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Joy in the Present
      

14 January 2006 | Draft

Ensuring Strategic Resilience through Haiku Patterns

reframing the scope of the "martial arts" in response to strategic threats

- / -

Introduction
Conventional attributes of haiku
Semantic and epistemological potential of haiku
Experiential focus of poetry
Haiku and the martial arts
Strategic potential of haiku
Catalytic role of haiku in kairotic time
Existential quality of life-and-death decisions
Haiku and strategic decision making
Natural cognitive templates offered by haiku
Cognitive configuration of haiku -- and dimensions of strategic engagement
Configuring the pattern that connects
Strategic potential of cognitive commonalities between poetry and music
Beyond knowledge -- to wisdom?
Conclusion
References
Published in Journal of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads, Volume 2, No. 3, December 2005 [text]
Abstract: Explores the role of haiku poems as a means of predisposing the mind to a higher order of strategic resilience in response to threats, especially when a configuration of haiku defines a form of pattern language. Such possibility relies on valued attributes of haiku: embodiment of transformation, capacity to hold several layers of meaning that may be discovered or explored, and capacity to act as a container for deep meaning. In responding to the experiential challenge of the sheer present, haiku are presented as relevant to any strategy that is required to deal with the urgent challenges of the moment -- as is typical of the preoccupations of the martial arts. A link is made to personal experience of death in contrast to facile attitudes to the death of others -- framing the significance of honourable personal sacrifice in a higher cause. Haiku provide a communication modality for essential understanding of the nature and quality of the experiential reality intuitively recognized at the core of the martial arts through the risky juxtaposition of life and death. This points to the dynamic opportunity of the transformative potential of the shifting patterns in such moments -- the aesthetic immediacy essential to paradigm change.

Introduction

The General Assembly of the World Academy of Art and Science (Zagreb, November 2005) had as its theme the Future of Knowledge (Evolutionary challenges of the 21st century). The meeting was accompanied by an invitational NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Security in Knowledge-based Society (Developing resilience in societies at risk and threatened by terrorism). Some participants attended both events. As was pointed out by Pieter Drenth (All European Academies), the distinction between "art" and "science" in English is bridged and encompassed, in some other European languages at least, by variants of the single German term "wissenschaft". This can be well translated by "ways of knowing".

With regard to any distinction between art and science, it was also pointed out that the military and security preoccupations of NATO strategists and tacticians can also be understood in terms of "martial arts" -- notably as articulated in classical texts on strategy favoured in western military academies (cf Sun Tzu, The Art of War; Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings: the classic guide to strategy). In this particular sense the "arts" were well represented on that occasion in the NATO event, whether or not the aesthetic dimensions were considered by participants in the WAAS event as meriting as much attention by the "sciences" -- despite the aesthetic qualities characteristic of the most fundamental theories extolled by scientists. One particular WAAS workshop was however devoted to the "organization of knowledge for human benefit" in which the aesthetic dimension was emphasized as fundamental to the comprehension and organization of complexity, and the mnemonic requisites of its communication and memorability in policy-making (cf Union of Intelligible Associations: remembering dynamic identity through a dodecameral mind, 2005).

The following argument endeavours to draw together these various cognitive threads through an exploration of the Japanese art of haiku, notably in the light of references to it by Swedish Ambassador, Kai Falkman, who participated in both the WAAS and NATO events. Falkman, President of the Swedish Haiku Society, focused on the interest in this art form of Dag Hammarskjöld, a writer of haiku, who during his mandate as Secretary-General of the United Nations, was especially preoccupied with security issues. UNESCO, one of the funders of the WAAS gathering, featured haiku through the website of its Italian National Commission, in collaboration with the World Haiku Club, on the occasion of World Poetry Day in 2002.

Conventional attributes of haiku

The following comments on haiku benefit notably from the insights of Kai Falkman (The String Untouched, translation of En Orörd Sträng, Ordfront, 2005).

Haiku is essentially a very short poem depicting a specific experience in nature or in a human context. It is contrasted with a related form, senryū, which tends to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature -- senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are serious.

