New Clear Vision

Support the Dominant Paradigm

by Randall Amster

There’s a bumper sticker still clinging to the back of my old camper, bearing a phrase you’ve probably heard before or perhaps even uttered: “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” At the time I’d placed this on the tailgate for display, it made perfect sense to me. The Dominant Paradigm was the one manufactured by the warmongers, corporateers, securitizers, and mediamen. The rest of us were living in a Subordinate Paradigm, and the path to our salvation lay in tearing down the one imposing itself upon us. Since those halcyon bumper-sticker days, however, I’ve come to see that this logic is actually inverted, and that in fact WE are the Dominant Paradigm while those ostensibly in charge are the ones who continually attempt to subvert it. (more…)

Thinking Whole, and Not Just Apart

by Winslow Myers

I still recall the shock of reading the philosopher Krishnamurti’s bald assertion, in his little book “Freedom from the Known,” that I was personally responsible for everything. The book was recommended to me by a remarkable man named Albert Bigelow. In 1958, Bert sailed his small ketch, the Golden Rule, into an American nuclear testing area in the Marshall Islands in an act of protest. Bert took seriously the obligation of being a global citizen long before the phrase “global citizen” was coined.

In 2010, the burden of trying to act responsibly for the planet as a whole has become overwhelming, almost paralyzing. There are so many huge challenges, all interrelated, and the cause-and-effect relationship between what I do personally in my daily life and those planet-wide challenges has become infinitely clearer than it was to all but a few in 1958. (more…)