An Absolute ‘change imagination’ versus an objective ‘imagine change’
‘If a lion could speak English we would not be able to understand him’
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Business people speak about paradigms in order to express some great change (they do not fully understand). Paradigm shifts in payments and information storage for example concerning ‘Blockchain’, but what is a paradigm? How can you or can you not relate to someone alien from a different paradigm? How can the poetic power of man help in being absolutely lost in translation in your own objective paradigm?
This article will confront you and make you aware of the presuppositions of your own paradigm! It will alos help you how to change an organization business to be better organised.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This article is also about:
A
The historical roots of the term ‘paradigm’?
What is a paradigm and why people think others are crazy?
Intermezzo: the duck, the rabbit, the turtle, the owl, the eagle and the lion
Second intermezzo to test your prejudices: the paradigm of the payment, the gift, the sacrifice and magic
The third intermezzo: a close encounter of the third kind with someone from a very different paradigm talking about 911
How to get to know your paradigm and the difference between the philosopher and anthropologist?
This should have been censored!
How can you compare paradigms or apples and pears and Newton’s ‘witchcraft’.
Intermezzo: the truth of poetry.
The word truth in Latin, Greek, Arabic and English.
When do we speak of different paradigms and how different are they?
Comparing the paradigms of Newton, Einstein and quantum mechanics.
The relation between relativity theory and quantum mechanics is as the relation between morality and freedom.
13
Organizational alchemy.
The paradigm of love.
Short metaphorical story.
The Greeks and four different words for love: love between people of different paradigms
This article is also about:
(4-2-2018, Amsterdam). This article is really about the difference between imagining change from within the same paradigm and change imagination as the ability to imagine from within another paradigm. It is about the difference between letting your perception and acts be determined by a paradigm others have created for you and creating your own paradigms (with given principles). Someone may act crazy, but viewing him or her from a different paradigm may change your outlook! It is about being a slave or a king both ruled by a paradigm or being really free to take any social role, any face.
This article is about becoming aware different paradigms (of perception, thinking and acting) really exists, cultural differences exist, and that you cannot just think the differences away by thinking you can easily think yourself from within another paradigm. Getting to know another paradigm costs lots of efforts, energy, and is not an analytical exercise for thinking. Think of the time it may cost you to understand relativity theory. You have to immerse your whole self in another paradigm to understand it and the other people who work and life in that paradigm, that (platonic) cave (realizing that everyone, all bodies, needs a cave, a shelter, to resists the stormy deadly weather outside – meaning your body is the cave!).
A
The historical roots of the term ‘paradigm’?
The paradigmatic example of a big revolutionary, rather than incremental, change is that of a paradigm shift. In business people speak about ‘paradigm shifts’, but not a lot of people know that this expression ‘paradigm shift’ was coined by Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) a philosopher of science. Not a scientist, but someone who reflected on science and the meaning of science for science, reflected on how scientific theories could change and whether scientific progression was possible.
He was struck by the difference in theories between Aristotle and modern science. How could one of the most intelligent people who ever lived, Aristotle (384-322 BC), be so far from the truth of modern science? Given the intelligence of Aristotle the benefit of the doubt (over and against saying he is crazy)Kuhn concluded that Aristotle must have lived in a different world or rather living in a different perspective of the common same old world we live in. Not is the case that two worlds exist for there is one world. Aristotle had a different paradigm and was not crazy.
What is a paradigm and why people think others are crazy?
Well literally a paradigm means ‘that what is said over all sayings’. ‘Para’ means ‘over’ or ‘beyond’ and ‘digm’ comes from ‘dicere’, that is ‘saying’. So a paradigm is about all that is said implicitly in what is said explicitly.
My favourite example to clarify what a paradigm is is to compare it to a certain game. The paradigm consists of the rules of the game that define what are lawful moves within the game and what are forbidden impossible moves. Chess is different from back gammon, but in making the metaphor more fitting we must stick to games that are very similar in using the same game board to play on for by analogy that game board is the world and the rules are the perspectives on the world. You can play back gammon or trick-Trak on the same board or classic chess and some alternative chess game on the same board. Say the alternative chess game even has the same rules as classical chess, but only the goal, the purpose of the game is different, namely to let your pieces be hit as quickly as possible, to lose your king as quickly as possible, then someone who only knows classical chess would think the players of that play are totally crazy.