The traditional Japanese rules for haiku require the use of 17 syllables grouped into three lines composed of respectively 5-7-5 syllables. These rules are applied in a multitude of languages by a worldwide "haiku movement" (cf World Haiku Club; Haiku International Association) [more]. The emphasis is clearly placed on succinctness and appropriateness, requiring extremely careful consideration of the pattern of words used and the effect they together create. The superfluous is excluded. In the words of Antoine de Saint Exupery, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Non-Japanese haiku poets have explored an even more abbreviated 3-5-3 form of haiku, as explained by Keiko Imaoka (Forms in English Haiku) in discussing the linguistic circumstances that necessitate shorter English haiku to be more loosely structured than Japanese haiku:

Over the years, however, most haiku poets in North America have become aware that 17 English syllables convey a great deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables, and have come to write haiku in fewer syllables, most often in three segments that follow a short-long-short pattern without a rigid structure. This style is called by some "free-form" haiku.

The core feature of haiku is an experience described in a concrete image designed to evoke the same experience in the reader. A good haiku is not simply a static description. Three valued attributes are:

  • embodiment of a transformation -- possibly with a surprising ending and/or a lingering poetic atmosphere. This may be catalyzed by describing an impression characteristic of one sensory organ through words normally descriptive of the impression through another. Images may be connected in a surprising way, possibly by changing perspectives calling for movement between them. Thinking is surprised and changes direction. Metaphors are however rarely used in haiku, because the image is expected to speak for itself and not be compared with something else in order to be accentuated or transformed in significance. However it is consequently recognized as a form that is wonderful for metaphorical descriptions. In contrast to this view, many of Matsuo Basho's haiku use metaphor and allegory to great effect [see poems].

  • capacity to hold several layers of meaning that may be discovered or explored -- possibly subsequently on reflection, or over a period of time. This may be achieved by using a proximate image like a fractal to imply the larger context of which it is a detail. Indirect insight is typical of haiku.

  • act as a container for deep meaning, as characterized by a sense of poignancy, being touched, existential tragedy, or inevitability beyond conventional frameworks. It offers a value-charged integrative perspective.

Stress is placed on the concreteness of the images. Purely abstract or intellectual concepts are not considered valid haiku -- irrespective of their conformity with the formal rules or the value of the experience they may engender. Meaningful insights overtly expressed are considered as an imposition, potentially alienating to the reader. This is an implicit aesthetic that is discovered by a receptive sensitivity rather than an invasive technique. A degree of detachment or distance is valued. Although the concrete images may be anchored in the immediate or distant past -- perhaps specifically associated with a season -- the effect sought is an experience in the present moment, the immediate here and now (cf Kate Hall, Mirroring the Moment, 2001)

In discussing a related art form, haiga, Susumu Takiguchi (Haiga: this delicious cocktail of art, poetry and calligraphy , World Haiku Review, Vol. 3, Issue 2: December 2003) provides the aesthetic framework for haiku:

... let us look at the three values of Japanese art and literature. Shin-zen-bi has long been a target which the Japanese have traditionally aimed to achieve in almost all their art forms, whether they are in the realm of literature, art or martial disciplines. It is a concept which points to an ultimate state of universality where shin (truth) in human epistemology, zen (goodness) in human ethics and bi (beauty) in human aesthetics are all combined to form a comprehensive and balanced value system, which makes the pursuit of these art forms both meaningful and worthwhile. Such holistic approach to life or culture is typical of Japanese pursuit and runs through more or less all forms of arts in Japan. In the case of haiku, perhaps the dominant element is truth, followed by beauty, with goodness as the factor least sought. This is largely due to the influence of Basho. His central theme of haikai was fuga-no-makoto (poetic sincerity, honesty and truth).

This true-to-life sincerity of haiku is called makoto.

Semantic and epistemological potential of haiku

In reviewing current approaches to haiku, A.C. Missias (Contemporary Haiku:  Origins and New Directions) notes that:

So, what characterizes a haiku today? This is not an easy question to answer. Certainly, the majority of haiku currently written in English do not conform to the 5-7-5 syllable pattern typical in Japanese, nor do they always concern nature topics; however, all of these divergences are matters of ongoing debate within the haiku community.

Haiku is more than a form of poetry; it is a way of seeing the world. Each haiku captures a moment of experience; an instant when the ordinary suddenly reveals its inner nature and makes us take a second look at the event, at human nature, at life. It can be as elevated as the ringing of a temple bell, or as simple as sunlight catching a bit of silverware on your table; as isolated as a mountain top, or as crowded as a subway car; revelling in beauty or acknowledging the ugly. What unifies these moments is the way they make us pause and take notice, the way we are still recalling them hours later, the feeling of having had a momentary insight transcending the ordinary, or a glimpse into the very essence of ordinariness itself.

