4D Star: The revolutionary, evidence-based universal paradigm fosters ethical directionality, strategic orientation, systemic vitality, and the integration of knowledge
Ethics, strategy, human systemic functionality, and knowledge integration must be coherently merged into an evidence-based paradigm for any decision or analysis to be suitable.
In retrospect, it seems that this should have been manifest long ago — but apparently, the elaboration of 4D Star required an unusual level of insight.
The point of departure is the aim of uplifting human dignity, human development, values, and virtues. This entails a broad understanding of our species — including its needs, aspirations, and place in the natural universe.
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Without freedom, a system cannot explore new options; thus, it cannot adaptively interface with its changing environment. Furthermore, human dignity cannot be upheld; human development cannot advance.
The variation represented by freedom must be met by a force that channels exploration right back toward the needs of the system. Loyalty provides the stability in which freedom can endure. It helps to hold the system together through time and it manifests itself in every aspect of functionality.
But for loyalty to lead freedom effectively back to human, it requires organization. This entails structured information, processes, and roles. Loyalty also needs an effective arrangement of resources and channels of informational exchange; otherwise, it cannot shepherd the system all the way to integrative, ethical, and sustainable innovation (IESI).
Innovation is a process; it is not a final, ideal end-state.
It is dynamic movement, not an oppressive prophecy shouted from a hilltop.
Thus, any ethical system demonstrating vitality engages constant feedback, so it can change course as indicated. It requires collective intelligence. It insists on continuous data to respond to threats and opportunities, to harmonize the systemic elements, and to monitor needs and development.
For these reasons, the system demands connectivity and communication.
These seven elements compose a complex system with innumerable interconnections.
When we consider Sustainability Through Time, we find that the system generates emergent properties. These include vitality and its components; i.e., resilience, adaptability, cohesiveness, trust, and diversity; as well as civilization and language.
These emergent properties feed back into the system as it moves through time. This continuous reinforcement strengthens the system, equipping it to survive and to thrive as it faces evolving factors of sustainability.
These systemic and temporal phenomena occur within a still-larger background frame: Enduring Realities. The eternal or slowly-evolving patterns of history and of nature set the stage for the unfolding of events and the dynamics of the ethical and resilient human system, which is open to and interactive with its environment.
January 2024
Revised: September 2024
Brian Luedke MSN RN
L’Europe
leurope.com
Confusion ➜ Insight
Making decisions with naïvely simplistic models — or without reference to a sufficiently broad macro-level paradigm — results in failure to address root causes of problems, or, in the creation of new, unforeseen dilemmas.
Contrasting with the author’s 4D paradigm, some models represent concepts as isolated dichotomies or one-dimensional continuums:
- engaged vs. unengaged (employees),
- safe vs. unsafe,
- equitable vs. inequitable,
- efficient vs. inefficient (processes), etc.
A simple model may accurately represent one aspect of reality. Simple models can provide clarity and facilitate promptness and efficiency. Relevant data can be easier to measure and communicate (Mallikarjun, 2021).
However, reliance on a basket of simple models – without an over-arching paradigm to organize information – can lead to catastrophic outcomes, a non-cumulative knowledge base, misdirected resources, and misaligned priorities.
While a macro-level paradigm inherently presents more complexity than simple models, it can nevertheless simplify analysis and decision making. Heretofore, without 4D Star, siloed approaches have often led to conflict between stakeholders, who advocate for elements in isolation – based on subjective values and experiences – without sufficient acknowledgement that competing priorities frequently connect at the macro-level.
Ignorance of macro-level dynamics thus generates confusion, distrust and rivalry, creating a new layer of complication in problem-solving. Simplification of tasks has long been recognized as a primary means of helping to avoid errors (Leveson, 1995). A macro-level paradigm that enables stakeholders to identify how priorities intersect would promote coherence, collaboration, and harmony — boosting systemic performance.
One needs to be ever mindful of important variables that may be excluded from simple models (Chowdhury and Turin, 2020). The surest way to ensure inclusion of relevant factors is through consistent reference to a robust and comprehensive higher-level paradigm.
