EBE communications (Paradigm-shifting through Transposition of Key) sending the message
Re-reading as a method
The radical suggestion is that all conceptual patterns, from any discipline, can be profitably "re-read" as metaphors -- through which insights can be gained of relevance to other domains of knowledge. The body of knowledge, generated by the disciplines over the years, may therefore be systematically (re-)explored as a resource for implicit insights. In a sense the geological layers of knowledge laid down over the centuries, including "fossilized knowledge", may be mined. Much will be irrelevant, but there are seams of insight of great value. The challenge is to separate the two.
In many disciplines, work undertaken decades (or even years) in the past is no longer of any interest. This implies that work done today is in most cases a fairly rapidly wasting asset for society as a whole -- other than for historical purposes. The difficulty with this perspective is that it neglects the challenge of educating each generation anew, and the problem of cultures and sectors of society without the resources to deliver the latest insights in a form in which they can be absorbed. As with many technologies, obsolete presentations continue to be used and to have their place. This can be seen in the distribution of out-dated textbooks in developing countries and in their use of "out-dated" traditional technologies. Some impoverished countries are obliged to operate on a basis of continuing repair of equipment, rather than its progressive replacement.
The reality of society is that different generations of information and technology coexist, often quite fruitfully. Old technologies may be rediscovered as more appropriate than the new. Portions of new technologies may be recycled in strangely innovative ways -- as may be seen in the use of old automobile tires in certain cultures. There is therefore merit in considering conceptual patterns from the past as a non-wasting asset that may prove more appropriate under certain circumstances than the most recent. Whilst more sophisticated, the latter may be both less accessible and less robust in practice. (This argument is developed elsewhere)
Challenge: sustaining community through dialogue
The challenge is to sustain new kinds of community through new kinds of dialogue that enable new kinds of insight. This may involve a clearer understanding of how existing sustainable communities are sustained through particular patterns of dialogue.
Transformative magic vs Conversational sprawl: What is exchanged in a dialogue which is sustaining? Is it as much what is exchanged as the pattern through which the exchange takes place? Much can be sustained by conversation about the weather in certain cultures. It is then the phatic communication that is vital. Much can be sustained by greeting people regularly encountered in a neighbourhood. These can become conversational habits. How to distinguish between habitual communication and richer forms that are felt to be nourishing, enhancing and transformative -- even 'magical'?
How much 'enhancing' is necessary for a pattern of activity to be 'sustaining'? Sustaining activity can be necessary, but it may not be sufficient where there is a need for a sense of 'newness', of 'happening' -- especially in the eyes of the young and adventuresome, or those on journeys of individuation. Sustainable community may in that sense be a form of 'subsistence' that denies the need for growth and development through which the community could 'thrive'. So-called 'sustainable development' may also be no more than the psycho-social equivalent of urban 'sprawl'.
Communities of discourse: There are many communities of discourse based on a style of communication. The nature of the style that sustains the interest of the community in the dialogue may be of many kinds. Most generally it is influenced by sharing of some form: background or history, language, preoccupations, preferences, beliefs, activities, etc. But the challenge of sustainable community lies beyond contexts based on solely on sharing -- in circumstances where the charm of sharing is no longer a sufficient attractant and differences are deeply held as a source of identity.
What makes for sustainable community where people are indifferent, or actively antagonistic, to others practising different styles of communication -- or where they believe they have had experiences and learnings that give them a perspective that they cannot easily share? These are real issues in places like Kosovo, Jerusalem, Rwanda, Sudan, or indeed in many urban slums. It is of course the case that special circumstances generate a special basis for dialogue. Veterans from opposing sides can have more in common than with non-combattants of their own side, as with torturers and their victims.
Special languages: Jargons easily develop amongst groups of people in order to sustain their communities. This is the case in many institutional settings whether prisons, military, corporations, student bodies, intelligence services, organized crime, sects or secret societies. More intriguing is the possibility that such jargons might be deliberately cultivated and developed to sustain a community. Examples of this have been studied (ICA, Hunger Project, EST) in terms of the generative metaphors they offer.
