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The Paradigm Conspiracy Outline
Š1996 Denise Breton and Christopher Largent. All Rights Reserved.
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Chapter 1 - Recovery: The Art of Paradigm Shifts

The Global Crisis of Addictions

Caught in Deadly Processes

Substance addictions

Process addictions

Addiction to:

Working, winning, high stress, relationships
fast track jobs, getting fame, etc.

The most "lauded" activities turn into addictive patterns

Religion, scientific study, academic inquiry, government service.

	Religion turns into obsession
	Scientific study turns into dogma.
	Systems of scientific research has its own brand of obsessive-complusive behavior.
	Academic inquiry becomes a "in-your-head" addiction
	Government service becomes power addiction

Process addictions are as deadly as substance addictions, because they underline substance addictions and just about every social and global ill we have.

Addict-Making Systems

Family dynamics, school rules, workplace polcies and practices, corporate hierarchies, government workings, media messages, cultural and religious belief systems -- all operate in ways that set us up to behave addictively. Society itself is an "addictive" system.

The Paradigm Conspiracy

Enter "Paradigms"

	Thomas Khun introduced the term "paradigm" in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.
	To raise "paradigm issues" is to reflect on the ideas or concepts we're using as our map of reality our worldview, life perspective, philosophy, or mental model. It is the blueprint we use to build our world in our mind.
	Paradigms usually begin with the institution of some "exemplary model" that weaves together theories, "standards" and methods in a way that seems to make the best sense at the time.

Developments within a paradigm

Developments occurring within the framework of a paradigm

Example: "normal science", where the paradigm gets so comfortable it becomes invisible, and practitioners operate within a mental model and pursue it to the nth degree. Becoming "healthy" is adjusting to the paradigm's definition of "healthy".

Developments which check the paradigm and create a new paradigm.

Paradigm Shifts

	Revolutionary development comes when the paradigm reaches a CRISIS, in that it doesn't solve problems the same any more. Anomalies relative to the paradigm begin to accumulate. Scientists begin to freak out as everything they ever learned is called into question. They believe that a new paradigm is not needed, that we just have to "make the one we have work better", and that "when things don't work, "something must be wrong with us".
	The more the paradigm fails to do its job, the more old-paradigm scientists try to make it work.
	The paradigm is ready for a revolution, but because old-paradigm scientists have forgotten that they even have a paradigm, scientists conclude instead that their world is falling apart, and that alternative ways of doing science don't exist. They are too bound to the paradigm to notice they are stumbling over their own models.

Paradigms can cause "soul-abusive" systems -- OUR CURRENT SYSTEM

Today we are not experiencing paradigm norms as healthy, either personally or globally. The blueprint for our social structure, families, governments, schools and businesses is not working well at all. It is causing out shared social systems to function abusively and to make us sick, physically and psychologically, as well.

The people who control the failing paradigm respond in specific ways

Blame certain people and label them "troublemakers"

"It's the ________ people that have to be restrained.

"We need more discipline and more restraint"

"We need more jails and longer jail sentences"

"We need to take away people's defensive weapons"

"We need more testing"

"We need more laws with stricter enforcement"

Coming down on people in the current paradigm isn't considered abuse

"If things don't work the answer is to take away more rights and make more laws"

The Paradigm of Control and "Power-Over" Model THE CONTROL PARADIGM MODEL

	What kind of healthy social "paradigm" requires that we blame individuals, intimidate and punish them in order to keep our "social systems" healthy? The overall pattern has to do with CONTROL.
	Domination is the paradigm's driving issue.
	According to the model, "if somebody doesn't control us, our social systems will fall into chaos"
	Paradigm model "authorities" believe that "nothing would work if we each did our own thing, and to have order, society must do what "the authorities" tell us to do.

The Soul : The Big Threat

	To be controlled, we have to be unplugged from competing sources of control. The major threat to external control is our internal guidance system - our Soul, the core of who we are, our deep presence, our inner connectedness to the Creative Force in the Universe. It's our direct link to reality. This core is the souce of our talent and the wellspring of creativity.
	To the control paradigm, the Soul* is the enemy* - what has to be removed from consideration in order for external control to work. Only when we're sufficiently disconnected from our inner compass will we follow external demands.

"Get Rid of the Troublemakers"

For "fear of chaos" social systems adopt the control paradigm and run with it. Through all sorts of institutionalized policies, we get the message that we are unacceptable the way we are, but that "if we surrender ourselves to the social system of control (family, school, business, profession, religion) "we'll become acceptable". The Soul is looked upon as a "sloppy inefficient trouble- maker" that we would be better off without.

The more control systems zap our inner lives, the less social order we have. It's a paradigm in crisis, creating neither personal or global health.

Two Paradigm Conspiracies

	As long as the paradigm remains "invisible" we're stuck. The prevailing model stymies change. It's the first paradigm conspiracy -- the one that blocks our best efforts to confront crises and change.
	The leap into "extraordinary science". The most conspiratorial part of a paradigm shift is that it lie within each of us to do it, but that we are essentially maintained in a state which keeps people from sharing their effort to change. Movers and shakers are powerless to prevent constructive change once many people start to hold a different viewpoint.

