World introversion as key to a sustainable existential ecostery?

Reimagining Principles Enabling an Existential Ecostery (Part #18)

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There is a major challenge in seeking to benefit from the insights relevant to any integrative reframing of "globalization". These have previously been partially discussed (Self-reflexive Challenges of Integrative Futures, 2008). Briefly stated, a number of seemingly (or potentially) complementary "waves" are being made in quite distinct domains of knowledge (in "my" universe), leaving it to others (or, in their absence, to "me") to enable some form of "global" comprehension, at least of relevance for "me" (Existential Embodiment of Externalities, 2009; In Quest of Radical Coherence, 1995).

Global cognitive fragmentation: None of the representatives of such initiatives want much to do with each other, often to the extent of condemning others to a cognitive netherworld of dangerous irrelevance. There they may be visited under authoritarian guidance -- at the visitor's own peril, especially given the increasingly questionable credibility of such authorities (Abuse of Faith in Governance, 2009).

The representatives are typically much esteemed in their own domains within the current global civilization. The domains may however be usefully understood as "conceptually gated" (Dynamically Gated Conceptual Communities: emergent patterns of isolation within knowledge society, 2004).

This argument addresses the fundamental reality that the worldviews of authorities are effectively no longer deliverable in a timely credible manner to the ever increasing numbers obliged to make do with whatever they conceive to be accessible and relevant to their existential needs. The "globalization" espoused and promoted by authorities is no longer meaningful beyond the domain of well-captured audiences (within which consensus has been elicited) -- unchallenged by existential concerns. Internet facilities obscure the manner in which they enable and reinforce traditional divisive trends.

For convenience with respect to the following discussion, a selection of such gated domains might be configured together as follows.

Problematically interrelated domains of strategic discourse (reproduced from Engendering Invagination and Gastrulation of Globalization, 2010)

"Turning the world around": Ignoring the track record of past decades, the situation may well be framed as one calling for global transformation according to strategic patterns and plans of the past. Appeals may be made for "new thinking" to that end -- or "political will" (International Organizations and the Generation of the Will to Change, 1970). Some may hope for popular revolution. Optimists may focus on the potential of human ingenuity, despite indications to the contrary (Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap: how can we solve the problems of the future? 2000).

). Others may focus on the anticipated catalyst of natural disaster, Armageddon, or the welcome fulfillment of divine prophecy (Spontaneous Initiation of Armageddon: a heartfelt response to systemic negligence, 2004).

It might then be asked how the world might otherwise to be "turned around". The question is especially significant in a period characterized by trends such as the following:

• virtualization and dematerialization of the economy
• ever increasing cognitive shift into the "virtual worlds" engendered by the internet and social networking
• invasive surveillance and loss of privacy (NSA and its collaborators in the PRISM initiative)
• widespread recourse to narcotic drugs
• widespread social unrest and the expectation that it will increase
• loss of confidence in authoritatively presented belief systems and recognition of a degree of self-reliance

"World introversion": Rather than "turning around", separately it has been argued that there is an opportunity -- for the individual -- of "world introversion" (World Introversion through Paracycling: global potential for living sustainably "outside-inside", 2013). As noted there, the cognitively paradoxical process of turning "outside in" has also been termed "circumversion" -- summarized by the following image..

Schematic indicative of interrelated processes of introversion and extroversion
	"Outside-Inside"	"Inside-Outside"
	Global
"Inside"			"Outside"
	Local / Individual
	"Outside-Inside"	"Inside-Outside"

The schematic above highlights various potential correspondences:

• left-hand quadrants:
  • the upper-left quadrant as the focus of a very high order of "introversion" of the world's human activity through global surveillance, analysis and modelling within supercomputers (most notably as implied by the initiatives of NSA through the PRISM program)
  • the lower-left quadrant as the focus of a very high order of subjective "introversion" within individual human consciousness, effectively "withdrawing" projections into the external world (M. D. Faber, The Withdrawal of Human Projection: separating from the symbolic order, 2013)
• right-hand quadrants:
  • the upper-right quadrant as the objective focus of the preoccupation of the "natural" and material sciences concerned to elaborate an understanding of world order (and to enable its governance through technocratic skills)
  • the lower-right quadrant as the objective focus of local community action and neighbourhood coherence (delinking from global dependence)
• diagonals, indicative of various forms of interactive "mirroring" between quadrants

The schematic bears a degree of similarity to the categories interrelated in the AQAL system elaborated by Ken Wilber. With respect to the possibility of "turning the world around", reframed here as introversion, the schematic suggests a framework through which the NSA/PRISM strategy could be "turned around" in the light of its original form as ECHELON, as discussed separately (From ECHELON to NOLEHCE: enabling a strategic conversion to a faith-based global brain, 2007).

The above schematic implies a form of non-cartesian complexity through the use of paired rectangular hyperbola, as was done in the above mentioned mapping of problematic, resolutique, imaginatique and ludique onto the plane of complexity (Imagining the Real Challenge and Realizing the Imaginal Pathway of Sustainable Transformation, 2007). However the paradoxical (counter-intuitive) nature of the cognitive relationships between the quadrants of the above schematic can also be usefully highlighted by the use of paired Mobius strips (along the diagonals), as in the following schematic.

