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Eliciting meaning through creative imagination


Eliciting Insight from Covert Operations by US (Part #7)

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Imagination: As noted above, claims as to the reality of externality can be reframed most readily in dramatic terms -- casting players into roles in an epic drama whose plot can have multiple twists and turns. For the individual it is the creative imagination with which the tale is imbued which engenders global coherence. It is through such reframing that coherence is ensured.

The individual can of course subscribe on occasion to an external reality -- patterns serving ironically as a source of inspiration. As with an early advertisement, it is a case of: By a Buick; something to believe in. Like any actor, the individual is free to switch the attribution of meaning between external and internal roles -- without permanent attachment to either. The art of the process would appear to involve transcending identification with either the internal or the external -- focusing rather on discovering what is associated with that process, and implied by it.

Of particular relevance to covert operations by US is then the ability to alternate between attributing reality to the "United States" (for example) and withdrawing all investment of significance in any such reality -- as a matter of convenience in navigating imaginatively the challenges of living in a global environment and sustaining its meaningful integrity. As with any actor in a play, it may be as appropriate for US to pretend that the "United States" exists -- perhaps for a documentary ritual of border control -- and then to disassociate from that notion as the drama evolves.

In contrast to constructivist arguments, for example, an interplay is then possibile between four perspectives: existence, non-existence, existence and non-existence, and neither existence nor non-existence, as explored by Kinhide Mushakoji (Global Iissues and Interparadigmatic Dialogue: essays on multipolar politics, 1988). Metaphorically, successive engagement with any perspective could be fruitfully compared with the existence and use of a "hold" or "grip" enabling support in the process of climbing a mountain. Understood in terms of conceptual "grasping", this can itself be fruitfully challnged (Beyond Harassment of Reality and Grasping Future Possibilities: learnings from sexual harassment as a metaphor, 1996).

This capacity reframes fundamentally the potential of any global drama in which "Palestine", "Israel", or "Tibet" might then be held to be significant -- briefly, for example, rather than permanently and unquestionably. The imaginative ability to "de-recognize" the "United States" for a time would similarly enable other virtual entities to exist for those who so wish, an Islamic Caliphate, a world Christian Community, and the like.

Rather than "derecognize", this might even be fruitfully understood as "decognize". This points to the potential significance of a recognition-decognition cycle which any sense of identity could fruitfully transcend (Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007). Such a cycle is reminiscent of the phenomenological epoché of Francisco Varela.

This process of dynamically reframing of Us and Them is curiously reminiscent of the games widely rehearsed by the young (Cowboys-and-Indians, Cops-and-Robbers, etc) in which roles are variously adopted for a time and abandoned. Skillfully practiced, such playfulness -- as "let's pretend" -- may be a vital key to covert global governance by US (Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance, 2010).

The current relevance of any such process of "make-believe" is strikingly evident at the time of writing (as indicated above) with respect to the decision of the European Central Bank to "print money" (ECB launches 1 trillion euro rescue plan to revive euro economy, Reuters, 22 January 2015). This highlights the interplay of imagination and credibility with which people are called to engage. Such efforts to elicit credibility in a virtual reality are curiously related in metaphorical terms to the expectation of "solidarity" in response to Islamic radicalism -- in a period when "liquidity" is sought for the financial system (Quantum Wampum Essential to Navigating Ragnarok: thrival in crisis through embodying turbulent flow, 2014; From Quantitative Easing (QE) to Moral Easing (ME): a stimulus package to avert moral bankruptcy? 2010).

Patterns: A vital question is then which patterns might prove fruitful to engaging in this process, namely to eliciting meaning as separately discussed (Eliciting a Universe of Meaning -- within a global information society of fragmenting knowledge and relationships, 2013). Possibilities include:

Interfaces: Given the degree of creative innovation regarding interfaces in a variety of technologies, this suggests that the interface between objectivity and subjectivity can be imaginatively explored in a simi liar manner. Insights are offered by the collaborative work of Douglas Hofstadter (Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, 1995; Surfaces and Essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking, 2012). The challenge is how to engage most fruitfully in the play of patterns to which solidity and fluidity are variously attributed and withdrawn. A notable interface is that with dream, and its challenge to imagination, as most recently explored by Steven M. Rosen (Dreams, Death, Rebirth: a multimedia topological odyssey into alchemy's hidden dimensions, 2014).

Curiously memetic warfare, which can be framed as superceding cyberwarfare, is readily explored as a kind of warfare between objectivity and subjectivity -- the challenge of the engagement with that to which solidity is imaginatively attributed as otherness (Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare: navigation of strategic interfaces in multidimensional knowledge space, 2001; Brian J. Hancock, Memetic Warfare: the future of war, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, 1 August 2011). This is exemplified by reference to facts and concrete proof in a context in which their reality is authoritatively denied -- as with respect to climate change, or the US Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture (Dick Cheney: Torture Report Is 'Full Of Crap', The Huffington Post, 12 December 2014).

