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Our paradigm is shifting. The very way we understand the world is
changing and things will never be the same again. It’s a change
as dramatic as learning that the Earth revolves around the sun,
that life evolves and that space and time are relative.
The new paradigm is easy to understand if challenging
to act upon. Like all evolutions, it’s firmly based on the old paradigm
which states that the universe is the sum of its parts. These parts
are separate, discrete units or things, at least in the world of
so-called solid matter, the sensory world we inhabit. These units
can affect each other but they remain unique and distinguishable.
A ball is a ball is a ball. Balls and roses don’t start acting like
liquids and flow into each other and merge to form something else.
The parts are contained in the whole.
The new paradigm builds on this and expands it by reversing
it: the whole is contained in every part. And not only in every
part but in every part of every part, no matter how small.
It's like a vacuum cleaner the size of an atom sucks
in the entire universe and contains it within itself. Then another,
quite similar but not exact universe is sucked into another atom-size
vacuum cleaner,. and another, and another, until there are enough
atoms to built a universe, every atom of which contains an entire
universe. And every part of every atom.
There are two corollaries to the new paradigm. The
first states that everything is connected, which must be the case
if everything is literally contained in everything else. However,
even under the old paradigm we can make a case for connection. Environmentalists
do it all the time, stating that what we do affects many different
things in many different locations. Even in a universe of separate
parts, we can still see how those parts can be connected.
The second corollary is that there is an infinite number
of infinite universes. It’s not enough to say that we all inhabit
the same universe and that we are just viewing the same universe
from different perspectives. No, the second corollary states that
each of us, and every part of us, actually inhabits a different
universe from everyone else. These universes overlap considerably,
allowing us to communicate and interact with each other, but each
universe is slightly different than all the others. It's as if each
universe inhabits or represents a different dimension or set of
dimensions from every other universe.
One way of looking at the combination of the new paradigm and its corollaries is to visualize a large two-story Victorian brick house. Now, this is a real house. You can live in it. It's solid. But it's also a special house because this house folds up. The high-peaked attic can fold into the second floor, which folds into the first floor, then folds into a brick like those used in the house. As soon as that brick is finished, another house appears to take the place of the first house. It appears to be just like the first house but this one is slightly different, maybe with a different decorative molding or mantle carving. Once again it's a real, strongly- built house but it too can be folded up, the attic into the second floor into the first floor into a brick. Then a third house appears, substantial and nearly identical with the first two but, again, something is slightly different, the window casings or the paneling in the dining room. And this house is folded up into a brick.
This goes on thousands of times, each time a slightly different
house appears and is folded up into the brick until the yard is
filled with stacks of bricks as well as all the other materials
needed to build the house: rafters, slates for the roof, etc. All
of which have been made by folding up variations of the house. Finally
another house is built from these supplies, each of which contains
a full house within itself. This continues until there is an infinite
number of houses. And in fact all of these houses are built and
maintained simultaneously.
This is what each of us carries within us, an infinite
number of infinite universes. Then why are we not crushed the weight
of these? After all, we must be pretty crowded inside. Perhaps the
answer has to do with being spread out through so many dimensions,
an infinite number of dimensions in fact, so this infinite number
of infinite universes is actually balanced between and spread among
all these dimensions.
The implications for this paradigm shift will reach
into every aspect of our lives. At first it will seem very unsettling
because it appears to be so very different than the paradigm in
which we now live with its emphasis on the separation of objects
that even affects our language with its emphasis on nouns instead
of verbs.
Such a language shift will affect the very way we understand
our sensory perceptions. Now our language tells us that our senses
are perceiving objects that are either "us" or "not
us" depending on whether they are contained inside this thing
we call our body or whether they are outside it.
However, these are all mental constructions that shape and conform
our perceptions to linguistically and socially-approved ideas. There
may be other ways of understanding our perceptions, of seeing them
as indicating not separateness as much as different perspectives
of the same thing; or of seeing every thing as a slightly different
aspect of the whole which contains us as much as we contain it.
