Transformative reframing of categories

Disparate Strategic Possibilities Dangerously Neglected (Part #3)

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The case of "work", clarified above by many references, is indicative of a more general issue. In a time of systemic global crisis there is little effort by disciplines and agencies to cultivate a posture calling into question the nature and scope of the categories by which their methodologies have long been defined. The consequence is that it is that same definition which may well be constraining their current relevance to the challenges by which they are faced -- especially when other sectors are dependent on their insights. The point has been made by the policy scientist Geoffrey Vickers: a trap is a function of the nature of the trapped (Freedom in a Rocking Boat: changing values in an unstable society, 1972). The point is also emphasized by the vain efforts of some to reframe an economic system which is proving to be dangerously less than fit for purpose.

The argument above endeavours to show that "economics" has effectively excluded dimensions which would render its principles more applicable to a system understood in global terms -- especially one faced with environmental challenges. Worse still the definition of "labour", as enshrined in the mandate and preoccupations of the ILO, precludes consideration of a very large proportion of work and workers characterizing the environment in which humanity is enmeshed. It is then questionable whether the insights of economics are of sufficiently general scope to enable the global system to be effectively addressed -- as various initiatives claim mistakenly to do.

Given that case, the question is then with what methodology can other instances be found of categories too narrowly defined -- too a potentially dangerous or unfruitful degree in this period. However (necessarily) speculative, examples might include:

• Extending the scientific worldview and methodology: As argued by the Galileo Commission in order to recognize and integrate neglected psychosocial dimensions (Harald Walach, Beyond a Materialist Worldview: towards an expanded science, 2019) and as an aspect of the case for fso-called Science 2.0.
  
  It is unfortunate that "science" is as impotent as religion in responding to problematically divisive dynamics -- and systematically avoids its acknowledgement, as may be variously argued (Challenges of Science Upheld as an Exclusive Mode of Inquiry, 2021; Â Challenges More Difficult for Science than Going to Mars, 2014; Metascience Enabling Upgrades to the Scientific Process, 2014;Â Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science, 2012)
  
  
• Underground accommodation: Neglected options for subterranean habitats in dense urban areas faced with major housing shortages (From Lateral Thinking to Voluminous Thinking, 2007)
  
  
• Extending understandings of "health" -- beyond the narrow focus of the World Health Organization, entangled as it is becoming in the medical-industrial complex, and faced with widespread erosion of a sense of well-being and the recourse to drugs obtained illegally:
  • Symbolic Insignia Indicative of Global Health (2021)
  • Comprehensive Pattern of Psychosocial Diseases and the Eases they Imply (2015)
  • Wholth as Sustaining Dynamic of Health and Wealth (2013)
  • Patterns Essential to Individual and Global Health? (2010)
  • Cognitive Implications of Lifestyle Diseases (2010)
  • Remedies to Global Crisis:Â "Allopathic" or "Homeopathic" (2009)
    
    
• Applying a health framework to the problematic conditions of an "unhealthy" information society:
  •  Memetic and Information Diseases in a Knowledge Society (2008)
  • Â Networking Diseases:Â speculations towards the development of cures and preventive measures (1978)
    
    
• Highlighting and interweaving insights from the cultures of the world: The conceptual resources they represent, suggests the need for a more systematic interrelationship between those insights and associated humour, as variously indicated by:
  • Encyclopedia of Conceptual Insights from the World's Cultures (1988), as proposed to UNESCO in relation to the First Decade on Cultural Development
  • Review of frameworks for the presentation of alternative conceptual orderings as determined by cultural and linguistic contexts (Paper for the UN University project on Information Overload and Information Underuse, 1986)
  • Mining cultural resources for global governance (1993)
  • Humour and Play-Fullness: essential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity (2005)
  • Susantha Goonatilake: Toward a Global Science: mining civilizational knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1999)
  • Darrell A. Posey: Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity:Â a complementary contriobution to the global biodiversity assessment (United Nations Enviroment Programme, 2000)
  • Victor S. M. De Guinzbourg (Ed.): Wit and Wisdom of the United Nations: proverbs and apothegms on diplomacy (1961)
  
