Collective intelligence and the challenge of collective brain death?

Are the UN and the International Community both Brain Dead (Part #2)

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Headlessness? The antithesis of collective "brain death" is presumably to be recognized in terms of collective intelligence. This is the shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. In the case of the UN, it is specifically promoted as an approach to sustainable development (Governing with Collective Intelligence, 2017; Bassey Ekpe, The United Nations and the Rationale for Collective Intelligence, 2016). What indeed might be expected of global collective intelligence at this time, as in times of crisis (Enabling Collective Intelligence in Response to Emergencies, 2010)?

In the case of crisis -- especially when the UN is understood as incapacitated -- appeals are now frequently made to a nebulous entity whose "existence" is itself questionable, namely the so-called international community, as separately discussed (International Community as God or Sorcerer's Apprentice? 2015). At the same time it is puzzling, if not symptomatic, to note that there exist a variety of uncoordinated strategic frameworks through which agencies may choose to frame their agendas -- whether or not their coherence could potentially be ensured in some way (Global Coherence by Interrelating Disparate Strategic Patterns Dynamically, 2019).

Those reacting to criticism that NATO is "brain dead" are vigorous in their claims that it is alive and active -- as would be the defence of many institutions which could be diagnosed in terms of similar criteria. The difficulty with such reactions is the well-known capacity of a headless chicken to run around, however aimlessly and for an extended period of time (The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head, BBC News, 10 September 2015). This is commonly used as a metaphor to describe problematic leadership (Jonas von Hoffmann, Hawk, Dove, Eagle or Headless Chicken? US Foreign Policy under Trump, Oxpol, 18 September 2019; The Guardian view on the Conservatives: the headless chicken party, The Guardian, 25 April 2019; Elly Brewer, Art of Headless Chicken Management, 1989).

Functioning brain? Do neither the international community nor the UN need a function that could be recognized as a "brain" -- given the activity of which a headless chicken is evident? Is a complementary function to be recognized in the "heart", as the chicken so clearly demonstrates? This would be consistent with the recognition by economist Paul Collier that development agencies are dominated by people with "headless hearts" (The Bottom Billion: why the developing countries are failing and what can be done about it, 2007). It has been claimed that the Security Council is the brain of the United Nations -- tasked with the challenge to deliver the visions and mission of the United Nations â-- peace and security through international cooperation and compromise for the good of humanity.

UNESCO was originally conceived as serving a brain capacity for the UN. The USA withdrew from UNESCO in 1984, rejoined in 2003, and withdrew again in 2018 -- having variously failed to pay its membership dues. Now primarily preoccupied with the "brain drain", despite severe reduction in funding, its original function is recalled in one declaration:

UNESCO is very much the brain, the soul and the heart of the United Nations as a whole. I say "the brain", because what else but education can empower the mind? "The soul", because science lights up the spirit of humankind and gives us, along with religion, a way out of the darkness. Finally we are "the heart"e;, because culture is usually the best way to bring about feelings of goodwill to all (Summary Records, UNESCO Executive Board, 1-17 April 2008)

As confirmation, on the election of Frederico Mayor as Director-General in 1987, it was reported that:

Mayor believes that the brain and not the body of UNESCO should be its largest part... he will seek to enlarge its intellectual capacity. He wants UNESCO to be a house of thinkers. He wants to remake the organization into a creative, dynamic consulting and coordinating agency. To mobilize the intellectual power, the teachers and scientists that each country has potentially available, is the major role of UNESCO, he argues (Eugene Garfield, F. Mayor's Vision for a Renewed UNESCO, The Scientist, 30 November 1987)

A brain function is however now more clearly evident in the vast array of "think tanks", whether within or independent of institutions -- potentially to be recognized as the "heartless heads". This very multiplicity, and the contrasting perspectives with which they are associated, suggests that all is not necessarily well with the functioning of the global brain, as argued separately (Tank Warfare Challenges for Global Governance: extending the "think tank" metaphor to include other cognitive modalities, 2019). Alternatively, is such "warfare" to be understood as a new manifestation of the "great game" (Playing the Great Game with Intelligence: authority versus the people, 2013)?

