Paradigm Shifts
Author: Thomas B. Anderson

This publication, Paradigm Shifts, may be the most efficient, easiest manual for self-improvement available. But beyond that, it is the ultimate mind tool for identifying and overcoming all unnatural problems, destructions and conflicts on a personal scale for oneself, and ultimately on a global scale for everyone. It reveals the basis of the current, world-wide anti-civilization, from which all unnatural problems arise, and compares all aspects of that current civilization with a natural civilization, in which conscious beings live free of all the artificial boundaries.

Today, a shift from an irrationality-and-death oriented civilization to a reason-and-life oriented civilization rises to a new urgency. Positing and grasping the primary differences between the two modes leads to ever new combinations and integrations of concepts which each reveal a current fundamental problem in the perception of people and structure of civilization, and at the same time offer a rational counterpart to be achieved.

No action is required

The following 100 steps are a 100-piece puzzle of a full comparison between an irrational and a rational mode of existence for conscious people. One only needs to integrate each comparison from a rational, scientific, cause-and-effect perspective, to understand the difference between the rational and irrational aspects. Those comparisons are applicable both on a global level, to society, and on a personal level, to oneself and one's own artifical problems which may or may not exist for each particular aspect.

Each aspect lists a resource on how to affect the switching from an irrational mode to a rational mode on a large scale, if applicable yet. The genuine understanding of each comparison is sufficient for an immediate, permanent adjustment from the irrational to the rational mode in one's own life. On genuinely understanding each particular difference, one will subsequently decide and act in one's own best interest -- towards individual survival, benefit, success, happiness. No additional action is required.

The fundaments of an unnatural civilization

An unnatural civilization is an anti-civilization, anti-life and anti-reason. It can only be created when societies of conscious people learn to grasp all concepts including those for evading reality, irrational, dishonesty, deceptions and self-deceptions, and chose to apply rather than dismiss them. On earth, those deceptions were and are introduced into people's minds and culture by leaders in religions, politics, philosophy and media. During evolution, the human mind depended on authority, until consciousness was developed. As a part of biological history, conscious men still implicitly seek authority in others in form of religions and leaders, or are at least susceptible to manipulation by any self-proclaimed authorities. Those "authorities" usually exert their manipulations in exchange for power over disempowered individuals, and values from expropriated individuals. Deception, self-deception and reality "evasion" is the first layer of an anticivilization.

Therefore, an anticivilization exists by force against the individual, but that force is either not recognized, or tolerated by a manipulated society. The use of force and fraud other than for self-defense is the second layer of an anticivilization.

The effects of following authorities results in inefficient structures created by those authorities, which are again accepted because of deceptive manipulation. Inefficient and harmful structures include current governments, laws, education, academe, health system, science, suppressed free businesses, institutionalized government business, media, societies, and individuals and individual opinions. The institutions that support manipulative leaders and their system of force are the third layer of an anticivilization.

The use of force is really used to sustain the needs those leaders, by expropriated values, including but not limited to taxes, and freedoms of individuals. It must be rationalized, however, to be broadly accepted. In an anticivilization, ends justify the means, the "common good" or "higher good" are valid life goals, society and minority rights come before individual rights, and sacrifice, especially for political and religious related goals is desirable. The "justification" of force and anti-individualism through the use of authority to form "public opinions" and a macro support structure of parasitic leaders is the fourth layer of an anticivilization.

From those upside-down institutions and opinions arise further destructions, from subtle personal problems and personal self-deceptions (mysticisms) to murderous movements, insane self-destruction, and society-sponsored oppression against the most natural and valuable attributes of conscious individuals. Those structures are not directly necessary to maintain a force-backed rule, but are a direct, incurable result of that rule and the effect on civilization. They include: breakthrough preventing regulations of life-sustaining, life-saving, and life-improving medicine/science/technology/progress/business, sugar/drugs/time-wasting self-destruction, personal tragedies caused by external destructions and force, the inevitability of ultimate death, religious and political condemnation and corruption of sexual values, isolationism, racism, immigration policies, religious terror, political-revolution terror, police-state terror, government control and intrusion in private lives, criminal bureaucracies. The irrational structures resulting from an upside-down manipulation of natural perspectives and the unnecessary suffering and stagnation they cause are the fifth layer of an anticivilization.