A macro-level paradigm with predictive power can facilitate organized action, promote efficiency, enhance communication and teamwork, clarify needed benchmarks and metrics, more fully integrate and engage research findings, enrich education, disseminate insight, strengthen analysis of historical anecdotes, and lend credibility to proposed reforms.
Narrow, specialized micro-level paradigms should be harmoniously “nested” within a superior paradigm. The highest-level model should be solutions-oriented and integrate human dignity, virtues, values, core human dynamics, sustainability and success through time, and enduring factors that frame reality.
Currently, rather than nesting their models within a superior paradigm, intellectuals, policymakers, and organizational leaders simply allow them to dead-end at a midway point. There is no logical reason for this; indeed, it is profoundly illogical and contributes to fragmentation, inefficiency, and confusion.
The fragmented approach that we currently have is perfectly designed for the results that we are getting. We see the negative outcomes associated with this primitive methodology, and no one is content. Yet institutional inertia, intellectual complacency, and self-serving interests in protecting the status quo are all conspiring to delay urgently-needed reform.
4D Star fills a crucial gap and catalyzes logical, strategic, and coordinated action. It facilitates communication and teamwork by providing stakeholders with the same “map” and terminology in view of achieving sustainable, ethical solutions.
A universal paradigm allows for a cumulative knowledge base where insights and data are systematically categorized and integrated, fostering an organized accumulation of knowledge.
Aside from having no evidence-based competitors in its class, it’s highly probable that inherently there could be none, since 4D Star already seems to coherently integrate eternal dynamics, temporal phenomena, and patterns perceived by living systems.
2D Level
HUMAN – FREEDOM – LOYALTY with élan – INNOVATION – ORGANIZATION – COMMUNICATION – CONNECTIVITY
The inseparable cohort of core elements of any ethical human complex system that manifests vitality.
Five Foundations
+ Ring of Harmony
+ Ring of Harmony
The 2D Level is represented by a two-dimensional (flat) five-pointed star, surrounded by a ring. This shape also stands for the overall 4D Star paradigm.
Five Foundations
- Human
- Freedom
- Loyalty (with élan)
- Innovation
- Organization
Note: The author sometimes uses “Enthusiastic Commitment” interchangeably with “Loyalty with élan.”
The 2D Level elements are partially-extrinsic systemic enablers that work in concert — and endure in combination — to promote aspirations and to extend virtues, values, and functionalities in key strategic areas.
Ring of Harmony
Surrounding the five-pointed star, the Ring represents communication and connectivity. Concomitantly, it also symbolizes the synergy, interactivity, and interdependence of the 2D Level elements. These dual meanings of the Ring dovetail, because communication and connectivity help to ensure harmonious systemic integration and alignment with data from the external environment and from structured representations of past events.
Physical, emotional, informational, and geographic factors impinge on the open channels and bonds represented by connectivity, affecting the element’s ability to convey information, boost cohesiveness, and embody solidarity.
Constructive disagreements contribute to the crafting of innovative, sustainable structures that harmoniously align with 4D Star principles to promote ethical outcomes.
The annular shape is already widely used to represent feedback loops, dynamic information flow, and connectivity, at various levels, e.g., cellular functionality, the nervous system, organizations, or ecology.
RELIGION
In religious contexts, the Ring of Harmony can be understood as also encompassing spiritual connectivity and spiritually-directed communication — either at the individual level, or at the level of the community, congregation, sangha, minyan, satsang, or ummah.
Indeed, the entire 4D Star paradigm is consistent with applications associated with any of the world religions.
(Perhaps the infinity represented by freedom, together with infinite connectivity, etc., approximates the mind of God.)
3D Level
Sustainability Through Time
As the 2D Level system moves through time, it generates emergent properties, e.g., adaptability, resilience, trust, cohesiveness, diversity, language, and civilization. This provides human systems with competitive advantages, equips them for success and survival, and frames a way of life.
