Eliciting Patterns of Global Consensus via Tensional Integrity
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 24 Jul 2023
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service
Interweaving Agreement and Disagreement Coherently with Force-Directed Layout Tensegrity
Introduction
18 Jul 2023 – Much is made of the need for consensus in global affairs, most notably with respect to major crises such as climate change. Efforts are made to engineer a form of consensus, as is evident in the current initiative of the World Health Organization with respect to any future risk to human health in the light of the controversially orchestrated pandemic response (Pandemic prevention, preparedness and response accord, WHO, 28 June 2023; Hell No to the WHO Pandemic Treaty, Global Research, 4 November 2022; The Case Against a Pandemic Treaty, Think Global Health, 26 November 2021). Of particular concern are the unforeseen environmental challenges which may be deemed to be a risk to health — thereby triggering an inappropriate response. Climate change may be considered in this light.
Consensus? Despite the articulation by the UN of the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN now intends to seek a higher order of consensus through the Secretary-General’s vision for the future of global cooperation in the form of a report titled Our Common Agenda (2021) — “to get the world back on track by turbocharging action on the Sustainable Development Goals”. This is presented with a view to the formulation of an action-oriented Pact for the Future which is expected to be agreed by Member States through intergovernmental negotiations on issues they decide to take forward on the occasion of the UN Summit of the Future planned for 2024. Our Common Agenda builds on the 12 commitments contained in the Declaration on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.
Curiously it is far from evident what is meant by consensus and the urgent need for unity as variously expressed — faced as it is by the recognition of diversity and its cultivation. How has this played out in the use by UNESCO of consensus decision-making? (Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani, What Exactly is Voting to Consensual Deliberation? Philosophical Papers, 50, 2021, 1-2; Darcy K. Leach, When Freedom Is Not an Endless Meeting: a new look at efficiency in consensus-based decision making, The Sociological Quarterly, 57, 2021, 1; Claudia Liuzza (The Making and UN-making of Consensus: institutional inertia in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, International Journal of Cultural Property, 28, 2021, 2)
Symbols? As an evocative inspiration for the peoples of the world, considerable effort is made to embody a sense of global unity and consensus by using the iconography of the globe in multiple forms — as previously implied by that of the circle. It remains completely unclear how any such symbol “translates” into the practicalities of a world in turmoil with conflicting preoccupations — a challenge carefully neglected. This difficulty of “translation” is similarly evident when a sense of consensual unity and harmony is articulated in the subtleties of music and song, as with the Anthem of Europe (A Singable Earth Charter, EU Constitution or Global Ethic? 2006; Reversing the Anthem of Europe to Signal Distress, 2016). The pattern is evident when the focus is on its negation, as in the much-appreciated painting of Guernica (1937) — but seemingly without any concern or capacity with regard to any necessary revision of that insight (Reimagining Guernica to Engage the Antitheses of a Cancel Culture, 2022).
The geodesic dome tends to be featured as a global symbol on the occasion of world events. Partially inspired by that widely recognized geometry, the concern in what follows is with the relevance of the principles enabling that seemingly improbable design — demonstrably inherently “sustainable”.
Expressed succinctly, how improbable does viable consensus need to be in practice — in contrast to the more comprehensible forms upheld as models of what is desirable. The status of cathedrals, temples, mosques, and the like, would seem to be inadequate to the challenge of the times — especially to the extent that they embody world views in conflict with each other — each deeming itself to be primary.
Tensegrity: The exploration here follows from earlier arguments with regard to that possibility (From Networking to Tensegrity Organization, 1984; Implementing Principles by Balancing Configurations of Functions: a tensegrity organization approach, 1979). Consideration has been given to such a possibility from the perspective of management cybernetics by Stafford Beer and his promotion of a viable system model and syntegration (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994; John Coghlan, Reflections on the Book, Beyond Dispute: a syntegration in Switzerland, 2016). Some consideration of the possibility featured in articulation of the preoccupations of the Rio Earth Summit which gave rise to Agenda 21 (1992) as the precursor to the UN’s later pattern of SDGs (Configuring Globally and Contending Locally: shaping the global network of local bargains, 1992).
The further development of this possibility follows from arguments regarding the relevance of tensegrity principles to psychosocial dynamics and the clues it offers to clues to collective strategic resilience and unshackling knowledge (Transcending Psychosocial Polarization with Tensegrity, 2021). Based as tensegrity is on polyhedral symmetry, such development follows from Identifying Polyhedra Enabling Memorable Strategic Mapping (2020) with its vital implications for collective memorability (Memorable Packing of Global Strategies in a Polyhedral Rosetta Stone, 2023).
Of current interest, with the development of web technology and augmented reality (or virtual reality) is the potential relevance of force-directed layout to the design and visualization of tensegrity structures, anticipated by its application to eliciting coherent patterns of preoccupations in 3D (Interactive Polyhedral Configuration of Preoccupations, 2023).
Artificial intelligence? With respect to the requisite “improbability” of strategic designs of relevance to a chaotic future — and their comprehensibility — the rapidly developing possibilities offered by artificial intelligence merit considerations. Given the alarm evoked by such possibilities, it is appropriate to note the AI for Good Global Summit (2023) organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – the UN specialized agency for information and communication technology – in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland.
