WHY IS ASIA ON THE EDGE? by DILIP MUKERJEA

Edges form, frame, and fashion, concepts into creations. They establish borders, boundaries, and barriers that impact our lives, and livelihoods. Sometimes they confuse, or clarify, issues that determine destinies…of peoples, and of nations. Edges emerge from movement, pause for a spell, and move on into fresh incarnations.

The edges that define continents are formed from the exertions of our planet rolling in space at 1,000 miles per minute. Asia is a continent created from such vibrancy, and …from the clashes of vigorous and vivacious cultures that are still evolving.

The question “Why is Asia on the Edge?” sounds complete, yet remains open, a reflection of the promises and possibilities of “infinity,” from the French in-fini, meaning unfinished, or incomplete. Asia is unfinished and incomplete, ergo, on the edge. Yet there is more…

Asia, in some senses, has always been ‘on edge’ but ‘on the edge’? I look upon ‘the edge’ as the contour lines that enclose and exclude. A mélange of tribes evolved, often with tough soul-stealing rigour, and spread out within vistas of wayfaring. They soon established their separate, distinct identities expressed in an expense of time and an expanse of spirit. The edge, for Asia, has moved on from being a dividing line between the Occident and the Orient; it has become a metaphor for Asia awakening to, no, breaking through…! What? Through a marmoreal darkness, into a new dawn, building to a succulent crescendo of emotion and passion in terms of its place in the forefront of modern civilisation. Driven by entelechy, that dynamic restlessness working purposefully towards a goal reflective of Asia’s primordial identity.

But what about Asia being on the edge of the ledge of knowledge? After all, we have been transitioning through the ‘knowledge economy’. The question is, in several senses, irrelevant, nor Asia’s repository of venerable wisdom has much to offer the corporate ecosystems of the Third Millennium. Yet, in numerous instances, amnesia has set in, and many Asian have no awareness of their heritage of wisdom. Thus, the best that can happen for now is to be poised on the edge, a dynamic edge, where innovations erupt with unstoppable ebullience. This is where learning happens…and Asia is learning, burning with learning.

The merging of Asia ancient and Asia contemporary is also an edge worth considering. It is here that we see the art of science and the science of art expressed with an eloquence that has a uniquely pulsating richness. Admittedly, it is the bane and the balm of individual perception that “objective” reality is seen through the filter of each person’s temperament. But there is no denying the brilliance and beauty that bursts forth from just the energy expended in what I see as ‘Asia Awakening’.

Integrating present intention and past wisdom will kindle a more synthesised awareness which begins in wonder and ends with wisdom…a fresh wisdom, embedded with elements to transform the world, and metamorphose it from hope to fulfillment. This would be Asia on the edge of what was and what can be, working towards a grand epiphany!

Asia is also on the edge … of fragmentation, but this could be the process of creative destruction, and reconstruction: a mosaic breaks up space into sharply distinctive pieces — and yet produces a coherent image. This too is Asia on the edge.

Every child is born with the desire to re-create the world on his or her own terms. For the child, magic and art are matters of mirth and merriment. Art translates curiosity and wonder into mastery over the environment. Asia is such a child, one created anew, in the wake of numerous past incarnations… on such an edge is Asia poised, set to articulate its energy and information into matter that takes on fresh forms and functions.

Art merging with science, with the same ingenuity of atoms that formed stars and provided the source for their prodigious energy. Stars joined together to form galaxies and galaxies conglomerated into clusters. I see this as a lustrous metaphor of Asians on the edge of ideas…ideAsians!

As two nations representing the Asian metaphor, China and India are also on the edge in their quest for the best. They compete, and collaborate, with one another, as can be seen in the imagery here. The Chinese and Indian flag shapes are contrasted and unified, at the same time. Nothing could be more different, and nothing could be more similar. This is the symbolic essence of Dialectic Thinking, which has 3 main propositions:

The Interdependence of Opposites

The Interpenetration of Opposites

The Unity of Opposites

Thus, Asia on the Edge is also reflective of

THESIS                 Being

ANTITHESIS       Nothingness

SYNTHESIS         Becoming

Asia is all of these: being, nothingness, becoming, and more…and it can only be so…on the edge!

On the next page is a taste of how ideas drift in from the edge and coalesce at centres of innovation. This is also reflective of how Asia being on the edge can inspire a global commonwealth of effort: to generate ideas, and regenerate communities!

IDEAS ON THE EDGE

Thoughts generally do not come to us in straight lines, between margins, all neatly sorted out. They are born as fuzzy images on the edges of our conscious minds. these ‘edgy images’ then become a little clearer (as shown to the left, by the various lightbulbs around the centre). A collection of such random images may move towards a central zone of focus (or they may move towards a central zone of focus (or they may stay on the edges and become the centres of other edgy thoughts).

Most ideas come from the edges. They can be refined as edgy ideas, or left to keep travelling ‘inwards’. Those that coalesce to become the central zone of focus,  (the large light bulb above) can be used as a stimulus to trigger more ideas.

AN EXAMPLE OF EDGE STREAMING

Inventing a Sea Plane: As you can see from the garland of images forming the edges of the outside circle, the sea plane is a composite of edgy ideas that swoosh in towards the centre. Each of these edgy ideas is also a synthesis of other edgy ideas. This is how the human brain propels evolution.

The central image thus formed is now ready to become the starting point of a Mind Map. It has become our zone of focus, from which a spray of additional ideas emerge. This starting point has been created from millions of other micro-starting points. The micro-zones of foci drift across our minds, inviting us to use them in our night- and daydreams. Most keep drifting. To catch them, you need a purpose, an intention, which has a force of its own. Then, “automagically,” like individual bulbs in a chandellier,

THE BRAIN'S POWERS OF THIN SLICING

My favourite "mentor" in the United States, strategy consultant Dudley Lynch , also author of the classic, 'Strategy of the Dolphin', among other excellent works, wrote an interesting blog piece about the brain's powers of thin slicing. Here's the link.

