Paradigm – A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. (dictionary.com)

I found this to be a most interesting definition of this word – paradigm. It states that when we as a group or number of people are stimulated to collectively believe in the same way, we are basing that belief on our assumptions, concepts, values, and practices. Most notable about all of these words in their semantic meanings, is that they are all four based on hearsay instead of factual evidence. Let’s look closer at this revelation:

From dictionary.com:

1) Assumption – Arrogance; presumption. Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof; a supposition. The act of taking for granted or supposing.

2) Concept – A scheme; a plan. Something formed in the mind; a thought or notion. An idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.

3) Values – To consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance. To regard or esteem highly. To rate according to relative estimate of worth or desirability; evaluate. To assign a value to. A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable. In Mathematics – magnitude; quantity; number represented by a figure, symbol, or the like. In Ethics – any object or quality desirable as a means or as an end in itself.

4) Practices – To perform or do habitually or usually. To follow or observe habitually or customarily: to practice one’s religion. Habitual or customary performance; operation. Habit; custom. In Law – the established method of conducting legal proceedings. In Archaic – plotting; intrigue; trickery. To plot or conspire.

As we can see by these dictionary definitions, all four of these words are non-factual. They are based in non-reality. They require belief, or faith. And most importantly, they do not require proof. So, a paradigm could be defined as follows: a state of belief and compliance in some thing or idea, where one or more people follow what they consider to be true without the benefit of any factual evidence supporting that belief and their compliance to improvable and idealistic concepts.

One could consider livestock in this examination as an equitable synonym to the power of this paradigm. As lambs are lead to the slaughter, as Lemmings ironically follow each other off a cliff, and as sheep follow in packs of oblivious domesticated herds, so too do the masses of people follow their paradigm of perception and belief.

Let’s look at some examples of these types of paradigms:

– Politics –

Usually, when one thinks in terms of American politics, one associates oneself with one of three parties: Democrat, Republican, or 3rd party. These can also be said to be politically left, right, and center (or alternative). Alex Jones brilliantly coined the phrase, “the left-right paradigm”, meaning that most people, due to their above defined assumptions, concepts, values, and practices, are mentally blocked from understanding the bigger picture (habit and custom) and so subscribe to the illusion of being left or right, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, as if there were no other options outside of this illusionary paradigm.

Though there were eight candidates running for president in the 2008 election, we found that because the media blacked out and ignored any fair coverage of these other six candidates (except for brief side-stories of unwarranted and inaccurate ridicule and humiliation) the vast majority of voters would not even consider a 3rd party candidate due to the stigma that has been attached to these “outside the box”, enormously qualified competitors. When asked about their reluctance to vote for an alternative candidate, the overwhelming reaction and response was negative, and most truly believed that a 3rd party actually cannot and will not ever be voted into office. Their proof…? Hearsay.

They are stuck in the right-left paradigm.

Even voters who use the Constitution of the United States in their political debate and rhetoric have no idea that there is even a Constitutional Party. While many voters complain that their government has gotten too big and powerful for the peoples liberty, the Libertarian Party remains constantly invisible to voters even though this party’s main platform is in fact the reduction in both size, power, and world expansion of our government and military. Even the Green Party remains a void in comprehension for the masses that are stuck in their paradigm. The fact is that the biggest polluters on the planet are subsidized and de-regulated by the democratic and republican two-party system of government. And in turn these huge corporations are the main contributors to these democratic and republican campaigns (which ensures continued pollution and non-green policies and products). Wouldn’t it make more sense to vote for the “Green” Party, if only by simple word association?

Can the media really spin political bullshit so deeply into people’s minds that they truly believe that a square peg can fit into a round hole?

Apparently so…

– Food –

How many times have you heard a vegetarian say I occasionally eat meat? Or that eggs and milk aren’t really meat. How about a kosher Jewish man that eats at Denny’s? How many strictly organic food eaters shop at huge conglomerate grocery stores, without a clue that organic on the label only means that 75% of it’s ingredients have to be organic? And how many of them fall for the “all-natural” label? Arsenic is all-natural. Heck, so is human feces, though I suppose it could loosely be considered man-made! And with the crap that passes for food now days, I suppose even our poop isn’t qualified to be called organic any more…

The point is, consumers one and all fall for the same old marketing tricks that are used in politics. When a huge corporate conglomerate bought up Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream company many years ago, they didn’t change the label! The picture of those two fat guys still entice buyers to purchase this product, even while they lay on a lounge chair at Club Med for the rest of their obese lives and laugh at the irony of it all, that is if they haven’t died from an even more ironic heart attack by now. The paradigm of just accepting that the food, meat, produce, and pharmaceutical industries have our best interests as consumers in mind when they sell us their products is absolutely ridiculous.

Monsanto and companies like it have succeeded in genetically altering and contaminating most of our food supply to the point where its nutrition value is so depleted that it is now deadly and cancer causing. Case in point: Monsanto has completely inundated the market with their Round-up ready, genetically altered corn and soybeans. Since most of our products are now made with corn, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, corn oil, soybean oil, partially hydrolyzed soybean oil, and on and on and on, we can barely escape eating this poisonous corn or soybeans. Cows and pigs eat this corn, and are therefore contaminated with this genetically altered unnatural ingredient. Do you eat meat? Well then, you eat Monsanto corn!

