Transforming dichotomic thinking - A Four-Paradigm Framework for Contradictions

In her seminal work, Leverage points, Donella Meadows states that changing paradigms is a leverage point that has the power to transform systems completely. There are many current paradigms that are in the way of sustainability and some of them deal with contradictions. Every complex system encounters contradictions when striving for a sustainable world: how to combine conflicts of different interests, goals and resolutions, for example? How to form an inclusive relationship to rest of the nature?
In Systems dynamics meets the press Meadows also writes that one of the problematic paradigms of the ‘current industrial paradigm’ is that “all choices are either/or not both/and”. Why do we have the urge to think either-or when facing a contradiction? This presentation proposes that contradictions are dealt with paradigm that rise from the early days of western philosophy, Aristotle and the laws of logics. These ‘laws’ shape our paradigms about contradictions: the Law of noncontradiction and the Law of excluded middle – things are either true or not true and nothing else – are still significant for western ideals of rationality and science. I also introduce inclusive paradigm derived from dialectics that enables to see the contradictions from the point of inclusion: to think both-and not either-or. From these inclusive and exclusive paradigms I build a conceptual tool that focuses on the paradigms through atomism-holism and dualism-pluralism axes and gives four different paradigms for contradictory situations. I also give examples how to apply them to sustainability challenges.
Implications for sustainability transformations: Sustainability transformations require transforming our current unsustainable paradigms. Transforming the way we see contradictions has the power to change the way we deal with them in real life. More comprehensive and plural paradigms about contradictions are vital as sustainability challenges are rarely cases of black or white but black AND white.