Questionable metaphors of perfectibility meriting challenge

Engaging with Insight of a Higher Order (Part #7)

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Questionable polarities: The various metaphors employed above, and in the title of this document (Engaging with Insight of a Higher Order), suggest a need to challenge their underlying assumptions and implications.

• Higher vs Lower? Use of higher is notably challenged as indicative of elitist discourse, especially by feminist scholars. It suggests a questionable ladder of progress up which people are encouraged to climb. "Up" is then unquestionably associated with "better". Potentially more interesting are the implications of "down", understood as indicative of more fundamental and grounded. Understood as "ascent", there is the question of whether it constitutes a form of escape from living reality, as separately explored (Clues to 'Ascent' and 'Escape', 2002).
  
  
• Insight vs Outsight? Similar questions could be raised with regard to insight. Less used, outsight is the power or act of perceiving and understanding external things clearly. Use of both "in" and "out" may also be questionable with respect to the so-called container metaphor. The nature of the container can itself be called into question in the light of the paradoxes of the Klein bottle in which inside and outside are indistinguishable (Intercourse with Globality through Enacting a Klein bottle: cognitive implication in a polysensorial "lens", 2009).
  
  
• Light vs Dark? Whether insight or outsight, there is an implication of greater clarity or light -- with light itself being employed as a metaphor, as is most evident in the case of enlightenment. The alternative can also be fruitfully explored (Enlightening Endarkenment: selected web resources on the challenge to comprehension, 2005)
  
  
• Order vs Orders? Here the issue is whether order is necessarily singular or is necessarily multiple, as separately explored (Law and Order vs. Lore and Orders? Imagining otherwise the forceful engagement of singularity with plurality, 2013). Also questionable is whether the static structural implication is itself appropriate relative to a more dynamic understanding (Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes: suggestions for process-oriented titles of global issue reports, 2013).
  
  
• Engagement vs Detachment? Is it to be assumed that some process of engaging is necessarily appropriate -- as can be questioned with respect to a degree of voyeurism in cultural and environmental tourism? Should the effort be made to "grasp" insight in some way, as questioned separately (Beyond Harassment of Reality and Grasping Future Possibilities: learnings from sexual harassment as a metaphor, 1996). Detachment is of course a modality cultivated in some forms of meditation, and may be variously envisaged (Paradoxes of Engaging with the Ultimate in any Guise: living life penultimately, 2012)
  
  
• Perfection vs Imperfection? This is especially interesting because of the implication that perfection is framed as a fundamental attractor, with imperfection as being something to be avoided to the extent possible, even to be "designed out". This can be explored in terms of remaindering (Social Remainders from Psychosocial Remaindering: review of current usage and implications, 2011). If only with respect to the challenge of waste disposal and recycling, the challenge is one of systemic integration (Reintegration of a Remaindered World: Cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2011). It raises the question of whether a more inclusive understanding of perfection would encompass imperfection (Kevin Griffin, The Freedom of Imperfection, The Huffington Post, 23 September 2011; Rob Preece, The Wisdom of Imperfection: the challenge of individuation in Buddhist life, 2006). The point is partially made with respect to the seasons, comparing spring-summer as "perfection" to autumn-winter" to "imperfection" -- a pattern echoed in any lifecycle. Rather than as a condition or state, perfection may then be better understood as a process. Such understanding is partially reflected in the Japanese world view of wabi-sabi centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection -- as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".
  
  
• Extraordinary vs Ordinary: Implied in the use of some of the terms above is that "insight of higher order" is extraordinary in a sense to be contrasted in some fundamental way with ordinary (every day) insight. This suggests that it is relatively exceptional and inaccessible -- even unique. This assumption can be usefully challenged by suggesting that all that makes it extraordinary is the common failure to recognize how ordinary and readily accessible it is -- did one but have the eyes to see. As has been variously articulated by mystics and others, the mystery lies in the extraordinary nature of the ordinary -- seen otherwise. Considered otherwise, as with the polarization above, the issue may be how to render the ordinary extraordinary, as well as rendering the extraordinary ordinary..

Although usefully challenged in this way, more understanding might be derived by variously challenging the questioning process itself. This approach could be characteristic of the Zen use of koans, notably the collection known as the The Gateless Gate.

Another approach would be by assuming that nothing meaningful could be articulated regarding higher orders of insight, as suggested by the theological process of apophasis (or "unsaying"), as separately discussed (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? 2008). This could take the form of a contrarian approach (Celebrating the Value of Deadly Problems Worldwide: planetary salvation in an era of inept global governance? 2008; Embodying a Hypercomplex of Unhygienic Nescience: questionable connectivity enabling apprehension of matters otherwise, 2014).

Axes of preferential bias? The generalizations associated with the polarities above could be challenged by a more systematic exploration based on the assumption of cultural biases and preferences (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993). This was the approach taken by the philosopher W. T. Jones (The Romantic Syndrome: toward a new method in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas, 1961) who identified seven axes of methodological bias in the consideration of any matter -- appropriately extended here to understanding of higher orders of insight. The biases are:

• Order vs Disorder: Namely the range between a preference for system, structure, conceptual clarity, etc. and a preference for fluidity, muddle chaos, etc, as suggested by:
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, 2012).
    
    
• Static vs Dynamic: Namely the range between a preference for the changeless, eternal, etc. and a preference for movement, for explanation in genetic and process terms, etc, as suggested by:
  • Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes: suggestions for process-oriented titles of global issue reports (2013).
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• Continuity vs Discreteness: Namely the range between a preference for wholeness, unity, etc and a preference for discreteness, plurality, diversity, etc.
  
  
• Inner vs Outer: Namely the range between a preference for being able to project oneself into the objects of one's experience (to experience them as one experiences oneself), and a preference for a relatively external, objective relation to them, as suggested by:
  • ¡¿ Defining the objective ∞ Refining the subjective ?!: Explaining reality ∞ Embodying realization (2011)
  • Sphere eversion as guide to the cognitive twist of global introversion? (2013).
    
    
• Sharp focus vs Soft focus: Namely the range between a preference for clear, direct experience and a preference for threshold experiences, felt to be saturated with more meaning than is immediately present.
  
  
• This world vs Other world: Namely the range between preference for belief in the spatio-temporal world as self-explanatory and preference for belief that it is not and can only be comprehended in terms of other frames, as suggested by:
  • Adhering to God's Plan in a Global Society: serious problems from a transfinite perspective (2014)
    
    
• Spontaneity vs Process: Namely the range between a preference for chance, freedom, accident, etc and a preference for explanations subject to laws and definable processes, as suggested by:
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007). .

These might then be "applied" to the criteria articulated above, giving rise to the pattern suggested by the following table.

Axes of preferential bias
	Credibility	Comprehensibility	Coherence	Communicability	Applicability
Order vs Disorder
Static vs Dynamic
Continuity vs Discreteness
Inner vs Outer
Sharp focus vs Soft focus
This world vs Other world
Spontaneity vs Process

The criteria of any sense of "higher orders of insight" could also be challenged using the standard set of WH questions, as in the following table.

Patterns of questions challenging "higher orders of insight"
	Credibility	Comprehensibility	Coherence	Communicability	Applicability
Who? For whom?
Why?
Where? Whither?
When? Whence?
What?
How?
Which?

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