Modelling: authentic dialogue and quarterstaff combat?

Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes (Part #16)

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One interesting take is to consider that a metaphorical "stake" (see above) may be both held and used like a "quarterstaff". The challenge in both cases is the extent to which either the stake or the quarterstaff is recognized as representing a paradox rather than as having any element of paradox designed out of it.

The quarterstaff (of some 2 metres length) is the basis for a traditional martial art -- which is also associated with some spiritual disciplines in West and East. A quarterstaff combat can be fruitfully explored as the encounter between two contrasting paradoxes or polarities -- or more in the case of many dialogue participants each so armed. It then models only too realistically many dialogue situations! The moves in such a conflict -- how the quarterstaff is held and used -- model many moves open to those interacting in dialogue. A quarterstaff may, for example, be held at one end (of the polarity) in order to beat the opponent with the other. One opponent may poke the other with one end of the quarterstaff, etc.

This "one-end" (polarized) method of engagement in dialogue is also modelled by the use of a sword. Fencing has its well known tactical elements (such as thrust, parry, riposte, engagement, change of engagement, beat, press, etc). This is a metaphor for some forms of dialogue as in the phrase of fencing Maestro Luigi Barbasetti: "like poets we compose verse in the great dialogue of steel". The metaphor is explored to a far greater degree in Miyamoto Musashi's classic The Book of Five Rings. This has become a key text in some Asian schools of management education. According to Harold Hayes (Strategic Balance in Chess and Fencing, 1991):

Education in the art of fencing prepares the fencer to sustain a rational dialogue with the opponent in the language of struggle. In that language there are many dialects, and many universal themes. Fencing itself is perhaps the king of those dialects, and chess is perhaps the queen. The education of a fencer develops familiarity with the many types of part/whole relationships that may exist among fencing actions and the infinite variations that link them together.

Such polarized engagement has also been popularly dramatized in the archetypal interaction of Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader in the Star Wars movie series using lightsabers ("laser swords"). It is consistent with that archetype that swords of any kind are only held at one end -- the other being used to subdue the opponent. So held it signifies a "truth" which challenges the "falsehood" of the opponent (holding the opposite view). They may only be held with one hand. More interesting for dialogue, as modelled by use of a quarterstaff, is the ability to use either end of the polarity -- in response to an opponent with a similar degree of freedom. Both hands are used.

The quarterstaff, however, may also be held and used with two hands about its mid-point -- notably in order to block any strike by another. This use of the polarity (or paradox) as a balanced whole may also be understood in the light of Carl Jung's syzygy archetype -- a concept from depth psychology related to synergy, but applying to the interrelationship of two complementary archetypes (typically male-female). From this perspective there is no differentiation of priority, importance, or sequence between the polarity's poles. The whole is then as distinct from the polarity of "space and time" as is Einstein's description of the texture of the universe as "space-time". In archetypal terms, this is a pattern of wholeness and integration. Paradoxical oppositions between the outer and the inner life are "joined" in marriage (as explored in My Reflecting Mirror World: making Joburg worthwhile, 2002) [more]. Great power is understood to arise from this integration.

Just as sign language windows on video screens are occasionally provided to interpret verbal dialogue for the deaf, it is possible to imagine a corresponding "interpretation" of a dialogue using two (or more) martial art practitioners of quarterstaff -- with each quarterstaff colour-coded to match a polarity (paradox) in play in the dialogue. Why is it assumed that any assembly of "stakeholders" is somehow static rather than in a dynamic interaction which calls for a special approach to their configuration -- if a "multi-stakeholder" group is to make possible the emergence of some higher order of consensus?

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