The Importance of Paradox in a Convergent World

All right, so let us accept the idea that we live in a convergent world instead of a divergent one, as argued in the previous blogs. What does that mean? And what does this have to do with paradox?

The world we have entered is a world that is converging towards a state of negligible growth within a finite space. Any growth or development that occurs, once convergence is achieved, will have to be first of all qualitative rather than quantitative. Hence, we may replace an existing product with a new one, engendering the development of a new industry, for example, but only at the cost of the decline of an older industry. If the new industry uses resources more efficiently, there will be some net growth. However, unlimited global expansion of resource use will become impossible.

Today, we function within a growth economy because the population is expanding, and because there are markets outside our own sphere of influence. The expanding population has always been the largest driver of the economy, to the point that it is not understood how a stable economy can function in the absence of such growth. The expanding population also drives large differentials between the rich and the poor, the expansion of space and resources, the conversion of the environment into waste products, scientific progress, the confrontations between nations, and so forth.

The new, convergent growth regime corresponds to a period where differences between populations, including economic differences and living standards, will be evening out (partly as a result of the increased connectivity), population growth will be declining and a balance between resource production and population use of these resources will need to be achieved. A highly connected, zero growth, planetary economy will therefore entail profound changes in the ways our societies are structured and how they operate, and these changes may well engender additional transformations, up to and including aspects of our psychic makeup.

This zero growth state corresponds to another profound change, of which we are all much more aware – the global manner in which the world is now connected via the internet. A sustainable state of socio-economic survival with a population that is close to the productivity limit of the planet is, by its very nature, a world characterized by a circular flow of information and cause and effect. In other words, the world is sufficiently dense and closed back on itself that our actions will come back to haunt us. The whole idea of not needing to care about the consequences of one’s actions is operative only in a world undergoing expansion. The nature of the expansion ensures that consequences may seep away – this is what it means to say the evolution of the world is divergent.

The emergence of the internet exacerbates the effect of closure still further. In the world coming into being, all our acts will reflect off our surroundings and come back to affect us. The need to be held accountable for our actions is already widely felt – in the coming decades, it will become a necessity. This will have profound consequences for both corporate and individual behavior. At the same time, human diversity will remain – indeed, it will be enhanced. When social pressure increases, people, by their very nature, rebel. People will seek ways of living and expressing that escape these pressures, whether this be adulterous affairs in a marriage, new spiritual explorations, the rise of certain forms of crime, new forms of creative expression, or any other form of individual and group expression. Values will differ from one group to another, identities likewise. Under increased socio-economic pressure for accountability, this will lead to a diversification of human interest groups, a multiplication of different interests, and hence to the increasing co-existence of extremes and groups in opposition. My central argument here, is that these opposing tendencies, and many others that will come into play, will create a social fabric that is characterized by opposites that co-exist side-by-side, and that new forms of resolution will be called into being. In the world of expansion, groups with radically different values did not always need to constantly rub shoulders. In the world coming into being, this will become the norm.

On the other hand, while we are looking at substantial changes in behavior, both at an organizational and, eventually, at an individual level, many things will remain similar to what they are today. Human nature, overall, is still human nature. The new society must be as diverse as the one today, or it cannot function. It must be able to accommodate viewpoints that dissent, even from widely held moral principles. The system that emerges will, therefore, be characterized by larger local inhomogeneities, in order to accommodate the increased global uniformity that follows from dynamical convergence.

In a zero growth economy characterized by high interconnectedness, the differences between one group and its neighbors will be exacerbated. Contradictions will co-exist side by side. Today’s global inhomogeneities and expanding population act as buffers against this situation, but these buffers will diminish over the next decades. In today’s world, we isolate our cultural and individual differences by moving away from groups that offend us, by surrounding ourselves with people of like mind. Likewise, we turn our gaze away from our own darker human side, and succeed in this, because there are places we may look that are “outside” the system and our reflections of the self. In a convergent world, as the space “outside” diminishes, we shall find this harder and harder to do. As a result, like it or not, we shall be forced to deal with paradox, increasingly, on an everyday basis.

