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Methodological parallels in identifying insubstantial entities?


Engaging with Hyperreality through Demonique and Angelique? (Part #4)


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Correspondences? The following table suggests a degree of equivalence between different memes -- as experienced, sensed, comprehended or embodied -- including the more subtle and mysterious. The juxtaposition recalls insights from the sciences, arts and symbolism into the nature of correspondences (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007).

Memes "Angelic"
("positive", "constructive")
"Demonic"
("negative", "destructive"
problems as necessary challenges to creativity as seemingly unjustified cause of pain
memories good memories, evoking nostalgia memories of past injustice
images attractive images repulsive images
issues as a focus of creativity as a focus of concern
values, principles values framed as positive values framed as negative
strategies remedial strategies disruptive strategies
goals global collective goals (MDG, SDG) questionable goals ("total system dominance")
concepts, models, hypotheses creative concepts destructive concepts
explanations inspired, imaginative unimaginative, restrictive
(dis)agreement consensus, harmony disagreement, discord
(mis)understanding sharing an understanding misunderstanding
findings (judicial, scientific) balanced, insightful biased
collectivities benevolent collectivities malevolent collectivities
decisions good decisions bad decisions
identity developed, fulfilled constrained, demeaned

Documenting the insubstantial: With respect to the existence of angels and demons, a remarkably balanced commentary is provided by Gustav Davidson, as compiler of a massive compendium: A Dictionary of Angels -- including the fallen angels (1967). The commentary might well have been adapted to that relating to the existence of problems (as "demons") and remedial strategies (as "angels") in the above-mentioned Encyclopedia (on which extensive methodological comments are separately provided).

Relevant to this argument are the following statements by Davidson on his experience as compiler, individually annotated here (as indents) with respect to conventional problem and strategic preoccupations:

  • Logic, I felt, was my only safe anchor in reality; but if, as Walter Nigg points out, angels are powers which transcend the logic of our existence [Harpers Bazaar, December 1962] did it follow that one is constrained to abandon logic in order to entertain angels? For the sake of angels I was ready to subscribe to Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief. (p. xii)
    • Is a "suspension of disbelief" appropriate (most notably for a politician) in engaging effectively with the reality of others -- their problems, strategies and values?

  • A professed belief in angels would, inevitably, involve me in a belief in the supernatural, and that was the golden snare I did not wish to be caught in. (p. xii)
    • The "golden snare" could be understood as closure on a particular transcendent perspective -- potentially incompatible with the cognitive challenge of the future, or the worldviews of others

  • This is what Augustine said: Every visible thing in this world is put under the charge of an angel. (p. xii)
    • There is indeed the possibility that "visible" implies creatively engendered -- effectively inspired in the light of individual or collective insight as yet to be appropriately understood (Comprehension of Appropriateness, 1986)

  • One thing I soon realized: in the realm of the unknowable and invisible, in matters where a questioner is finally reduced to taking things on faith, one can be sure of nothing, prove nothing, and convince nobody. (p. xiii)
    • Given the degree to which authorities are at ideological loggerheads -- to the point of inspiring bloody conflict -- new attitudes are required to what is upheld otherwise as truth, especially when ignorance is denied

  • One of the problems I ran into, in the early days of my investigations, was how to hack my way through the changes of nomenclature and orthography that angels passed through in the course of their being translated from one language to another, or copied out by scribes from one manuscript to another, or by the virtue of the natural deterioration that occurs with any body of writing undergoing repeated transcriptions and metathesis (p. xiii)
    • This concern recalls that with respect to the "alphabet soup" of international institutional initiatives, the reframing and relabelling of remedial strategies, and the challenging interpretation of them from the perspectives of different cultures, ideologies and worldviews.

  • Equally difficult to deal with was the question whether (and how many) other spirits in the celestial hierarchy were good or evil, fallen or still upright, dwellers of Heaven or Hell. (p. xvi)
    • Given the characteristic promotion and demonisation of proposals, initiatives, and values -- so evident in the current global civilization -- the question remains as to which are unquestionably valid and which are vulnerable to reframing as suspect, now or in the future. Which will "fall" and which will "rise"?

