After Gutenberg

Subtitle: Check Your Weltanschauung at the Portal

We had learned from Monkeyfister that BP Uses Prison Labor For Oil Clean-Up.

It looks as if Arizona is improving upon a fine old Southern tradition: a new law “could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison.” “Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it’s not about prisons. It’s about what’s best for the country.”

According to NPR, “an analysis of fund-raising documents, lobbying records and corporate reports shows that the private prison industry helped draft and pass the measure.”

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

“The community’s cultural background and the stories we tell will shape how a dominant pattern arises.”

O.K., until reading a suggestion by University of Michigan professor Andy Hoffman, this blog was going to stop at noting Pearce’s own words — send hundreds of thousands of people to prison is what’s best for the country. But, first, a Wikipedia segue:

Handa, M.L. (1986) introduced the idea of “social paradigm” in the context of social sciences. He identified the basic components of a social paradigm. Like Kuhn, Handa addressed the issue of changing paradigm; the process popularly known as “paradigm shift”. In this respect, he focused on social circumstances that precipitate such a shift and the effects of the shift on social institutions, including the institution of education. This broad shift in the social arena, in turn, changes the way the individual perceives reality.

Another use of the word paradigm is in the sense of Weltanschauung (German for world view). For example, in social science, the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. Social scientists have adopted the Kuhnian phrase “paradigm shift” to denote a change in how a given society goes about organizing and understanding reality. A “dominant paradigm” refers to the values, or system of thought, in a society that are most standard and widely held at a given time. Dominant paradigms are shaped both by the community’s cultural background and by the context of the historical moment.

Professor Andy suggests that Climate Change, like Slavery, needs a true Cultural Shift to stop it, which got this blog to ruminate about what is a Cultural Shift and how do We (yes, you and me brothers and sisters) know whether it is a true one? What makes up a false Cultural Shift?

Those denying and / or in denial about the anthropogenic causes of climate change might assert that such focus is a false Cultural Shift. It is not true to the principles that made our country great.

In any case, with the return of prison labor to hide the tar balls Hoffman’s analogy struck a chord. And, resonated with California’s consideration of Proposition 19.

“By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.”