The ITU is positioned as the leading action-oriented United Nations platform promoting AI to advance health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, sustainable infrastructure, and other global development priorities (Artificial Intelligence for Good, ITU Council, 2023; Global summit on AI takes action to ensure artificial intelligence benefits humanity, ITU, 20 June 2023; ITU Statement on the closing of the 2023 AI for Good Global Summit, 7 July 2023). A valuable contextual perspective on the ITU initiative has however been provided (Ville Aula and and James Bowles, Stepping back from Data and AI for Good: current trends and ways forward, Big Data and Society, May 2023). There is as yet no trace of how problematic UN “summit dynamics” may have been enhanced by AI at the ITU event — or envisaged there as a vital requirement for future global governance.
The innovations evident from neural learning have been well-publicized with respect to the strategic achievements of AI in chess and the game of go. In the form of ChatGPT, indicative examples of guidance in such matters are provided in the following exploration. Were the debates at the ITU Summit used as a means of “training” AI — and if not, why not? (Use of ChatGPT to Clarify Possibility of Dialogue of Higher Quality, 2023).
Consensus of “higher order”? It is appropriate to emphasize that the patterns of design enabling forms of consensus of a higher order may be quite distinct from the simpler models of unity which tend to be promoted as credible — despite their demonstrable inadequacy. The complexity of society clearly calls for news ways of interweaving agreement and disagreement, as implied by the coherence of biodiversity in which every species is necessarily “someone else’s lunch” (Using Disagreements for Superordinate Frame Configuration, 1992). In this sense tensegrity has been recognized as fundamental to the coherence of cellular architecture (Donald E. Ingber, et al, Tensegrity, cellular biophysics, and the mechanics of living systems, Reports on Progress in Physics, 77, 2014, 4). From the perspective of biomimicry, it might be assumed that its principles could be of relevance to global organization.
The following exercise assumes that use of force-directed layout in engendering a tensegrity may be especially suggestive of the manner in which global coherence may well be intimately related to some form of self-organization, namely a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. This perspective is in fundamental contrast to any conventional assumption that such order must necessarily be designed or planned — inspired by consensus.
“Two-dimensional strategies”? With respect to any “higher order” of consensus, there is therefore a case to be made for the limitations of representation of strategic plans in two-dimensional iconography in a period when the challenges are global, and therefore minimally three-dimensional as argued with respect to the potentially hidden facets of global strategy of NATO potentially highlighted through polyhedra (Envisaging NATO Otherwise — in 3D and 4D? 2017).
The conventional restriction to “planar strategies” visualized in 2D can be readily understood as reinforcing a “flat earth” perspective unsuited to “global” navigation. The problem is evident in the 2D iconography of the most recent strategic articulation by the Club of Rome with respect to the pentagram of “five turnarounds”, as previously discussed and illustrated (Application of force-directed layout to Club of Rome reports, 2023).
Psychosocial “disconnect”: Although there is an extensive literature on tensegrity from a mathematical, architectural and aesthetic perspective, those preoccupations extend to only a limited degree to their relevance to strategic issues of knowledge management and psychosocial and organization. This “disconnect” is unfortunately evident in exploring the adaptation of much-studied polyhedral configurations to the possibility of the representation of tensegrity structures in force-directed representations. This is despite the degree to which that modality may be readily held to be reflective of the principles in question. Force-directed layout has however been extensively adapted to the representation of social networks — although their cognitive significance for governance and collective comprehension appears to have remained elusive.
Weaving and braiding patterns? The focus in what follows is therefore on the practicalities of representation of force-directed tensegrities in a web environment — in order to enable exploratory interaction with them worldwide, given the support and innovation to be expected from AI. There is a particular irony to such practicality in that the conceptual challenges from a rational perspective (potentially trivial for some relatively obscure disciplines) are compensated by a considerable degree of familiarity with their comprehension from the perspective of weaving, knitting and basket-weaving.
The bridging discipline is braiding, curiously a focus in it own right from a mathematical perspective — as with juggling — evoking recognition of their implications for governance (Warp and Weft of Future Governance: ninefold interweaving of incommensurable threads of discourse, 2010; Governance as “juggling” — Juggling as “governance” 2018; The Future of Comprehension: conceptual birdcages and functional basket-weaving, 1980).
There is a degree of irony to the metaphoric role attributed to “baskets” — highlighted by the four “baskets” of issues into which The Helsinki Final Act was divided on the occasion of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975). The metaphor has been employed in framing Sino-US relations (Differences buried in ‘basket’ of issues, South China Morning Post, 26 October 1997). More recently the metaphor has featured in discussion of UN reform (Member States Move Towards a “Basket” Approach, Global Policy Forum, 21 March 2008). Could articulation of strategies indeed be fruitfully explored in terms of “basket-weaving”?
Curiously global governance could be recognized as associated intuitively with “spherical braiding”, exemplified by the challenges of constructing the balls that are central to the ball games which are such a focus of global attention. Both the association football and that of sepak takraw (kick volleyball) follow the pattern of the truncated icosahedron fundamental to a molecular configuration — the C60 fullerene — esteemed to be of considerable significance in the light of its stability (Sustainability through Global Patterns of 60-fold Organization, 2022). The seam pattern of the tennis ball and the baseball follow an analogous geometrical pattern (Game ball design as holding insight of relevance to global governance? 2020).
Given the focus on practicalities, a degree of emphasis is given in what follows to the propensity for error — as would be the case with weaving and juggling. This propensity is of particular relevance if viable governance is to be understood metaphorically in terms of viable weaving — with errors made as understanding of the requirements for viable consensus and unity develops.
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