Making the Shift: By Death or Recovery?

Paradigm shifts are scary precisely because we don't know what's next. Control paradigm authorities claim that "soul-guided worlds aren't possible - that they degenerate into anarchy". Challenging this cultural belief involves a leap of faith.

Plan A: Death [ Addict-making paradigms lead to death ]

	Kuhn believed that paradigms permeate our consciousness so thoroughly that the only way to get rid of them is for old paradigm practitioners to die off. However, as a method for paradigm change, it lacks practicality, particularly if you take reincarnation into account.
	Either we let addictive paradigms die, or we die under the addictive model.

Plan B: Recovery

Using the Alcoholics Anonymous model of recovery from addiction is a viable model to allow people to experience their personal paradigm in crisis and then to embark on the journey of "extraordinary science" in order to evolve their own models.

"Micro" (personal) recovery has limits within the context of a larger defunct paradigm, because how can a person get healthy when the system itself is sick? How can we make the paradigm revolution that our Soul requires as long as our cultural paradigm conspires to sabotage our shift to internal guidance?

	As long as social systems continue to operate on a control paradigm, they reinforce habits that put Soul needs last, because that's how we're controllable.
	Sick paradigms make sick institutions that make sick people -- and then reward us for not noticing how sick we have become.

Getting to the paradigm-cause of social illness.

	Social systems resist because the control paradigm hiding in the shadows won't allow system-wide transformation to occur.
	Micro-recovery is where the process of paradigm revolution starts.
	Getting to the root of these patterns, we question the paradigm behind them and then move away from it.
	The social systems requiring people to behave in soul-disconnected ways must also change.
	Belief structures, rules, methods and goals (the paradigm) that requires "soul loss" to "create a healthy society" must be changed.

RECOVERY - What it is and isn't.

What recovery is

Recovery is holistic, relating to the big picture, the whole of creation. Our personal traumas are related to the systems arounf us, because we're adopted their paradigm as well. How our social systems "think" has become the way we "think"

What recovery is not

	Recovery is not about "fixing people". The fact that we feel this way doesn't mean there is something "wrong" with us. There is something right in that we notice the consistent wounding of our inner lives and that we can't tolerate it any more.
	Recovery is not about "getting rid of bad habits". Looking at it in terms of "habits" alone bypasses the whole point about the crisis in the paradigm itself in which the "habit" exists.
	Recovery is not about becoming "normal".

We're not talking about "blame" -- We are talking about accountability.

The "Blame Dodge"

In order to "get off the hook", control-paradigm systems claim they're being "blamed". But, that's a dodge. Systems and their "authorities" protect themselves by taking no responsibility for the consequences of their behavior. They don't want the consequences known, and if it does become know, they want to make sure they're not held "responsible". The cry of "your blaming others" is a trick for keeping control paradigms in place. A paradigm approach considers responsibility all the way around.

Example: The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire which killed 146 and injured 70. Response was to "pin the blame", not seek accountability. But, several changes were made in the paradigm to provide for increased worker safety.

Paradigm Accountability

	Although individuals and social institutions are held accountable, its the paradigm that is at the root of any accountability for action, because it is the paradigm that creates the context in which events occur.
	If a paradigm requires doing emotional violence to individuals from the time they're born and institutionalizes humiliation as the way to achieve "social order", then tragedies are bound to follow.

Personal Recovery as a Personal Paradigm Shift. With responsibility comes the choice to shift models.

Soul pain is often reflective of paradigm crisis and must be acknowledged as such.

	Shifts in models of consciousness can often be painful. The trick with recovery is to trace the pain back to the paradigm model that makes all of us less than who we are, not to other people or circumstances.
	When the pain becomes too much, people often resort to addictions

Spiritual Awakening and Recovery Processes

	Recovery processes also involve a process of spiritual awakening, and constitute a profound shift to a paradigm that honors who we are, and unveils the truth underneath the roles we have assumed.
	Supported by a paradigm of Soul-Connectedness, we come to trust the inner self enough to follow it on a path of spiritual awakening,

Creativity

As we make a paradigm shift, we experience an explosion of creativity. Stepping out of the control-defined "norm", we begin doing what we love and following inner guidance.

Not Stopping With Personal Paradigm Shifts

Social Systems: The Means of Control

A snag to the relative success of personal paradigm shifting is the system snag, since we are surrounded by a social system which is the means of control. Our current social system components function as "emissaries" of the control paradigm, sent to render the population as controllable. The function of the current social system is to make people obedient and compliant.

Soul- Violating Family Systems

	Very violent children are almost always frequent recipients of severe punishment at home, and this violence breeds more violence
	Abusive executives and CEOs don't exploit employees and customers without help from their family upbringing which entrained those kind of principles as viable options for problem solving.

Soul-Violating Social Systems