Introducing The Paradigm Timeline of History

(April 2, 2025) Above is the traditional timeline of European history. It is descriptive but not very insightful in regards to historical causes. The translation of runic texts has pushed the timeline further back in time to about 1600 BCE and even more if extrapolations into Neolithic farmer culture are accepted. A more insightful approach to historical analysis is to use a paradigm timeline below.

At its simplest a paradigm is how we see things as demonstrated above. Shift attention and we see this same picture differently. Being able to choose the way we perceive this well known picture makes it analogous to a religious paradigm. If we could not change perception at will then it would be analogous to a cultural paradigm. Such changeability requires exposure to alternate views.

What is a Paradigm?

(April 1, 2025) Facts must be organized so they can be found when needed. This requires a mental framework, that is, a paradigm for working with acquired facts. If new facts cannot be fitted into a person's existing paradigm they will be ignored. Those facts are just not seen. Paradigms should not be confused with social or cultural classification schemes (which they often are). They exist at a much deeper level.

History has 2 great paradigm shifts between 3 phases of history. The phases of history are shown below with their main religious groupings in parenthesis:

Ancient Pagan (with personified deities: the popular classic world, late Hinduism) (with non-personified deities: Druidry, Pythagorean, early Stoic, Epicurean, early Hinduism)
Scriptural (with personified deities: Jewish, Christian, Islam) (without personified deities: Buddhist) All these have sacred scriptures for their authority.
Modern (without spiritual realm: humanists, scientists)(with spiritual realm: new agers, witches, modern Pagans)

The great paradigm shifts are:

Dualist Revolution (500 BCE - 300 CE)
Renaissance Revolution (1400 CE - 2000 CE) Includes Enlightenment & Romantic eras

One example of a paradigm change is a scientific revolution like the one in which plate tectonics replaced the idea of a static earth with rising and falling land bridges. Changes in paradigm tend to follow the circular pattern above. This cycle was first described by Thomas Kuhn in his book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962at http://faculty.humanities.uci.edu/bjbecker/revoltingideas/week1d.html

Paradigms Can Be Changed But With Difficulty

(November 27, 2023, Updated April 1, 2025) Paradigms can be difficult to change because they are heavily influenced by humanity's psychology. Either the psychology of identity or the difficulty in unlearning something then relearning. The first learning of something is always the easiest. This combination of change difficulty and identity psychology can make such people having such a "brain-washed" paradigm appear completely irrational to others. Holding onto an identity paradigm will even make them willing to perform atrocities in defense of that paradigm. This was noticed by German Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was jailed and eventually killed by the Nazis. He wrote this:

“The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison)