Collective Intelligence is Rewiring not just the Planet, but our Brains

A 6/23/09 article in New Scientist reports on “the first evidence that tool use alters the body map.”  That is, researchers have found that a human brain’s internal map of the body is adjusted to account for a tool that extends the body’s reach.  Researchers were excited to note that this means that a transplanted hand or a prosthetic limb would similarly be incorporated into the ‘body map’ inside the brain.  This is an important example of the plasticity of the brain.

What struck me about this article is the implication for collective intelligence and collective consciousness:

The more we use tools that embody collective intelligence, and tools that increase our awareness and use of the perceptions, knowledge and experiences of people in other parts of the world, the bigger and bigger becomes our brains’ “body map” — and “self map”.

As social media are evolving, they are becoming more and more tools for getting things done, visualizing and then solving complex problems, finding answers, getting support we need, etc.   A key is the shift from passive viewing of world events on nightly television news (which had its own expansive effects), to a much more intimate using of collective intelligence, and participating in it.

We are physically evolving into a new species – by rewiring our brains to encompass tools for accessing and using collective intelligence.

The two principles that shine through when collective intelligence becomes collective consciousness are:

The Whole is more than the sum of the parts.

And

The Whole is contained in the parts.

The gradual rewiring of human brains to encompass more and more of the whole species and planet is the physical embodiment of this second principle.

(Confession:  Whenever I write something like this, which I seem to like to do, I often hear an internal chorus of “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now what?”  The “but now what” is the interesting part.)

In Love with Collective Consciousness, and Networks

How long have I loved thee, dear Human Network?  Let me count the years, since my birth into my loving family, and since my youthful awakening, at age 18, sitting at the feet of Père Pierre, saint of human networks, who wrote again and again about his powerful vision of the planetization of consciousness.

Every person I have loved, appreciated, talked with, liked or disliked, or noticed, has been an experience in the network of consciousness.  It is a network for loving, entertaining, trading, learning, making things and buying them, earning a living, and living.  It is a network for fighting, ha!  Competing, ha!  The network always both wins and loses.  It grows and shrinks, but now mostly grows, grows more and more threatened by its own incoherence, and ever more heartened by its own brilliance, and compassion, and inspired by its search for solutions to its – our — survival and fulfillment.

How long have I loved thee, dear Human Network? Let me count the years, since my birth, into my loving family, and since my youthful awakening, at age 18, sitting at the feet of Père Pierre, saint of human networks, who wrote again and again about his powerful vision of the planetization of consciousness.

Every person I have loved, appreciated, talked with, liked or disliked, or noticed, has been my own part in the network of consciousness. It is a network for loving, entertaining, trading, learning, making things and buying them, earning a living, living. It is a network for fighting, ha! Competing, ha! The network always both wins and loses. It grows and shrinks, but now mostly grows, grows more and more threatened by its own incoherence, and ever more heartened by its own brilliance, and compassion, and inspired by its search for solutions to its – our — survival and fulfillment.

My favorite twirler

My bonnie lass twirling to Cantrip at the Potomac Celtic Festival.

More info about the bonnie lass:  http://www.lisalindberg.com

Excellent sources of updates on Iranian election

Very interesting developments.   A promise of something good in the air, never forgetting the danger.

The best sources I have found for following what’s happening:

The Lede:  New York Times blog
Latest Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey

www.twitter.com/Katrinskaya (Twitter posts from Iran)

Iran protests meet the social Web: What we’ve learned
(Gaurav Mishra Gauvranomics.com)

But of course there is a flood of good sources.

