Paradigms and Significance (Shift Happens)
Paradigm: (pronounced pair'-a-dime) My own understanding of this word is "a standard or accepted thought pattern; a fundamental way of seeing reality; a set of rules by which the self, others, culture, the world, and God are interpreted"
Significance: importance, or perceived importance
Facet: a point of view; one of many aspects; one of the many flat surfaces of a gemstone
WHAT IS REALITY?
I find that the way I see the world will shift from time to time, and entire situations, motivations, and foundational values take on entirely different meanings. However, I'm not exactly sure *how* the shift happens. It doesn't seem to be a conscious effort usually, but I can sense when it is happening. Sometimes the shift can happen multiple times in a day, and reality can seem to have many facets, not just back and forth between two viewpoints. How I see myself and the rest of the world (and God) changes depending on which facet I'm viewing at the time. A particular facet can last for days or even months.
Some weeks ago, I was despairing over not being very significant, and feeling that my life was pretty much mediocre. A short list of things I was brooding about:
*I hold an "entry level" job, though my training and education is much more advanced. Many men define themselves by their jobs, and though I don't usually do this, I occasionally see myself at a dead-end and have only myself to blame. Others also tend to pigeon-hole me by what I do. I have not "reached my potential" by any stretch.
*I seem to live a life of quiet self-centeredness, not really contributing to the well-being of others.
*For nearly 10 years, I was part of a worldwide Christian ministry, distributing significant preaching all over the earth via a website and via CD. That has come to a screeching halt for reasons I won't go into here. Now all I have is a "blog" where I brain-dump my thoughts on "church and reality" to anyone that cares to read, which may be no one at all, I really don't know.
*I used to have hobbies, like photography, electronics, and ballroom dancing. These days I rarely do much of anything interesting or fun, other than fix computers for people, which is a sort of puzzle solving.
All of this was adding up to a dismal self-image, probably brought on by discussing my employment possibilities with someone that evening.
However, a few days later, I "felt" my view shift and things just didn't seem that bad after all.
*I'm employed and making a decent living;
*I do help some kids in India and Africa with education and health-care;
*I still have fun and friends, it just looks different than it used to.
KEY THOUGHT
My point is that the underlying reality did not change, only my interpretation of it. Yet, the perception was going to drastically affect the way that I dealt with reality. Sometimes my perception of God or other people seems to take on a particular slant, and then later it will shift to a different perspective. During one lunch, I felt this change happen a couple of times, though I lack the words to describe it exactly. While I'm not sure what to make of the causation of the shifts, they led me to ponder the fixated paradigms and hard line absolutism that I witness in many people and people groups.
PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE
Like the old movie "It's A Wonderful Life" proposes, significance is in the eye of the beholder. I interact with many people daily at a surface level, and at a much deeper level with those I call friends. My influence on them is greater than I usually realize, and I doubt that they understand how much I value them. And like the movie, a simple shift of viewpoint can lead a man to the edge of suicide. I have heard that some teenagers of particularly high intelligence get so stymied by the thought that "I will die eventually", that they figure "What is the point of doing anything? All our actions are futile. Why put off the inevitable?" They get stuck on one facet or viewpoint, and all other views seem irrelevant. Some of them actually do commit suicide. Whatever significance they could contribute to the world, and whatever significance they could have in their own eyes is completely occluded by this thought of futility. The reality remains that they could learn, teach, create, influence, befriend, love, and experience several million things before dying. But due to a fixated paradigm, their souls become convinced of the need to die.
AROUND THE WORLD
I see another aspect of this "fixated paradigm" concept played out daily around the world in the form of people that are convinced that God wants them to kill other people. They base their view of reality on a book, and on their culture which honors that book and its author as being from God. Since these people are steeped in this world view from birth, it in effect becomes reality to them. The resulting actions of some of their more fanatical citizens occasionally come crashing into our lives at full speed, leaving us to wonder what the hell just happened. That is because on this side of the world, we were generally raised with a different book (culturally, if not religiously), and have a completely different view of reality that does not often include blowing up civilians to please an angry god, and thus gaining a bunch of virgins to screw in paradise. Admittedly, there was a time when the roles were reversed, about a thousand years ago, when certain representatives of "Christianity" were intent on killing Muslims (and Jews, and anyone else that was different, including other Christians) for the sake of God. Some might see this as a sort of "cosmic payback". More likely, it is the result of the philosophies and popular beliefs that ebb and flow across global humanity, and there is at least a chance that those fixated minds or cultures can be influenced towards a different behavior.
