House of Wisdom (Arabic بيت الحكمة Bait
al-Hikma)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom
See: Story Manu
in 1001 Nights:
[1285] GlobalEthics The "Ethics Summit"
Story about Harun Al Raschids
son Manu, ... Heiner Benking Independent Futurist and
Facilitator, Associate of the Millennium Project of ...
coforum.de/index.php?GlobalEthics
and ETHICS SUMMIT KÜHLUNGSBORN:
See also:
Tagore Einstein
Council and Foundation COUNCIL Meeting
in June in Berlin
STEINBRUCH
Material for “CONSTRUCTIONS”:
The article is a revised version of a plenary lecture and
available in the APLS Journal.
Show or Schau: http://benking.de/show-schau.html
Show or Schau?
Lynton Caldwell (1999) allows us a look behind
the facades or under the surface of the dangers threatening humankind. I
subscribe to his analysis and synthesis of the threads and dilemmas, including
his four lines of action.
Given this unique chance to comment on such a
fundamental and basic article, I will not lament over words, dates, or issues
left out in his piece, as this would be the typical trick of people avoiding
the big picture and the urgencies and immediacies at hand. Instead, I will try
to go with him on a higher plateau of pondering where humankind is going and
what the issues and challenges are in my view after reading his article.
Shared Images and Models
I definitely agree with Caldwell that we are in danger of losing our
shared rationality. This danger is real, as we are not equipped by evolution
for such fundamental and rapid change. Subject to this glut of new ways, means,
and messages, we are out of touch and subject to confusion about the basics of
our existence, like the "loss of distance" and the questioning of our
feelings, positions, and perspectives in this new, strange environment. Being
and feeling "lost in space" (slide 6), we try to avoid confronting
our outdated world-models and views; instead, we invent "spaces of
flow" or "a second flood" as part of a post-modern cyberculture. There are alternative and non-dualistic
models that we can structure, merge, and morph (more about this later), but we
are afraid of leaving the mold, afraid of leaving the
shores and sailing into new lands. I will return to alternative models and
views, even on very central terms like "net" or "space"
later; at this point, I just want to give an example of how we use language
metaphorically. I invite you, for example, to see "space" as an
extensional potential that allows us to make issues real, and solid, and allows
us to make issues and contexts real instead of making us feel "lost in
space." So please take our terms for real, not as empty in a void of
nothingness. We focus here on terms, as the modern technologies have usurped central
terms like "space" or the "net." (slide
6)
In a series at the Humboldt
University in Berlin at the end of the millennium, which
we called "Zeiten-Wende" or "Zeiten-Welten-Wende," (slide 4) I focussed on the
modern media impact, on pictures and icons we use to paint and communicate
possible futures. Examples from thinkers and writers through the ages included
"show" (Illich), "varieté"
(Huxley), "sweet mash" (in German, "brei" or pastry) according to the Grimm’s fairy
tales. These pictures or analogies describe our modern world of edutainment, politainment, lawtainment, or
bread and games as we know from Roman times, as in the following examples:
images describing loss of control or freedom include "prison"
(Orwell), "(second/final) flood" (Bible, Ascott,
Lévy) "bomb" (Einstein for
telecommunications impact). Lynton Caldwell is obviously not alone when
pondering about our destiny, but he does more—he invites us take a "middle
road."
Making Concepts Real and Adding Context
And that is exactly what I am working on and
want to outline here: real alternatives. We have three alternatives: we can
either immerse ourselves in the issues, or take on an observer status that
makes us a little more immune to the details, or as the middle path, oscillate
between the different perspectives, but in a way that we know where we are and
what we are looking at, and in which context. Our exercise is one of physical
and of mental mobility at the same time, bridging objects and subjects,
re-establishing of creativity and fantasy in combination with questioning
identities, values, levels, proportions, and consequences along and across
scales, cultures, languages, and times. In this physical and deep immersive
model, called "House
of Eyes", children have tested alternative positions and perspectives
for years.
Applications for Another
Pattern Language? (slide 12)
This language based on spacial
metaphors and embodyment evolved when we were
thinking about patterns and fields as real. Are there applications, and can the
findings be shared, or are we talking here about just another creative,
artistic outcry? First, we can share levels, proportions, horizons, and
also "feelings." Second, we can consider new forms of multi-modal,
multiple access search machines for the world wide web.
And last but not least, we can engage in "culture navigation," which
allows us to access and assimilate content from libraries and museums around
the world, making multi-media, multi-lingual, multi-cultural connections,
caring for a 'humane' multi-lingual (information) society. Another possible
field is social systems design, and that might be close to what Caldwell is looking for.We must find ways to reach people.
Let us start with the traditions of story
telling. In one story, Mamun, the son of Harun
al Rashid, saved his just-inherited, fast-deteriorating empire for decades
by having artists design a positive, aesthetic, shared model/vision/picture—in
this case, a model of a beautiful city and rich community. By jointly
constructing positive futures, we can create realities that can become
"true" if we share the dream and work on it! (late note: see the "Ethics Summit"
presentation which covers the story from 1001 night in greater detail and how
we can create new stories like this
one, and develop the art of
story-telling and dialogue.)
Concreteness in
Integral Worlds
Heiner Benking and Sherryl
Stalinski
ABSTRACT
The paper reviews representations and signs that might help us to come to
common and shared realization in an integral age. It explores how we can use
models and schemas in order to share "common frames of
reference." The authors explore possible ways of embodying and
linking worlds or realities. These include the construction of a-perspective or
extra realities that can help us to jointly create meaning and understanding beyond
our directly observable meso-scale and ego-centric
"environment/vicinity." We explore ways to merge and morph - know,
connect, translate and transform schemas - and overcome the dualisms or schisms
in our conceptions and mental models, as this is understood as one criteria in Gebser’s structure of
moving from the Rational to the Integral. One step is seen to include and move
beyond the physical and visual (perspective) space to shared and combined
(merged and morphed spaces), spaces were we can jointly create and move
boundaries in our perceived and created worlds using processes of dialogue. The authors
suggest this fundamental step in coming to the concretion of shared dimensions
in order to avoid the dangers of post-modern vagueness and Beliebigkeit,
or the creations of new myths and belief systems, as they would lead us back
into former forms of human development. Instead, we strive for a broader basis
for imparting and dialogue - which is part the motto of the INTEGRAL STRUCTURE
- coming to a broader and shared collective understanding.The
authors believe that Gebser shows us a way out of
dualistic, anthropocentric thinking that leaves us enslaved by physical space
concepts and "boxed" thinking, and provides ways towards sharing not
only physical but also mental manifestations and imaginations. Gebser seems to be urging us to look into the inclusion of
all layers or structures and not ending only in meditative state, but standing
on the ground, surveying the world with our eyes and sharing or imparting
concepts of a bigger and shared picture in order to expand our realms of
being.
"The
concretion of time
is one of the preconditions
for the integral structure;
only the concrete can be integrated,
never the merely abstract."
--Jean Gebser, The Ever-present Origin, p.99
(emphasis of"one"
added by the authors)
Words
words - yes words.
Make them solid
So you can pick them up
and throw them.
That is the problem.
How to make the intangible real, lifelike....
--J. R. Lloyd
