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Joy in the Present
      

12th November 2006 | Draft

A Singable Earth Charter, EU Constitution or Global Ethic?

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Also published in abridged form in Statistics, Visualizations and Patterns (Vol 5 of the Yearbook of International Organizations, Munich, K G Saur Verlag, 6th edition, 2006/2007, as section 10.4.2) under the title: Why any Earth Charter or EU Constitution should be Singable.
Guidelines for consideration
Policy implications: a "Concert of Democracies"?
Cognitive engagement with complexity
Individual identity within global frameworks
"Singing the Earth"
Sustaining collective memory of articulations of collective intent
Distinctions relevant to technical considerations
Organizational implementation
Conclusion
References

Guidelines for consideration

The following considerations could be borne in mind when reflecting on the potential role of song in ensuring that a Constitution should have credibility and value beyond that typically associated with legal documents:

  1. Needs to be short -- but able to embody a complex pattern of information (in the light of advances in auditory display and sonification)
  2. Needs to be memorable -- especially in the sense of its function of "re-membering" a divided society
  3. Needs to offer reminders of significant relationships between matters that may otherwise be treated as dangerously unrelated -- vital feedback loops from a systemic control perspective
  4. Needs to be attractive in the context of a complex social system -- especially according to the new understanding of "strange attractors" in the complexity sciences
  5. Needs to strike a balance between the dysfunctional symbolic extremes of:
    • the Ode to Joy, adopted as the anthem of Europe -- appealing primarily to the older generation, if only because of its classical quality, exemplifying the democratic challenge that admiration does not necessarily enable participation
    • the overwhelming popular winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 (Hard Rock Hallelujah) -- a heavy metal band in monstrous demonic guise, appealing significantly to the younger generation [video]
    • the 300-pages of the legal text of the proposed European Constitution [more] -- unreadable, and therefore incomprehensible, to most EU citizens (and perhaps deliberately so)
  6. Capable of being refreshed periodically, if not annually, in the light of new insights, challenges and opportunities -- and if only in recognition of the limitations of any previous version
  7. Inviting participation, if not entraining it -- as a contrast to the apathy-reinforcement characteristic of modern political discourse
  8. Inherently imaginative -- reframing the past, offering new significance to the present, and pointing to new ways of thinking about the future
  9. Challenging to cognition -- an element of puzzle and mystery to be "solved", as with many computer and other games in which there is a gestalt to be recognized (possibly even at several levels)
  10. Imminently practical in its elaboration -- as with the procedures for open competition for major architectural or other design projects
  11. Susceptible to animated accompaniment -- with possibilities of exemplification through multi-media techniques and gaming simulations
  12. Embodying systemic understandings valuable to governance at all levels -- and consonant with experience at those levels
  13. Challenging to the conventional mindsets of lawyers, managers, politicians, academics, designers, commmunicators and system builders -- responsible in their various ways for the current democratic deficit and the failure to address the issues of society effectively
  14. Implying the future possibility of techniques whereby principles of governance could be elaborated from aesthetic patterns -- as a complement to the dominant tendency to use costly marketing techniques, including promotional music, to render legal texts acceptable
  15. Offering a new vehicle for the articulation and transportation of value-charged insights -- especially a vehicle capable of holding the values of the future
  16. Encompassing meanings and values held to be significant by a greater proportion of the population -- bridging the cultivated divisions between political parties
  17. Offering means of embodying the paradoxes of contemporary society -- and suggesting perspectives from which they may be transcended
  18. Responding to the collective schizophrenia which fails to bridge between aesthetics and governance -- between "opera" and "work" -- as complemetary disciplines, exemplified by the role performed by epics in some cultures (eg the Mahabarata in India, the Dragon Dance in China)
  19. Suggesting harmonious patterns of complex relationships, so effectively explored in the discipline of musical harmony -- and practiced by singers worldwide
  20. Embodying an aesthetic feel for what "Europe" means -- and what it means to be a "European" in a European cultural context, or a citizen of the world
  21. Giving credibility to challenging responses to challenging complexes of social problems (as exemplified by: the 12 songs of The Globalization Saga: Balance or Destruction, 2004, as a CD accompaniment to a book by Professor Franz Josef Radermacher, FAW - Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing, Ulm, in association with the Global Marshall Plan Initiative; the 13 songs in the CD accompanying the book of Alan AtKisson, Believing Cassandra: an optimist looks at a pessimist's world, 1999 -- the AtKisson Group is currently engaged in a strategic review process for the international Earth Charter Initiative)
Das über das Medium Musik, auch komplizierte Sachverhalte einfach transportiert werden können und Songs als Brückenschlag zur Seele funktionieren und damit sensibilisieren die Augen für notwendige Entwicklungen zu öffnen, das hat sich bei den bisherigen Präsentationen der Musicalsongs bewiesen, sowohl in Bildungskontexten als auch in internationalen Konferenzen. Franz Josef Radermacher, member of Club of Rome

