change? What do you mean "change"?’

Changes in Our Lives and in the History of Christian Belief

presented by Stephenie Rose Cooper

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Session 3, continued:  Paradigm Shifts - How Change Happens

 

Paradigm Shift – What is it?

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and defined the

concept of "paradigm shift." Some definitions:

• A change from one way of thinking to another

• A change from an inadequate way of seeing the world to one that is more complete and useful

• A change in behavior and attitude that accompanies a new way of seeing

• A break with an old pattern of perceiving and behaving

• It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change (state and federal government, new systems of thinking, current research, etc.).

• Kuhn seems to assume that all change is for the better, but remember – he’s focusing on scientific progress. More about this later.

 

Paradigm Shift – Other Terms

• Cultural Change

• Social Change

• Evolution

• Revolution

• Metamorphosis

• Innovation

• Shift of vision

• Transformation of vision

• Changing worldview

• Switch in visual gestalt

• Conversion

• Mountaintop Experience

 

Caveat: Retroactive Clairvoyance

From the Skeptics Dictionary:

"Some, like Joel Barker in his video "The Business of Paradigms," use paradigm and paradigm shift to explain how some people or companies fail and others succeed. The ones who succeed are those who can shift to a new paradigm; the ones who fail are those who remain hidebound and fixated on traditional ideas because they have proved successful in the past or because they can see no use for some new idea … This model might be called retroactive clairvoyance because it sees always and only after the fact who failed to make a paradigm shift and who benefited by having foresight to take advantage of other people's creations.  This model is useless for predicting that creations will prove profitable and useful. But it is excellent in hindsight."

Kuhn on Scientific Progress: Five Stages

1. Pre-science (no paradigm)

2. "Normal" science

3. Crisis – serious anomalies

4. Scientific revolution – paradigm shift

5. New "normal" science (new paradigm)

 

Origin: T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Anomalies awaken us to new questions

– An anomaly is phenomenon for which one’s paradigm makes one unready; there is awareness that something’s amiss

• Failure of old paradigm to fit causes paradigm destruction so new paradigm can emerge

• Transition period occurs between paradigms in which there will be overlap between problems that can be solved by old and new paradigm

• Steph’s addition: Sometimes one paradigm completely replaces another, sometimes the new paradigm is a synthesis of old and new

– Dialectic: Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis

 

Climate for Paradigm Shifts

• Paradigm shifts are breaks with old ways of thinking, reorganizations of thought. They are breakthroughs to new insights

• Smaller crises may lead to smaller, less noticeable paradigm shifts

– Exceptional "new" thought does not come along easily- there is a lot of trial and error

• Two qualities create a favorable climate for shifts, make for less painful shifts, help us accept change more freely

– Open mindedness, and

– Willingness to risk

 

Cause and Effect

• We affect other people through the paradigms we hold of them. If we hang onto other peoples’ mistakes and weaknesses, we may influence them to repeat them, or worse yet, fail to perceive their potential for good.

– Examples: Ways of treating women and persons of color to "keep them in their places."

• Because paradigms create their own evidence and filter understanding.  we may be seeing problems that aren’t there or seeing them as bigger than they are, or attributing cause to (blaming) the wrong source

• By exercising faith and trust in other people, we shift our focus from controlling the negative things in the relationship to freeing or releasing the positive things

 

Why do people resist change?

• New ideas challenge your basic beliefs – your conception of reality – causing you to lose touch with your grounding in the net of beliefs that give you your worldview and reason for existence

• New ideas put you the defensive position of having to support your current ideas

• Change brings discomfort. Those who have new ideas always shake the others, who prefer to stay in their circle of comfort instead of exploring the unknown.

• Some changes really aren’t for the better.

– Of course, the problem is that the initial reaction to many positive changes is that they are not good changes.