QUESTIONING "REALITY"
Within both cultures, there are variations of views influenced by family, school, media, other religions, and personal experiences. But even though other views exist, not many people question their own beliefs, and many people grow angrily defensive when their beliefs are questioned, because it feels like reality itself is being disrupted, and if they entertain such questions they stand the chance of no longer feeling safe about fitting in with their social structure (friends, family, religion, culture). And fitting-in is one of the primary motivators for most of humankind, as I have examined in other writings. Reality itself isn't any different for either culture (i.e., the physical laws, the need to eat, etc.) but the way it is filtered and interpreted through a set of assumptions dramatically affects the behaviors within each culture, and how those cultures view and interact with each other. Mostly these religious filters deal with how oneself and other people are to be esteemed (or not), and how to make sure that adherents are on the good side of whatever deity they happen to acknowledge. Unfortunately, some see it as a favor to God to kill and die "for Him", and these beliefs are ingrained in their children daily until it becomes unchanging reality to them.
MY OWN EXPERIENCES
I suppose that the interesting part for me in all of this is that my own view *does* change, even multiple times in a day. I consider myself an orthodox Christian (in the sense of historic beliefs, not a particular denomination), so I am probably heretical in my views from time to time. However, I always try to submit my changing viewpoints to an underlying foundation of beliefs. As I have mentioned in other writings, there are times I would have abandoned religion entirely if it were not for my own experiences with God that are non-negotiable. Without that foundation on interaction, I would be...perhaps multi-polar, if that is a usable term. However, I hope that my shifting viewpoints serve to give me a better interpretation of reality.
There are times when I cannot rationally arrive at the conclusion that the God of the Bible is real. The stories it presents sometimes seem farcical or shockingly evil (such as complete genocide of a people group). But because it was ordered by God, it is called good in the context of the scriptures. If we were to read the same account in a modern newspaper, we would probably be outraged at Israel and seek to impose sanctions on them. It seems barbaric and primitive to me to make humans carry out the capital judgment of the creator. This leads me to question how genuine the stories are from the perspective of revealing the Creator.
Yet my experiences with God stand there staring me in the face and I cannot conclude that God is unreal. And the thing that led me to know Him is the Bible. So even if I drift so far as not wanting any of my faith to be real, I am drawn back to what I know personally to be real. I have no way to translate this to another person, because it is experientially founded. I wonder sometimes if the way God is represented in the scriptures is strongly influenced by the rather barbaric culture of the Middle East and the He is actually rather different. Without direct revelation, I have no way to know. Thus far I am left with the book that led me to encounter God, and a lot of unanswered questions.
Perhaps my paradigm shifts can be classified as "temptation", or "spiritual attacks". But in the last couple of years, my quest has been to sift out the reality of God from the fantasies that man has about God. I quit going to church because it became a distraction rather than a benefit. Their desire to make me conform to their patterns of behavior and thought are strong, and they don't have much time for unusual questions that don't have a quick prefab answer. Genuine concerns are dismissed with a laugh and a quick denial. Grrrrr. Church seems to be more of an avenue of societal control than it is the body of Jesus.
VIOLENCE AGAINST THE DIFFERENT
Violence around the world astounds me daily, particularly when it is founded in a desire to eliminate those who are "different". Currently, there are old tribal hatreds being inflamed in Kenya, and people who were behaving civilly are now hacking their neighbors to death with machetes. Wahabi Muslims around the globe are intent on making everyone else in the world conform to their views of God and reality, and they will maim, rape, and kill those who are different. Radical Hindus slaughter Christian families in fierce anger for claiming their gods are only dead idols. Communist governments and rebels routinely torture and destroy those who don't want to be controlled by them, or who merely desire to worship God in peace. Human life is cheap to them, and even infants are destroyed without mercy. [Of course, even one of the Bible psalmists advocated the same behavior: "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." Psalm 137. That is not often preached on Sunday mornings.]
