Optimizing the individual and collective learning process

In Quest of Optimism Beyond the Edge: through avoidance of the answering process (Part #15)

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The unconscious sense of an underlying or conditioning void has a curious influence on the enthusiastic engagement in many social change "projects" (cf John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995). These tend to be undertaken as though nothing similar had been undertaken previously -- namely in an ahistorical, atemporal mode of an assumed tabula rasa. Participants tend to be unconstrained by what they, or their predecessors, may have learnt from previous initiatives -- especially, self-reflexively, with respect to their personal contribution to the failure of those initiatives. From a learning perspective, such projects are therefore essentially asystemic -- confirming the recognition that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

The above argument points to the central importance in a knowledge-based society of the processes whereby closure is "avoided", or of how unavoidable closure is managed. The fundamental importance of closure in relation to reflexivity has been well explored by Hilary Lawson (Closure: a story of everything, 2001; Reflexivity: the post-modern predicament, 1986 ).

In the question-answer process, closure may however be usefully compared to the manner in which the dynamic engendered by a question is collapsed and brought to an end by an answer -- framed as the desirable "achievement of closure". By comparison with the challenge of managing nuclear plasma, such closure may however be compared with the (undesirable) phenomena of quenching -- whereby the plasma is de-energized and de-natured through contact with its container, namely the walls of the fusion reactor with which contact is otherwise prevented by magnetic repulsion technology.

Curiously some schools of philosophy, as well as some disciplines of meditation, advocate approaches that avoid closure in various forms -- certainly premature closure. An extreme example of the latter is of course the dysfunctional closure associated with groupthink (Groupthink: the Search for Archaeoraptor as a Metaphoric Tale, 2002)

The case for suspension of the quenching-answer dynamic may be compared to philosophical arguments in favour of epoché or bracketing. Consistent with the query raised by Zeilinger (above) regarding res extensa vs res cogitans, this is understood as the theoretical moment where all belief in the existence of the real world, and consequently all action in the real world, is suspended. One's own consciousness is then subject to immanent critique so that when such belief is recovered, it will have a firmer grounding in consciousness. The phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl (Cartesian Meditations, 1931) develops the notion of "phenomenological epoché" -- where the world is "lost in order to be regained" through placing the epoché and thereby "bracketing" the world.

As discussed elsewhere (Present Moment Research: exploration of nowness, 2001), potentially much more relevant is the initiative of Francisco Varela (in several papers) to give an explicitly naturalized account of present experiential nowness based on two complementary approaches: phenomenological analysis and cognitive neuroscience (The Specious Present: a neurophenomenology of time consciousness, 1997). He provides a valuable review of Edmund Husserl's extensive philosophical studies of "intimate temporality", noting the concern of Maurice Merleau-Ponty that "Time is not a line but a network of intentionalities" (Phenomenology of Perception, 1945). Varela presents a four-fold model of nowness based on flows and dynamical trends. He concludes that neurobiological attributes and the phenomenology of lived experience are interacting partners:

One thing is clear: the specific nature of the mutual constraints is far from a simple empirical correspondence or a categorical isomorphism. three ingredients have turned out to play an equally important role: (1) the neurobiological basis, (2) the formal descriptive tools mostly derived from nonlinear dynamics, and (3) the nature of lived temporal experience studied under reduction. What needs to be examined carefully is the way in which these three ingredients are braided together in a constitutive manner. what we find is much more than a juxtaposition of items. It is an active link, where effects of constraint and modification can circulate effectively, modifying both partners in a fruitful complementary way.

Elsewhere, Varela (The Gesture of Awareness, 1999) proposes a 3-fold cycle at the core of the act of becoming aware in the moment: "an initial phase of suspension of habitual thought and judgement, followed by a phase of conversion of attention from 'the exterior' to 'the interior', ending with a phase of letting-go or of receptivity towards the experience." Varela sees the phenomenological epoché as "the ensemble of these three organically linked phases",

In the current global situation the quality of questions and answers, and the dynamic of the question-answer process, would seem to be less than adequate to the challenges. There may therefore be a case for benefitting from the insights -- the cognitive patterns -- of the advanced science and technology fundamental to successful nuclear fusion in order to optimize sustainable collective learning processes. Exactly how might the question-answer dynamic then be "suspended" to avoid premature "quenching" closure, whilst sustaining the generation of insights vital to collective learning?

What might be the relevance for the organization of the communication dynamics of large conferences or electronically enabled collective communication processes that are so vital to collective decision-making (cf Documents relating to Dialogue and Transformative Conferencing)? Given the relevance of the "conveyor" metaphor to the global dissemination and circulation of knowledge (if not wisdom), there is a case for benefitting from insights into the global ocean conveyor that is seemingly so vulnerable to disruption by climate change (Potential Misuse of the Conveyor Metaphor: recognition of the circular dynamic essential to its appropriate operation, 2007).

There would appear to be is a degree of equivalence between:

• the desperate focus on early consensus ("unity") and the associated elimination (or marginalization) of disagreement (or dissent) in the hopes of ensuring that global processes are manageable within the currently somewhat simplistic dominant mindset upheld in international discourse -- and in national voting systems
• the desperate focus on knowledge (exemplified by its cultivation in exclusive elite networks of excellence) and the elimination of ignorance (or the marginalization of the ignorant) and meaninglessness in the belief that human ingenuity will prevail in ensuring emergence of insight appropriate to strategic challenges

Ignorance will continue to be omni-present and will necessarily continue to be engendered, and sustained, in a knowledge-based society -- if only through the birth of children and through the ageing process. This will necessarily be associated with the prevalence and generation of disagreement. There would therefore seem to be a case for working with such phenomena rather than assuming that they can be eliminated or considered insignificant. In an exponentially expanding knowledge society, the personal experience of ignorance is necessarily fundamental and central.

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