Masako K. Hiraga ('Blending' and an Interpretation of Haiku: A Cognitive Approach, 1997) has explored the function of haiku in relation to conceptual blending. This is described as:

Conceptual blending has a fascinating dynamics and a crucial role in how we think and live. It operates largely behind the scenes. Almost invisibly to consciousness, it choreographs vast networks of conceptual meaning, yielding cognitive products, which, at the conscious level, appear simple. Blending is governed by uniform structural and dynamic principles and by optimality constraints. The theory of conceptual blending has been applied by scores of researchers, in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, music theory, poetics, mathematics, divinity, semiotics, theory of art, psychotherapy, artificial intelligence, political science, discourse analysis, philosophy, anthropology, and the study of gesture and of material culture. [more]

Dag Hammarskjöld was especially struck by the semantic and mnemonic role of haiku as he noted in his first haiku poem (1959):

Seventeen syllables
opened the door
to memory and meaning

Beyond the merits of aphorisms or epigrams (cf VSM de Guinzbourg, Wit and Wisdom of the United Nations: proverbs and apothegms on diplomacy, 1961), a haiku might be understood to be a form of semantic catalyst. From a learning perspective it might be understood to be in a class similar to a koan or a mantra in spiritual education. It is a trigger for surprising experiential insight through evoking an unfamiliar pattern of associations to sustain the emergence of such an insight. Zen writer R H Blyth defined a haiku as “the expression of a temporary enlightenment in which we see into the life of things”.

This philosophical or spiritual emphasis is highlighted in the words of one web commentator:

Most people today are familiar with the old saying, "Tao is beyond words, thoughts and expression." What students may not be familiar with is that two countries, namely Japan and China developed schools of poetry and literature in order to 'paint' a subtle pattern by way of the Haiku in Japan and in China by such early poets as Han Shan (Cold Mountain), hermit and wildly eccentric Taoist...

Haiku as a Zen art form is most interesting in revealing the pattern (or Li). Basho, the wandering Japanese Taoist poet... sought to lead others to see the Li or Pattern as a flash or sudden insight.... Basho, like most of Li or Pattern School sought always to be at one with nature and the four seasons, each poem expressing a sudden vivid awareness that comes from this harmony with Tao. The Japanese take the Li or Pattern method and turn it into actually a very strict but aesthetic art form. [more]

According to his disciple Doho, Basho would "enter into the object, the whole of its delicate life, feeling as it feels. The poem follows of itself." (cf Takahashi, Shinkichi, Afterimages: Zen Poems, 1972). The approach to "seeing the pattern", emphasizing direct and immediate experience without defining the way things are, was notably developed by Ch'eng I (Cheng Yi), a scholar of the Sung Dynasty (c.1033-1107 AD) who saw the pattern as unitary, its divisions being multiple. For him: "The pattern does not define what things are, the pattern refers to the ways things function and interact." [more]

Experiential focus of poetry

J.W. Hackett (The Way of Haiku, 1969) writes with the conviction that:

...the best haiku are created from direct and immediate experience with nature, and that this intuitive experience can be expressed in any language. In essence, I regard haiku as fundamentally existential and experiential, rather than literary.

In discussing meaning beyond reason, Timothy J Munson (Technologies of Sin and Salvation: capital, communication and human experience in this age of the perpetual innovation economy) argues that:

The discipline of haiku presents a concentrated lesson in Zen reconstructive art. The poem becomes an opportunity to reimagine experience in this new terrain outlying the familiar dualisms and dialectics of common cognition. Alexander, who has written extensively on Dewey's analysis of the role of art and aesthetics in propelling creative innovation and generating "consummatory experience," notes that, "The haiku strives to reveal, through its concrete but suggestively minimalist technique, the immediate vitality of the moment"

This accords with a particular understanding of western poetry as articulated by Alice Oswald (Wild Things, Guardian, 3 December 2005) in contrasting "nostalgia" with "immediacy", notably as exemplified by the poetry of Ted Hughes:

...But in all the poems I knew... there was a flavour of absence or at least distance - as if the poet was sitting on a rock on a hill looking at the world through a telescope. The word that best describes that kind of poem, that contagious feeling of aloofness, is nostalgia.... We walk outside and a fog of nostalgia comes over us.... So we get used to thinking about (and reading about) nature as the just-vanished place, the place we can't quite reach

