Potential clues to embodying globality through crowning experience

Engaging with Globality through Cognitive Crowns (Part #4)

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Further exploration is necessarily constrained by the concern implied in the title of a later work by Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson (Angels Fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred, 1987). Nevertheless it seems vital -- if only as an act of imagination -- to explore possible ways of understanding the mode of cognition that might prove essential to the challenges of governance at this time. This is especially the case in the light of the recognition accorded to divinity in any coronation process.

The discussion in Dimension 2 of Enabling designs of cognitive circlets and crowns provides a range of clues. However, although helpful in some respects, the suggestions highlight the need to seek greater understanding of the nature of the "crowning insight", its articulation, and of how it might be brought into "focus" -- if a visual metaphor is indeed appropriate (Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge: bringing the "elephant" into "focus", 2008).

In considering the cognitive and epistemological nature of the challenge, it would seem to be a fundamental error to neglect the subtleties, paradoxes and complexity of the most sophisticated conceptualization that humanity has engendered. If the most complex theories of physics and cosmology are so vitally significant (primarily as a consequence of their beauty and elegance) to global comprehension of the universe (a Theory of Everything), how is it that they are held to be so irrelevant to comprehension and governance of the psycho-social universe -- both by those who formulate them and by those faced with the challenge of global governance? If it does not have equivalent characteristics, why should it be considered of requisitely adequate richness to encompass globality or be of appropriate elegance to be comprehensible, memorable and susceptible to communication?

Synergetics: One important point of departure is the recognition by R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics: explorations in the geometry of thinking, 1975/1979) that a minimum of three interlocking circles are necessary to constitute a system -- whose "global" nature is implicit in the resulting approximation to a sphere in 3D. In the light of the above, these may be understood as cycles, possibly represented by circlets of some kind. This then provides a basic criterion for shifting out of linearity and binary logic into a mode in which the complementarity of distinct (even incommensurable) dynamic loops -- of different "orientation" -- is essential to the sustainability of a system.

For governance, if each government ministry is seen as responsible for such a cycle or loop, then ensuring they interlock appropriately constitutes a viable engagement with globality. It is such a configuration that is a pointer to thrice-born cognition of requisite variety to encompass, engage and cognitively embody a global system. There is much to be derived from Synergetics of relevance to cognition. However, despite the subtitle, the cognitive implications have not been developed -- although much has been articulated that lends itself to interpretation. Fuller himself also understood synergetics as a form of self-discipline.

The insights of synergetics with respect to polyhedra, as constituting and representing systems, lend themselves to representation of possibilities of polyhedral governance based on a polyhedral configuration of values responding to the need for psychoactive engagement (Towards Polyhedral Global Governance: complexifying oversimplistic strategic metaphors, 2008; Topology of Valuing: psychodynamics of collective engagement with polyhedral value configurations, 2008). Such engagement with a spherical; configuration of some kind effectively depends on the cognitive topology taking the form of a crown.

Spherical configuration of categories: Following from Fuller's arguments (Synergetics, 1975/1979), a sense of the globality implicit in the cognition of a set of categories could be usefully reinforced by appropriate representation beyond hierarchical listing or tabular presentation (Spherical Configuration of Categories -- to reflect systemic patterns of environmental checks and balances, 1994). This has implications for the configuration of web-based fora (Spherical Configuration of Interlocking Roundtables: Internet enhancement of global self-organization through patterns of dialogue, 1998).

The adequacy of the conventional spreadsheet presentation of accounting details, as the basic instrument of strategic management, could similarly be called into question in favour of a spherical representation (Spherical Accounting: using geometry to embody developmental integrity, 2004). Curiously recognition of such integrity may imply a relationship between consciousness of the management concepts of a "bottom line" and that of being variously "born again" -- given the challenges of the double bottom line (socially responsible enterprise management) and triple bottom line (values and criteria for measuring success in economic, ecological and social terms). Comprehension of such "bottom lines" may be associated in practice with the mutual constraints of interlocking cycles essential to global sustainability. The case made there for a quadruple or fourth bottom line (Sohail Inayatullah, Spirituality as the Fourth Bottom Line, 2003), or a quintuple (fifth) bottom line, call for exploration in the light of the arguments of Synergetics. Such constraints could also be explored in terms of the need for "double capping" and "triple capping" of behaviours which tend to undermine sustainability.

