</a>Challenge

Governance through Pattern Language: creative cognitive engagement contrasted with abdication of responsibility (Part #2)

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• greater intensity
• improved information "antenna" -- cognitive "antenna"
• enhanced interaction with relevant knowlege
• a higher degree of grounded embodiment

Ironically some of these cognitive challenges are precisely those identified by the term "cognitive fusion" as employed in the cognitive enhancement of fighter pilots. Characteristics of what can be variously understood as "fusion" are indeed of potential interest (cf Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006). Curiously they also feature as a prime attractor characteristic of interactive computer games with their increasing emphasis on hyperrealism (***). To be dicovered is what needs to be "fused" and how that relates to creative intelligence and operacy in other practical contexts

Irrespective of how this challenge may be met for individuals, the larger challenge is that for collectives. How do the bodies, to which I have variously delegated responsibility for holding the values of my planet, engage with each other and with the problems of my planet? How do I recognize creative intelligence in others and engage creatively with it -- especially when I may be operating with a lower order of intelligence? What are the threads that need to be woven together to augment such creative response?

Such a challenge needs itself to be challenged. As "fusion" implies, there is potentially an excessive degree of "heat" under conditions where "cool" may be more appropriate. The contrast was notably a concern of Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: the extensions of man, 1994). The value of cool, in contrast to heat, is a topic of study (Jeff Rice, The Handbook of Cool), understood as detached and uninvolved while simultaneously in and contributing to the culture. For Wikipedia, cool in popular culture is:

an aesthetic of attitude, behaviour, comportment, appearance and style. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no one meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and is very frequently used as an expression of admiration or approval. A great deal of literature has been committed to understanding the concept of cool in societies.

If any form of "fusion" is appropriate to the organization of knowledge and action, it may well have aesthetic and subjective characteristics that relate it more closely to those of "non-action" as advocated by eastern philosophy (cf The Quest for the Socio-Economics of Non-Action, 1993 ). The difficulty is that whilst "fusion" is considered concretely meaningful in terms of action, any attitude implying "non-action" has credibility only to some. Ironically the term "cold fusion" would be as controversial metaphorically as it is in relation to physical phenomena.

Like others before him, playwright Steve Waters (The Paralysis of Creation, Guardian, 23 November 2006) expreses the challenge as one of imagination:

Yet the elusive challenges of climate change won't serve as a call to arms until we unlock our imagination from its current paralysis. Admittedly the facts are pretty paralysing....Unfortunately the first casualty of this barrage of bad news is the imagination....The result is a contraction of the horizon... This inability to connect trauma in the biosphere with the small print of our lives stalls the necessity for radical change.

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