  • It is well to bear in mind that all angels, whatever their state of grace -- indeed no matter how christologically corrupt and defiant -- are under God, even when, to all intents and purposes, they are performing under the direct orders of the Devil. Evil itself is an instrumentality of the Creator, who uses evil for His own divine, if unsearchable, ends (p. xvii)
    • In systemic terms, there is every possibility that both the most seemingly problematic conditions and the most questionable initiatives, may prove to be of fruitful significance in a larger context and in the eyes of the future.

  • To revert to the question as to whether angels have an existence outside Holy Writ, or apart from the beliefs and testimony of visionaries, fabulists , hermeneuts, ecstatics, etc. Such a question has been a debatable one from almost the start, even before the down-to-earth Sadducees repudiated them and the apocalyptic Pharisees acknowledged and espoused them. Aristotle and Plato believed in angels (Artistotle called them intelligences). Socrates, who believed in nothing that could not be verified by (or was repugnant to) logic and experience, nevertheless had his daimon, an attendant spirit, whose voice warned the marketplace philosopher whenever he was about to make a wrong decision (p. xxii)
    • Despite reference to the "Holy Writ" of the highest governmental and academic authorities, continuing debate highlights the question of the extent and nature of problems, remedial initiatives, and the values which inspire their recognition. Nevertheless individuals and collectives are indeed so inspired, or claim to be so. Resources may well be allocated in consequence -- possibly inspiring bloody conflict.

  • Now, to invent an angel, a hierarchy, or an order in a hierarchy, required some imagination but not too much ingenuity. It was sufficient merely to (1) scramble together letters of the Hebrew alphabet; (2) juxtapose such letters in anagrammatic, acronymic, or cryptogrammatic form; (3) tack on to any place, property, function, attribute, or quality the theophorous "el" or "irion".... Countless "paper angels" or "suffix angels", many of them unpronounceable and irreducible to intelligent listing, were thus fabricated; they passed, virtually unchallenged, into the religious and secular literature of the day, to be accredited after a while as valid. (p. xxii)
    • As noted with respect to the "alphabet soup", a similar pattern is detectable with respect to the frequent elaboration of new strategic initiatives inspired by new articulation of values. Some may well become sacrosanct -- for a time -- as a consequence of their adoption by the highest authorities.

  • Scripture... gives the names of no more than two or three angels. That there may well be seven named angels in Scripture... is a thesis on which, admittedly, no two theologians are likely to agree. In the "orthodox" count... there are nine orders in the celestial hierarchy. But there are other "authoritative" lists provided by sundry Protestant writers that give seven, nine, twelve orders... (p. xxiii)
    • The "Scripture" of global discourse cultivates a degree of ambiguity with regard to the enumeration of core problems, remedial responses, and the values inspiring them. There are indeed many articulations by "protesting" constituencies -- each proposing alternative orders as more appropriate.

  • A good way to conclude this Apologia pro libro suo is to quote from a recently published paper on the guise of angels. It was there intimated that in view of the continuing hold of the supernatural over the minds of men, and the fact that a belief in the existence of angels (and demons) is an article of faith with two of our world religions, and part of the tradition of at least four of them (Persian, Jewish, Christian, Muslim), it is highly probable that we shall have the wingèd creatures with us for a long, long time to come (p. xxvi).
    • The reference to "wingèd creatures" could be understood to anticipate the argument below for the appropriate representation of such entities in hyperbolic space using forms which visually recall a sense of "winged".

The comparisons made above can be reframed and reviewed in terms of cultural memes (D.J.H. Brown, Cultural Memes and their Inhibitory Impact upon Energy Policy Change, 2008; Robert Walker, Cultural Memes, Innate Proclivities and Musical Behaviour: a case study of the western traditions, Psychology of Music, 2004; Alexis Morris, et al. The Evolution of Cultural Resilience and Complexity, 2011). Engendered and sustained by belief, both solutions (angelic or otherwise) and problems (demonic or otherwise) merit consideration as creations of the human spirit which may "rise" and "fall" under circumstances -- potentially defying forms of comprehension the future may find appropriate.

Hierarchical orders? Conventional articulations of the clustering into angelic and demonic orders and hierarchies call for continuing critical review regarding the implied prioritization -- notably given the ineffectual and unsustainable consensus they tend to inspire. Especially intriguing with respect to angelic and demonic perspectives are the distinctive modes of cognition they purportedly imply when ordered in this way.

