In every society, legal norms that function as guidelines for conduct coexist with perceptual norms that act as frames of reference.
We usually have a clear notion of the existence of a legal normative body that governs us, however, we are less aware of the existence of unwritten norms that, being socially accepted as valid criteria to give the same meaning to surrounding facts and things , they function as common reference frames.
Perceptual norms make social coexistence possible and in an almost imperceptible way, they constitute a bulwark that we tend to maintain, since they make up a set of references that generate security for us.
Thus, we ourselves are teaching and transmitting them, from generation to generation, through a system of rewards and punishments, so that they are effectively internalized as real, taken for granted, and interpreted as an indisputable truth. These standards that function as frames of reference are paradigms.
A paradigm is a model that, applied to social reality, translates into a set of values and knowledge shared collectively, used and validated by a community over time.
They function as an unspoken norm that is given to us to frame reality and, in turn, so that we frame it.
Each one of us was raised and educated in a paradigm that has made us see the world through a certain prism, conditioning our way of observing the world and constituting ourselves.
We have all learned a series of assumptions, beliefs and values that we have taken for granted and that, together, designed in our minds a kind of map that allowed us to understand reality.
Maps are not the territory they represent but an explanation of certain aspects of something that cannot be understood in any other way.
In the same way, the paradigms function as mental maps that have served as a guide to discover the world using a certain interpretative matrix; we have grown up assuming a series of pre-established assumptions, realities and values, which we take and do not question.
We have learned to take for granted that the way we see things corresponds to how they really are or how they should be, and on these presumptions, to which we attribute the force of truth, we have built our attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and evaluations.
It is time to assume that those maps that we use as a guide are not reality itself, but a mere learned interpretation of a universe that is inviting us to abandon old molds.
Living in a given society at the same historical time makes us share basic structural paradigms; however, each of us is the result of the sum of various paradigms. Each system of which we are a part has its own forms, with which, throughout life, we add characteristics derived from the social place we occupy, the family we belong to, the environment in which we develop, our gender. , profession, age, marital status, work and each of the circumstances that define our transit through this world.
Each one will be, after all, a compendium of various juxtaposed paradigms.
Using the map metaphor again, it is easy to understand how complex human interaction can be if we all continue to cling to the known maps, recognizing only our own as valid.
Becoming aware of the basic assumptions that we take for granted and from which we interpret everything that happens to us, allows us to discover what lies beneath all that we learned, that defines us and makes us observe the world, others and ourselves in a certain way. .
Understanding ourselves as simple observers conditioned by certain paradigms that make us see things in one way and not another is the first step to get out of the cave that distorts our gaze and is, at the same time, the only loophole to affirm that it does not exist. an indisputable truth, but as many valid perspectives as possible looks, which gives us the opportunity to choose our personal way of seeing life and design ourselves according to our own needs, desires and aspirations.
At the same time, only from the dismantling of the learned structure as the only certain truth, it is feasible to recognize in the gaze of the other a difference that, far from being qualified as right or wrong, can be taken as a possibility of expansion of one’s own perspective.
We are protagonists of a time that challenges us to carry out an exercise in full awareness that enables us to recognize that only to the extent that we are capable of abandoning the comfort of staying within the learned scheme can we generate, from our own evolution, a shared paradigm shift.
Just as Copernicus, in order to develop the theory that placed the sun at the center of the universe, had to question the paradigm established by Ptolemy, in the same way, all change starts from a first action related to having the courage to generate a change of vision in relation to something that was given for certain.
Any change usually originates from a conscious exercise that allows us to recognize the areas of discomfort that we try to hide in order to maintain the status quo of tranquility that the familiar terrain grants; then, this initiated movement brings with it the questioning of the current model and an analysis from other perspectives that allows broadening the perspective and demolishing the beliefs that supported the learned scheme.
Only from the determination to leave the places of comfort that, many times, contain a deep discomfort, it is possible to provoke an exercise of analysis and subsequent questioning that allows us to distinguish the content of the paradigm that governs us and, consequently, we enable us to start an ideal selection process to create our own way of seeing things.
No change will be possible if we are not capable of generating in ourselves more expansive views that allow us to find new possibilities in the same reality.
We can remain installed in the complaint, feeding reasons to always support the same arguments or we can wake up from lethargy, make our way through our own doubts and uncertainties and choose to be promoters of a change of perspective that manages to transform reality.
Probably, only in the latter case will we rise to the occasion, having assumed the challenge of questioning, in principle, the paradigm on which we have built ourselves, knowing that nothing will change if we are not capable of modifying our own perspectives.
It is in our hands to be the architects of a new reality or prisoners of our own cells. It depends on us.
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by CEDOC