Excitement: Neither substantive nor non-substantive (Fire)

Having Bought into a Wreck -- What Now? (Part #13)

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Most elusive, and perhaps most attractive for that reason, is the modality associated with "excitement", however that is to be understood. Clearly every effort is made to commodify it as a product in entertainment, recreation, games, tourism, and the like. There is some irony to the preoccupation that "heat" is now engendering in relation to my "automobile" -- in terms of global warming.

As "fire", cognitive excitement has however been carefully explored by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander (Surfaces and Essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thtinking, 2013). Arguably its elusive nature can be understood to a degree as an intuitive appreciation of higher dimensionality and quantum consciousness, as argued above by Alexander Wendt (Quantum Mind and Social Science: unifying physical and social ontology, 2015).

There is of course the strange exemplification of "fire" and "excitement" that is associated with the "firing" of weapons, especially missiles and bombs. This is both a major feature of entertainment and of military activity. Fire in all its forms has long been a primary focus of individual and collective attention. Ironically, in the case of my "automobile", I would of course be delighted if I could get it to "fire up" as an indication that it is finally working.

Just as with global warming, there is now a challenge of how best to contain fire-excitement "globally" -- as with any engine. Curiously, considerable investment is being made in the design of an unusual container for nucler fusion by ITER -- effectivwly an engine which is the hope for energy in the future. The toroidal design offers multiple metaphors of relevance to the issues I have with my "automobile" as a container of a kind -- if only I could get it together (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006).

Understood as a system, what can be fruitfully recognized as circulating within such a container (Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability, 2010)? There the suggestion was made that a primary candidate was attention, possibly of a particular quality and focus. As appropriately contained, this can be recognized in terms of the confidence it engenders.

Most intriguing, as the primary paradoxical requirement for the toroidal design of ITER, is the manner in which the plasma, as the fiery state of matter, has to be confidently contained -- by a container with whose walls it cannot be allowed to come in contact. This resembles the pardoxical alchemical quest for a container for alkahest -- a hypothetical universal solvent, having the power to dissolve every other substance of which a container could be made. Understood otherwise, if attention is appropriately "contained", without producing a conventional substantive product, it could then be understood as constitutings an inexhaustible energy resource. This would seem to be the insight associated with Taoist understanding of neidan. Is this what I need to get my "automobile" moving?

Curiously it is the psychosocial dynamics within arena and stadia which offer a degree of insights into the containment of attention -- an intuitive recognition potentially prefiguring some more complex and subtler design, of which ITER is another precursor. The emphasis of the Roman Empire on the constuction of stadia is a clear indication of some such intuitive understanding -- succinctly, if cyncally, expressed as panem et circenses. Arguably equivalents are now to be recognized in TV programs and online gaming.

The challenge of containing attention when excited can be variously discussed (Con-taining significance in the con-quest of the moment, 2016; Cognitive significance of a con-tainer, 2016). The latter notes the arguments of Alexander Klose, inspired by shipping containers as the primary symbol of globalization and a container world (The Container Principle: how a box changes the way we think, 2009). In a critical comment Klose notes:

Containers represent the impressive dyamics of modern capitalism and its fundamental optimism in the face of every crisis. At the same time, they represent the fears and objections to these dynamics when logistic are organized purely for optimization, forcibly converging and aligning formerly remote parts of the world through an exponential increase in transport and communications processes. The basic materiality of containers, the fact that they can be emptied just as easily as they can be filled, also seems to reveal an effect on the semantic level of stories and images. (p. ix)

Klose argues that:

Today the transport container has become ... a key image, a gobal visiotype that professes to make further explanations superfluous. The success of the metacontainer has brought about a metareality in which containers and globalization have always formed a firm and fast tautological unity... This metareality consusts of a bastion of belief in progress andthe apotheosis of rationality, regardless of whether this process is interpreted as philanthropic or branded as misanthropic. The reality is based on a mythical foundation that attributes technical and social development to ominous powers of the economy and the market. (pp. 74-75)

The argument is appropriately extended by Klose to include the cognitive preoccupations of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, 1980) with the container as the primary subspecies in the genus of the ontological metaphor:

Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation. We project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces. Thus we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside. (p. 25)

To the exent that the shipping container is such a substantive product -- potentially alienating to the highest degree -- the ambiguously paradoxical relation between container and contained becomes especially evident. With respect to psychosocial change and transformation, it is potentially more fruitful to understand the container as taking dynamic rather than substantive form -- indicated by the argument above with respect to "power control" and the "third derivative of velocity". In alchemical terms, this can be framed in relation to the ouroboros as the embodiment of eternal return, as variously comprehended (Complementary visual patterns: Ouroboros, MÖbius strip, Klein bottle, 2018; Experimental animations in 3D of the ouroboros pattern, 2018).

Missing from such "description" is the essence of excitement and any associated risk. Strangely this is evident in the controversy associated with the ambiguous appreciation of "radical" and "radicalization". On the one hand these are promoted as characteristic of the most innovative forms of creativity in every domain; on the other hand they are deeply feared as characteristic of instigation of social change by revolutionaries, anarchists and "terrorists" of every colour.

Whatever form it takes, excitement of this kind is potentially a source of terror -- strangely appreciated in the attraction of "terrific" experiences and "terrific" personalities (Coming Out as a Radical -- or Coming In? 2015; Radical Innovators Beware -- in the arts, sciences and philosophy, 2016; Identifying the Root Cause Focus of Radical Identity, 2016; Radicalisation of Existence and Identity, 2015). Do such considration suggest that I need a "radical" approach to my "automobile" if ever I am to get it to work? Does "radical" then imply a higher cognitive dimensionality -- one clearly a challenge to comprehension given its "intimacy"?

With respect to the dynamics of attention in relation to excitement, it is appropriate to recognize the understanding of duende -- loosely translated as "having soul", a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity, often connected with flamenco dancing (Daimon, Djinn, Muse and Duende: variations on a timeless experience, 2007). It is associated with saudade, as engendered by a related art form (Duende and saudade as transformative animation of intercourse, 2015). Both terms elude conventional communication (Tom Schnabel, Saudade and Duende: two elusive words that defy translation, KCRW Rhythm Planet, 11 June 2013). The subtlety of the associated experience might be fruitfully compared with the Chinese understanding of wu wei as indicating, with appropriate ambiguity, both :

• an attitude of genuine non-action, motivated by a lack of desire to participate in human affairs and
• a technique by means of which the practitioner may gain enhanced control of human affairs

With appropriate excitement framed as "having soul", there is a case for framing the fourfold pattern above (product, liquidity, imagination and excitement) in relation to the common experience of "soulless" dining. The "deliverables" then contrast with the "dreamables", as determined by the "deniables" (Dreamables, Deniables, Deliverables and Duende: global dynamics "at the table" inspired by dining and wining in practice, 2015).

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