The classical chess players are themselves in an absolute sense crazy, do not have the flexibility of mind, for they have not the flexibility to think outside their own paradigm, their ‘box’, and project their ‘rule-box’ on another box. They do not know how to think outside-the-box. Well this example is easy and everyone would agree that he or she can easily go outside the box or if you compare a paradigm with an island that he or she can swim or build a ship to visit other islands, with other cultures. The reason is because these examples fit the same paradigm of Western culture.
Intermezzo: the duck, the rabbit, the turtle, the owl, the eagle and the lion
The rabbit said that the duck was crazy and the duck said that the rabbit was crazy when they saw this poetic picture:
They both accused each other of authistically projecting there subjective perception on the world and thus on each other. A blind mole passed and said that he could hear the love between the duck and the rabbit for both wanted that the other recognized them, they both wanted that they could share a form of life in order to share their lives, to share each other and become one. A wise owl spoke and said that both the duck and rabbit are hunted by the hunter. An eagle landed and grabbed both the duck and the rabbit and brought them to the lion. What happened next? Is this a love story?
Second intermezzo to test your prejudices: the paradigm of the payment, the gift, the sacrifice and magic
To get to the truth it is well know you have to be a salmon swimming against current thought of what they-think, that is of what you should think. You the reader are trapped in the paradigm of the payment, the paradigm of efficiency as production, if you think a sacrifice an animal is totally meaningless for you totally destroy an animal without even consuming the animal.
To know a little more and about the difference between the payment, the gift and the sacrifice go to and you will have a way to categorize cultural paradigms: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/intermezzo-gift-einstein-debt-credit-quantum-james-roolvink/ Learn how the total destruction is the greatest production. Learn that there is a hierarchy of paradigms. The more hierarchical the paradigm the more it can let you experience what precedes and is beyond all paradigms. Learn that truth is not democratic and you have to fight for it. Learn that you may have not enough energy to learn other more fundamental, hierarchical paradigms.
These for achetypes of cultural paradigms I see can be reduced to two paradigms: the paradigm of payment in which everything is a coincidence and the other paradigms for whom such a thing as coincidence does not exist and rather speak about power. From the perspective of coincidence power is the impossible fairy tail of controlling coincidences, quantum effects, the fairy tale of Apollo controlling chaos.
You cannot pay for magic, but magical payments exist.
The third intermezzo: a close encounter of the third kind with someone from a very different paradigm talking about 911 and immaculate conception
If you are not aware other objective paradims exist and that your objective reality, your world, is the absolute only reality the question is what happens if you meet someone of a different paradigm. If the paradigm does not differ very much the other person would be defined as eccentric. If the paradigm differs quite a bit the other person would be interpreted as being crazy, but if that person can act consistently within your paradigm, understand your paradigm, and if you are honest that person cannot be crazy. You have to conclude you are crazy, but if you conclude you are crazy your are not really crazy, so the very different person must be ‘boxed’ differently, namely as evil and demonic (in the christian sense, not the Greek sense in which some demons/djinn mediated between the gods/angels and humans). You may want to hurt and kill that other person. You want to do that if you are afraid your perspective is not absolute and that your life could have lived differently, richer, more truthful. The other de-justifies your life being giving you a choice to life differently.
You notice that another really is an other when he or she can interprete all events in the world from a total different, yet consistent ‘reasonable’ (‘logos’), perspective even if the paradigm seems very irrational. ‘911’ in our normal paradigm is either bad luck or a conspiracy. In another paradigm it may be a negative satanic miracle. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXPLZUmlpoo&t=303s). On Youtube you may find footage in which you see an explosion in WTC before the plain crashes into the WTC. Within the scientific paradigm we can easily explain this with the help of the mechanical cause in which a cause from the past causes an actual effect to occur now. (Do you see how contradictionary the concept of mechanical causality is!). However with the eyes of Aristotle, and quantum mechanics, and his final cause in which the final effect causes the cause you may have a whole other outlook on what happened at 911, although what is an absolute fact is that what happened is a tragedy.
