Detailed articulation of tabular presentation of Thinking/Doing (with indicative documents)

Governing Civilization through Civilizing Governance: global challenge for a turbulent future (Part #13)

Documents are included here merely as an indication of the range of topics which might be addressed under any of the 16 thinking/doing items. They are potentially helpful in any further elaboration of the scope of the item and identifying further resources from within their respective bibliographies.

Links are provided below back to the table above (which itself has links to items below). The following articulation could be developed to point to the relevance of complementary preoccupation with the Imaginatique and Irresolutique

Resolutique ("explicit imaginary")

Exploratory simulation (gaming)

T: Designing simulations to elicit (unconventional) options, associating them with openly accessible, attractive gaming to elicit cognitive entrainment; learnings from the successes and failures of "peace games" and "war games" in enabling constructive rather than purely destructive outcomes (notably reminiscent of imperial/colonial historical patterns); development of intelligent agent-based simulations; exploration of enabling simulations for emergence of more complex memetic and social structures (beyond the constraints exemplfied by simplistic and negative prefixes)
D: Dissemination of insightful, interactive gaming and pattern emergence; adaptation of virtual stock portfolio practices (as promoted by some banks as learning devices for clients) to enable exploration of governance options
Docs:

Sustainable dynamics

T: Exploring unforeseen potentials of complex dynamics of non-linear systems involving multiple actors
D: Implementing information systems to enable such structures to emerge and develop as appropriate
Docs:

Appropriate organizational architecture

T: Identifying structures of requisite complexity and coherence and ensuring their emergence, especially those in which intractable differences and incommensurabilities are designed in rather than out. Of particular interest, in the context of a conference inspired by the hellenic ideal, it should be recalled that Plato is known to geometricians for his association with Platonic solids which only take form in three dimensions (as opposed to two) -- and when more than three sides are presented and appropriately configured. Many of them have many more sides and the configurations are quite complex -- although aesthetically and intuitively appealing. Arguably there is a challenge to escape from "strategic flatland" into the third dimension (at least). With the complementary Archimedean solids, the two series together suggest a periodic table of institutional and strategic opportunities that call for exploration -- where "sides" are indicative of distinct (if not commensurable) strategic perspectives. More generally, including forms of more than three dimensions, this institutional architectural repertoire includes the regular polytopes. There may indeed be a case for geodesic institutional and cognitive structures -- as implied by arguments of R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics: explorations in the geometry of thinking, 1975/1979).
D: Implementing information systems to enable such structures to emerge and develop as appropriate; application in support of face-to-face and virtual assemblies of "static" and "non-static" actors. Design of electronic protocols that would catalyze the emergence of "Platonic solid" configurations from the amorphousness of "social networking" and "networks of excellence", as partially envisaged by management cybernetician Stafford Beer (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994).
Docs:

Recognition of higher order challenges

T: Articulating challenges and possibilities beyond conventional polarization and demonisation; naming higher order challenges ("wolves in sheep's clothing"; "white-anting"; "Emperor's new clothes", etc)
D: Creation of engaging activities that give credibility and viability to non-polarized initiatives
- instead of addressing the dynamics of why a particular behaviour occurs (drugs, pedophiles, theft, violence, etc) focus is mistakenly placed on stopping it by incarceration in the light of an inherently simplistic and restrictive worldview
- delay of "governance" with respect to uptake on new possibilities (eg the web, social networking, etc)
Docs:

Imaginatique ("implicit real")

Quality / Significance enhancement

T: Reframing "quality of life" and "pursuit of happiness"; implications of voluntary simplicity -- Bhutan ***
D: Designing viable environments to sustain unconventional qualities
Docs:

Experimental alternatives

T: Recognizing and monitoring the viability of the widest spectrum of alternatives, in isolation and as necessary complements in any system
D: Implementation of experimental environments ("free zones", "socio-poles", "renaissance zones"); development of substitution databases; undertaking proper experiments with alternative modes of organization; encouraging experimental alternatives to "downsizing"; challenging simplistic demonisation of alternatives
Docs:

Reframing assumptions (Nasty questions)

T: Cognitive vigilance and critical thinking appropriate to detection of vital insights readily suppressed by spin and advocacy of positive thinking
D: Develop processes for emergence of challenging and problematic perspectives (notably associated with the "unsaid")
Docs:

Self-reflexivity / Internalization

T: Identifying the conceptual challenges of cognitive embodiment of "external" reality and its role in psycho-social sustainability
self-critique
D: Recognition, design and implementation of strategies that effectively mirror their environment
Docs:

Problematique ("explicit imaginary")

Insight capture

T: Designing open processes for gathering, configuring and disseminating insight -- in anticipation of it proving valuable
D: Implementing and assessing "wisdom" and innovation gathering systems
Docs:

Enabling / Facilitation

T: Designing processes to identify opportunities for enabling and facilitating innovative, regulatory and "best practice" initiatives
D: Implementation of enabling information processes and legislation
Docs:

Strategic engagement / comprehension

T: Identifying nature of coherent strategic representations capable of eliciting appropriate engagement; challenge of comprehension of complexity
D: Developing relevant software to facilitate configuring complexity
Docs:

Crisis preparedness

T: Implications for social systems of the adaptive cycle, resilience and degrading gracefully (Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization, 2006) under conditions of collapse (Jared M. Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005). Issues of preparedness in the light of black swan theory regarding high impact unexpected events (cf Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007).
D: Introduction of relevant fall-back procedures and alternatives; implementation of emergency (default) configurations of the web in anticipation of collapse
Docs:

Irresolutique ("implicit real")

Credibility ("hearts and minds")

T: Rethinking destructive loss of confidence (as recognized by the military); meaning of confidence (as modelled by financial system) and eroded by tokenism and secrecy
D: Proactive assessment of confidence erosion (broken promises, tokenism, deception by authorities, etc) and consequent implementation of confidence building processes of appropriate complexity; proactive response to compromised authorities (political, financial / economic, value exemplars, environmental, health, judicial, religious, security)
Docs:
- Future Challenge of Faith-based Governance, 2003
- Mobilization for Alienation vs. Catalysis for Participation: choice for the United Nations system, 1973

"Access" / Feedback to authorities

T: Identifying processes to enable meaningful access to authoritative focal points in highly assymetric conditions (information overload and underuse). Challenge of the mathematics of meaningful communication between populations of millions and thousands (if not hundreds) of relevant agents of government: filtration, relevance, spam. Designing towards the ideals of democratic "participation" in a context of tokenism and spin.
D: Assessing and redesigning systems of public (taxpayer) interaction with government, media and academia (in light of realistic constraints and innovative possibilities)
Docs:

Participation / Social networking

T: Exploring implications of web-enhanced (social) networking for new approaches to governance
D: Implementatyion of systems facilitating emergence and viability of higher order configurations
Docs:

Dialogue / Chemistry / Otherness

T: Exploring the challenge of "designing in" otherness and disagreement beyond comfort zones (rather than harmonising it "out"). With respect to organizational archietecture, there is a desperate need for some strategic and institutional "Platonic solids" to emerge credibly and sustainably from any Socratic dialogue process. It is possible that it is the very dynamic of such dialogue, as a complex system involving many sides, which engenders such solids as a form of standing wave pattern.
D: Design of systems whose viability benefits from the variety of intractable differences; identification of the variety of games as potential systemic attractors (and distractors); development of a continuing series of experimental dialogues (bringing together the wise and the model/solution advocates) and evaluating the dynamics of such gather and the degree to which lessons are integratewd into the models of the wise.
Docs:

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Detailed articulation of tabular presentation of Thinking/Doing (with indicative documents)