The good ol' paradigm

I watched ABC last night, and first we had a discussion on citizenship tests, and then we had a discussion about troops in Iraq. In both cases, I realised whatever be the kind of solution offered, there was some kind of I and some kind of them and 'never the twain shall meet'. All in all, I found the discussions very frustrating, because once we have reached that kind of crystallised version of 'us' and 'them' - we start hypothesising. So, the discussion goes on like - "if we do this they will do that" and that sits like an assumption, for each and every speaker. Good Lord! I really would like to know how do you know that. You see, we have put 'us' in a box 'them' in another box, and all of us know how boxes work, right? No. The problem is that these assumptions are not right. They cannot be right. If they were right, then the solution based on these assumptions would work - which they never do.

Our paradigm to look at the world and our idea of an ideal world is flawed. Justice and equality as we have come to understand them, do not seem to be working. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of justice and equality, but just like a physicist cannot start his experiment assuming that there is no gravity - we cannot just go on assuming things that are just not happening. We need to understand how the world works and only then can we make any change in the world for the positive. We need a new paradigm, I don't know what and how of it. I dont know how it will be available on the news and in the media - but hey, some people are already working on 'A Project for a New Mythology'.

ps: oh this last stanza has so much scope to be misunderstood, I so hope no one decides to do that.