12 May 2004 | Draft
Using Research in the Participative Orchestration of Europe
- / -
Presentation for Panel IV: Research & Development / Sustainable
Environment / Quality Management
Eurovisioning Conference: Redesigning Europe in the Third Millennium: a new
sustainable vision of democracy (Budapest, 15-17 May 2004)
This topic of this paper was subsequently developed in much
greater detail in
Animating the Representation of Europe (2004)
A. European multiple personality disorder
-
“Personalities”: Commerce, Research, Media, Sport, Arts, Military,
Legislature, etc
-
Interdisciplinary equivalent: Economics, Physics, Biology, Psychology,
etc
- From Clinton’s: “It's the economy, stupid” to Rumsfeld’s:
“It’s the photos, stupid”
- Using “research to redesign Europe” rather then “financing
European research”
B. Imagining Europe
European identity
- Challenge of a “soulless Europe” (cf Fischer, Fortuyn, Rocard, Lonergan)
- Challenge of voter apathy and democratic deficit
- New and imaginative understandings of unity, integration (cf fusion research,
etc)
- Challenge to the imagination:
- moving beyond vague promises (economic advantage, democratic participation,
etc)
- sustaining the imagination for sustainable dialogue
Metaphoric impoverishment : a cognitive challenge (cf Lakoff and Johnson)
- Basis for strategic discourse: communicating coherent imaginative strategies
(cf Schon)
- Mnemonic support for the imagination: pattern language (cf Alexander)
- Participative design : new “metaphors” (cf computer software, fashion,
cosmology)
- Example 1: “Gardening Europe” in the light of ecosystemic diversity :
gardening kniowledge?
- Example 2: Music in the light of sophisticated / popular understandings
of harmony and melody
- Images of Europe: bureaucracy, market, building complex, garden, symphony,
etc (cf Morgan)
- Multiplier effects: cross-fertilization, transdisciplinarity, creativity
C. Conceptual challenges for a multi-facetted Europe
Managing meaningful differences (rather than the endless quest for meaningless
consensus)
- Conceptual differences and cognitive styles (cf Hofstede)
- Transcending polarities and strategic dilemmas (cf tensegrity organization)
- Working with diversity: building the psycho-social ecosystem and weaving
the social fabric
New styles of thinking – beyond “project logic”
- New kinds of organization and governance sustained by new metaphors (cf
Damanhur)
- New kinds of accounting systems to sustain new kinds of initiatives (cf
LETS)
- New kinds of (legal) contracts to sustain new kinds of partnerships and
“programmes”
D. Practicalities
Practicalities of participatory democracy
- Mathematical realities of “participation”: “representation” of millions
vs bureaucratic capacity
- Hyperspace “variable geometry”: Cyprus, Ireland, Euskadi, Flanders, Jerusalem,
Rom, etc
- Use of web to create a coherent communication space for emergence of initiatives
Social experiments
- “Transition zones” within countries (and status of accession countries)
- Adaptation of formulae: “industrial zones”, “research parks”, “free trade
zones”, “incubators”
- “Renaissance zones” (cf Damanhur www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs00s/horus.php)
- Social safety nets: high budget vs sustainability of alternative forms?
(cf Gandhi on poverty)
E. Research specifics
Beyond text: visualization / sonification
- Bypassing the traditional snobbery of science and legislators (science
+ art > Hungary)
- Language translation and future of European Union (monolingual?) Eurotexting
?
- Visualization: “It’s the pictures, stupid !”
- Irony: Eurovision (song contest, 15 May 2004) vs Eurovisioning (15 May
2004)
- European schizophrenia: linear text presentations vs musical harmony/melody
- Developing metaphoric carriers: song, football (UEFA), etc
- Putting declarations to music (no song, no meaning, no consensus?)
- Budapest Declaration (cf as sung Creative Connections?)
- Self-criticism: this presentation (visuals, sound)?
Simulation / Gaming – and failures of European intiatives
- Exemplar of a qualitative cultural synthesis: Glass Bead Game --Magister
Ludi (Hermann Hesse)
- Republic (Demis Hassabis: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/)
- Community strategy games: Game of Life (Damanhur), Transformation
Game (Findhorn)
- Beyond Monopoly to a Game of Europe? Football as a meme
carrier? Sporting memetics?
Articulating the systemic linkages underlying the EU Constitution -- meaningfully
- Fundamental challenge: voter apathy, empty promises, cynicism, etc
- Is the constitution “singable”? Is it an archetypal poem (Kalevala)?
Why not?
- Failure of Agenda 21? Not “singable” to sustain memorability of
vital links of sustainability?
- Cognitive challenge: mnemonic holding of complexity through visualization
and sound
F. Contextual support
Research and intelligence
- Application of science. Research as its own metaphor (cf nuclear fusion
at Cadarache)
- Network of centres of excellence (cf Imagination Lab, http://www.imagilab.org/)
- Secret intelligence services: destruction vs construction of relationships
Art and science
- “Art and science” (cf Gyorgy Kepes) vs “Art and political strategy” (cf
Book of Five Rings)
- From Poetry-making to Policy-making (www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/poetpol0.php)
- Strategic aphorisms of the EU (cf Wit and Wisdom of the United Nations)
Cultural disposition of Hungary: providing an alchemical melding of art and
science. Design vs Composition
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