Imagining a new way -- drawing on both science and culture

Implication of Personal Despair in Planetary Despair (Part #11)

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The question is how such imaginative creativity relates to the human ingenuity which has been upheld as the primary means whereby humanity will navigate the desperate condition of the planet (Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap, 2000). Where "science" has failed to enable more appropriate approaches to the complexity of global governance, will humanity in some way draw upon the resources of "culture", as has been the practice down the centuries? (Relevance of Mythopoeic Insights to Global Challenges, 2009). Significantly culture acknowledges despair in ways that science is unable to do. The interplay between hope and despair is then woven into a dramatic form which transcends both as a vehicle for meaning of another kind. Some indication of this is evident in the transformation of the former USSR (Participative Democracy vs. Participative Drama: lessons in social transformation for international organizations from Gorbachev, 1991).

Since the sense of despair is so intimately related to the sense of failure, it is vital to recognize how the experimental methods of research and development point to a need to enable healthy experimentation into "alternatives" in the psychosocial realm. This acceptance of failure, so central to the experimental method of science and technology, is to be contrasted with the systematic marginalization, deprecation, and even criminalization of it in the psychosocial realm. Kenneth Boulding was wont to make the point that he had no knowledge of any learning that had not been preceded or associated with failure. Donald N. Michael emphasized the associated importance of the "requirement to embrace error":

More bluntly, future-responsive societal learning makes it necessary for individuals and organizations to embrace error. It is the only way to ensure a shared self-consciousness about limited theory on the nature of social dynamics, about limited data for testing theory, and hence about our limited ability to control our situation well enough to be successful more often than not (Learning to Plan and Planning to Learn, 1997)

The value attached to the technology of "tempering" as a metaphor for the cultivation of the strength of the human spirit -- itself then compared to a sword -- raises the question whether despair might be usefully recognized as a means of appropriately cultivating that spirit. This would be consistent with the methods of many radical approaches to training. Does the hope so widely sought need to be tempered by despair as might be readily conceded by those who value "experience"?

In the quest for sufficiently radical new approaches, it is useful to stress the the cognitive context appropriate to such exploration, as has been well-framed by Arthur C. Clarke -- most notably in the third of his three "laws" of  prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
   
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
   
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The question is whether the current radical "re-imagining" of reality -- given even greater legitimacy by "big science" projects -- will offer imaginative guidance to transform the existential despair -- perhaps necessary to motivating the quest for transcendence of the inadequate cognitive forms of the past.

Three "big science" pointers challenge conventional frameworks and constitute powerful metaphors of a poorly articulated cognitive enterprise. Each involves a quite extraordinary investment into matters that are quite intangible and for reasons that are quite questionable at a time of global crisis. They are:

• Astrophysics and cosmology, suggesting (notably in the light of the International Space Station) possibilities with respect to the universe of knowledge. As a metaphor, the ISS raises the question of the cognitive nature of the quest to achieve and inhabit a stable "orbit" around the mundane:
  • Beyond the Standard Model of Universal Awareness, 2010
  • Towards an Astrophysics of the Knowledge Universe? from astronautics to noonautics, 2006
  • Noonautics: four modes of travelling and navigating the knowledge universe? 2006
  • Being the Universe: a metaphoric frontier, 1999
• ITER (aka the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), suggesting the possibility of cognitive fusion. As a metaphor, ITER raises the question of the cognitive significance of the quest for "off the wall" detachment from a container for essentially unimaginable dynamics -- in order to generate unlimited energy (which would destroy the container):
  • Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006
  • Complementarity and Self-Reflexivity: between nuclear fusion and cognitive fusion, 2006
  • Cognitive Fusion through Myth and Symbol Making: archetypal dimensions, 2006
• CERN Large Hadron Collider, suggesting new insights into nonduality. As a metaphor, the LHC raises questions about the cognitive quest to explore the insights derived from creating situations in which opposites clash under extraordinary condition, recalling the classic Taoist insight of Chuang-Tzu (The Pivot)
  • Dynamic Interrelationship of Symbols of Coherent Experiential Representation of Nonduality, 2008
  • Epistemological panic in the face of nonduality: Does nothing matter? 2010

The three initiatives are characterized by distinct (but related) fundamental geometries suggesting, as metaphors, an interlinked quest for a radical engagement with globality (Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality, 2009). This is reinforced when the technical challenges of each, understood as a collective cognitive challenge in the spirit of Robert Romanyshyn (Technology as Symptom and Dream, 1989; The Wounded Researcher: research with soul in mind, 2007), are expressed succinctly as a classic Venn diagram:

Use of Venn diagram to challenge adequacy of 3 "big science" initiatives

The possibility of deriving psychosocial benefits from the quality of thinking devoted to such initiatives is liable to be reinforced by ever increasing levels of despair as a consequence of unfulfilled hopes associated with the broken promises increasingly evident as characteristic of political processes -- exemplified by the promise of democracy. The trend is liable to be further reinforced by the evident challenges of information overload and the incapacity to benefit from the insight fragmented across disciplines, belief systems and languages. These are likely to accelerate a form of collapse of any coherence to the body of knowledge (Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009). It is evident in the degree to which it takes longer to articulate a response to information already received than to digest new information being currently received -- which may render irrelevant the response being articulated.

The prime characteristic of the emerging experience, necessarily evocative of further despair, is the challenge to both science and to religion as conventionally promoted. But whilst their formal, professional and institutional forms may be challenged, it is to be expected that the associated cognitive disciplines will acquire greater focus and relevance (Happiness and Unhappiness through Naysign and Nescience: comprehending the essence of sustainability? 2008) . This is evident in the recognized contrast between "religion" and "spirituality" -- and the case made for apophasis or "unsaying" (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? 2008).

There would appear to be a strange emerging confluence between the sense of personal despair (and the option of suicide) and the sense of humanity being on "death row" (as noted above by Lovelock) -- combined with the concern with how a civilization might consider "dying with dignity" (once immortality is no longer an option).

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