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Comments on The Paradigm Conspiracy

“Without question, the addictive paradigms that bind us to society (and often to each other) also hinder our growth as free-thinking individuals. This deeply researched book not only exposes these addictive systems, but provides a new vision of recovery by insisting that we change the lenses through which we see our world. It then becomes the compass rather than the rigid road map by which we lead our lives—thus, enabling us to break with the traditionally binding patterns of today.”

—Dr. Stephen R. Covey,

Founder and chairman of the Covey Leadership Center
and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

“This is an excellent and eminently readable book. The metaphoric comparison between addiction and cultural belief systems is powerful. The book raises the critical question for our time: Can you have healthy persons in an unhealthy system—a system based on an essentially unhealthy paradigm? It argues, successfully, that the paradigm which creates addiction can’t also heal it; in other words, there is no solution for our social ills short of fundamental whole-system change. The first step is to face our taboos and our toxic patterns with honesty and integrity. The book is a powerful wake-up call.”

—Willis Harman,

Former President, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Sausalito, California

 

“The Paradigm Conspiracy presents a full-tilt attack on the soul-violating insitutions in America which seek to control our lives. Their stifling of our independence and creativity spawns addictions of all types. [The authors] argue that a paradigm shift away from the domination model which encourages lies, secrets, restrictions, and cover-ups is the best path to recovery on both a personal and societal level."

“Using illustrative material from popular culture, philosophy, science, economics, business, politics, and history, the authors imaginatively spin out a soul-honoring personal, cultural, and global paradigm. This transformative spiritual vision uses dialogue to create harmony and renewal in social systems. It emphasizes self-knowledge, inner worth, the connectiveness of all things, and a heightened consciousness seeking meaning and truth in the midst of everyday life. The Paradigm Conspiracy is a philosophical masterwork that will enable you to see yourself and the world with fresh eyes.”

—Frederic A. Brussat,

Co-author of Spiritual Literacy and reviewer for Values & Visions Reviews Service

“A comprehensive survey of the changing paradigm and the need to increase the rate of change. We can only hope that we will find ourselves on the positive side of the tidal wave that now confronts us. There is a synthesis here that we need to understand—and support—if we are to survive.”

—Vine Deloria, Jr.,

Professor of History, Religious Studies and Law,
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

“This book is a must read for anyone who values family and freedom.”

—Russell Means,

Activist, actor, and co-author of Where White Men Fear to Tread

“When scholarship and poetry converge, anything is possible. Such is the gift of vision and hope presented by Breton and Largent in their masterful book, The Paradigm Conspiracy. I recommend this book to anyone who understands that in the heart of their own recovery from old paradigm addictions is the seed of recovery for the workplace, the society and the planet.”

—Carol Orsborn,

Author of Enough is Enough and Inner Excellence

“We now see that the social changes necessary for our survival on this planet require an alternative to competition and exploitation. Christopher Largent and Denise Breton in their wonderful book The Paradigm Conspiracy carefully discern for us an emerging paradigm that draws its power from many therapeutic and advocacy groups.”

—Patrick Carnes,

Author of Out of the Shadows, Contrary to Love,
Don’t Call it Love, Sexual Anorexia, and The Betrayal Bond

“We all feel the quiet anguish; The Paradigm Conspiracy names the perpetrator: our toxic, old-paradigm social/political systems, which survive at the price of our souls. But it doesn’t have to be that way. This book teaches us how to map out a different, soul-affirming path for our lives, one that will allow us to walk with the powerful new healing that is moving into the world.”

—Bill Kauth,

Co-founder of the New Warrior Training Adventure and
author of A Circle of Men: The Original Manual for Men’s Support Groups

“The Paradigm Conspiracy lays bare the faulty architecture of our society, the unassailable ‘facts of life’ that drive us crazy, and gives us some tools by which to navigate ourselves out of the maze. . . .[This book] is a very welcome addition to a library of precious voices reminding us that things can be better.”

—Roderick Sorrell and Amy Max Sorrell,

Authors of The I Ching Made Easy

“Finally, a book that provides a political and economic context for personal recovery work. The Paradigm Conspiracy gives us a total view of how control systems work and why we need to change our governing paradigms. The book is wide-ranging, clarifying, and practical. It helps us move beyond victim blaming and towards system clarification.”

—Paul Kivel,

Author of Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence that Tears Our Lives Apart and Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice &
founder of The Oakland Men’s Project

 

Reviews of The Paradigm Conspiracy

“This is a heady book—not for the faint of heart, but certainly for those with searching minds unafraid of exploring challenging philosophical ideas and how they can stimulate change in the systems that guide our country. Since the system as it stands is unhealthy, can the products of that system be healthy? The authors say ‘No,’ as they confront the ‘conspiracy’ of forces that have evolved into an institutional and cultural paradigm of addiction. In response, they present a number of philosophical models that have moved individuals toward personal change, to finding the strength to counter the dysfunctional morass in which we are mired. These 300+ pages address belief-system levels of reality from a variety of perspectives in showing a way “out of trance to walk our truth.” It’s a courageous book of depth and unsettling insight.”