The most efficient, unbeatable leaders at the top of anticivilization hierarchies explicitly understand and exploit all five layers, enlarging the resulting problems for purposes of increasingly gaining values, support, control over public opinion, distractions from the core problems, and fake-ego-boosting arbitrary destructions of values. The anti-civilization is a multi-layered monster. The lifeblood of that monster is the conscious evasion of reality by its inhabitants. Thus, that monster is actually a ghost, based on nothing, and is vanished by reality.

The anti-civilization deceives observers by its stagnant cyclic dynamics -- all its illusions go from bad to better, from better to worse, and then back.

The anti-civilization is also a multi-headed hydra. Its structueres exist for over 3000 years and are essentially the ultimate manifestation of artificial complexity. Keep fighting one issue, or even many issues at once, and you succeed at correcting them. Meanwhile, many other issues that you don't control will worsen. When you care about those issues, other issues will spring back to the status-quo. Individuals cannot beat or reform an anti-civilization -- they can only, and must, withdraw from it, to act toward their best interests. Every individual can leave the anticivilization. When all individuals, except the parasitical leaders and their supporters, have left the anticivilization, it will cease to exist, no fight and no reform necessary.

The fundaments of a natural civilization

Seen from the wider scope of the natural way of life for conscious beings, all structures, fundaments and laws of an anticivilization are invalid; in fact, they are based on illusions which are dispelled when seen before the whole picture of reality. Natural conscious life logically follows along the rules of evolution. Preservance of the individual self is the highest good for every rational conscious individual. Control and self-control is the most important mechanism. In fact, because a conscious individual can grasp anything in existence it has the potential to control and do everything.

Unlike in an anticivilization, death is not inevitable in a natural civilization. Conscious individuals have the three tools required to overcome their own biological limits: the conscious capability to understand their own mortality and the problem of a limited lifespan, their own rational self-interest, and the capability of scientific thinking that yields potentially unlimited technological progress. Free of false escapes such as mystical immortality or life-after-death visions, the goal and necessity of conquering death through science, progress, and business become obvious. Free of "ethical" limitations, altruistic burdens, and of government force, a natural civilization that persists in a rational mode soon makes scientific achievemts that obsolete that death inevitable for non-conscious beings.

Above all, one principle, the only morally mandatory principle, rules a natural civilization: the prohibition of initiatory force, fraud, or threat of force. Using force against others for a reason other than self-defense is the root cause of all evil, which does not exist in nature, unless it is introduced by political and religious leaders to create an anti-civilization. Free from forced government security and public insurances, free from compulsory government-controlled education, free from force-backed regulations of any activity and any property, the self-controlled natural dynamics of a civilization of conscious individuals flourishes permanently.

Naturally, there are cultures and different ways of living, seeing things, and doing business. Natural cultures of conscious people differ from tribal, unconscious cultures and anticivilization societies in the point that they do not include unconscious habits, conditioning, or automatically accepted "public opinions". Habits and common ways of lifestyle exist not because of the authority of a leader or of society views them as necessary, but only because they are explicitly reviewed by each conscious being which adopts them, and found to be objectively beneficial to individual life, well-being and happiness. There are no irrational taboos or limits as to what any individual can do either, including areas of free opinions, sex, and personal power. Still, no freedoms of an individual can hurt the rights of anyone else, because of the natural principle of using force only for immediate self-defense.

Finally, laziness and boredom are also absent. The natural, unrestricted, unconditioned mode of existence for a conscious individual is the feeling of happiness and the absence of negative emotions. Positive emotions are the basic motivation for exerting effort that lead to ever-new accomplishments in life for oneself and others. Those accomplishments, in turn, ensure an individuals self-esteem and happiness, and therefore the motivation for further accomplishments.

Beyond Libertarianism

Improving one's own personal philosophy, and life situation in general, not primarily society, is the most important key to all forms of change, and any constructive improvement should be oriented around oneself, not society. Libertarianism as a movement misses out on those issues, as well as it undergeneralizes fundamental moral issues, including even condemnation of clear initiatory-force crimes from taxes, immigration, the business/ government corruption that does exist, as well as religious destructions. Libertarianism does not explicitly enough state the categorical immorality of compulsory government systems and the inherent injustice, as well as not speaking out on the evils of initiatory-fraud-and-force organised religion. But, those are structures that make up the fundamental incompatibility of the current civilization with natural, prosperous reality. Some aspects of libertarianism lack honesty and are too pragmatic while missing out on personal issues, therefore libertarianism is missing its goal of a majority audience of productive, innocent individuals world-wide. It fails to aim toward a *fully* rational civilization of *full* justice for everyone -- not a improvement toward liberty within anticivilization boundaries, but a radical clean-sweep from all destrutive politics, religion, force. As public libertarianism erodes the force-backed injustice from a position within the anticivilization, it, like any other anticivlization movement, no matter how good-intentioned the motive and goal, ironically has to stay acceptable to the anticivlization structures in order to survive.