It could be argued that the whole push for political correctness in language has been an attempt to develop a pattern of discourse that would be more inclusive of those typically excluded. The extension of this that stresses 'positive' phrasing -- rejecting grammatical forms containing negatives -- is promoted as an effort to empower rather than disempower. However, efforts to design out negative feedback concerning inadequacies can lead to their own difficulties -- of which the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle is the most dramatic example. Institutions have to discover ways to acquire negative feedback without endangering the image and career of those who provide it. But this is also a challenge for individuals in acquiring feedback from friends concerning the suitability of their attire, the tastiness of their cooking, the boring quality of their discourse, etc. There is also a subtle monotony to being constantly exposed to positive feedback -- a real problem for leaders surrounded by sycophants.
Designing a more appropriate language for sustainable community
Possibility: Given this context, what possibility is there to design new languages that might bypass the disempowering limitations of existing languages and respond more effectively to the challenges of the times? What form might a language of sustainable community take? What features would it require? How complicated would it be and how difficult to learn? How much fun would it need to be?
The many efforts towards an international language, of which Esperanto is the most widely promoted example, need to be compared with this possibility. Such international languages tend to be designed to be readily comprehensible, logical compromises in terms of existing languages. As such they are primarily exercises in linguistics. Whilst designed for communication, they are not designed to respond to challenging new circumstances. What is proposed here is quite different.
Reframing challenges: The focus of such a new language (or set of languages) would be to find new ways to acknowledge variety, provide it with a coherent context, respond more dynamically and creatively to changing circumstances, and provide users with the kind of ownership and identity that they acquire through special jargons. Fundamental to such design is that the language should have a range of aesthetic qualities that would be vital to the workings of the language and its coherence -- rather than as purely decorative features. It has to be intriguing and enjoyable to use. As with poetry, associations need to resonate meaningfully to provide a coherence to discourse that contrasts with the conventional list-fixation in discussion of sustainable community.
Strategically it could be a seen as a radical experiment in developing a language that would enable problems, and strategies in response to them, to be understood in new ways. Rather than adapt existing languages to deal with the problems that emerge as a result of the inadequacies of the conceptualization to which such languages give rise, this would be a language designed to sustain community and the creative responses to its development. Whereas 'problems' emerge as unforeseen challenges that have to be dealt with using the clunky tools of existing languages, such a language would have a proactive approach to problems and to the dynamics of change that existing languages have so much difficulty in handling.
Potential and precedents: The potential of this approach can be illustrated by cases where a relationship between two (or more) people is sustained when they communicate through one language, but is endangered when they endeavour to interact through another. The glass ceiling effect faced by executive women is partially attributed to their exclusion from the bonding discourse associated with the club (golf, drinking, strip) environment of professional male colleagues with whom they otherwise communicate fruitfully. The survival of multilingual couples may be safeguarded and enhanced in one language but undermined in another in which their interactions are experienced as discordant.
In negotiating difficult treaties a language, such as English, may be preferred because of a certain degree of ambiguity of interpretation is possible between the parties in conflict that would be absent if the treaty were articulated in French or German, for example. A Taiwan spokesman in 1999 argued that 'there is one nation and two countries'. The statement was made in English because the distinction between 'nation' (in the sense of people or race), 'country' (separate from, or against -- from the Latin contra), and 'state' as a unit of government, cannot be effectively made in Chinese. What distinctions relevant to sustainable community is it effectively impossible to make in English or other dominant languages?