As noted above, given the fundamental relationship between sphere and torus, any such investigation could be extended with greater generality to include the torus (Comprehension of Requisite Variety for Sustainable Psychosocial Dynamics: transforming a matrix classification onto intertwined tori, 2006). Links to related approaches are presented elsewhere (Beyond the Matrix: becoming other wise, 2007).

Spiral dynamics: As mentioned in Dimension 2, in relation to the AQAL system of the Integral Movement, its integration with Spiral Dynamics may be understood as taking the form of a crown. However the concentric circles of AQAL are then to be understood as interlinked as a spiral rather than such as to constitute the basis for a sphere -- as promoted in Synergetics. There are however interesting transformations between such geometries -- with their cognitive implications.

Infosets: Partially in the light of the work of Fuller on spherical tensegrity, management cybernetician Stafford Beer (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994) pointed to the possibility of eliciting "infosets" of "sovereign individuals" (implicitly recognized to be "cognitively crowned" in their internalization of the pattern of relations with each other and their preoccupations). He argued :

There are people all over the world, sovereign individuals, who have ideas and purposes that they wish to share with others. They do not see themselves as bound by hierarchy (even to their own nation-states) or committed to the processes (even those called democratic) that demand the establishment of political parties, dedicated movements, delegations - or indeed high-profile leadership. These people are the material of infosets: neighbourhood infosets of thirty local friends, global infosets of thirty world citizens. Infosets of either kind formulate themselves, because they constitute potential command posts; they spread epidemically, demonstrating their redundancy; they interact massively, as is the nature of shared commitment. It is not a commitment to some shared manifesto, but a commitment to circumvent folly wherever it is found; it is a commitment to alleviate suffering; it is a commitment to brotherhood and peace. This worldwide syntegration does not of course exist. It is a vision. But although visions may be inspirational, they do nothing much to alleviate suffering until inspiration is embodied in a plan of action. And if mounting human misery is the product of a triage machine as I have argued, and if the triage machine is endemic to the ruling world ideology so that it cannot be dismantled, then the action plan must circumvent triage altogether. The aim is ambitions: to start a process that invokes the redundancy of potential command as the methodology for a new system of world governance. (World in Torment: a time whose idea must come, 1992)

This concept has since been extrensively explored by Markus Schwaninger (Intelligent Organizations: powerful models for systemic management, 2009)

Self-reflexivity and recursion: Hilary Lawson (Reflexivity: the post-modern predicament, 1986) has clarified the dilemmas reflexivity implies for the future, notably in relation to the closure associated with the sense of globality explored here (Closure: a story of everything, 2001). Its importance have been noted in relation to administration (Ann L.Cunliffe and Jong S. Jun, The Need for Reflexivity in Public Administration, Administration and Society, 2005, 37: 225-242). Self-reference or self-reflexivity had been given a particular focus through the work of Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, 1979). Elsewhere, as Recursion and self-reflexivity, it has been discussed in relation to complexity and autopoiesis, namely as the process of auto (self) creation that is presumably at the core of any adaptive reorganization in response to the challenges of the times (Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations, 2007; Engendering the Future through Self-reflexive Group Initiatives, 2008).

A cognitive circlet or torque exemplifies this notion of closure -- especially as traditionally symbolized by the Ouroboros. Clearly a higher degree of closure and self-reflexivity is implied by interlocking circlets forming a cognitive crown. A contrast may then be drawn between the degree of self-reflexivity of a single circlet and that associated with their interlocking.

