Global table: enabling comprehension, credibility, communicability and memorability

Clarifying the Unexplored Dynamics of 12-fold Round tables (Part #10)

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In 1969 a fundamental review of the United Nations, known as the "Jackson Report", focused on its development capacity, as reviewed separately (Study of the Capacity of the UN Development System, 1970). An appropriate question at this time is the "carrying capacity" of any "global table", understood in psychosocial terms. Given the well-developed understanding of the role of currency circulation, what is then to be undestood as circulating at such a global table in psychoocial terms (Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability? 2010; Circulation of the light: What flows? What circulates? Cryptocurrency? 2014).

Comprehension: Questions of relevance include:

• how is comprehension enabled, especially when the significance of archetypes -- in systemic or personality terms -- tends to be a matter of carefully guarded expertise?
• how can patterns of archetypes, together with their systemic relations, be widely communicated?
• how can credibility be engendered beyond the realms of those cultivating recognition of such archetypes?
• beyond comprehension and communicability in the short-term, how can such insights be rendered memorable?

Such questions are relatively irrelevant to the subtle preoccupations of those concerned with archetypes and the cultivation of the associated insight. The extensive literature tends to avoid consideration of "comprehension".

Cognitive engagement: The challenge is all the greater in that the requisite engagement, with what is usefully articulated through mathematics and symbolic geometry, implies an understanding most notably developed in cognitive psychology (George Lakoff and Rafael E. Núñez, Where Mathematics Comes From: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, 2000). Given the potentially fundamental nature of the implied principles, and the credibility cultivated by religion, this also implies the articulations of theology (Mathematical Theology -- Future Science of Confidence in Belief : self-reflexive global reframing to enable faith-based governance, 2011).

Missing from such arguments, or only subtly implied by them, is the nature of the engagement of archetypes as embodied ("knights", "apostles", etc) rather than as attributed to external "personifications" (deities, etc). This engagement is clarified by:

• "re-cognition" of being the driver of a vehicle -- a helicopter as the inspiration for the argument of Young (1976) -- rather than adopting the role of a "back seat driver"
• the reference to having "skin in the game" as pointedly elaborated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: hidden asymmetries in daily life, 2018), for whom the articulations of advocates of particular forms of action lack precisely that engagement with reality
• recognition of the "number" (or variety) of strategic moves that one can make as the driver, perhaps to be understood as:
  • the number of gears into which one can shift
  • the postures one can adopt (as in the martial arts), chess, or go -- or possibly online gaming (notably as inspired by mythology)
  • the games one can play, as suggested by the Games People Play of Transactional Analysis
• emphasis on the cognitive posture articulated and embodied by Mahatma Gandhi: You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

The engagement between those at a 12-fold round table could be understood in terms of the proprioceptive dialogue deriving from the work of David Bohm and cultivated by Steven Rosen. This implies a degree of radical honesty most apparent between participants with "skin in the game" -- namely dialoguing under conditions of risk rather than from within a comfort zone.

Pattern connectivity: The subtle complexity, together with the inappropriateness of closure, highlights the significance of an aesthetic quality to the dynamics of a global table (Aesthetics of Governance in the Year 2490, 1990; Aesthetics and Informatics: the art of information for policy-making and community-building, 1999; Aesthetic "re-membrance" of the whole through cognitive "skins", 2016). Despite the incidental appeal this may have, its importance is most evident in enabling a sense of coherence and connectivity in comprehension of the "pattern that connects", as highlighted by Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979) in making the point that:

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.

As argued elsewhere, the challenge for a global table is then one of Enactivating the Pattern that Connects" (2006). As noted above the "looser" degree of connectivity, especially in terms of complementarity, can be usefully explored through the various understandings of correspondences (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007).

Table vs Portal? The appropriateness of the "table" metaphor may itself be challenged, especially if the implication is that the dialogue there will enable transportation to another location, space, or framework. In particular, rather than the three mutually orthogonal "tables" illustrated above, they may rotate in relation to one another according to other principles. Alternatives might also include some sense of portal or gate:

• A radically distinctive example is the so-called "gateless gate" of the Zen tradition (Configuring a Set of Zen Koan as a Wisdom Container: formatting the Gateless Gate for Twitter, 2012).
• The evocatively imaginative stargate of the TV series (the theme of the Stargate Wiki; notably evoking the creativity of artists such as Silvia Hartmann, Stargate Symbols).
• The imaginative mechanism presented in the iconic movie Contact (1997), as shown below left -- imagined in the light of a science fiction novel by astrophysicist Carl Sagan (Contact, 1985).

The mechanism in the movie was partly inspired by the gyroscope/gimbal dynamics shown in the animation below. This suggests ways of configuring the symbolic stars of the Flag of Europe, as indicated below. A suggestive animation of 3 mutually rotating circles, within which the icosahedron/dodecahedron is embedded, is presented for comparison (below right). The icosahedron is rendered transparent except for the vertices. Those animations derive from a separate discussion (Experimental Visualization of Dynamics of the European Parliament in 3D, 2019). In this context they raise the question of how any such 12-fold configuration constitutes a strategic portal of cognitive relevance to the times.

"The Machine" of Contact (animation)	Gimbal stabilization of compass using gyroscope dynamics	Indicative gyroscope dynamics of Flag of Europe	Gimbal animation of 12 stars in dodecahedral configuration
	Gyroscope stabilization
Reproduced from Wikipedia		Experimental Visualization of Dynamics of the European Parliament in 3D (2019).

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