Wrestling With The Ultimate Conflcit: Contradictory Paradigms

Wrestling With the Ultimate Conflict: Contradictory Paradigms

By William Cottringer, Ph.D.

"The only way you become aware of the intrinsic paradigms that guide your thinking are when they come in open contact with their opposites." ~The author.

     I am sorry but I am not going to apologize for the overly abstract or intellectual flavor of this article. It is too deep to try and oversimplify into the popular, practical realm. So you will just have to suck it in and think about it.

    The ultimate conflict is when two incompatible paradigms butt heads. There is really only one fundamental, ultimate conflict between contradictory paradigms, but it shows itself in slightly different forms. That is why it is so hard to see for what it really is-the end of our dissecting of life and our understanding of what life is about. This is the core problem to solve, and the main obstacle guarding the door to genuine success.

    The basic conflict of two opposing paradigms appears in various forms:

• A win-lose, competitive, and scarcity mentality vs. a win-win, cooperative and abundance mentality.
• Positive love vs. negative fear.
• Open-mindedness vs. closed-mindedness.
• Belief in the value of surrendering to, joining and obeying a higher power vs. belief in the value of being ego-centered, self-reliant and independent.
• Trusting and accepting life and letting go of the need to control everything vs.  being suspicious of life and trying to control everything.
• Being optimistic, hopeful and positive in believing in your power to make choices to create a better future vs. having limited confidence to do this.

     Being in a work or personal relationship when there is such a conflict in fundamental paradigms is probably one of the most trying experiences in life. Oddly the resolution is most often a paradigm that needs changing itself-the viewpoint that conflicts are moments of wonderful opportunity of which to take advantage vs. moments of horrendous danger and discomfort to avoid.

     And of course such opposing paradigms are most often really just two different sides to the same coin. One person who poses as being gracious, tolerant, open-minded and accepting of others' points of view is really ungracious, intolerant and un-accepting in disguise when it comes to dealing with the opposite point of view. It is very easy to be intolerant of intolerance or close-minded about close-mindedness.

    Let's get to the heart of this article. Can you change another person's "wrong" paradigm with your "better" one?  If not, there is no such thing as progress and the negative side of the above either-or list dominates the other side; if you can, then there is forward progress by the better, more successful paradigm winning out or the two mixing and creating a brand new compromise, not between the two, but over and above.

     Not that many people have evolved to the point of being able to resolve such seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between apparent contradictory paradigms with no visible middle-ground. The few that do have to look inside their personal experience and try to articulate what seems to sound like the truth of the matter.

• Such conflicting paradigms are unconscious and nearly impervious to our conscious efforts to change them-after all it is very hard to change something that is so much a part of you that it is invisible. But that doesn't mean you can't and shouldn't try. The sweetest success comes from the sweatiest of efforts.
• You really can't argue someone out of their basic point of view that he or she may not even understand or be aware of; you can only point out indirect examples that don't have any personal thoughts or emotions keeping them from view. The more the distance the better.
• Rational proof of examples of paradigm shifts resulting in progress and success-such at a view of the world as being flat changing to a round one, the traditional clock being replaced with digital time, and traditional physics moving towards quantum mechanics-can have some impact.
• The smartest people of our world are already influencing the rest of us to challenge our most 'sacred cow' paradigms and life is always providing firsthand experiences of dramatic, inevitable change; the more you resist new paradigms and change (win-lose competition being replaced by win-win cooperation), the more uncomfortable you become, but then the more motivated you become to change.
• The helping professions have been involved with this paradigm changing business for a long time and know that it is a long, gradual, and painful process that has to be wrapped in a therapeutic double-bind-the unconditional acceptance that everyone can be okay and success can be achieved with or without the change. But such tacit permission has to be loudly spoken.
• The best conflict resolution strategists know that when there is such a standoff between opposite paradigms, there is but one best answer-both people are probably over-flavored by their own paradigm's value and have incorrect and incomplete perceptions of the other person's paradigm. They are both a little right and a little wrong and the truth is somewhere in between and just needs to be squeezed out.
• Paradoxes are very clever hiding places for creative solutions to perplexing problems, such as trying to change less effective paradigms into more effective ones. By thinking about and solving a paradox like "you can't have your cake and eat it too" you become more flexible in mental thinking to see through and past the 'injunctions' that words impose on you and convince you to be their hostage.
• Success in life is the transfer of the unconscious wisdom we were born with to the conscious awareness of and practical use of that wisdom to be successful. You don't have to invent new solutions or even reinvent old ones, just remember to uncover them from their hiding places. Things are already in motion.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA., along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and "P" Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers). This article is part of his new book Rational Reality Repair Rx coming soon. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net