AMERICAN INFLUENCE
It seems like those of us who have been taught to respect others and at least to tolerate opposing views are in the minority worldwide. While America has sought to spread democracy around the world, it apparently has done a poor job in spreading the values of integrity, tolerance, mercy, and generosity. We pour billions of dollars into third-world countries, only to have it sucked up by corrupt officials who divert it into the accounts of their families. Such people argue that they are duty bound to help their families first, since they don't know how long they will be in power. Those we establish in power have historically used our support to crush their enemies and rule with autocracy. So what we intended to help other nations often ends up continuing the cycle of oppression.
STRENGTH OF CIVILIZATION
I sometimes wonder if our own civilization would quickly disintegrate into such vile behavior should our enemies pop a few nukes on our soil, and the markets come crashing down. If our entire perceived goodness is the result of a largely cultural way of viewing reality, and the values we hold are not founded in something more solid than cultural tendencies, our grasp on civilization is tenuous. Other civilizations have lasted for much longer than ours, holding to very different values, ones that would disturb us in America. Their people groups have had authoritarian based rule for centuries, and their religions enforce strong controls on how people behave. History shows us that previously great nations like Greece and Rome, that spawned logic, science, and engineering, fell to the hands of barbarians, bringing about the Dark Ages which lasted over 500 years. I think there are quite a few people in America now (and certainly around the world) that would rejoice at the chance to be lawless barbarians, to have their gang/cult/religion in total control of an area. It feels really good to them to have power (significance), and to use it without mercy on those who are different. That is until worse barbarians show up and turn them into victims. But that whole "way" is primitive and shallow, and our advanced civilization would quickly degenerate into a civil war on several fronts.
MY VIEWS
Since I have observed that my own views change perspective, but recognize that the underlying reality hasn't changed, it remains that there is a common reality that is shared by all people, regardless of how they see it. The issue then is how we see reality.
It seems to me that living together on this planet in peace should be a fairly simple thing. But the attitude at the root of the discord is "Our way of seeing and doing things is reality and is correct. Everyone else is wrong and must be annoyed, harassed, abused, or destroyed" (often justified by claiming that God wants it that way). That may be an oversimplification, but it seems to apply to so many conflicts, from mere peer pressure on up to genocide. A more basic attitude of many criminals is that other people are merely prey. Criminals don't typically seek any justification to their actions. Their own comfort/thrill/high is the only thing that is important. "They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed." Perhaps it is a variation of the animalistic nature of man to prevail over competitors and so survive to breed. Man loses something distinctive when this way is embraced.
Yet some people still feel it is absolutely essential to hate and to kill to establish their viewpoint across the face of the Earth, because they consider their viewpoint abject reality and they feel that all eternity depends on their violent actions. They never stop to ask, "If God is so angry with all these unbelievers, why doesn't He stop blessing them, and why doesn't HE do something to stop them?" Instead they whip themselves into a religious frenzy (a fixated paradigm) and see bloodshed as their ticket to paradise.
It seems to me that we ought to be able to leave other folks alone, and that we should have the expectation of being left alone. But any time that people gather in groups, there is at some level an expectation of unity. The greater the unity, the more powerful the expectations of conformity, and the often accompanying attitude of snide superiority. Religion, sports, companies, schools, gangs, economic enclaves (rich and poor), political associations, military, race, and cultures, are examples of such groups. The critical factor of empathy is being left out of the life-teachings in many of these groups, and those who don't fit in with them are pigeon-holed with stereotypes and derogatory names.
When groups of people value and promote respect, tolerance, and empathy, it creates a foundation for a diverse and healthy society where new ideas find fertile ground for development and disagreement without fear of harm. What I don't know how to do is influence minds that have become set on destruction to reconsider their view. They are usually motivated by leaders that have no intention of becoming "martyrs" themselves, but who have no qualms pushing young men, women, and children to "die for God". These fiends should be opposed and removed by those who desire freedom and peace in their countries.
As I said before, the shift in my own view is not usually conscious. So to purposefully take a mind that is convinced that it needs to kill others for a God it has never met, and change it to a tolerant and merciful mind is perhaps ...miraculous. This does happen occasionally, very occasionally. But from the human angle, I think we have to try to counter the extremist teachings through a variety of methods, probably appealing to the human mind that values reason, beauty, order, and freedom.
My view of my own significance varies from day to day, but I think I have a healthy enough foundation that I can weather the shifting winds, and maybe even learn some things in the process.
