In The Absence of a Paradigm

SOMETHING is happening. (And you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?)

The most astonishing thing that hasn’t happened in the past two months is that the chatterers, the talking heads, the know-it-alls, endlessly filling the airwaves with blither, blather and bluster have steadfastly refused to ask the fundamental question: What the Heck is Happening Here?

The news this morning is dominated by the enormous demonstrations in England. Last night it was the enormous demonstrations in Syria. We have seen the demonstrations in Wisconsin. In Michigan. In Ohio. In Egypt. In Yemen. In Jordan. In Bahrain. In Libya.

Did you even know that the Canadian government just fell apart?

SOMETHING is taking place at an archetypal level, across the world, across class and social lines, across religious and political divides, all characterized by popular uprisings against authoritarian high-handedness across the world.

But no one offers any explanation, or even the suggestion of an explanation as to why this homogenous response has taken place, aimed at quite different forms of governance: the people versus the powerful.

Isn’t that odd?

I mean, it would seem that a child of five would notice that there is a similar force — expressed in divergent ways over dissimilar ‘issues’ — taking place all over the globe. But no one dares to even observe that this is happening, because there is no acceptable paradigm that might be brought up to offer an explanation; no prime mover, unmoved.

Well, actually there IS a long-standing paradigm that gives pretty good predictive results, and without endorsing it in any way, I will refer you to this page, and you can make up your own mind on this.

As a pragmatist, I have to say that the writer has 1) a paradigm of long-standing repute (and disrepute) and 2) good predictive powers, given that this was written before the Japanese earthquake.

If you disagree, offer or find your OWN paradigm for what’s transpiring, but hurry up, the great Event culminates tomorrow, March 28, 2011.

What we are looking for is a paradigm that gives good predictive results.

In the absence of any other paradigm, Occam’s Razor suggests that we ought not be mindlessly dismissive.

Besides, if correct, it might give you the insight to avoid the nasty astral weather fronts that are careening violently around the globe. And that has eminent practical value.

But that’s up to you. Any explanation is probably preferable to no explanation whatsoever, which is what we’re currently being given (or NOT given).

SOMETHING is sure as hell happening.

And I don’t see anyone offering any explanations (or bothering to draw any parallels, since that would entail having to explain them). Which is extremely ODD, given the 23.9 hours of mindless blather that surrounds the .1 hour of actual news that’s bilged out in our 24-hour news cycle.

Courage.