Policy implications: a "Concert of Democracies"?

Only song can reframe the formally recognized "global intelligence failure" and "lack of imagination" associated with the uncritical support of the handling of the Iraq situation -- by the most intelligent, the most powerful and the most wealthy -- acting through the Coalition of the Willing. Such lack of intelligence would be further compounded by efforts envisaged to force acceptance of a European Constitution.

Is it meaningful to live in a Europe whose Constitution is unsingable?
Is there not a similiar challenge for any Earth Charter?
And for any future Global Ethic?

As an an alternative to the divisive foreign policy of the Bush regime, inspired by the neocon Project for the New American Century, a new bipartisan report by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton University), titled Forging a World of Liberty Under Law, US National Security in the 21st Century (2006), notably proposes an appropriate charter for the establishment of a "concert of democracies". This follows from one of the first speeches during World War I of President Woodrow Wilson who called for "a concert of free countries." The new concert is conceived in the following terms:

While pushing for reform of the United Nations and other major global institutions, the United States should work with its friends and allies to develop a global “Concert of Democracies” – a new institution designed to strengthen security cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies. This Concert would institutionalize and ratify the “democratic peace.” If the United Nations cannot be reformed, the Concert would provide an alternative forum for liberal democracies to authorize collective action, including the use of force, by a supermajority vote. Its membership would be selective, but self-selected.

The use of the "concert" metaphor in the report would seem to constitute a shift beyond the policy sustaining the Coalition of the Willing -- but one that, in musical terms, could be challenged as a possibly outdated mode in which the "music" is necessarily "directed" by the "conductor" to ensure that all sing "in concert" from the same "hymn sheet":

Leading Americans across the political spectrum understood that we are far better off if American power is exercised within an international framework of cooperation, where others have a voice – although not a veto – and nations endeavor to work in concert towards common ends...This aspect of the Concert would constitute a major effort to integrate non-Western democratic powers into a global democratic order. At the same time, the Concert would be more substantial and exclusive than the already existing “community of democracies,” which is a broad but shallow organization that seeks to strengthen democracy within states..

As a reviewer of what is also termed the "Slaughter Report", Chibli Mallat describes the Concert of Democracies initiative in the following terms:

...it is the result of three years of intensive bipartisan debate involving over 400 prominent people from academia, the policy-making community, and the media in the United States, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria and former Secretary of State George Shultz. The Slaughter report operates as a post-modern multi-layered problem solver, addressing such problems as terrorism, China, AIDS and other pandemics, global warming, energy and infrastructures. It is ambitious, and seeks the defining status of the famous "X article" by George Kennan on the strategy of "containment" published in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1947. [more]

To what extent could the Concert of Democracies be said to be merely a form of institutionalization of the strategic mindset underlying the Coalition of the Willing? Is the effective focus on "concerted effort" or "concertation" without calling upon the musical connotations? As such it emphasizes concentration, typically of a temporary character for a particular task -- as with any periodic plenary assembly. It is perhaps appropriate to note that the related term concerto is applied chiefly to compositions in which unequal instrumental or vocal forces are brought into opposition.

However, in exploiting the connotations of such a potentially fruitful musical metaphor (if that is the intention), it would be most regrettable if the USA were only to develop its implications within a particular classical understanding of musical harmony -- and the social organization associated with it from past centuries (cf Jacques Attali. Noise: the political economy of music, 1977/1985). This would avoid any exploration of the other powerful potentials of musical harmony reflective of the modern complexity that the new strategy purports to address.