Whilst frequently unrelated to universities, the "brain function" of the latter is controversially challenged at this time, especially in the USA, by the increasingly influential role of identity politics (William L. Anderson, How Identity Politics Is Changing Universities, Mises, 26 May 2018; Eboo Patel, Some Concerns About Campus Identity Politics, Conversations on Diversity, 19 March 2019; Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure, 2018).

Despite recognition of emerging global dependence on artificial intelligence, it is far from clear that international institutions have applied insights from management cybernetics into the design of an appropriate brain (Stafford Beer, Brain of the Firm: the managerial cybernetics of organization, 1981), especially given the requisite complexity for a "viable system" (Giuliana Galli Carminati, The Planetary Brain: From the Web to the Grid and Beyond, 2011).

Heartlessness? Beer himself extends use of such metaphors to another organ through which death is more readily associated (The Heart of Enterprise, 1980). Give the reference above to "heartless heads" and the dependence on artificial intelligence, there is the readily recognized possibility of "heartless" global initiatives -- with the implication of a distinctive form of death, irrespective of whether "life support" could otherwise be provided for the brain (Coveney: US decision to pull funding to UN relief agency 'heartless and dangerous' Breaking News, 1 September 2018; US Resorting to Heartless Tactics in the Middle East, DW, 20 Juy 2006). This tendency to ever greater heartlessness is evident in the collective psychic numbing in the face of media depictions of mega-suffering and mega-deaths from starvation and disaster. It is however appropriate to ask whether climate disaster, or massive extinction of species, could trigger a fatal global "heart attack" -- given the reliance on artificial support for the brain function (as variously explored in science fiction and by transhumanists). As currently imagined, does the international community really need a heart?

Potentially even more relevant, especially given the foreseen challenge of food resources, is metaphorical reference to the stomach -- notably in relation to the elusive "political will to change" (Phil McDuff, Ending Climate Change Requires the End of Capitalism: have we got the stomach for it? The Guardian, 18 March 2019; Thomas Gift, Americans lack the stomach for a protracted trade war with China, LSE, 9 August 2019; Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, Can the GOP Stomach Trump's Economic Plan? Foreign Policy, 10 January 2017; Emmanuel Olusegun Stober, Stomach Infrastructure: lessons for democracy and good governance, Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 4, 2016, 3). Is it appropriate to ask whether the United Nations has the "stomach" for sustainable development -- avoiding the more controversial question of whether society has the "balls" for necessary change? Brainless or not, the US-led NATO coalitions seeningly experience not the slightest "heart" or "stomach" difficulties in engendering collateral damage -- for which it could be claimed that they have both "heart" and "balls".

Global life support? The metaphor through which President Macron has chosen to frame the case of NATO could indeed be used to question whether global governance has become a "basket case" -- the term by which the governance of some countries is deprecated (M. Ron Wahid, et al, Return of the Basket Case, Foreign Policy, 3 January 2014). To the extent that there is some kind of "global brain", however vestigial its operation, does that metaphor invite exploration of its vital integrative function -- as exemplified by the corpus callosum (Corpus Callosum of the Global Brain? Locating the integrative function within the world wide web, 2014). Given the controversy regarding indicators determining "death", as indicated by "brain death", potentially more tragically problematic is the possibility that institutions of global governance are in a "persistent vegetative state" -- dependent on the "life support" of financial contributions.

In the case of UNESCO, as an institution potentially close to brain death according to the Macron criteria, there is then the strangest of ironies to its primary role in enabling production of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) on the science of sustainable development and conservation of life support systems on earth. This online dynamic library of some 600 volumes -- an integration of 21 encyclopedias -- is compiled through crowdsourcing, whereby thousands of intellectuals from all over the world and across various academic institutions contribute.

Uncertainty of brain death: Science is currently puzzled by the existence of brainwaves long after the moment when death is more readily assumed (Bec Crew, Brain Activity Has Been Recorded as Much as 10 Minutes After Death, Science Alert, October 2018; Andrew Griffin, Brain activity appears to continue after people are dead, according to new study, The Independent, 9 March 2017; Rafi Letzter, Dying Brains Silence Themselves in a Dark Wave of 'Spreading Depression', LiveScience, 27 February 2018).

