Lessons for future psychosocial evolution

Engendering a Psychopter through Biomimicry and Technomimicry (Part #8)

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The question is then, given the challenges of this learning process, what are the kinds of lessons to be learned in the case of psychosocial evolution -- and under what conditions can they be learned? Why is it so difficult to comprehend what is involved, even by those motivated to do so -- as illustrated by the case of helicopter development? Might the same be asked of the World Social Forum and its current incarnation in the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

Also very significant is the learning required to control and pilot such a vehicle. The non-trivial learning challenges of the following may be usefully contrasted: balloon, bicycle, automobile, airplane, helicopter, spacecraft, monocycle -- if only in terms of learning time required. The question could be asked with respect to "sustainability" as to whether the new insights required correspond to the automobile or the airplane -- or involve unusual insight into balance implied by some of the other vehicles, and especially the helicopter. Or are there new "vehicles" to be discovered based on new principles, or on generalization of known principles into new dimensions? What might that mean?

Especially relevant is the extent to which known vehicles are used as metaphors for collective strategies, potentially constituting a form of metaphoric entrapment, in the light of Leishman's "technical problems" above:

Vehicles as metaphors for collective strategies
	balloon	bicycle	automobile	airplane	helicopter	spacecraft	monocycle
vertical aerodynamics
powerplant / engine
minimizing weight
counteracting torque
stability and  control
minimizing vibration

How are these technical problems to be understood -- or reframed -- with respect to the next phase of psychosocial evolution? Are there additional problems to be understood -- technical or otherwise?

How is learning to be ensured in the terms of Donald N. Michael (On Learning to Plan and Planning to Learn, 1973; The Unprepared Society: planning for a precarious future, 1968)? Especially relevant is the discussion of "the requirement for embracing error echoed by John O'Brien (Embracing Ignorance, Error, and Fallibility: competencies for leadership of effective services, 1987):

More bluntly, future-responsive societal learning makes it necessary for individuals and organizations to embrace error. It is the only way to ensure a shared self-consciousness about limited theory on the nature of social dynamics, about limited data for testing theory, and hence about our limited ability to control our situation well enough to be successful more often than not (Learning to Plan and Planning to Learn, 1997)

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