Possible characteristics of the unthought

Unthought as Cognitive Foundation of Global Civilization (Part #8)

"Unthinking": Frequent reference is made to "unthinking" in relation to acts that prove disastrous -- the French term is inconscient, the German Unbewuss. This is readily reframed as "human error" -- purportedly an innocent technicality regarding "operator malfunction" in the absence of the vigilance required by the task and its responsibilities. It may be explained by fatigue, stress, incompetence, or substance abuse, but it is the nature of the "unthinking process", of which these are symptoms, which merits further reflection.

Any web search highlights numerous references to "unthinking" in a variety of contexts unrelated to "human error". Some of these have been included in the references (below) to enrich further consideration of insights they may offer with respect to the "unthought". Quotations of interest include:

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. (Albert Einstein)
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. (John Maynard Keynes)
Unthinking is the ability to apply years of learning at the crucial moment by removing your thinking self from the equation. (Ian Leslie)

As these imply, "unthinking" may also suggest a proactive modality which is the contrary of that deprecated in relation to human error, and much to be valued, as with:

Peter Bratsis. Unthinking the State (2002)
Wade L. Huntley. Unthinking the Unthinkable (2004)
David Lyon. Unthinking Modernity (1996)
Immanuel Wallerstein. Unthinking Social Science (2001)

Especially interesting is a classic text by G. N. A. Vesey (Unthinking Assumptions and Their Justification, 1954).

Unthinkable: The various references to "unthinking the unthinkable" recall the Cold War preoccupation framed by Herman Kahn (Thinking about the Unthinkable, 1962, Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s, 1985) regarding the most brutal strategic possibilities (Jonathan Stevenson, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable: harnessing doom from the Cold War to the Age of Terror, 2008). Consideration of these possibilities has effectively been reactivated, if only in the eyes of conspiracy theorists (Heinz Duthel, The Trilateral Commission and the New World Order "Thinking The Unthinkable", 2011). These are reinforced, for example, by efforts to document the unexplained issues in the official reports on the 9/11 disaster by the 9/11 Truth Movement, most notably by David Ray Griffin (The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, 2004; The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, 2008; The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False, 2009). Described as "unthinkable thoughts", these highlight the possibility of complicity in the attacks by agents of the United States.

The nature of the "unthinkable" has become variously evident from the Watergate scandal, from the Cablegate revelations via Wikileaks, and from the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other incarceration facilities. Establishment of the "legality" of enhanced interrogation, creatively but questionably, framed as "not-torture" has contributed to recognition that the "unthinkable" is now reasonably probable as documented by such as Philippe Sands (Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, 2005; Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, 2008). The extent to which information is now classified as "secret" does little to alleviate belief that the "unthinkable" is indeed being actively considered (James J. Wirtz, Peter R. Lavoy and Scott D. Sagan, Planning the Unthinkable: how new powers will use nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, 2000). Concerns have for example been expressed at the complicity of pharmecutical companies with the World Health Organization in promoting an "unjustified scare" in relation to the swine flu pandemic of 2009 according to a report by the Council of Europe (PACE Health Committee denounces "unjustified scare" of Swine Flu, waste of public money, 2010). Concerns have been expressed that the pandemic was deliberately falsified -- possibly even in anticipation of instigating such a pandemic in the future.

Such possibilities have been seen as characteristic of the current era by Joshua Cooper Ramo (The Age of the Unthinkable: why the New World Disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it, 2009). The effort to "think the unthinkable" continues to be seen as an appropriate challenge in a variety of domains (Lydia Dotto, Thinking the Unthinkable: civilization and rapid climate change, 1988; Wendy Jordan Thomson, Thinking the Unthinkable: a paradigm for peace, 2009; H Craft and A Brown, Thinking the unthinkable: papers on sexual abuse and people with learning difficulties, 1989; R. J. Parlett, Provision for Welfare in the 21st Century: thinking the unthinkable conservatively, 2000; Walid Khalidi, Thinking the Unthinkable: a sovereign Palestinian State, 1978; United Nations and United Nations Development Programme, Thinking the Unthinkable: from thought to policy - the role of think tanks in shaping government, 2003).

Gullibility -- susceptibility to confidence tricks: The notion of a "hole" can be fruitfully associated with a gap in attention, as might occur in the case of "human error". The phrase "I was not thinking" would then apply equally to any vulnerability to a confidence trick. This argument has been developed in relation to the creativity of a Knight's move in chess. Knight's move thinking is much valued in strategic contexts -- being treated as synonymous with lateral thinking. However, as developed, the argument suggested that the "move" effectively traversed a zone which could usefully be represented by a form of "hole" -- characterized by profound inattention on the part of the victim (Swastika as Dynamic Pattern Underlying Psychosocial Power Processes: implicate order of Knight's move game-playing sustaining creativity, exploitation and impunity, 2012).