What is a Paradox?

Wikipedia asserts that “A paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.” It goes on to state “Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably and wrongly with contradiction; but whereas a contradiction asserts its own opposite, many paradoxes do allow for resolution of some kind.” The “whatis.com” dictionary modulates this definition by indicating that “A paradox is a statement or concept that contains conflicting ideas” – hence extending the definition from embracing only statements to also embracing concepts. Etymologically speaking, the word means “beyond thinking”, just as orthodox means “right thinking”. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary also adds the following : “one (as a person, situation, or action) having seemingly contradictory qualities or phases”.

In this blog, it is assumed that paradoxes are not only a property of statements and concepts, but also of being. This is similar to the way paradoxes are expressed in zen koans. Zen koans are statements such as the popular “what is the sound of one hand clapping”, and hence fall within the definition given by Wikipedia, but they are statements that may engender profound reorganization of the self. In this sense, they evoke paradoxes of being.

These definitions highlight both the relationships between paradox, conflict and contradiction, but they are, for the most part, careful to distinguish between them. Hence when we say that in a convergent world, contradictions will co-exist side-by-side, this is not itself a paradox. As indicated by Wikipedia, paradox implies that a form of resolution is possible. This actually provides a framework for defining paradoxes of being : that is, these are contradictions within being that can be resolved.

However, it should also be clear that a paradox is, by its nature, opposed to an orthodoxy. Paradoxes may be resolved, but never in obvious or predictable ways, and certainly not according to tenets of doctrine. Orthodoxy, for the most parts, seeks to exclude contradictions, to develop a consistent argument. What I call here “paradoxy”, then, is an alternative to orthodoxy in terms of suggesting modes of being and action. Rather than right action being determined by committee, it derives from the resolution of paradox, a resolution which, by its very nature, must follow from the source of the paradox itself.

Paradox is heavily used within certain kinds of psychoanalysis, especially Jungian and Freudian approaches. Jung characterizes an archetype as 'irrepresentable'. Archetypal representations, are therefore, within Jung’s thought, “representations of the irrepresentable” . Jung was also fascinated by the presence of paradox within Zen Buddhism, as revealed by the following comment : “Above all I would mention the koans of Zen Buddhism, those sublime paradoxes that light up, as with a flash of lightning, the inscrutable interrelations between ego and self.” (C.G. Jung, On the nature of the psyche, p. 135). Freud’s theories are also rife with the presence of paradoxes – the opposition between the search for pleasure and the personal destructiveness this can lead to, or between the desire for things that are of necessity forbidden by social conventions, are two examples. There is even a variant of psychoanalysis called Paradox Theory, based on the observation that both Freud and Jung recognized the human mind as based on “opposite forces”.

These ideas further emphasize the notion that paradoxes may not always refer to statements or concepts, but also to behaviors and states of being.

Let us now explore how paradoxes differ from orthodoxies, as this will lay the groundwork for understanding where one is going if one is leaving orthodoxy behind. If orthodoxies are determined by committee or convention, and therefore imposed from without the individual, then paradoxes are determined by the inherent nature of things, and imposed from within the individual. For this reason, there is a relatively strong relationship between paradox and personal forms of spirituality, while organized religion is more strongly associated with orthodoxy and doctrine.

These are mutually exclusive, also, because if one is attentive to one’s inner paradoxes, orthodox thinking will be irrelevant, while one adopts orthodox ideas if one does not entirely trust one’s inner resources. As has been indicated earlier, the concept of a paradox implies something that can be resolved, or that can resolve itself. The process by which resolution is achieved, however, will rarely be straightforward, due to the nature of a paradox.

Of course, paradoxes of being and action may also occur at organizational levels, and not only within individuals. In such situations, organizational paradoxes may come into conflict with organizational doctrines.

“Paradox is what makes life interesting.” (Charles Handy, 1994, The Age of Paradox, p. 13.)