Global brain?

Are the UN and the International Community both Brain Dead (Part #3)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

The global brain is a conceptualization of the worldwide network formed by all the people on this planet together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an intelligent, self-organizing system. The term was coined by Peter Russell (The Global Brain: speculations on the evolutionary leap to planetary consciousness, 1982).

The original metaphor was first presented as a model by Francis Heylighen and Johan Bollen (The World-Wide Web as a Super-Brain: from metaphor to model, 1996). Heylighen reviewed the history of the underlying ideas in terms of four perspectives "organicism", "encyclopedism", "emergentism" and "evolutionary cybernetics" (Conceptions of a Global Brain: an historical review, 2011). A basis for simulating the operation of the brain in terms of the connectivity of its elements has been suggested in terms of the thousands of interlinked online profiles of the Yearbook of International Organizations and the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (Simulating a Global Brain: using networks of international organizations, world problems, strategies, and values, 2001).

Exploiting the metaphor, rather than the model, the concern here is the nature and location of the integrative function within the world wide web. This follows from questions raised with regard to integration of the right and left hemispheres of that brain, however these are to be understood (Engendering Viable Global Futures through Hemispheric Integration: a radical challenge to individual imagination, 2014)

It is appropriate to ask whether the current challenges to global governance, and any requisite integration of the global brain, could not be fruitfully explored with respect to split-brain pathology, any form of split consciousness, hemispheric specialization, or bipolar disorder. "Hemisphere" is also a reminder of its metaphorical appropriation from the potentially complex patterns of geometry -- rarely explored in relation to globality (Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2009). Ironically, with respect to the argument here, "hemispheric disassociation" is only too evident between the cybernetic preoccupation with the global brain (as modelled by the internet) and its use as a metaphor for emergence of planetary consciousness.

Detectable "brainwaves"? As potentially associated with the global functions of the internet, it is also appropriate to ask whether the retreat of policy-makers into short-termism in response to information overload constitutes a pathological symptom of another kind. Rather than "brain death", is the progressive "information death" to be compared to the effects of collective senility -- even a form of Alzheimer syndrome? (Information death of the global brain, 2018; Imminent Collective Communication "Info-death"? Collapse of global civilization understood otherwise, 2018; Pointers to the Pathology of Collective Memory, 1980). Has global civilization engaged unconsciously in a form of self-harm potentially comparable with the role of corpus callosotomy in a remedial effort to respond to so-called "epileptic governance" and spastic coordination, or possibly spastic hemiplegia?

More fundamental to any understading of collective "brain death" is however the existence of "brainwaves" and the capacity to detect them prior to a terminal "flatline" condition. Those commonly recognized in the human brain include: Alpha wave, Beta wave, Gamma wave, Delta wave, Theta wave, and Mu wave. Curiously "brainwave" is readily used metaphorically to describe a moment of creativity. More intriguing is the discovery that the ability to comprehend metaphors (whether associated with creativity or not) is specifically associated with brainwaves (Alexis Blue, How the Brain Finds Meaning in Metaphor, University Communications, 2 April 2019). Reference to fruitful communication as being "on the same wavelength" is also recognized in such terms (Ephrat Livni, Being on the same wavelength isn't just a figure of speech: it's proven neuroscience, Quartz, 5 May 2017).

Macron's provocative metaphorical reference to "brain death" is therefore helpful in focusing attention on whether global institutions can be said to exhibit any detectable form of "brainwave" by which their collective intelligence is characterized. Understood in terms of creativity, can it be said that such organizations have "brainwaves"? In this respect, despite periodic calls for "new thinking", it is unclear whether this engenders detectable "brainwaves" -- especially if its existence is rendered undetectable by secrecy (as in the case of NATO).

Where is the evidence of "new thinking" by the United Nations, for example? Is "sustainable development" to be understood as the "Last Brainwave" of the UN? On the other hand. could the mysterious sense in which 12-, 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-fold global strategic patterns "feel right" to many, be understood in terms of the cyclic periodicity of brainwaves? Would this also be true of the 21-fold organization of UNESCO's Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems? Do such examples suggest that there is a fundamental pattern of coherence to be recognized in wave terms (Requisite 20-fold Articulation of Operative Insights? 2018; Memetic Analogue to the 20 Amino Acids as vital to Psychosocial Life? 2015).

