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Co-Intelligence and Issue Activism




Here are my initial thoughts on the range of general co-intelligence-based efforts that could be carried out around any broad social problem -- especially technological threats to communities.. -- Tom


- improving the capacity of issue organizations, coalitions and local communities to effectively self-organize and function well

- supporting/developing leadership towards self-organization, at all levels

- generating coherence among stakeholders (in communities, in issue groups, etc.), while at the same time promoting increasingly inclusive definitions of "who is a stakeholder" (e.g., the disfranchised, future generations, the natural world, etc.)

- facilitating shared respect, understanding and coordinated action among diverse players addressing any particular aspect of the issue

- promoting dialogue and other high quality conversations of all kinds (circles, world cafes, etc.) throughout issue-related activities -- within groups, between groups, and out in the public

- making sure that the institutionalization of such dialogues in cities, counties, states and countries is part of any issue-based agenda, to increase the ability to the society to fruitfully digest/reflect on their issue as well as all other issues

- arranging things so that expertise (and leadership) is on tap, not on top

- building common ground that honors (and creatively utilizes) diversity

- evolving our culture's dominant story field by enriching its pool of subsidiary narratives and increasing the proportion of life-affirming narratives based on holistic assumptions and collaborative values

- helping our culture usefully digest (process) archetypal differences that manifest around any controversial issue

- increased equity, peerness, and shared suffering and benefits through any crisis, and in any proposed solutions

- catalyzing collective learning (including functional information flows and feedback systems) and the emergence of community wisdom. This could be on-the-ground learning that improves local responsiveness, as well as culture-wide learning regarding the causes and meanings of the issue.

- transforming our democracy towards wise, conscious, on-going collective co-evolution

- increasing the resilience of community life - and the resilience of individuals and groups THROUGH community life

- applying the fullness of human capacities (synergistically!) to this problem/opportunity -- individually and collectively. (Those capacities include perception, reason, emotion, intuition, imagination, narrative intelligence, verbal capacities, somatic abilities, musical and artistic capabilities, practical sensibilities, guidance by higher powers, etc.). Dealing with them all -- especially emotions -- in life-enhancing ways.

- using any controversial issue to stimulate greater participatory consciousness, participatory motivation, participatory competence and participatory opportunities. This includes both active engagement and letting go of control and blame.

- advocating collaboration and partnerships (with each other, with nature) as fundamental approaches to dealing with the issue

- utilizing the free resources available through leverage (exercising one's influence on a system most effectively, given limited resources, usually by "moving upstream"), design (the capacity of a pattern or context to make a difference), synergy (that quality of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts), holergy (the aspects of a part that make it greater than its role in the whole), with-ness (moving with the grain/flow/energy/gestalt of a situation, rather than against it) and transcendence (shifting a frame of reference to increase the desirable possibilities available).

- advancing people's understanding of interconnectedness, wholeness, co-creativity, living systems, co-intelligence, etc.

- preservation of the knowledge, methodologies and infrastructure of co-intelligence in the face of (or even by means of!) any potential catastrophe (political, social, technological or natural)