NTRODUCTION TO PARADIGMS

Paradigms provide overarching frameworks within which people try to understand major issues. An example of a major paradigm shift occurred in astronomy when scholars realized the earth and planets revolved around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the earth. People require frameworks in all areas of life in order to function, because they help us measure the relative importance of any given detail or its causes and effects. On the other hand, all paradigms have weak points, are necessarily partial, and must confront data that does not perfectly “fit”. If we are to honestly look at the world then we must explore the anomalies in our paradigms. Refusal to do so contributes to dogmatism or blind adherence to a chosen “truth”.

Political paradigms are more problematic and uncertain than scientific paradigms. Because political paradigms deal with subjective value judgments, they involve one’s beliefs, values, and personal morality. In this subjective terrain one can find many more anomalies, especially when political climates change. No political paradigm can justify a claim as “scientific” or “objectively true”.

Despite these weaknesses, political and social paradigms are as important as scientific paradigms in orienting our thoughts and behavior. They attempt to explain the behavior of important people and current events. When people align themselves with a political paradigm, they often also express their own faith or lack of faith in others. People may prefer one paradigm over another less for its explanatory abilities than because they like its philosophy.

But choosing a paradigm for the wrong reasons can be dangerous. When people are committed to a certain set of conclusions, regardless of the evidence, the paradigm ceases to aid an accurate assessment of reality and asserts a zero-sum relationship to any other approach to the issue. You are wrong because I am right. One of the key indicators that paradigms have become dogmatic is the presence of verbal “landmines”: when one says certain things (see the “catch phrases”) from one paradigm, adherents of the other immediately either turn off or get hostile, accusing the person of racism, fascism, idiotarianism, islamo-bolshevism, etc.

As a result paradigms becomes dogmatic, a tool to wield, or a weapon with which an activist can strike, rather than a map to explore. Ultimately, this shift to blinding activism can have a huge negative impact on our world, even as it promises to further our hopes. It can insist on a “truth” that directly contradicts important evidence, and proposes solutions that will backfire in real life.

Ultimately, we need to be able to apply both paradigms, exploring our social and political world by treating them as working hypotheses that get confirmed or disproved in any individual case, rather than axiomatic truths that impose “right” on every case. Then different paradigms can have a positive-sum relationship, and improve our ability to solve problems by increasing our ability to understand them.

As promoters of civil societies, unfair judgments are exactly what we try to avoid. If we want to reduce moral failures at home and around the world, we might start at home, by judging fairly. If we don’t, we may find that poor judgments encourage the very evils we think we oppose. And in today’s current climate of terrorism, judging poorly and taking sides unfairly can be suicidal.