There are indeed other lessons to be drawn from the metaphor (cf John Kao, Jamming: the art and discipline of corporate creativity, 1997; Lukasz Michalec and David A Banks, Information Systems Development Methodologies and all that Jazz, 2004). Specifically it would be especially regrettable if "concert" became merely another reframing of the unfortunate mindset underlying the "Global Compact" of the United Nations (cf "Globalization": the UN’s "Safe Haven" for the World’s Marginalized -- the Global Compact with Multinational Corporations as the UN’s "Final Solution", 2000). A critical description of European institutions has been made in terms of the "orchestra" metaphor by Timothy Garton Ash (The European Orchestra, Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public Policy, 2001, 3).

Should the set of shared values fundamental to a Concert of Democracies be expressed as a conventional checklist -- or rather as a song that interweaves their relationships into a comprehensible whole exemplifying their complementarity as a system of checks and balances?

Cognitive engagement with complexity

There is a real challenge in comprehending and communicating the strategic challenges of sustainable development in an increasingly complex global environment, as explored by Franz Josef Radermacher (Balance or Destruction, 2004). Is there not a strong case for finding ways to hold the pattern of systemic feedback loops (so essential to sustainability) in mnemonic devices, such as song, that can be more widely understood and related to the values justifying any action?

In musical terms, might it be possible to embody such systemic sustainable development insights into a compromise between the archetypal insights of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle and the participative mnemonics of Harold Baum's The Biochemists' Song Book (1982/2003). The latter presents information on the complexities of interweaving metabolic pathways, set to well known songs, as an enjoyable memory aid. It is to be contrasted with the excellent charts on the total pattern of metabolic pathways which illustrate the larger challenge to comprehension (see Biochemical Pathways: Metabolic Pathways; Biochemical Pathways: Cellular and Molecular Processes; Metabolic Pathways of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology). These are of a degree of complexity commensurate with the systems exercises in global modelling -- indicative of the constraints on sustainable development.

Metabolic pathways reflect the fundamental life sustaining processes at the micro level. It is to be expected (from a general systems perspective) that these would be isomorphic to some degree with those at a macro-systemic level, especially with respect to the pattern of systemic pathways basic to sustainable development. Also fundamental to sustainable development are the laws of thermodynamics. These have also been turned into a song (First and Second Law. Flanders and Swann Online).

If wisdom is required to respond to the challenge of sustainable development,
how might that wisdom be best embodied in music and song?

Individual identity within global frameworks

Constitutions and charters might be said to be about collective identity. The question is what they imply or ignore in relation to individual identity.

Whilst perhaps acknowledging the individual to some degree as an objective entity for which legal protection may in some way be required, charters are typically lax in honouring the individual subjectivity that motivates engagement with global charters, indifference to them -- or their rejection. Consider, for example, the complementary dimensions embodied in the experimental Universal Declaration of the Rights of Human Organization (1971).

The "war on terror" is increasing pressure for a form of documented identity of citizens to be embodied in biometric identity cards. It is appropriate to ask whether those who identify with the description of themselves by others in ID cards merit what amounts to a two-dimensional existence in legal "flatland" -- in contrast to other possibilities (cf Ron Atkin. Multidimensional Man: can man live in three dimensional space? 1981). Such extreme reductionism might be considered the antithesis of what people consider meaningful in their lives. How can any global framework be meaningful in practice under such circumstances?

Expressing a constititution of any kind in a collective song evokes the possibility that individuals might themselves be acknowledged through the song that best expresses their identity. Whereas an identity card typically requires a "signature" to become a legal document, there is then a question of whether a "signature tune" constitutes a richer expression of the identity of an individual. More important is the question of the manner in which the individual identifies with the tune and to what degree. The significance of such a possibility is evident in affinities that are celebrated in song -- "they are playing our tune". Curiously the individuals in many species of animal, notably birds, are recognizable to each other through their unique song.

