Apathy and quenching excitement

Playfully Changing the Prevailing Climate of Opinion: Climate change as focal metaphor of effective global governance (Part #16)

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The concern here is with sustaining, and even enhancing, the excitement sought by people in "game-play space". The challenge is one of boredom and apathy -- of being "turned off". Curiously this can be explored further using the above metaphor in relation to the so-called fifth form of matter, namely plasma. This is the focus of major investments in fusion reactors as a source of energy. The technical challenge is to prevent the plasma from being "quenched", preventing the fusion reaction from taking place -- as with "throwing cold water" on a new insight. It might be argued that this is a perfect metaphor for exploring the energy challenges in relation to climate change. Furthermore, in many symbols systems it is of the highest value in relation to insight.

As discussed elsewhere (The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity, 2003), what is effectively the "magic circle" of Johan Huizinga is surrounded by what may be termed a "quenching" boundary. Its "magical" nature is "quenched" by any encounter with the cognitive "not-ness" of conventional understanding of space-time. This is the problem for players in "virtual life" in responding to "real life".

The metaphor of quenching derives from the research on nuclear fusion (in contrast with nuclear fission). This fusion process is dependent on plasma that can only exist under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure and is "quenched" when it comes into contact with the container in which the fusion reactions take place. Many decades of research have been devoted to the design of a container capable of containing plasma -- in order that nuclear fusion can take place as a prime source of energy for the future. The art has been to contain the plasma within a "magnetic bottle" such that magnetic field effects repel the plasma from any part of the encircling container wall. In the larger scheme of things, it is perhaps no coincidence that such research is now entering a new phase with the construction of ITER as a major international project to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. This work on the "governance" of fusion processes essential to economic development may be as valuable as a metaphorical pointer to governance of psycho-social processes of sustainable development.

Understanding "plasma" as a quality of intensity, of attention, it might then be understood how the high energy "is-ness", characteristic of the state of being within the "magic circle", can readily be quenched by contact with any mundane cognition. Sustaining interaction within the "magic circle" therefore calls for an analogous existential technology to maintain the detachment of being from that containing spatio-temporal world. This existential technology may be considered as having been identified in many spiritual disciplines (see Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002; Psychology of Sustainability: Embodying cyclic environmental processes, 2002).

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