Styles of flight as styles of governance

Counteracting Extremes Enabling Normal Flying (Part #5)

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Bird flight: The many species of birds offer numerous examples of styles of flight as implied by the image below. These can be readily explored with respect to the flight of aircraft and the necessary control systems (Hendrik Tennekes, The Simple Science of Flight: from insects to Jumbo Jets, 2009).

The question here is how these might be compared with styles of governance. Curiously the military has explored such parallels in distinguishing many aircraft -- known as "war birds" -- by use of the names of raptors.

Wing shapes and varieties of flight

FlightSilhouettes by L. Shyamal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Bird flight is dependent on the shape of the birds wings and the way they use them. Typically the modes of bird flight distinguished are gliding (or soaring flight), and flapping (or powered flight). As noted by Gordon Ramel (Bird Flight):

However, birds use flight in different ways, some are on the wing most of the time, while others make only short flights from one perch to another. Also birds live in different habitats which generate different aerodynamic problems. It is not surprising then that birds of different species have different shaped wings.

Changing the shape of a wing gives it different aerodynamic properties. One way to assess these properties is to measure what is called the 'aspect ratio'. This is the ratio of wing area2 divided by wing breadth. Long wings are better for gliding but harder to flap quickly and are therefore not much good at quick acceleration. Another way is to look at flight capabilities is to look at 'Wing Loading', this can show the differences between birds with similar wing shapes but different sizes. Wing loading is the relationship between total body mass and total wing area, it is expressed as grams of body mass over centimeters squared of wing area.

The quest for sustainability in global governance is remarkably suggested by the capacity of birds to glide. Again for Ramel:

Many soaring or gliding birds appear to hang in the air effortlessly, gaining height with barely a twitch of a wing. These are birds like Vultures, large raptors, Pelicans and Storks with a high lift to drag ratio. Essentially this means that their wings generate a lot of lift without producing much drag. Large birds have evolved to be gliders partly because gliding becomes easier the larger your wings are and obviously small birds cannot have large wings. Secondly, the mechanics of flapping flight become harder to attain the larger you get.

Gilding flight is notably enabled by the ability of birds to make use of thermals or updrafts resulting from the uneven heating of air at the surface. These issues are remarkably explained and illustrated in the lecture notes of Gary Ritchison (Bird Flight I; Bird Flight II and Other Means of Locomotion).

Their translation into language of relevance to governance should not be considered "rocket science". There is of course the greatest irony to the manner in which governance is in many cases dependent on "hot air". Do flight modes of birds may instructively into the possible styles of governance -- when able to fly? For example, an approach of potential relevance to governance is understanding of the use by birds of intermittent bounding and undulating flight modes (Jeremy M. V. Rayner, Aerodynamics and Energetics of Intermittent Flight in Birds, American Zoology, 41, 2001).

Further to the cited assertion by John J. Videler: Birds are pilot and aircraft in one (Bird flight modes, 2006), it is useful to stress the recognition that birds can be considered in terms of the viable system model of cybernetics. It is appropriate to recognize the extent to which the aerodynamics of flight in birds has been explored in relation to that of aircraft. Missing is any effort to relate insights from both the flight of birds and that of aircraft to the challenges of psychosocial system governance -- understood in systemic terms, since each of the three requires a particular form of governance

From walking to flying : Walking as a metaphor offers one way of exploring the relation between left and right -- given the ready association with the left and right legs, and the desirability of their coordinated movement (Learning to Walk as a Metaphor for Transcending Duality, 1994).

Contemporary society is bedeviled by dilemmas, dualities and polarized debates, especially in the political arena. No satisfactory way has been found to transcend this condition. The response has been to favour democratically one pole of a dilemma at the expense of another for as long as this is feasible -- however obvious it becomes that both extremes hold vital truths for society. It is useful to recognize that the ability to throw rocks, missiles or missives is not an indication of the flying capacity of a civilization.

But the challenge to understanding of any transcendence is absolutely fundamental. It is not simply the resolution of an intellectual game of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, as should be obvious from the difficulties in dealing with such extremes, if only in the political arena.

There is therefore merit in learning from a metaphor based on experience to which all have been exposed, namely learning to walk -- or learning to fly, for some. Neither is a static, mechanistic process. Coordinating leg movement to the degree that makes it possible to stand upon two legs, and walk with them, is far from being simple. Transcending dualities can usefully be seen through such a metaphor, because walking is considered so trivial once it has been learnt. It is not however seen as trivial by an infant or by those who have to relearn it after an accident.

Given that birds both walk and fly, there is a case for contrasting these modes with respect to how governance might operate when also able to fly ( Luis M. Bautista, To walk or to fly? How birds choose among foraging modes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 98, 2001).

Alternation and its dynamic: The challenges of transcending dualities can be seen in the light of the stages of learning to walk. The challenge for a collectivity of learning to fly -- metaphorically -- can be similarly explored.

There are questions of security and fear of falling, which may require an inhabitant act of faith in the stability of the walking process (as is the case in learning to ride a bicycle). Associated with this is the problem of holding on, and learning to detach oneself from support structures. There is the challenge of orientation, notably whilst in movement.

But the art -- seemingly in both cases -- lies in a process of alternation. In the case of walking, the load is shifted between the two supporting legs as they are moved in sequence. There is an intuitive appreciation of this in the arguments for alternation between parties in government (especially appreciated as 'alternance' in French) -- although the current procedures for achieving this can only be described as chaotic and reminiscent of a drunkard attempting to walk (although the equivalent challenge for a spastic might be even more descriptive).

The challenge of transcendence is therefore a challenge to learn a pattern experience which is essentially dynamic. It is a pattern of movement which ensures stability (as is the case in certain meditative breathing exercises). People are only able to stand still by ensuring the continuous interplay of certain sets of muscles and processes. This calls for the ability to continually reconfigure, as is the case with walking. Such dynamic stability could be considered an important feature of 'sustainability'.

Polarities as limbs -- or wings: Polarities can be used like limbs to support a body of awareness. To understand experientially what is a limb in this context, there may be merit in exploring the evolutionary origin of limbs -- on the understanding that 'psychogeny' may replicate ontogeny. And a form of psychogeny may be replicated during daily life. The simpler forms of integrative experience can be considered amoeboid or amorphous. For example, sleepily stretching out an arm from bed in the morning to turn off an alarm clock bears more resemblance to extruding a reabsorbable pseudopod than using a limb. There may well be stages to patterned experience equivalent to the emergence of true opposing limbs, passing though those of an insectoid nature. How many limbs does one need to support one's current body of awareness?

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