Interwoven psychosocial currents

Transcending One-eyed Global Modelling Perspectives (Part #7)

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The merit of the global ocean current model is that it suggests how the many currents are connected. In the psychosocial case this is quite controversial. For although a person, or a country can "rise" out of a problematic situation, or "sink" into a catastrophic one, the connections suggested here are not one-way processes, as argued separately against the use of the conveyor metaphor by Ken Wilber (Potential Misuse of the Conveyor Metaphor: recognition of the circular dynamic essential to its appropriate operation, 2007). Having "risen" one may "fall" and having "fallen" one may "rise". But the controversy here lies in the sense in which the implication is that this is cyclic and perhaps necessarily so (Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007)

Whilst the process may indeed be cyclic, as with the cycles associated with substance abuse, the question raised is why any such cycle is necessary in systemic terms. Why is a one-way process not possible or preferable? One response lies in the saying "what goes up, must come down". The truth of this is evident in experience of heightened pleasure, necessarily to be followed by a "down" cycle. Staying "up" all the time is recognized as being not feasible -- at least in the longer term -- just as with "inspiration", necessarily to be followed by expiration. This is as true at the cultural level, with the rise and fall of empires over time.

Interweaving the cycles, as suggested by the system of ocean currents, suggests a possibility of engaging with the set of cycles to recognize the larger system -- thereby "breaking the cycle" in a more sustainable manner (Web resources on "breaking the cycle", 2002). The shift to a "global" focus then enables, and is sustained by, interlocking or interweaving cycles (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways, 2010; Spherical configuration of interlocking roundtables: Internet enhancement of global self-organization through patterns of dialogue, 1998; Representation of Interlocking Elements for a Sustainable Global System, 1995).

Since it was emphasized above that the systemic focus was on flows not categories or sectors, an interesting aspect of any global mapping of those flows occurs in relation to, or engenders, zones of "solidity" which could be understood as continents and islands -- bounded cognitive sectors more reminiscent of conventionally frozen categories. As noted above, using the widely familiar planetary globe as a template offers a means of thinking in new ways about the relationships between invariance and the change implicit in flow. In contrast to the classic dictum of Alfred Korzybski, the territory can in this context be fruitfully explored as a map (The Territory Construed as the Map: in search of radical design innovations in the representation of human activities and their relationships, 1979). This is then consistent at the global level with the argument of Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979). Irrespective of the controversial aspects of such connectivity, it can be readily argued that it is the contraints and patterning proclivities of the human mind that renders any such isomorphism credible.

Rather than asking the question what currents circulate globally around the conventional social sectors -- understood through frozen categories -- the emphasis is placed on the systemic flows and what distinct zones they effectively engender. This offers scope for the imagination, as indicated below by the maps of the island continents of "Marxyland" and "Freudyland" -- produced under pseudonyms by the future researchers John McHale and Magda McHale.

Humorous mapping exercises Rebus Heaviwait and Emmanuel Lighthanger (Projex, New York, Links Books, 1972).
" Marxyland "	" Freudyland "

The thermohaline circulation of ocean currents around the globe offer a further suggestive insight. To be both wind-driven and warmed, the "surface-currents" are necessarily of greater width and more limited depth and move more rapidly. The eventual cooling and sinking of such waters leads to their movement into the ocean basins at great depth, possibly even ocean trenches, where proportionately greater volumes of water move far more slowly -- with the oldest waters estimated to have a transit time of up to 1600 years before they "upwell". Such periods are a reminder of the duration of empires before some form of "comeupance" necessarily occurs -- a deserved reward or just due.

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