Such possibilities suggest a way of thinking about global constitutions as constituting a framework evocative of individual and group songs -- through which the identity of each is enhanced and through which each identifies the other. The challenge at this time, given the huge quantity of music that is accessible and in process of being created, is that individuals identify with songs produced by others -- whether or not they sing or play them themselves. Only rarely, in celebration of a life or as part of a ritual, is a song composed for an individual. Unlike painters, it is rare for individuals to consciously produce a musical self-portrait (Richard Strauss, Robert Schumann, Kurt Bestor and Keith Jarrett are some exceptions) although the process is now a feature of musical education. Consequently it might therefore be said that a sense of identity is borrowed from others ("downloaded") and played in private self-confirmation as a form of "identity pace-maker". The facilitation of this process may be seen by the future as a form of "identity theft" by the collectivity at this time -- as with global constitutions.

How might an individual be encouraged to recognize the song that they are effectively singing -- the integrative expression of their identity (cf Mary Catherine Bateson , Composing a Life, 1990, which she compares to jazz improvisation, although the focus is primarily on life stories). How can the many features of music be used to articulate and hold the dynamics of an evolving identity? Phil Rockstroh (An Outcast's Inappropriate Aria: singing at the dinner table of the Empire, Swans Commentary, 2005) makes an even stronger, politically engaged, point:

Can you accept the unsettling truth of knowing that what we inflict upon the world we will eventually inflict upon ourselves, and visa versa? And ask over and over again this question: When so many external and internal forces work to thwart, degrade, and destroy our essential selves, hence the world -- what can help to restore us?

Poets tell us that only depth-delving songs, those sounds and images that reveal hidden truths, can partially restore what had been lost...Orpheus can pass into the underworld and back...but Eurydice remains lost to shadow... We only half live in the world...the rest is mystery... Lorca called it Deep Song: An autochthonic music that allows us to live beyond ourselves...to glimpse larger realities...and be freed from our self-constructed prison of believing the world of subjectivity and habit is the only world possible.

Deep Song is not mood music for those in a Prozac state of mind. It is a chord progression of the cosmic blues. It wails primordial storms and collapsing stars; it sings of uncharitable seas of dark matter and of the alien oceans of our tide-tossed hearts.

One approach to understanding the "lost language" of pattern-shifting in such a process reality can be obtained from insights into the 4,000 year-old chanted hymns of the Rg Veda of the Indian tradition (as discussed elsewhere). A very powerful exploration of this work by a philosopher, Antonio de Nicolas, using the non-Boolean logic of quantum mechanics, opens up valuable approaches to integration. The unique feature of the approach is that it is grounded in tone and the shifting relationships between tone. It is through the pattern of musical tones that the significance of the Rg Veda is to be found:

Therefore, from a linguistic and cultural perspective, we have to be aware that we are dealing with a language where tonal and arithmetical relations establish the epistemological invariances... Language grounded in music is grounded thereby on context dependency; any tone can have any possible relation to other tones, and the shift from one tone to another, which alone makes melody possible, is a shift in perspective which the singer himself embodies. Any perspective (tone) must be "sacrificed" for a new one to come into being; the song is a radical activity which requires innovation while maintaining continuity, and the "world" is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song. (Antonio de Nicolas, Meditations through the Rg Veda, 1978, p. 57)

"Singing the Earth"

It is appropriate to note that articulating through song the integrative significance of the Earth as a whole, and engaging meaningfully with it, has been undertaken throughout the history of humanity. Such songs have typically been the work of priests in ritual ceremonies. Whilst typically these have been long forgotten (or suppressed) as pagan ceremonies, it is not to be forgotten that such songs continue to be sung in neo-pagan ceremonies, of which the midsummer celebrations in Nordic countries are particularly significant.

Also of contemporary significance is the importance attached to such songs within indigenous societies around the world. In particular, Australian Aborigenes continue to attach great significance to their capacity to "sing the land" -- singing the land into existence. The people and the land are understood as one -- by the very act of singing the land, the land itself lives and breathes. Such understandings have been extensively documented for UNEP in a project led by Darrell Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999).

Such insights are of course faintly echoed in modern religions in cycles of popular festivals in which the fertility of the land is celebrated: spring festivals, mid-summer festivals, early autumn (harvest festivals, Thanksgiving, etc) and winter festivals.

