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At its simplest a paradigm is how we see things as demonstrated above. Shift attention and we see this same picture differently. Being able to choose the way we perceive this well known picture makes it analogous to a religious paradigm. If we could not change perception at will then it would be analogous to a cultural paradigm. Such changeability requires exposure to alternate views.
What is a Paradigm?
What is a Paradigm?
(April 1, 2025) Facts must be organized so they can be found when needed. This requires a mental framework, that is, a paradigm for working with acquired facts. If new facts cannot be fitted into a person's existing paradigm they will be ignored. Those facts are just not seen. Paradigms should not be confused with social or cultural classification schemes (which they often are). They exist at a much deeper level.
We tend to see what we want to see.
One example of a paradigm change is a scientific revolution like the one in which plate tectonics replaced the idea of a static earth. Long held scientific and scholarly theories become like religions because they are taught that way (dogmatically) when first introduced during early schooling. Changes in scientific paradigms tend to follow the circular pattern above. This cycle was first described by Thomas Kuhn in his book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962at http://faculty.humanities.uci.edu/bjbecker/revoltingideas/week1d.html
Paradigms Are Only Changed With Difficulty
Paradigms Are Only Changed With Difficulty
(November 27, 2023, Updated April 1, 2025) Paradigms can be difficult to change because they are heavily influenced by humanity's psychology. Either the psychology of identity or the difficulty in unlearning something then relearning. The first learning of something is always the easiest. This combination of change difficulty and identity psychology can make such people having such a "brain-washed" paradigm appear completely irrational to others. Holding onto an identity paradigm will even make them willing to perform atrocities in defense of that paradigm. This was noticed by German Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was jailed and eventually killed by the Nazis. He wrote this:
“The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison)
Culture adapts itself to the environment over time in an evolutionary process. This image illustrates many of the parameters defining that environment.
Cultural Evolution
Cultural Evolution
(May 27, 2025) This difficulty in changing paradigms leads to cultural evolution. Those tribes which happen to have paradigms better adapted to surviving in any particular environment will grow and prosper more than those tribes not so well adapted.
Cultural evolution is a faster from of adaptive change then biological evolution. Only in modern times with the rise of literacy and science has reasoning allowed for even faster social change. An existing culture always comes from some mix of earlier cultures or from mixing with neighboring cultures (analogous to biological mating).
For better or for worse, the defense of one's culture has been a major motivating force in history. A tribes prosperity depended on its culture yet innovation was also important as the tribe's environment changed. So successful human tribes developed a balance between cultural innovation and cultural dogmatism. This balance was achieved by each tribe having a continuum of different personality types. Their conservatives sought to preserve existing culture with a tendency to blame others for social problems. In contrast, their liberals sought innovation and tolerance with a tendency to blame themselves for social problems.
A culture is is best imagined as an inverted 3-layered pyramid. A culture is held together by its paradigms. Religions are changeable paradigms which represent the transitional state from a paradigm to the traditional way of doing or making things.
Culture Is Best Analyzed As An Inverse Pyramid
Culture Is Best Analyzed As An Inverse Pyramid
(May 27, 2025, updated July 26, 2025) Runic texts cannot be accurately translated and understood without first understanding the culture behind them. Achieving this understanding was an iterative process involving repeated translations while slowing adding an ever greater number of texts to the starting sample. Eventually, consistent word definitions emerged allowing translations to proceed according to the strict scholar's standard (one English word or phrase for each Akkadian word). Contrast this to most ancient language translations outside of Latin which have many possible English words per ancient word. So if a sentence does not make sense just replace the word with other words until the translation conforms to some preconceived bias.
"Culture" is a layered cake of ideas having different levels of emotional stickiness. The most sticky are paradigms, often held subconsciously. Next are religions which define the rules of one's life path. Everyone has a religion even if those rules have not been formally stated. The loosest layer are traditions and spirituality. Traditions include the material culture of archaeology, technology, and the techniques of magic.
Together the define a person's identity. Along with greed and altruism, the psychology of identity is one of the big motivators of history.
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