Local Politician Publishes Book

Ron Dudum Accentuates the Byzantine

In 2006 Sunset District supervisor hopeful Ron Dudum lost by only 53 votes. It might be fitting to say that disappointments in local politics inspired him to write his first book, Three Paradigms of Reality: from Homer to Einstein.

“Had I not lost the election for supervisor I probably would not have finished this book,” Dudum told the Sunset Beacon as the book debuted this October. “Actually, the book took me over 15 years to write and with the help of a really brilliantly precise editor I was able to get it done after three arduous drafts.”

“My thoughts were there,” he said, “I just needed some help to really get a clearer perspective to get them all together,” said Dudum.

With the editor’s help and a few extra courses of study, Dudum was able to sort through the collective knowledge and experience of his life. Dudum recognized that the traditional Western approach to philosophy has five periods such as the ancient, medieval, modern, post-modern and then contemporary. In Dudum’s view these five periods of philosophical history can be condensed into three.

“Western philosophy history sort of skips over the Byzantine period which I think is crucial,” said Dudum. Condensing the five time-periods of philosophical thought into “Three Paradigms” of philosophy history is what he considers to be a more proper order of how to explain why so many people believe so many different things.

Born and raised in San Francisco by parents from Palestine Dudum mentioned that his life has been a mixture of Eastern and Western culture. Yet all the social and technological changes of the past 40 years have created the most impact upon San Francisco as well as the world.

In Dudum’s view there are two aspects to The City. One side is the popular that has its international flair attracting people from all over the world and the other side is that of the village. “I live in the village, as a native the City has a much different angle,” said Dudum.

“People come here to the City usually from some other place with lots of ideals, get involved with politics, make an impact and then leave to settle down someplace else.”

Dudum finds this rather frustrating because some of those political impacts cause problems. In a seemingly permissive place like SF how does Dudum keep focus of the traditional values like family, faith and community? “Commitment,” he said.

Dudum said that amid all the permissiveness and diversity that characterizes San Francisco it is interesting how people can view the same facts and interpret reality and truth differently.

On sale at Amazon.com, for more information about Three Paradigms of Reality: From Homer to Einstein visit www.threeparadigms.com.

November 2009