Buddhists and Futurists

The Intercontextual and Paradigmatic Self

For a long time, I've been feeling frustrated with the baggage that comes with words like "multiculturalism" and "interculturalism." In the US context, these words seem to be in struggle with each other, as "multicultural" usually refers to the power dimensions of race, class, and gender in this country. On the other hand, "intercultural" is sometimes accused of resisting the inclusion of these power dimensions by instead focusing on the ethnic differences between nations. I don't think this tension is that useful as I approach the future.

I think the key concept of the future is the self. With globalization and internationalization, people can have experiences in many different realms. Ethnicity and power difference will still matter, but an individual's ability to creatively manage multiple contexts will make these matters much less significant, I think.

I like the notion of the paradigmatic self. The idea here that we can move in and out of different paradigms, more than just cultural contexts. If a paradigm is a set of assumptions and values that guide our view of the world/reality, well then, it makes sense that we can have different selves that view the world differently, depending on the set of assumptions we're using at that moment. I think, though, that these selves aren't as fleeting as my word "moment" suggests. Although we can have indefinite paradigmatic selves, the paradigm is related to the context in which we're operating (thus, intercontextual self).

Of course, we may even be said to have epistemological selves: selves that have different ways of knowing depending on the paradigm/context. I'm not sure, though, that epistemology has as much explanatory value as either paradigm or intercontext.