How does nesting within the lower orders of any hierarchy imply a form of "subunderstanding" -- following the argument of Magoroh Maruyama (Peripheral Vision: polyocular vision or subunderstanding?, Organization Studies, 25, 2004, 3, pp. 467-480)? More challenging is the nature of of the insight implied by the highest levels of any proposed cognitive hierarchy upheld as a focus for belief. To what extent does such positioning -- as the "archangels" of secular society -- go beyond facile manipulation of conventional labels: environment, security, employment, education, resources, and the like?

Named otherwise, the angels and demons in the Dictionary resemble strangely the entities profiled in the Encyclopedia as problems, strategies, values and concepts. Other labels for the insubstantial -- whose nature also remains elusive

Given the limited set of archangels recognized, there is of course the provocative case for recognizing that functionally their secular equivalent could be compared to the limited sets of corporate entities that "rule the world", as implied by the argument of Pier Giuseppe Monateri (Rational Angels: understanding the theological background of economic rationality, Cardozo Electronic Law Bulletin, 2011; La Natura Angelica della Corporation). This argument is distinct from recognition of "corporate angels" in various forms (Corporate Angel Network; Types of Business Angels; Brian E. Hill, Attracting Capital from Angels, 2002).

The contrasting perceptions of their ruling function could be compared with deprecation of the various hierarchical orderings of angels (Swiss study shows 147 corporations rule the world, 12 October 2012; Revealed -- the capitalist network that runs the world, New Scientist, 19 October 2011; The 50 Corporations that Rule the World, WhiteOut Press, 16 September 2012; The Four Companies That Control the 147 Companies That Own Everything, Forbes, 26 October 2011; 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy, Information Clearing House, 4 November 2013).

Dynamics? Missing from Davidson's very comprehensive Dictionary of Angels is any sense of how particular angels interact systemically with other angels in Heaven or in Hell. This dynamic is only implicit, if at all, in the hierarchical orders and arrays presented. An analogous dynamic has been a preoccupation of the Encyclopedia and the visualization of the networks of entities it profiled. Such systemic insights are under exploration for possible future evolution of the Encyclopedia (Encycling Problematic Wickedness for Potential Humanity, 2014).

To the extent that problems and remedial strategies can be imaginatively framed as demonic and angelic in nature, as memes they offer another way of speculating about the nature of the final battle envisaged by some religions in their end times scenarios, notably the Battle of Armageddon. Should such a battle be understood in the light of what is now being termed memetic warfare (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, 36, 2, 2010, pp. 41-46)

Evocation and invocation: The correspondences implied above offer the ironic implication that the deprecated traditional magic rituals of "evocation" of demonic and angelic entities could be fruitfully compared to the practices and settings in which modern day politicians ceremoniously invoke values in response to selected issues.

As exercises in public relations, image management and "talking up" strategic options, such processes could well be compared in systemic terms with traditional magical operations -- effectively "summoning" demons (notably through fear mongering) and invoking angelic assistance in response.

Especially intriguing in any such operational correspondence are efforts to control the demonic in a cultivated culture of fear -- drawing on myth when appropriate.

Quest for angelic language: There is an evident absence of any unifying language or discipline -- highlighted by the failure of unified science and philosophy (Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems: an essay on the grounds and implications of philosophical diversity, 1985). It is then appropriate to note the traditional quest for the language of angels as variously imagined (Aaron Leitch, The Angelical Language, 2010).

As argued separately, traces of it may now be speculatively recognized in use of Twitter (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? 2010). The associated set of communication concerns is contrasted there with the quest for a language adequate to governance, as notably recognized by Umberto Eco in exploring an appropriate language for "The Making of Europe" (The Search for the Perfect Language, 1993). He summarizes the insights of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia about the idea that there once existed a language, notably a "language of the birds", which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts. He explores the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture, and history.

The question here is whether global use of Twitter -- exemplifying many of the current communication concerns -- can be understood as enabling the emergence into practice of a form of that mythical language of the birds, common to the memory of many cultures. These include Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and shamanism, as indicated by Philip Coppens (Tweet Tweet: the language of birds). Despite that title however, no reference is made to Twitter, whose potential relationship to any "language of the birds" does not seem to have been considered by others.


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