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Meta models, general and abstract by nature, are essential to make sense of growing complexity. Meta[ models create additional space, new space, for resolving new problems--problems that are too complex for the solutions that created them.
The dynamic set (Beauty, Good, Truth, Economy) is a meta model. That is why I like it. It also why it comes up so often. It promises to make sense of beauty-aesthetics, good-ethics, truth-science, and economy-action and all the interactions among them.
Reading Edgar Morin, I noticed the power he finds in "going meta". He seems know how to resolve (approach) most of the world's intractable problems--always with the same Aikido sensei-like move. He goes meta.
Detailed Engineering Models are essential to produce working artifacts.
The unusual thing about this move is that meta is necessarily of longer wave length and its force is always indirectly applied.
Taking a longer view and never pushing are the opposite to what most people are looking for when faced with pressing problems.
Teddybears, touch stones, and rosaries are apt metaphors because they are each deal indirectly with the long term.
Let's begin collecting and sharing Meta Metaphors and models.