Pruning Our Failed Paradigms
We must clean our intellectual house
We live in an age of failing systems. Everywhere around us, we see paradigmatic failure. People still refuse to acknowledge the extent of these failures, although the social and political consequences are constantly described, analyzed, and worsening by the day.
Because we are linear thinkers, we see these only as individual system problems and fail to see the integrated totality. We insist on individually labeling the winners and losers but refuse to see the aggregate problem.
That integration is what creates the inarticulate malaise that haunts us daily. You cannot solve that problem without focusing on the causes. And there is the problem of using the same techniques to solve a problem that was used to create it.
As the list of failures grows, we concentrate on the superficial symptoms. This works to limit our anxiety, as negative details can hide the more extensive system failures. We refuse to see structural collapse, preferring to see only superficial shortcomings.
This is, itself, a sign of the more significant failure.
Using America as the paradigmatic center of our failing world, people wonder about the absence of political leaders. The command and control systems at the center of our nation-state…
