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Post-chiral governance -- beyond political handedness?
Unquestioned Bias in Governance from Direction of Reading? (Part #9)
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Chirality: It is curious that any movement from right-to-left is deprecated in many contexts (possibly even framed as "sinister" or "evil"), in contrast to movement from left-to-right (readily understood to be indicative of the "good"). This is not the case in dance in which a full range of patterns is explored (including up and down) -- with all that may imply cognitively for integrative expression of human potential.
The distinction is notably explored as significant in biology in terms of chirality (namely handedness), as well as in nanotechnology (Exposing "evil twins", Research at University of Cambridge, 16 May 2014). Noting in passing the issue of handedness in politics, the phenomenon is reviewed in greater detail by James P. Riehl (Exploring Mirror-Image Asymmetry: an introduction to the origin and consequences of chirality, 2011).
The possibility of "post-chiral politics" is noted by Herbert Snorrason (Chirality as a Fundamental Phenomenon, 27 June 2012). Appropriate to this argument, this theme has now been explored with respect to sustainability in an extensive chapter devoted to Underlying Disturbing Processes: assymmetries, coriolis and chirality, by Pierre Massotte and Patrick Corsi (Sustainability Calling: underpinning technologies, 2015, pp. 47-82). Given the fundamental importance of handedness in the political framing strategies of governance, it might be asked why there are remarkably few references to chirality in that connection -- despite extensive study of it in the life sciences.
Seating arrangements in legislatures: An extremely modest step towards post-chiral governance could be enabled in those legislative assemblies in which the representatives of the ruling party are habitually seated on the right (or left), with those of the opposition seated on the left (or right) -- as in the famed "Mother of Parliaments". Where seating is in hemicycle form, some follow a strict left-right arrangement with, for example, a left wing governing party sitting on the left and the right wing opposition on the right (Felix Klingmueller, A Small Typology of Parliamentary Seating Arrangements, Abitare, 30 April 2013).
Any such conventional seating arrangement could be easily switched periodically as a simple challenge to the reinforcement of habitual thinking, inflexible perspectives and implicit bias.
| Periodic alternation between parliamentary seating arrangements (as a means of correcting for unrecognized bias) | ||
| majority on right | majority on left | |
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The suggestion is consistent with the practice in many 2-team sports (football, hockey, volley-ball, tennis, etc), in which teams "switch ends" at half-time to compensate for any unfair advantage from one end or the other. Of particular interest would be the arguments advanced resisting any such proposed change in parliamentary assemblies. How is "reading the legislative chamber" framed otherwise by such dynamics (David Kantor, Reading the Room: group dynamics for coaches and leaders, 2012)?
There is some irony to the controversial movement of the European Parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg every month (at great cost in a period of austerity) -- whether or not this is associated with different seating arrangements (The three places of work of the European Parliament; The farce of the EU travelling circus, The Telegraph, 11 January 2014).
Governance in terms of Gordian knot?: Given the patterns in terms of which political and strategic dynamics might be "read", there is a strange resemblance of the set (in the schematic above) to the classic Endless Knot. The challenge of governance could even be fruitfully explored as in the light of the Gordian knot to which a number of strategic studies refer, as discussed separately (Mapping grossness: Gordian knot of governance as a Discordian mandala? 2016).
This suggests the following a speculative exercise in chirality. The top right quadrant there is the vertical reflection of that on the top left. The bottom right is the horizontal reflection of that on the top left. The bottom right is the vertical reflection of that on the bottom left. The directions represented within each quadrant are then variously similar or inverted with respect to those in the other quadrant.
| Directional chirality in governance and music? (horizontal and vertical reflections of the Endless Knot) |
 |
Individually, but especially when combined or superimposed, the quadrants are reminiscent of the famous Gordian Knot which features in discussions of governance, as summarized separately (Mapping grossness: Gordian knot of governance as a Discordian mandala? 2016). As might be expected, "Endless Knot" has been adopted as the name of a music group -- whose productions are readily available on the web. The following images suggest further insight. That on the (adapted from a variant of
| Complementary clues to further implication? | |
| As discussed by Keith Critchlow (Islamic Patterns: an analytical and cosmological approach, 1983) | As discussed by Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization, 2006) |
 |  |
| 8-fold Islamic pattern (complexification of the 4-fold variant above) | Connecting the directions (as reproduced from Panarchy, as described by The Sustainable Scale Project) |
Reading arrays: Rather than the preoccupation with reading directionalty, this may be understood as a particular instance of reading an array, namely how an array of indicators is scanned -- even images on a page, or details of a painting. This is evident to a degree in the manner in which voting in a legislative assembly may be presented on a panel reflecting the seating arrangement. Other examples implying a variety of understandings of governance include a chess (or go) board, a dynamic display of military battle (as in a control room), a stock quotation indicator board, and a control panel (factory, vehicle, etc). All elicit multi-directional "reading" skills critical to governance -- contrasting with the overly simplistic bidirectional left-right pattern. Of particular interest is how information in the array is then integrated. This is a focus of "cognitive fusion" research to enhance decision-making capacity of a fighter aircraft pilot faced with an instrument panel (Cognitive Fusion and Groupthink, 2007; Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor, 2006).