We feed our pets kibbles and bits of the worst possible scraps of meat and cancerous growths from the beef and poultry industries; spoiled, contaminated, and not fit for human consumption. Why do we do this? Because we like the commercials where the beautiful dog has the high-pro-glow. Product placement. Brand loyalty. But you can rest assured that the dog in that commercial has never eaten the product it is selling before that day! And you can also take it to the bank that the Monsanto executives and board members will not eat the products that they sell. These are upper class; the pedigreed (that’s pedi-GREED). There is a reason the Queen of England has her own organic garden and protected hunting grounds.

The dairy industry has its own set of paradigms in which we all fall under. Whole, 2%, 1%, low-fat, non-fat, skim… and non-dairy (main ingredients: corn syrup and partially hydrolyzed soybean oil). And then they have the clever ploy of printing on their label that they do not use the growth hormone rbst in their cows. And, for the unsuspecting consumer, this is true. But what they don’t comprehend is that there are a multitude of growth hormones that can be used, and that only this particular hormone was in fact not used in this particular dairy product.

Silly consumers…

So which of the food paradigms do you fall under… bottled water, false organic, all natural, diet, low-carb, fat free, or non-rbst? Any way you look at it, our assumptions, concepts, values, and practices are severely manipulated in the marketing of these products. And at this point, it is nearly impossible to eat non-contaminated, truly organic, actually natural, corn and soybean free, non-hormone laden products. Good luck though. Perhaps the usual ignorance will help us through this particular paradigm.

– Religion –

Being the ultimate in belief and faith-based paradigms, I have to give a shout out to the billions who subscribe to a particular religion. Personal enlightenment aside, the corporate religious paradigm actually succeeds in making its followers live less in the image of God!

For instance, the stories of Jesus are so far off from the way a typical Christian behaves and lives his or her life, that this is the biggest reason people are turned off by the Christian religions. The assumption (i.e. arrogance, presumption) that a man can know God while in this life is the basis of this paradigm of faith.

It is based on the concept (a scheme; a plan. Something formed in the mind; a thought or notion.) of God that was put forth in an ancient book, which has been transcribed, translated, cut, downsized, censored, and reinterpreted so many times that there is no way that its original message or historical factualness can be validated or even conceived.

And, it was written by men.

It is the basis for the values (To consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance. A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable. Any object or quality desirable as a means or as an end in itself.) for which Christians have and personify in life. Perhaps the definition of values has been taken to literal by the devout? Materialism is not what the writers of this book had in mind when trying to assign personal values. However, with the money that the corporate churches take in at the expense of their parishioners, perhaps it is the church itself that is the problem. Blind faith in the corporate materialistic church itself instead of the personal and loving nature of each of our individual interpretations of God might be the true paradigm that has corrupted the very best of us.

Based on the teachings of the corporate church, and not necessarily the teachings of the original bible, Christians and individual churches develop their practices (To perform or do habitually or usually. To follow or observe habitually or customarily. Habit; custom. Plotting; intrigue; trickery. To plot or conspire.) The inevitable destination of those with blind faith is ignorance. Belief in God or something necessarily unknown after this life is perfectly understandable and should be encouraged. Faith that the afterlife is and can only be one thing as determined by the church is perfectly irrational and downright frightening. The religious paradigm has led the masses into war, witch-burning, human and animal ritual sacrifice, a disrespect for nature, a sense of immortal irresponsibility for the earth and its other inhabitants, and has been used to control and manipulate these masses in a way that can’t be fully explained here. But this control influences politics and the very freedoms that we as a people hold dear. And the powers that be control these puppet strings of blind faith with precision and evil intent.

A good example of this manipulation of the religious paradigm which influences millions is this: By using the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion as a battle cry, Christians and other religious faiths are convinced that they must actually vote to take away other people’s or minority group’s civil and human rights. Even while the church and its followers are screaming about the attack on their freedom of religion as this basic human right is slowly getting drained away by legislation and other ignorant thinking, they mount insurmountable advertising campaigns to take away, through the vote, the rights of other groups. All the while never realizing what a hypocritical and non-peaceful thing they are doing.

With well over 1000 different official religions in this world, all claiming to be the one true religion, it is hard to believe that religious faith is even still a paradigm that we can all fall under the influence of…

Yet we do.

Religion and righteousness are not fit to be in the same equation. They are two different concepts – one of corruption and one of being incorruptible. My values come from deep within. They do not come from the fear of a selfish, omnipotent, unforgiving God, nor from the fear of His opposite – Satan. My practices and actions come from my righteousness, instinctively knowing what is right and what is wrong. Where those instincts come from I would never presume to have an assumption. And my concept of good and evil, positive and negative, light and dark, come from looking at all history, religions, texts, and most importantly the ancient knowledge that has been suppressed by the corporate church.

I applaud anyone that does anything righteous in the name of God (whatever your definition). But I can only condemn anyone who acts on behalf of the corporate church in the name of God, as if the church is a holy corporate middleman that has some unearthly powers to attune and command the thoughts and will of God.

We must break all of these paradigms in order to see the true nature of what is happening around us – how we are controlled and how we are being slowly made sick and dying in the name of profits and control.

Isn’t this what Jesus would do?

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Clint Richardson (realitybloger.wordpress.com)
February 1, 2010