The Co-Intelligence FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Here are answers to 20 questions about co-intelligence. Click on a question to be taken to its answer. What is intelligence? Intelligence can be described in a number of ways:
When we think we know what’s going on and that’s not what’s actually going on, we make “stupid” mistakes. Keeping ourselves aligned with reality – that’s what intelligence is – is vital to our survival, success, and having good lives generally.
Co-intelligence involves truly common sense – shared awareness among people about how to live well together in the circumstances they share, in partnership with the living world – today and tomorrow. It is a bigger way to generate bigger understandings of bigger realities to promote bigger forms of success and quality of life for all. HOW IS CO-INTELLIGENCE A BIGGER FORM OF INTELLIGENCE? We can look at co-intelligence as an expanded, inclusive form of intelligence because...
For a model of how co-intelligence expands traditional intelligence, see Six basic manifestations of co-intelligence. WHAT IS A BIGGER PICTURE PERSPECTIVE AND WHAT ARE BIGGER PICTURE RESULTS? To improve our ability to see things from a bigger picture perspective and create bigger picture benefits, we can ask questions like these:
WHAT HELPS PEOPLE MAKE CO-INTELLIGENCE HAPPEN? Here are some of the most important factors:
This means that there is a whole field of study, knowledge, and practice of co-intelligence which can be used to understand and increase the co-intelligence capacities of people and groups. ISN'T CO-INTELLIGENCE JUST COLLABORATION? Collaboration is an important aspect of co-intelligence, but there's more to co-intelligence than that. After all, people can and do collaborate in creating harmful effects on themselves, each other, and the world around them. They can also collaborate while being ignorant of important things that then make them fail. With co-intelligence they are collaborating on knowing and using what they need to know and use to create long-term broad benefits. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CO-INTELLIGENCE AND COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE? Collective intelligence concerns the intelligence of groups, organizations, communities, societies, and other collective entities. Co-intelligence involves "diverse people working really well together in ways that make things better from a bigger picture perspective". Thus collective intelligence is only one of the following six major manifestations of co-intelligence so far identified:
Each of these can be thought of as co-intelligent in itself, but true co-intelligence includes many if not all of them integrated together. For example, a group working well together in hyper-rational ways towards extremely self-interested ends exhibits collective intelligence but - since it probably lacks much wisdom and heart intelligence - it doesn't really fit the definition of co-intelligence (i.e., "making things better from a bigger picture perspective"). Of course, collective intelligence that involves diverse people using their full cognitive capacities to collaborate with each other and the energies and entities involved in the problem they're working on, empathically taking into account the full spectrum of information and perspectives while attuned to the guidance of nature and spirit - that's very co-intelligent collective intelligence!! Co-stupidity is people working together (generally without realizing it) in ways that generate failure and/or that make things worse in the bigger picture. Some varieties of co-stupidity have been studied for years under the name "groupthink". WHAT CAUSES PEOPLE AND GROUPS TO BE CO-STUPID? Co-stupidity shows up because of many factors, but especially when:
Co-stupidity is curable by doing things that enhance co-intelligence, as described in this FAQ and elsewhere on this site. IS CO-INTELLIGENCE AN EXPERIENCE? A short answer would be "No," in the sense that co-intelligence is not in itself an experience nor fundamentally about experience. It is about how well and wisely we engage with each other and the changing world around us. That being said, we may or may not have any particular experiences or feelings when this is happening - especially when it is happening with a whole community or society. Sometimes we may experience stress and struggle as we work our way co-intelligently through our collective differences and challenges en route to a useful, shared sense of what's going on and what should happen. Such struggles can become meaningful, positive experiences as part of a larger process of healing, discovery, or transformation. On the other hand, the empathic quality of our experience is a recognized facet of co-intelligence we call resonant intelligence. And certain instances of co-intelligence have profound experiential dimensions. We can be elated by a really good co-creative conversation. We can also develop a special kind of presence as a facilitator or a deep resonance with living things and places as a practitioner of permaculture (an ecological design science) or religious communion with the Goddess in Nature or the God in all people and things. CAN INDIVIDUALS BE CO-INTELLIGENT, OR JUST GROUPS? The word "co-intelligence" tends to be used to describe
the capacity of a group, community, or other collective. However,
sometimes the co-intelligence of the collective comes about largely
from the cooperative personalities, attitudes, or consciousness
of its members as individuals. In this case, the individuals can
be said to "be co-intelligent". Furthermore, people may
be considered individually co-intelligent based on the extent to
which they integrate the diversity that exists within themselves
- especially their cognitive diversity - their reason, emotion,
intuition, etc.... or a remarkable ability to elicit mutually beneficial
collaborative engagements from the people and life around them...
