Traditional modes of cognitive engagement with hyperreality

Engaging with Hyperreality through Demonique and Angelique? (Part #11)

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The argument above has focused on use of verbal argument and visualization to clarify possibilities for engagement with hyperreality. It is however appropriate to recognize that other modes are widely favoured, in the light of traditions of the past. These modes could be distinguished as variously emphasizing decision-making, game-playing, use of circlets of beads for mnemonic guidance in prayer, and focusing devices for meditation. (Correspondences between Traditional Constellations and Pattern Languages: requisite simplexity for sustainable comprehension of complexity, 2014)

Classical Chinese encodings of engagement with hyperreality: Of particular interest in terms of their systemic organization are several classical Chinese encodings of a set of conditions -- I Ching (Yijing), T'ai Hsüan Ching (Tai Xuan Jing) -- and the specific manner in which transformation is possible between them. These are variously discussed separately (Sustainability through Magically Dancing Patterns, 2008; 9-fold Higher Order Patterning of Tao Te Ching Insights: possibilities in the mathematics of magic squares, cubes and hypercubes. 2003; 9-fold Magic Square Pattern of Tao Te Ching Insights experimentally associated with the 81 insights of the T'ai Hsüan Ching, 2006).

Of particular relevance to further reflection on the dynamics of a "hyperbolic round table" (as discussed above), is the pattern of hexagrams of the I Ching and the transformations between the conditions they represent, most notably with respect to decision-making (whether deliberate or inadvertent). Especially striking, in the light of the visualization of hyperbolic tessellation on the Poincaré disk are the arcs indicative of links between proximate hexagrams -- reminiscent as they are of the arcs on that disk.

Screen shot of circular configuration of 64 hexagrams of I Ching (formed by animation of inner circle of trigrams relative to outer circle of trigrams)

The schematic above was used as the framework for a previous exercise (Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations: interrelating traditional cultural symbols through animation, 2008).

Engaging with hyperreality through traditional circlets of beads: Meriting particular attention is the significance widely associated with circlets of beads. Their use in ritual practice can be recognized as a form of cyclic engagement with an elusively implied integrative understanding -- one which is not exclusively encompassed by the mnemonic associations of any one bead. The manner of the use of such circlets suggests an intuitively appreciated engagement with a connecting meta-pattern, as discussed separately.(Designing Cultural Rosaries and Meaning Malas to Sustain Associations within the Pattern that Connects, 2000)

Clearly such a circlet may have only a few 'beads' as mnemonic aids -- as is the case with some charm bracelets. Alternatively, it may be of much larger size, as the following examples indicate::

• The 108 mala beads of the Buddhist rosary or more (112 in Japan), although lay persons may use only 30 to 40 -- as with European 'worry beads'.
• The Tibetan variant has 108 plus 3 (separating groups of 27) plus 1 ( used like an abacus to count up to 10,800 prayers). The 'wrist mala' is usually made up of 22 beads.
• In Hinduism, the number of beads on a prayer strand varies from 18, 27, 54 to 108 -- but there is always an extra bead inserted -- called the meru, to indicate when the chanting cycle (japa) is finished (http://www.hubcom.com/tantric/mala.htm). 108 is also the number of names of Lord Ganesh (http://www.mantraonnet.com/108ganeshnames.html)
• For Muslims the bead-string (Tasbih or Subha), consists of 33, 66, or 99 beads, and is used for counting devotionally the names of Allah -- a 100th bead terminating the cycle. In Arabic, the word for "rose" (ward) is just a vowel away and related by root to the word for "invocation of sacred Names" (wird); thus the rose symbolism in the Sufi way (connoting remembrance), and the name of this device in Christianity: "rosary."
• Catholic rosaries have 50 beads, namely 5 groups of 10; Eastern Orthodox may use 100. But the number of beads on a chaplet, or rosary, depends on the number of prayers making up each particular form of devotion (a full rosary consists of one hundred and fifty Hail Marys, fifteen Our Fathers, and three or four beads corresponding to introductory versicles and the Glory be to the Father, etc). Lay people commonly have beads representing a third part of the rosary. Traditionally, 'tenners' were little pocket rosaries of 10 beads, one fifth of the standard five decade rosary; the 'pocket' or 'wrist rosary' or 'tenner', was traditionally a man's prayer bead.
• Anglican prayer beads may comprise four groups of seven beads called Weeks which are divided by four Cruciform beads (the Weeks are a reminder of the days of Creation, the temporal week, the seasons of the Church year, and the seven Sacraments
  

Mandalas as a focus for meditation: As with the resemblance of the above schematic to the Poincaré disk, mandalas and rose windows could be interpreted as structured to provide a focus for engagement with hyperreality.

