Strategic Implications of Missing Psychodynamic Dimensions in Global Modelling

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 25 May 2026

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Conceptual Mandalas Contrasting Existential Issues in Comparison with Earth4All and IDG

Introduction

25 May 2026 – A past issue of the Paradigm Explorer journal of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) was experimentally analyzed at the time with the aid of two AIs — ChatGPT-4 and Claude-3 (Experimental AI Meta-analysis of an Academic Journal Issue, 2024). This notably focused on the Challenge of authenticity in relation to spiritual intelligence. With the new AI facilities that have since become available as a result of rapid development, it was possible to repeat the analysis of that earlier issue (#143) and to apply the same methodology to the analysis of a current issue (#150) for comparative purposes. The comparative analysis was extended to the report of the Galileo Commission instigated by SMN (Harald Walach, Beyond a Materialist Worldview: towards an expanded science, 2019).

The exercise was undertaken in the light of the global model framing currently offered by the Earth4All initiative of the Club of Rome — the “5 turnarounds” required at this time — in the light of the systemic focus long offered by updates to the World3 model which had given rise to The Limits to Growth (1972). There is no “World4” model. Consideration was also given to the unrelated Inner Development Goals (IDG) initiative on the transformational skills for sustainable development. The purpose of the comparison was to highlight the extent to which the intangible issues articulated by Paradigm Explorer and SMN were recognized by the tangible issues with which Earth4All was preoccupied, or by the behavioural science focus of IDG.

In response to the recognized failures of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals initiative, the strategic relevance of any such exploration is indicated by the extensive Earth4All study (Johannah Bernstein, et al, SDGs for All: Strategic Scenarios — Earth4All System Dynamics Modelling of SDG Progress, 2023). It can however be argued that a primary factor undermining such vulnerability is the failure to accord attention to complementary psychosocial dimensions — “missing dimensions” — as presented separately (Mnemonics of Achieving Strategic Lift-off and Sustainable Flight, 2026; Psychodynamics Correspondences to World Dynamics, 2026).

The well-documented tendency to ignore or dismiss enabling factors of polycrisis has been recently highlighted in the case of UN reports themselves (Michelle Nichols, UN report finds United Nations reports are not widely read, Reuters, 2 August 2025; Nobody reads UN reports – UN report, The Telegraph New Zealand, 3 August 2025). Of interest therefore is whether this process applies in the case of global modelling of the unasked questions of root cause analysis (Misleading Modelling of Global Crises, 2021; Perspectives of AI on Psychosocial Implications of Global Modelling, 2024). How indeed are these related to the role of the absentials identified as so fundamental by Terrence Deacon? (Marlie Tandoc, Human Cognition, Patterning and Deacon’s Absentials: the value of absent-mindedness in the sense of minding what is absent, 2018) . An issue of ever increasing importance with the rapid current development of censorship (Global Strategic Implications of the Unsaid, 2003; Lipoproblems: Developing a Strategy Omitting a Key Problem, 2009).

The question is whether developing AI facilities can now enable the articulation of relevant dimensions otherwise, notably through visualization in a manner which has psychological appeal in contrast to the alienation induced by academic and institutional reports. The curious traditional mnemonic appeal and coherence of mandala-like configurations framed the possibility of exploring whether presentations in that form could now be articulated experimentally by AIs in the light of AI analysis of complex disparate text presentations. Potentially relevant to that argument is the widespread — and unquestioned — use of images in that style to signal the identity of collective initiatives (Eliciting Insight from Mandala-style Logos in 3D, 2020).  There is however a particular irony to the fact that those associating their identity with such images make little effort to articulate their systemic preoccupations in the light of such patterns of coherence — and may well deprecate such visualization in preference to text and the conventional convenience of print media.

The exercise undertaken sits within a substantial institutional movement toward visual abstracts as primary rather than supplementary communication. Scientific publishing has required graphical abstracts at major journals (Cell, The Lancet, much of Elsevier’s catalogue) since the mid-2010s, with editorial guidelines specifying single images that carry the central finding visually rather than as illustration of textual claims. Policy work has moved analogously toward the one-page summary that combines headline finding with diagrammatic evidence (OECD policy briefs, World Bank notes, IPCC Summaries for Policymakers). The mandala-style projection developed here is the centro-symmetric limit case of this movement — organized around symmetry rather than around finding-specificity — and it recovers, within contemporary AI-enabled visualization, the cognitive function that the traditional mandala (Tibetan thangka, Christian rose window, Islamic geometric tilework, Kabbalistic Tree of Life) has always served. The contemporary visual-abstract literature has not yet acknowledged this lineage; the present exercise frames the connection explicitly.

As designed, the process undertaken highlights the differences in “language” between the quantitative-material focus of conventional global models in contrast with the “qualitative-existential” focus of an array of other perspectives. Curiously in the preference of both for textual articulations with their characteristics pathologies, the “language” and appeal of visualization is lost, whatever recourse the two may have to it — as in the case of graph-theory and sacred geometry symbols respectively. Both such approaches to visualization draw on the cognitive relevance of number in the patterned organization of experience.

The exercise which follows developed and applied a method — with AI — to the two issues of Paradigm Explorer and to the Galileo Commission report. It gave rise in each case to a mandala-style image in 2D, to a 3D variant of that image, and to an interactive version of that 3D variant. In doing so, the process also developed a Python script enabling analysis and generation of analogous presentations from other texts — whether future issues of Paradigm Explorer, or other documents. Needless to say, given the experimental nature of the exercise, the whole procedure and its products invite many refinements through further iterations with AI — notably as they become feasible in the future, with greater expertise.

The analysis and the aesthetic enhancement of the visual results frames the question of the requisite variety of “ways of seeing” in the face of polycrisis. As ways of “seeing”, the variety of games is noted as indicative of contrasting forms of dynamic engagement with an “other” — each with its associated strategies. Each game is constituted by its constitutive obstacle — its rule against which the in-game competence is defined — and that the obstacles differ structurally rather than perspectivally. Earth4All is constituted by the modelling obstacle (“everything must run as a calibrated simulation”); IDG by the trainable-capacity obstacle (“everything inner must be a learnable skill”); Galileo / Paradigm Explorer by the legitimation-of-anomaly obstacle (“everything must be defensible against scientism without dissolving into credulity”). These are not three viewpoints on a common situation but three distinct kinds of activity, each making certain moves legal and certain moves illegal by the very feature that makes the game playable.

The “missing dimensions” highlighted frame a concluding discussion of the relevance of a mytho-poetic framing of current global conflicts with its array of deities. This argues that the pantheon vocabulary explored is not a metaphor laid over conventional institutional analysis but a recovery of the original conceptual lineage that the modern institutions actually descend from (medieval ecclesiastical hierarchy, ancient polytheistic structures, the dionysian De Coelesti Hierarchia underwriting the entire Western institutional tradition). Under that reading, the quotation marks around “pantheon” understate the framing: institutions are pantheons not by analogy but by descent.

The closing reflections explore the cognitive demands of encounters with intelligences operating in non-binary modes, taking the contemporary encounter with AI as a rehearsal space for the meta-ludic competence that the analysis identifies as institutionally missing.

Of particularly surprising relevance to the argument, if only as a metaphor, was the “technical” challenge of representing complexity — whether in terms of the layout of projections in 2 dimensions or 3 — such as to avoid the tendency of one item to obscure another however highlighted.

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