How clever can you get? A pair o’ dogs is a paradox. Two shiny dimes is the Cockney way of saying “new paradigms.” So this is “paradox and new paradigms” time, folks!
Quantum physicists report that electrons are both particles and waves; even coined a word for this paradoxical condition – wavicles!
Electrons are fundamental to our everyday world. They swirl around the nuclei of our very atoms, generating currents as they flow as electricity, and pass through integrated circuitry to produce the bedazzling wonders of electronics.
How so? Look at any big modern city from the air. The higher you go the more it resembles a microchip, but as you zoom back in, it transforms into one big printed circuit board with all these capacitors, resistors, diodes, and semiconductors sticking up like tiny erections: highrises, office complexes, shopping malls, stadiums, sprawling suburbs, road networks. All these cables, tubes, and colorful wires transporting electrons hither and thither, generating the humdrum hum of rush-hour traffic.
The moment you make the connection between micro and macro, you begin to comprehend this modified and updated adage: “As within, so without.” The esoteric insights gained by magicians and quantum physicists DO apply to our everyday lives, and the sooner we get comfortable with paradox, the less rigid our mindsets become. I’ve never known anybody to suffer from an overly flexible mindset, but those who cling to rigid perspectives and beliefs certainly cause a great deal of suffering, especially to their own loved ones.
Take the classic EITHER/OR stance for example. When you hear some buffoon saying, “You’re EITHER with me, OR against me” – watch out! He or she is attempting to box you in, leave you with another Hobson’s choice – which is really no choice at all. In life, it’s never black OR white, there’s always an entire spectrum of grays in between – not to mention the possibility of spontaneous rainbows of vivid colors from which to choose!
The antidote to either/or is BOTH/AND. Most times it’s BOTH this AND that, not either/or. You can apply this to just about any situation. Take the hullabaloo surrounding the issue of “moral policing”: you hear arguments on both sides, some advocating strict control over what young people do for fun, and others defending the individual’s right to define his or her own concept of “morality.”
I find it unfathomable that there are so many who actually believe they can change people’s behavior from outside - through coercion, intimidation, and threats. Sure, point a knife at someone’s throat and they’ll give you their money or do whatever you say – but when the State legitimizes the use of brute force, it reinforces the Criminal Element and compels it to retaliate even more brutally.
Most times there is really no solution required beyond looking hard into the mirror and acknowledging that we’ve not been giving our kids enough attention, affection, and appreciation – which is why they don’t enjoy hanging around the homestead. I’ve seen so many parents justify their workaholism by saying it’s all for their children’s sake; they want to accumulate as much as possible, so they can give their kids the best education money can buy, and so on. But what they’re overlooking is that every kid essentially wants their parents to love and befriend them – everything else follows from that; and “education” itself can easily be shown to be merely another profitable racket run by know-nothings who actually don’t give a hoot whether your kids can think for themselves, as long as they pay their tuition fees on time.
In effect, if you BELIEVE the world is “competitive” you project around yourself a hostile, unfriendly environment... and then you pass that holographic hell to your children as a legacy. Now, if you LOVE your kids, WHY on earth would you want to inflict such a bleak scenario on them? After all, the “future” is really just a bunch of different scenarios we’re collectively scripting with our present beliefs and perceptions.
Disaster, catastrophe, eco-apocalypse, Armageddon, and the New World Order are only scenarios generated by the old paradigms of Darwinian survivalism and Malthusian not-enough-to-shareism. They have absolutely no basis in reality... despite what the Experts say.
To become an Expert you have to embrace and extol and perpetuate the old paradigms. However, by consciously opting to create entirely new paradigms wherein all life can blossom into greater joy, freedom, and limitless abundance – without doing so at the expense of any other lifeform – you are effectively bypassing all possibility of doomsday, futility, and despair. Ask yourself now, isn’t that something worth putting your energy into, rather than gossiping about other people’s sex life?
[Originally published in the June 2005 issue of VIDA! First posted 8 January 2007, reposted 15 November 2017 & 30 July 2018]