 

Heretics and Infidels – Some Definitions

• Heretic:

– Someone who has lost a theological argument. [source unknown]

– A member of the forum who has agreed, with bad grace, to differ. [exchristian.net]

– Another word for freedom of thought. [Graham Greene, 1981]

•Infidel:

– A term of reproach which Christians and Muslims, in their modesty, agree to apply to each other. [exchristian.net]

– A person who does not acknowledge yourGod [ansme.com]

– In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. [Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce]

 

Heretics and Infidels – What Are They Really?

• Those who challenge the basic tenets of a paradigm are either infidels or heretics

– Infidels challenge from the outside – written off by the insiders as unbelievers, crazies, uninformed, mentally deficient

– Heretics challenge from the inside – worse than the infidels because they "should know better" and reject the very heart of the value system to which they belong

• "It is not surprising that Copernicus published his treatise while on his death bed; in his day you would tolerate the infidel but burn the heretic." – James Decker, keynote speech at EIDX conference, 2/13/2001

 

What is the real threat?

• What are the consequences when the prevailing paradigm changes and you adapt to the change (promote, endorse) or when you do not adapt (resist)? Can be non-existent to minor

– Do we still burn heretics?

– Are people with beliefs that are different than the prevailing paradigm still persecuted?

• Christians are still persecuted in many places

– Do we fear ostracism?

– Threats to job security?

– Fear of not knowing what’s right and what’s wrong, what the rules are, what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not?

– Can’t share your faith without fear?

– Loss of friendships and accompanying grieving process?

See also "The big "C" word: Episcopalians talk about change" on www.everyvoice.net

 

Dealing with Change

• Challenge is to overcome the barriers of status quo thinking, keep what is working, and improve/abandon what is not effective practice... all based on good data.

• "All truth passes through three stages:

First, it is ridiculed;

Second, it is violently opposed; and

Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

 

Factors That Affect Acceptance of New Ideas

• How people perceive the value of the changes

– Is it an improvement or a setback? Is it compatible with other beliefs/ideas? How complex is it? Is experimentation possible to find out if the change is a good one?

• How the ideas are communicated

– Enforced or voluntary?

- Adequate support from friends, colleagues, family?

• Peoples’ styles for responding to changes

– Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards/resisters

•Time

– Some changes need less time, some need a lot of time

 

Some revolutions don’t happen overnight

• After centuries of a Ptolemaic model that had the earth at the center (which fit right well with most theology), in 1541 Copernicus proposed that the phenomena that astronomers had been describing for centuries would be better accounted for in a model with the Sun at the center of the universe.

– It was not immediately accepted by the scientific community.

– It was no less complicated than the earlier model

– It wasn’t clear whether the theory could explain most of the bellwether phenomena that had occupied scientists for centuries

– Copernicus Died in 1543. Condemned by the Inquisition in 1616.

– Galileo condemned in 1633 by the Inquisition for his support of Copernican theory. In 1992, Pope John Paul II said that the church made errors in the case but did not admit that the church was wrong to convict Galileo of heresy

 

Denial

"Resistance will often accompany a paradigm shift … denial does also – the denial that everything is not right in Christianity, or in Western education, or in our very definitions of what constitute theological education and ministerial training, or in the prevailing worldview of patriarchal religion in general … resistance is a sign that something deep is being challenged, and a paradigm shift is a deep movement indeed. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another … in other words a paradigm shift requires generousity, courage, and sacrifice."

-- Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ

 

Do You Anticipate or React?

• Have I created the conditions that support changes in my life?

• Am I proactive?

• Am I open to new ideas and new ways of understanding?

• Am I willing to take risks?

• Am I doing what it takes to live with change?

• Do I consciously seek to learn from my challenges?

• Do I avoid being critical and judgmental?

• Do I follow my hunches and intuitions?

• Do I welcome people who disagree with me?

• Do I look within myself for the solution to my problems?

 

How did humankind leap forward so dramatically?

• For 2 million years, human evolution was slow; changes were not perceived as revolutionary, because they took so long.

• The dramatic changes and accelerated rate of change approximately 35,000 years ago.