So then I read all the Hughes poems... and what they all had in common was that imaginative grasp of the present - that ability to speak strictly within one moment and not through a misted screen of remembered moments....This non-nostalgic way of writing is, to my mind, the only way of getting through to the animate part of nature, the soft growing tip. Hughes called it "the vital somewhat terrible spirit of natural life which is new in every second". D H Lawrence, whose poems Hughes admired, called it "quivering momentaneity". He spoke of the need for an "unrestful, ungraspable poetry of the sheer present"...

The challenge of the sheer present is that faced by any strategy that is required to deal with the urgent challenges of the moment, typical of the preoccupations of the martial arts -- but hopefully also of all those locked tragically into other kinds of life-and-death situations. Hence the relevance of poetry-making as a template for policy-making in the face of emergencies (cf Poetry-making and Policy-making: Magic, Miracles and Image-building, 1993).

Haiku and the martial arts

Sakusen is the Japanese term for the art of military strategy. Daisetz Suzuki (Zen and Japanese Culture, 1970), in his description of Zen, illustrated its surprising role in the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrayed in the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature.

Seamus Mulholland (Philosophy and the Martial Arts, 2004) highlights the aesthetic quality of eastern martial arts:

Quite aside from the philosophical questions that Martial Arts might throw into relief, there is another aspect of Martial Arts which many western practitioners fail to see and that is its aesthetic. Martial Arts is simply beautiful to look at when it is done properly. It is as graceful, as skilled, as deft and as fluid and flowing as ice-dance, ballroom dancing, gymnastics. I believe this is so because the form of the Martial Arts depends on an understanding not just of accidental in physical movement but how those movements as shapes appear to the onlooker and to the one engaged in the movements themselves. To see the gracefulness of the ancient art of Aikido, or the strong symmetry of a skilled samurai swordsman, or the powerful, strong yet perfectly balanced movement of a karate-ka is to understand that while these movements have what some may consider to be a dubious purpose (hurting people), in themselves they are works of art.

Similarly it is stated elsewhere that:

Ancient Chinese aesthetics advocated a balance between hardness and softness, voidness and solidness, notion and stillness, and negative and positive, as well as the expression of the spirit of an object through its form. Under this influence, Chinese martial arts have formed their own aesthetic standards that incorporate a stage of conceptual contentment, harmony, and nature, as well as beauty and elegance. [more]

Another study endeavours to demonstrate that martial arts should be rethought as a rightful part of the forms of artistic representation (Short study of the artistic question in the martial arts and kenpo karate; see also Suresh Awasthi, Martial Arts and Performance Tradition, 2005).

Most martial arts schools, especially the more modern, sport-oriented, competition-based programs, fail to blend in a philosophical curriculum. Traditionally, however, the fiercest samurai also trained in brush painting, flower arrangement, haiku writing, and solving conundrums that foster a positive ethic. [more] The 17th century samurai Yamamoto Tsumetomo (Bushido: The Way of the Samurai, 2001) was the author of a key text (Hagakure: the Book of the Samurai, 1979) in the early training of samurai in the Bushido code of the "Way of the Warrior". Its circulation was long restricted to an inner circle prepared for death at any moment in the unquestioning service of their masters. The author had a long-standing interest in poetry and a recent translation is prefaced by two of his haiku.

The role of the Hagakure might be compared in a modern context to a set of guidelines developed by the Pentagon's PsyOps program at Fort Bragg as psychological input to the training provided by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (previously the School of the Americas). Other parallels, relating to the "Way of Bush", and "Bush-I-Do", have been the subject of extensive satirical commentary (cf Evan Eisenberg, Bushido: the Way of the American Warrior, New Yorker, 7 June 2004; Alan Bisbort. Bushido and Bushito: Our new fatal code of conduct, American Politics Journal, 2003). The insistence of American foreign policy under George Bush on the binary logic that "You are either with us or against us" [more more more], nevertheless has a strange resonance with the principle enunciated in the Hagakure that:

The way of the samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. (Prefacing quote in Boyé Lafayette de Mente, Samurai Strategies, 2005)

However, the modern "armchair warrior", so ably described by Eisenberg, makes his "quick choice" in relation to the death of others, rather than to any honourable personal sacrifice in a higher cause -- a modern perversion of the Bushido code of honour (cf Honour Essential to Psycho-social Integrity: challenge of dishonourable leadership to the nameless, 2005). The perversion is all the greater in that the armchair warrior only engages in such killing, from on high, through the protection of virtual or procedural interfaces -- however real the killing perpetrated.