Also, as the system advances through time, these emergent properties feed back into the system, further enhancing functionality and strength.
Through time, human systems safeguard and manage factors of sustainability that align with Enduring Realities. Examples of these factors include population health, social solidarity, maintenance of infrastructure, the preservation of freedom and of organizational vitality, the strength and independence of allies, and strategic posture vis-à-vis external adversaries.
4D Level
Enduring Realities
Corresponding to long-term factors present in the Universe, this layer includes components such as historical patterns, persistent behavioral tendencies and operational dynamics, scientific knowledge, slowly-evolving demographic trends, and geographic features and ramifications.
The holistic functionality of core systemic enablers (2D Level) occurs within the context of the limits and opportunities afforded by this stable background frame, with the 4D Level thus informing the management of evolving challenges and opportunities.
Thus, as they draw on structured representations of abiding conditions, human systems integrate this knowledge with ethical and strategic considerations.
Dystopian Antithesis: "Malevolent Star"
The author has also outlined a “Malevolent Star” model to describe how a dictatorial organization or society can endure with a certain sustainability — not by empowering and supporting the needs of people, but by applying tyrannical dynamics in the service of an oppressive regime that engages terror, oppression-based obedience, and pervasive segmentation.
- The “Human” foundation is replaced by Regime, since human needs and empowerment are subordinated to the power-hunger of the regime.
- “Freedom” is supplanted by Oppression since generally only regime representatives are empowered to make choices – and terror is engaged to suppress freedom. Physical and societal features are also used to repress liberty.
- “Loyalty with élan” is swapped out with Obedience, since loyalty cannot exist as a response to terror. The regime demands, and the dynamics of the oppressive system dictate, that ancestral-style loyalty to oneself and to others — even to family — be subsumed under this servile obedience.
- “Innovation” is replaced by Stagnation, since the elements of 4D Star (2D Level) are all required for the emergence of an innovative, resilient, diverse society. Isolated improvements, such as technological advances, (frequently deriving from espionage), are however not excluded, since the regime sacrifices human needs to obtain resources for development in key areas, such as military or surveillance equipment.
- “Organization” is supplanted by Segmentation, an over-arching theme throughout the system. The dictator nurtures rivalries between factions — and uses inefficient, duplicative, mutually-adversarial agencies — to weaken his own agents and thereby obviate the emergence of a subversive center of power. Different sets of “laws” and norms prevail, depending on proximity to power. Propaganda and reality exist in different worlds. Even within minds, distinct cognitive areas appear, to process inconsistencies between ancestral morality and compliance with regime diktats — between the spark of culture and creativity, and the real world without freedom-oxygen. Demographic groups and economic classes are encouraged to harbor suspicions and resentments of each other, to clear a path for further regime power acquisition. Indeed, this segmentation — pervasive throughout all aspects of the system — reflects the system’s fundamental departure from nature. It contrasts sharply with the harmonious congruence of the complementary elements of 4D Star.
- “Ring of Harmony” is transformed into a Chain of Disharmony. Suppressing “Communication” and imposing Disinformation is a key priority for oppressive regimes, because that removes power from the people and their ability to organize in favor of themselves. The void in meaningful communication is filled with propaganda that encourages paranoia about supposed internal and external enemies. Indeed, oppressive regimes do not want “Emotional (or Spiritual) Connectivity,” but rather Emotional (and Spiritual) Alienation marked by suspicion and fear. After achieving resentment and mistrust, the regime frequently will offer a sacrifice of perceived enemies to encourage and to reward obedience. People may manifest gratitude or participate enthusiastically, not realizing that they are being manipulated toward their own moral and physical destruction.
Malevolent Star regimes try to pass themselves off as 4D Star-type systems, to attempt to generate enthusiastic obedience. The author has written a separate introductory essay to explore Malevolent Star in more depth.
Irrefutability and Novelty
4D Star balances macro with micro, theory with application, conservation with transformation, complexity with simplicity, temporality with timelessness, manliness with femininity, the tangible with the intangible, specificity with universality, science with spirituality, descriptive with prescriptive powers.
