How can Society Learn Wisdom from Crises?
"How Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the
Earth" is one of a series of articles coming out of a major
climate change conference in the UK. The conference is publicizing
'state of the art' climate change science and what it has to teach us
about our lives and our futures. Are we able to collectively learn?Additional reports are available at the NHNE Climate Change Reference
Page , including:
GLOBAL WARMING: SCIENTISTS REVEAL TIMETABLE
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent
February 3, 2005
GREENHOUSE GAS TURNING OCEANS ACID, SCIENTISTS WARN
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent / New Zealand Herald
February 4, 2005
CLIMATE CHANGE VERDICT: IT'S HERE, IT'S REAL
TOP SCIENTIFIC MEETING COMES TO BASIC CONCLUSIONS
CALL GOES OUT FOR PROMPT ACTION BY GOVERNMENTS
By Peter Calamai
The Toronto Star
February 5, 2005
The perspective of co-intelligence suggests it is important to
reflect on why our societies are so slow to respond to threats like
this. We need to not only address these threats directly, but to
delve behind them into the systems that allow, encourage and produce
them. We need to discern the dynamics that produce so many threats
of such great scope and power so rapidly -- and, perhaps even more
important, the dynamics that make our collective response so
inadequate. Why is it so hard for us to collectively learn from our
collective experience?Surely, factors like our consumerist economy, corporate power, and
manipulation of the press and politics by special-interests all play
major and interlocking roles.So does our 10,000 year old biological equipment for perceiving,
thinking about and responding to a local, natural world that most of
us no longer live in (see NEW WORLD NEW MIND by Robert Ornstein and
Paul Ehrlich). Our personal cognitive equipment -- our brains,
senses, nervous systems, etc. -- are simply not built to grasp things
like radiation, nanobots, climate change, aquifer exhaustion,
pollutants, systemic overshoot, complex technologies, or billions of
anything.Furthermore, our powerful scientific method is DESIGNED to be out of
context: "Controlled experiments" exclude all factors but one, so as
to identify a single linear cause that can be engineered to create a
specific result out in the world (as well as other results, which we
downplay by calling them "side effects"). But the world is not a
controlled experiment. It is a complex and very nonlinear weave of
causes and effects. Climate change doesn't happen in a laboratory,
and it isn't a side-effect. It happens in the world, it is a real
effect, and we caused it -- and are causing it every day.Corporations, science, PR, partisan politics, money-measured
economics (e.g., Gross Domestic Product) -- all these institutions
tend to "externalize costs" -- to make someone else pay for the
problems they create. More often than not, they act as if the
downside of their activities is not real, is not worthy of attention,
is thoroughly ignorable -- or, at least, is none of their business.
Thus it takes tremendous work to tease out the dark side, the down
side, the problems that roll downhill into our lives, where we
wander, confused about where it all came from.All these factors -- and more -- add up to a dominant reality of our
times: Our personal and social powers and limitations are producing
effects in the world far beyond our ability to collectively and
wisely deal with those effects. We lack the kinds of collective
intelligence and wisdom that would make sane, timely decisions a
natural part of our civilization.I believe it behooves us to do what we can to enhance that capacity,
in all its forms. For more information on this see
Collective Intelligence and The Collective Wisdom Initiative.The challenge is daunting. But the possibiities are endless and the
potential rewards unprecedented. We have the basic tools we need.
Now we just need to create together exciting innovations and committed
networks capable of carrying us through the coming rapids with flying colors
into a more peaceful, just, sustainable and wise civilization.Coheartedly,
Tom
posted by Tom Atlee on Sunday February 13 2005
updated on Saturday September 24 2005URL of this article:
http://www.communicationagents.com/tom_atlee/2005/02/13/how_can_society_learn_wisdom_from_crises.htm
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April 27, 2008 - Tom Atlee
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