Evolutionary possibilities for global governance?

Counteracting Extremes Enabling Normal Flying (Part #11)

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There is a remarkable fascination with dinosaurs, their evolution and the reasons for their extinction. This is all the more remarkable in that efforts are variously made to relate the condition of dinosaurs to challenges of governance (James Patrick Kelly, Think Like a Dinosaur, 1997; Till Vestring, Teaching Dinosaurs to Dance, 2014; Michal Cakrt, Teaching the Dinosaurs Dance, EconPapers, 1997; Douglas Hague, Transforming the Dinosaurs: how organizations learn, 1993) as discussed separately (Systemic Biomimicry of Dinosaurs by Multinational Corporations: clearing the ground for future psychosocial evolution, 2011). The focus would seem to be an adaptation of the argument of Rosabeth Moss Kanter (When Giants Learn To Dance. 1990, subsequently challenged (Innovation: the classic traps, Harvard Business Review, 1 November 2006). Given their limitations with respect to global governance, should the array of intergovernmental organizations -- notably the agencies of the United Nations -- also be understood as dinosaurs, perhaps of the herbivorous variety?

With respect to the focus here on birds and the development of their capacity to fly, research is now showing how they evolved from dinosaurs (T. Alexander Dececchi and Hans C. E. Larsson, Body and limb dissociation at the at the origin of birds: uncoupling allometric constraints across a macroevolutionary transition, Evolution, 67, 2013). A description of that research notes:

... throughout most of the history of carnivorous dinosaurs, limb lengths showed a relatively stable scaling relationship to body size. This is despite a 5000-fold difference in mass between Tyrannosaurus rex and the smallest feathered theropods from China. This limb scaling changed, however, at the origin of birds, when both the forelimbs and hind limbs underwent a dramatic decoupling from body size. This change may have been critical in allowing early birds to evolve flight, and then to exploit the forest canopy, the authors conclude.

As forelimbs lengthened, they became long enough to serve as an airfoil, allowing for the evolution of powered flight. When coupled with the shrinking of the hind limbs, this helped refine flight control and efficiency in early birds. Shorter legs would have aided in reducing drag during flight -- the reason modern birds tuck their legs as they fly -- and also in perching and moving about on small branches in trees. This combination of better wings with more compact legs would have been critical for the survival of birds in a time when another group of flying reptiles, the pterosaurs, dominated the skies and competed for food. (How Birds Got Their Wings, McGill News, 17 September 2013)

Further insight into the transition from dinosaurs to birds focuses on modes of flight (Xia Wang, Avian Wing Proportions and Flight Styles: first step towards predicting the flight modes of Mesozoic birds, PLOS One, December 2011). With the recent extinction of the flightless dodo, and the emergence of drones as a new species of bird (purportedly as a constraint on terrorism), it is appropriate to note the existence of so-called "terror birds" (Phorusrhacids) -- an extinct clade of large carnivorous flightless birds. Might the future evolution of drones have similar function?

The concern with how "dinosaurs" might learn can be framed in terms of how it might be possible to communicate with them at this time -- beyond eliciting a quizzical look. This is poignantly illustrated in the fictional account by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing regarding the encounter of a galactic development agent with the inhabitant of a developing planet:

To say that he understood what went on was true. To say that he did not understand -- was true. I would sit and explain, over and over again. He listened, his eyes fixed on my face, his lips moving as he repeated to himself what I was saying. He would nod: yes, he had grasped it. But a few minutes later, when I might be saying something of the same kind, he was uncomfortable, threatened. Why was I saying that? and that? his troubled eyes asked of my face: What did I mean? His questions at such moments were as if I had never taught him anything at all. He was like one drugged or in shock. Yet it seemed that he did absorb information for sometimes he would talk as if from a basis of shared knowledge: it was as if a part of him knew and remembered all I told him, but other parts had not heard a word. I have never before or since had so strongly that experience of being with a person and knowing that all the time there was certainly a part of that person in contact with you, something real and alive and listening -- and yet most of the time what one said did not reach that silent and invisible being, and what he said was not often said by the real part of him. It was as if someone stood there bound and gagged while an inferior impersonator spoke for him. (Re: Colonised Planet 5 - Shikasta, 1979, pp. 56-57).

It is intriguing that comprehension of the challenges of the evolutionary transition should be framed at the present time in terms of dance -- a mode commonly associated with the experience of flying. Given the manner in which it is used as a metaphor in relation to governance, it is clearly the cognitive and psychosocial dynamics that are intuited to have qualities otherwise associated with dance. This is usefully recognized in a classic account of the development of quantum physics by Gary Zukav (The Dancing Wu Li Masters, 1979). Such an otherwise questionable intuition is shared by Stephen Hawking (The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: the most astounding papers of quantum physics -- and how they shook the scientific world, 2011).

Considerable insight of relevance to governance is to be derived from biomechanics and aerodynamics through biomimicry, as argued above. However there is clearly also the possibility of deriving insight from the aesthetics of flying by birds, in flocks or individually -- readily described by poets as a form of dance. If evolution is to be understood as the emergence of a pattern of greater complexity, the argument of Gregory Bateson remains relevant in explaining why "we are our own metaphor" to a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation:

One reason why poetry is important for finding out about the world is because in poetry a set of relationships get mapped onto a level of diversity in us that we don't ordinarily have access to. We bring it out in poetry. We can give to each other in poetry the access to a set of relationships in the other person and in the world that we are not usually conscious of in ourselves. So we need poetry as knowledge about the world and about ourselves, because of this mapping from complexity to complexity. (Cited by Mary Catherine Bateson, 1972, pp. 288-9)

Curiously there is considerable poetry associated with both birds and airplanes, but very little with governance -- with the notable exception of the I Ching, articulated in poetic form as a traditionally valued key to appropriate governance in China. Is understanding of the nature of "flying" partially enabled by aesthetic insight? Should the flying of global governance be explored as partly characterized by the emergence of an epic poem of the style of the Kalevala or the Mahabharata? Can it be considered inherently poetic in its own right (Being a Poem in the Making, 2012; Poetry-making and Policy-making: arranging a marriage between Beauty and the Beast, 1993)?

Of interest in this respect is the valued significance associated with "soaring" flight. This was noted above with regard to both eagles and artificial intelligence. In the case of the human spirit, this has been widely understood as enabled by poetry. The experience is intimately related to imagination and creativity. The issue is how the sentiment can be translated into the cognitive dynamics implied by the various calls to reimagine the world (Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present, 2012)

The challenge would appear to lie in recognizing the significance for governance in the dynamics of patterns whether intuited, dreamed or observed, as argued from perspectives which bridge across disciplines and traditions, as by Steven M. Rosen (Dreams, Death, Rebirth: a topological odyssey into alchemy's hidden dimensions, 2014).

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