Transcending One-eyed Global Modelling Perspectives: Incorporating Under-Currents into Global Circulation of Value
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 6 Dec 2010
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
Produced on the occasion of the revelations of US diplomatic cables via WikiLeaks.
Introduction
The dissemination by WikiLeaks of classified communications of the US military and diplomatic services allows serious attention to be given to systemic phenomena which are typically dismissed as being “unconfirmed” allegations of marginal significance — at worst exceptional incidents. Whilst “everyone” has long acknowledged the extent of secrecy and corruption, this was typically minimized or denied in official communications, establishment media and education systems. More problematic is the degree to which such systemic phenomena have been denied or minimized in academic studies and modelling of the world system.
The phenomena have however become increasingly evident through the revelation of “scandals” at the very highest level, whether involving embezzlement of funds or “illicit” sexual relationships. Many with experience of contractual relationships are aware of the extent to which they are dependent on “commissions” or other forms of bribery and unmentionable pressures — or even blackmail and “dirty tricks”.
The concern here is with the psychosocial processes of the transition between “overt” and “covert” in various flows which interweave to constitute a global system of circulating “value”. The question is how to understand and represent the global nature of the dynamic of these interconnected flows — “transcending” the denial of the extent of what is essentially covert. In the absence of any such consideration, the global system can only be understood “superficially”, however much that representation is appreciated by many. For those involved in many forms of business, such superficiality does not represent the “real” world. Rather it is the camouflage for the ways business is often “really done”.
This exploration follows from various others, notably the profiling of the many “world problems” perceived by international constituencies in the various editions of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential as well as other studies (Global Strategic Implications of the Unsaid: from myth-making towards a wisdom society, 2003; Mapping the Global Underground, 2010; Designing Global Self-governance for the Future: patterns of dynamic integration of the netherworld, 2010; Globalization within a Global Potemkin Society, 2000).
Ultimately the question to be asked is how adequate global models can be developed to enable credible global governance in the absence of meaningful integration of the “unsaid”. The approach taken here follows from a previous suggestion to benefit, as a suggestive template, from the relatively comprehensible global complexity of the thermohaline circulation of the ocean currents around the world (Enabling Moral Currency Circulation, 2010). The phenomena to be interwoven are therefore explored through the metaphor of “currents”. A set of other images is used to highlight alternative ways of thinking about the experiential continuity between psychosocial “surface-currents” and “under-currents”, notably in terms of knot theory and topology. It is this inclusion and incorporation of the hidden which seen as vital to the global governance of the future — a “two-eyed approach” vital to the sense of perspective of which the current “one-eyed approach” is deprived.
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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Dec 2010.
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