Mystery of covert operations: Efforts to describe the processes of imagination through which meaning is engendered are themselves highly questionable as attempts to entrap "in-the-box" what is essentially "out-of-the-box". Such imagination is that of an agency which itself eludes conventional definition, operating as it does under the cover of subjectivity. Such efforts are now tragically reflected in the "imaginative" designs of new environments through use of concrete to create yet more "boxes" within which US are expected to live, despite covering the land with yet more concrete.

The problems of enclosure and premature closure can be provocatively explored through "USA-fication" rather than "usification" (as above) -- if only as a source of mnemonic catalysts. Some have already made use of the term for other purposes. This offers a way of enriching understanding of globality and any sense of global domination -- by US in its subjective sense. The following table is suggestive in this respect.

Mystery of covert USA operations?
U S A
Undefinable
Unrecognizable		 Systematizing
Synthesizing		 Associations
Analogues
Unifying
Universalizing		 Sensing
Sympathizing		 Altereity
Antithesis
Unknowable
Uncertainty		 Sinusoidal Alternation
Adaptation

The table is a device through which a variety of understandings of USA-fication can be indicated, whether by its rows, or by its diagonals, or indeed by combining selected insights (one from each column). Other suggestive terms could of course be added, such as Autopoiesis (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: the realization of the living, 1973). In the light of the subsequent work of Varela on the phenomenological epoché (indicated above), it is appropriate to note his depiction of this cognitive process in terms of interlocking Borromean rings. Of particular relevance is the 3-dimensional representation of a set of such rings (chosen as the logo of the International Mathematical Union), as discussed separately (Exercise in imagining hypercomputing via hexagram patterning, 2014).

In the variant below the rings are coloured red-green-blue to contrast with the red-white-blue with which USA is conventionally associated -- specifically to suggest that the cognitive and strategic integration implied by "white" emerges only from the combination of the colours of the RGB colour mod)el. The implications of "white" cannot be directly appropriated. The cognitive implications of such use of the colour triangle has been made by Ron Atkin (Multidimensional Man; can man live in 3-dimensional space? 1981) as discussed separately (Comprehension: Social organization determined by incommunicability of insights).

Framing cognitive and strategic integration
Borromean rings in 3D
coloured red-green-blue 		RGB Additive colour model
Borromean rings RGB RGB Additive colour model
Images adapted from Wikipedia

Ideally this pattern, however depicted, recalls the kind of integrity associated with magic squares (or the fulfillment offered by sudoku). Conventional understandings of USA are then to be understood as a form of cognitive extremism restrictively reinforced by constitutional articulation. Any process of USA-fication seeks to recover subjectively what has been inappropriately projected onto such externality -- thereby empowering it to an unfortunate degree at the subjective expense of US.

Understood as indicative of three distinct functions, USA can be variously colour-coded as follows using the RGB model -- given the symbolic associations which may be associated by different cultures with each colour (most notably in flags and herladic symbols). Each pattern effectively circumscribes and implies the elusive significance of "white" -- as engendered by the combination of each colour.

Experimental colour-coding of USA functions
  U-function S-function A-function
RGB      
RBG      
GRB      
GBR      
BGR      
BRG      

The terms highlighted for mnemonic purposes notably place the emphasis on process and alternation -- a switch from the static implications of "states" to a dynamic sense, as separately argued (Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes: suggestions for process-oriented titles of global issue reports, 2013). This contrasts the thinking associated with any "state of the union" with what a dynamic sense might imply, whether with respect to the USA or to the globe -- as with any "United Nations" analogue. It is therefore a challenge to simplistic understandings of "united" and "union", as possibly extended to any sense of "universal". This helps to frame the challenge of "liberating" integration from premature closure, as previously discussed (Liberation of Integration, Universality and Concord -- through pattern, oscillation, harmony and embodiment, 1980).

Especially intriguing is the dynamic reframing of "states", given the subjective implication for US. There is of course a degree of recognition of the variety of cognitive states and conditions amongst which one can alternate -- the covert operations of one's internal "weather" dynamics. Their number and nature naturally defy conventional definition. There is some irony to the fact that the number of states purportedly "united" by the USA should be of the same order as the number of such conditions identified and integrated by the I Ching from an existential decision-making perspective, as may be variously explored (Transformation Metaphors derived experimentally from the Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching): for sustainable dialogue, vision, conferencing, policy, network, community and lifestyle, 1997).

The elusive sense of a dynamic of emergence and integration suggested by the above pattern can also be speculatively explored in terms of the progressive transformation of human cognition, as implied by notions of "grokking" (Authentic Grokking: emergence of Homo conjugens, 2003). These can be considered as consistent with recognition of Homo undulans (Emergence of Homo undulans -- through a "grokking" dynamic? 2013), as argued by Daniel Dervin (Creativity and Culture: a psychoanalytic study of the creative process in the arts, sciences, and culture, 1990).

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