Dimensions and processes to be encompassed self-reflexively?

Global Challenge of the Global Challenge (Part #5)

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This exercise is a further articulation of points previously made more extensively in response to the Urgent Appeal to Change the Mindset, launched by the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives and elaborated separately (Embodiment of Change: Comprehension, Traction and Impact? Discovering enabling questions for the future, 2011). The latter noted:

• Identifying meta-challenges: checklists and documents
  • Checklists variously framed, highlighting the nature of questions which are typically avoided in considering future possibilities
  • Denial and question avoidance, indicating various approaches to the nature of denial
  • Misplaced optimism regarding governance and systemic negligence in existing approaches
  • Neglected issues in dialogue, facilitation and game-playing as currently framed
  • Possibilities of anticipating and reframing disagreements that tend to undermine the coherence of global initiatives.
  • Neglected conventional cognitive traps undermining framing of strategies
  • Unexamined implications of the requisite complexity of "new thinking" in response to strategic obsolescence
  • Unquestioned assumptions regarding forms of presentation of conclusions
  • Humouristic and poetic summaries endeavouring to highlight the current tragedy by unconventional means
• Case studies: sources of potential insights and learnings

Dimensions meriting consideration as to how they are best to be integrated include the following -- recognizing the dynamics engendered by their possible exclusion:

• Disagreement: how indeed to engage with those who disagree with the process or any emergent recommendations for a new decision-making framework? How should their perspectives be designed in or designed out? Given the current outcomes of democratic elections and referenda, with the right to govern being determined by 52% vs 48% (irrespective of the percentage of abstentions), a fundamental issue is how is any proposal for a new framework to be deemed satisfactory and for whom. Despite the vain efforts of the majority to elicit "unity", how best to handle disappointment?
  
  
• Adherence to pre-defined requirements? how to elicit creativity and pattern-breaking within a framework which requires adherence to particular pre-defined criteria? The issue becomes evident with very occasional EU calls for "off the wall" research proposals which are then rejected by evaluators because their results cannot be proven in advance.
  
  
• "Unsaid" and "Non-dit": how to take account of what is not frankly stated and is only subtly implicit, if not carefully designed out of consideration? This may apply both to the framing of the organization of the Global Challenge, the motivations of those involved, the nature of acceptable deliverables, and the biases of those to whom they are addressed (Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid": from myth-making towards a "wisdom society", 2003).
  
  
• Blame-game: The current crisis of governance is characterized to a large degree by various forms of blame-game. Each is able to indicate others who are (primarily) at fault in inhibiting more effective decision-making. How is this tendency to be taken into account in the case of any new framework -- whose promoters are liable to imply blame (if their views are not accepted) or be considered blameworthy by others resistant to any implementation of the new? (Collective Mea Culpa? You Must be Joking ! Them is to blame, Not us ! 2015).
  
  
• Stylistic antagonism and incompatibilities: Any blame-game may well be a rationalization of antipathy to the style of the proposers (or the Global Challenge itself). The challenge of style extends to those whose dynamics need to be encompassed by the new framework and may be highly resistant to being "seated at the same table", especially on equal terms (Epistemological Challenge of Cognitive Body Odour: exploring the underside of dialogue, 2006)
  
  
• Information overload and constrained span of attention: The challenge of information overload is increasingly evident for all. It notably applies to the handling of any issues of governance in which key documents may well be thousands of pages in length. The issue extends even more dramatically to those with oversight responsibility -- potentially only manageable by neglecting the vital details in many documents. The issue is of course of relevance to the evaluation of submissions to the Global Challenge. It may be asked, hypothetically, how 100, 1000 or 10,000 submissions could be adequately processed -- if the process attracted an unexpected number of participants. (Comprehension of Numbers Challenging Global Civilization: number games people play for survival, 2014).
  
  
• Integrative comprehension: Irrespective of issues of information overload, there is clearly an issue of the comprehensibility of any adequate new framework -- where adequacy may require engagement with higher orders of complexity beyond habitual comfort zones. Depending on the style of presentation (text, visualization, oral, sonification, equations, etc) or any mix of styles, who is expected to be effectively engaged by what (lengthy) argument? Again this applies as much to the framework (as it is sought to implement it) as to the appreciation of submissions within the Global Challenges framework. Who can be expected to "see the forest for the trees", namely who is liable to be distracted by the "trees" or unduly enthused by the "forest". What forms of integration merit appreciation and to what extent may any one be meaningless to some? (Living with Incomprehension and Uncertainty: re-cognizing the varieties of non-comprehension and misunderstanding, 2012; Global Brane Comprehension Enabling a Higher Dimensional Big Tent? 2011)
  
