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Welcome back to our second session talking about the Modern Paradigm.
Let’s start with a review of what we learned in our first session on the Modern Paradigm.
For thousands of years, the Wisdom Paradigm was the dominant way of understanding life across all the world’s great societies, cultures and religions.
That was until about 450 years ago when Europe was torn apart by more than 100 years of religious wars that killed millions of people and devastated nations.
With Europe broken politically, spiritually and financially, European thinkers tried to come up with a new understanding of life that would allow people of different religions to live together without killing each other.
Modern, European philosophers began to replace the Wisdom Paradigm of understanding life based on purpose and reason with a Modern Paradigm of understanding life based on reason alone.
Reason is good at handling measurable, quantitative things and not very good at handling things that are tough to measure.
So modern thinkers split life into a public side of life for subjects that reason can tackle easily, and the private-personal side of life for subjects that reason has trouble with like religion, feelings and happiness.
Subjects like business, science, economics and ethics went into the public side of life. The idea was that society could use reason to discuss these issues publicly and get to the Truth about them.
In contrast, issues like Happiness, purpose, meaning, love and feelings went into the private-personal side of life. Putting them in the private side of life meant that they didn’t have to be talked about publicly. You could believe and talk about whatever you wanted in your private life.
The Wisdom Paradigm has covenant relationships—where the good of the individual and team are the same. Modern philosophers replaced those with Modern contract relationships where what’s good for the individual and team are opposite.
The Modern split of life into public and private sides made some important issues, like human nature, fulfillment and the meaning of life, much more complicated.
Modern thinkers invented disciplines, like psychology and psychiatry, to try to understand human nature using reason alone, but these disciplines can’t answer important questions about meaning or purpose in life.
When it comes to motivating people, Modern philosophers had to drop Wisdom concepts of Happiness and fulfillment—they were now on the private side of life. Instead, Modern thinkers tried to explain motivation in terms of quantifiable things like money.
Finally, when Modern philosophers dropped purpose, they lost the primary explanation for moral objectivity—for the existence of moral facts—like it’s a fact that slavery is wrong.
They tried to replace the justification for moral facts using pure reason alone, but that eventually failed. Morality and ethics went from being facts in the public side of life to being personal opinions on the private side of life.
That’s where we are so far in the Modern Paradigm. In this session we’re going to tackle how the Modern Paradigm looks at life, and the nature of Truth and knowledge, history, success and rules.
Truth and Knowledge
In the Wisdom Paradigm, the emphasis is on the development of, wait for it, wisdom.
Remember that wisdom is knowledge plus character. Wisdom is when you have knowledge of the Truth and the character to live the Truth. As you increase your knowledge and develop character more and more, you gain wisdom.
Wisdom is the knowledge and character you need to become a good person who develops good relationships and achieves Happiness in life.
The Book of Wisdom is Scripture because scripture contains the Truth and knowledge you need to live a good life and become a good person.
People gain wisdom through formation, a process that develops both intellectual knowledge and good character for Happiness.
The new, Modern Paradigm has a different take on all this.
The Modern Paradigm believes that there is objective Truth, but focuses on pure reason and information to get there. In fact, a big reason that Modern philosophers reject purpose is that they think a focus on purpose leads away from objective Truth.
The Modern Paradigm goes from a focus on wisdom—knowledge plus character—to a focus on knowledge alone. Character and the emphasis on life get replaced by a focus on academic knowledge and information.
The point isn’t to learn about life. In the Modern Paradigm, the point is to use reason to learn all there is to know in the universe.
The Modern approach to knowledge is straightforward. If we understand knowledge as information, then we can divide all knowledge into a spectrum of subjects like history, sociology, literature, chemistry and physics. Then we can break these subject areas down into thinner and thinner slices and study each of them.
For instance, we can divide chemistry into analytic, organic, physical, bio, inorganic and polymer chemistries.
Then we can assign scientists and PhD students to research each thin slice.
Sound familiar?
The wisdom PhD focuses on how all areas of life fit together to gain wisdom about life, so you can live a good and happy life.
In contrast, the modern PhD focuses on a small slice of knowledge and produces a highly technical dissertation like the Stereochemistry of the Vicinal Hydride Shift (McRowe 1966).
The idea is that given enough time and scientists, we can know everything there is to know.
Then we’ll collect all that information and publish it in the Modern Paradigm’s book of all knowledge—the encyclopedia.