There are precedents for this proposal. New computer languages are typically designed to deal with problems inadequately handled through old computer languages. It has been argued that an MBA program is primarily acquisition of a new language through which to deal with the corporate challenges of commerce. The jargon of many disciplines can be seen in this light. The strange phrasing employed by the military ('target acquisition', 'collateral damage', etc) can be seen as a language designed to maximize military efficiency -- and minimize humanitarian sensitivity (at a time when they are required to perform 'humanitarian missions'). Latin could be seen as the language appropriate to the administration of the Roman Empire and the conceptual needs of its inheritors, the Catholic Church, and European academic life over many centuries. The language of organizational processes (commission, voting, assembling, presiding, etc) has its historical origins in this religious context. Latin might even be considered as the language most supportive of unconstrained growth. Are there languages more sensitive to the patterns and processes of environmental checks and balances that are so easy to deny in English?
In this light a special language could be seen as a way of exporting intractable problems for other languages to address -- as such it is an exercise in denial. What languages are designed to deal only with the 'soluble problems', and with what language do those who have to deal with these problems communicate? What kind of language might be able to import the problems exported by other languages?
Despite its success, the danger is to assume that English is adequate to the conceptual challenges of contemporary and future crises and their resolution. It has been argued that the development community has already developed its own jargon based on English -- and the complaint is that it is stale and sterile and poorly adapted to the needs it purports to serve. There is therefore a case for exploring a new language unconstrained by the styles of communication that are common to those languages currently aggravating the challenges through their cognitive limitations.
Design traps: But how might such a new language be designed? There are some obvious traps. It could be designed by a committee that would manage an approved terminology and grammar -- the models favoured for the continuing development of French and Spanish, for example. It could be the subject of an international competition -- the design approach favoured in major architectural endeavours. Such approaches would suffer from the delivery problem that is basic to most challenges of world society.
There is also the implication that the language would be produced as a form of finished product that would not permit creative tinkering by those who use it -- as with many manufactured products and designed environments. This is contrary to the increasing recognition of the vital importance of popular participation and involvement -- if apathy is to be avoided. Then there is the problem of teaching and learning the language -- or set of languages -- in a period when successful delivery of any form of education is problematic..
Evolutionary approach: Rather than imposing a top-down design, the key might be adoption of an evolutionary approach. Rather than endeavouring presumptuously to introduce something 'other' into the many different cultural contexts, the key might be to encourage the 'growth' of the new language(s) from meaningful conceptual seeds within those contexts -- cultivation rather than manufacture.
This approach might be designed around the interaction of the following principles:
- Focus on, and encourage, development of metaphors from local culture, that mesh with it, and may be derived from traditional stories in that culture. Giving prominence to illustrative metaphor, over other features of the language of that culture, orients people to that which can carry and transform their thinking -- rather than lock them into the particularities of their language and the overwhelming quantity of concepts and information that other languages imply that they should acquire. Metaphor is therefore promoted as the organizing principle for knowledge and its acquisition -- if and when it is required.
- Focus on what enables new understanding of the challenges of the society and new ways of responding to them. The challenge is to focus on what inspires and sustains growth of people within that culture rather than on ancillary concerns which can be left to their daily language(s). The object is to give prominence to what calls for action and the possibilities for that action, rather than on much of the context that encumbers traditional educational exercises.
- Encourage exchange of metaphor between cultures in a spirit of cross-fertilization. Again the emphasis is on metaphor and its transformative power and only secondarily on the language through which that metaphor may be articulated at any one time. In this sense it is such metaphors that are the vital cultural products. Some metaphors may not travel well, especially when they are the vehicles that best carry the distinctive features of the culture, vital to the identity of its people.
- Encourage identification of metaphoric modules. As metaphors emerge from their particular contexts, the challenge is to associate them with operational concerns and contexts -- metaphors relating to food, water, security, employment, health, etc. The is a step beyond 'best practice' information initiatives to the metaphors that enable people to determine for themselves what may or may not be applicable in their situation. What are the sets of metaphors most useful for dealing with knowledge about food? About water? In each case these would include metaphors to articulate the streetwise challenges of dealing with those who manipulate and abuse information and access relating to food, water, etc. Whether appropriate information is accessible or not, the emphasis is on the primary importance of enabling metaphors to guide use of what is available.
