Latest comments for http://www.banjomafia.com , comment 0 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.banjomafia.com Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:46:24 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.banjomafia.com/myblog/the-perils-of-paradigms.html#pc_27 In the last episode of the sci-fi TV series "Firefly", the final scene shows a bounty hunter named Jubal Early drifting through space in his space suit doing a slow tumble. His final words were, "Well, here I am..." Kinda know the feeling. Just got my account locked on the BHO for being too political. Actually it was more for teasing a moderator than anything. The post was no more political than anything else on the thread, it's that it just didn't match the moderators political persuasion. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for some restraint in these sorts of forums. Unfortunately moderators are human beings and like all of us comes with a built-in paradigm. In science you'd call it field/ground recognition. In our lives we all make certain assumptions about the world and what is right and normal. Against that backdrop we see everything that is not "normal" moving. That's essential or we'd not be able to distinguish objects we should pay attention to from the background against which it stands. If you didn't everything would get your equal attention and when you were driving, you wouldn't be able to judge oncoming cars because the trees and billboards would compete for equal attention in you brain. When a person who has been blind from birth regains his sight it takes a while for him to be able to see faces or recognize the shapes of things because his brain doesn't understand what is background and what is something separate from the background. It's that way for political and religious issues. Our politics and religion form the backgrounds of our lives. One man's simple fact is another man's wrong opinion if it stands out against the backdrop of what we "know" to be true. The moderator in question has no idea that I could possibly see things other than the way he sees them. It's likely that he intellectually acknowledges that people have another opinion than he does, but he's pretty sure that those of us who disagree with him all know that we are wrong and are just deliberately saying this stuff because we have an ulterior motive for selling our particular brand of snake oil. Fortunately, we can probably work things out and I expect to have my account unlocked as soon as this guy feels he has proved his authority and restored order to his little corner of the world! People are such odd ducks. We really shouldn't give them any authority. Inevitably, authority gets misused and not even deliberately but simply because our paradigms don't allow us to see the whole picture. Paradigms enable us to drive and hunt and catch a football when you throw it at us. They don't always let us fully see the world as others see it. I'm just sayin' Tom - twayneking Sat, 24 May 2008 22:52:42 +0100