Such celebration points to a poorly recognized relationship between the associated mindset sustaining it and that called for at this time under the term "sustainable development" and as the need for "appropriate lifestyles". Sustainable development might be considered a simplistic secular euphemism for a lost cognitive engagement with the Earth -- and the joy of being approrpriately alive, as recognized in popular festivals worldwide. This raises the question as to the nature of the cognitive engagement of the world's earliest "sustainable developers".

Curiously the few festivals specifically initiated to celebrate sustainable development tend to be named "Earth festivals".

Sustaining collective memory of articulations of collective intent

Of particular relevance in the case of religious ritual down the ages is the recognition of the mnemonic function of music and chant -- mnemonic songs -- as a means to convey insight. Important items of information are deliberately linked to rhythm and repetition in an effort to aid memory. Sutras and prayers are meant to be chanted, thus engaging the musical/rhythmic regions of the brain in synchrony with the written and uttered word. More of the brain is activated by an exposure to a combination of data units + rhythm + melody + intonation + pitch -- especially with the addition of dance. As notably explored by suggestopedia for purposes of accelerative learning, this enables large units of structured data to be remembered as a patterned whole. At a a more familiar level it is one of the reasons that pop songs and rap are so easily remembered.

The question of the constraints on collective learning was a significant dimension omitted from an optimistic commissioned study of the supposedly unlimited possibilities of individual learning -- as reviewed elsewhere (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory: a critique of the Club of Rome Report, 1980), notably exploring the nature of the pathology of collective memory. For western culture it is interesting to note (drawing upon its classical roots, as presented in the figure below) the traditional symbolic understanding of the relationship between law, as one expression of longer-term collective intent, and the collective memory capacity required to sustain its credibilty and viabity.

Primordial relationship of law to memory as indicated by the relationship in Greek mythology between Zeus (as the guardian of law and morality), who fathered the nine Muses with Mnemosyne, and his son Apollo (as the giver of laws)
muses enneagram

The complementary relevance of the Muses to memory, especially of collective intent, might then be articulated as follows (with possibilities in italics of relevance to the memorability of declarations of collective intent):

  • Calliope (epic poetry and eloquence ): As oral narrative verse, this emphasizes deep feeling and ethical significance rather than the form or subject matter. It expresses the nature or ideals of an entire culture at a significant or crucial period of its history. Accompanied by a stringed instrument, the epic song was both the most popular form of entertainment in the ancient world and the repository of a people's cultural tradition and history. It charges the experiential world with significance. This is exemplified by such works as the Iliad, the Mahabharata or the Kalevala. However the importance of the latter to the successful uptake of information technology was highlighted in an introductory speech by the Finnish Presidency of the European Commission on the New Dimensions of Learning in the Information Society (July 1999) by referring first to the influential role of the Kalevala (as discussed in an earlier paper (Enhancing the Quality of Knowing through Integration of East-West Metaphors, 2000). Clearly epic poetry provides an important form of support for long-term, deep cultural memory -- if only in the perpetuation of the memory of a ruler. This may be closely related to expressions of long-term collective intent -- again perhaps exemplified by a ruler desiring to perpetuate his intent. For the Greeks, the source of inspiration was conventionally ascribed to the Muse. [more] Should the European Union not elicit epic poetry to communicate the "deep feeling and ethical significance" of any proposed constitution? An Iliad or Kalevala?

  • Euterpe (music): Music of different types serves to sustain collective memory of a short, medium or long-term nature. This may be seen in the short-term marketing role of advertising jingles (or the "psyching up" of traditional battle music), the medium-term role of popular tunes defining a cultural period or collective identity (as with regimental marches) over decades, and the longer-term role of folk and classical music in sustaining cultural identity. Rhythm assists in remembering otherwise unconnected data which may be especially important in oral tradition where key rules and elements of folk wisdom are often expressed rhythmically. Research has shown memory to be affected by many different factors, but notably including music because of the manner in which it stimulates parts of the brain (Sara B Kirkweg, The Effects of Music on Memory, 2006; M H Thaut, D A Peterson & G C McIntosh, Temporal Entrainment of Cognitive Functions: musical mnemonics induce brain plasticity and oscillatory synchrony in neural networks underlying memory, 2005). Beyond Beethoen's Ode to Joy, what is possible in this respect to encode mnemonically the insights of an Earth Charter, a Global Ethic or an EU Constitution?