The relation between the martial arts and haiku is further clarified by Bruce Ross (Liveliness in Japanese and American Haiku, World Haiku Review, 2002) as follows:

The Southeast Asians, including the Japanese, conceive of their spiritual center as hara, that internal area a few fingers' width beneath the navel, rather than in the area of the head as in the West. This center is the Chinese dan-tien and the Buddha belly of meditation. In martial arts, such as aikido or tai chi chuan, all movement naturally flows from here. It is a focal point for various kinds of internal energy as well as an intuitive center that connects us to the universe.

Strategic potential of haiku

Kai Falkman comments on one of Hammarskjöld's haiku:

While the shots echoed
he sought the life of words
for life's sake

The Secretary-General sought the right words to activate the process of peace negotiations in the midst of armed hostilities. Generally speaking, the words already exist in the Charter of the United Nations, which all member states have promised to respect and obey, but when its principles are not followed, the Secretary-General must intervene to give life to the words so that they will be experienced as real by the parties that have gone back on their words. The reason for giving life to the words is to save lives, that is, a duty to intervene for life's sake.

Falkman focuses on the sense of necessity to find life in words and thus counteract the death that men wreak with their weapons -- even while they are being used.

Hammarskjöld would seem to have recognized the importance of the haiku in disciplining his own thinking to evoke appropriate strategic insight -- even though this was a discipline he applied in private and unknown to others at that time. In what may be one of the most extreme ironies of the times, and an illustration of the dysfunctional potential of haiku, as a devotee of language the US Secretary of Defense (and therefore the principal representative of the leading member of NATO), Donald Rumsfeld is known to insert haiku into press briefings, as noted by Hart Seely (Pieces of Intelligence: the existential poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld, 2003):

During news briefings and media interviews, Rumsfeld quietly inserts haiku, sonnets, free verse, and flights of lyrical fancy into his responses, embedding the verses within the full transcripts of his sessions, which are published on the U.S. Defense Department's website.[more]

There is an experiential reality intuitively recognized at the core of the martial arts through the risky juxtaposition of life and death. Haiku constitutes a communication modality for essential understanding of its nature and quality. That understanding points to the dynamic opportunity of the transformative potential of the shifting patterns in such moments -- the aesthetic immediacy essential to paradigm change. Haiku effectively attune the mind to surprises. From a martial art perspective it might well be considered to be the strategic antithesis of a "zero-sum game" typical of much strategic thinking (but see Tom Czerwinski, Nonlinearity and Military Affairs: a working bibliography, 1999; Terrorism, Nonlinearity and Complex Adaptive Systems: Links to online papers). This is a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s).

Stealth is of course a vital component in deploying an effective strategy against a deadly enemy. It is therefore to be expected that the insights emerging from the gathering as a whole regarding the strategic role of haiku as a pattern language should have a hidden dimension -- consistent with the organization of the NATO event unbeknownst beforehand to those in the WAAS gathering not invited to it. A variety of covert agendas were played out by various factions.

As noted above, haiku has the ability to hold multiple levels of meaning regarding its transformative implications in a manner somewhat reminiscent of conventional levels of secrecy and security classification. Consistent with this perspective, haiku is associated with "disappearing" according to Gabriel Rosenstock (Haiku: the gentle art of disappearing, 2004) -- especially in the case of haiku that are not superficial and unmemorable due to the intrusion of the grosser aspects of thinking [more]. He compares the condition with that of flow as identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, 1998). Rosenstock recognizes that the concatenation of events triggering haiku moments make of them a singularity (as discussed below).

