Welcome, Traveler.

Most people spend their lives using a map they did not create, inherited from their culture, education, and surroundings. Few ever stop to ask whether that map accurately reflects the territory.

The purpose of this journey is to learn how to examine the map, improve it, and, when necessary, replace it.

Let us begin.

What We Are Trying To Do

As you move through life, you will encounter anomalies.

You hold certain ideas about the world, and those ideas lead you to make predictions and explanations. Most of the time they seem to work. Yet sooner or later you encounter experiences that do not fit your expectations. Things happen that your understanding cannot adequately explain.

We call these anomalies.

Throughout history, anomalies have often signaled the need for a better way of understanding reality.

Astrology made countless predictions that failed to occur. Astronomy, observing the same skies, achieved a far more reliable record of prediction and explanation.

Newtonian physics explained much about the world, yet eventually its anomalies led to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The same process occurs in our personal lives. We often attribute our difficulties to circumstances when, in fact, the source lies deeper—in the culture, worldview, and paradigms through which we interpret our experiences.

A simpler way to say this is that if your map no longer guides you effectively through the territory, it may be time to examine both your map and the process by which it was created.

Our purpose is to learn how to do exactly that.

Shortly, we will meet the Cargo Cult. In their case, the mismatch between map and territory is so striking that it becomes easy to see. Their experience gives us an opportunity to examine culture, worldview, and paradigm in operational terms—not merely as definitions, but as realities that can be experienced and understood.

Afterward, we will approach the same ideas again from a different perspective through a discussion of Thomas Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts.

By the end, you should not only understand these concepts. You should begin to recognize them at work in your own life and in the world around you.