Alternative rhythm: It is so easily assumed that everyone needs to speak a language that happens to be dominant during at a particular historical period. The question is not asked whether the apparent ineffectiveness of those so dominated (and marginalized) is due to their need for another language that could better carry their cultural insights and styles of organization. Africa, for example,has been on the receiving end of colonial organizing principles, the 'Westminster style' of democracy, and yet appears to be in dire straits despite decades of 'development programs'.
It is useful to accept the inappropriateness of much conventional management thinking in response to the dramatic developmental situation in Africa -- as a basis for exploring more radical frameworks compatible with resources in African cultures, that are not taken seriously by the North. In the light of earlier work on the relevance of the cognitive frameworks associated with poetry and music in articulating more relevant policies, the question might be raised as to whether insights into rhythm and harmony cannot be used to catalyze the emergence of new forms of organization and management, whether at the grass-roots or strategic level.
It could be hypothesized that by giving legitimacy to skills common in aural cultures, notably those associated with song, new insights may emerge which place African cultures at an advantage (notably in comparison with Northern countries) in navigating through the turbulent periods of future decades. There is some probability that such insights are more readily accessible, as an unexplored developmental resource, at many levels of African society than in other cultures. This approach would also challenge the tendency to view any appreciative evaluation of African skills in this respect as a subtle form of disparagement. Rhythm may be the key to organizational breakthroughs in Africa -- just as it might be the key to the increasing political apathy of younger generations in the North.
Transforming in a transforming world
Statics vs Dynamics: To a preponderant degree the world is described in terms of static features -- despite the fact that it is experienced dynamically, especially in the case of its challenges and opportunities. The world is made up of nation 'states', and headed by 'statesmen' who make 'statements', and may report on the 'state of the environment' or the 'state of the economy'. There is even a Forum on the 'State of the World'. People, like the weather, are described as being 'in a state'. In each case, 'dynamic' would be more appropriate but the usage is not accepted -- although the original Club of Rome report was based on a study of 'world dynamics'. Like the human body, civilization is based on processes -- whether we are aware of this or not.
This static bias extends to the description of species in the environment. As with people, most animals are described and scientifically categorized in terms of how they can be still-photographed and measured -- and not in terms of behaviours that might only be captured on video. Language itself is very clumsy in describing or thinking about behaviour. And yet it tends to be through dynamics -- rather than statics -- that people work and derive meaningful pleasure from their leisure time. Is personal identity perceived as static or dynamic -- whether by the person identified, or by others? In a transforming world, does it seem appropriate to have a static sense identity? How could one learn about process identity?
The concepts through which the world is experienced, and through which people describe themselves, follow this static pattern. They are often represented by points, or areas -- as in the Venn diagrams of symbolic logic. Even processes are grasped through what amounts to a series of conceptual snapshots of states -- as in early flip-card experiments leading to cinematography. In this way a river is conceptually static -- a line across a map -- rather than a 'flowing'. It is possible that the ability to understand 'flowing' as a dynamic process is an undeveloped or rare skill, whose absence is poorly recognized (cf Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
Where people rely primarily on one sense -- such as sight -- drawing attention to other senses (such as smell, or sound) is problematic. Although illiteracy and dyslexia are well-recognized as the focus of international programs, innumeracy is reframed as amusingly inconsequential, as with inability to derive meaning from tabular information or structural presentations (maps, system diagrams, circuit diagrams). In a time of systemic and ecological crises, why is there no term for inability to read patterns -- or it that equivalent to tastelessness? Understanding process is treated as of even less consequence, where snapshot information is available.
The real insights into process are to be found in body sports (martial arts, surfing, acrobatics) and the arts (music, dance, drama) where comprehension through kinaesthetic intelligence of a pattern of movement as a flowing whole is the core of the art. But how to communicate the distinction between snapshot understanding of a symphony and the flowing patterns over time of any musical composition -- between recognizing the beat and understanding the evolving musical pattern? In discussion of the processes sustaining development, very little policy communication within the international community is in a non-textual form and no sense of this limitation has been expressed.
