UNESCO - IIAS – Culture of Peace, 1997

Symposium on Culture of Peace - Plenary Session

Chair: Dr. Vladimir Lomeiko, Special Advisor to the Director General of UNESCO, Paris, France, and Prof. Dr. Vladimir Zeman, Concordia, Montreal, Canada

Consiousness, Boredom, Communication and Evil, Tilly Janowitz, Paul Babarik, Concordia, Montreal

Social Cognition as Basis for Culture of Peace, Kristina Kauffmann, IIASA, Witold Skolasinski, Poland

Lampsacus - Hometown of Mankind on the Internet, Otto E. Rösler; Tübingen

Cultivating a Human Cognition by Dialogue, Heiner Benking, Creative Member, The Club of Budapest, FAW, Ulm

Spiritual Reconstruction: ‘…Peace---If…’, Nicolas A. Bensaid, Legal and Commercial Coordinator; Paris

General Discussion on Culture of Peace

Moderatorsw: Prof. George Lasker, IIAS, and Dr. Vladimir Lomeiko, UNESCO

AWARD CEREMONY

Please note that a year later – in 1998 – UN GA Fifty-second session Agenda item 156 52/13. a Culture of peace was declared. As you can see this plenary and award session was quite timely.

and this very VERY LATE NOTE (2009):

I was just with some participants from the Culture ofd Peace event 12 years ago. The events were intense and political in Baden-Baden at that time, so we remembered why my topic and contribution was extended, and I had - beside the paper – a 2 page had-out delivered before the lecture, and how this assault on Systems and Science by questioning Overclaims & Oversimplifications was receicved not only by the organiszers, not only that the long paper of the invited “keynote” was not inculded into the proceedings ! we remembered that the discussions were ranging much further thand just over- claims and – simplifications on the individual or personal level, but also about over- extensions and exploitations on the group or collective level.

It seems worth to recall that the work on multi-perspectivity and –positionality was already 7 years “old” – but not established as it is now being included in the International Encyclopedia of Systems of Cybernetics. For me this neglect of anything new and different is typical for the ingroups and turfs we face not only in science – but in many areas – see the work on group-think and clan-think by John Warfield, or the original work in the formative early years of the Club of Rome: Ozbekhan, Jantsch, Christakis…

I can only point to the presentation and paper for Hans Jona’ 90^th birthday (by he way also not included in the proceedings) and the work of Nathan Keyfritz about Interdisciplinarity at IIASA, Laxemburg…. See my letter to Lynton Caldwell an the paper SHOW or SCHAU. In retrospect I feel it is time that neglected and ignored papers should be collected by any author and should be voted for, ranked, and revisited to see if pragmatic or ethical – societal aspects are good enough to see if they fit not just a certain audience, but other times and places….

SOMEHOW STRANGE and TYPICAL – the 3 contributions above – whicha re very dear to me event 15 years later did never hit the streets – I feel I really should think about the idea to collect not just the “others” but also the “other models” !! and the “odds”!….

The author is a long-time collaborator of The Society Culture of Peace:

See also the later established official UNESCO website:

Here you find my contribution and the handout from Baden-Baden.

Culture_of_Peace_Intersymp_97_Cognitives_Panorama.htm

Overview & Orientation or Overclaims & Oversimplifications ? http://benking.de/ceptualinstitute/overview.htm

Understanding and Sharing in a Cognitive Panorama

ABSTRACT:

presents a way to visualize complex issues in connected space-scapes or situation rooms, which is called a Cognitive Panorama,
shows how to embody lateral thinking, which we call diagonal as it crosses patterns and domains, igniting creativity,
combines synthetic and real pictures to form models, which portray objects as they are seen from different perspectives,
presents ways to focus interest and invite voices in dialogue, and
summarizes lessons learned in areas such as: education, knowledge organization, ethics, and policy making, or communication in detail and in general.

In contrast to the metaphor of the `Second Flood' (Lévy 1996), describing Cyberculture's impact due to its 1.) `open-ended' universality, 2.) loss of meaning, and 3.) loss of context, this paper makes use of context to organize knowledge, and provides orientation by localizing `what we know and miss', by mapping relations and connections. Instead of accepting a `flat' chaotic mess of data, the concept actively addresses critical issues such as mis-use, manipulation, and under-use of messages and information, and searches for other factors, like quality, to help further discrimination of data and knowledge. Some focus is on disorientation and apathy, specialization and globalization, and specific schools, like scientific or post-modern relativist's views. Central is the idea to use space not only as a real world platform to position and share objects, but also to bridge and follow meaning into embodied context and semantic spaces which form an organic or holistic world- view. Through reflection on conceptual positions, outlining and embodying situations or topics (logical places), we can also scrutinize abstract `realities' and interconnectedness, explore participatory approaches (Judge 1980- 97), (Harman 1996), (Benking, 1988-97), ways to share more effectively and consistently in groups `where we are and what we think'

I have prepared also a summing up hand-out for that session. Please see also the summary below:

Overview & Orientation
or
Overclaims & Oversimplifications ?

· Sharing frames of references,

· Finding agreement, checks and balances in the world of ideas, and

· How we can use our potentials for the next phylogenetic step: investing in sharable concepts
     and exploiting (mental) mobility and movement as the basic extension systems and thereby
     becoming aware about our fixations on real and ideal territories, without learning to take away
     boundaries and reconfigure categories of our thinking.

· Models and mental models,

· The mind’s eye, and

· A creative tolerance to see in perspective obvious over-claims and over-simplifications, see their
proportions and consequences.

· Focus is on making us aware of mental territories, may they be reductionistic or synoptic.

A VERY LATE NOTE (2009):

I was just with some participants from the Culture ofd Peace event 12 years ago. The events were intense and political in Baden-Baden at that time, so we remembered why my topic and contribution was extended, and I had - beside the paper – a 2 page had-out delivered before the lecture, and how this assault on Systems and Science by questioning Overclaims & Oversimplifications was receicved not only by the organiszers, not only that the long paper of the invited “keynote” was not inculded into the proceedings ! we remebered that the discussions were ranging much further thand just over- claims and – simplifications on the individual or personal level, but also about over- extensions and exploitations on the group or collective level.

I can only point to the presentation and paper for Hans Jona’ 90^th birthday (by he way also not included in the proceedings) and the work of Nathan Keyfritz about Interdisciplinarity at IIASA, Laxemburg…. See my letter to Lynton Caldwell an the paper SHOW or SCHAU. In retrospect I feel it is time that neglected and ignored papers should be collected by any author and should be voted for, ranked,a nd revisited to see if pragmatic or ethical – societal aspects are good enough to see if they fit not just a certain audience, but other times and places….

I have moved both papers later to my German website: www.benking.de

Please visit: Understanding and Sharing in a Cognitive Panorama Overview & Orientation or Overclaims & Oversimplifications ?