Beyond Objectivism

The basis of objectivism is reality, however, the practical expression as a form of philosophy lacks safeguards. Not only are single persons able to to claim philosophical authority within objectivism, and thus undermine key aspects of the philosophy, especially its focus. That focus goes toward eliminating criminalities, especially the force and governments, not toward bringing about change by "perfectioning" single individuals and going through the definition of the same philosophical words and concepts again and again. But, objectivism also lacks a safeguard against the establishment of dogmas. Dogmatically manipulated objectivism can ironically resemble in some ways the christian kind of dogmas. The condemnation of human aspects that are not perfect or "fully aligned" with the "ideal" objectivist philosophies is misleading. Especially, no moral or significant value judgments can be made about a persons immediate emotions, and a persons actions and views regarding amoral subjects, i.e. subjects that are neither destructive (including laziness and self-destruction) or objectively productive. Current objectivism tends to be dogmatic and too elitist, especially in its style, to reach its broad goal of reforming civilization by liberating and empowering the individual, instead of criticizing it, by criticizing the anticivilization structures, instead of paying attention to anything else. Still, genuine objectivist philosophy remains the single most important philosophy of thought and self-liberation for any movement, business and individual.

Paradigm Shifts

Aspect

Unnatural Civilization

Natural Civilization

Action-Mode Switch (Example)

Philosophy: Values The definition of values is distorted, arbitrary or bogus The individual (you) is the highest value, all other values are relative to an individual's objective needs Personal

Society: Limits "Society" (actually the anticivilization leaders) impose limits on personality, finances, lifestyle, health, happiness All aspects of life have a naturally unlimited positive potential Libertarianism Love and Sex "Love" is mostly faked, neurotic, equivalent to superficial sex, or selfless Love is free of guilt, genuine, mutual, and can be romantic or individual, all based on the values, happiness and self-esteem of individuals Personal

Life: Meaning and purpose The purpose of one's own life cannot be grasped by a mind clouded and distracted by all-pervasive irrationalities Continuous effort of thinking about one's own path in life and making necessary planning and corrections is natural Personal

Life: Life cycles Irrationality -> Laziness -> Unhapiness -> Destructivity -> More irrationality No Irrationality -> Conscious effort -> Productivity -> Happiness -> Motivation -> More effort Productive Work

Justice: law Victimless "crimes", from illegal possession to thought "crimes". Politics, lobbyists, lawyers can subjectively define what constitutes a crime. Objective crimes are only the direct initiation of force, fraud or threat of force Free Nation Foundation

Justice: prosecution The state as a moral/social/platonistic "authority" prosecutes wrongdoers through expropriations, jails, taking away freedom, guns, death Only goals of justice are the financial compensation of real-person victims, and the use of forced detention when necessary to guarantee safety from a perpetrator's further destructive actions Not yet Religion Religion is normal, necessary, a refuge. Organized religion silently influences politics and society, and raises to actual power, resulting in oppression and death, when given the chance. Religion is absurd for self-responsible, rational individuals. It is a historical relict, much like slavery and kings of ancient societies. Detox

Government: Taxes Mandatory taxes necessary to keep this civilization stable Freedom from taxes and other force stabilizes and improves society, economy and individual wealth of everyone Withdrawing support including through legal meaures God God is the holy father, the absolute authority, an existentialistic uncomprehensible entity, or a platonistic metaphor for the order of society and the State God as authority and as an unprovable idea is irrelevant; individuals believe in their own strengths and virtues and only they possess unlimited potential through real, self-controlled actions Secular Humanism

Government: bureaucracy Governments are parasites; they dishonestly expand into every area of life and society to justify themselves and usurp values. Unnatural institutions IRS, FDA, DEA, EPA, INS, criminally harm people, directly and indirectly Governments that do exist only fulfill the function of providing immediate physical safety from aggression. Only voluntary, competitive services exist Libertarian defense-only government

Government: protection Governments jail and intimidate the productives, while neglecting legitimate, necessary security and protection Governments protect against real offenders, including those who harm and intimidate the productives Libertarian defense-only government