Variant of the above schematic using paired Mobius strips as indicative of the paradoxical cognitive dynamic across diagonals between quadrants (animation is used to suggest a dynamic)

Indicative metaphors of introversion: The cognitive process of "introversion" necessitates recognition of an unsuspected degree of existential "intimacy" (potentially incommunicable) as a dynamic challenge to conventional approaches to objective engagement with static "categories". Possibilities include:

• a recognition that the engagement with "globality", implied by use of paired Mobius strips, can be explored further through the paradoxical topology of the Klein bottle and insights from enactivism, as separately discussed (Intercourse with Globality through Enacting a Klein bottle: cognitive implication in a polysensorial "lens", 2009)
• the possibility that the process of "world introversion" involves cognitive dynamics previously explored in the light of the biology of invagination (Engendering Invagination and Gastrulation of Globalization: reconstructive insights from the sciences and the humanities, 2010; Invagination in Psychosocial Terms: understandings from web resources, 2010)
• an implication that the above schematic could be interpreted systemically in terms of the kinds of dynamic between the 4 chambers of the human heart and their associated valves, as suggested by the following image -- thereby offering a metaphoric understanding of the "circulation of the light" reminiscent of the original insights into that process according to the "inner alchemy" (Neidan) of Taoism, and its comparison with the spiritual alchemy of the West. The dynamics of Neidan could be interpreted as offering insights into healthy "sustainability" from an individual perspective.

Circulatory metaphors associated with the heart provocatively suggestive of a corresponding "cognitive cardiovascular system" dynamic
Simplified diagram of the mammalian heart (Image reproduced from Wikipedia)	Classic image of practitioner of Neidan (Image reproduced from Wikipedia)

A heart-related theme of potential relevance can also be explored in the light of the work of Edward Haskell (1972) on the "coaction cardiod", as discussed separately (Cardioid Attractor Fundamental to Sustainability: 8 transactional games forming the heart of sustainable relationship, 2005) and by Timothy Wilken (UnCommon Science, 2001). Suggestive commentary and imagery is provided in the Wikipedia profile of the cardiac cycle.

Psychosocial "thermohaline circulation"? In a related exploration, consideration was given to the systemic insights to be drawn from the global circulation of ocean currents with their changing temperature and salinity -- suggesting the possibility of a psychosocial "thermohaline circulation"? (Transcending One-eyed Global Modelling Perspectives: incorporating under-currents into global circulation of value, 2010). The circulation is illustrated by the following images.

Global Thermohaline Circulation (conventional view) (Image adapted from Wikipedia)

***

Global Thermohaline Circulation (polar view) (Image adapted from Wikipedia)

The ocean circulation metaphor is notably useful because it suggests a possible cognitive analogue to the Great Pacific trash vortex -- a gyre of marine debris in the central North Pacific Ocean.

Sphere introversion: The metaphors and supporting images above rely on conventional systemic representations, possibly in relation to a sphere. References to the Mobius strip and Klein bottle do however point to the cognitive challenge of a paradoxical geometry. This was the primary focus of the separate discussion of "world introversion" and the global potential for living sustainably "outside-inside". There the suggestion was made that the cognitive challenge could be better understood through the highly unusual process of "sphere inversion" -- turning a sphere "inside-out" or "outside-in" -- a process only recently discovered and illustrated through various video animations. The stages in that process (as visually represented) are geometrically reminiscent of the patterned division of a circle into an increasing number of segments as shown below.

Phases in one process of a sphere turning inside out (overhead view) Centerfold of Making Waves (1995) a full-color 48-page book by Silvio Levy that accompanies the video Outside In available from the Geometry Center

Although a much simpler transformation process, the following animation suggests that the world (as a globe) cannot "breathe" when confined to a spheroidal geometry. The transformation into a torus (and back) points to a possibility of cycling through a pattern of geometric forms variously supporting understandings of "globality". To be consistent, maps such as those above call for articulation on such patterns (as discussed below).

Animation from Wikipedia of the degeneration of a standard torus into a sphere as the distance to the axis of revolution decreases

Invagination of globalization: The following argument endeavours to weave together threads whose mirroring of one another is in part a symptom of the requisite complexity and of its challenge to comprehension. The following figures offer one integrative overview, presented progressively to enable understanding of the argument as subsequently expanded. In particular, the right-hand image merits reconsideration in the light of the work of William S. Huff (Homonym, Homonym and Homonym, and Other Word Pairs, 1992), as previously discussed in relation to the Ba Gua coding scheme (Conditions of Objective, Subjective and Embodied Cognition: mnemonic systems for memetic coding of complexity, 2007).

Overview of relationship between aspects of the argument -- each reconfigured with respect to the precedent (reproduced from Engendering Invagination and Gastrulation of Globalization, 2010)
Disparate processes tending to engender "gastrulation" of globalization	Partial articulation of left-hand figure, introducing colour-coding of pairs of processes
Further articulation of right-hand figure with pairs disposed across the circle, effectively dividing it into two halves, with arrows indicating inferences discussed in the text
Toroidal "gastrulation" Spheroidal "invagination"

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