  
• Ignorance, credibility and communicability: With the rise of populism, and the discrediting of past expertise (proven to be inadequate to the times), a major challenge is associated with those who variously fail to comprehend the insight embodied in any recommended new framework. The conventional response to this challenge -- evident in the strategies of religions, science, philosophy and ideologies -- has been to make use of increasingly sophisticated public relations techniques. Understood otherwise, the focus is on "marketing" the preferred perspective -- irrespective of indications of limited uptake. The abuse of this facility, remarkably evident in media engagement in the US presidential campaign, has resulted in its being extensively discredited. The process is increasingly indistinguishable from confidence trickery -- especially notable with respect to "fake news" and "post-truth" politics. (Credibility Crunch engendered by Hope-mongering, 2008).
  
  
• Openness to the potential of missing dimensions: The request for a new "framework" itself implies a tendency to closure and finality, cognitive or otherwise, when the challenge of openness merits particular attention -- especially to the emergence of future issues and creative perspectives. Combining the incommensurability of openness and closure calls for a design philosophy characterized by paradox. As a design metaphor, this is helpfully exemplified by the ITER toroidal nuclear fusion reactor currently under construction (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006).
  
  
• Avoidance of controversy and inconvenient questions: To facilitate discourse in the moment, there is a marked tendency to avoid issues of significance to decision-making of relevance to governance in the longer-term. If recognized, their relevance may simply be denied with respect to challenges of the shorter-term. This tendency creates vulnerability to strategic surprises as argued by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007).
  
  
• Limiting focus on the singular solution: As framed the Global Challenge process is designed to elicit a single framework in a period in which there are clearly preferences for contrasting frameworks. This is the challenge of the unitary versus the multiplicity -- with total system dominance versus some form of "multiverse" -- potentially exemplified by advocates of the singularity hypothesis. In agriculture this is evident in the challenge of monoculture to crop diversity. In society this is evident in pressures for conformity to a particular set of "universal" norms versus some form of multiculturalism. The question is how these incommensurable tendencies are to be resolved within a new pattern of global governance -- questionable framed as some form of magical "silver bullet" in response to a complex of "wicked problems" (Embodying Strategic Self-reference in a World Futures Conference: transcending the wicked problem engendered by projecting negativity elsewhere, 2015; Strategic Ecosystem: beyond The Plan, 1995).
  
  
• Static focus versus Dynamic focus: As with the emphasis on closure, aspiration to a new "framework" may also be challenged as implying advocacy of a new form of stasis or invariance -- when the requirement for some may be a new form of engagement with change. If astrophysics and relativity theory recognize the need for comprehension of frames of reference shifting in relation to one another, the potential relevance to governance of some psychosocial equivalent clearly merits consideration. Curiously the issue applies to any implication that values are invariants best circumscribed and defined by nouns, when they may well need to be understood as verbs or even questions as to the nature of what is implied
  
  
• Risk aversion: The articulation of the Global Challenges Prize specifically calls for a framework around how "global risks can be minimized or eliminated". This is somewhat extraordinary in that the funding of the Prize derives from financial initiatives which have creatively embraced risk. The question may be addressed otherwise through recognition of the extent to which people seek exposure to risk and admire those who cultivate extreme risk. This contrasts with the assumption that people are in quest of a cocooned existence -- echoed in conservative tendencies to preserve the status quo. How is risk aversion to be mitigated in a society strangely dependent on change?

Any explicit consideration of these dimensions tends to obscure the need for their constraints to be ignored -- because their recognition may well inhibit and discourage creative thinking and innovation. Hence the enthusiasm for "starting afresh" and ignoring any lessons from failures of the past. Such consideration suggests the need for a "meta-perspective", especially in the light of the world leadership to be offered by the presidency of Donald Trump (Requisite Meta-reflection on Engagement in Systemic Change? Fiat, fatwa and world-making in a period of existential radicalisation, 2015). The latter frames the challenge in terms of:

Towards a more self-reflexive focus Agencies of systemic change Science and nescience Systemic neglect by science Mutual embedding of disparate cognitive modalities

Systemic change by authoritative fiat Fiat and world-making as an individual opportunity Self-reflexive discourse as catalyst for change Mnemonic catalysts enabling self-reflexive discourse Achieving traction through embodiment

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