You will notice the others otherness if the perspective on things and people you care about, you love, is very different, but with the same amount of love or even more. You might get jaleous on his or hers ability to love and become to hate that person.
What you come from a gift-paradim and the other person from the sacrificial-paradigm? Nice love stories or tragedies can evolve from that question! Not so much if the others otherness is magical for with holy magic everything is resolved just in time with justice.
With the ‘final cause’ in your heart try and explain an immaculate conception!
How to get to know your paradigm and the difference between the philosopher and anthropologist?
What a paradigm is one comes to know in ‘philosophical’ reflecting explicitly on what is said implicitly and/or by ‘anthropologically’ involve yourself, immerse yourself in a totally different culture. A real philosopher tries to build a perspective of world with an absolute minimum of presuppositions. How does the world look like from the perspective of logic alone (Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)? How does the world look like in a ‘count-as-1’ (1937-…)? What is presupposed in time (‘De kleine prins telt mee’ James Roolvink 1977…). The philosopher is concerned about the structure of all possible perspectives of the world.
While the philosopher tries to get rid of all non-absolute implicit presuppositions the anthropologist tries to gain as much new objective presuppositions of the new culture. Not that I call these cultural presuppositions ‘objective’ in these sense that they constitute what is objectively possible as the rules of a game tell you what is possible or not. Personally I am an unmovable philosopher, or rather ‘erosoph’ (I come back to that), that can change the perspective of the world from my rocking chair rather than an anthropologist that is moving, travelling, around the world, or to be more truthful: a philosopher that has visited a tribe in West-Africa Guinee Conakry that has the most different perspective of the world and translated this difference from within the sources of Western thinking itself in order to enrich Western thinking of what is possible and thus allowing a different deeper perception of the world.
Anyway it is not about thinking differently, but about experiencing, perceiving differently. How is the world experiences when time is experienced as an actual past? In that paradigm we can not only think our ancestors. ‘spirits’, still live, but can actually perceive them and they can perceive is. In what way do they exist and do we exist if that is true? Etc. etc..
Ludwig Wittgenstein who became an anthropological philosopher of daily live summarized it well: ‘If a lion could speak English we could not understand him’. We cannot start thinking what the lion would mean with ‘green rocks with sorrow rain, thus hunt at noon with three lionesses’ and how he concludes (‘thus’). We have to share the form of live of the lion to understand what he just said.
This should have been censored!
Are you bold enough to get outside your box, outside your island and cross the ocean in search for a ‘difference’, outside your form of live? And what is implied in this picture is imagination externally from the outside. Better it is to say you are an egg and that you need to get that what is outside your egg, infinity/God, inside your egg to perceive other eggs from the inside, from within their perspective. That means the objective world is the perspective on the Absolute Infinite and the world does not exists in itself, but is the result of the relation between the Absolute Infinite with its subject, egg. The world is constituted (Immanuel Kant 1724-1804). The box does not exists in itself and going outside the box neither. The box exists only for-us, but the for-us exists absolutely in itself. The for-us is your soul and the world therefor is not an illusion, but an appearance of something Absolute (the relation between God and the soul).
How can you compare paradigms or apples and pears and Newton’s ‘witchcraft’
If in science a paradigm X can explain all the natural phenomena in paradigm Y, explain more phenomena and can explain what is presupposed in paradigm Y one can say that paradigm X is more truthful than paradigm Y. Newton (1642–1726/1727) had to posit ‘gravity’ and got himself in a lot of problem in the beginning after publication of his laws of motion for gravity implied ‘causation at a distance’ and does implying ‘witchcraft’, something beyond material things. Einstein (1879-1955) could explain gravity with a material cause and could also explain all other natural phenomena Newton described (better), thus relativity theory is more true than Newton’s theory, that is not totally untrue, but less true (rather than less untrue for it says something objective).
Back gammon is a better game than Goose plates for with back gammon you can ‘play’ more. Games that allow you to play more are games that bring you beyond that game and stimulate to invent games, change the rules of the game you are playing. Tennis is better than table tennis. Kung-Fu as an art is better than tennis as a sport etc..
