Rüdiger Lutz:
The canny TranCeformation - the paradigm-shift in progress - soft ways and hardships on the serendipity-trail
Since decades we are talking about pradigm-shifts. Every scientific discipline and field of exploration has its own "revolutionary" change of Weltanschauungen, which are their foundations. From physics to psychology, ecology to epistemology the very foundations of established theories are questioned and restructered.
However the speciality of paradigms is their quality of non-specialisation, they are explicitly holistic, encompassing, global and universal. So they are "against method" (Paul Feyerabend) and measurability of so called objective facts. The steps to the ecology of mind (Bateson) boil down to a canny TranCeformation of our entire cultural system. This is mainly because of the convergence of three major developments and revolutions in:
- Ecology (environmental crisis and deteriorations of natural resources, entropy and social reactions to it)
- Technology (micro-nano-pico-tech and global information explosion and computer-comunication/Internet)
- Neuropsychology (exploring inner space and psychedelic revolution through plants and synthetic drugs)
All three developments are parallel structures, which are momentarily generating the paradigmatic shift and TranCeformation to a postindustrial, planetary evolution in the new millennium.
For every specific aspect of this TranCeformtion there is already enough scientific verification or in Poppers critical approach, falsification of the old paradigm to show that we are in the mid of a major challenge to reason (Churchman), which is so badly needed those days.
However the general and overall insight and breakthrough has not happened yet, the system still suppresses all intentions and innovations, which endangers its materialistic and mechanistic core - the old paradigm, the dinosaurs and anachronistic structures prevent the obvious self-healing measures of change. Paradigms die with their proponents Thomas S. Kuhn prophesied wisely in his ground-breaking cevre "The Structure of scientific revolutions", however we have a already memetic imprints, that allow ideas and theories to prevail longer than the lifespan of its originators. Hierarchies and obsolete technologies, social darwinism and psychological conditioning are traditional, intrinsic values of our post-modern societies - take it or leave it! "Drop out" (T. Leary) was not meant to be cynical are suicidal in face of the apparent condition of mankind, but to open up to alternative views of reality and to work for a better and more reasonable world, we can live in.
The pioneers, psychonauts and futurists are already designing sustainable futures and seem helplessly unrealistic regarding the powers that exist. Nonetheless htey cannot be falsificated and dismissed, because they are the only hope there is for an endangered species, named homo sapiens.
Innovation is the hype of the times, but the ice is very thin on the surface of the terra incognita of tomorrow. Most idealistic and progressive endeavours are ended before they begin. Consensual reality is seen in the backview mirror and therefore a mere historical reminiscence to former achievements, an homage at times long gone. Jules Verne was called crazy for his descriptions of coming attractions and so are today's futurists, visionaries and designers nonrealistic producers of impossible worlds. The contemporary generation is torn between the images of thinkable futures and the realism of boom-or-doom positivists. The times they are a-changing and the careful observer doesn't stay passive, but participates in the ongoing dance of Shiva, the multifold goddess of love.
The convergence of iPod's and Internet, RFID's and communal experience of consciousness-raising plants lead to an ecological awareness, which is novel and also archaic in its TranCeformance and religious revival of the deeper level of human existence.
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2005/06 - http://www.thur.de/philo/gast/ruediger/lutz13.htm
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