The question is explored as metacognition, namely in thinking about thinking, considered one of the most important developments in the contemporary study of cognition (Maxwell J. Roberts and George Erdos, Strategy Selection and Metacognition, Educational Psychology, 13, 3 and 4, 1993, pp. 259-266). Metacognition is then knowledge (as awareness) of one's cognitive processes and the efficient use of this self-awareness to self-regulate these cognitive processes. As a field of psychology of importance to learning processes, it is the focus of the International Association for Metacognition. It is traditionally defined as the knowledge and experiences that people have (or are able to develop) about their own cognitive processes and as such -- beyond the preoccupations of psychology -- is a focus of many spiritual disciplines in the East (yoga) and West which would have different terms to describe it (commonly associated with the injunction Know Thyself). Metacomprehension is a form of metacognition that involves knowledge and consciousness of strategies employed by a learner to comprehend information while receiving it. Metamemory is a feature of metacognition concerned with the process of deciding about the adequacy of information acquisition and retention.

The recursive dimension is evident in references in the literature to "meta-metacognition" (cf Christopher Andersen, A Theoretical framework for examining peer collaboration in preservice teacher education, 2000). As argued by Stephanie Pieschl, most theoretical models of epistemological beliefs (namely beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing) agree that they are related to metacognitive processes, that they are probably even 'meta-metacognition', but very little is known about the exact processes of how epistemological beliefs might influence metacognition or self-regulated learning. Curiously, in the light of the circlet focus of this exploration, the newly launched Centre for Innovation and Research in Cognition, Learning, and Teaching is known by its acronym CIRCLETS.

Sphereland cognition?: With respect to Dimension 2, the crown re-cognition of this Dimension 3 might be understood as offering a global sense of the strategic perspective of the systemic articulations of the "planar world" -- especially as "plans". Although not in strategic terms, or with any reference to globality, the interface between Dimension 2 and Dimension 3 has been extensively explored in several well-known works and/or films by mathematicians (Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: a romance of many dimensions, 1884; Charles Howard Hinton, An Episode on Flatland: or how a plain folk discovered the third dimension, 1907; Dionys Burger, Sphereland, 1965); A. K. Dewdney, The Planiverse, 1984; Ian Stewart, Flatterland, 2001). In Irresponsible Dependence on a Flat Earth Mentality -- in response to global governance challenges (2008) the strategic significance of Dimension 3 has been contrasted elsewhere with the "flatland" understanding of globality of Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat, 2005).

Such imaginative explorations might well offer insights on the cognitive inadequacies of current global change initiatives designed in terms of "plans".

Metadialogue: As a development of the argument for argument mapping (made in Dimension 1), this has been variously described by the following:

• On the basis of recent developments in constructivism and social constructionism, Jürgen Hargens and Uwe Grau (Meta-dialogue, Contemporary Family Therapy, 16, 6, December, 1994, pp. 451-462) describe the structure of meta-dialogue in detail. They propose an approach that takes self-recursiveness seriously. Meta-dialogue is understood as an extension of reflecting teams and reflecting positions. Therapists are seen as experts in interviewing (questioning, asking, and reflecting) and clients as experts for their different domains (their lives).
  
  
• For J. G. Burgoyne. Learning from experience: from individual discovery to meta-dialogue via the evolution of transitional myths, Personnel Review, 24, 6, 1995, pp. 61-72(12)) learning from experience assumes particular importance at times of fundamental transition because inherited learning becomes irrelevant or misleading. The current fundamental transition is seen as being from work for the production of knowledge to work for the production of identify/meaning (mentofacture to spiroculture). The accompanying transition in terms of learning from experience is then from individual discovery of personal and environmental realities to collective meaning making. A process of meta-dialogue is proposed as an approach to facilitating learning from experience in a way appropriate to the times. Meta-dialogue then involves sharing and reaching an understanding of the ways in which beliefs under discussion in dialogue can be believed to be true or useful.
  
  
• For the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (Group Facilitation, 1999) the facilitator plays a role in third-order meta-dialogue. This may be may be requested at any time by participants who seeks clarification about a rule or any other matter governing the dialogue as a whole. The facilitator is then responsible for answering meta-dialogical questions but may also initiate a meta-dialogue at any time, if in his judgement some procedural point requires clarification. Thus the facilitator of a Socratic dialogue is then to be understood as like the conductor of an orchestra: he has no explicit voice in the score, but has a meta-voice in conducting the performance.
  
