Work cycle

Composing and Engendering the Future: Presenting the Future (Part 4) (Part #4)

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The notion of a work cycle is introduced here because it is relatively clear that a living system cannot exist in a state of stasis on interfaces between past, present and future. Living is synonymous with one or more active work cycles through which energy is moved through feedback loops to ensure integrity in the moment. The most obvious in mammals may be the respiratory cycle. This energy may take the form of attention -- even vigilance. Those drawn to the enneagram are particularly attentive to the cyclic structure of work as mapped by that diagram (see Anthony Blake. The Intelligent Enneagram http://www.duversity.org/archives/intellennea.html). The structure might be usefully considered to map six intermediary positions necessary to hold a relationship between past, present and future -- whether as interfaces or different ways of understanding time.

The concept of a work cycle is basic to thermodynamics -- and is exemplified by the Carnot cycle. The question here is whether this provides insights into a necessary dynamic relationship between past, present and future in terms of the nature and focus of attention. Is there a sense in which living embodies some such cycle -- of which the the heat engine is merely a limited material analogue? The heat engine cycle does indeed have to relate past, present and future in order to sustain its activity.

Curiously it is Gregory Bateson in a section on Form, Substance and Difference (http://www.tiac.net/users/knowweb/bateson.htm) of his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) that relates the depth psychology work of Carl Jung to the thermodynamics of Sadi Carnot. But it is in another book, translated by Jung's colleague Richard Wilhelm (1929), that Jung comments on a fundamental cycle identified in a Chinese text T'ai I Chin Hua Tsung Chih (The Secret of the Golden Flower) -- more recently translated by Thomas Cleary (1991). This focus has also been compared to the Nestorian Gospel of St Thomas (http://www.netmastersinc.com/secrets/golden_flower1.htm) -- although within the Christian tradition careful attention has indeed been paid to the significance of a "rota" as a cycle of duty, of which there may be musical variants. The much-cited Chinese work discusses the "circulation of the light" of awareness through various conditions during meditation reminiscent (if only in the metaphors used to describe them) of stages of the Carnot heat cycle.

The insights of such circulation may also be evident in the psycho-social attraction of certain pattern dances -- presumably providing some kind of time-binding resonance transcending past, present and future for participants.

The past century has provided widespread familiarity with engines, notably combustion engines in motorbikes and other vehicles. The operation of the piston cycle has entered collective consciousness in many ways -- as well as the distinction between 2-stroke engines and those with multiple cylinders. This suggests a line of inquiry as to whether thinking itself can be understood as operating in cyles that might be usefully modelled by such engines for many people. In this sense a basic cycle would alternate between the extremes of any form of polarized thinking -- with each extreme providing a turning point. One might be associated with the charge that drives the cycle. Clearly this might be understood as a cruder pattern than that associated with multiple cylinders -- if their operation could be integrated to reinforce a common rotation. Of special interest in this respect are rotary engines (cf the Wankel rotary engine).

Related to such understanding of an engine is that of gearing whereby rapid rotation is translated into slower and more powerful rotation that can perform certain kinds of work. Many forms of thinking might be associated with rapid cycles. These need to be geared down to speeds that can mesh with operations in the material world (see Conceptual Birdcages and Functional Basket-weaving. 1980, /compbask_x_h_1#gear). This challenge might be seen in relation to that of gearing down principle to practice.

Earlier the question was raised of how to configure, juxtapose and superpose sets of categories (3, 4, 5, etc) to create a "door frame" governing integrative cognition -- to frame any response to the riddle of life in the present. This challenge can now be presented dynamically. This is most easily described in terms of a paticular kind of fair ground challenge involving a a tunnel through which one must walk -- in which the frame of the tunnel rotates. To make life difficult, the tunnel frame is made up of successive segments with a triangular, square, pentagonal, hexagonal, or other cross-section, each rotating independently. In the cognitive analogue however the challenge in the present moment is to position relevant conceptual sets of 3, 4, 5, etc aspects (thus essentially incommensurable) in relation to a common centre in order to move navigate through them -- even if they rotate at different rates in relation to one another around such a common axis. As in the segments of the fairground tunnel, each "side" is effectively a trap to which it is a mistake to cling more than temporarily -- but such features frame the cognitive doorway. This challenge may also be described metaphorically by the geometry of magnetic bottles used to contain plasma to ensure nuclear fusion, where containment can only be successful if the plasma is effectively prevented from touching (and being "quenched") by any such contact.

The conceptual implications of this challenge have been most clearly articulated by Ron Atkin (1981) in describing the navigation of different degrees of complexity in a multidimensional space. He illustrates the challenge by use of a simple triangle (more).

These considerations raise the question of how fundamental sets of principles are to govern behaviour, especially in the moment. Whether it be the basic "Liberty / Equality / Fraternity" that originated with the French Revolution, or variants of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (/univ_x_h_1) with its 30 principles, it is how these governing principles relate to each other dynamically, rather than statically (like a conceptual laundry list), that is a vital key to viable navigation. There is also the intriguing possibility that the associated patterns of "values" and "virtues" (so extensively articulated in eastern belief systems) may in fact encode attitudinal control "mechanisms" (and traps) for the effective navigation of knowledge spaces in the moment (/othwise_x_h_1#navig).