It combines ancient wisdom with modern evidence-based approaches.
This unique level of coherence and integration demonstrates profound correspondence with nature. Thus, 4D Star is singularly capable of addressing complex, real-world problems.
Together with the dark mirror Malevolent Star, it describes not only ideal functionality, but also dystopian dynamics.
The model’s alignment with all available evidence likely exceeds that of almost any other paradigm, since its scalability extends from plants and eusocial insects to human civilizations, passing by an ability to describe thought itself.
Almost uniquely among paradigms, 4D Star explains its own creation while embodying its own principles. This meta-cognitive quality is exactly what one would have expected of the highest-level meta-paradigm.
This recursiveness means that, in addition to clearing all of the traditional hurdles; i.e., internal logic, alignment with evidence, facilitating predictions, and explanatory power; the paradigm possesses an extremely rare additional layer of validity. This higher level of objective corroboration is key, given 4D Star’s status as the universal paradigm.
Indeed, 4D Star can be seen reflexively in the process of evaluating and analyzing the paradigm. This would make it quite impossible for analysis to lead to some kind of refutation. (In a religious context, this could have profound meaning.)
By embodying its own principles, 4D Star avoids the pitfalls of self-contradiction that can undermine other paradigms. Hence, the model holds a unique position in terms of transparency of ethical orientation.
Within its own self-reflective structure, 4D Star provides for further elaboration and the harmonious nesting of micro-level paradigms. Thus, the model embodies the adaptability and strategic dynamism that it advocates.
“But what about falsifiability?”
Similar to how mathematics, fundamental principles of logic, and falsifiability itself are not falsifiable, one would not expect the highest-level meta-paradigm to be falsifiable in the sense of subordinate paradigms. However, 4D Star is eminently provable in facilitating explanations, descriptions, and predictions that consistently correspond to reality.
Attempting to use a philosophical rule such as falsifiability to refute the foundation of philosophy would be like trying to use the principles of logic to undo logic. The irrefutability of the paradigm confirms its validity rather than undermining it.
Further, if one were to persist with “refuting” 4D Star based on a subordinate rule, one would be left with a much larger conundrum: having to explain away a paradigm with all the advantages described above.
(That the falsifiability principle is not itself falsifiable exemplifies how subordinate principles and micro-level paradigms tend not to embody their own tenets or explain their own creation.)
Like logic and mathematics, 4D Star’s ability to facilitate accurate predictions comes through modeling, not through its own empirical basis.
Straigtforward example
A recent news article conveyed that U.S. astronauts on a mission would have had the opportunity to assist other astronauts from an earlier mission who were still in space and in trouble. Unfortunately, the two teams apparently had different types of equipment, which were mutually incompatible and provided by different suppliers. Despite the loyalty of these well-qualified astronauts, in function of this physical connectivity issue, there was no purpose served in extensive communication, no meaningful freedom to explore options, no ability to innovate — and thus no solutions were offered at that time for the astronauts in trouble. The incompatibility reflects enduring realities related to geometry and laws of physics. The apparent inadequacy of the space program (or its parent agency) in terms of aptly structuring its démarche would have contributed to this failure to manifest resilience as time progressed. (Consider an analogous micro-level scenario where two ants from different colonies rub their antennae together, but, finding misalignment of colony odor, depart in separate directions without any cooperation. [This is a slightly loose analogy, though, because the astronauts had already identified each other as all belonging to the same system to which they were loyal. However, without connectivity, their earnest commitment was ultimately futile, and thus the two scenarios have a similar ending.])
Example incorporating chaos
This scenario from naval warfare illustrates the potential of 4D Star to precisely model outcomes in spite of inherent chaos:
An admiral facing a sea battle is actually an enemy agent, a mole, utterly without loyalty. He will sabotage the effort of his own navy. He will not use incoming data to identify relevant existing structures or creative rearrangements to innovate in view of victory, through collaboration with colleagues and by engaging his own cognitive faculties, consistent with 4D Star dynamics.
