Complementary "stories" offering viable coherence

Transforming from Paranoia through Metanoia and Hyponoia? (Part #3)

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One approach to reframing "paranoia" is to recognize the set of cognitive modalities as engendering radically contrasting stories:

• paranoia offers "stories that work" in that they provide protective coherence, effectively a cognitive "survival package". The animals of nature must necessarily be vigilantly suspicious of everything as a source of threat.
• metanoia offers salvation through coherent reframing in a larger, subtler context, whether as promoted by the metanoians as a remedy for affluenza or through the arrival of a prophesied Messiah of end times scenarios, and the associated rapture through which people are "raised up" (Spontaneous Initiation of Armageddon: a heartfelt response to systemic negligence, 2004; Amanda Marcotte, 4 Reasons Right-Wing Christians Salivate for the End Times, AlterNet, 11 October 2013)
• dianoia offers the ever-renewed hope of being able to "talk things through" and "clear things up", notably in dialogue (interfaith, intercultural, interdisciplinary, etc), currently exemplified with respect to electronic surveillance (Hillary Clinton: we need to talk sensibly about spying, The Guardian, 12 October 2013), or more particulary through the dianetics of scientology (Thomas R. Flanagan and Kenneth C. Bausch, A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures: a workbook for addressing the global problematique, 2011)
• hyponoia cultivates the potential significance and coherence offered by secrets, possibly to be discovered by quests (exemplified by the Holy Grail, and the "codes" of Dan Brown novel's and the like), the multitude of vitally important secrets valued by the intelligence communities (including its "crown jewels"), as well as by those of secret societies (Illuminati, etc) (In Quest of Sustainability as Holy Grail of Global Governance, 2011)
• anoia offers the existential coherence typically expressed in paradoxical poetic or riddle form, as with the koans of Zen or the self-deprecatory humour of Mulla Nasreddin, suitably exemplified by juxtaposition of the verse of Donald Rumsfeld during his campaign (with other leaders of "great emptiness") to annihilate the culture of a region which had engendered the other verse by Omar Khayyam:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know.

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, End in the Nothing all Things end in -- Yes -- Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what Thou shalt be -- Nothing -- Thou shalt not be less.

The challenge is to explore ways of interweaving the "stories" to enable both "navigation" between them and a larger coherence, as previously discussed (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways, 2010). This is usefully illustrated by the potentially dynamic connectivity of the following images (adapted from Wikipedia) -- especially in the light of the cognitive implications of their topological relationship.

Images indicative of interwoven stories

Topology of the crown jewels? There is of course a symbolic irony to the manner in which a "pentagon" is embodied in both the more conventional image (on the left), as promoted in religious contexts, and in that on the right. The latter is composed of multiple Borromean rings of significance in topology as forming a Brunnian link (namely removing any ring results in several unlinked rings). It is based on a depiction in the Principia Discordia and is promoted by Discordianism (and is therefore known as the "Discordian mandala").

The cognitive implications of the Borromean knot (or ring), basic to the image on the right, are discussed separately in relation to the work of Jacques Lacan and Francisco Varela (Engendering holistic integration: Borromean knots and Klein bottles? 2010). The Borromean knot also figures -- as basic to the minimal stable concept -- in the work of Gordon Pask on his Interaction of Actors Theory, as extensively summarized by Nick Green (Interactions of Actors Theory, Kybernetes, 2004). Comments relevant to the above argument appear in a recent blog (Borromean Machine-Oriented Ontology, Strange Strangers, and Alien Phenomenology, LarvalSubjects, 24 July 2012).

Such imagery, and the associated arguments, are suggestive of the requisite complexity of any healthy dynamic interrelating paranoia with the other "noias". They are consistent with the self-reflexivity and paradox explored in the work of Douglas Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007) and its collective implication, discussed separately (Sustaining a Community of Strange Loops: comprehension and engagement through aesthetic ring transformation, 2010).

Given the inspiration of the "crown jewels" of the intelligence community for the argument above, it is also appropriate to note how the configurations of the images above can be readily understood as constituting a "crown" enabling a form of "cognitive fusion" fundamental to governance, as described separately (Engaging with Globality through Cognitive Crowns, 2009; Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor, 2006). It is in effect the points of intersection on the "learning pathways" mapped by the crown configuration that are the locus of any cognitive "jewel" (Spherical Configuration of Interlocking Roundtables, 1998; Spherical Configuration of Categories to Reflect Systemic Patterns of Environmental Checks and Balances, 1994).

There is the further delightful implication that the number of jewels in any such crown might then be governed by the Euler characteristic in algebraic topology, as originally determined for polyhedra (David S. Richeson, Euler's Gem: the polyhedron formula and the birth of topology, 2012).

The jewel metaphor can be exploited further (Patterning Archetypal Templates of Emergent Order: implications of diamond faceting for enlightening dialogue, 2002). As points of intersection on unrecognized "learning pathways", the "jewels" of the intelligence community could be understood as the "stations" on a form of map, as depicted below.

Reproduced from Mapping the Global Underground (2010)

Such mapping of the secret "crown jewels" of the intelligence community can be explored otherwise in two-dimensional variants, as well as in three-dimensional variants more appropriate to a "crown" (Map of Systemic Interdependencies None Dares Name, 2011; Mind Map of Global Civilizational Collapse: why nothing is happening in response to global challenges, 2011).

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