The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Progress Report #1
Harry
Hillman Chartrand ©
October 23, 2001
The post-modern
nation-state institutionalizes knowledge into “domains” embodied as
“grant-giving” agencies or “councils” that vary between countries. Such councils are political
crystallizations of distinct non-geographic constituencies, e.g. in
Intellectual Property
Rights
Knowledge flowing from
these domains (from both inside and outside what can be called the
“knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake, and “art-for-art’s-sakes sectors) is
institutionalized as “economic” property, i.e. property that can be bought and
sold in a marketplace and/or is freely available in the “public domain”.
Transformation is effected through legislative instrument (and/or legal
precedent) that embody knowledge as “intellectual property rights” including
formal rights such as copyrights, patents, registered industrial designs and
trademarks, as well as informal rights such as “know-how” and trade
secrets. Variation of such rights
is inherent in differences in national legal systems, e.g., Common Law, Civil
Code or Shar’ia.
Technology
Intellectual property rights are institutionalized as “technology” embodied, on the shop floor, as “physical” and “human” capital. [summary to be expanded.]
Knowing
Ultimately, however, all capital is human capital in that physical capital must, no matter how round-about the method of production, be assembled by human beings applying knowledge transmitted inter- or intra-generationally. This amounts to a variation on labour theory of value. Thus knowledge, intellectual property and technology (as opposed to ‘information’) only finds meaning and expression through the human psyche.
Competitiveness
It is the structure, nature and inter-phasing of different knowledge domains, intellectual property rights and technology (including: physical technology derived from the natural and engineering sciences; organizational technology derived from the humanities and social sciences; and, design technology derived from the arts) that determines the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy (please see Fig. 1: Epistemic Genetics).
Chapter 1: The Multiverse
of the Mind
In reality, libraries, archives and computers store what Carl Sagan called ‘extrasomatic knowledge’ (The Dragons of Eden, Balantine, NY., 1977). It is, however, only a ‘natural’ person who can ‘know’. This is the true meaning of the biological term used to define our species: Homo sapiens. But how does a person know? What alternative forms does ‘knowing’ take? How do different ways of knowing affect the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy? The purpose of the initial research project is to answer these and related questions and thereby lay a psychological foundation upon which the main thesis can be constructed.
There are a number of distinct schools of psychology, e.g. behaviourist, clinical, neurophysiologic, psychoanalytic, etc. The sub-discipline chosen is alternatively called analytic, complex, depth or Jungian psychology (Jung, C.G., Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series, and Princeton University Press). This sub-discipline allows for explicit treatment of and sensitivity to cultural variations on psychological phenomena demonstrated to be generic and common to all humanity throughout time and across space, e.g. the concept of the ‘collective unconscious’.
The first stage of the project will involve a literature search, preparation of a reading list, annotations and précis of relevant works. The second stage will involve the construction of a summary model of ‘knowing’ based on findings reported in the literature. The third stage will involve extraction of methodologies, models and concepts useful in demonstrating the thesis at higher levels of analysis, i.e. knowledge domains, intellectual property rights and technology.
Preliminary findings include a methodological approach which, in effect, will be used in establishing the main thesis. In essence, the transdisciplinary approach recognizes that a phenomenon has many facets each requiring application of a number of different disciplinary lenses. The resulting “compound” vision of the phenomenon offers a fuller, richer and more accurate understanding of the phenomenon. In the terms of complex psychology:
Symbols gather round the
thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists
in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and
describing the unknown from many sides.
Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped,
points to another facet of meaning.
Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in
question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the
symbols point to and of what they are trying to express.
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness, Bollingen Series XLII, Princeton University Press, Copyright 1954, p. 7.
Beyond this specific methodological insight, preliminary work has revealed three component models of depth psychology that may prove of use. First, in this disciplinary tradition, there are four elemental faculties of ‘knowing’ including the:
intellectual or thinking function,
intuitive or ‘no-knowledge’ function,
emotional or the feeling function and,
sensational or the sensual function (e.g. sex, drugs and rock’n roll).
Within any individual (or culture) one function tends to be dominant (usually thinking or feeling), two subordinate (usually intuition and sensation), and one repressed (usually thinking or feeling).
