Subj : What is a Paradigm?
To   : All
From : Rachel L. Akers
Date : Sun Nov 12 2000 10:11 pm

Just got this interesting conversation starter...

  Rai

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                         What is a Paradigm?

 It's a wonderful word! But even an abundance of dictionary definitions
won˙t tell us the full story of what "paradigm" really means in the context
that it is so commonly used today - when we˙re talking about the changes in
traditional thought patterns in business.
This story may help to explain...

Some years ago, a young man bought a new sports car.

On the first weekend he owned it, he decided to take it out into the
country. It was a beautiful day, so he lowered the top and headed out of town.

With the wind in his hair, he sped through the forest, getting faster and
faster as he went. Taking a sweeping left hand turn, his car drifted wide,
passing very close to a woman driving in the opposite direction. As their
cars passed, the woman shouted ˙PIG!˙ at the man. Annoyed by this, the man
immediately gave the woman ˙the finger˙, hoping she would see his gesture
in her rear vision mirror. Then, as he rounded the bend, his car slammed
straight into a pig that had wandered onto the road!


The man˙s paradigm, or ˙programmed thought pattern˙, had not allowed him to
consider any thought other than that the woman had hurled an insult at him,
when in fact she had been trying to warn him about the pig that had strayed
onto the road. His ˙paradigm˙ response, programmed into him over many
years, was to hurl an insult back at her as quickly as he could.

MORAL: OLD PARADIGMS CAN BE LIFE-THREATENING! 
 

--- Msged/2 4.00
 * Origin: Elfwhere - The POINTy eared POINT (3:640/531.2379)

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