Five Causes of Media Inaccuracy – illustrated by reporting of the Iranian election protests

In her piece published yesterday about the reporting of the current Iranian “Green Revolution”, Cynthia Boaz identified five causes of media inaccuracy:

1. Intentional misrepresentations:  Spinning, twisting, distorting, or outright making things up for the purpose of bolstering a particular ideology, political party, or other limited interest.
2. Sloppy or hasty reporting:  “…the inability or unwillingness of reporters to engage in serious investigative or assiduous on-the-ground reporting.  For example, when in doubt – where information is sparse or of questionable veracity, and official (government) forces are being challenged by nongovernmental forces, media tend to default to the perspective of the officials, regardless of regime type or ideology.”
3. Fragmentation, which “involves covering the story in isolated, seemingly unrelated pieces”, which when taken together give a very different impression than a deeper reporting of the whole system would reveal.
4. Dramatization, which “occurs when the news is encapsulated in short, sensationalistic bits intended to provoke an emotional response on the part of the news consumer.”   This seems to be close to the “intentional’ type of bias, since it serves the narrow interests of the reporting agency.
5. Euphemism, for which Boaz gives the example of using the phrase “’huge crowds in Iran” which can then give the impression that these “crowds” are disorganized, spontaneous types of groupings, rather than strategic, organized and disciplined.

I see the distinctions, and it is important to understand them.  However, these five causes can still basically be lumped together as either grossly intentional, or as less intentionally lacking a holistic viewpoint.  Lacking a holistic viewpoint can be attributed to effects that may be out of the reporter and agency’s control, such as lack of access to sources or lack of funding; or else they can be attributed to factors that are directly the fault of the reporting agency: lack of competence (sloppiness), or lack of integrity (e.g., a desire to appeal to sensation-seeking consumers in order to be noticed and sell).

In the case of reporting on the Iranian election demonstrations, Boaz states that several of these types of media errors have together given the World the idea that the demonstrations have been chaotic, unplanned, isolated acts that are often violent.  In contrast, she says that

“These people are for the most part technologically and strategically savvy, especially when compared to the hardliners and mullahs that make up the ancient regime in Iran. They have studied the nonviolent struggles in Chile, South Africa and Serbia. They understand the dynamics of civil resistance and the power of simply withdrawing individual complicity in oppression. These are the people whose “tweets” and Facebook “status updates” the world is getting live via digital media…”

And that in contrast to what is mostly reported,

“the reality is much richer and more potentially encouraging. The Green Revolution is not just a series of ad hoc protests against a political theft, it is a story of widespread resistance to ongoing oppression. It is not the repression and violence that is most interesting about the news coming from Iran, it is that people continue to resist despite the repression.”

I would love to see more reporting about the intelligent and conscious components of this resistance.  How much in depth reporting is even possible in a country that obstructs investigation and punishes dissent?

Obama’s Radical Middle Messages

Barack Obama is a Radical Centrist, preaching and teaching dialogue, finding common ground, and listening and speaking “fair-minded words” with an open heart and an open mind.   These themes appear in all of his speeches on controversial issues, which are about the only issues he speaks about.   Controversy is everywhere, paralyzing us, provoking verbal hostilities and worse, wasting our time, energies and resources and producing ineffective solutions that seem to only get us into deeper troubles.

Here are some excerpts from two of his recent speeches.

From his May 17 speech at Notre Dame in which he focused on abortion:

About dealing with conflict:

“Understand – I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”

About finding common ground:

“So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

From his June 4 Cairo speech to Muslims around the world: 

Dialogue and the Radical Middle

Dialogue is radical.  It’s not just “love your enemy;” it’s actually talking to them.  Loving someone is nice and abstract, and easy to do especially from a distance (including a morally superior distance).

Dialogue is much more challenging since it involves not only talking, but also listening, respecting, and suspending (stepping back from your own position — and ego — in order to listen more clearly).

The idea of the Radical Middle, or Radical Center, is closely related to “bi-partisanship.”  It doesn’t mean joining the mushy Center.  You can keep your ideas and your perspectives, but you have to take the radical step of actually listening to other perspectives and looking for solutions together that can take many views, needs, and experiences into account.

Dialogue and the Radical Middle are examples of collective intelligence (combining many facts and perspectives) that take a giant step towards collective consciousness.

(written 5/20/2009)

Concept: Surrender to the Lord

Why, I ask, do I want to write about this?

Here’s a thought:

This phrase, “surrender to the Lord” has deep meaning to hundreds of millions of people on our planet – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and others.

It is also a phrase that has very little positive effect on millions of others, or in many cases, makes them want to run away.

So it is an important concept.  If more of us could get more clarity about both the sublime and the disturbing interpretations of this phrase, that could be a good thing.