Stopping the world: By using language to conceptually freeze features of the environment and experience, much can be achieved. Having 'stopped' the world in this way, what has been stopped can then be manipulated as with childrens' blocks. Model castles and other things can be constructed -- as many academics and consultants enthusiastically do as a basis for international programs or studies 'under laboratory conditions'. These can be treated as real for certain purposes -- which are often enthralling.
But, as in certain magical tales, this freezing process seals away the secret life of what is so frozen. It is buried, like Merlin in his cave. The conceptual chunks into which frozen reality can be broken do indeed permit development of a panoply of constructs that become the basis for civilization as we know it. But like magma from beneath the Earth's crust, the dynamic processes have not gone away. They may well come bursting forth in what are perceived as natural disasters, inexplicable discontent within the population, or deep personal dissatisfaction with a hollow lifestyle. The conceptual frameworks developed by civilization are not proving adequate to governance of its processes -- despite desparate claims to the contrary.
A major advantage of freezing features of the environment is that they tend to stay frozen when one's awareness is attracted to other features of the environment. A stable, conceptually hygienic context can be constructed by effectively tiling the world with labels. That this is made up of frozen processes, is of no consequence -- again rather like inhabiting a magical castle whose walls are made up of living beings long frozen into immobility. In this sense one is a magician inhabiting a castle of stasis. The tragedy is that the magician has forgotten the spells through which the freezing was done and through which the stasis may be broken.
The problem with freezing reality is that people cannot live, or thrive, in a world of stasis -- in the bleak and arid environment typically depicted as surrounding such a black magician's castle. Life is nourished and sustained by living processes. It is ironic that modern civilization may have conceptual characteristics analogous to glaciation. Globalization may be the final onset of a conceptual Ice Age.
Underlying dynamics: The paradox is that life goes on irrespective of the manner in which people may choose to freeze it. Rivers still flow beneath the ice. There is therefore a case for seeking ways to relate to this living reality beyond the models and constructs that seek to freeze it. In such a search the dynamics of behaviour would seem to be a key. The conceptual constructs serve, like mnemonic aids, to remind us of the dynamics to which we do not know how to relate -- of the reality with which we do not know how to dance.
Suppose an 'elephant', as we choose to perceive and photograph it, was effectively the tip of a behavioural iceberg that we have essentially given up handling. So what we dimly admire in the majesty and dignity of the elephant, could be processes in which we participate and of which we are part -- at some level. Similarly with the behavioural qualities of a swallow or a trout. Some folk cultures (Native American, Aborigine, etc) that cultivate a relation to totemic animals endeavour to explain themselves in these terms. The animals in the environment in some manner then 'carry' our understanding of processes -- performing a task that we have effectively forgotten and denied. In this way they carry forgotten dimensions of ourselves -- forgotten processes in our larger selves.
Downsizing identity: Civilization engages in constructing definitions of its citizens and the nature of human beings. These constructs tend to be simplistic or mechanistic at best -- as any reading of relevant legal or academic documents will show. People endeavour to rise above such alienating definitions through art and the behaviours in which they engage. The difficulty is that civilization has set in motion initiatives to destroy features of the environment that are carrying unconscious, or culturally repressed, memories of our larger selves. In addition to effectively entombing us in demeaning conceptual frameworks, it is destroying the living symbols that in some way together carry our larger identities -- however challenging they may be to our present understanding. Elephants are now more widely understood through cartoon characterizations and advertising clips -- making a mockery of forgotten parts of ourselves.
The larger reality may however be that we are effectively downsizing our identities -- and severely diminishing ourselves in ways essentially beyond our present understanding. It is not only the rainforests that are being destroyed but that part of our larger selves that is of equivalent complexity and whose processes are carried by the forgotten complexity and richness of those rainforests.