Government: politics A monolithic force-backed, authoritative state influenced by power-and-fame-hungry politicians and lobbies supporting various unproductive institutions Without force, governments are forced to exist in a voluntary, competitive business mode Libertarian defense-only government Individualism The populace, knowingly and unknowingly, supports the subtle violation and erosion of individual rights Everyone supports and enforces the protection of everyone's individual rights Neo-Tech Advantages

News: politics The news media portrays politics wrongfully as important, is a strong supporter of and investor in political power The news media holds up individual values and science/technology as important Not yet

News: business dynamics The news media profits by advancing the importance of politics and other authority-related areas, satisfying public demands Without a demand for politics or authority, the news media resorts to beneficient, productive business/science/art topics to profit Slowly appearing unpolitical cyberspace news, likeslashdot

Philosophy: recognition of authority Politics, authorities and "the public" are basically everything Politics, authorities and "the public" are basically nothing Depoliticizing society and Understanding the bicameral mind Business Many non-profit movements with arbitrary philosophy and goals, often form mutual alliance with government force Free, independent, creative business is the only necessary movement Free-Market Captialism

Mind: understanding Urge for externally proclaimed meanings and purposes in one's life philosophy The conscious capability to know and understand everything utilized obsoleted any external guidance Self-introspection/self-growth

Philosophy: morals Selfless philosophical and moral orientations Self-growth is the ultimate goal Objectivism Science and Technology Science dominated by traditional goals and academic dogmas. Thought is limited by traditional concepts. Science is led by competitive free business, goals are creating the most important values for individuals. Thought and subsequent progress is unlimited and experiences frequent paradigm shifts. Not yet Business Global business is under attack. Manipulated people cry for force/regulations Globally unregulated business and trade is protected as all individual rights of entrepreneurs are protected in absence of force. WTO Power Life dominated by irrational strive for power, destructive short-term fun, and fame, for immoral power over others Life dominated by carefully planned actions for long-term values and -happiness, for power over one's own destiny Rational egoism

Mind: authority and guidance Guidance from "above" and others: false authorities are trusted to set one's short path throughout life Guidance in rational self: oneself determines rational life-enhancing steps that set one's infinite path throughout life Conscious control; Understanding the bicameral mind Art Art and entertainment provide implicit authority, guidance, diversion from the stress of self-responsibility Art and entertainment provide reflection on own accomplishments and values derived from one's own self-responsible effort Non-establishment cyberspace art/entertainment

Health: diet Diet and eating habits are neurotic, habitual, or purposely self-destructive Diet and eating habits are the means only to maximum health and well-being. No drugs. Individuals consequently inquire about, learn and apply all scientific facts. Life Extension Foundation

Society: conformism Conformity is mandatory. Neurotic, compulsory strive for being and staying socially acceptable. Individuality is mandatory, and no collective social standards exist. Personal

Happiness: dynamics Evasions of reality lead to downward happiness spirals of disease, depression and conscious self-destruction, ending with ultimate death Honest exploration of reality lead to upward happiness spirals of health, self-esteem and efforts within a free environment, which are ever advancing Personal Death Psychological self-affected decline into age and then death is seen as mystical destiny and taken for granted Permanent youth and health is eventually natural for everyone, and sustained through autonomous, continuous personal effort and growth New Perspectives on Unlimited Longevity

Government: public services Individuals are forced to provide welfare to protect others and restricted in other ways for "protection from themselves"; force rationalized through altruism and bogus government compassion All insurance is volitional, and rational decisions enable everyone to survive for himself Anti-tax legal challenges

Government: travel, borders, business Job regulations and forced welfare let governments rationalize racist immigration policies Free travel, migration and work empowers individuals, economies, civilization Open borders

Business: morals Under "moral" pressure, business resorts to selfless actions which harm themselves and society Free business resorts to selfish actions which ultimately benefit everyone New business paradigms, like Global Wealth Power

Business: competition False business dominance through government-force based deception Business dominance only through hard-effort competition Separation of economy and the state (not yet)

Science: applied technology Application of technology is limited, rationalized through environmental concerns Application of technology solves all environmental problems and limitlessly progresses beyond Not yet Money Money is demonized; money systems owned and transactions regulated by governments; increasing amount of taxes Money is seen as equivalent for exchanging tangible values; monetary systems are decentralized and voluntary Cybercash solutions like e-gold, not yet anonymous and decentralized though








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Tom Anderson is publisher and founding member of the IA foundation: http://secretcodes.org

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