In this view, what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch are simply
different manifestations of the whole; like looking through a kaleidoscope
and viewing infinitely different arrangements of the same pieces.
Which is another way of saying that the universe is not so much
“us” and “not us” as much as it is different aspects of ourselves
just as we are different aspects of it.
Applying the new paradigm to specific examples of daily
living will be challenging. Consider a court room where the victim
of a crime and the perpetrator confront each other. Under the old
paradigm each considers the other to be a separate creature, one
of whom has wronged the other and therefore, under our justice system,
must somehow pay for that wrong.
Under the new paradigm, however, victim and perpetrator
now realize that each is contained in the other. The victim is part
of the perpetrator just as much as the perpetrator is contained
in the victim. So who has victimized whom, and who must pay?
This is even true for murder victims and murderers.
The victim continues to live in the murderer, while the murderer
actually killed him or her self. And what about the victim’s family
who wants justice and an eye for an eye, and now realize each of
them is part of the murderer, who likewise is contained in them?
In our economic system of Darwinian competition, it’s
survival of the fittest to reach the corporate top, whether by skill,
intelligence, guile, ruthlessness or all of the above. The person
at the top deserves to be there. All those below deserve their respective
places in the food chain pyramid. But now the person on top realizes
that he or she is contained in every single person below them. He
or she is part of them so who gains and who loses in sharing corporate
profits, for example? “This is mine. I’ve earned it” changes meaning
as the definition of “mine” and “I” changes.
Yet this is also true for employees as well. Whereas
under the old paradigm they might look at the owner/boss/employer
as a ruthless, greedy son-of-a-bitch who is trying to deprive them
of their just reward, now they realize that the owner is part of
them, just as they are part of him. So who is taking advantage of
whom?
Environmental issues will also change as our perspective
of them changes. Take a polluter, any polluter, from a person tossing
a potato chip bag out the window to a corporation releasing toxic
fumes or liquids. Under the old paradigm it’s “Hey, it’[s not hurting
me.” Under the new paradigm, however, that distinction no longer
exists because the person tossing out the chip bag actually is the
chip bag and is the land on which the bag lands. Just as the corporate
polluter is contained in the toxic emissions and is also part of
the water and the air and the land affected by the emissions.
What the new paradigm does is it forces us to look
at ourselves and the world in which we live from new perspectives.
It could make us more empathetic, more understanding, more compassionate.
Consider a meeting between President George W. Bush
and Osama bin Laden; sworn enemies, each of whom would probably
like to see the other dead as being wholly evil, antithetical to
each other’s way of life. Under the new paradigm, they look at each
other and now each one realizes that he is contained in the other.
So how are they to resolve their apparent differences?
The ramifications of the new paradigm will emerge over
decades until it becomes as elemental and “natural” to future generations
who are raised in it from birth as the old paradigm is “natural”
to those of us raised in it. Even our language will change as our
emphasis shifts the separateness of nouns to the connectedness of
verbs.
Yet such transitions are rarely easy. They are understandable
filled with anxiety and consternation as the ground shifts beneath
our feet. Earthquakes can be frightening and destructive until a
new, if temporary, equilibrium is reached.
One way of getting through such times is to look at
the paradigm shift as an old game with updated rules, like going
from Version 1.0 to 2.0. It may be frustrating learning the new
rules and how the system operates, but seeing it with such a light
touch will make it seem more like play and will help ease the acceptance
and understanding of a different perspective as our perspectives
change.
Indeed, changing perspectives is the heart of this
paradigm shift. We not only see through other people’s eyes, we
realize that their sight is now our sight as well.
It’s very much like putting on a show. Shakespeare said all the
world’s a stage and all of us are actors playing a role. Under the
old paradigm all we ever got to play was basically one role before
our lives were over. Now, it’s the theatrical equivalent of a customer
service department going 24/7/365. Now we are playing all the roles
all the time in all the plays on all the stages. Everyone becomes
far more than even the theatrical triple threat. Whatever it is,
it’s not boring. And in any case, in the evolutionary view of things,
even this new paradigm will eventually be replaced by yet another,
and another. No, it’s never boring.
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