Navigating psychic space?

Enabling Governance through the Dynamics of Nature (Part #14)

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The work of Schauberger, and of others inspired by the flow of water, offers a way of reframing reflection about how psychic space is experienced and how the knowledge universe is "navigated". Such navigation may be variously explored (Noonautics: four modes of travelling and navigating the knowledge universe? 2006; Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002).

Such possibilities can be contrasted with the characteristic mainstream ("hearts and minds") bombardment of alternatives (Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare: navigation of strategic interfaces in multidimensional knowledge space, 2001). Irrespective of the reality or viability of Schauberger's "flying disk", the thinking it embodies with regard to flow merits consideration.

Of particular interest in relation to such navigation, in the light of insights into air flow, is the cognitive transition of Arthur M. Young. He was the 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. 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 (The Geometry of Meaning, 1976). But 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 -- the helicopter as 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. 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).

Navigation typically orients reflection to the challenge of movement in space, even understood metaphorically. The argument above with respect to flow, and helicoidal movement within that flow, reframes the challenge in terms of time. References to the river-like flow of time are frequent (Igor D. Novikov, The River of Time, 2001; William Prem, Charting the River of Time, 2007).

With respect to the earlier arguments for "toroidal governance" in contrast to "global governance", this suggests a new relation to time (Strategic Embodiment of Time: configuring questions fundamental to change, 2010; The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: embodying time as the heartland of humanity, 2003; Where There is No Time and Nothing Matters: cognitive challenges at the Edge of the World, 2008).

The imagination can then be creatively stretched by reflection on the cognitive implications of "timeship" design (Timeship: Conception, Technology, Design, Embodiment and Operation, 2003; Embodying a Timeship vs. Empowering a Spaceship, 2003).

With respect to the use of metaphor in facilitating "navigation", the point was made in the first of these documents that:

An imaginative stimulus for such investigation is provided by a science fiction scenario explored by a number of writers. It focuses on the challenge of comprehending high degrees of complexity calling for decision-making under operational conditions (as is the case in global global management). The problem is that of piloting or navigating a spacecraft through "hyperspace" or "sub-space", as imagined in the light of recent advances in theoretical physics and mathematics.

Because of the inherent complexity of such environments, writers have explored the possibility that pilots and navigators might choose appropriate metaphors through which to perceive and order their task in relation to qualitative features of that complexity - for example, flying like a bird, windsurfing, swimming like a fish, tunneling like a mole, etc. The mass of data input derived from various arrays of sensors, and otherwise completely unmanageable, is then channelled to the pilot in the form of appropriate sensory inputs to the nerve synapses corresponding to his "wings" or his "fins".

Perception through the chosen metaphor is assisted by artificial intelligence software and appropriate graphic displays. The pilot switches between metaphors according to the nature of the hyperspace terrain. Such speculations do at least stimulate imagination concerning a possible marriage between metaphor and artificial intelligence in relation to governance.

The possibility of making such navigational choices is again reminiscent of "shapeshifting" as mentioned above (En-minding the Extended Body Enactive engagement in conceptual shapeshifting and deep ecology, 2003). It also recalls the fundamental issues of apophasis and unsaying (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? 2008).

Any such focus on "navigation" can be reframed in terms of a longer time frame, namely the evolution of human consciousness, as helpfully summarized by Jennifer Gidley (A Macrohistorical Planetary Tapestry: the fascinating integral narratives of Steiner, Gebser and Wilber, 2007) as part of her exploration of The Evolution of Consciousness as a Planetary Imperative (2007). Of particular interest is then the association on a longer time scale of the integral approach of Ken Wilber with spiral dynamics (as noted above). How might that emphasis be related to the case for consideration of helicoidal flow (as presented above)? In the evolution of human consciousness, from a self-referential perspective, such movement would need to take account of the problematic dynamics between those of different "colour", as coded within the spiral dynamics scheme.

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