Read this.
And make sure you’ve clicked on the T.S. Elliot link at the end, so that you firmly set the mood.
We are in the middle of the same argument daily at work. Where’s the sense of awe? Of change? Where’s the chutzpah that spawned new classes and growth out of the back of a truck or the depths of someone’s parents’ garage? Now, we’re in the “Age of the Incremental”: Change standing on the shoulders of change balanced on a whittled stool. No more can evolution stand on it’s own two legs, it stands on a dot-release or a beta candidate.
One of my students wrote an interesting comment in class the other day: “Pretty soon, you’ll go to McDonald’s and see written around the lip of the coffee cups, ‘This End Up.'”
The “paradigm shift” is about as handy to me as thinking “out of the box”. I’m sure it’s as good a label as any that encompasses the idea, and since I’m not here to put that much more thought into it myself, it’ll stand. But it’s still a label. Another restriction. Another piece of thought legislation that says “I’m tired of thinking this way, so I’ll ever-so-liberally think this new way instead.” Before long, you’re back in the box.
There’s a run on gas throughout the midwest, and heading this way. I woke up earlier this week to the disappearance of several of our nation’s cities and towns. Things are pretty bad out there. Does it really matter that we have a direction, as long as we’re moving somewhere?