“That’s what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.”
DORIS LESSING
“YOU CAN’T BEAT SOMETHING with nothing.” That street wisdom also applies to habits of the mind. You can’t lose old and negative ways of thinking until new and positive ones replace them.
The biggest and most far-reaching kind of cognitive therapy is a paradigm shift: a change in the organizing principle that underlies the way we think about ourselves and the world. It is a pattern so ingrained that we may consider it “natural” and be unaware of its existence.
In societies shaped by patriarchy and racial divisions, the prevailing paradigm comes in three parts.
The first is the either/or way of thinking that divides almost everything in two. “Masculine” and “feminine,” subject and object, light skin and dark skin, dominant and passive, intellect and emotion, mind and body, winner and loser, good and evil, the idea that there are “two sides to every question”—all these are the living results of bipartite thinking. In older and more subtle cultures, each half was equally necessary to the other (as in the yin and yang of Eastern thought), but even that division had its origins in the division of human qualities into “masculine” and “feminine.” The more unequal this genderized dyad became, the more it turned into the next part of the paradigm: linear thinking. Rating and grading people, the notion that all accomplishment lies in defeating others, even a linear view of abstractions like time and history—all these things were organized by the same paradigm. Since a straight line was too simplistic to be practical for most human interactions, however, it split into the third and last part of the paradigm: hierarchy. The pyramid or the classic organizational chart became the grid through which many cultures were to see the world for centuries: from a “male-headed” household to corporate structures in which all authority flows from the top; from hierarchical classrooms to religions in which God’s will is interpreted by a pope or ayatollah.
It isn’t that a binary, linear, and then hierarchical paradigm is always wrong. Some things really have two parts, competition can be used to press individual boundaries, and a hierarchy is well-suited to firefighting, surgery, or anything else that requires quick action.
But as a universal pattern with almost no alternatives, this paradigm limits us at best and destroys us at worst. It turns most human interactions into a contest that only one or a few at the top can win, and it teaches us that there is a limited amount of self-esteem to go around; that some of us can only have it if others do not.
Fortunately, this is just a cognitive construct. There is nothing biological or immutable about it, and therefore it can be changed. In other times and cultures, there have been cyclical and regenerative paradigms, unitary paradigms, and pantheistic ones in which each living thing had a spirit of its own—to name just a few. Especially for those of us who have been looking at everything through a linear and hierarchical grid—perhaps no more aware of alternatives than a fish is aware of alternatives to water—it’s important to let other possibilities into our minds. Since we are living in a time when the foundations of the old paradigm are cracking anyway, there are motives for changing it and glimpses through the cracks of what the future could be. Perhaps the most obvious motive for change is the ecological crisis. Disasters like pollution, a new species extinction every few hours, biospheric degradation, and the threat of nuclear annihilation are all powerful reasons to overturn the centuries of the either/or, Man-against-Nature paradigm that got us here. To think about taking our place in nature instead of conquering it is a deep change in the way we see ourselves and the world. It means changing from binary and linear thinking to a cyclical paradigm that is a new declaration of interdependence.
Another motive is the movement against internal colonialisms of sex and race. Superior/inferior, light skin/dark skin, masculine/feminine divisions are being replaced with the idea that each person has a full circle of human qualities in unique combination. Instead of defining power as domination, it is being redefined as self-determination. Instead of outstripping others, the goal is completing oneself. Since the sexual caste system is the most ancient form of oppression and the one on which all others are based, changing it is like pulling the rug from under the whole hierarchy. As physicist Fritjof Capra writes in The Turning Point, feminism “will have a profound effect on further evolution” because patriarchy “is the one system … whose doctrines were so universally accepted that they seemed to be the laws of nature.”
The communications revolution has eroded hierarchy by giving the bottom as much information as the top—and also by letting all parts of the hierarchy see each other (which is why computers and photocopiers are outlawed in totalitarian regimes, and access even to phone lines extremely restricted). Long-term hierarchies have produced a few people at the top who use power poorly, a lot of people in the middle who wait for orders and approval, and many more at the bottom who feel powerless and resentful. But from Eastern Europe to South Africa, democratic uprisings are softening and humanizing hierarchies into more circularity. Smaller, more lateral and cooperative units are emerging for diverse purposes, from Japanese corporate management to Gandhian village economies.
Even the sacred cow of competitiveness is getting to be less sacred. In No Contest, psychologist Alfie Kohn poses the question: “Do we perform better when we are trying to beat others than when we are working with them or alone?” After looking at many studies, he concludes: “The evidence is so overwhelmingly clear and consistent that the answer to this question already can be reported: almost never. Superior performance not only does not require competition; it usually seems to require its absence.” In fact, a competitive system perpetuates itself by keeping self-esteem low and making even the winners constantly needy of more success. As Kohn writes, “We compete to overcome fundamental doubts about our capabilities and, finally, to compensate for low self-esteem.”20
Rather than finding a source in competition, self-esteem and excellence both come from the excitement of learning and pressing individual boundaries; a satisfaction in the task itself; pleasure in cooperating with, appreciating, and being appreciated by others—and as much joy in the process as in the result.
As each person completes herself or himself and contributes what is authentic, a new paradigm emerges: circularity. At rest, it is a circle, and in motion, a spiral. When we look more closely at each part, it is a microcosm of the whole. If we consciously take this as our organizing principle, we come up with very nonbinary, unlinear, nonhierarchical results. For instance:
If we think of ourselves as circles, our goal is completion—not defeating others. Progress lies in the direction we haven’t been.
If we think of families and nurturing groups as circles, the sum means maximizing each part—not restricting others or keeping secrets. Progress is appreciation.
If we think of work structures as circles, excellence and cooperation are the goal—not competition. Progress becomes mutual support and connectedness.
If we think of nature as a circle, then we are part of its reciprocity. Progress means interdependence.
If we respect nature and each living thing as a microcosm of nature—then we respect the unique miracle of ourselves.
And so we have come full circle. Self-esteem is not a zero-sum game: by definition, there is exactly enough to go around. By making the circle the organizing image in our minds, a prison of lines and limits will gradually disappear.