Recognizing viable pathways of diminishing competence

Flowering of Civilization -- Deflowering of Culture (Part #7)

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As noted with respect to Metaphors To Die By (2013), there is some recognition of "dying well" and a "good death". The possibility has been expressed through the mechanical metaphor of shifting to a lower gear -- downshifting (Steve Vernon, Do the Downshift to Survive Your Retirement Years, MoneyWatch, 6 April 2010; Carolee Duckworth and Marie Langworthy, Shifting Gears to your Life and Work after Retirement, 2013).

This metaphor does not systematically explore the progressive loss of cognitive capacity. Simpler patterns of order may need to be used to sustain a dignified sense of integrity and coherence -- as suggested with respect to the sequence of centro-symmetric polyhedra (Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2009). This is potentially more evident in the case of the geometry of flowers. Yet to be identified are the pathways through "viable" patterns of collapse -- whether for an individual, a group or a knowledge-based civilization. Ironically this may be understood topologically as "packing" (a concentration on essentials) or as "unpacking" (as discarding unnecessary packaging).

Aging imposes a convergence on cognitive simplicity -- one that can be fruitfully undertaken voluntarily. Cultivation of flowers is consistent with this -- making of flowers an admirable symbol of requisite simplicity in guiding cognitive reflection on that convergence. This may well accord with the arguments of Duane Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity: toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich, 2010).

What are the viable patterns of downscaling or downshifting for the United Nations agencies, for example -- a more appropriate framing of United Nations reform? How might such understanding relate to that of the ordered collapse of major corporations and the downscaling required of government institutions by austerity measures in the face of dramatic budgetary crises?

The tetrahedral pyramid may prove to be the last explicit mnemonic recourse to viable ordering during the process of decline -- only implying the greater (deployed) complexity from which it has been reduced, and to which access is then severely constrained. Ironically it is the pyramidal form which has featured prominently in the architecture of cultures in which dying is a major concern -- possibly understood as a form of "gateway" to the afterlife. In some cultures, these are suggestive of the reason for pyramid construction during the lifetime of the person to whom it was dedicated.

The role of such holding patterns -- effectively their nesting within one another -- is central to the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, as separately discussed (Geometry of Thinking for Sustainable Global Governance: cognitive implication of synergetics, 2009). Ironically such forms are of current symbolic significance on the dollar bill, with respect to naming of the NSA PRISM surveillance program, and the US Pentagon.

As represented, notably by Critchlow, flower patterns are typically two-dimensional -- although centro-symmetrical. The two-dimensional representation accords with typical approaches to global governance and to "planning" in general. As such it is potentially a vital indicator of their inadequacy in practice. The central focus is of course typical of hierarchical organization with its own problematic implications. There is therefore an irony to the manner in which the three-dimensionality of flowers is made so evident in deliberative contexts -- if only as a decorative feature, much as with the illuminated manuscripts of centuries past.

Flowers offer the further advantage of expressing other patterns, as with colour and scent -- now increasingly valued in neuromarketing, itself understandably related to any use of psychoactive drugs by policy-makers. Cognitive downscaling may then be understood as passing through multiple colour and scent variations to the primary colours and scents as viable memetic holding patterns -- according to deteriorating capacity to discern variety, and especially when (strategic) vision is constrained or absent. There is some irony to the fact that the major political parties in any democracy tend already to identify with preferred primary colours in opposition to the others.

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