Imagining the nature of transcending: sustainable (r)evolution?

Engendering a Psychopter through Biomimicry and Technomimicry (Part #9)

Imaginative stimulus: There is a classic science fiction tale regarding an interdisciplinary group of specialists, in a range of technologies, brought together in a top secret installation by an appropriate government agency. They were shown a low quality film of a supposedly top secret laboratory which had apparently achieved a degree of success in developing an antigravity vehicle -- before all involved, and the laboratory (with all its records), were destroyed by an explosion during a testing phase. The challenge to the new group, inspired by the apparently evident partial success of the previous group, was to replicate the work and develop the vehicle. Unknown to the "new" group, the film had however been deliberately faked by the government agency -- simply as a means of motivating a group of otherwise sceptical specialists.

With respect to the operation of a "psychopter", what might "anti-gravity" imply in terms of "getting off the ground"?

"Higher": Importance is variously attached to the individual and collective challenge of getting "higher". For example:

strategically achieving height is relation to an opponent is seen as a major advantage, notably with respect to early detection of threats, effective use of weaponry, and acquiring a defensible position
height is valued in relation to status -- encouraging "social climbing" and aspirations to "higher" positions ("high office"), exemplified by "high flyers"
achieving "height" is implicit in the stages of "higher" education -- or the achievement of a "high degree" in some secret societies -- potentially culminating in wisdom, or becoming highly cultivated
competitive construction of the "highest" skyscrapers is widely held as vital to national prestige
in addition to the challenge of flight, that of ensuring "escape velocity" in order to achieve orbit is also considered a mark of national prestige
collective cultural development may be understood as culminating in a "high" civilization or a civilization at its "height"
getting "high" is a primary motivation for drug-enhanced experience
height is implicit in the the ascension envisaged and cultivated in psychospiritual development

"Meta": Implicit in the non-physical indications is some sense of higher dimensionality -- whatever that might be understood to mean. As indicated, intuitions of its nature may be readily and mistakenly projected into physical forms. "Higher" however has a sense of "meta" as implied by Gregory Bateson:

The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect. And it is from this perspective that he then warns: "Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality". (Mind and Nature; a necessary unity, 1979, pp. 8-11).

Any sense of higher dimensionality is then a challenge to understandings of "higher" in relation to achieving "escape velocity" with respect to the geometry of "globalization". Consideration may then have to be given to the implications of a "hypersphere" on which humanity may be cognitively grounded. Through what succession of geometries may ascension then be conceived?

"Meta" of course implies abstraction as a form of "higher" -- presumably implicitly associated with the degrees of abstraction achieved through "higher" education. However, in the sense of a pattern of connectivity, "meta" may be understood otherwise as independent of "higher" and its dysfunctionality, as separately argued (¿ Higher Education 8 Meta-education ? Transforming cognitive enabling processes increasingly unfit for purpose, 2011). This may notably imply the capacity to function "in between" incompatible conventional "higher" understandings (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: Global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011).

A related implication is offered by Joël de Rosnay (The Macroscope, 1979) as the detection of patterns of larger systems (by analogy with the microscope). Understanding at the micro-level may offer guidance to understanding of systems of a larger scale. This is an instance of technomimicry. This approach was a stimulus to the study of Luc de Brabandère (Le Latéroscope: systèmes et créativité, 1989; The Forgotten Half of Change: achieving greater creativity through changes in perception, 2005).

Metaphors: Another approach may be through understanding of metaphors as cognitive vehicles in their own right, as separately argued (Metaphors as Transdisciplinary Vehicles of the Future, 1991). Of relevance in this respect is the unexplored complement to the ubiquity of "assumption" (and "presumption"), namely "transumption" or metalepsis as a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to by something else which is only remotely associated with it.

It is in the light of such possibilities that a wide range of clues to "ascension" has been separately explored (Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002):

Combining Clues to Movement and Attitude Control (Annex 3)

Clues to 'Ascent' and 'Escape' (Annex 4)

Combining Clues to 'Ascent' and 'Escape' (Annex 5)

Technomimicry: As noted above, of particular interest in relation to such navigation, in the light of insights into air flow, is the cognitive transition of Arthur M. Young as designer of Bell Helicopter's first helicopter, the Model 30, and inventor of the stabilizer bar used on many of Bell's early helicopter designs. Of relevance to the argument in relation to navigation is the inspiration that helicopter design offered him in his quest for the development of a psychopter. He understood this to be the "winged self", a metaphor for the human spirit. As he stated:

I am interested now in the Psychopter -- because it won't work. What is the Psychopter? It is the winged self. It is that which the helicopter usurped -- and what the helicopter was finally revealed not to be.

He subsequently founded the "Institute for the Study of Consciousness" and advocated a process approach to integral theory with a particular understanding of learning-action cycles (Geometry of Meaning, 1976). In subsequent work he focused extensively on the torus and toroidal space-time (The Reflexive Universe: evolution of consciousness, 1976; see video The Sphere and The Torus, 2007).

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