Paradigm Shift

Been a while since I've posted anything :-) I've been busy thinking about other stuff, however tonight I went along to a "philosophical study" group. Its organised by a couple of people I used to go to a regular philosophy night with. The study group is organised around a study guide and based on the movie "What the bleep?" (which I havent actually seen yet...). Anyways, the first session was on paradigm shifts.

A few things were interesting to me, I was the only person who was pure atheist / non dualist / no afterlife type person. The others has some concept of an afterlife and spirituality but none were christian. I spent some time listening to others conceptual model of "life" and a few things occured to me....

I think people are often more concerned that their "paradigm" suits who they are rather than whether it is valid or not. This is not too surprising since the validity of ones conceptual model dosn't stop one living life and experiencing valid thoughts and emotions.

People often prefer to re-interpret their paradigm than shift paradigms.

People need some kind of paradigm in order to think. Which may seem obvious, but I think some people don't really understand their paradigm and tend to be a bit all over the place with their thinking.

Often those people who do shift paradigm tend to have some very clear thinking about their current paradigm

It surprises me that people often don't feel the need for a meta paradigm, a paradigm that encompasses all paradigms. Rather, people prefer to say that other paradigms are "wrong" or that they simply are "alternative" without explanation to why all these altnerative paradigms exist.

so, is it more important to live a happy life or is it more important to live a life knowing truth? (which of course most belief systems would claim that their truth is happiness, how could a non truth possibly make you happy?? but, what if thats just a delusion?)