Given the enthusiasm for collective "brainstorming" as a group creativity technique, this merits greater articulation in terms of "brain waves" -- especially given the possibility of a "perfect storm", and the disasters with which that might potentially be associated: confusion versus cognitive fusion?

Relevance of the wave metaphor? Can nations be said to be "on the same wavelength" with respect to climate change and enviromental degradation at this critical time? If not, is there a case for exploring the wave patterns characteristic of collective intelligence -- some analogue to alpha, beta, etc? Is the incapacity of institutions to frame such issues through more fruitful metaphors itself an indication that such waves have already "flatlined"? (Rupinder Mangat and Simon Dalby, Climate and Wartalk: metaphors, imagination, transformation, Elementa, 6, 2018, 1; Anne K. Armstrong, et al, Using Metaphor and Analogy in Climate Change Communication, 2018; Alice Deignan, et al, Metaphors of Climate Science in Three Genres: research articles, educational texts, and secondary school student talk, Applied Linguistics, 40, 2019, 2).

It could be considered extraordinary that global society is equipping itself with a vast array of technology dependent on wave functions -- in support of collective intelligence or its artificial surrogates -- whilst ignoring the nature of the wave functions which may be fundamental to the operation of the intelligence of its institutions. Thinking in regard to electromagnetic waves now extends to quantum mechanics with implications for quantum psychology. Yet to be addressed are the issues raised from the perspective of international relations by Alexander Wendt (Quantum Mind and Social Science: unifying physical and social ontology, 2015).

Is this failure itself a characteristic of institutional "brain death"? Of further relevance is his argument that indivuals merit recognition as "walking wave functions", as discussed separately (On being "walking wave functions" in terms of quantum consciousness? 2017). This could then be understood as applicable to collective entities -- institutions -- with the implication that their "brain death" could be explored in terms of "collapse of the wave function", especially given the relation to consciousness in the light of the Von Neumannâ--Wigner interpretation (Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009). Now that importance is attached to an ultimate singularity, the manner in which this might be associated with collapse of a global function calls for attention (Cadell Last, Global Brain Singularity: universal history, future evolution and humanity's dialectical horizon. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2018).

Whether the challenges international institutions claim to face are embodied in other institutions, or whether they take the form of environmental and resource issues, in the light of Wendt's argument, there is a case for framing the engagement in wave terms (Encountering Otherness as a Waveform, 2013).

Wendt could however presumably argue that global institutions are now in effect "ghosts" in an electromechanical machine, following earlier introduction of such a frame by Gilbert Ryle (Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine, 1967; Alexander Wendt, The mind-body problem and social science: motivating a quantum social theory, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 48, 2018, 2). The metaphor is readily applicable to the "international community" -- but comprehensible in the case of the United Nations and many other global bodies.

Integrative function? With respect to strategic vision, the requirement for separate hemispheres to achieve stereoscopic depth could also be understood as a challenge to implicit assumptions regarding any "cyclopean" form of globality (Cyclopean Vision versus Poly-sensual Engagement, 2006). Such integrative implications are also evoked with respect to political economy (Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen, The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: responding to globalization in the Americas, 2008; Maxwell Cameron, The Future of Hemispheric Integration, The Mark, 7 March 2012). These currently play out with respect to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

In the following, the earlier quest for such an integrative function is reproduced (from 2014). However, given the problematic division of the world into "hemispheres", it is appropriate to further exploit the relevance of the metaphor to such integration -- especially given the nebulous "transcendent" ("God-like") role attributed to the "international community". One source of insight, for example, might then be the argument of Iain McGilchrist (Divine Understanding and the Divided Brain, In: Handbook of Neuroethics, 2015):

Interaction with the world requires the right hemisphere's broad attention, which is inclusive and opens up into possibility, coupled with the left hemisphere's narrow attention, which collapses the world we experience into specificity. If the left hemisphere collapses the world too quickly into what is specific, however, it precludes the possibility of knowledge that transcends what is already familiar, notably purported knowledge of the divine. By contrast, the right hemisphere is more sensitive to image, metaphor, and narratives by which theological knowledge may be capable of expression that would be ambiguous or apparently contradictory if expressed simply as a set of propositions.

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]