—NAPRA ReVIEW

“This outstanding book, by a husband and wife team, is about how our systems of government, church, school and culture violate our human potential in today’s world. This book explores ways in which control systems work today and how we need to be about changing our governing paradigms. It is very practical and assists us to move beyond our often current mode of operation where we see ourselves as caught in ‘victim blaming.’ Its goal is to assist us in the transformation process of today’s systems.

“It is their belief, under which they operate, that philosophical perspectives, spiritual traditions and truths, understanding history and contemporary new science and consciousness studies and expression can empower individuals to assist in changing social systems around us by changing the much outdated paradigms on which they were founded.

“This is a book which calls us, in our daily living, to be about manifesting the spiritual truths and insights which we profess. The authors address the reality that the consciousness of all of us is interconnected across time and space and this consciousness is non-local. It is a book that can guide us into the twenty-first century.”

—Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship International

“Examining how worldviews can cause or end suffering, authors Breton and Largent. . . indict our present systems of government, church, school, and culture as diseased institutions in need of radical change by concerned and active members of society. . . .But they also describe the ways we can move toward a more “soul-sensitive” paradigm, noting that the starting point is within the individual, operating within the interconnected web of individual life. The most conspiratorial part of a paradigm shift, they say, is that it lies within the power of each of us to do it. . . .Changing paradigms changes everything, and now is the time to begin.”

—Noetic Sciences Review

“If there is to be a new High—if the world is to survive and if a new just, sustainable, peaceful social order is to emerge—we need to begin planting the seeds now.

“An excellent new book that helps us sort the vital cultural seed from the moribund is The Paradigm Conspiracy by Denise Breton and Christopher Largent. The authors have a background in the addiction-recovery movement, but they’ve seen beyond the personal to the societal. . . .

“The authors have a grounded spiritual, psychological, and political perspective—a rare combination. At the core of the current, destructive paradigm, as they see it, is a pervasive sense of woundedness and insecurity, and a need to control. No mere reshuffling of candidates or laws will solve our social problems until the fundamental paradigm of society changes to one of inner-directedness and cooperation.

“This is a ground-breaking book that applies to social systems the insights gained from the personal recovery and transformational movements. While there are millions of people whose lives are being reshaped by those movements, until now their energies have largely been siphoned away from the arena of social change. Perhaps Breton and Largent are the harbingers of a new, collective phase of recovery and transformation. Certainly the new paradigm they outline must be part of the basis for any truly sustainable, ecological, and humane culture. . . .

“The soul-honoring paradigm—even in seed form—inspires a confidence that overcomes the dual fear that the system will collapse (thus engendering immense human suffering), or that it will not collapse (thus preserving till the bitter end the present regime of environmental ruin and human exploitation). While we are affected by that system, we are not identical with it. Those who are already living the new paradigm (at least in part) are creators of culture—that ephemeral tissue of thought and behavior that binds people sustainably to one another and to the land.

“It’s a challenge—keeping our bearing while present systems crumble. There’s no point trying to deny the horror of what’s happening around us. But let’s not hold our breath too long. There’s work to be done.

—Richard Heinberg,
editor of MuseLetter

“Written in everyday language and peppered with humor. . . [The Paradigm Conspiracy] proposes a cultural experiment: What would happen if we all ‘conspire’—breathe together—to create social structures whose guiding purpose is to honor our souls rather than revere power at any price?”

—Atlantis Rising

“We are all conspirators in what we call reality, and so, according to the authors, we can all conspire to bring a new paradigm into existence. . . .Breton and Largent describe workable paradigms that prove this can be done.”

—Nexus

“Breton and Largent suggest awareness is a first step in disarming the modern paradigm of its insidious and unconscious influence. . . [The Paradigm Conspiracy] is a whole-systems look at why so many Americans feel like pawns of circumstances. . . . A book for ‘spiritual radicals.’”

—The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)

“In the second half of the 20th Century, intellectual streams from many sources have flowed together to make a new river of wisdom for which we can be grateful and which is the only hope we have for the survival of human kind. The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson, written in 1981, was at the heart of the river bed and one of her sources was the work of Thomas Kuhn, who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and introduced the idea of paradigm shifts to explain the way in which philosophy of science and science itself have evolved. Then Robert Pirsig, who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, wrote another book recently entitled Lila in which he told me for the first time how much the whole experiment called the United States of America was from the intellectual tradition of the American Indians at least as much if not more than from Europe. ” He said that when the Declaration of Independence began with, “We find these truths to be self-evident. . . ,” that none of them were self-evident from anything ever written or spoken in the Continent of Europe. These truths were self-evident from living with the Indians for 300 years. Benjamin Franklin had been ambassador to the Iroquois Confederacy and many other of the Constitution’s framers were familiar with their model of government.

“Now along comes the great synthesis of the great syntheses. The book is called The Paradigm Conspiracy. . . Out of the twelve step tradition, a book of twelve chapters quoting twelve poems by the great poet Rumi, with each chapter based on one of the twelve cycles of truth of the great Huron Native American named Deganawidah, the designer of the Great Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy. Breton and Largent say, “The Twelve Cycles brought the Northeast Indians back from the brink of annihilation.” The twelve cycles of truth are: “Learning the truth, honoring the truth, accepting the truth, observing the truth, hearing the truth, presenting the truth, loving the truth, serving the truth, living the truth, working the truth, walking the truth, and being grateful for the truth.