That's my 20 cents on paradigms. ;-)
Significance: importance, or perceived importance
Facet: a point of view; one of many aspects; one of the many flat surfaces of a gemstone
WHAT IS REALITY?
I find that the way I see the world will shift from time to time, and entire situations, motivations, and foundational values take on entirely different meanings. However, I'm not exactly sure *how* the shift happens. It doesn't seem to be a conscious effort usually, but I can sense when it is happening. Sometimes the shift can happen multiple times in a day, and reality can seem to have many facets, not just back and forth between two viewpoints. How I see myself and the rest of the world (and God) changes depending on which facet I'm viewing at the time. A particular facet can last for days or even months.
Some weeks ago, I was despairing over not being very significant, and feeling that my life was pretty much mediocre. A short list of things I was brooding about:
*I hold an "entry level" job, though my training and education is much more advanced. Many men define themselves by their jobs, and though I don't usually do this, I occasionally see myself at a dead-end and have only myself to blame. Others also tend to pigeon-hole me by what I do. I have not "reached my potential" by any stretch.
*I seem to live a life of quiet self-centeredness, not really contributing to the well-being of others.
*For nearly 10 years, I was part of a worldwide Christian ministry, distributing significant preaching all over the earth via a website and via CD. That has come to a screeching halt for reasons I won't go into here. Now all I have is a "blog" where I brain-dump my thoughts on "church and reality" to anyone that cares to read, which may be no one at all, I really don't know.
*I used to have hobbies, like photography, electronics, and ballroom dancing. These days I rarely do much of anything interesting or fun, other than fix computers for people, which is a sort of puzzle solving.
All of this was adding up to a dismal self-image, probably brought on by discussing my employment possibilities with someone that evening.
However, a few days later, I "felt" my view shift and things just didn't seem that bad after all.
*I'm employed and making a decent living;
*I do help some kids in India and Africa with education and health-care;
*I still have fun and friends, it just looks different than it used to.
KEY THOUGHT
My point is that the underlying reality did not change, only my interpretation of it. Yet, the perception was going to drastically affect the way that I dealt with reality. Sometimes my perception of God or other people seems to take on a particular slant, and then later it will shift to a different perspective. During one lunch, I felt this change happen a couple of times, though I lack the words to describe it exactly. While I'm not sure what to make of the causation of the shifts, they led me to ponder the fixated paradigms and hard line absolutism that I witness in many people and people groups.
PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE
Like the old movie "It's A Wonderful Life" proposes, significance is in the eye of the beholder. I interact with many people daily at a surface level, and at a much deeper level with those I call friends. My influence on them is greater than I usually realize, and I doubt that they understand how much I value them. And like the movie, a simple shift of viewpoint can lead a man to the edge of suicide. I have heard that some teenagers of particularly high intelligence get so stymied by the thought that "I will die eventually", that they figure "What is the point of doing anything? All our actions are futile. Why put off the inevitable?" They get stuck on one facet or viewpoint, and all other views seem irrelevant. Some of them actually do commit suicide. Whatever significance they could contribute to the world, and whatever significance they could have in their own eyes is completely occluded by this thought of futility. The reality remains that they could learn, teach, create, influence, befriend, love, and experience several million things before dying. But due to a fixated paradigm, their souls become convinced of the need to die.
AROUND THE WORLD
I see another aspect of this "fixated paradigm" concept played out daily around the world in the form of people that are convinced that God wants them to kill other people. They base their view of reality on a book, and on their culture which honors that book and its author as being from God. Since these people are steeped in this world view from birth, it in effect becomes reality to them. The resulting actions of some of their more fanatical citizens occasionally come crashing into our lives at full speed, leaving us to wonder what the hell just happened. That is because on this side of the world, we were generally raised with a different book (culturally, if not religiously), and have a completely different view of reality that does not often include blowing up civilians to please an angry god, and thus gaining a bunch of virgins to screw in paradise. Admittedly, there was a time when the roles were reversed, about a thousand years ago, when certain representatives of "Christianity" were intent on killing Muslims (and Jews, and anyone else that was different, including other Christians) for the sake of God. Some might see this as a sort of "cosmic payback". More likely, it is the result of the philosophies and popular beliefs that ebb and flow across global humanity, and there is at least a chance that those fixated minds or cultures can be influenced towards a different behavior.
QUESTIONING "REALITY"
Within both cultures, there are variations of views influenced by family, school, media, other religions, and personal experiences. But even though other views exist, not many people question their own beliefs, and many people grow angrily defensive when their beliefs are questioned, because it feels like reality itself is being disrupted, and if they entertain such questions they stand the chance of no longer feeling safe about fitting in with their social structure (friends, family, religion, culture). And fitting-in is one of the primary motivators for most of humankind, as I have examined in other writings. Reality itself isn't any different for either culture (i.e., the physical laws, the need to eat, etc.) but the way it is filtered and interpreted through a set of assumptions dramatically affects the behaviors within each culture, and how those cultures view and interact with each other. Mostly these religious filters deal with how oneself and other people are to be esteemed (or not), and how to make sure that adherents are on the good side of whatever deity they happen to acknowledge. Unfortunately, some see it as a favor to God to kill and die "for Him", and these beliefs are ingrained in their children daily until it becomes unchanging reality to them.
MY OWN EXPERIENCES
I suppose that the interesting part for me in all of this is that my own view *does* change, even multiple times in a day. I consider myself an orthodox Christian (in the sense of historic beliefs, not a particular denomination), so I am probably heretical in my views from time to time. However, I always try to submit my changing viewpoints to an underlying foundation of beliefs. As I have mentioned in other writings, there are times I would have abandoned religion entirely if it were not for my own experiences with God that are non-negotiable. Without that foundation on interaction, I would be...perhaps multi-polar, if that is a usable term. However, I hope that my shifting viewpoints serve to give me a better interpretation of reality.
There are times when I cannot rationally arrive at the conclusion that the God of the Bible is real. The stories it presents sometimes seem farcical or shockingly evil (such as complete genocide of a people group). But because it was ordered by God, it is called good in the context of the scriptures. If we were to read the same account in a modern newspaper, we would probably be outraged at Israel and seek to impose sanctions on them. It seems barbaric and primitive to me to make humans carry out the capital judgment of the creator. This leads me to question how genuine the stories are from the perspective of revealing the Creator.
Yet my experiences with God stand there staring me in the face and I cannot conclude that God is unreal. And the thing that led me to know Him is the Bible. So even if I drift so far as not wanting any of my faith to be real, I am drawn back to what I know personally to be real. I have no way to translate this to another person, because it is experientially founded. I wonder sometimes if the way God is represented in the scriptures is strongly influenced by the rather barbaric culture of the Middle East and the He is actually rather different. Without direct revelation, I have no way to know. Thus far I am left with the book that led me to encounter God, and a lot of unanswered questions.
Perhaps my paradigm shifts can be classified as "temptation", or "spiritual attacks". But in the last couple of years, my quest has been to sift out the reality of God from the fantasies that man has about God. I quit going to church because it became a distraction rather than a benefit. Their desire to make me conform to their patterns of behavior and thought are strong, and they don't have much time for unusual questions that don't have a quick prefab answer. Genuine concerns are dismissed with a laugh and a quick denial. Grrrrr. Church seems to be more of an avenue of societal control than it is the body of Jesus.
VIOLENCE AGAINST THE DIFFERENT
Violence around the world astounds me daily, particularly when it is founded in a desire to eliminate those who are "different". Currently, there are old tribal hatreds being inflamed in Kenya, and people who were behaving civilly are now hacking their neighbors to death with machetes. Wahabi Muslims around the globe are intent on making everyone else in the world conform to their views of God and reality, and they will maim, rape, and kill those who are different. Radical Hindus slaughter Christian families in fierce anger for claiming their gods are only dead idols. Communist governments and rebels routinely torture and destroy those who don't want to be controlled by them, or who merely desire to worship God in peace. Human life is cheap to them, and even infants are destroyed without mercy. [Of course, even one of the Bible psalmists advocated the same behavior: "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." Psalm 137. That is not often preached on Sunday mornings.]