The challenge is helpfully clarified in the extensive discussion by Faisal Qazi, et al (The degree of certainty in brain death: probability in clinical and Islamic legal discourse, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 34, 2013):

While ample criticism of the scientific criteria of brain death (Harvard criteria) by traditional legal sources now exists, an analysis of the legal process in assessing brain death, geared toward informing the clinician's perspective on the issue, is lacking... As a medically and scientifically oriented community, our understanding of personhood as a physical phenomenon continues to evolve parallel to our understanding of physiological science. A clinical understanding of personhood, however, is nowhere more controversial than in the topic of brain death... Confounding the issue are numerous factors, not the least of which is the absence of international or even national consensuses on the very definition of brain death....

To understand what is meant by the term "brain death", it may be of value to clarify what is not meant. Brain death is a social construct of clinical criteria that has been defined more recently as a means of distinguishing irreversible loss of personhood from human organismal death, while maintaining that the two are functionally but not physiologically equal

The uncertainty is confirmed by a subsequent survey and further debate (Torrey Boland, Worldwide Variations in Brain Death Declaration, World Neurology, 5 August 2015; European Society of Anaesthesiology, International variation on definition of brain death must be cleared up to restore public confidence, MedicalXPress, 3 June 2017).

Zombie metaphor: Such considerations are clearly of value in informing discussion of the "brain death" of global institutions, metaphoriocally understood. A relevant provocation is the extraordinary level of recognition of "zombies" -- namely the "walking dead" in the case of individuals (Preponderance of references to the eradication of zombies, 2014; Andreu Domingo, Analyzing Zombie Dystopia as Neoliberal Scenario: an exercise in emancipatory catastrophism, Frontiers in Sociology, 26 July 2018). As a metaphor, this has now been applied to institutions (Richard Lakeman and Luke Molloy, Rise of the zombie institution, the failure of mental health nursing leadership, and mental health nursing as a zombie category, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 27, 2017, 3; Elizabeth Sepper, Zombie Religious Institutions, Northwestern University Law Review, 112, 2018, 5; Xinfeng Jiang, et al, The mystery of zombie enterprises -- "stiff but deathless", China Journal of Accounting Research, 10, 2017, 4).

Zombie has featured as the hypothetical theme of a model UN debate. Does the UN lend itself to recognition as a "zombie" -- or the international community? The question has been variously raised with respect to NATO (Douglas Macgregor, NATO Is Not Dying: It's a Zombie, The National Interest, 31 March 2019; Daniel Larison, Zombie NATO Expansion Stumbles On, The American Conservative, 23 October 2019; Joel Hillison, A Zombie Alliance or Alliance against Zombie? NATO at 70 Years, War Room: United States Army War College, 4 April 2019 ).

With regard to NATO, the case has been argued for the Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier with respect to NATO by Vibeke Schou Tjalve (Zombie NATO, DIIS Policy Brief, 17 May 2017), Three pivotal points are noted:

Will: NATO is a multi-national not a supra-national organization and as such, perpetual struggles over how to build member state consensus is part of its DNA...In qualitative terms, the gulf between how a Trump Pentagon and a Germany-heavy Europe thinks about military power is wide. Unless NATO addresses that gulf â-- honestly and with grit â-- all talk of collective will or resolve is bound to be an illusion.
Pulse: NATO, as any collective organization, needs fuel or pulse: the drive that comes with a shared sense of purpose. Turning NATO into little more than a cost-benefit transactional institution -- ignorant of the UN values that its preamble pays tribute to, and based on little but quid-pro-quo deals around common interests or enemies -- installs a dangerous logic. An alliance held together by nothing but mutual foes makes crisis its only dynamic. That is a dangerous fuel.
Soul: A product of the second world war, NATO was born not only as a shield against external foes, but against the destructive potential that is state power as such... The question is though, whether the very soul of NATO identity does not depend upon that historical memory of trauma. If so, will it survive making performative militarism NATO's key uniting doctrine?

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