“This book has moved me to tears so many times the pages are warped. When I was at the end of my last book tour in May to push Radical Honesty into best seller status, I had read less than three chapters of The Paradigm Conspiracy, and I held it up along side my book and said to people, ‘If you can only afford one of these two books, buy this one.’ This is an absolutely fantastic book which I am reading through for the second time right now and I recommend it to readers of The Radical Honesty Rag as a five star, once in a decade, keep it on the shelf to refer back to forever, water mark for the end of the 20th Century, great goddamned book!!”

—Brad Blanton,
Author of Radical Honesty and editor of The Radical Honesty Rag

“I consider this book to be one of the most important works of the twentieth century—with pervasive and far-reaching implications for the twenty-first. While this statement may have the over-amped ring of hyperbole to some, I assure you that it is, for me, a deeply held conviction. My admiration for The Paradigm Conspiracy goes far beyond my appreciation for its many admirable stylistic attributes or the fact that I happen to agree with virtually every word on its pages. I feel a soul-level appreciation for this book as a great work of timeless wisdom, one which I believe to have been directly inspired by the Holy Spirit.

“I discovered The Paradigm Conspiracy at a time when I was grappling with intense issues concerning my relationship with and understanding of spiritual organizations. I had long been a reader of Matthew Fox, and had recently discovered his discussions of “power-over” vs. “power-with” in Original Blessing. I was also acquainted with Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory and with David Bohm’s ideas on the healing power of dialogue. And I was involved in research on the history of the Twelve Step Recovery Movement. It seems that I was collecting many pieces of a great puzzle that could help me understand why organizations created to further our spiritual evolution and sense of oneness seemed so often to express the very antithesis of their original intentions. Then I found this wonderful book.

“The Paradigm Conspiracy, like others published by Hazelden [the original publisher], is a book about recovery. However, unlike other titles from that company, it steps back and takes a far more expansive view of what recovery really means. From a viewpoint that is firmly grounded in the culture of recovery, the authors give us an unflinchingly honest assessment of the contexts within which we live our lives, and show us the many ways that our society itself is steeped in the culture of addiction—an addiction not to drugs or to alcohol or sex or relationships, but to power.

“More specifically, it is an addiction to what Matthew Fox calls “power-over,” a paradigm based in the patriarchal model of hierarchical control structures and systems of reward and punishment. The authors assert that a shift to the “power-with” paradigm, in which our essential connectedness is recognized and honored, and in which power is shared in a co-creative way, will lead to a new stage in our evolution—the great leap forward that has been presaged by spiritual and scientific visionaries throughout the ages.

“Breton and Largent see recovery, both personal and societal, as mastery of the art of paradigm shifts. They speak of global patterns, but they focus on how those patterns affect us personally and how we can be proactive in changing them. The authors compassionately explore both the pain and the power that come with questioning and changing many of the invisible assumptions that comprise our own paradigms. They show us our own paradigm filters and how we can free ourselves from them, for more clarity of vision and greater self-acceptance.

“Thus we can begin building systems based on who we really are, rather than what someone else demands us to be. Toward this end, dialogue is presented as a way of discovering our own individuality and our connectedness to the greater whole. Breton and Largent explore how focused and intentional dialogue is an essential tool to healing our social systems, whether they be our political parties and legislative bodies, our schools, our corporations, or our churches and other spiritual organizations.

“The Paradigm Conspiracy deals extensively with the various manifestations of the ‘control paradigm’ and all of the excuses and rationalizations used to justify its continued existence. We find the primary emphasis of the book to be on genuine self-discovery:

 

“The secret something that is shared by all effective healing methods is the process of leading one to an honest and truthful self-discovery. This self-discovery is required for the initiation and continuation of self-healing; for it is only through self-healing—in contrast to curing—that one can experience both permanent recovery and spiritual growth. The closer our perception of self approaches the truth, the deeper our capacity for self-healing becomes. When there is a very close correspondence between self-image and truth, our self-healing power may be virtually unlimited.”

“The authors incorporate and synthesize great insights from psychology, anthropology, as well as from classical Greek philosophy and the “12 Cycles of Truth,” which is a wisdom teaching for the Iroquois Confederacy of Five Nations. Throughout, the mystical yet reality-based poetry of Rumi and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous serve as touchstones in our journey toward understanding what they call “the paradigm conspiracy.” Once we understand it, the book makes clear to us, we can loosen the grip that this conspiracy has on our consciousness, and together we can conspire in a new, co-creative way, to build a world which honors “power-with” and the essential Oneness of All."

“The result is a powerfully moving and wonderfully transformative book, with a timely message for all. The Paradigm Conspiracy moved me profoundly. It gave me a new and greater context for my understanding of myself and the world, and showed me that we all have the power to change the world by changing the way we see ourselves. I confidently recommend this book to everyone."

—Boz Martyn,
Innerchange