News Flash - The Old Paradigm Isn't Coming Back!

 One problem I see with so many discussions about politics, culture, the economy and other areas is the refusal of people on all sides of the issues to accept the reality of change. Whether it's liberals or conservatives, materialists or followers of religions, they tend to blame the "other side" for the situation and seem intent on returning to a time when things were supposedly better. The terms "old paradigm" and "new paradigm" get thrown around quite a bit, and they can mean many things. A paradigm, however, generally refers to something significant and fundamental rather than just a minor or secondary aspect of something. So let's look at some areas where the old paradigm is simply not going to return no matter what anybody does, no matter who gets elected and no matter how much we try to deny it: *** The Economy -jobs that were created for the industrial age are fading fast. *** The Environment - regardless of the cause, the climate appears to be changing. *** Culture -the "nuclear family," a world of distinct and separate nations and races; these are already anachronistic concepts. *** Dogma -politics, economics, nationalism & religion are increasingly irrelevant. None of the above are exactly revelations. Everyone sees this occurring right before our eyes, but the problem is that hardly anyone accepts that it's really happening and that it's irreversible. I propose that, rather than see such things as problems, we take them as axioms for the times we're living in and look for ways to make the best of them. If we explore these phenomena in more detail, we can see that this isn't so hard to do. In fact, when we really look at it, we should be glad all of this is happening! As I write this, there are spreading protests in the U.S., called Occupy Wall Street. As thousands protest economic inequality and hardship, conservatives condemn the protestors as socialists, anarchists or just lazy hippies (this is from reading actual message boards!). At the same time, we're approaching an extremely divisive presidential election where Democrats and Republicans hurl accusations and insults back and forth. Both sides talk about the economy as though it was either possible or desirable to go back in time -specifically to the post-World War ll era where the industrial economy was expanding and the United States was the dominant power. The fact is, these days are gone forever, and, more importantly, why should we even mourn them? Both corporate capitalism and socialism are based on an industrial age model that is less and less r Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6620412