We've discussed Paradigm Examples and Personal Paradigms. Now let's add the concept of Collective Paradigms.
A Collective Paradigm is a Personal Paradigm that is shared by a group of people. That's simple enough, but since the concepts of paradigms may be new to us, let's build a quick foundation so our terms make good sense to us.
Most of us had our first real experience with Collective Paradigms when we started going to school. As we began to socialize, we discovered that there were different social groups. Some of those groups were popular, and some were unpopular.
Those who were in the popular social groups enjoyed a sense of social acceptance and inclusion, but those in the unpopular social groups suffered from a sense of social rejection and exclusion. This creates a dilemma for the person trapped in an unpopular social group.
Social acceptance feels good and social rejection feels bad. So how does one fix that problem? The simple solution for children is to learn what gives the popular social group its popularity and then join the crowd.
Yes, we've just defined the term Peer Pressure. And most of us are familiar with that feeling of pressure to change how we behave, believe, or even dress and carry ourselves so we can conform to and fit in with a popular social group.
Whether it is good or bad depends on what our peers are pressuring us to do. Peer pressure can encourage us to learn bad habits, but it works the same way with good habits. We can encourage one another to strive for excellence or to settle for mediocrity.
The real concern about Peer Pressure is that it teaches us to manipulate one another. We learn that we can have power and control over others if we learn to play the game. Unfortunately, we also develop a measure of tolerance for this manipulation.
We are taught by our social peers that our Personal Paradigms must submit to popular Collective Paradigms. There will be times when we can thoughtfully, and prayerfully do just that. But there are inherent hazards for those who blindly go with the flow.
Groupthink is a fully corrupted type of Peer Pressure that aggressively assaults dissenting Personal Paradigms. In its blind ignorance, Groupthink will destroy any thought or reasoning that does not comply with its synthetically fabricated condition of consensus. In a social setting, Groupthink is virtually always destructive in nature.
Whether a collective is good or bad depends on the value of its purpose. We should know this before we dive in. If your parents told you that "Everybody's doing it" isn't a good enough excuse for you to do it, too, they were right.
So let us add this understanding to our foundation. There is more to discuss on the subject of Collective Paradigms, but we can save that for later. It is important to realize that Collective Paradigms often challenge us to change our Personal Paradigms. This gives the collective group control over our lives.
Simple awareness is a good first step in the process of both protecting and correcting our Personal Paradigms.
When we know The Truth, it will make us free.