Such indications suggest that the nature of the "strategy" most appropriately associated with haiku may well be that otherwise associated with the Tao as both transcendent yet immanent, manifesting itself most powerfully through the forces of wu-wei ("nonaction") and yu-wu ("nonbeing"). It is such insights that are most valued in the traditional martial arts (cf Key Sun. How to Overcome without Fighting: an introduction to the Taoist approach to conflict resolution, 1995). As is frequently stated, wu-wei -- the principle of "nonaction" -- is not inactivity. As described by Alan Watts (Tao: The Watercourse Way, 1977), wu-wei is the right action of letting nature take its course, namely a minimalist way of finesse rather than force. Strategically it is a way to roll with the punch, to swim with the tide, to go with the flow. Thus wu-wei is not so much the absence of effort as it is right effort, effort used wisely, such as in the martial arts. It is poetry in motion -- as with haiku -- in which balance is not static. Classic haiku may indeed be associated with the quality of water (cf Sam Hamill.The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa and Other Poets, 1995).

This emphasis on the logic of flow and water has been explored by Edward de Bono (Water Logic, 1993; I Am Right-You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance : From Rock Logic to Water Logic, 1992 ) who contends that traditional logic is static, based on the solid foundations of "is" and identity. In contrast to this traditional "rock logic", he proposes a "water logic" based on "to" and the flow of the mind: "What does this lead to?" as opposed to "What is...?" He argues that this new logic is surprisingly easy to learn and to use, and results in a visual "flowscape", which allows people to lay out and then look at their thinking.

Haiku, conventionally understood might be considered as the antithesis of any action orientation. In this light, any association of haiku with the conventionally operational focus of strategy must then necessarily have an essentially "non-operational" quality in order to manifest itself most powerfully through "non-action". Writing haiku might then be usefully contrasted with casting "spells", which it might otherwise resemble in providing an operational focus for thinking. As discussed elsewhere (Poetry-making and Policy-making: Magic, Miracles and Image-building, 1993):

Charismatic leaders have been studied as "spellbinders" by A R Willner (1984). Like it or not, spells as an aspect of magic seem to be closely associated with this overlap between poetry and policy. Concern is expressed at continuing popular interest in spells and the related persistent practices in many countries. But commercial advertising may be seen as using many of the techniques previously confined to spell-casting. There is a lot of "magic" in public relations and in what the "spin doctors" of political campaigns endeavour to achieve (Maltese, 1992).

Janet and Stewart Farrar (1990) indicate: "A spell can be as simple or as complicated as the occasion demands. But be it simple or complex, three factors are essential: precise visualization of intent, concentration and will- power" (p. 31). Many of the spells and incantations to which they refer take poetic form, including two embodied in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Many are of course designed to "solve problems".

In contrasting spells with haiku, it is appropriate also to contrast them with commercial advertising jingles -- a feature of marketing strategies -- namely as memorable slogans usually set to an engaging melody. Jingles are memes constructed -- somewhat like love charms -- to stay in a person's memory and are often nostalgically remembered decades later, even after the associated "brand" has ceased to exist.

Catalytic role of haiku in kairotic time

Thomas Hemstege (Hail, Herbs, and Turnips: Haiku and its Models in the Natural World, Modern Haiku, Vol. 35:1, Winter Spring 2004, 31) usedully reframes the widespread understanding that haiku are nature poems:

Japanese haiku are “time poems” whose subject matter is time, the passage of time, the past, the present and the future. The poet illustrates this process of becoming and passing away within a shorter or longer period of time by relating them to things in the natural world, either alive or dead.

The notion of "kairos" (chairos) can be traced back to the rhetoric of Sophists who held that the effectiveness of speech is determined by the timing within "cultural and political contexts". It has been explored in relation to science (cf C R Miller. Kairos in the rhetoric of science, 1992). A distinction is made between "kairotic decision-making" and the normal decision-making characteristic of chronological time. Kairos may be described as an "irreducible singularity" -- an experiential singularity in contrast with, or by analogy to, a technological singularity. How the singularity of experience can be thought through the concept of a "technics of the self" is explored by Jean-Philippe Milet (Experience as Technique of the Self, Tekhnema 2: Technics and Finitude, Spring 1995).

The relation between haiku and decisive moments -- the "right time" -- has been widely explored. A haiku experience may be considered an embodiment of kairotic time -- the time in which fundamental decisions may be appropriately taken. The strategic notion of seizing kairotic moments as opportunities has been widely publicized by the injunction Carpe Diem in the movie Dead Poets Society. Such moments may be understood as marking the very essence of humanity (cf The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity, 2003).

