Response to a comment on "How a Paradigm is Formed"

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog-post called "How a Paradigm is Formed" and I received the following comment

(Thank you for the comment Moo):

I think you need to be less pessimistic about the world.

If those scientists were still there, poised and ready to spray the 5 new monkeys, then those monkeys were actually correct in living by their learned paradigm. Yes, they didn't know why. But one monkey will eventually just try it and the other monkeys will suffer the consequence - getting wet. Then they'd all know why, and remember that sometimes, just because you don't know the reason for doing something, it doesn't mean there isn't a very good one.

On the other hand, let's take a situation where the scientists are no longer there, yet the monkeys still beat each other up for climbing up the ladder.

One day, one monkey will just go for it and reach the bananas before getting beaten up. And the monkeys will learn. Or maybe not, they're monkeys.

We are human however. We are creative creatures. We learn. We try. We seek out improvements. If we reached the bananas, and saw the benefits of climbing the ladder, we'll try to find a legitamate reason as to why we were beating each other up for climbing the ladder.

And in that way, we learn.

In our world, some things change, and some things don't.

Therefore, it's good to keep an eye out, but living by learned paradigms isn't bad, as long as you remain inquisitive.

Take this century for example. In western society, many of the "old ways" have been dropped.

Yet we have a ridiculous amount of.. depression, broken families, broken hearts ... societal suffering shall we say. Did we really need HIV/AIDS to spread as much as it did? Didn't we already have rules about not having sex with whoever/whenever?

Hope you get my point.

Posted by: moo | August 09, 2007 at 11:53 AM

I was so happy to receive such a generous comment.  This was the reason I starting blogging in the first place: to get a real conversation going!  Again, thank you for your comment Moo. 

And now to respond to it:

Short version... I AGREE with you!

It's funny that you say I need to be "less pessimistic about the world" because I am an extreme optimist!  Actually, I'm an absolutist - that's what I call it.  I am completely aware of the difficult and sometimes horrible situatons happening in the world... but I have absolutely no doubt that everything is going in the right direction.  I am a huge believer of the changes currently happening in the world that will make it better NOW.

I totally agree with your assessment of how humans act.  This example was just an example of how a word that usally has positive connotation (like Paradigm) and it could be negative. 

I also believe that even though the story described in the blog-post is negative, it eventually leads to positive.  The dark ages lead to the renaissance, world wars have lead to peace.  So I am very happy with the current direction of the world. 

The internet is helping to put a strong light on all the negative and injustices going on around the world... and THAT can't be bad, right?  It will push us into taking action against these.

Comments

[Mischa]

You're happy with the current direction of the world?? All I can see is pre-teens getting pregnant, women everywhere committing murder by having abortions, drugs becoming commonplace in younger and younger generations, people dying for the most ridiculous reasons (read the news today: guy got shot over $6??), and on top of it all, no one seems to care. Call me a pessimist if you want, but I don't see how another renaissance can come of this.

[Javier Avellan]

Mischa,

Thank you for your comment... I see your point... however, the reason you see that is because it is more visible than it was before. All of these things and more were happening in the past - but the internet and the news media was not around to report it and profit from reporting it.

I think the direction that things are going (because things are more visible) are definitely positive. I believe injustice is now much more visible than before and it makes all of us aware of it... which takes us in a positive direction towards eliminating it.

But it's a good debate. Thank you for being involved in the conversation.