  
• Maurice A. Finocchiaro (Arguments, Meta-arguments, and Metadialogues: A Reconstruction of Krabbe, Govier, and Woods. Argumentation, 21, 3, September 2007, pp. 253-268) responds to presentations (notably by Erik C. W. Krabbe) at the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (2002) defining a metadialogue as a dialogue about one or more dialogues, and a ground-level dialogue as a dialogue that is not a metadialogue. He defines a meta-argument as an argument about one or more arguments, and a ground-level argument as one which is not a meta-argument. Presentations at the Third ISSA Conference on Argumentation (2002) showed that fallacy criticism consists of metadialogues, and that such metadialogues can be profiled in ways that lead to their proper termination or resolution. Finocchiaro describes five types of meta-arguments and considers the possibility of others.
  
  
• In the light of the set of dialectical rules for opening and closing metadialogues, proposed by Krabbe (2003), in which the permissibility of moves in a ground level dialogue is being discussed, Jan Albert van Laar (T he Dialectial Approach to Argument and Argument Criticism, 2003) discusses the possibility of starting a metadialogue at a level n -- and a metametadialogue at level n+1. Such a dialogue forms a discussion that corresponds with ideal discussion behaviour as the discussants themselves view it: it does not contain any violation of a discussion rule, or so the parties themselves think. These dialogues are regulated by the rules for (complex) persuasion dialogue. However, different rules must regulate the discussion that contains the possibly inadmissible moves and the metadiscussions about potentially inadmissible moves
  
  
• Peter Houtlosser1 and Jan Albert van Laar1. Metadialogues: Krabbe's Immanent Dialectic Argumentation, 21, 3, September, 2007, pp. 205-208
  

The emphases of behavioural psychology in exploring these issues contrast radically with those of spiritual disciplines. A more recent study of Douglas Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007) might be understood as an intermediary perspective. Of particular relevance to global governance are the collective challenges of any form of metacognition, notably in relation to collective memory (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory, 1980; Pointers to the Pathology of Collective Memory, 1980). The issues may be explored from the perspective of the adequacy of futures research (Self-reflexive Challenges of Integrative Futures, 2008).

The question regarding any wearer of the cognitive Triple Crown, faced with the leadership challenge of global governance, is the degree to which the quality of their awareness of their own awareness is vital to a viable integrative approach. To what extent does Barack Obama need to be a "strange loop" in Hofstadter's terms?

The strategic challenge of such cognition, of the unknown knowns and the known unknowns (famously publicized by Donald Rumsfeld) has been explored elsewhere (Unknown Undoing: challenge of incomprehensibility of systemic neglect, 2008). This suggests the possibility of a three-fold mode of knowing, doing and feeling that may be articulated into a rich and integrated array of cognitive modes.

"Polyocular stereoscopic engagement": The interlocking circlets which it is suggested here are the basis for Triple Crown cognition may be fruitfully understood as functioning as metaphorical "eyes". This follows from the need for such an integrative combination of complementary approaches as argued by Magoroh Maruyama (Polyocular Vision or Subunderstanding, Organization Studies, 2004).

The contrasting geometry of this configuration of circlets is reminiscent of the four (or five) socio-cultural/epistemological mindscape distinctions described earlier (Magoroh Maruyma, Mindscapes, social patterns and future development of scientific theory types. Cybernetica, 1980), notably as extensively explicated by David M. Boje (2006) and Michael Caley (Mindscapes: the epistemology of Magoroh Maruyama, 1994) in terms of :

• H-mindscape (homogenistic, hierarchical, classificational): Parts are subordinated to the whole, with subcategories neatly grouped into supercategories. The strongest, or the majority, dominate at the expense of the weak (whether values, policies, problems, priorities, etc). Logic is deductive and axiomatic demanding sequential reasoning. Cause-effect relations may be deterministic or probabilistic.
• I-mindscape (heterogenistic, individualistic, random): Only individuals are real, even when aggregated into society. Emphasis on self-sufficiency, independence and individual values. Design favours the random, the capricious and the unexpected. Scheduling and planning are to be avoided. Non-random events are improbable. Each question has its own answer; there are no universal principles.
• S-mindscape (heterogenistic, interactive, homeostatic): Society consists of heterogeneous individuals who interact non-hierarchically to mutual advantages. Mutual dependency. Differences are desirable and contribute to the harmony of the whole. Maintenance of the natural equilibrium. Values are interrelated and cannot be rank-ordered. Avoidance of repetition. Causal loops. Categories not mutually exclusive. Objectivity is less useful than "cross-subjectivity" or multiple viewpoints. Meaning is context dependent.
• G-mindscape (heterogenistic, interactive, morphogenetic): Heterogeneous individuals interact non-hierarchically for mutual benefit, generating new patterns and harmony. Nature in continually changing requiring allowance for change. Values interact to generate new values and meanings. Values of deliberate (anticipatory) incompleteness. Causal loops. Multiple evolving meanings.

