A Context for Our CI Convergence

(Nancy’s Notes, Part I)

My interest in this convergence is in creating a livable future. I have come to define that as one whose conditions and institutions “bring out the best in us” in two ways: First, that the customs and circumstances that shape how children are reared promote the inborn human predisposition to care about others and develop the gifts that are distinctively theirs to give. Malidoma Somé tells of his people, the Dagara of Burkina Faso, that when a child of their village quickens in the womb, the elders gather to ask of its spirit, “Why have the ancestors sent you to us at this time? What gifts do you bring that we sorely need?” Based on the answer they receive, the child is named, and thus called and recalled to her purpose as she grows. “It is the function of the entire village”, he said to me, “to enable that one child to give her gift. And it is the fulfillment of her entire life, her “individuality”, to give that gift to her community, and to be recognized for it. All for one and one for all.” The second condition is that, as fully as possible, the institutions within which we must function as adults, elicit, enable and reward our creativity, individual and collective, and our cooperation. To the extent that we can understand what is entailed in these two sets of conditions and can influence the mighty forces of our times towards yielding such conditions, we will find ourselves also able to achieve the sustainability, justice, and prosperity that further constitute a livable future.

Is such aspiration naïve? Is such a future possible? And, if so, how likely is it? As to the last, I do not know. I have given up dire predictions, or predictions at all, except for gauging in the moment which course of action is the more likely to leverage the future that I seek.  As to the former, we must be rigorous and tough minded in determining that what we seek is in no obvious way either logically, physically or psychologically impossible, with due alertness to whatever hostile counter forces may need to be overcome in achieving the good we seek.

What we already know about what works towards this end we should be making the basis of our institutions in whatever ways we can. And what we do not yet know should become our most urgent inquiry.  For both, I turn to the practice, research and theory of collective intelligence, conscious evolution, and service system sciences.  With these demands in mind, here are some grounds for believing a livable future to be at least possible and for guiding our current actions. I offer these as background for our reflections on collective intelligence.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.      <!--[endif]-->Genetic Predispositions We appear to be genetically predisposed to cooperate, as our primary mode of survival, notwithstanding how readily these sensitivities turn destructive when frustrated. Our intelligence is not needed for hunting but for managing complex systems of reciprocity—and for telling stories. We learn from each other’s mistakes. We woo with words because social influence is a major determinant of survival. Women are more verbal, arguably, because young humans need what only words can give them. Music and dance probably preceded language. Visualization enables not only tool design, but also art and ritual, and these—along with stories—bind a people together. And we need the “tribe” to be thus bound, for our young are vulnerable far longer than any other species.

The fact that children well-reared, and adults given opportunities to recover from emotional damage, both move towards not away from compassion, service and justice is further evidence of the innateness of these tendencies. Archon Fung notes, moreover, that under equitable circumstances, ordinary folks given on-going authority to decide public matters collectively move towards a conception of the “common good” and become increasingly motivated by it. And we know as well that under the right conditions “the people” achieve levels of wisdom and cooperation that transform situations and open up solutions not otherwise available often in the face of “insurmountable” challenges.

In short, under healthy conditions, our very nature is in line with what we now need—still need after all these eons—for our very survival. Notwithstanding two millennia of propaganda blaming our instincts for our problems, our nature serves us. We have lost track of that, as much as if we tried to understand the nature of bears seeing them only in cages, for what we see in ourselves now is the result of millennia of overcrowding and aggression. The challenge is great indeed, but it is not the challenge of overcoming our basic nature, but rather of producing the conditions in which our basic nature can flourish in good health.  

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.      <!--[endif]-->“Study war no more”. We already know much about what these healthy conditions are, i.e. those conditions that are needed to empower our capacity for good. We also have much yet to learn. Yet, ironically, we probably know more about this than we know that we know—for what we “naturally” do right, we tend to take for granted. We haven’t studied it or made much of it. As Glenda Jackson, the consummate actress, once said in an interview comparing good acting to good housekeeping, “When it works, no one notices”. Thus, we write headlines and histories around breakdowns, because their consequences are so dramatic, and around wars because their successes change the political face of our world. But how can we even notice “the war that didn’t happen”, let alone make a study of why it didn’t happen—what right moves were made, what conciliatory gestures or substantive agreements? How often has some modest equivalent to the “Iroquois Federation”—or the EU—occurred now lost in time? How do you make history out of the history that was not made? How notice all the things that are actually working, and how they work, and why?   

Answers to this challenge are inherent in the study of collective intelligence, for the study of peace needs its own disciplines and that is what we are about here, I think. We are embarking on the study of how—as George Fox put it in the original Quaker testimony of peace—to “remove the occasion of war”.  I find hope in realizing that now that we are starting at last to ask the question, “What went right?”, we will discover that we already know a great deal of what we need to achieve a livable future. We “just” need to recognize and do more of it.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.      <!--[endif]-->Social Design        In recent centuries, and without much fanfare, we have slipped into consciously designing many of the social systems within which we live. We no longer see them as either inherent in nature or as mandated by heaven, but rather as the products of accident and intention. We ratify constitutions, make laws, incorporate organizations with by-laws, draw up and withdraw charters, reorganize organizations, vote in amendments, and so forth. While we necessarily live within systems as given, we can and do continuously evaluate and occasionally change these systems. When you think about it that is quite remarkable. The consciousness we are now bringing to the design of machines and of organizations, we are starting to extend to whole social systems—and thus we may yet find our way out.   

<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.      <!--[endif]-->Systems theory tells us that much of what we may hope for is as yet unimagined and will emerge as the un-designed property of a system we can but affect locally. For all us control freaks, that’s scary. We can see that a lot of the systems we’ve “designed” so far have turned out to have some astounding benefits—and some awesome powers to harm.  The “invisible hand” has proven not only uncannily innovative, but also hell bent on destruction.  Yet it is we who designed that system—set up its rules and watched them play out, like a game design in a computer experiment. So—we can redesign it—and we are. Even the sacrosanct rules of the stock market are now the subject of intense scrutiny and rethinking. As we play with systems and discover unanticipated consequences, we mess up a lot. But that’s not all. In the end, I think, more good jazz is made than cacophony. And, either way, we learn. And so evolve.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.      <!--[endif]-->Common Ground Diversity creates the fault lines along which social conflict erupts. But, it also multiplies the wisdom and the range of already tested options. We have this vast repertoire of human experience to turn to. We are not starting from scratch. Nor need our drawing from that repertoire mean that we have no “moral compass”. That just “anything goes”. Rather, as a species, we have a common biology, a common history, and a common fate. It is this common ground that we find ourselves upon whenever we seek wisdom collectively, treat diversity as a source of knowledge, or conflict as a source of creative energy. I also believe, as Parker Palmer puts it, that “what we seek to know seeks to know us”, that that “whole that is greater than the sum of its parts” is released into any space we open up for it, so our wisdom that our wisdom does rise to the occasions that call it forth, “beyond our wildest dreams”.

The realities of these times must soon drive us into a global focus, an intensity of effort and unity of purpose that has no precedent. As is always true of life, we cannot know what miracles of creativity may be ours until forced by circumstance to participate in their creation.