Photo by Alan Briskin
"New capacity and intelligence emerges through connections: from cell to cell, dendrite to dendrite, human to human, group to group. As extraordinary and mysterious as the experience of profound connection—and of collective wisdom emerging—may feel in the moment, collective wisdom as a phenomenon is natural, even potentially ordinary."
~ The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly
"When we join together the terms collective and wisdom, we reach a whole new synthesis of insight and revelation.
Like binocular vision, in which both eyes are used at once, joining collective with wisdom is a way of seeing with added dimension and depth. The collective eye can pick up patterns of order, variation, and connections; wisdom can detect meaning and human values that arise spontaneously from a particular situation. We achieve, to paraphrase the words of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, an ability to weave together the slender threads of a fractured whole into a firmer pattern of meaning.
To share collective wisdom with others is to make meaning from disparate threads and weave together a fresh understanding."
~ The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly
"Collective wisdom helps us transcend the duality of self and others because it is a reminder that we are part of a larger framework from which we act out our role. As Shakespeare recognized, alone we are merely players, each with our exits and entrances, but as members of something larger, we become something extraordinary. “Consider,” another wise poet said, “how the stars that shine more brightly manage to combine in constellations, get a name.” So too with collective wisdom: When we are in service to that which is life affirming and needed, we become something greater in combination with others."
~ The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly
If you have to ask what a picture is worth, then you probably can't afford this column.
In The Power of Collective Wisdom we wrote "seeking collective wisdom is a conscious attempt to elevate group life from its history of fighting tooth and claw to reach the top of the hierarchy or achieve dominance over others." And we referred to the human capacity for empathy, compassion, and the role of mirror neurons in allowing for the permeability of emotional life.
So check out these words below from economist and best selling author, Jeremy Rifkin, the author of The Empathic Civilization
"Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers but, rather, a collaborative enterprise between like-minded players. The classical economic idea that another's gain is at the expense of one's own loss is replaced by the idea that enhancing the well-being of others amplifies one's own well-being. The win/lose game gives way to the win/win scenario.
In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."
~ Jeremy Rifkin