Bias in reading may also be introduced through the colours used in any array -- as exemplified in the simple case of the parliamentary seating arrangement above. As with directionality, the point to be stressed is the psychological association to one colour or another in different cultures, as highlighted by Colin Cherry (On Human Communication, 1966). He notes that whilst there is no difficulty in translating the colour "red" into and from Russian, the associations in the two languages are very different. In English: blood red, red in tooth and claw, red with anger, red light district, etc. In Russian the translation of "red" is synonymous with "beautiful" and has associations equivalent to the English "golden" - hence "Red Square" and the "Red Army"should be meaningfully translated as the "Golden Square" and the "Golden Army". There is little sense of how this plays out in the tensions between political parties, especially in the light of the primary colour with which they are associated -- and by which they may be appreciated or deprecated, as with the "Greens".
The issues can be framed in terms of defining reading comprehension, as argued with respect to text alone by Catherine Snow (Reading Comprehension: reading for learning, In: Vibeke Grøver Aukrust, Learning and Cognition, 2011):
The dilemmas posed by considering different levels of processing of this brief text are, of course, greatly expanded if we consider the comprehenion of longer and more complex texts, from paragraphs to newspaper reports or scientific articles to entire novels, let alone trying to establish what constitutes comprehension when reading an array of texts -- reports of a political speech in right-wing versus left-wing newspapers, or scientific articles reporting conflicting results, or the entire oeuvre of a novelist -- in conjunction with one another. At some point between the simple sentence above and the several volumes of Remembrance of Things Past, the definition of cmprehension shape-shifts from a simple representation of an event to deep understanding of a worldview, but fixing the boundary between those activities is not easy. (p. 192)
The argument with respect to text only implies the comprehension associated with patterns of relationships between elements of an array as is more evident in the comprehension of a network in which points in the array are variously related by lines -- effectively a concept map or mind map of some kind. This is implicit in the appreciation of the "tensions" between the various pieces on a chess board at some stage in the game -- or between the "players" in any parliamentary assembly. It is especially evident in the capacity of those controlling movement, as displayed for air traffic, train movement, or factory processes.
The last examples further highlight the relevance to governance -- implicit in the capacity to read and intervene strategically in a game board. In this respect, much has recently been made of the success of artificial intelligence with respect to the game of go (Artificial intelligence: Google's AlphaGo beats Go master Lee Se-dol, BBC News, 12 March 2016). Of related interest is the current use of games to elicit new knowledge, as might be desirable in the decision-making arenas of governance (Karen Schrier, Knowledge Games: how playing games can solve problems, create insight, and make change, 2016). A review of the latter notes their potential relevance to the solution of the so-called wicked problems of governance:
Indeed, most social and political problems are "wicked": health issues that combine social and biological causes, such as heart disease; how to help children struggling at school; high rates of recidivism among prisoners. Can games help? Why not? Compared with other collective problem-solving activities, they unite people with different experiences in a uniquely structured and motivating way. (Douglas Heaven, Can video games really create new knowledge? New Scientist, 25 May 2016)
Pattern variation: The variety of patterns open to exploration is consistent with the variations explored in music. Given the importance attached to Beethoven's musical insight -- through its adoption as the Anthem of Europe -- the argument above invites attention to his capacity to generate the 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor (1806) following the earlier initiative of Johann Sebastian Bach (30 Goldberg Variations, 1741). The latter were notably a feature of the study on self-reflexivity by Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid, 1979).
As musical metaphors imply, rather than seeking to understand chirality in static structural terms, there is a case for exploring the dynamics of alternation between mirror images and complementaries (Metaphors of Alternation: an exploration of their significance for development policy-making, 1984). For governance, much remains to be learned from the supposedly well-known process of walking -- in contrast to current efforts to hop on one leg, limping, or stagger (Transcending duality as the conceptual equivalent of learning to walk, 1994; Rick Aster, Walking is More than a Metaphor, 2006; Forerunner Commentary, Bible verses about Walking Metaphor).
Does the current problematic coordination of global governance merit exploration in pathological terms -- as being "governance by spasm"? Is the global brain currently inflicted with an analogue to cerebral palsy, especially in the light of reports on the effect of the disease on the corpus callosum (Corpus Callosum of the Global Brain? Locating the integrative function within the world wide web, 2014)?
As separately discussed, given current difficulties with the "extremities" of the political spectrum, an even richer source of insight may be found in flying, rather than through deprecating one or other "political wing", or seeking desperately to "block" its use (Counteracting Extremes Enabling Normal Flying: insights for global governance from birds on the wing and the dodo, 2015). This explored the following themes:
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The question is whether there is more to be imaginatively explored in relation to governance and the capacity of birds to fly than has been derived in the development of the helicopter and drones (Engendering a Psychopter through Biomimicry and Technomimicry: insights from the process of helicopter development, 2011). However, with respect to how insights might be mistakenly applied to forms of governance which already "fly of their own accord", a cautionary comment is offered by Pablo Triana (Lecturing Birds on Flying: can mathematical theories destroy the financial markets? 2009). Is there a larger systems perspective to be elicited which might be of relevance to enabling global governance to really take-off and fly?
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