Shifting Paradigms
The history we inhabit seems to roll along in a straight line—until it takes a jog in an unexpected direction. Sometimes something portending calamity occurs on the fringe and moves to the center of events, driving everything in unexpected directions. Sometimes something unexpected occurs suddenly out of the clear blue.
For instance, you figure you’re in a Cold War with an adversary that you understand (vaguely) as somewhat enigmatic but predictable, and then one day he collapses and goes out of existence. Or you think you’ll have a normal presidential election campaign, and one of the prime candidates is murdered just like his brother the President recently was—and all the wisest political advisors and analysts in the land are brought up short.
Or, you’re running a multinational empire as its monarch-deity engaged in keeping the sun god happy by way of generous sacrificial human offerings, when one day along comes a strange oceanic vessel full of sickly looking fellows with fancy boom sticks who quickly tear your world apart—just as you experience the deadliest conceivable plague that critically weakens your populace.
You just never know what change of subject the Fates might have in store for you. Sometimes an event occurs that no one has ever dealt with or even dreamt in his wildest fantasies before, and every single assumption you and your civilization have developed over the generations is rendered completely irrelevant.
Assumptions at the dawn of the 20th century surely never contemplated a world war (let alone two) that would rearrange geopolitics by felling and rearranging nation states worldwide. The 20th century—someone among the world’s elites surely thought in 1900—will mean further expansion of the steam-powered revolution in industry: faster, more extensive rail travel and commerce; stronger European-based naval empires; short marginal wars among the great powers over bits of territorial control; more telegraph wires stretched to more places, maybe with some enhancements allowing human speech over the same. Why would anyone assume anything different?And then a princeling is murdered in Sarajevo, existing game plans are consulted, and the paradigm shifts.
No one believed the ensuing conflict would amount to much. The parties eagerly engaged in a good, old-fashioned manly contest of applied violence of the type familiar since time immemorial. But the war dragged on until it bankrupted empires, which couldn’t withstand the political upheaval. The effects revolutionized governments, leading to a second round of world war, which for the one team was little more than a continuation of the first after a pause to regain strength.
Technology came off the rails, too, as it were. A horse-bound public left their livestock and farms to settle in megalopolises much larger than previously imagined, unconstrained by the communicable disease that had once limited such growth. Electrification permanently tore down the barriers of night. The skies and space opened up, persistently changing the subject, disrupting expectations, redirecting human events.
Within most of our lifetimes we’ve seen the disintegration of what we assumed were forever-stable entities like newspapers and television media as a proliferation of satellite and cable channels appeared, the end of telephone monopolies, and then the internet revolutionized communications until it bent society to the breaking point.
Will artificial intelligence lead to similar disruption? Will the disruption be slow, fast, or breakneck? Is the technology again about to shift the paradigm in which we live? Paradigm shifts come unexpectedly and drive events in directions unanticipated by linear assumptions. They resemble an interruption in a discussion, an unexpected change of subject.
If there ever was a time where it felt like we were ripe for an historic non sequitur, this would be it. The straight-line assumptions in my imagination include: worsening American culture-war political squabbles, socio-cultural malaise exacerbated by social media and the attention economy, a trajectory for war with China, ongoing insistence by voters that America retreat from the world stage, lackluster growth of everything other than government spending. I’ve often wondered if an unanticipated outside shock might arrive in the form of a large meteor strike, or perhaps the oft-feared solar-flare event that cripples electronics worldwide, or maybe the eruption of the Yellowstone mega-volcano, the revelation of an extra-terrestrial species that’s been playing peekaboo with us for years. But maybe it will come from this new technology as it takes us in directions different from any we had previously considered.
Or perhaps we’ll continue to coast along on our current straight-line trajectory for some time still. Which wouldn’t be so bad, all told. It’s a fairly comfortable existence here in the modern industrial world, with challenges mainly in the form of first-world problems. It’s comfortable enough that we have ample time and space to ponder the alternatives.
It's a rare occasion when I sing praise for a politician for any reason. And this isn't exactly that for a couple of reasons. Nevertheless, I'll hum a few bars for one I've given little to no credit to for much of anything in the past but have at least come to have a small modicum of respect for these days due to his being the only R POTUS primary candidate so far to not only go after Trump like a junk yard dog after a sausage-scented interloper but to obviously not care what anybody in his party thinks about that one way or the other.
This morning I saw a few minutes of an interview of Chris Christie with Jake Tapper. At one point Tapper played a clip of Will Hurd saying he won't be at the debates because he won't sign the "pledge" to support the nominee regardless of who that may turn out to be; that would be lying in his book since he couldn't promise to do that. Tapper then asked Christie if he would sign the pledge in order to get onto the debate stage and would that be "honest" considering Christie has said he won't support Trump.
Christie gave the best "non-answer" direct-answer I think I've ever heard come out of a politician's mouth. I'm paraphrasing here, but Christie began by saying We need to "change things" in this country. Then after a couple of forgettable lines, recounted how in 2016 all the primary candidates signed the "pledge", including Donald Trump who, when asked on the debate stage to reaffirm that pledge along with the others, was the only one who "refused to raise his hand", as Christie put it.
He then said that he'd sign the pledge and take it every bit as seriously as Donald Trump had.
The guy doesn't really look like a genius to me, but genius level style points on this, if nothing else.
Happy Sunday!
I learned a new word today that I can't believe I never saw before , cat lovers are called : Ailurophiles...huh, seems weird, should look up the latin word, bet that would make more sense....lol
Today is National Ice Cream Day , National Snake Day and National Personal Chef day, would like the first and third, the middle not so much...though I think they are fascinating and cool
I read a story about a domestic duck in DC that wandered into the wild , and was taken care of and loved by the populace...it ended sadly, and I of course, started weeping, but, it was overall a heartwarming story, which is better than policial doom stuff...lol...
I have a dr appt Tuesday to refill a script, it is a $10 script and he won't fill it without a visit, I am not happy...I have about $75 left on my deductible for the year...so, it seems kind overpriced..plus, he is going to be mad I only took the three months of statins, and argue with me about my NOT high BP...though I might get a referral to a podiatrist.
Other than that, my life is still boring and the meaning of life has no answer still....lol
Hope you all have an awesome day.