Scripture, the book of wisdom, is replaced by the modern encyclopedia, the book of all knowledge.
Underneath all of this is a modern temptation to believe that by knowing everything, we can solve all our problems ourselves. By using reason, science and technology, we can create our own utopia.
The Wisdom Paradigm uses formation to develop both knowledge and character in young people so they can develop wisdom for Happiness in life. Performing arts and athletics are as important as the classroom in developing the character, teamwork and leadership that leads to wisdom, great relationships and Happiness.
The Modern Paradigm uses a different method—education—to develop the knowledge needed to get a good job and be a productive member of society.
We see this in our education system today. Our modern education system is all about academic grades and test results in the classroom. When school budgets are tight, programs like performing arts and athletics get cut.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, research is naturally focused on things that will help us gain knowledge to become good people in a good society. In the Wisdom Paradigm, it doesn’t make sense to pursue science or technology that would make our society bad.
In the Modern Paradigm, however, research is done for its own sake—whether it helps humanity become good or not.
Over time, the overwhelming modern focus on knowledge and information overrides moral or ethical considerations—which largely move from the public side of life into the private side anyway.
So, as a public ethics and morality evaporate over time, the only restrictions to the pursuit of science and technology are the personal morality of the scientist and the ever-changing social conventions of the time.
In the Modern Paradigm, knowledge, science and technology do not exist to help us become good. They exist for their own sake.
Measure of Success
In the Wisdom Paradigm, the measure of success is honor. Are you a good person with character worthy of honor? Do you have love, honesty, justice, wisdom, courage and integrity?
In the Wisdom Paradigm, the successful person is one who is honorable, develops good relationships and achieves his purpose in life—Happiness.
The Modern Paradigm looks at success in a very different way.
In the Modern Paradigm anything having to do with Happiness or purpose belongs in the private side of life. It’s personal. That means the measure of success is really a private or personal issue.
The way you measure success in your life may be very different from the way I measure of success in my life.
That makes it impossible to have a common, public understanding of success in public life.
So, the Modern Paradigm has an unending, unsolvable argument about what success means in life. Some will say success is about money. Some might argue for fulfillment.
There will be dozens of other opinions as well, with no ability for a modern community to agree on a definition of success.
Its personal.
That said, with the Modern Paradigm’s emphasis on reason and what can be measured and quantified, people will be biased to measure success in life in terms of money.
Here’s perhaps the biggest danger.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, it is very clear what life is about—good relationships and Happiness. Everyone knows their purpose in life and how to get there. Society is bound together by a shared understanding of purpose and the virtues.
In the Modern Paradigm, however, all that gets tossed out the window. Or rather tossed out of the public side and into the private side of life.
There is no shared understanding of meaning or purpose in life. No shared understanding of how to measure success in life.
The fundamental, shared things that bound us together as community begin to break down.
One more thing that pushes us further off course.
Work
In the Wisdom Paradigm, work is fully integrated with the rest of your life. There is no work-life and private life. There is just one life and work is a key part of it. Work is a great place to practice virtues, become a good person, develop good relationships and achieve Happiness.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, you should find fulfillment in your work and your relationships at work.
When the Modern Paradigm divides life into public and private, all that changes.
Work is in your public, not private life. Work is separate from fulfillment and Happiness.
Work isn’t something that is supposed to be fun or fulfilling. Instead, modern work becomes a job that you do to make a living until you can retire to finally pursue something your find fulfilling.
It is not impossible to find fulfillment in your modern job, but fulfillment is considered an extraordinary benefit, not a fundamental part of work.
Contemporary American business theory is firmly based in the Modern Paradigm—and that causes American business to significantly underperform its potential in at least two ways.
First, when work is a job unrelated to fulfillment or Happiness, employee engagement and performance are lower.
Second, American business theory emphasizes low-performance contract relationships instead of high-performance covenant relationships.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, work is one of the best opportunities in life to become good, develop good relationships and achieve Happiness.
In the Modern Paradigm, work is a job in the public side of life that has little to do with fulfillment and Happiness, which are in the private side of life.
What Are Rules For?
Rules in the Modern Paradigm function much as rules do in the Wisdom Paradigm. Rules help us become better at things faster than if we tried to figure them out on our own.
Remember that rules in the Wisdom and Modern Paradigms help us become good people and good communities.
That’s going to change dramatically in the Postmodern Paradigm.
Modern Wrap Up
The religious wars and deep suffering in 16th and 17th century Europe caused philosophers to develop a whole new paradigm for understanding life—the Modern Paradigm.