Appropriately, the term Knight's move thinking is also used to describe a pathological condition of dissociative thought disorder potentially characteristic of an "unthought hole" (see Knight's move thinking: appreciated or deprecated). The animations in that earlier document offer a sense of the "locus" of the hole in relation to strategic creativity. Given that susceptibility to a confidence trick may be framed in terms of failure to "keep one's eye on the ball", of particular relevance in the mathematical articulation of Ron Atkin (discussed below) is the sense in which the comprehension "hole" may also be sensed as an obstruction -- perhaps usefully recognized as a "ball", as is suggested by the visual animations.

Existential terror: The nature of "reality" may be too terrifying to contemplate. As suggested above, there is a sense in which the "unthought thought" is assiduously "unthought" -- because it is too terrifying. This possibility is suggested in various myths, notably that in Greek mythology regarding the encounter of Perseus with the Medusa -- using his shield as a mirror, to avoid being "terrified", to the extent of being "petrified".

Curiously such terror has been recently justified by Barack Obama's much-cited affirmation that "evil exists" in his acceptance speech for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Also noteworthy is the very extensive review of four recent studies of evil in the Financial Times (Julian Baggini, The Faces of Evil, FT, 5-6 June 2010).

Inexplicability of the unexpected: The surprise associated with the unexpected may well render it inherently incomprehensible -- as a protection from the existential terror it might otherwise evoke (Engaging with the Inexplicable, the Incomprehensible and the Unexpected, 2010). This would be consistent with the argument above regarding the "unreadability" of the unthought thought.

Collective unconscious: The sense in which humanity is characterized by a form of collective unconsciousness has been extensively explored by Carl Jung (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1981) -- further to his work on the personal unconsciousness (of the individual). As indicated by Michel Foucault (The Order of Things: an archaeology of the human sciences, 2002):

As a matter of fact, the unconscious, and the forms of the unthought in general, have not been the reward granted to a positive knowledge of man. Man and the unthought are, at the archaeological level, contemporaries. (p. 355)

As noted above, this argument is echoed from a quite different perspective by the work of John Ralston Saul (The Unconscious Civilization,1995). It can be explained through an understanding of the individual human "shadow", of group shadow, or even of the shadow of humanity (as tentatively explored). In the case of cultures, the manifestation of shadow has been noted in the form of the excesses of Nazism. Its manifestation in the case of colonial powers is necessarily more controversial and subject to denial (as noted above).

Ignorance: Recognizing the existence of "ignorance", and the experience of it, poses the curious problem as to what can be "known" about it and by what means. Whilst much is necessarily known about "knowledge" and the acquisition of it through "learning", ignorance is in many respects inaccessible. The interface between knowledge and ignorance, especially in relation to decision-making, is a fruitful area of exploration with respect to the cybernetics of human knowing (Søren Brier, Ranulph Glanville: The Cybernetician of Ignorance, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 2008; Erkki Patokorpi, Information Pluralism and Some Informative Modes of Ignorance, Information, 2011; Didier Dubois, et al., Representing Partial Ignorance. IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 1996; Dirk Baecker, The Intelligence of Ignorance in Self-Referential Systems, 1994).

Mutifacetted unity: There would appear to be a deeply held assumption regarding essential unity, whether in relation to God, the universe, humanity, or knowledge. In the case of God, this is challenged by the complete incapacity of the religions to surmount their particularities and engender modalities which transcend them -- if only to reduce the bloody conflicts which their convictions currently engender.

The nature of God as multiple has been explored by Stephen R. Prothero (God Is Not One: the eight rival religions that run the world, 2011). This leaves unexamined the nature of any underlying unity, if such exists. Using the periodic table of chemical elements as a metaphor, consideration could be given to an equivalent with respect to the variety of beliefs (Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality: including the sciences and other belief systems, 2007). Again this would raise the question of the nature of any "belief" in such a framework -- as yet another "model".

With respect to the universe, physicists have long explored the possibility of a multiverse (meta-universe or metaverse) as the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise everything that exists and can exist. In the case of knowledge, despite efforts to articulate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary frameworks, none such has proven to be universely acceptable, as noted in the commentaries on the Integrative Knowledge Project. How does the intuitive sense of unity relate to the nature and processes of "unthought thought"?

Implicate order: The possibility of an "implicate order" has been creatively explored by the physicist David Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980) notably in the light of exchanges with an Eastern worldview (The Limits of Thought: discussions between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm, 1999).