It is within this framework, and recalling the functioning of any engine-driven vehicle, that interesting questions might be raised about what might be understood by the following "verbs":

• to present
• to future
• to past

"Future generation" (reprinted from /converse_x_h_1#future)

How does the future emerge into the present? How does potential become actuality? What are the cognitive traps associated with phrases such as: "where does the future come from" and "the far-distant future" ? How are present initiatives established as future realities? Why does past understanding appear so quaint from the present and what does this say of present understandings that are taken so seriously now?

The sustainability of global conversation or dialogue is therefore viewed as necessarily dynamic rather than static. Insights from chaos theory and strange attractors merit attention (Judge, 1993b). Its meta-stable nature ensures its coherence by engendering "futures". Global conversations thus evolve through "generations", necessarily accompanied by schisms that challenge any previous sense of coherence. "Participants" in a conversation today are the children of those participating yesterday, or an hour ago -- even if they are physically indistinguishable. As with computer backups, one can usefully speak of grandfather-father-son relationships between one's own successive "incarnations" in social intercourse.

How then is the future generated? How does one understand the nature of a future generation from one's current mode of comprehension? How does one comprehend across the generation gap -- and seek comprehension in return -- if only by oneself?

Whilst such questions are challenging for society as a whole, they are even more challenging for oneself. Each person has multi-generational qualities, from the "child within" to the nascent elder. In the process of maturation, the challenges of communication between one's own internal generations become increasingly evident. They can no longer be satisfactorily projected onto the outside world.

How does one engender a future -- preferred or otherwise? Is there some internal procreative process, as suggested by depth psychology's enthusiasm for alchemical symbolism? Reproductive biology certainly achieves a future generation through mating. How does a new generation of reality-handling acquire viability and inspire confidence within one's own psyche? Can what is superseded be truly cast off like a reptilian skin, or must past generations be carried with us into the future --"unto seven generations"?

Whilst there is of course merit in speculating about future generations in centuries or millennia to come, there is another kind of inquiry into future generation which merits reflection. As implied above, a future generation, in the developmental or psychological sense of the maturation of an individual, has its own challenges. But of even greater challenge is the much more immediate focus of how one engenders the immediate future -- over the next hours or minutes.

It is easy to argue that this has nothing to do with the "future" as framed by this conference. But this may be a flaw in the way future studies is understood and a reason for its marginalization. Do futurists suffer from conceptual presbyopia? Failure to attend to how the immediate future is determined by "doing" in the present moment, may obscure modes of understanding vital to meaningful insight into the future of biological generations -- to the epochs in which future studies may prefer to roam. Any sense of well-being is associated with the immediate present, rather than with the distant future. It is now that the help from "You and I" is required by the conference theme, whether for the young or the elderly.

How does future generation occur on this scale -- and what insights does it offer for understanding on the larger scale? As various schools of meditation have it, one attends to a certain complex of events for a while (seconds, minutes or hours), as an act combining mindfulness, empathy and action -- with, or without, others. Then, by distraction or choice, that focus dies and one passes on to some other complex of events. This process can be experienced as a sequence of generations of attention foci -- maybe returning cyclically to a former focus. It is through this process that one engenders a future into which one is then borne (Sogyal Rinpoche, 1994). Any practice, discipline or habit can be considered a form of "meditation" in this sense.

When a generation is understood as taking some 14 "years", possibility of change is perceived as limited by most. But understood as lived cycles of experience many hundreds of "generations" may take place within that same period of years. Such generations may be existentially more significant, and give rise to more variety, than is often associated with conventional thinking about the future 100, 1,000 or 5,000 years hence -- which is usually unchallenged by the reality of experiential change.Focus on the scope for change through psychological generation may well offer vital clues to change over longer periods of years. Greater attentiveness is therefore required to the potential emergence of fundamentally new varieties of significance over such periods.

From this perspective the challenge becomes how creatively to traverse a succession of generations -- the "Wheel of Life" for some Eastern religions (Sogyal Rinpoche, 1994). Various approaches might be taken to this psychological "reincarnation" process through many "little deaths". The generations could be "managed", as attempted by those favouring highly structured schedules (and armed with pocket "organizers"). One contrast would be to live the succession completely spontaneously as a child of the moment. They could be "navigated" with the spirit of an explorer, entrepreneur or opportunist. They might even be "surfed". They could be treated as an aesthetic exercise in composition or design -- "composing" a lifestyle as explored by Mary Catherine Bateson (1990). Or, like a breeder, focus could be placed on "breeding" better futures by combining suitable quality bloodlines engendered in past experience. The process could even be treated as an exercise in "gardening" a life -- life husbandry. In each case blending constraints from the past with potential distractions by the unforeseen creates pitfalls and opportunities. What strange new insights and disciplines will the future bring to this process?

[To Part 5]

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