Part of co-intelligence is collective
intelligence. The collective intelligence of whole societies
is called societal intelligence.
Societal intelligence involves, among other things,
The more all three of these factors are present, the more useful
diverse perspectives will be to the collective mind, and the less
likely the whole culture will find itself stuck at one extreme
or another (unable to respond) or torn apart from within by the
expansion of extremism in a contracting middle ground.
In many social and environmental problems the discourse is often
extreme. Intense discussions occur in widely diverse specialized
groups. Some may fear a catastrophe while others brush the problem
off. There is precious little creative middle ground or dialogic
space in which the merits of various perspectives can be compared
and understood in nuanced ways, and more useful perspectives evolved.
This suggests a need for greater societal intelligence. To help
us understand how to pursue that objective, we can look at the
sort of factors that undermine the three primary conditions for
societal intelligence mentioned above. Among the more obvious
are:
These add up to the cultural co-stupidity we find when we observe
how whole societies respond to their pressing collective problems.
Anything we can do to ameliorate the obstacles to societal intelligence
listed above, will increase our culture's capacity to respond
to its growing crises and all the dangers and opportunities of
the 21st century.
Another part of co-intelligence is collaborative
intelligence, the capacity to work with the
world around us, not trying to dominate it.
A large part of our social and environmental problems arise from
our effort to get what we want from the world without taking into
account its needs or its wisdom. This leaves our economic and
technological systems overextended and vulnerable. Natural systems
are resilient because their complexity has been evolving for billions
of years. Our culture is arrogant enough to think that it can
create highly complex systems from scratch and get away with it.
We lack the patience to learn from nature how to collaborate with
it to grow what we need. We only have the capacity to force nature
to tell us enough of its secrets to take what we want.
This difference is visible in the distinction between indigenous
science and modern science. Indigenous science -- the science
practiced by native peoples -- learns the dynamics and spirit
of nature in a particular place, so that the learner can develop
a right relationship, a respectful partnership with the natural
entities in his or her environs. Modern science, in contrast,
attempts to find universal causal principles that will allow technicians
to manipulate physical reality to construct and extract without
having to give much, if anything, back; without having to belong
or owe or love. Take the money and run.
Our technologies have been used mostly to increase our capacity
to take the money and run, to efficiently extract and move what
we want from point A to point B, faster and farther, with less
expense, effort or obligation. The interconnectedness this has
woven into our culture has added to our ability to extract life
from each other, from communities, from the highly-evolved and
productive natural systems around us. We suck out life, and leave
deadness behind. Look at the hills that are mined or clearcut.
Look at the boarded-up towns. Look at the faces on the trains
and in the cars, the endless cars and trucks laying their tracks
of stone over everything, driving weather to extremes. This is
a web of death, as brittle as a dead branch, ready to snap. It
doesn't matter how fast the pieces move, how vast the masses/statistics/cities,
how bright the colored plastic. It is not alive and it is forced.
It will not last.
Permaculture offers one view
out. Permaculture has the solidity of modern science yet the sensitivity
of indigenous science. Permaculture has principles, universal
ecological design principles. And once you learn them, you throw
them away far enough that you can then look at the life that is
all around you and really see it -- see what
it does, what it needs, what it has to offer, what kind of dance
it is inviting you into. Permaculture teaches us -- those of us
who have forgotten -- how to work with nature, to become a partner
to Life, so that plants and animals and dirt and water and weather
yield us food and clothing and shelter and meaning freely and
vibrantly without having to be hacked, yanked, forced and poisoned.
Permaculture systems are resilient, because they use the natural
tendencies of things to do what they naturally do, all arranged
so that they are all useful to and supportive of each other. You
don't have to poison the slugs; the ducks will eat them. The ducks
will swim in the pond you made by digging out earth with which
to build your aesthetic, well insulated home, whose greywater
flows through a marsh you built -- complete with lovely cattails
-- to purify it before it arrives in the pond where the ducks
swim above the goldfish.
I saw this very thing a few years ago, on my first visit to an
actual permaculture site near Point Reyes, California. It had
a profound impact on me. It was more Eden than farm, more work
of art than constructed development. It was not planned and built.
It had grown and evolved for several years, with the equal participation
of the land, plants, animals, and humans. The humans brought to
the dance their conscious observation, thinking and caring. Next
year that site won't be the same, because it will have led to
something else, equally beautiful and productive, ever new.
People like I met there don't generate social and environmental
problems. They don't create global warming, racism and toxic waste
dumps. Their spirit is collaborative, patient, spiritual, eager
to give as much as to take, happy to belong and co-create, loving
the wisdom that grows so deeply all around them and curious to
see what it will do next.
If we can learn this gigantic lesson, then our grandchildren will
know what life is all about. And they will carry it on, they will
belong to the Earth again and to each other. We will have made
it, as a culture. And perhaps we won't do this again, this waste
of life and meaning.
To the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
To the person with a song, a drum and a dream, every problem looks
like a dance.