  The challenge is provocatively highlighted by lexicons of untranslatable words and phrases:
  • Barbara Cassin, et al (Ed.): Dictionary of Untranslatables: a philosophical lexicon (Princeton University Press, 2014)
  • Howard Rheingold:  They Have a Word for It (Severn House Publishers, 1988)
  • Adam Jacot de Boinod: Meaning of Tingo and other Extraordinary Words from around the World (Penguin, 2008)
  • Mendel Kalmenson and Zalman Abraham: People of the Word (Ezra Press, Â 2022)
  • Michele Frolla: 203 Most Beautiful Untranslatable Worlds (The Intrepid Guide, 2020)
  • John-Erik Jordan: Beautiful Untranslatable Words From Around The World (Babbel Magazine, 10 February 2017)
  • Tim Lomas: The Magic of "Untranslatable" Words (Scientific American, 12 July 2016)
  • Michelle Baumgartner: Untranslatable Words from Around the World (Lingvist, 21 September 2022)
    
    
• Anticipating a surprising singularity in some form, as discussed in Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society (2009), indicating the possibility of:

  Technological singularity Cognitive singularity Communication singularity Globality as singularityÂ

  Symmetry group singularity Subjective singularity Singularity of planetary consciousness Metaphorical singularity

  
  Especially provocative are:
  • Metasystemic transition: Â Future Global Exodus to the Metasphere (2022)
  • Extraterrestrial encounter:
    • Sensing Epiterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Embedding of "extraterrestrials" in episystemic dynamics? (2013)
    • Interplanetary Security Council resolution: No-fly zone on Earth (2011)
    • Communicating with Aliens:Â the Psychological Dimension of Dialogue (2000)
    • radical categories
  • Spiritual singularities as framed by professional insights from preemptive news and image management:
    • Strategic Briefing for the Messiah (1999)
    • Strategic Briefing for Satan (1999)
  • Potential emergence of a radically "unifying" global perspective -- however that is to be comprehended -- for which calls are repeatedly made by global leadership:
    • Enactivating Multiversal Community: hearing a pattern of voices in the global wilderness (2012)
    • Comprehension of Unity as a Paradoxical Dynamic (2019)
    • Sustaining a Community of Strange Loops (2010)
    • Engaging with Elusive Connectivity and Coherence (2018)
    • Quest for a "universal constant" of globalization? (2010)
• Appreciative engagement with ignorance and disagreement: Especially in the light of singularities challenging comprehension:
  • Ignorance, the unsayable and the unsaid:
    • Enlightening Endarkenment:Â selected web resources on the challenge to comprehension  (2005)
• University of Ignorance: engaging with nothing, the unknown, the incomprehensible, and the unsaid (2013)
• Varieties of the Unsaid in sustaining psycho-social community (2003)
• Nicholas Rescher:
  • Ignorance: on the wider implications of deficient knowledge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009)
  • Unknowability: an inquiry into the limits of knowledge (Lexington Books, 2009)
  • The Limits of Science (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)
• Unknowns and incomprehension:
  • Unknown Undoing: challenge of incomprehensibility of systemic neglect (2008)
  • Reframing the unknown (1995)
  • The Future of Leadership:Â reframing the unknown (1994)
  • Living with Incomprehension and Uncertainty (2012)
  • Engaging with the Inexplicable, the Incomprehensible and the Unexpected (2010)
  • John Brockman (Ed.): The Last Unknowns (Edge Foundation, 2019)
• Disagreement:
  • Radical Disagreement Reframed Metaphorically through Intersexuality (2009)
  • Coherent Patterns of Schism Formation, Bifurcation and Disagreement (2001)
  • Approaches to the art of disagreement (1995)
  • Using disagreements for superordinate frame configuration (1995)
• Evil:
• Ensuring Dynamics of Sustainability by Appreciative Recognition of Evil (2022)
• Encyclopedia of Evil Claims, Claimants, Counter-claims, and Sigils (2016)
• Evil Rules: Guidelines for Engaging in Armageddon Now (2015)
• Beheading versus Befooting: in quest of the lesser evil for the greater good (2014)
• Needing Evil Elsewhere (2001)
• Sustainable Improvement in the Quality of Corruption (1998)
• Extraterrestrial perspective:
• Anticipation of Judicial Inquisition of Humans by Extraterrestrials (2020)
  