The philosophers split life into public life and private life, and got rid of faith and purpose by dropping them on the private side of life.
The Modern Paradigm isn’t a framework that helps people understand how to achieve Happiness. It is a framework that allows people of different religions to live together without killing each other.
Modern philosophers dropped Wisdom covenant relationships where the good of the individual and community are the same, and replaced them with Modern contract relationships where the self-interest of the individual and team are opposite.
When Modern philosophers put Happiness and meaning in the private side of life, we lost the fundamental, shared understandings about life that used to bind our communities together.
With Happiness and meaning dismissed to the private side of life, Modern society tends to use money as the most common motivation and measure of success in public life.
In the Modern Paradigm, work is separated from purpose, Happiness and the person, and becomes a job focused on simply making money.
In the Modern Paradigm, we no longer pursue wisdom to achieve Happiness in life. Instead, the Modern Paradigm emphasizes knowledge, information and technology for their own sake.
The Modern Paradigm drops the book of wisdom—Scripture—and replaces it with the encyclopedia, the book of all knowledge.
Finally, the Modern Paradigm drops the formation process focused on developing wisdom about life and replaces it with an education process focused almost purely on knowledge.
From Modern to Postmodern
Given the suffering and religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, eliminating faith/purpose from the public side of life and depending on reason alone seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
But there is a price to pay. A very big price.
Let’s go back to our analogy of the generations-long journey from New York to San Diego.
If we are in New York and our destination is San Diego, then reason tells us that it’s a fact that heading southwest is the right direction and it’s a fact that east and north are wrong directions.
What makes heading southwest the right, factual direction?
Because it gets us to our destination.
Now, let’s do what the Modern Paradigm does and split life into public and private, and let’s put our destination, San Diego, in the private side of life.
As people having conversations together in our private side of life, we can agree that heading southwest is the right direction.
Publicly, however, we can no longer talk about the destination—San Diego.
On the public side, philosophers try to come up with a new justification based on reason alone on why it’s a fact that its right to travel southwest. After 200 years of trying, however, it becomes clear that these attempts based on reason alone fail.
We travel southwest because that’s what we’ve been told to do, but we’ve lost the reason why. When you have a rule or do something but forgot the reason why—that’s a taboo.
Over time, increasing numbers of people decide they don’t want to travel southwest. They want to go east or north. We use social pressure to get them back in line, but eventually that fails too.
So, people go whatever direction they want and society can’t tell them why it’s a fact that they are headed the wrong way.
Once you drop the destination, any direction becomes ok. There are no right and wrong directions. No good and bad directions. Every direction is equivalent.
This is what happens to ethics and morality going into the late 1800’s. With our destination—Happiness—out of the public discussion and the failure of the Modern Paradigm to construct a new objective morality based on reason alone, new Postmodern philosophers argue that there is no real Truth or objectivity.
Postmodern philosophers argue that we haven’t been traveling southwest because it is factually right, but because that is what we have been programmed to do by our parents, churches, schools, media, culture, etc.
We travel that direction because it’s what powerful, privileged people in our society have programmed us to do.
If anyone tries to travel in a different direction, the rest of the community will force them to go southwest. The community will do that because they don’t like disruption.
But over time, more and more people will travel in other directions.
They will argue that reason doesn’t give us any compelling reason why southwest is right.
They will argue that attempts by society to force them to travel “society’s direction” are unjust oppression.
Shouldn’t I be free to choose my own direction in life?
Who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do with my life?
Who are you to force your definition of justice on me?
Why are you being so judgmental?
The most important anchor point, the most important reference point in life was always our purpose, our destination, Happiness.
When the modern philosophers remove that anchor point, purpose, they start us down a path that inevitably leads us away from objectivity and facts and into subjectivism, where there are no facts, just opinions and values.
No Facts. No Truth. No Justice. No Morality.
Just feelings.
The Modern Paradigm inevitably disintegrates into the Postmodern Paradigm.
With everyone heading wherever they want, our community falls apart.
With no anchor points in life, everything becomes upside down and inside out and we become very disoriented.
So disoriented that we forget that Happiness is even a thing. Or that life has meaning.
And even though we have more wealth and education and technology than anytime in history, we are surprised that our younger generations, disoriented and ignorant of Happiness, are depressed and kill themselves at historic rates.
Stay tuned for the next session.
I’m Pete Bowen.