It is these two words, “surrender” and “Lord” that cause the biggest impacts for either attracting or repelling people.

Throughout history there have been good authorities (kings, judges, land-owners, bosses, etc.) and bad ones; but all equally had to be called “lord.”   So when put together with the word “surrender”, the phrase can naturally be interpreted as a need for unquestioning deference and obedience.

How is that historic, very “earthly” interpretation compared to the spiritual interpretation?  Is there a close fit?  Or not?  

Disagreement is a puzzle, not a problem

Disagreement is a puzzle, not a problem.

Disagreement is an opportunity to learn, to create a greater whole.

The problem is hostility.

Arrogance, ridicule, self-righteousness, disrespect, spurious and misleading arguments are all forms of hostility – non-physical violence.

The good news is that many of us who disagree on important things, still agree that hostility is a mistake: We don’t have to defend ourselves from each other. We are only defending ourselves from the hostility we fear coming from others.  

Yet,  many also attack to gain control, or to defend, pre-emptively.

When the dominant paradigm (social rule) is to gain control and defend, then forget learning, forget creating a greater whole, ultimately, forget keeping the Earth alive.  Fortunately, at least, this is becoming more obvious.  Competing desires to gain control is finally becoming a threat to everyone.

OK, so now the problem is that while many of us agree that we keep making the same mistakes, we’re still having trouble agreeing on common solutions.  

Learning to listen, and talk without defenses, has become a very tricky thing !  This is what we have to work on.

How Bohmian Dialogue makes use of 2300 Year Old Ideas

I’m now reading two books.  One was written ten years ago and its ideas are still influential and appreciated among tens of thousands of people.   The other was written at least 2300 years ago, and its ideas are influential and appreciated among hundreds of millions of people.

I recently discovered the same point made in both books.  One is about the practice of Dialogue in groups.  The other is about the practice of Yoga for achieving a “settled mind.”

I’m sure there are many more points in common, but here are the two points that just stood out for me as the same: 

Training for Focused Conversations and Consensus

For anyone interested in the methods mentioned in the post below, here is info on upcoming training on Focused Conversations and Consensus:

In Brooklyn, NY on May 12-13 (click on “View Schedule to see all places and dates)

In Toronto on July 9-10

Creating wholeness in collaboration.

(Continued from here.)

Feelings are most primal, and hardest to ignore.

They are powerful triggers to action, and also trigger cycles of thinking, interpretation and meaning.  The “most important facts” then become dominated by whatever triggered the most powerful feelings.

Interpretations are heavily influenced by feelings because feelings focus and filter thinking to derive interpretations.  The interpretations also loop back to explain or justify the feelings, and to justify the actions that the person has taken or wants to take.

Feelings are important and have to be recognized and understood.  But feelings shouldn’t dominate thinking and action.

The only way to break the dominance of feelings is to step back and see them in the larger context of a group of people who have different feelings and interpretations about the same set of circumstances – and whose help is needed to create solutions..

The dialogue process intentionally trains participants to both listen to others, and to suspend judgment in order to make listening possible.   When people stay with the process long enough to get the hang of it, the process can present to everyone a bigger whole that no one person was seeing before.

The focused-conversation method has a similar result by taking the whole group through a process of collecting facts, expressing (and listening to) feelings, and stating (and listening to) interpretations before attempting to reach a decision together.   They get to see not only how other people feel about the situation, but also how they are all coming up with different interpretations based on different experiences and knowledge.

David Bohm’s On Dialogue especially explains how the evolution of individual consciousness is closely related and essential to development of collective consciousness. For example, he relates the ability to suspend and step back from ones own feelings and biases to the process of meditation.  Both dialogue and meditation involve a method of suspension (drawing back) to help individuals expand their awareness to greater wholes than they were previously capable of understanding.  The dialogue process trains individuals to think in more expanded ways by suspending personal judgments and getting a taste of the greater whole that comes from multiple perspectives.

Other references:

One of the best books on the practice of dialogue, by William Isaacs.

A pdf and book describing the Focused Conversation method, by Brian Stanfield and ICA Associates.