or simply the level of true wisdom they
manifest in service to broader perspectives and beneficial impacts. A system, culture, or activity can be considered especially co-intelligent when it is set up in such a way that individuals grounded in their own self interest and narrow perspectives nevertheless make decisions and take actions that benefit the world around them. A good example of such a design is the proposal to add into the market price of goods and services the costs of dealing with environmental and social damages associated with those goods and services so that the most beneficial goods and services are cheaper than the more destructive ones. On the other hand, a system whose design encourages co-stupidity can impede, distort or subsume the efforts of people in it who are trying to act co-intelligently, keeping them trapped in participating in co-stupidity. No, but many existing methods and resources can enhance co-intelligence and many more can and should be developed. Existing practices and resources range from approaches to dialogue and online collaboration to science and meditation. Most of the people reading this FAQ already know of or use methods and resources that facilitate or manifest co-intelligence. Wikis and other open source efforts are good examples. But these methods are not themselves co-intelligence any more than a paint brush is art. Their intelligent use, however, can help produce co-intelligence. For a taste of such methods, see Co-Intelligent Practices, Approaches, Processes and Organizations. ISN'T CO-INTELLIGENCE ALREADY HAPPENING IN LOTS OF PLACES? The simple answer is "Yes!" In fact, given that people are always dealing with situations they face together - consciously or not, successfully or not - co-intelligence is always present to some extent. Many groups and organizations develop a level of collective functionality that shows up as co-intelligence even if they don't call it that. However, when we understand the dynamics involved and some approaches that make good use of those dynamics, we can significantly increase the co-intelligence that’s present within, among, and around us. WHAT IS THE CO-INTELLIGENCE WORLDVIEW? A worldview is the way someone sees the world. For example, many artists and others have an aesthetic worldview, seeing the aesthetic dimensions of every person, every place, every creation of people or nature. A devout Christian or Hindu may see the face of God in every being and the workings of God everywhere. When someone who sees the world in terms of co-intelligence observes people trying to deal with a situation, they notice how well those people are working with each other - and with whatever challenges and resources exist in the situation - in ways that create beneficial outcomes for everyone who is connected to that situation. If their discernment is trained in the co-intelligence worldview, they also see ways to help those involved be more co-intelligent. WHAT DOES CO-INTELLIGENCE HAVE TO DO WITH DEMOCRACY? Democracy is, essentially, self-governance - government by the people. Some people are legitimately concerned about "too much" democracy because they fear mob rule and general co-stupidity. The fact that we can enhance the co-intelligence of groups, communities, and whole societies suggests that we could create wiser forms of self-governance at all levels of society. We call this the promise of "wise democracy". A primary example of this is the use of citizen deliberative councils, randomly selected panels of citizens who consider an issue together, supported by full-spectrum information and facilitation that helps them listen to each other and co-create shared findings and recommendations about the issue. These and other approaches are covered in detail in the books The Tao of Democracy and Empowering Public Wisdom. WHAT VALUE DO THE CO-INTELLIGENCE WORLDVIEW AND CO-INTELLIGENCE CAPACITIES ADD TO HUMAN LIFE? There is never a time when people don't need to address situations in their collective lives. In fact, politics, governance, economics, justice and international relations all involve major social systems dedicated to doing exactly that. Doing it successfully is not easy and doing it unsuccessfully can produce disastrous consequences. Given the obvious collective dysfunction, stupidity, and folly we can observe here and there at every level and in every sector of society - and even by any given society and civilization as a whole - there is clear need for improvement. Furthermore, given the consequences of the worst of our collective failures - including some very large and foreseeable global catastrophes - the ability to increase humanity's capacity for co-intelligence is a precious skill indeed. IS CO-INTELLIGENCE THE INTELLIGENCE OF GOD OR SPIRIT? If you are a spiritual person, you may well see spiritual dimensions to co-intelligence, which is very understandable. At the same time, it is no more necessary to think of co-intelligence in spiritual terms than it is to think of healing, mediation or facilitation in spiritual terms, even though many practitioners of those arts do so. What you are probably thinking of with this question is closely related to the recognized manifestation of co-intelligence referred to as "universal intelligence" (which covers all intelligences beyond the usual human forms) and to the broader intelligence underlying co-intelligence - a phenomenon known as "holistic intelligence". WHAT IS HOLISTIC INTELLIGENCE? Holistic intelligence involves the evolutionary dynamism that we find in all domains and at all levels, thanks to the holistic, interrelated nature of reality. Co-intelligence - a subset of holistic intelligence - focuses on the human manifestations of that dynamic, and our conscious use of it. An example of holistic intelligence is the tendency of any living or life-like system, when disturbed, to seek to reestablish or renew its former state or to transform itself into something new that has more integrity or utility under the circumstances. We can observe this tendency in how forces involved with a disturbed forest, species, person, mechanism or idea act to reestablish its prior order or to stimulate a new form to emerge (including even the entity's breakdown into components useful elsewhere). When we're dealing with this dynamic in human affairs – in groups, organizations, communities, or societies - we find problems, conflicts and dysfunctions calling forth energies seeking solutions, resolution, organizational or social change, and so on. In other words, we find some degree of co-intelligence at work seeking to promote fruitful harmony. In both cases, we are observing impulses for more healthy integrity, functionality and contextual "fitness" - which are all manifestations of a whole trying to regain its wholesome nature after a disturbance. Holistic intelligence be viewed as the intelligence of The Whole
of Reality or as a transcendent Intelligence that shapes reality.
Although this perspective is not necessary for understanding holistic
intelligence, for many people it is thoroughly descriptive and spiritually
meaningful. For further information see Holistic Intelligence. HOW DOES ALL THIS FIT TOGETHER? Co-intelligence is a bigger-picture intelligence phenomenon WHAT IS THE CO-INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE? The Co-Intelligence Institute (CII) is a non-profit research and public service organization founded in 1996 by Tom Atlee and Karen Mercer to encourage increased understanding and application of co-intelligence - as a capacity, a worldview, and a field of study, knowledge and practice. Through research, networking, publications, advocacy, and project work, the CII seeks to enhance society's capacity to successfully meet the challenges we collectively face in ways that produce a sustainable, just, and responsible civilization that provides a high quality of life for all who live within and around it. Contributions to our work and participation in our networks and in our upcoming community of practice are warmly welcomed. . If you have comments about this site,
email cii@igc.org. |