  • Clio (history): The role of history in sustaining collective intent is exemplified by the much-cited phrase regarding failure to learn from history: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, Life of Reason, 1905). Without a sense of history there can be no sustained collective learning. History provides an understanding of why collective intent has been embodied in declarations and constitutions in a particular way. Music may well be powerfully inspired by historical events important to remembrance of cultural identity (as with the use of the Lambeg drum in Northern Ireland). A journal, History and Memory (Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness), explores the manifold ways in which the past shapes the present and is shaped by present perceptions. How should the lessons of history be configured and presented in support of declarations of collective intent in response to the challenges of the future?

  • Erato (lyrics and love poetry): The role of lyrics in song is evident in protest and revolutionary songs as well as in those in celebration, and remembrance, of the qualities of people and relationships. Lyrics are a common feature of memory aids. How to elicit the lyrics in support of any collective understanding of future action? What are the lyrics supportive of sustainable development and paradigm change?

  • Melopmeme (tragedy): Any tragedy, dramatically presented, offers an extremely powerful means of drawing attention to dimensions of life that may be readily (even preferably) forgotten. It links memories of sufferings in the past to the potential of sufferings in the future. In so doing it gives a dimensional sense of depth. Powerful collective examples are provided by the many massacres and genocidal initiatives (eg the Holocaust). On an individual level examples include cases of premature death, broken relationships, betrayal, etc. Tragedy may be intimately related to traumatic memories and therefore a focus of psychotherapy. How to express the tragic consequences of inaction, or inappropriate action, to help focus declarations of collective intent for the future?

  • Polyhymnia (sacred poetry): The importance to collective memory of sacred poetry is exemplified by the Rg Veda as a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. Typically such poetry seeks to provide a sense, or memory, of both a higher dimensionality to life and a subtler, or higher, form of law and order (cf Antonio De Nicolas, Meditations through the Rg Veda: four-dimensional man, 1976/2003). What are the subtler dimensions that need to be appropriately expressed as a guide to future constitutions? How to move beyond simplistic references to particular understandings of spiritual dimensions and to give recognition to other forms of subtlety? What does sacralization then mean and how can poetry assist in communicating the integrity it implies? (cf Poetry-making and Policy-making, 1993; Sacralization of Hyperlink Geometry, 1997)

  • Terpsichore (dancing and choral song): The patterns of dance, especially traditional folk dances, provide a powerful means for remembering and preserving cultural identity. In the form of sacred dances they constitute a language in their own right which has long been used to exemplify and celebrate collective intent. The kinesthetic sense allows people to feel internally the movements of their muscles, joints and tendons. Kinesthetic memory (or muscle memory) is essential for the memorization of a musical score [more] or the routines of a dance, namely remembering all the movements, gestures and physical sensations needed. Such kinesthetic memory therefore supports the semantic content that ritual and other dances may be intended to represent -- whether in sacred temple dances or in some indigenous cultures (such as amongst the Aborigenes of Australia). Given the effort to give expression to Europe through choral song in the Ode to Joy, how should Europe be danced? How should a Global Ethic be danced? What is to be learnt from sacred dances of the past?

  • Thalia (comedy): Through whatever vehicle, readily remembered humour provides a powerful means of creatively bringing together the seemingly disparate in ways that offer new insight essential to the vitality of any culture and its ability to respond to incongruity -- notably that resulting from inadequacies in the law (cf Humour and Play-Fullness: essential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity, 2005). Through humorously juxtaposing and reframing inequities, it provides a catalyst for nonviolent receptivity to change. Its playful quality may sustain and give credibility to processes of change (cf Playfully Changing the Prevailing Climate of Opinion: climate change as focal metaphor of effective global governance, 2005). What comedy and humour would creatively sustain insight into the potentials of any collective intent otherwise expressed more seriously? (cf Victor S.M. de Guinzbourg. Wit and Wisdom of the United Nations: proverbs and apothegms on diplomacy, 1961)