The relation of this approach to that of the Myers-Briggs MBTI typology is the subject of a detailed comment by David M. Boje (Mindscape Theory and the Myers-Briggs, 2006).

But whereas Maruyama is relying on a vision-based metaphor, consistent with most strategic thinking, the argument can be fruitfully extended through a polysensorial metaphor consistent with human reliance on a set of distinct senses. In strategic articulation there is then a need to combine appropriately the cognitive approaches of those distinct senses, if only metaphorically, as argued elsewhere (Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge: bringing the "elephant" into "focus", 2008). It is this integration that transcends the dysfunctional disassociation of "cognition" and "manipulation" regretted by George Soros (above) and is perhaps usefully to be understood in terms of "operacy" as defined by Edward de Bono:

The idiom of education is that it is enough to build up the information base and that action is then easy. It is not. The skills of action are every bit as important as the skills of knowledge. That this is not recognised in education is a tragedy. For convenience I have coined the term 'operacy', which is derived from 'operate' and 'operational' and thus indicates 'the skill needed for doing'. I believe that operacy should rank alongside literacy and numeracy as a major aim of education.

In cognitive terms, there is widespread appreciation of stereoscopic effects to achieve 3D perception in depth and a sense of perspective -- forming an image in 3D by this means. However, despite reliance on the vision metaphor, there is indeed a strategic assumption that any vision is somehow single-eyed or "cyclopean" (Cyclopean Vision vs Poly-sensual Engagement, 2006). The conventional political distinction between "right" and "left" seldom implies the need for the stereoscopic effect derived from the integration of the contrasting "visions" obtained through those perspectives -- although supposedly it is the essential merit of democratic debate and of bipartisan initiatives in response to crisis. A related case has been made from a theological perspective (John A T Robinson, Truth is Two-eyed, 1979). A more realistic sense of the need to integrate multiple perspectives is associated in practice with processes to interrelate the contrasting claims of stakeholders.

Transcending the perspectives of right and left in this way recalls the mythological importance of the "third eye" -- the Eye of Horus in the ancient Egyptian symbolism of royal power. It is this third eye, as with the interlocking provided by a third circlet, that then effectively provides the cognitive integration basic to any crowning experience assumed to be associated with such royalty. In some Eastern and Western spiritual traditions this third (or inner) eye is related to the ajna chakra -- leading to the kinds of higher consciousness that is framed here as such a crowning experience. Curiously, whereas future strategy development is universally based on the vision metaphor, any recognized capacity to use a third eye is typically attributed to "seers". Within the Hindu tradition however, a "crown chakra" (sahasrara) is actually recognized above the ajna chakra. Within the agni yoga tradition, as the Brahmarandhra, it is often referred to as "the bell".

However, as noted above, the more fundamental challenge of cognitive engagement is implied by associating Maruyama's epistemological mindscapes (or the MBTI cognitive modalities) with circlets -- moving beyond reliance on the vision metaphor (Stepping into, or through, the Mirror: embodying alternative scenario patterns, 2008). The capacity of the contrasting sensing circlets is then better understood through the dynamic implied by each as a cycle -- perhaps in the terms developed with respect to the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: an essay in cosmology, 1929) and others including Nicholas Rescher (Process Philosophy: a survey of basic issues, 2000). Whitehead articulated his understanding in mereotopology, a mathematical formalism combining mereological and topological notions. It would be useful to explore the cognitive intersections between the associated point-free geometry of Whitehead and the articulation of R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics: explorations in the geometry of thinking, 1975/1979).

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