Requisite complementarity for innovative strategic nimbleness

Alternating between Complementary Images of Coronavirus (Part #6)

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Cubic container insights? The frameworks presented above -- extended from 3D to 4D -- offer a way of discussing the complementarity between the images evoked by COVID-19 which are the focus of this argument. It is tempting to exploit the cubic characteristics as indicative framing elements in the following manner:

• 8 vertices or orientations: usefully recalling the disparate elements of the classic Eightfold Path of Buddhism, as variously echoed in other domains,notably the eightfold path of policy analysis and the eightfold way of physics (as an organizational scheme subatomic particles, fundamental to framing the elusive nature of quarks). Of some relevance to this argument is the pattern of 8 team roles originally identified by Meredith Belbin as a self-perception inventory, but subsequently extended to nine (The Nine Belbin Team Roles).
  
  
• 6 sides: as extensively discussed by Edward de Bono (Six Thinking Hats, 1985; Six Frames For Thinking About Information, 2008). A six-fold framework has been emphasized by others (Raymond Abellio, La Structure absolue. essai de phénoménologie génétique, 1965)
  
  
• 12 edges: as notably fundamental to the dynamical framework of Arthur M. Young (The Geometry of Meaning, 1976) as can be variously discussed (Typology of 12 complementary strategies essential to sustainable development, 1998; Â Characteristics of phases in 12-phase learning / action cycles, 1998)Â

Of particular interest is the tendency to a form of fixation on the role of a given pattern of N-foldness as offering a primary ordering function, as discussed separately (Patterns of N-foldness: comparison of integrated multi-set concept schemes as forms of presentation, 1980). Little attention is seemingly given to the implications of alternative "fixations". Examples include:

• the UN's 8 Millennium Goals,
• the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals,
• the 15 Global Challenges of the Millenium Project
• the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century, as framed by the US National Academy of Engineering (2020)
• the 10 Catastrophic Threats articulated by the Commission for the Human Future (Surving and Thriving in the 21st Century: a discussion and call to action on global catastrophic risks, 2020; Arnagretta Hunter and John Hewson, 10 Catastrophic Threats Are Facing Humans Right Now, And Coronavirus Is Only One of Them, Science Alert, 25 April 2020)

Container design: The sets identified above -- as checklists (or strategic "laundry lists") exemplify a relative crude understanding of a strategic container. The nature of such a container has notably been addressed in cognitive terms as image schemata and as contaioner metaphors (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980).

Whether as challenges or goals, the elements of each set can be understood as implying categories of "dangerous things" of which COVID-19 is but one example. These are all revelatory of categories currently cultivated in the "global mind" (George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: what categories reveal about the mind, 1987).

Given the manner in which such sets are effectively packaged in "boxes", there is some irony to the contrasting approach offered by Alexander Klose (citing Lakoff) in the light of the massive replication of containers for the transportation of goods (The Container Principle: how a box changes the way we think, 2015)

The cognitive and strategic challenge for global governance might be usefully seen in terms of the traditional alchemical endeavour to design a framework for the universal solvent capable of dissolving everything -- with any individual strategic endeavour having the capacity to cause the catastropic collapse of any conventional container. Any of the 8 strategic frameworks named above has the capacity to negate destructively all the others -- unless subject to the mutual constraintt of their complementarity. Could fixation on a particular metaphor be significant to the collective "choice" reviewed by Jared Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Viking Press, 2005)? In contrast to the classic Metaphors We Live By (1980), could such fixation be otherwise understood (Metaphors To Die By: correspondences between a collapsing civilization, culture or group, and a dying person, 2013)?

A curious feature of this paradox is the design challenge of the ITER nuclear fusion reactor. Its primary reqiuirement is that the plasma it contains should not come in contact with its container wall for which a toroidal form has been considered appropriate. This can be seen as a potentially appropriate metaphor for the challenge to strategic comprehension at this time (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006),

Any such design challenge contrasts fundamentally with the simplistic use of the tank metaphor as the source of the strategic insignts on which humanity is so dependent. The challenge is especially evident in the competitive articulation of global strategic preoccupations, as promoted from the conflicting perspectives of think tanks -- with little reference to each other or to their respective insights (Tank Warfare Challenges for Global Governance: extending the "think tank" metaphor to include other cognitive modalities, 2019).

As a container, any such tank also contrasts with more encompassing use of a traditional metaphor, namely the tent, and the quest for a "bigger tent" -- rather than a better tank (Global Brane Comprehension Enabling a Higher Dimensional Big Tent? 2011).

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