Evolving Collective Intelligence by Tom Atlee

Exploring how to generate the collective wisdom we need

Exploring how to generate the collective wisdom we need

Evolving Collective Intelligence

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Candida International

What Does MHRA Stand For??

Bono and Bush Party without Koch: AIDS Industry Makes a Mockery of Medical Science

Profit as Usual and to Hell with the Risks: Media Urge that Young Girls Receive Mandatory Cervical Cancer Vaccine

 

Health Supreme

Multiple sclerosis is Lyme disease: Anatomy of a cover-up

Chromotherapy in Cancer

Inclined Bed Therapy: Tilt your bed for healthful sleep

 

Share The Wealth

Artificial Water Fluoridation: Off To A Poor Start / Fluoride Injures The Newborn

Drinking Water Fluoridation is Genotoxic & Teratogenic

Democracy At Work? - PPM On Fluoride

"Evidence Be Damned...Patient Outcome Is Irrelevant" - From Helke

Why Remove Fluoride From Phosphate Rock To Make Fertilizer

 

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Islanda, quando il popolo sconfigge l'economia globale.

Il Giorno Fuori dal Tempo, Il significato energetico del 25 luglio

Rinaldo Lampis: L'uso Cosciente delle Energie

Attivazione nei Colli Euganei (PD) della Piramide di Luce

Contatti con gli Abitanti Invisibili della Natura

 

Diary of a Knowledge Broker

Giving It Away, Making Money

Greenhouses That Change the World

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What Is an "Integrated Solution"?

Thoughts about Value-Add

April 01, 2005

Terri Schiavo and Collective Intelligence

The media and political focus on Terri Schiavo (and whether to disconnect her from her life support systems) has been a great example of the phenomena commented on by neurobiologist Robert Ornstein and Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich in their 1989 book New World New Mind: "Our human mental system is failing to comprehend the modern world."

That is, our nervous systems and cognitive systems -- which have not changed significantly in the ten thousand years of civilization's colonization of nature -- are set up to respond to lightning cracking and branches breaking, to advancing bears and intruders, to the gnawing pangs of hunger and cold. But we are poorly equipped to respond to slow-moving, impersonal often invisibly unfolding disasters of vast scale -- like most of the major threats we face today: climate change, national debt accumulation, loss of fresh water, disease mutations, dangerous technological developments, etc.

Case in point: At the same time as the Schiavo case was reaching its climax, 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries released their devastating Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which got scant coverage in comparison.

We live in environments and among problems that are overwhelmingly human-made and thus alien to our nervous systems. Especially in the relative affluence of developed nations, we are not surrounded by the threats and opportunities that we evolved to respond to. And so we respond to compelling but comparatively trivial stories but fail to respond to the hard-to-perceive but intensely real threats which do surround us.

Our collective eyes and ears -- our media -- respond to our ancient, narrow focus of attention by sellingt us the dramatic, the personal, the immediate. Like Terri Shiavo. Like tsunamis. Like celebrity trials and scandals. Nothing systemic or emergent.

And thus we slide further towards a systemic collapse whose signs, while plentiful all around us, are nearly invisible to our senses, thought and feeling. The implications for democracy are profound.

Ehrlich and Ornstein recommend education in systems thinking. This is good and I would go further. It seems to me that we need collectively intelligent systems -- from statistics and computer modeling to responsible media and citizen deliberative councils -- to compensate for the limitations of our individual cognitive capacities. And we need to recognize those limitations explicitly, or we will continue to let our arrogant, ignorant individualism impede the solutions which will save our grandchildren's world.

 


posted by Tom Atlee on Friday April 1 2005
updated on Saturday September 24 2005

URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/tom_atlee/2005/04/01/terri_schiavo_and_collective_intelligence.htm

 

 

 


Related Articles

Reflections on the evolution of choice and collective intelligence
I had an interesting conversation about choice today with my friend and colleague Adin Rogovin. We noticed that increased choice may increase or decrease happiness. Choice -- seen by most people as supporting happiness -- can be overwhelming, or false, or of poor quality. Lack of choice -- normally thought of as a source of unhappiness -- can make life simple, supporting happiness if one's life situation is otherwise satisfying.... [read more]
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Whole System Learning and Evolution -- and the New Journalism
A few days ago I stumbled on a new model for whole-system intelligence inspired by some work my friend Peggy Holman is doing with Journalism that Matters. These journalists are reexamining the kinds of stories they tell and their role in democracy, especially in light of how the rise of bloggers and other citizen journalists challenges mainstream media. Journalism that Matters is trying to revision that challenge into a create... [read more]
May 08, 2008 - Tom Atlee

Gathering storms of unwanted change
In addition to its immediate relevance for our personal behaviors and health and as a public health issue, this report from The Ecologist on "The Gathering Brainstorm" of damaging Wi-Fi impacts, includes the sentence "The technology is now moving far faster than it can be tested or regulated." This is one of the rare occasions of a specific reference to a phenomenon that really concerns me:... [read more]
April 27, 2008 - Tom Atlee

 


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These articles are brought to you strictly for educational and informational purposes. Be sure to consult your health practitioner of choice before utilizing any of the information to cure or mitigate disease. Any copyrighted material cited is used strictly in a non commercial way and in accordance with the "fair use" doctrine.

 

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