Transformative embodiment of the extraordinary

Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance (Part #13)

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It could be argued that any collective event, endowed with a rich diversity of participants, will evoke or engender extraordinary roles to enhance its sense of integrity. Traditionally these included the troubadour and the court jester. Two aesthetically significant extraordinary figures were evident in the Luxembourg event. Had they been deliberately programmed in as part of a research project, it could not have been better done.

As a magnificent exemplification of the challenge of embodying the extraordinary, the contrast between the two was perhaps of greatest significance -- embodying as they did the contrast between "strong integration" and "weak integration", whilst highlighting admirably the weaknesses of the former and the strengths of the latter:

Harmony: Music is of unquestionable significance to more fruitful integration, as discussed separately (A Singable Earth Charter, EU Constitution or Global Ethic? 2006; Structuring Mnemonic Encoding of Development Plans and Ethical Charters using Musical Leitmotivs, 2001). The former paper notes the significance of the initiative of the Director of the German Research Centre for Applied Knowledge Processing, Franz-Josef Radermacher in articulating a strategy for sustainable development supplemented by an illustrative DVD of songs (Balance or Destruction: ecosocial market economy as the key to global sustainable development, 2004).

The role of "A" was therefore potentially of great value to integrative insight. However, as noted by Jacques Attali, it is the organization of the music of today that anticipates the psychosocial organization required by the challenges of tomorrow (Noise: the political economy of music, 1985). The structures and procedures of the institutions of today are constrained by programmes and procedures characteristic of the music of yesteryear -- exemplified by the use of the Ode to Joy as the anthem of the European Union at a time when the Eurovision Song Contest was won by Lordi, a demonically masked hard rock band. There is seemingly no role for the Lordi favoured by younger generations in the Ode to Joy of their elders.

In that sense "A" failed in his conventional use of the theory of harmony to offer insight into the subtleties required of the psychosocial organization of the future -- and without being able to use the marvels of that theory to transform the patterns of the Symposium. He effectively provided a perfect illustration of why the music of yesteryear, as performed, is irrelevant to the emergent harmonies of a turbulent future. "A" might even be unfairly caricatured as "Nero fiddling while Rome burned" (as reported by Suetonius). Who would dare to protest or question?

Unconstrained performance: Again there is every justification for introduction of aesthetic dimensions into integrative discourse in this period of cognitive and strategic fragmentation, as separately argued (Poetry-making and Policy-making Arranging a Marriage between Beauty and the Beast, 1993). However, as with facilitators, there is a real challenge to enabling and constraining "performance", as discussed with respect to that argument in the case of poetry (Proposal for an exploratory international  conference, 1993).

Hermann Hesse says little about the discipline required in managing the archetypal Glass Bead Game which has been such an inspiration to many as the cohesive dynamic of a future community (Magister Ludi, 1943). If the masters of that game do not understand how they are part of the problem, however, they cannot understand the nature of the resolution required in enabling engagement with the songlines of the noosphere (Cultivating the Songlines of the Noosphere, 1996).

Reframing differences: Of particular interest in this respect, in the light of the theory of harmony, are the possibilities of reframing differences in terms of notes in octaves, given all the known challenges of tuning systems and tuning itself (Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality: including the sciences and other belief systems, 2007; Polarities as Pluckable Tensed Strings: hypercomprehension through harmonics of value-based choice-making, 2007; Paradigm-shifting through Transposition of Key, 1999). How to convert a cognitive trajectory -- however deep-drilled and productive a bore-hole -- into a pluckable string, preferably configured into a wind-harp exposed to the winds of change?

Notably of relevance is reframing the different voices of integration through polyphony (All Blacks of Davos vs All Greens of Porto Alegre: reframing global strategic discord through polyphony? 2007). More challenging to conventional approaches to integrative frameworks is moving beyond the technicalities of ensuring that everyone "sings from the same hymnsheet" to those of engaging meaningfully with others who express themselves through other hymnsheets based on other rhythms and tuning systems (Self-reflexive Challenges of Integrative Futures, 2008). Is ignoring them and their discordance, or seeking their elimination, a sustainable option in a global society (Framing the Global Future by Ignoring Alternatives: unfreezing categories as a vital necessity, 2009; Patterning Disagreement, 1995; Using Disagreements for Superordinate Frame Configuration, 1995) ? If there is a dissonant diabolus in musica in integrative discourse -- unresolved by any possibility of overtones -- what then is the appropriate musical metaphor?

Tragically instigators of integrative discourse are seemingly united only in their incapacity to address their fundamental disagreement -- or to consider it to be of any significance to a more encompassing worldview (Evaluating Synthesis Initiatives and their Sustaining Dialogues, 2000). The ultimate "lipoproblem" (Lipoproblems: developing a strategy omitting a key problem, 2009)? Divorced of its tragic implications, the term derives from the elegantly playful methodology of Oulipo (French abbreviation for: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature"), a group of writers, poets and mathematicians interested in the creation of literature using constrained writing techniques.

Arguably, as first approximation, the integrative worldview required is then necessarily multifacetted -- "multi-sided" -- with consequent implications for its governance (Towards Polyhedral Global Governance: complexifying oversimplistic strategic metaphors, 2008) and the configuration of its "discordant" values (Coherent Value Frameworks: pillar-ization, polarization and polyhedral frames of reference, 2008).

Epistemological enrichment: In the light of the resonances between the songs of the birds, to make further use of that metaphor, of considerable interest is the argument by Antonio de Nicolas (1978) regarding the use of languages based on tone in his study of the four complementary conceptual languages of the Rg Veda considered necessary to hold the complexity of insights and experience:

Therefore, from a linguistic and cultural perspective, we have to be aware that we are dealing with a language where tonal and arithmetical relations establish the epistemological invariances....Language grounded in music is grounded thereby on context dependency; any tone can have any possible relationship to other tones, and the shift from one tone to another, which alone makes melody possible, is a shift in perspective which the singer himself embodies. Any perspective (tone) must be 'sacrificed' for a new one to come into being; continuity, and the 'world' is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song.

In ancient times, the infinite possibilities of the number field were considered isomorphic with the infinite possibilities of tone...Rg Veda man, like his Greek counterparts, knew himself to be the organizer of the scale, and he cherished the multitude of possibilities open to him too much to freeze himself into one dogmatic posture. His language keeps alive that 'openness' to alternatives, yet it avoids entrapment in anarchy. It also resolves the fixity of theory by setting the body of man historically moving through the freedom of musical spaces, viewpoint transpositions, reciprocities, pluralism, and finally, an absolutely radical sacrifice of all theory as a fixed invariant. (Antonio de Nicolas, Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978, p. 57)

If the relationship between the arguments of the conference "birds" might be understood in terms of the interference patterns between bird song, how might that relate to integrative understanding derived from insights into integrative patterns of resonance from quantum models of cognitive reality?

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