Paradigms and Paradigm-breakers
I thought it might be a good idea to explain what I mean by paradigms and paradigm-breakers through a few examples. Some people may not be as willing as I am to pick up a dictionary.
Can openers may be my favorite example. The world became so used to the old style can opener that leaves you with the top of a can that is sharp and cannot be used to re-close the can that no one thought twice about improving it, even though it's a pretty crude implementation. This went on for as long as cans had been around. 100 years? 200?
So, then, someone came along and looked at things differently. They saw that the edge along the top could be cut in such a way that the can top no longer had sharp edges and could still be used to close the can. I hope you are familiar with both styles of can openers or you may not get the point. I expect young folks may not. But, then again, I don't think young folks will have nearly the amount of trouble with the paradigms I have been breaking, left and right, as old people.
But, let's try velcro. People, since the beginning of people, have cursed burrs in the woods. They get stuck on clothes and pretty much everywhere. That's all anyone thought of them for millennia. Someone came along and looked at them differently. They saw what a great method they would make for simplifying closures like zippers, buttons, and shoestrings. Velcro was created.
This last one is very similar to Loving Coitus. Burrs alone were not enough. Plastics were required, so it was not possible to even create velcro until the last century. For loving coitus, three millennia of insights regarding the body, as well as insights regarding the stupour, animal instincts and a lot more were required.
There is three millennia of effort to be credited [think "free love" and the Flower Power generation as my favorite example; Ralph Waldo Emerson is another; and pretty much anyone with quotes in Aphorisms or Maggie's Farm; I have to add, specifically, Tears For Fears as they are the only all-male band that seem to give a fig about empathy and portray some level of insight as to the fact that something is wrong with humanity and it mostly has to do with the male gender; of the female bands/lyricists, a lot of them get a sense of it(further evidence), FATM comes to mind], no matter how much I would love to take credit for it all. It is really a matter of our sentient awareness rising to the occasion.
All of these folks are paradigm-breakers to some extent. Maybe I'm unusual (wisecracks welcome), but my jaw hit the floor with both of these examples of witless paradigms (velcro and can openers) being broken, when I first encountered them. There were a lot more. One that I never put in Aphorisms because I don't know who to quote but I like alot is, "99.999% of the people want to do a good job. If they cannot, the process is broken." Talk about understatement.
I have spent my lifetime breaking paradigms. Some saved my life. One can save prehumanity from itself.
A few times I've been told, "well, that changes everything". Of course, it didn't. It only changed everything in some small aspect of a business or organization.
This changes everything. No understatement.
This will need a lot more work, I think. It's all almost getting to the point of fun, though. The obstructions have all been plowed aside and I can see with some level of clarity and concentrate on what it all means.