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Towards a world without a 1%
By Joost van Steenis
Changing the fundamental paradigms that rule society opens the door to a completely different future.
“Despite their defeats, the princes do not lose anything” (Jean-Paul Marat).
The world is dominated by the 1%, the Happy Few with a surplus of power and money. Despite wars, revolutions, economic and financial crises, natural catastrophes, etc. they rule the world already for ages.
Is a world possible where decisions are not taken because of the pivotal role of money but because all people have the same status?
Thomas S. Kuhn wrote in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: “….when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.”
Though his studies concerned the smaller world of science, also in the much more complicated big world unsolvable problems can be solved by applying new paradigms. Then we see things we could not see before. Copernicus could not foresee the influence of his new paradigm expressed in the small sentence: “The Earth is not the centre of the Universe”. The future is unknown but we can take the road to that new future by using a new paradigm, another small sentence that states that “all people have the same status”.
The future is not a simple extrapolation of the present. Extrapolations do not change the basic paradigms that determine our world. The predecessors of Copernicus explained the movements in the sky time and again with new calculations but could not solve many problems by assuming that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. “The failure of the existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones” (Kuhn). Copernicus wrote in the Preface to the De Revolutionibus that “the astronomical tradition had finally created a monster”. Our society based on the money paradigm has also become a monster in which nearly ten million kids die each year before they are five years old.
This problem cannot be solved when decisions are ruled by money. By adopting a new paradigm this becomes a prime problem. Now it is a secondary one because the kids are not important in the money economy. When the thinking of people is inspired by new principles, the world will start to change.
To open the door to a completely different world we must replace the old assumptions with new paradigms. Advancing on the road to that world is more important than the new world itself. The far future will be organised by people who live then. The transition is determined by a paradigm shift, a catastrophe, a revolution. The Catastrophe Theory of the French mathematician René Thom tells us that predictions are impossible. We can only strengthen the factors that lead to a revolution. When the fundamentals start to change, society will change also. To open the door we need new paradigms as guidelines for human activity.
Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat
http://philosophers-stone.co.uk
2013-02-25 05:35:38
Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2013/02/towards-a-world-without-a-1/
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