</a>Cognitive fusion: Light of comprehension -- of values?

Topology of Valuing: dynamics of collective engagement with polyhedral value configurations (Part #11)

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Light is one of the most frequently used metaphors through which any transition to comprehension is described -- whether for simple creativity or mystical insight. It is presumably just as appropriate to the comprehension of the significance of a value or a set of values -- and their relevance in practice.

In this sense light and learning have long been associated. In some way what is described in terms of light is associated with the transition from a configuration of disparate elements (or one whose order is not especially meaningful) to engagement with the configuration and recognition of its wider implications. In academic discourse and method, aside from use of "brilliant", it would seem to be closely related to the experiece of "clarification".

The process is of course important in different ways in the many traditions of meditation -- each variously concerned with attention and focus as facilitated by some kind of frame of reference. Hence the interest of psychoanalyst Carl Jung in the long tradition of framing offered by mandalas and yantras -- typically polygonal in structure.

Curiously an aspect of this process is central to facilitation of "cognitive fusion" -- for jetfighter pilots (travelling faster than the speed of sound) whose lives depend on the ability to focus much disparate information and arrive at a tactical decision in the shortest time. A less urgent form is important in "situation rooms" and "war rooms". The question for the future is whether this process can be further, and more creatively, enhanced in relation to wider value-based strategic issues by learning from research on nuclear fusion, as explored elsewhere (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006).

As the design of antenna indicates, issues of focus to achieve and enhance some form of cognitive synthesis and fusion may be usefully explored by appropriately configuring an array of frames of reference -- in this case triangulated frames of values differently oriented to each other. It is these differences in orientation that interrelate requisite variety -- effectively patterns of enriching "otherness".

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