  
• Navigation of knowledge and experiential space
  • Envisaging the Art of Navigating Conceptual Complexity: in search of software combining artistic and conceptual insights (1995)
  • Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities:Â clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement (2002)
  • Noonautics:Â four modes of travelling and navigating the knowledge universe? (2006)
  • Global Quality Navigation System (GQS): participative enhancement of aesthetic discovery (2008)
    
    
• Mathematical theology
  • Mathematical Theology: Future Science of Confidence in Belief (2011)
  • International Institute of Advanced Studies in Mathematical Theology (2011)
  • Bibliography of Relevance to Mathematical Theology (2011)
    
    
• Reframing "employment" and "unemployment": The tardy recognition by economics of the "work" associated with "housework" is indicative of its failure to recognize that of "voluntary work", slavery, prison labour, or "homework". There is a case for identifying whether a person can ever be appropriately understood to be "unemployed" -- as notably suggested by meditation, bearing witness, and waiting:
  • 12 Mindsets Ensuring Disappearance of Employment Opportunities (2015)
  • Being Employed by the Future: reframing the immediate challenge of sustainable community. (1996)
  • Sustainable Occupation beyond the Economic Rationale:Â Reframing employment, non-profit-making and voluntary (1998)
  • In Quest of a Job vs Engendering Employment (2009)
  • Waiting as an Experience of Fundamental Significance (2018)
    
    
• Reframing "land", "property" and "ownership": Current understandings of "land", and their major implications for violent disagreeement, can be called into question as instances of misplaced concreteness. This is evident to a degree through widespread  recognition of a "field" of activity and the non-material relation to it in the case of many disciplines. People can have a special relationship to land without any need to own it exclusively as property -- or even to access it, as notably evident in the case of symbolic locations (Jerusalem as a Symbolic Singularity, 2017).
  
  The relationship may be particularly cultivated by a diaspora, whether or not this implies citizenship or voting rights. Unconventional relationships to the land are notably cultivated by indigenous peoples.
  • Affinity, Diaspora, Identity, Reunification, Return (2013)
  • Darrell Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, United Nations Environmental Programme, 1999).
    
    
  Unresolved issues are also evident in relation to the responsibilities associated with property and ownership:
  • Einstein's Implicit Theory of Relativity -- of Cognitive Property? (2007)
  • Obligations incumbent on owners and licensors of intellectual property (2007)
  • Universal Declaration of Patent Responsibilities: a draft proposal (2007)
    
    
• Hypothetical future recognition of dangerously constrained present-day comprehension: Given the bemused condescension with which insights of past centuries are perceived at present, it is instructive to consider how the future may view prevailing assumptions -- especially those deemed unquestionable:
  • Engaging with Hyperreality through Demonique and Angelique? (2016)
  • Imagining Order as Hypercomputing (2014)
  • Embodying a Hypercomplex of Unhygienic Nescience (2014)
  • Hyperaction through Hypercomprehension and Hyperdrive (2006)
    
    
• Reframing the UN's Sustainable development Goals: The examples above suggest that some of the UN's SDGs, might be fruitfully reframed as inappropriately mistaken instances of misplaced concreteness.
  • Imagining Partnership of the SDG Goals as Phases of the Cross (2022)
  • Systemic Coherence of the UN's 17 SDGs as a Global Dream (2021)

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