The loss of species from nature is presented as regrettable but inevitable, although some effort is made to engage in palliative programs. Some concern for lost species is expressed in terms of lost remedial health product opportunities. But the loss may be far greater in terms of lost cultural health opportunities -- we are destroying the potential of our civilization. In this sense it is 'cultural rainforests' that are our health being cut and burnt down for simplistic reasons justified by primitive economics.
'Carrying capacity' of the environment: What are the secret dynamics of ourselves that are still carried for us by features of our environment? How can one discover them? Are we ourselves the carriers of larger meaning for other species?
There are many who still attribute deeper significance to mountains, waterfalls, rivers and other larger features of the land -- or the species associated with them. For groups this may take the form of recognizing sacredness in them -- and they are then the focus of pilgrimage. But for many individuals features of the landscape are appreciated beyond the ways in which civilization describes them. Mountains, rivers and waterfalls can have deep meaning within people -- irrespective of their appreciation by others.
To what extent do people have waterfall or mountain 'modalities' to their being -- from which they effectively distance themselves, because the vistas and dynamic engagement evoked are more than can be managed through conventional static categorization of reality? What are we doing to these modalities when we fill the rivers with life-destroying pollutants, trash the highest mountains, destroy the forests, and domesticate the few species that we allow to survive in our environment?
In this context, what is to be made of the homogenization associated with globalization? There is concern, notably in the European Union, that in order to rationalize trade, the variety of approved crop species needs to be reduced. As a carrier of larger meanings, to what extent does globalization of this kind dangerously reduce the cultural variety on which our civilization may depend to survive and to thrive? Is the process reducing the psycho-social carrying capacity of the environment?
Clearly we are forced to work with the conceptual tunnel vision through which we have been trained by our civilization to view the environment. But we can allow ourselves to remember that each conceptually frozen construct (making up our magical castle on its blighted landscape) is holding a secret dynamic for us. We are surrounded by mnemonic aids that echo understandings of our larger living selves. We are surrounded by keys to the transformation of our world of stasis into a living reality. What then is not a key to transformation?
Metaphor: turning the key: It is in this context that the potential of metaphor needs to be recognized. Metaphor offers a way of 'turning the key'. It can transport us out of the limit condition imposed by the conceptual freezing process and into other spaces and processes in which we can live and breathe. The question is whether our civilization is also destroying the ability of ordinary people to turn the key. Metaphor is deliberately designed out of many communication processes as undesirable. The possibilities of metaphor have no more status in education than grammar and forced appreciation of literary style -- quickly forgotten by school leavers. And yet metaphor is widely and cruelly misused in framing those selected as scapegoats in any bullying process in such institutions.
How do we learn how to 'do metaphor' to turn the key? A good way of exploring this is to look at how people, even in the most desperate of circumstances, engage in humour to transform their experience. Like metaphor, humour is a process of shifting frameworks. Many have a 'sense of humour' -- some do not. Some can only appreciate jokes, and some can 'make jokes'. But it is not a rare skill. Music is another example of a process through which people are moved into a different process framework. Many can only appreciate music, a few can 'make music' and are able, at will, to engage in 'transposition of key'. But again it is not a rare skill.
One of the reasons metaphor is disparaged by the sophisticated is that it is seen as a substitute for use of relevant concepts and thus a mark of lack of education and/or verbal skill. However, for the most creative, metaphor is often the vehicle through which they first give form to new insights -- notably in fundamental physics and complexity theory. Metaphor is widely used by those without formal education -- notably in slums in developing countries.
The question is then why those who are unlikely to receive a formal education should not be encouraged to use metaphor -- 'its like...' -- to articulate and communicate insights. Indeed this is a highly valued traditional teaching role of metaphor when confronted with intangible complexity. Who is failing to encourage its use as a short-cut? Has Unesco ever advocated the use of metaphor to achieve some of its educational ambitions?
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