Let’s imagine that we can somehow repeat the battle thousands of times — each time with minutely different starting conditions. This compensates for the inherent chaos arising from seemingly minor aspects of initial conditions. In some iterations, the admiral may be removed from his post or somehow accidentally win the battle. Statistics would clarify how that percentage of “accidental wins” would become more precise as a function of the increasing number of repetitions.
Regardless of the exact percentage, it would perfectly reflect the key circumstances of the scenario’s starting point; operational dynamics in the context of disloyalty (i.e., probable systemic breakdown); 3D Level factors (e.g., resilience and adaptability in the iterations where he is successfully removed); and 4D Level factors.
It might come as little surprise that conceptually integrating complexity with chaos demands an all-encompassing perspective, one that transcends the usual limits of analysis.
No other model could possibly replicate these three interlinked layers of consideration; however, subordinate principles and micro-level paradigms would certainly contribute to understanding of many details and relationships. Rather than offering fragmented insights, these enrichments are harmoniously nested within the universal paradigm to offer integrated understanding at a high level.
Novelty
To understand the full context in which the 2D Level open system operates, one needs to engage schematic multi-dimensionality, since time and background reality are distinct — albeit linked — layers.
Researchers and theorists have previously failed to identify the systemic enablers and their holistic functionality, which contributed to traditional abuse of paradigmatic one-dimensionality or two-dimensionality.
The only other well-known attempt at a universal paradigm is apparently the Integral Theory of Ken Wilber. Wilber’s proposal suffers from some limitations: the aforementioned abuse of two-dimensionality — it relies on “Four Quadrants” — thereby precluding the strategic clarity afforded by an intuitive consideration of time and enduring realities; no identification of the cohort of systemic enablers; and an eccentric approach of cataloguing scattered ponderings on human development and spirituality, as opposed to constituting a solutions-oriented, evidence-based model offering ethical directionality and strategic orientation.
In contrast to an artificial conjuring of scalability, the 4D Star systemic enablers manifest organic scalability and holistically produce the emergent properties that foster survival and success through the vicissitudes of time (3D Level). This authentic demonstration of fractal dynamism — seamlessly situated within the historical-natural background-frame (4D Level) — offers both comprehensive insight as well as versatile and impactful practical applications.
LEGAL NOTICE: U.S. Copyright Registration # TX 9-371-754 — enhanced protections related to PUNITIVE DAMAGES as well as ATTORNEYS’ FEES. Author’s email is listed at the bottom of this web page, if the reader needs to inquire about approved use of this paradigm.
Click for PART II
Click for Brief Summary
August 2024 note: The author acknowledges that “Part II” will likely need to be thoroughly rewritten once the author has some organizational support — this reflexively mirrors 4D Star dynamics, awareness, and humility.
Please understand that the author got this far by himself, using meager resources derived from an RN salary, although obviously A.I. has been extremely useful in terms of trying to understand and articulate what 4D Star really represents to living systems — and clearly, the contributions of prior thinkers and researchers in a multitude of fields created the landscape in which 4D Star could emerge. The Brief Summary, the article about Moyano, the UNM research article, and the article about plants, combined with the above Introduction, might constitute the best available combination of content at this time.
The author fully expects this to “catch on” within the coming months, because of all the reasons described in the above Introduction, because the world obviously has urgent need of this paradigm shift, and because A.I. can now “spoon feed” us coherent and detailed explanations of how 4D Star comprehensively and perfectly aligns with reality.
The author has made a personal commitment to himself to “reinvest” any renown back into humanity — for example, by organizing (collaboratively) joyful and creative cultural events that bring people together to celebrate insight and togetherness, while raising money for causes like disadvantaged children or disabled veterans in places like the U.S., Ukraine, or Israel. Please, hold the author to this commitment and mark it down now — he’s a human with routine weaknesses and will need supportive but firm encouragement.
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