Of related interest is the challenge of being seized by such decisive moments when faced with an unforeseen opportunity to stand up and be counted as holding views, or taking initiatives, that contrast with those of the majority -- possibly involving a high degree of risk and even mortal danger. Such decisions may be seen, whether at that time or from a historical perspective, as constituting a kairotic turning point -- bringing wider long-term significance to the moment (cf Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004).

Damir Ibrisimovic (in a personal communication) makes the point that:

I would suggest that a truly powerful haiku poem does not only take into account all previous moments, but also these new elements establishing (correcting previous experiences) and adding to the experience as a whole an imagined shape of (potential) future moments in all of their uniqueness that we are able to imagine. Such expressions of one’s moments of infinities of one’s transient now propel us to our own infinities of our own transient now by “encapsulating” the state of mind into words, rather than describing the moment itself.

The realm of the spirit is held to operate in kairotic (chairotic) rather than chronological time. This has been descibed by Mircea Eliade (The Sacred and the Profane) as "sacred time" [more]. The cyclic nature of sacred time has been described as follows:

  • as a return to the beginning of time
  • as repeated cycles of death and return
  • as indefinitely recoverable
  • as replicating the activities of ancestors (possibly through ritual)

According to Kay Stone (The Golden Woman: Dreaming as Art, 2004):

"...dreams take place in the ever-present timelessness of sacred chairos time, in contrast with the clock-ticking chronos time of our waking world. Bringing the two together is a delightful challenge, and . . . a sacred one as well"

This challenge may be at the core of reconciling faith-based and evidence-based reality in these times. Being in love may also be characterized by kairotic moments. As various commentators suggest:

  • In chronos, you move through time. In chairos, time moves through you
  • Chairos time is where time, instead of getting longer, gets deeper
  • "Chairos" refers to appropriateness, to the timeless feel of special events that "take their own time" and there's nothing you can do to hurry them; to the rightness when things happen "at the right time". [more]
  • Industrialisation favoured Chronos, the time of timetables, structured time. The post-industrial world, however, is increasingly ruled by Chairos, a more spur-of-the-moment, directionless kind of time. And so our project designed services to support it.[more]

The quasi-mystical understandings of kairos are a particular focus of some theologians, notably with respect to kairotic moments of sacred ceremonies. As noted in a sermon by S. James Steen in making the contrast with chronological time:

Chairos is of a whole different order, as in "It was a magical time," or "We had a wonderful time." Minutes have no meaning in chairos. It's not about quantity, but a quality of time, like "we had an experience of eternal life." It's not like minutes going on forever; it's like a moment so rich that it seems to last forever. [more]

The kairos of Biblical geo-politics in the 21st century, as explored by Kim Yong-Bock (Theology of Life: Wisdom of the Whole Life as an Alternative Foundation, 2001). For example, the World Student Christian Federation Asia-Pacific Region indicated in 2004:

All the delegates of the Assembly recognised that the Federation is situated at a critical juncture of time confronting with the most crucial call to the faith: the call to arise from death to life!   In order to make the Federation’s vision relevant to the world where the power of death prevails, the Federation should respond quickly and profoundly to the challenges given by the societies and churches.  It is a kairotic time for the Federation as the movements move forward to a “life-centered vision and mission” and to proclaim the good news of life for all. [more]

Natasha Artemeva (Traveling in Space and Time: A Study of Learning Trajectories in Student Acquisition of Engineering Communication Strategies, 2003) offers a relevant analysis of "strategies" in terms of learning and the configuration of kairotic time by students, citing a variety of authors:

Catherine Schryer's (2000) definition of genres as "constellations of regulated, improvisational strategies triggered by the interaction between individual socialization... and an organization....." (p. 450) serves as the basis for the analysis. Schryer explains that in this definition, the key word "constellation" allows her "to conceptualize genres as flexible sets of reoccurring practices (textual and nontextual)" (p. 450) and that the term "strategies" allows her "to reconceptualize rules and conventions (terms that seem to preclude choice) as strategies (a term that connotes choice) and thus explore questions related to agency" (p. 451). Schryer's redefinition of genre is largely based on Bakhtin's (1981) notion of chronotope. Bakhtin (1981), discussing the development of literary forms, defines chronotope (literally, "time space") as "the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships..." (p. 84). Bakhtin (1981) insists that

the chronotope....has an intrinsic generic significance. It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for... the primary category in the chronotope is time (emphasis in original). (p. 85)

With this focus on time and its role in the acquisition and use of genres within v