Early spring, warmer, longer days, grass growing, trees budding; the northern
hemisphere tips toward the sun again as it's done billions of times before.  The moon circles us as we fly round the sun and we all circle the galactic core.  Water falls, is drawn up, falls again.  Our lives reflect nature:  every heartbeat, every breath completes a cycle; cycles of light and darkness regulate our master hormones; a woman's monthly cycles enable the miracle of life; we enter the world needing lots of help, and often leave the same way.
         If I had to draw reality on a graph, I'd say it looks more like a circle than a line.  Today however, we live from a linear conception of nature and history.  We strive for some end point where we hope to taste the elixir of ultimate fulfillment, but upon reaching an end point, we look ahead for another destination.  A circle has no end point; every place is both a beginning and an ending; fulfillment is always available.
         The linear view of life, which underlies our thoughts but is itself rarely recognized, is a deep cause of our most desperate problems today.

         In recent years, the phrase "paradigm shift" has seen increasing circulation.   A paradigm (pronounced "para-dime") is a fundamental set of assumptions and beliefs (often unconscious) upon which a world-view is based.  This idea was explained in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn in an important book called "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."  Kuhn traces the history within many specific areas of science, and notes a pattern.  A science does not develop just by gradual accumulation of facts.  Instead, a science draws on a paradigm--a world-view which serves as the basis for further discovery.  The gradual uncovering of a paradigm's implications may continue for years, even hundreds of years--this is "normal science."  Finally, though, observations are made that don't make sense under the standard paradigm--these are called "anomalies."  For example, the physics of Newton could not explain the bending of light near the sun's gravitational field that our instruments first detected about 100 years ago.
         When anomalies emerge, a period of "crisis" in the science occurs.  Die-hards--addicted to the old viewpoint--make heroic efforts to explain away the problems.  Ultimately, though, competing paradigms are proposed which will rework the very foundation of the science.  Finally, a new paradigm emerges victorious, providing a world-view that explains everything the old science did plus the new observations as well.  With general acceptance of the new paradigm, another period of "normal science" proceeds until the next "scientific revolution."
         Einstein and quantum physics superseded the paradigm of Newton, which had explained much for several hundred years.  Our society today still hasn't caught up with 20th century physics.  In health care, for example, many of our current practices stem from a Newtonian view of the body as a machine--a beautiful and elaborate machine, perhaps, but a machine nevertheless.  This doesn't fit with the new physics, which says that what really exists are fluctuating energy fields.  The best of "alternative medicine" often attempts to work with these energies, although they perhaps haven't yet been described or even recognized by our medical science.  We would be most arrogant to suppose that we have already discovered all the important forms of energy that exist.

         What about circles and lines?  If we look beneath our usual thoughts, we'll see that lines are fundamental to our current societal paradigm.  The Dow-Jones average traces a line, which seems to go up forever.  Bill Clinton told us we needed to "grow the economy."  (As Edward Abbey observed, unlimited growth in a finite system is the ideology of the cancer cell.)  Medicare requires physical therapists to document "progress" to justify their work with 90 year-old patients.  Most 90 year-olds, however, are (on the whole) slowing down; it is valid to help them do so gracefully.  This is hard to justify on a linear model, because what these people are really doing is completing the cycle, reconnecting the end to the beginning of their journey.
         Along with linear thinking, another basic component of our current paradigm is the belief that my interests conflict with your interests, and that I can somehow gain if you are hurt.  "I, me, mine" stand front and center in our thoughts; the context of "we" forms a vague background.  But really "we're all in this boat together," and an emerging paradigm may propel "us" and our shared interests into the foreground of our thoughts.  This would fundamentally change our approach to life.
         Many "anomalies" of our current world-view have been emerging:  world hunger, nuclear weapons, disrespect for and destruction of the natural world, a widening chasm between rich and poor, and dissatisfaction even among the rich who find that the philosophy of "more is always better" does not bring fulfillment.
         New paradigms are emerging and competing for acceptance even as die-hards cling to old views.  For example, the very concept of "sustainable" (applied to logging, fishing, or whatever) implies a cyclical view of economics.
         It's an exciting time to be alive.  With our thoughts and related lifestyles, we can build a new paradigm for human culture that could serve for a thousand years.  We can start by harmonizing with the cycles of life, and stop trying to turn them into lines.  The place to begin is with the next breath.