Climbing Elven Stairways: DNA as a macroscopic metaphor of polarized psychodynamics

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Introduction

This is an exploration of the possibility that the operating pattern associated with DNA, so fundamental to microbiological life processes, may be of some relevance in reframing understanding of the large-scale processes associated with psychosocial interactions -- with which civilization has as yet proven to be fatally incompetent.

What follows is a development of aspects of the following earlier explorations:

• Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking (2007)
• Potential Misuse of the Conveyor Metaphor: recognition of the circular dynamic essential to its appropriate operation (2007)
• Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects (2006)
• DNA Supercoiling as a Pattern for Understanding Psycho-social Twistedness (2004)

The central insight is that correspondences offer a form of understanding of relationships between what may well be both incommensurable and incompatible within conventional frameworks -- as between science and religion, between science and art, or between different belief systems. DNA integrates large quantities of information of qualitative and generative significance, notably through the nature of the bonding between its two intertwined, complementary strands. The most challenging bonds in psychosocial dynamics are partially embodied and understood, if at all, in poiesis of some form (poetry, dance, music, drama, etc). ***

This exploration takes a quite different approach from that of Spiral Dynamics based on the work of Clare W. Graves (The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of the Adult Human Biopsychosocial Systems, 1981). The emphasis is on the existential challenge of comprehending any relationship with "The Other" and how such a challenging bond may break down. It focuses closely on what may be learnt from the complexities associated with DNA, notably in contrast with the existential dynamics to which the I Ching alludes through metaphor.

The question in what follows is whether, as correspondences, such bonds between the incommensurable offer a form of ladder -- a cognitive spiral staircase, in the light of the DNA metaphor, on which it may be possible lightly to tread between the polarized, "clashing" forces. Might "theories of correspondences" be more fruitfully understood as "ladders of correspondences"?

More intriguing is whether processes of creativity and schism formation in groups are usefully patterned by the processes associated with DNA replication and its role in protein fabrication. In endeavouring to comprehend the integrity of the "pattern that connects" does this imply that this depends on the ability of that pattern to engage dynamically in seemingly disintegrative processes through which the new is engendered? How are such disintegrative processes to be distinguished from those destructive of that pattern and the quality which it sustains?

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