Stability through configuration

Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes (Part #5)

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As indicated above, there are many such paradoxes, whether or not many are actively problematic for a given individual. Rather than offering attention to paradoxes separately and in arbitrary succession, there is a case for exploring the consequences of considering them together -- at least those experienced as significant in a given period.

The question is what might then be understood experientially by "together"? How can two or more paradoxes be held within a common framework? What exactly is a "common framework"? The question is especially relevant given the frequent appeals to "common values" and the search for a comprehensible, viable, universal framework for them -- with no concern regarding the paradoxical relationship in practice between many values and their polar opposites. Whether obvious or not, "positive" values (such as peace and freedom) have their "negative" aspects, just as "negative" values may have their "positive" aspects. Clarifying the nature of such "value polarities" was a particular concern of the above-mentioned Human Values project.

What might be the characteristics of such a framework, given that its paradoxical components are significant primarily because they "break out of" rational cognitive frameworks? In the bridging situation described above, the individual provides the framework holding the single paradoxical relationship together. This might be termed a 1-dimensional configuration.

If such a single paradox is represented by a line (or rod), consider the possibility of being able to dispose several such rods on a flat surface (2 dimensions). If the individual is to respond to them collectively, then the individual can be understood as placed at the centre of the configuration. So 3 paradoxes might be laid out to form a triangle with the individual at the centre. Similarly 4 might be laid out as a square, 5 as a pentagon, or 6 as a hexagon, etc.

Setting aside for the moment whether (or how) the ends of the rods are linked in such a configuration, the question is how it impacts on a person's awareness -- "handling" 3 paradoxes simultaneously, for example. Whereas with the single paradox, the person could "evade" the destabilizing dynamic by "moving away" from the polarity in many directions, now the ability to do so is constrained. Such movement is effectively "barred".

The individual can indeed step out of the configuration -- effectively denying its existential challenge and "moving out of the line of fire". Or the individual can move "up" and "away" from the configuration -- perhaps diminishing its existential weight. Or the individual can "move into" the plane of the configuration -- embodying the set of paradoxes in some way. In this case the configuration provides a kind of stable place for instability. To some degree the individual's awareness is dynamically held in that space more firmly than in the case of a single paradox. Any shift "towards" or "away" from a particular paradox in the plane is corrected by the pull of the others.

In such a situation the individual's awareness is effectively "stressed" -- or inductively "heated" -- at the common focus of the dynamic set up by each paradox. In this sense the configuration functions as a kind of door or gateway that is opened by the transformation processes associated with the "heating". Rather than "heating", the process might be understood as a form of "transportation" -- perhaps somewhat modelled by the operation of a linear magnet. The "co-operation" of the paradoxes serves then to shift awareness "through" the configuration in a somewhat controlled manner. However if "through" is simply considered like going through a door into a new space -- this implies that in this new space the paradoxes will somehow magically no longer apply. Whilst such "irrational" spaces may well exist, as in fantasy and fiction, they are not the focus of this exploration.

Again a failure to configure in some way results in the individual being sucked uncontrollably into the chaotic dynamics to which he or she is exposed -- the dynamics around a strange attractor.

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