– "If you want to inject visitors from outer space, creative acts of God, or refugees from Atlantis, this is the time to do it, although the story works just as well with only the ordinary miraculousness of normal evolution. But whatever the cause, the next 35,000 years would see more innovation in stone tools, more widespread migration, and more population growth than the whole previous 2 million years of human history."  -– Robert Gilman

 

How did humankind leap forward so dramatically?

• The big change: Complex language developed, and allowed thought, especially the exploration of possibilities, to be shared. "It is both powerful and terrifying, expanding horizons and needing to be controlled, for words have a seemingly magical power to stimulate and guide the imagination."

– Began telling stories

– With stories came ideals and systems of belief

– People began to have self-images and ideal-images and tension between the two

– Example: Pre-lingual humans and other animals display tendencies to divide up tasks and give roles to genders; exceptions occur and are treated as "normal" by the troop. With language, "ideology" forms, and exceptions are treated as "deviations," that may be punishable.

• Since then, the faster we’ve communicated, the faster we’ve changed.

 

20th c., 1st Half – Post-industrial

• Rise of communism, atheistic politics

• Automobile leads to increased mobility; average 10 mph

• Radio and telephone by wire

• Electricity, refrigeration, indoor plumbing; infinitely abundant energy resources

• Flight becomes reality, then passenger planes, then international travel

• Theory of Relativity supercedes Newtonian physics; time is relative (not absolute)

• Evolution accepted as scientific fact

– Even though the outcome of the Scopes trial in 1925 was the refutation of evolution, it gave the theory the very attention it needed to become accepted

• Computer invented – 1st one is room-sized, costs millions, limited functionality

• Specialization in medicine

• Two world wars; atomic bomb

• God is dead

20th c., 2nd Half – Information Age

• Rate of change accelerated to where it can be perceived by an individual in his/her lifetime

• Nuclear family falls apart

• Atomic age; quantum physics

• Rapid technological advancement; television, satellite communications

• Computerization/automation dominates; desktop computers affordable by average consumer; internet; handheld computers; virtual meetings

• Live TV coverage of war in Vietnam leads to changed beliefs about war

• Women’s liberation, gay rights, handicapped rights, Gray Panthers, etc.

• Ecology, idea of global community; environmental protection

• Automobiles are fuel-efficient and pollute less (until mid-1990’s when SUVs came along)

• Pluralism and heterogeneity valued

• Heart transplants, artificial hearts, right-to-die movement, abortion rights, holistic medicine

• Demise of communism

• Scientific wonders may be evidence of God

21st c. – Aquarian Age?

• Humans live 100 years?

• Revival of spirituality? Polytheism?

• Customized genetic structures?

• Human brain fully mapped? Power of unconscious tapped? Telekinesis and psychic powers common? Basic knowledge programmed in at birth?

• Direct, tangible experience of God through expanded consciousness?

• Colonization of space?

• Interstellar travel?

• International borders eliminated?

• End to acceptability of war as a solution to crises?

• Humans live in total symbiosis with the earth?

• Energy conservation maximized, free energy sources available?

• Most waste recyclable?

• Ability to transport matter electronically?

• Second coming of Christ?

 

What do grownups know?

• As the millennium drew to a close, the students of Mr. Manning's second grade class at MacLachlan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada took a look at some of the important discoveries of the past two thousand years.  How has our world been changed by the imaginations of our ancestors? Which inventions have had the most effect on our lives? How will the discoveries of the future affect the way we will live in the next millennium? http://www.maclachlan.on.ca/macgr2/grade2.html

– 105 C.E. – Paper (China), because otherwise we’d have to write on leaves

– 200 C.E. – Ice Skates (Europe). We can’t have ice hockey without them

– 450 C.E. – Tubas, drums, horns (Peru). Need them to play the national anthem.

- 525 C.E. - The calendar.  Otherwise it wouldn't be the Year 2000.

- 1271 C.E. - The spinning wheel.  Otherwise our clothes would fall apart quickly.

And David predicts that the most important discovery in the future will be flying skates, because then we can play hockey anywhere!

 

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