AMERICAN INFLUENCE
It seems like those of us who have been taught to respect others and at least to tolerate opposing views are in the minority worldwide. While America has sought to spread democracy around the world, it apparently has done a poor job in spreading the values of integrity, tolerance, mercy, and generosity. We pour billions of dollars into third-world countries, only to have it sucked up by corrupt officials who divert it into the accounts of their families. Such people argue that they are duty bound to help their families first, since they don't know how long they will be in power. Those we establish in power have historically used our support to crush their enemies and rule with autocracy. So what we intended to help other nations often ends up continuing the cycle of oppression.
STRENGTH OF CIVILIZATION
I sometimes wonder if our own civilization would quickly disintegrate into such vile behavior should our enemies pop a few nukes on our soil, and the markets come crashing down. If our entire perceived goodness is the result of a largely cultural way of viewing reality, and the values we hold are not founded in something more solid than cultural tendencies, our grasp on civilization is tenuous. Other civilizations have lasted for much longer than ours, holding to very different values, ones that would disturb us in America. Their people groups have had authoritarian based rule for centuries, and their religions enforce strong controls on how people behave. History shows us that previously great nations like Greece and Rome, that spawned logic, science, and engineering, fell to the hands of barbarians, bringing about the Dark Ages which lasted over 500 years. I think there are quite a few people in America now (and certainly around the world) that would rejoice at the chance to be lawless barbarians, to have their gang/cult/religion in total control of an area. It feels really good to them to have power (significance), and to use it without mercy on those who are different. That is until worse barbarians show up and turn them into victims. But that whole "way" is primitive and shallow, and our advanced civilization would quickly degenerate into a civil war on several fronts.
MY VIEWS
Since I have observed that my own views change perspective, but recognize that the underlying reality hasn't changed, it remains that there is a common reality that is shared by all people, regardless of how they see it. The issue then is how we see reality.
It seems to me that living together on this planet in peace should be a fairly simple thing. But the attitude at the root of the discord is "Our way of seeing and doing things is reality and is correct. Everyone else is wrong and must be annoyed, harassed, abused, or destroyed" (often justified by claiming that God wants it that way). That may be an oversimplification, but it seems to apply to so many conflicts, from mere peer pressure on up to genocide. A more basic attitude of many criminals is that other people are merely prey. Criminals don't typically seek any justification to their actions. Their own comfort/thrill/high is the only thing that is important. "They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed." Perhaps it is a variation of the animalistic nature of man to prevail over competitors and so survive to breed. Man loses something distinctive when this way is embraced.
Yet some people still feel it is absolutely essential to hate and to kill to establish their viewpoint across the face of the Earth, because they consider their viewpoint abject reality and they feel that all eternity depends on their violent actions. They never stop to ask, "If God is so angry with all these unbelievers, why doesn't He stop blessing them, and why doesn't HE do something to stop them?" Instead they whip themselves into a religious frenzy (a fixated paradigm) and see bloodshed as their ticket to paradise.
It seems to me that we ought to be able to leave other folks alone, and that we should have the expectation of being left alone. But any time that people gather in groups, there is at some level an expectation of unity. The greater the unity, the more powerful the expectations of conformity, and the often accompanying attitude of snide superiority. Religion, sports, companies, schools, gangs, economic enclaves (rich and poor), political associations, military, race, and cultures, are examples of such groups. The critical factor of empathy is being left out of the life-teachings in many of these groups, and those who don't fit in with them are pigeon-holed with stereotypes and derogatory names.
When groups of people value and promote respect, tolerance, and empathy, it creates a foundation for a diverse and healthy society where new ideas find fertile ground for development and disagreement without fear of harm. What I don't know how to do is influence minds that have become set on destruction to reconsider their view. They are usually motivated by leaders that have no intention of becoming "martyrs" themselves, but who have no qualms pushing young men, women, and children to "die for God". These fiends should be opposed and removed by those who desire freedom and peace in their countries.
As I said before, the shift in my own view is not usually conscious. So to purposefully take a mind that is convinced that it needs to kill others for a God it has never met, and change it to a tolerant and merciful mind is perhaps ...miraculous. This does happen occasionally, very occasionally. But from the human angle, I think we have to try to counter the extremist teachings through a variety of methods, probably appealing to the human mind that values reason, beauty, order, and freedom.
My view of my own significance varies from day to day, but I think I have a healthy enough foundation that I can weather the shifting winds, and maybe even learn some things in the process.
That's my 20 cents on paradigms. ;-)
posted by Jason Woodrow at 6:04 PM