From within the paradigm, the form of live of table tennis, we cannot speak about other sports. In different paradigms the same words ‘play’, ‘winning’ have different meanings, so with words you cannot translate one paradigm into each other. Being in one paradigm you cannot speak about another other paradigm and vice versa. You can be acting in different paradigms or have an intuition of other paradigms, but there is not an objective jargon in which to compare the paradigms, for all paradigms are objective.
It is the reason that in merging companies rather than talk about what is or should be common teams from different companies have to do something together in other to get to share a common live form. Training in ‘communication’ are normally very formal ‘if this…than that’ rather than that they focus on how to get to know another form of live, another soul.
Intermezzo: the truth of poetry
Yet this is not the end of thinking with words, not the end of words, for the one who can switch perspectives, switchs paradigms can poetically translate one experience in one paradigm into another experience (or set of experiences) in another paradigm. Poetry is more true than the phrases within a paradigm for poetry embraces more than one paradigm and real poetry is about translating that out of which all finite paradigms, finite worlds, come into existence, the ‘Absolute Infinite’, into a finite paradigm (of how we objectively in words view our objective world – so a paradigm I consider as a verbal reflection of the mind (bodily brain) of the objective world we perceive with our bodies). Poetry is not objective language, but an absolute subjective language that is both more and less than objective language, thus more.
‘A penalty shootout in soccer can be compared to a tie-break in the fifth set at the US Open’ is a poetical analogy. Analogies are the bridges the stairs to other paradigms and to that out of which all paradigms come into existence. Man is a poet.
Man is the child that plays counters in a game. ‘Time is a child that plays counters in a game, the royal power is of a child’ (Herakleitos c. 535 – c. 475 BC). Scholars argue what game the child played, chess or back gammon or some other game, but the point is that the child is playing in the sense of inventing a new game from within the bounds of an already existing game or without any bounds. The power comes from playing as inventing without bounds from within the Absolute Infinite, the Player in all players. Power is about inventing not new paradigms as reflections of an objective world, but about inventing, seeing, new possible objective worlds. The child can change into a lion or an angel.
By poetical analogy: science stands over and against philosophy as playing stands over and against magic. Playing is a symbol of magic and the symbol partakes in a finite way into what it symbolizes. Science is a symbol of philosophy and all sciences were born out of philosophy. Man plays when he is doing philosophy. In magic objective truths
The word truth in Latin, Greek, Arabic and English
For Kuhn the meaning of the word ‘truth’ had different meaning in one paradigm than in another paradigm. What is true can even be untrue in another paradigm. A move in one game of chess is considered stupid or impossible and in another game as a stroke of genius.
The word for true in Latin ‘veritas’ is thought against the background of the ‘falsum’, the false. Veritas means not-false. The false the Romans considered as a breach of contract and thus chaos. Veritas means order and became to mean a priori (logical) certainty. Veritas means order by closing everything in, by boxing everything into boxes. The Romans are a bad translation of the Greeks and translated the Greek ‘pseudo’ to the false. Yet a ‘pseudonym’ reveals more about an author than the ‘official’ name in which the state inscribed itself into the author. The pseudonym is a more true name, reveals more about the essence, the soul, or the author.
In Greek the word for truth is ‘Aletheia’ and is considered a goddess who truthfully opens you to the best of objective truths. (In the Quran God is considered the Opener). We who are opened (for ourselves, the best objective world and to the Opener) have no a priori power, certainty to get opened when we want. (The subject had no power over the Absolute Infinite and thus has not even power to control himself!).
If you compare different radio stations to different objective truths she guides you to what is the best radio station to listen to that allows you to hear the silence in which all radio stations emerge and to hear the Voice beyond this silent void that created this void and all things that emerge in this void. ‘Aletheia’ literally means not-forgetting, thus remembering the truth you already know. That is why in reflecting on a truth-experience you always say ‘I really already knew that all along’. Now you know even better what you already knew!
The word ‘true’ in English comes from the German ‘treu’ which means faithful and tree. A ‘tree’ means ‘three’ for a tree connects the earth, the heavens and itself to each other. The tree is not faithful to the earth.
