WRESTLING WITH THE ULTIMATE CONFLICT: 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.

• When a new truthful idea/change is introduced, it goes through three stages of reaction by people:

1.It is initially discounted and outright rejected as either not being true or not being practical/useful.

2. It is severely, but unfairly and irrationally, criticized for any and all flaws.

3. It is accepted and embraced as a valuable and important truth.

The more fundamental the idea/solution is, the more pronounced the initial resistance, because you are getting into subconscious emotional and cognitive packaging of existing paradigms, truths and basic personal preferences that are nearly impervious to being accessed/changed.

• 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.

• How you knowing something for sure? Here is the normal process:

1. There is no absolute certainty about anything, accept letting go to believing in something that seems to be self evident, after the satisfying level of evidence is in.

2. Use the ‘arm’s length’ test to separate personal feelings, turf knowledge and ego pride from the rational aspects of what makes good sense.

3. Be honest about what you know and don’t know and learn what you need to know; use what you do know smarter.

4. It’s not what you know but rather how you feel about what you know that counts most; work hard to articulate your gut instincts and feelings clearly.

5. Never lose sight of your spiritual beliefs; without them, nothing else really matters.

• 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.

• If this isn't enough, consider Howard Gardner's decades of compelling research findings on changing minds:

1. Reason—Presenting logic and rationale of pros and cons to make something believable and credible, is a good start. Strong abstract ideas and concepts that can be shown to get practical results are convincing. So are great thought-provoking questions. As Dr. Phil wisely says, “How is that working for you?

2. Research—Factual information, field tests and relevant data that support and “prove” the truth, benefit, or value of something you want to sell or tell or get someone to “buy” are powerful levers. Demonstrating how your "mission-based alignment idea can attract valuable new clients and actually contribute to you bottom line is the proof in the pudding. Also, when you can provide impressive facts about how you actually solved perplexing problems, like how to be more effective in changing someone's mind, you are making a believer of the person.

3. Resonance—Sometimes we just feel “right” or good about something. Animated personal stories are good for this—hence the success of the Chicken Soup For The Soul book series by Jack Canfield. This emotional/intuitive loading is often powerful in forcing a tipping point in your favor. When an unqualified, poorly trained armed security guard shot a civilian by mistake, that resonance-loaded news coverage is what helped get the security guard licensing law passed in the State of Washington. (this event also falls under # 6 below). Good timing, relevancy and the customizing of your information to the person’s immediate needs can provide the emotional connection you need to sell a service or idea.

4. Re-descriptions—Presenting a point in a variety of forms and formats, or showing different ways it can be applied, is an effective belief-influencing/convincing strategy. You are increasing credibility, value and benefit.

5. Resources—This is where value-added selling comes in, by offering additional rewards and resources to strengthen your position with the other person. Resources act as rewards and reinforce what you want—to change the person’s mind in the right direction

6. Real World Events—The best example is the 9-11 attack that opened company’s and the Senate’s pocketbooks for more security expenditures—more than ever made in our history! (probably too much!) Then, the absence of these events brought on complacency!

7. Resistances—These are what need to be understood well enough to eliminate or at least weaken their hold on belief and idea retention of the anti-change mindset, or the other six techniques lose their power, even collectively depending on how strong the resistances are. And remember, we are all quick to adopt a new belief about something with minimal evidence of its truth or based on just one personal firsthand experience; but the longer we keep the belief, the harder it becomes to change.