Acquiring a sense of 12 modalities for viable system awareness?

Governance as "juggling" -- Juggling as "governance" (Part #14)

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Contrasting intelligences: It is appropriate to emphasize the contrast between an analytical understanding of the different modalities and experiential engagement with them -- recalling the distinction between analytical intelligence and kinesthetic intelligence. With respect to the variety of intelligences, it is curious to note that the number currently recognized is greater than 7 and less than 12, potentially suggesting a degree of correspondence with the number of functions vital to governance in practice.

As noted by Charles Beck in describing the experience of his students (Juggling Makes Physics Fun: elementary students learn the physical science concepts behind juggling, Science and Children March 2008):

They soon learned that they had to control the direction, amount of force, and distance between the objects. The students were overjoyed when they learned to keep the objects in motion without dropping them. The very act of tossing and catching objects helped students to understand the basic physical principles involved in rotating a set of objects. ... To help students understand the juggling skills required to keep a set of rotating objects under control and in a predictable pattern. ... To suggest a simple set of tossing, dropping, and catching exercises designed to help students literally grasp a set of juggling concepts.

A similar contrast could be framed with respect to governance -- then typically offered by the contrast between an MBA qualification and the subtlety of "experience", as is held to be vital in the selection of candidates to any executive position. Beyond the arguments of Edward de Bono, how do individuals or groups acquire an experiential sense of the variety of functions required -- a sense of requisite variety beyond that theoretically identified by cybernetics?

Cycles and viable systems: One approach to this question is through the insights of viable system theory as originally developed by management cybernetician Stafford Beer. So framed the issue might then be understood in terms of the number of feedback loops in a viable system of governance -- and how these are to be recognized and experienced. In this respect the distinction between first-order, second-order, and higher-order feedback loops is highly relevant, however these are to be understood, as argued by Maurice Yolles and Gerhard Fink (Generic Agency Theory, Cybernetic Orders and New Paradigms, 2014). Given the emphasis of Young on learning cycles, are such loops to be understood as related to those cycles? These and related distinctions are discussed separately (Revisioning a tabular configuration of categories, 2018).

Especially in the light of the cycles so evident in patterns of juggling, another approach is through a sense of the number of cycles effectively required to get a particular pattern to "work" -- namely to "keeping the balls in play", avoiding any tendency to "dropping the ball". This recalls insights into 8 thermodynamic processes, and some 12 thermodynamic cycles. Are 3-fold, 4-fold, and N-fold cycles to be usefully distinguished -- some of which might be implied in the circular representation of Young's Rosetta stone of meaning?

Given the uncertainty regarding the number of fundamental operational concepts, of interest is how any sense of viability is affected if the requisite variety is reduced to 6, 7, 8, or 9, or icreased to 15 or more. Young's tabular Rosetta stone of meaning could be stripped down to to sets of that number by dropping rows or columns. Could a helicopter then be piloted by ignoring wha is omitted? Could an organization then be sustainably governed? Can the 8-fold Chinese BaGua be understood as "stripped down" in some way, or has the significance of the 12-fold set been "redistributed" within the 8-fold set?

Transcending the binary modality: Given Young's consideration of binary operators, with their sense of positive and negative, a potentially related approach is through the psychosocial implications of the pioneering work of Nikola Tesla on the rotation of magnetic fields (Potential implications of alternation and rotation in psychosocial fields in Reimagining Tesla's Creativity through Technomimicry: psychosocial empowerment by imagining charged conditions otherwise, 2014). Ironically this is somewhat reminiscent of the rotation of the pattern of constellations of the zodiac as perceived from Earth.

Might such a systemic understanding of "positive" and "negative" offer a more fruitful manner of handling the potentially catastrophic dynamics to which they currently give rise?

Cognitive embodiment: Any engagement with juggling evokes recognition of the manner in which cognition is deeply engaged in the process, hence the particular relevance of the arguments of Lakoff, as previously anticipated (Philosophy In The Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought, 1999). With respect to the concerns of this exercise, the point can be variously argued otherwise in that light (Existential Embodiment of Externalities: radical cognitive engagement with environmental categories and disciplines, 2009; Strategic Embodiment of Time: configuring questions fundamental to change, 2010).

In addition to the arguments of Polster (The Mathematics of Juggling, 2003), of particular relevance are those from a cognitive perspective of George Lakoff (Where Mathematics Comes From: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, 2001). It is also appropriate to note those of quantum physicist Richard Feynman with regard to spinning plates (Ben Weinlick, Spinning Plates and The Serious Play of Richard Feynman, The Creativity Post, 6 August 2012).

Self-reference: An interesting extreme in this respect is the classical statement regarding governance by General de Gaulle: L'Etat c'est moi. Especially insightful with respect to the above argument is however the case study of Heidi Lee Mew (Juggling a Way of Being: a grounded theory of how one group of nurses navigates tension among personal and professional values 'in the moment'. Dalhousie University. 2013). This is summarized as:

Despite nursing's espoused professional values of caring and social justice, some patients are stigmatized and receive discriminatory nursing care. There is a gap in existing literature about how nurses deal with the tension they experience when personal and professional values collide. The purpose of this study was to generate a substantive theory of the process that nurses use when faced with values tension in clinical practice and how this affects their behaviour. Using constructivist grounded theory methodology informed by symbolic interactionism and critical social theory, the theory of Juggling a Way of Being was co-constructed with data obtained through interviews with registered nurses (n=8) who provide frontline care in an emergency department in Atlantic Canada. The study's findings revealed a process fraught with tension as nurse participants assimilated internal and external stressors, adjusted the patient-centered/nurse-centered lens according to their interpretation of the situation, and achieved a point of action or inaction. Implications for nursing practice and administration, education and research are discussed.

Perspective of non-western cultures: It is appropriate to note a quite distinct approach to cognitive embodiment of juggling -- as braiding or interweaving -- as offered by reflections within the logic and practice of other traditions, namely kundalini yoga or the neidan process of Zen. The serpentine coiling of kundalini within the human body could be provocatively compared to the Triple Helix preoccupations with regard to institutional creativity -- and their global implications. Both frame the question of "what flows" when juggling is governed successfully (Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability, 2010).

This question can also be explored in terms of the psychology of flow, as articulated by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990; Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life, 1998; Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning, 2003). Insight from other perspectives are presented separaely (Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002).

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