The tree is faithful to the heavens is rooted with its roots in heaven.
By being faithful to the heavens (Alethei, the Opener, the Infinite Absolute, God, the Player in all players etc.) you may root in yourself and be allowed to be faithful to yourself (your soul).
This is our Celtic tree of life in which branches (effects) root in roots (causes) and the roots (causes) root in the branches (effects). To really understand this tree and make it a wheel of time, as a flying machine for your soul, you must understand that the heavenly roots root in the future and branches with their fruits are of the earthly present. ‘If a lion could speak English we could not understand him’. What we can understand of this lion is that this lion does not recognize our idea of mechanical causality from the past to the present. (The ‘Celtic’ kinglike speech of causality from within the future is translated to the ordinary concepts of causality of being faithful to the earth, roots rooted in the earth, by a game I invented called ‘back-in-time-chess’ that could be played hopefully at the end of 2018 and is being programmed and reinvented were necessary by program genius Martin Dirkzwager).
When do we speak of different paradigms and how different are they?
Well that depends on how deep you may see. In science by scientist’s Newtonian mechanics, relativity theory and quantum mechanics are considered different paradigms. The mental and even existential shock in the beginning of the 20th century was the idea that both relativity theory and quantum mechanics provides an objective mental perspective on how we experience (‘ ’) world (in our experience), yet on a mental logical level these theories are logically opposed. Two logical consistent objective theories are relative to each other logically inconsistent.
Is reality consistent or are we? You might conclude that the Absolute Infinite is logically inconsistent, a chaos or is more than logical (like mathematics that is more than logical in the sense of not being not logical), a greater harmony, a greater objectivity, something Absolute. You might think that both our theories, we, and absolute reality are consistent, that is logical. If you think this you will probably search for an all unifying theory. The problem of unifying theories for scientist is that they become to philosophical and this mathematical not allowing verification in the objective world (that remember is not considered to exist in itself, but is the effect of Absolute reality within the subject it creates).
If you look deeper and away from the external surface you might consider these theories the same (as Martin Heidegger 1889-1976 for example did) for they all think within the relation of the subject and the objective world, objective reality. They do not consider the Absolute who in reality is not an impersonal Absolute but a Personal Subject with a capital ‘S’ and all beings that mediate between the Subject and subject. From the surface these theories are very different, but if you go deeper to the level of fundamental grammar they are the same for they are ‘captivated’ in an dualistic logical binary jargon of ‘subject-object’.
Philosophy starts with ‘three’ introducing something ‘Absolute’, introducing a new third word. Wisdom starts with ‘four’ and can think in a ‘fourfold’. Power starts with nine and being able to think the objective world within a nine-fold. Once I asked a man of Power, a man of God, to give a definition of power for a loved one and he replied: ‘Power is not to die stupid’.
Comparing Newton, Einstein and quantum mechanics
In this scheme (from 2001/2) I tried to extract a philosophical outlook from the science of these theories. That is possible because these theories implicitly use philosophical building blocks.
The relation between relativity theory and quantum mechanics is as the relation between morality and freedom
Relativity theory stands to quantum mechanics as the moral law stands to freedom. For us as embodied powerless beings absolute power appears as freedom in abiding to the moral law. We have to start with the abiding to the moral law and later we experience freedom, but in itself power is earlier and the moral law is later. (The holy precedes and is beyond morality). In other words for us quantum mechanics gets its meaning with relativity theory as its background as magic gets its meaning from us with quantum mechanics as its background.
However to understand something in itself from within itself you do not need a background. Think of the Celtic tree, the platonic ideas, the ideas of God. Not: (determinism vs. freedom) vs. power. You can ‘think’ power in and of itself.
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Organizational alchemy
Organizations and be seen as paradigms or tribes. They may seem very different from the surface doing very different things, but on a deeper level they may look the same sharing the more or less the same core values for example. Newtonian mechanics, relativity theory and quantum mechanics share the same subject-object dichotomy although Newtonian mechanics emphasis or is grown out of the ‘subject’ aspect, relativity theory the ‘object’ aspect and quantum mechanics the ‘relation between subject and object’.