Mathematics: The mathematician Ron Atkin offers a well-articulated -- and comprehensible -- analysis of the challenge of comprehending a more complex whole through a degree of comprehension of its parts (Ron Atkin, Multidimensional Man: can man live in three dimensions? 1981) as summarized elsewhere (Comprehension: Social organization determined by incommunicability of insights, 1995). Technically this is known as q-analysis (Ron Atkin, Combinatorial Connectivities in Social Systems; an application of simplicial complex structures to the study of large organizations, 1977). This is consistent with the possibility of partial comprehension (Towards the Dynamic Art of Partial Comprehension, 2012).

Despite the deprecation of the "somethingness" of God, there is a further irony in the pursuit of physicists of a Theory of Everything -- articulated in the light of the most complex mathematics, calling upon a multitude of "dimensions" beyond human ken. Given the lack of "substance" to such a theory, and its incomprehensibility to most, this would seem to imply a form of unthought thought in the complementarity between these two non-substantial preoccupations.

This suggests the extent to which the nature of "God" may be indicated by some forms of mathematics, especially since "God" has traditionally been a major inspiration for innovative icons of mathematics. As a form of infinity it has notably been understood in terms of the infinite sets of Georg Cantor. He identified the Absolute Infinite with God. The approach has been discussed by mathematician Sarah Voss (What Number Is God?: metaphors, metaphysics, metamathematics, and the Nature of Things, 1995). An obvious approach is of course to consider "God" as a strange attractor, as explored separately (Human Values as Strange Attractors, 1993). The intellectual beauty of symmetry groups of the highest order offers other possibilities -- together with constraints to such comprehension (Dynamics of Symmetry Group Theorizing, 2008).

Such considerations highlight the merit of the allocation of resources to mathematical theology -- in which "theology" is generalized to include any form of belief, as separately argued (Mathematical Theology: Future Science of Confidence in Belief -- self-reflexive global reframing to enable faith-based governance, 2011).

Existential role of the missing: As discussed separately (Evolutionary influence of the absent, 2011), an extremely valuable perspective on the argument here is offered by the recent work of Terrence W. Deacon (Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged from matter, 2011). His point is succinctly made by the distinct titles of his summary of his revolutionary new theory in its print and online variants (The importance of what is missing, New Scientist, 26 November 2011; Consciousness is a matter of constraint, New Scientist, 30 November 2011). His theory follows naturally from his previous book (The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain, 1997).

Extraterrestrials: Whilst the possibility of communication and contact with those from other parts of the universe has been an imaginative exploration for science fiction, and for some scientists, the psychosocial consequences of an encounter with life of a truly "other" nature has not been explored to any degree. This could well be "otherness" of a very high order. Irrespective of physical threats, the question is the nature of any "other consequences". The common tendency is to imagine extraterrestrials as operating out of a recognizable mindset -- whether hostile, amicable or wise. The possibility of quite different priorities -- a missing common denominator -- is ignored, as considered separately (Communicating with Aliens: the psychological dimension of dalogue, 2000).

The associated "unthought thought" is especially relevant to any consideration of the problematic nature of the content of communication with hypothetical extraterrestrials, as discussed separately (Self-reflective Embodiment of Transdisciplinary Integration (SETI): the universal criterion of species maturity? 2008). This might clarify the failure to initiate "contact" by extraterrestrials -- as has been so optimistically anticipated. Perhaps the very "emptiness" of human civilization is only too evident to them. Humanity may simply be categorized as "boring" at this stage of its evolution -- possibly through its inability to engage consciously with the cognitive implications of that process, including a failure to engage effectively with the "unthought". For humanity the essential referents of extraterrestrials in that respect may be meaningless. The condition is evident in the deprecation by atheists of belief in the spiritual in any form, or the deprecation by science of the significance of feng shui as appreciated within Chinese culture. Extraterrestrials may prove to be as radical as islamic fundamentalists with regard to belief in Allah.

Just as the behaviour of youth may be framed as "alien" by adults -- and deprecated as "unthinking" with regard to its consequences -- extraterrestrials may expect a higher order of self-reflexivity on the part of humanity if communication is to be meaningful for them. Of course, a disaffected younger generation -- subjected to debt bondage by the unthinking behaviour of their elders -- may well respond in future in ways as unthinkable as extraterrestrials.

There is the further strange possibility that contact by sophisticated aliens might seek to follow a higher ethical order in responding to local norms. Unthinkingly and in all innocence, humans may be articulating those guidelines through their pattern of behaviour to each other (Writing Guidelines for Future Occupation of Earth by Extraterrestrials: be done by as you did ? 2010).

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Possible characteristics of the unthought