One particular segment of his writing caught my attention, especially from my deep interest in understanding - and developing - anticipatory prowess:

"... Boiled to a few words, it says that when everything is happening at once, the brain defaults to what it feels is most right (that’s the “gestalt” part).

It really doesn’t even have to think about it; in fact, it usually doesn’t.

If you want it to do something else... make tactical decisions... then you better spend a lot of time upfront explicitly teaching the brain about what to look for and what to do when it finds it (that’s the “feature intensive” part)... "

drawing his inspiration from the book, 'Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement', by Dr. Matthew J. Sharps, a psychology professor at California State University, who has made a career of studying the actions of people who must make split-second, life-and-death-affecting decisions. In the book, he offers his G/FI (Gestalt/Feature Intensive) Processing Theory. Sounds like a good book to read!

In a nut shell, as I have understood from him, anticipatory prowess is also a learned behaviour.

Thank you, my friend.

TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR DILIP MUKERJEA: QUESTION 20

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Question #20:

If your offerings are so great as you and your representatives have claimed in your publicity, how come the world is not beating a path to your door?

DM:   They will. This reminds me of a humorous encapsulation of the advance of technology being rejected:

A robot walks into a bar, orders a drink, and lays down some cash.

Bartender says, "Hey, we don't serve robots."
And the robot says, "Oh, but someday you will!" 
And then too, I think of a quote by Howard Aiken:
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." 
Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in transferring data that prevail, but fail to work, into brains that wish to race ahead. I propose we throw away the thimble, and get nimble … using what I have to offer.

The future demands a fresh resumé. We live in an era of powerful possibilities. Only a Learning Revolution can heal our plundered planet. 

We must make the unimaginable not only possible, but inevitable. Fast change and unpredictability are the dominant facts of life. So we need to gain perspective and not be in too much of a hurry to go nowhere.

Other than what I have already stated, all I have to give is my total energy. If we all did so, together we could achieve historic victories over the forces of entropy.

So, I remain resolute. The tendency of people to not do something does not faze me. Tendency is not destiny.

At the same time, if the mass of humankind is going one way, it does not have to be the correct way! I just wish to help people see a superior way…whilst I keep learning how I can get better at helping them get better!

INTERESTING INSIGHTS FROM THE EXPERTS

"... Although the repetitive drills that accompany handwwriting lessons seem outdated, such physical instruction will help students to succeed. He says these activities stimulate brain activity, lead to increased language fluency, and aid in the development of important knowledge... in particular the development of thinking and language capacities,.. and in developing deep feelings of confidence and interest in the world-all-together, the essential prerequistes for the emergence of the capable and caring individual..."

~ Neurologist Frank Wilson, author of 'The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture';

[Source: The Atlantic, 'Handwriting is a 21st Century Skill', by Edward Tenner, 28th April 2011]

TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR DILIP MUKERJEA: QUESTION 19

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Question #19:

There is seemingly an evolving plethora of new skill or competency sets, e.g. neuro-linguistics, success motivation, financial intelligence, team creativity (synectics), Kepner-Tregore methodology, Triz, Tony Buzan’s stuff, etc., from many different purveyors, which one must acquire in order to survive – and thrive – in today’s fast-paced, rapidly-changing, highly-complex and hyper-competitive world.

How can we make our choices or rather how can we make the right choice?

DM:   Good question.

The cost of confusion is soaring, so we must appreciate the value of clarity. The list proffered by you has merit. One can never learn less. But we must be clear in determining where we are, where we wish to go, and how to get there. This must be in the face of upheavals in numerous sectors of society … feels like trying to outrun a tsunami!

My clear conviction is that we have a choice: education, or extinction!

We need to redesign the structure of education so that learning takes place instead of swotting, slogging, and sweating…in terror! The vital characteristic of a learning experience must be its evocative quality: it must evoke the experiences or meanings from within the learner, rather than describe what is on the outside.

It must have the power to catalyse passions. With its subtly penetrative attributes, smart learning systems are able to extend into the unconscious matrix where perceptions, experiences, concepts, memories, cohabit and commingle with one another in varying degrees of intimacy, sinuously tangling and disentangling, often with languorous aplomb, at other times, with celebratory incandescence.

These learning strategies unravel the qualitative relationships that are generally invisible to the naked eye. The process, at full throttle, often unravels an unsuspected kinship between things and elements, culminating in an epiphanic revelation.

I thus respectfully propose that my material be started with, so that a solid foundation can be laid for further skills to come on board. Without this foundation, we might as well invest in real estate…a house of cards!

[to be continued in the Next Post]

TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR DILIP MUKERJEA: QUESTION 18

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Question #18:

Outside Singapore, entities that wish to represent you in various countries obviously come in many instances, as new players in town, and a new outfit, with an apparent ragtag group of professionals remotely connected to the field of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’.

Sometimes, they don’t seem to be able to answer pertinent questions.

More importantly, can they sustain an investment in your programs, say for the next 90 days, or 12 months, or 36 months?

DM:   I take your point. In the domain of creativity, this is to be expected, perhaps more so in this part of the world.

Yet, I have a strong conviction that with due guidance, their positive attitude will be complemented by a competent aptitude. Besides, this is a welcome test of my strengths and capabilities, not to mention my creative resourcefulness in getting the best out of everyone in this endeavour.

[to be continued in the Next Post]

JUST A RENDITION FOR FUN FROM DILIP MUKERJEA