Second, individuals (and their cultures)
tend to either extroverted (consciousness focused on the external world);
introverted (focused on the internal world of the psyche); or centroverted
(bi-focal).
Third, each human being lives on many levels
of mental life creating a veritable multiverse of mind within each of us. Within each multiverse, the ego is but one of a myriad of
unconscious complexes co-existing in the human psyche, hence the term “complex
psychology”. While normally ego
consciousness dominates a competing complex requires but a threshold of libido to bring it up from the depths of
the unconscious to the bubbling surface and ‘constellate’ it in consciousness
and behaviour.
Jungian psychology has classified and categorized such complexes, based on global analysis of myth, fairy tale and dreams as well as from the neurosis and psychosis to which humankind is heir, into recognizable and consistent categories - across cultures and across time. They are called archetypes that tend to constellate into specific patterns called mythogems that are shared by all human cultures but vary in detail between them.
Current findings of the initial research
project that may prove useful in development of the main thesis
include:
(a) alternative ‘ways of knowing’ tend to become institutionalized into distinct “knowing” industries, e.g. the science, religious (spiritual), arts and sensual industries. It is to be expected that different nation states will enjoy a comparative advantage in some but not all of these industries or, more properly, economic sectors. [For an overview of one, please see my article: “
Towards an American Arts Industry” in The Public Life of the Arts in America, Joni Cherbo and M. Wyszomirski (eds), Rutgers University Press, April 2000;(b) traditionally, Occidental culture has tended to extroversion, e.g. the natural and engineering sciences resulting in ‘materialism” while Oriental cultures have tended towards introversion, e.g. Buddhist denial of the reality of the material world – all is illusion. Not only is there rich variation with in each but to the dialectic of Occident/Orient needs, in a post-modern era, to embrace a trialetic (Erich Jantsch, Design for Evolution, Braziller, NYC, 1975.) through inclusion of what is alternatively called the “Fourth World”, native or aboriginal culture.
A global culture would, accordingly, tend towards centroversion [for an overview of one distinct culture please see my articles "
Intellectual Property in the Global Village", Government Information in Canada, University of Saskatchewan, Spring 1995; "Christianity, Copyright and Censorship in English-speaking Cultures" in Culture and Democracy: Social and Ethical Issues in Public Support for the Arts and Humanities, A. Buchwalter (ed.), Westview, Boulder, 1992; and, "Context and Continuity: Philistines, Pharisees and Art in English Culture", Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1991]; and,
(c) the constellation of archetypes into mythogems
offers a way of exploring alternative patterns of competitiveness between
cultures, e.g. what does competitiveness mean to a Cree in northern
Beyond current findings, a number of more speculative observations may prove useful in developing a transdisciplinary thesis. The search for an understanding of ‘psychic’ symbols through complex psychology can, to a degree, be characterized as ‘the search for the perfect metaphor’. “As Above, So Below” is an ancient maxim for the correspondence of knowing on different planes of consciousness.
A new set of metaphors or images – a coherent symbol group - is required by a post-modern era [for an exploration of a coherent symbol group, please see: my précis of James Hillman, Hillman, The Thoughts of the Heart, Eranos Lectures 2, Spring Publications Inc., Dallas, Texas, USA, 1981]. Most will inevitably come from that which has been uncovered in the external world by the Occidental quest of the natural and engineering sciences. The question is which have ‘meaningfulness’ for the internality of contemporary humanity, or in terms of complex psychology, which have numinosity. Initially this set should include: archetypes/quarks; archetypes/institutions; archetypes/DNA; institutions/DNA; libido/electromagnetic force; unified field theory/unity of knowledge; and, the Earth from Space.
This initial report, as all subsequent progress reports, will be posted on my PhD website:
http://members.home.net/harryhillman/. Comments, suggestions and discussion is warmly welcomed and badly needed.Chapter 1: The Multiverse of the Mind
An Interdisciplinary Studies PhD
Thesis Proposal
by Harry Hillman Chartrand
h-chartrand@home.com
B.A.
Hon., M.A., Economics,
to the