  • Urania (astronomy): The configuration and movement of heavenly bodies in relation to the Earth has traditionally provided one of the most powerful mnemonic device for means of remembering and ordering relationships over time, whether it be the daily rhythms of life, monthly cycles, annual cycles relating to agriculture, or the longer-term rhythms traditionally considered so vital to a sense of place in the cosmos (cf Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004). Would the values and clauses of key legislation be more widely (if not universally) comprehended by associating them visually with stories linked to particular configurations of stars and planets -- as was so effectively done for oral cultures of the past? What might the stars on the flag of Europe signify?
Of particular interest, given the written text mode preferred for modern declarations and constitutions, is the absence of prose from the above schema. Whilst the above schema may be seen as a limitation of the oral tradition (Michael E.Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman, Orality and the Problem of Memory, 1998), it is vital to recall the extent to which functional illiteracy and preferences for non-text media determine contemporary collective behaviour and the manner in which memory is sustained. In a sense the oral culture remains of far more importance than those preferring text modes would care to admit.

Distinctions relevant to technical considerations

In arguing for singable articulations of strategic significance, it is vital to distinguish (as in the table below) the extremes to which reference may be made.

Styles of knowledge communication (rough and tentative)
. "Left hemisphere" ("analytic") "Right hemisphere" ("integrative")
"operational"
engaged
(a) praxis, demonstration,
work chants, battle songs
company songs
(d) embodiment of conceptual relationships in song; archetypal engagement; sacred music; healing music, deep song
"descriptive"
detached
(c) systems dynamics,
mapping
(b) evocative song,
opera and
educational multi-media

A far more detailed method of distinguishing preferred modes of knowledge communication is required. The table serves usefully to distinguish the essentially unsingable (c) from the songs characteristic of (b) -- on the understanding that particular approaches may lie closer or further away from the intersection of the implied axes distinguishing the coloured quadrants.

As an example, in a survey of different educational approaches to systems thinking, Günther Ossimitz (The Development of Systems Thinking Skills Using System Dynamics Modeling Tools, 1997) notes that the system view of ecologists is often more "qualitative" than the system dynamics view of system. He gives as an example of the latter Frederic Vester (Unsere Welt - ein vernetztes System, 1984/2002) and his game Ökolopoly (available both as a board game and as a computer game). Radermacher's songs reflect this emphasis, as do AtKisson's.

The challenge is to explore the forms of integration between (a), (b) and (c) -- namely the emergence of (d) as a cognitive "marriage" enabling a new form of creative operacy (using Edward de Bono's term). What might be understood by "intelligent songs"? (cf Christopher Chase. Playing by Nature's Paradigm: systems science and the Grateful Dead, 1997). What characterizes and distinguishes the composition of songs that enable so-called paradigm shifts? How are such distinctions to be realted to the extensive work on music cognition? [resources]

One early example is the work promoted by the Cathars through the troubadours and trouvères, highly sophisticated verse-technicians, whose music and poetry combined in the service of the courtly ideal of love:

Modern European literature originated in Occitania in the early 12th century. It was started by hundreds of Troubadours (poet-musicians), who sang the praises of new values and in a new way. Their themes were courtly love, and concepts such as "convivencia" and "paratge" for which there is no modern counterpart in modern English or French. "convivencia" meant something more than conviviality and "paratge" meant something more than honour, courtesy, chivalry or gentility (though our concepts of honour, courtesy, chivalry and gentility all owe something to the concept of "paratge". They praised high ideals, promoting a spirit of equality based on common virtue and deprecating discrimination based on blood or wealth. They were responsible for a great flowering of creativity (The Troubadours).

A more recent example might be the role of the indigenous American art form of country music, especially blackfaced minstrel singers (with widely popular songs such as Zip Coon), in the meaning and making of a culture (cf Damon W. Root, Hidden Country, Reasononline, October 2002).

How might song, and understanding of the theory of harmony, act as a vehicle for the pattern of systemic insights in the UN's Agenda 21, for example? The work of Lukasz Michalec and David A Banks (