Symbolic games and game symbolism: Many games have been elaborated to enable engagement with subtler insight than is immediately obvious -- or have lent themselves to such interpretation. These notably include chess and go, and their many equivalents, as well as games using sets of cards. Especially relevant to this argument are:

• the Tarot set of 72 cards
• OH Cards (kesem cards or cards of association) as a genre of special playing cards used as story-telling prompters, counseling and psychotherapeutic tools, communication enhancers, educational aids, and social interactive games. Such cards operate at the interface of literature, art appreciation, games and psychology. Most commonly they are used as a focus for self-examination.
  • sets of angel cards, some of which number 72 and are explicitly or implictly related to the Tarot pack.
  • the set of 30 Northgate Managing Conflict Cards of three types: True/False Cards, Round Robin Cards, Real Situation Cards. Northgate also has a set of 30 Personal Effectiveness Cards: Time Management.
  • Eco-Innovators produces Design Play Cards -- a deck of 50 quirky playing cards designed to challenge, inspire and explore sustainable design, as separately described (Eco Innovators' Design Play Cards are a Fun Way to Learn About Sustainable Design, Inhabitat; Can you design a phone that'll be used longer? A refrigerator that discourages food waste? Play the sustainability card game, TED talk, 2013).
• sets of devil cards (or demon cards), possibly matching the angel cards and/or the Tarot pack. The Wikipedia introduction to Goetic demons in popular culture notes:
  • many trading card games include members of the 72 demons into their cards. The games include: Devil Maker, Valkyrie Crusade, Ayakashi Ghost Guild, Rage of Bahamut, etc.
  • many appear in Lantasia's video action game Lemegeton
  • in the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, all of the suits are named after demons in the Ars Goetia.

Given the acceptance in popular culture, it is appropriate to ask how further use might be made of games (a process now recognized as gamification), possibly with extensive sets of cards, to enable greater comprehension and organization of factors relevant to sustainability. Especially intriguing with respect to sustainability is the transformstion from the win-lose focus of conventional games to that skillfully articulated by religious scholar James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: a vision of life as play and possibility, 1987).

Of particular interest is enabling understanding in terms of patterns of feedback dynamics -- such as might be relevant to recognizing the modes of failure of viable systems (discussed in the main paper). Such possibilities are illustrated by the approaches variously taken with respect to representation of the map of metabolic pathways (WikiPathways for the People; The Pathway Localization database (PathLocdb); General Overview of the Major Metabolic Pathways). With respect to sets of cards, one opportunity is to enable the cards to be variously juxtapositioned (even fitted together as in a jigsaw puzzle) such as to visualize systemic pathways between conditions enabling or undermining sustainability. Why this has not been done is a mystery in its own right.

The cognitive-aesthetic combination in games has been extensively described by allusion, most elegantly in the Glass Bead Game (1943) by Hermann Hesse, where he comments:

I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbol led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang holiness is forever being created.

These and other associations offer curious echoes to the elaboration of a "game of spheres" by Nicholas de Cusa (De Ludo Globi, 1463), written as a contribution to both a literature and a practice of moral game-playing. This formed part of the tradition of the forgotten chess-like game Rithmomachia (The Battle of Numbers or Rythmomachy), which combined the pleasures of gaming with mathematical study and moral education.

Intellectuals of the medieval and Renaissance periods who played this game were not only seeking to master the principles of Boethian mathematics but were striving to improve their own understanding of the secrets of the cosmos (Ann E. Moyer, In The Philosophers' Game, 2001). It has been an inspiration to the magnum opus of Hesse, as noted by Todd R. Harris (The Interplay of Opposites, the Language of Experience, and the Geometry of Ascent: a comparison of Hermann Hesse's "Das Glasperlenspiel" and Nicholas of Cusa's "De Ludo Globi", 2001).

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