Local force vs Global gravity -- or the reverse?

Local Reality of Overcrowding -- Global Unreality of Overpopulation (Part #6)

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A curiously favoured metaphor for the planetary challenge is the "gravity" of the global situation, accompanied by increasing recognition of the need to engage the "force" of local community action. The choices may be less than appropriate, or more subtly related, than as most readily understood.

The most recent report on the evolving global crisis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (This Is a Crisis: facing up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown -- Initial report, 2019), has been announced by Roger Harrabin with the comment:

Politicians and policymakers have failed to grasp the gravity of the environmental crisis facing the Earth, a report claims. (Environment in multiple crises - report. BBC, 12 February 2019)

It should be emphasized that, consistent with the preoccupation of this argument, rather than "explanation" and "definition" alone, the concern here is with how people choose to frame their experience of "local" and "global", most obviously through metaphors which carry a degree of intuitive comprehension of complexity. There is a case for recognizing the contribution of aesthetic insight to the manner in which both local and global are distinguished. This follows from the argument of biologist/anthropologist Gregory Bateson in explaining why "we are our own metaphor", as pointed out to a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation that:

One reason why poetry is important for finding out about the world is because in poetry a set of relationships get mapped onto a level of diversity in us that we don't ordinarily have access to. We bring it out in poetry. We can give to each other in poetry the access to a set of relationships in the other person and in the world that we are not usually conscious of in ourselves. So we need poetry as knowledge about the world and about ourselves, because of this mapping from complexity to complexity. (Cited by Mary Catherine Bateson, 1972, pp. 288-9)

Inverse square law? In a period in which techno-optimists make much of the future role of robots, artificial intelligence, and even of the global brain, the problematic implications for global civilization are skillfully circumnavigated with some exceptions (John Brockman (Ed.), Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI, 2019). Ironically it could be argued that the impact of "artificial intelligence" has been to a large extent prefigured by the mindset of bureaucrats and conventional decision-makers operating according to "programs" variously pre-scripted -- with consequences already evident. Using a Turing test, has it already become impossible to distinguish between a robot and a bureaucrat or policy-maker -- in a professional capacity?

However, of curious relevance to the above argument is a degree of recognition of the role of proxemics as it applies to human-robot interaction.

One paper posits that proxemic behaviors can be modeled as a single continuous scaling function which captures the change across three of the proximity zones. This is understood as similar to the inverse-square law from physics, which captures and understanding of gravitational pull (Zachary Henkel, et al, Evaluation of Proxemic Scaling Functions for Social Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems 44, 2014, 3)

Reference to the inverse-square law is indeed a helpful way of generalizing Edward Hall's distinctions of interpersonal distances. It is consistent with recognition of a variety of gravity models by the psychosocial sciences. As used however, such gravity models are applied to what are essentially local conditions -- distance from a supermarket in a consumer catchment area. It is appropriate to ask whether the "consumption" thereby achieved offers (as more generally understood) the required insight for global engagement.

Tentative indication of distinctive forms of (over)consumption
Sense	Consumption characteristic of a particular sense	Overloading
taste	gustatory pleasures, and metaphors thereof	experienced in terms of surfeit
touch	feeling ("impressions"), and metaphors thereof	experienced in terms of the stress of multiple pressures, arising from the competitive quest for "impact"
smell	odour (perfume), and metaphors thereof	typically framed as "rich", whether appreciatively or not
hearing	sound (music), and metaphors thereof	experienced in terms of excessive volume and possibly cacophony
sight	views (beauty, perspectives). and metaphors thereof	experienced as clutter and confusion (visual crowding), if not as appreciation of variety

Such a gravity model could even be understood as reinforcing a "flat earth" understanding of a global civilization (Irresponsible Dependence on a Flat Earth Mentality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2008). The latter constituted a critique of  The World Is Flat (2005), by Thomas L. Friedman, which was given the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2005. The award recognizes one business book that provides 'the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics. Friedman subsequently produced a book whose title is relevant to this argument (Hot, Flat, and Crowded, 2008)

Is there an unfortunate use of the "wrong geometry" in addressing the global challenge? The discipline for World War I involved parading on the "square ground". The most distinguished general of that war was Field Marshal Douglas Haig, a Scottish Freemason who would have been profoundly influenced by its framing of "on the square". There is the further suggestion that the geometry of a two-dimensional surface is primarily associated with squared parameters, whereas that of the globe (as a sphere) is primarily associated with cubed parameters relevant to its three-dimensional volume.

Such a critique can be taken further through the occasional caricature of the vehicle of conventional governance as having "square wheels" (Reframing the Square Wheels of Global Governance: transcending vain hopes of squaring the circle in global decision-making, 2017). In these critical times, are the metaphorical implications of strategic "plans" and "planning" themselves inappropriate for the three-dimensionality of the globe, however relevant they may be to two-dimensional surfaces, as can be more speculatively argued (Adhering to God's Plan in a Global Society: serious problems framed by the Pope from a transfinite perspective, 2014)?

Inverse cube law? It could therefore be asked whether an inverse cube law offers richer insight. Such a law applies to "force" rather than to "gravity", as extensively explained by John Baez (The Inverse Cube Force Law, Azimuth, 30 August 2015). If the requisite global engagement is better explored in terms of force, then the quest might indeed be for "Global force -- Local gravity", the reverse of the subtitle of this section. Gravity may indeed be experienced, but this is arguably inadequate to the challenge.

Appropriate to this development of the proxemics argument, in its entry on Edward Hall in the Hmolpedia (4, pp. 2174-5), he is cited to the effect that:

Like gravity, the influence of two bodies on each other is inversely proportional not only to the square of the distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them. (1966, p. 129; emphasis added)

The commentary argues further:

In equation form, Hall seems to be giving the following estimate of the measure of the force between humans and animals or what seems to be social gravity: where GS is the social gravity, d is the distance between the two people or animals, and n is a number between 2 and 3.

Hall explains this logic in terms of his "invisible bubbles" theory and compressed social stress:

If one sees man surrounded by a series of invisible bubbles which have measurable dimensions, architecture can be seen in a new light. It is then possible to conceive that people can be cramped by the spaces in which they have to live and work. They may find themselves forced into behavior, relationships, or emotional outlets that are overly stressful. When stress increases, sensitivity to crowding rises --- people get more on edge --- so that more and more space is required as less and less is available. (emphasis added)

The adjacent numbers give some example calculation of what Hall is saying here. In other words, if for example you get in someone's face, at a distance of 0.5 meters, the force may increase at a rate proportional to the inverse cube (8 newtons of force) of the distance rather than the inverse square (4 newtons of force) of the distance, according to Hall's intuitive estimates.

To give a comparative example, magnetic field strength is often described as diminishing inversely proportional to the square of the distance; but one will often hear descriptions that the field strength is inversely proportional to the cube of the distance from the surface of the magnet. It depends on the source of the field and how close you are to it.

It is appropriate to note the extent to which particularly significant interpersonal relations may be described as "magnetic" and related to proximity. This features in a model of the human space within which a person is felt to be centered (Rory John Bufacchi, Understanding defensive peripersonal space through mathematical modelling, Thesis, 2018) noting that:

Take as an example the magnetic field strength around a magnet. It falls off as the inverse cube of distance from the magnet. It is because of this large rate of change that when holding a magnetic object and approaching a magnet, we perceive a 'boundary' defining the area where we start feeling the attractive force exerted by the magnet.

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