Consultant Dan
17 September 2010
Is there a new paradigm?
I was in Canberra again this week and had some interesting conversations with Labor, Greens and media. Underneath the mirth about ‘beautiful ugliness’, ‘rainbows’, ‘letting the sun in’ and a ‘new paradigm’, there is a sense that a serious shift may be taking place.
One of the ways to tell if Australian politics is experiencing a genuine paradigm shift is to look at what the opponents of the new paradigm are saying.
In a period of normal debate, both sides of an argument use the same data to argue for different conclusions. But in a period of paradigm conflict, the opposing sides see the world so differently that there is not even agreement about facts. Proponents of the declining paradigm increasingly come to look like a foreign tribe, or uncomprehending children.
From this view of the nature of paradigms, Tony Abbott is quite right to exclude his Senators and MPs from attending the new Gillard-Milne climate committee of the Australian Parliament. What would they have to contribute?
While the Liberal Party continues to be held hostage by an anti-green paradigm, they see the world differently to the rest of us. Since they are not able to cogitate on the facts of climate change they cannot understand facts about the future of the Australian economy.
Reason can not build a bridge from their old paradigm to the rising green paradigm. Like any period of scientific revolution, it will be winner takes all. We will come to prevail and they will increasingly retreat from reason to complaint.
Here is a longer opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald, that I wrote when when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister, which you might find amusing if not illuminating.
Dan – of real and deep concern to me is the shift from reasonable debate to unreasonable snarling – especially from the Lib side of the divide. It is no longer enough to disagree you must hate, it is no longer enough to win you must destroy.
It is as if the rabid looniness of Tea Party politics is creeping into Australian political discourse.
It is a worry.
Thanks John and Jan.
Jan – I think it would be good to work out how to break open the right and talk to those who can still engage with the issues.
John – the Tea Party movement is a worry and I wish the media would take some responsibility for fostering the dangerous ignorance and rage you refer to.
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Great comment Dan. And perhaps the only way to understand the inherently ‘unreasonable’ (i.e. economically illogical) opposition of the right to the possibility of new business opportunities, a position they are supposed to own.