If you really want to have a better execution for example in sales you may train some skills (cold calling, cold writing – trainings I provide as well), but better is to go one level (or more levels) deeper than the level of execution that you want to improve. To execute a website, in the sense of writing the content of a website is even impossible without having clarity of the core ideology (core values and mission), the stuff your paradigm is made of.
The paradigm of love
Short metaphorical story
What if the Celtic tree, that can fly, is in love with an immovable heavenly tree firmly rooted in heaven? And what if the heavenly tree thinks the Celtic tree is no real tree at all and of the devil? The Celtic seduces by pretending to be an out of the ordinary beautiful eccentric earthly tree, that has to be careful to balance divine craziness, beyond the heavens and earth, plain ordinary earth like slow and boring thinking, into balanced eccentricity. The heavenly tree will long for this tree and if the love is so strong she, her roots, get loose out of heaven and she falls on earth, rooted in nothing, and sure to die. The Celtic tree will fly to her and save her allowing her roots to root in him so she can survive. He has to teach she is a Celtic tree as well and become independent rooted in herself. Being caught by heavenly memories she thinks that is crazy and of the devil. He flies near the earth and she lets loose. She now is a walking tree on the earth and can root were she wants. All earthly male trees fall in love with her and she may forget herself and the Celtic tree if she listen to much to the seducing songs of the earthly trees that try to seduce her to root forever near them, for ever forgetting she is a heavenly tree. She is strong and walks the earth and inspires young tries to move. She is a witch tree, a very lonely tree. One day she sees the Celtic tree flying through the sky. She is falls in love once a again with this sorcerer who has a source in himself, who is his own source (made possible of course by the Source in all sources, the Player in all players).
It is easy to finish or change this story, this outline, these pointers for a fairy tale. Do know that scientists discovered that forests move!
The Greeks and four different words for love
Love is hard to maintain if loved ones are living far apart from each other. Love is almost impossible to maintain if loved once live in the same house, but live in different paradigms, if they are different trees. Impossible if neither of the trees is a Celtic tree. Possible in the end if one of the trees is a Celtic tree.
If one of the trees is a heavenly sacred ensouled tree and the other a philosophical high spirited tree only bodily animalistic ‘kerootes’, the body, can mediate between soul and spirit. Without this mediation love is not even possible to maintain even temporary. What any maintenance love can turn in the greatest disappointment ever. Outer anger and inner grief. To communicate in to be in communion with each other and share a form of life.
How do you love your loved one? How do you love your business? Can you see your business as a divine gift as an expression, a manifestation, an objectivation, of your soul`s love for the Absolute Infinite? Is your business a mirror in which you can see yourself, rather than look to yourself, and allowing to See through the mirror and through yourself into the Absolute Infinite? Eros means in loving your by God given loved one loving God who allowed you to receive such a gift. To receive means to love the loved one more than you love yourself.
It helps if you have more than one word for love. Of course we can describe the words of the Greek paradigm into ours, our language, but it is better if that description is compressed into one word for the word is more primary than language. Words are not build from language, language is built from words.
Kind regards,
James Roolvink
Interested in an incremental change for the better within or radical change of your organization?
Interested in training your creativity systematically? A one day course had been developed to train creativity for both business and technological innovation. Do you want to be able to imagine change or be able to change your imagination? Do you want to perceive something different or be able to perceive the same thing differently?
Contact me at [email protected] ‘Change imagination . Discover treasures’
In 2018 a book called ‘De kleine prins telt mee’ shall be published in which the whole of Western thought is transformed from within the sources of the West itself. This will be one of the most important books of this century. A radical change on our perspective on time and who we are as humans will be argumented for. It will be a blow for materialism.
I have been developing the thoughts in this book over a period of almost 20 years in front of my computer and in Africa. Some of the thoughts are going to be objectified in a game ‘back-in-time-chess’ in order that by playing you may learn these fundamental thoughts easily, for playing is more concrete than our other ordinary doings and dwellings.
These insights will benefit businesses and if your are interested contact me at [email protected] ‘Change imagination . Discover treasures’
