Cognitive significance of a con-tainer

Evoking Castalia as Envisaged, Entoned and Embodied -- informed by the bertsolitaria process ? (Part #5)

This has been remarkably explored with respect to shipping containers as the primary symbol of globalization and a container world (Alexander Klose, The Container Principle: how a box changes the way we think, 2009). In a critical comment Klose notes:

Containers represent the impressive dyamics of modern capitalism and its fundamental optimism in the face of every crisis. At the same time, they represent the fears and objections to these dynamics when logistic are organized purely for optimization, forcibly converging and aligning formerly remote parts of the world through an exponential increase in transport and communications processes. The basic materiality of containers, the fact that they can be emptied just as easily as they can be filled, also seems to reveal an effect on the semantic level of stories and images. (p. ix)

Klose argues that:

Today the transport container has become ... a key image, a gobal visiotype that professes to make further explanations superfluous. The success of the metacontainer has brought about a metareality in which containers and globalization have always formed a firm and fast tautological unity... This metareality consusts of a bastion of belief in progress andthe apotheosis of rationality, regardless of whether this process is interpreted as philanthropic or branded as misanthropic. The reality is based on a mythical foundation that attributes technical and social development to ominous powers of the economy and the market. (pp. 74-75)

The argument is appropriately extended by Klose to include the cognitive preoccupations of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) with the container as the primary subspecies in the genus of the ontological metaphor, citing:

Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation. We project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces. Thus we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside. (p. 25)

Organization of categories as containers: Especially interesting is the recognition that the implications extend to the framing, organization and management of categories, classes (as in classification) and concepts -- as in knowledge menagement, categorization, classification and semantic mapping. In all such instances, concepts are conventionally represented as box-like containers. Klose draws particular attention to the Matryoshka Principle:

Matryoshkas, the colorfully painted wooden nesting Russian dolls, are among the most famous Russian exports. They serve as an organizational model for one of the most successful container principles, the Matryoshka Principle, which has found its way into highly varied contexts. In business management, in prodiction ad logistics, and also in communications and information, it refers to models of recursive organization. An object or a model is recursive if it contains itself as a part, just as each Russian doll contains a smaller mode of itself inside it. (p. 68-69)

Curiously no association is made by Klose to fractal organization and especially to the Mandelbrot set with its resemblance to a Matryoshka. The relevance to sustainability within any global container is discussed separately, with respect to transcendence of dilemmas (Psycho-social Significance of the Mandelbrot Set: a sustainable boundary between chaos and order, 2005; Sustainability through the Dynamics of Strategic Dilemmas -- in the light of the coherence and visual form of the Mandelbrot set, 2005).

Thinking outside the box: Significantly missing from the valuable review by Klose of "how a box changes the way we think" is any consideration of "thinking outside the box". This is widely used as a metaphor for thinking un-con-ventionally, most notably in the form of novel or creative thinking.

Given the magical surprise cultivated in the great game of Castalia, it is appropriate to note the unexpected association between the Gilbreath Principle and the Mandelbrot set, as specifically described through wordplay by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham (Magical Mathematics: the mathematical ideas that animate great magic tricks, 2012):

One of the great new discoveries of modern card magic is called the Gilbreath Principle. It is a new invariant that lets the spectator shuffle a normal deck of cards and still concludes in a grand display of structure. One of the great new discoveries of modern mathematics is called the Mandelbrot set. It's a new invariant that takes a "shuffle" of the plane and still concludes in a grand display of structure. (From the Gilbreath Principle to the Mandelbrot Set, chapter 5, pp. 61-83)

Topological transformation of containers: Given the ubiquity of the container box, within which most in urbanised socieies now live and work (and probably think), the interest here is how the great game of Castalia constitutes a contrasting form of container -- and what this enables. The attractive focus traditionally offered by circular amphitheatres and arenas is indeed suggestive in this respect.

In a separate articulation, containers enabling cognitive processes are discussed in terms of: think tanks and incubators, conferences, virtual containers in cyberspace, and retreat centres for meditation (Cognitive Containers, 2011). Reference is also made there to the BaGua configuration as a container, and (metaphorically) to industrial reaction vessels. It is in the latter respect that the future adequacy of the box metaphor is challenged, given the unusual nature of the container required to enable the nuclear fusion on which hopes for a sustainable energy source are focused (ITER: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).

The primary characteristics of a container appropriate to this outcome is the requirement that the plasma it contains should not come into contact with the wall of the container. This is achieved by using a toroidal configuration of magnets to control the dynamics of the circulating plasma. Such a design, as separately described, constitutes one inspiration for the great game of Castalia (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006).

The topological transformation from the materiality of a circular amphitheatre to the insubstantiality of a toroidal form as a container for psychosocial processes is inherently appropriate. It might otherwise be assumed that a spherical form -- reflecting the dynamics of a globalized integrity -- would constitute a more appropriate container. This assumption is helpfully called into question by the arguments through which this options was set aside in the design of a nuclear fusion reactor.

The question is how to gain greater understanding of what might be circulating within that form. One approach is through the traditional symbolism of the circulation of light, as discussed separately (Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability? 2010). Another approach is to imagine it as especially related to the dyanmics of conviviality and confidence (Confidelity Container Design, 2011).

Building confidence and conviviality: Much is currently made of the challenge of confidence building, most obviously with respect to economics but increasingly with regard to the trustworthiness of authorities in general -- especially political authorities. The concerns are also expressed, perhaps to an even higher and more urgent degree, with respect to local community building. Such matters have most notably come to the fore in relation to "building the peace" in territories acclaimed ("triumphantly") as having been shattered by conquest -- or those in a state of increasing fearfulness, held ("incomprehensibly") to be the ("innocent") victims of terrorism.

In exploring the containers appropriate to the sustainability of confidence, as it might be currently enabled in Castalia, it is useful to review its possible surrogates, as discussed separately (Varieties of Confidence Essential to Sustainability: surrogates and tokens obscuring the existential "gold standard", 2009). This included the following indicative configuration.

Confidence and Confidelity highlighted by Configuration (reproduced from Primary Global Reserve Currency: the Con? 2009)
*Confidence and its surrogates*	*Configuration of axes of bias*

Participative design of a cognitive container: The great game central to the cultural dynamics of Castalia is appropriately recognized as a con-tainer for the processes whereby its identity and coherence are sustained. The notion of such a container is a reminder of the role played by the amphitheatres con-structed throughout the Roman Empire, and epitomized by the Coloseum and its gladiators. Their role gave rise to the critical phrase bread and circuses in recognition of the superficial appeasement characteristic of con-ventional politics, and the virtual amphitheatres created by con-temporary use of the broadcast media.

In Castalia the nature of the psychosocial con-tainer offered by the great game is imagined otherwise. In terms of the eight cognitive systemic functions highlighted above, it is understood as the con-fluence of con-fidence, con-sensus, con-trol, con-sumption, con-ception and con-sideration. However the very nature of that con-fluence is paradoxically challenged by the cognitively elusive underlying dynamics of "con" itself.

Metaphorically the challenge of this con-tainer can be provocatively explored through the dynamics in a con-troversial modern amphitheatre, namely bullfighting or tauromachy, and the widepread use of bull as a euphemism (Viable Global Governance through Bullfighting: challenge of transcendence, 2009).

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Cognitive significance of a con-tainer