Collective Intelligence

In 2012, after retiring from my professional career, I was eager to participate in some of the practices I had read about that facilitated group practices aimed at realizing emergent capacities. My working hypothesis was that it could be possible for people to participate in ways that would catalyze new cognitive and conative capacities such […]

A person living today in a modern city or a suburb can be surrounded by others yet feel deeply, dangerously alone. According to neuroscientists, the effects of social isolation are as real as thirst, hunger, or pain. We are, in essence, social animals in need of deep connection. Throughout time we have survived and thrived […]

The quality of our conversations makes our world what it is. How we talk to each other determines whether we walk away from each other and prepare to fight for our separate interests, or hold fire, stay together, and open up into a future of mutual understanding and brighter possibility. Conversation is an art that […]

By Rhonda Fabian Last year, Kosmos commissioned a communication research study to better understand an emerging global movement and how groups within the movement could connect effectively. Led by Kosmos Digital Editor Rhonda Fabian and Jen Horner, PhD, both alumni of the Anneneberg School for Communication, the study was shared widely with the Kosmos community and remains one of the most-read features on our website. Here we summarize the key insights from the study.

This is Part Four of our Collective Presencing series. The earlier three articles in this series describe the new human capacity we are calling Collective Presencing. This article describes the journey to becoming a Circle of Creation--at least as far as the authors have travelled thus far, knowing that the horizon moves ever ahead as we take the next step.

In the first two articles in this series, we introduced collective presencing as a new human capacity emerging at this time. The first article described a journey of individual and collective deepening and widening through a set of practices that can, over time, allow us first to achieve collective wisdom and later to become generative of more life. The second article took a more detailed look at the first phase in the process: what it takes to become a Circle of Presence. We promised that the next article would treat the next phase, the Circle of Creation. On deeper reflection we came to see that the transition to the Circle of Creation represents such a paradigm shift that some wider context is needed before we broach that subject. This article offers that.

Our first article (Kosmos, Spring / Summer 2012) gave an overview of the new human capacity we are starting to articulate—that we call Collective Presencing, the purpose of which is to allow us to systematically achieve collective wisdom. We described the two distinct phases that we see unfolding as a collection of individuals learns to become a collective capable of employing this capacity on behalf of the whole: firstly, becoming a circle of presence, then becoming a circle of creation.

This is the first in a series of articles introducing the phenomenon and practice of Collective Presencing, a new capacity evolving in humanity at this time. Great thinkers have foreseen its coming—we recognise it in Aurobindo’s descent of the supramental and Teil-hard de Chardin’s noosphere. But what exactly do those terms mean? Where these gifted individuals intuited and envisioned the birth of this new collective capacity at the dawn of the last century, we are now starting to be able to describe it from experience. While many might recognise the phenomenon from transpersonal group work and other such practices, so far as we are aware, this is the first attempt to articulate it as a path and a set of capacities that can be intentionally developed.

Connecting our conversations is the best way to discover that the future is already here, but that the awareness of it is not evenly distributed. Why is this important? Because, the choice is between joining together to create a wisdom society or regressing into an extinct society. The complex, intertwining local and global crises will outpace our ‘response-ability if we don't wise up individually and collectively.

This article gives a brief overview of what needs to happen if we— individually and collectively—are to wisely and effectively engage in shaping the future of our planet and our species. The community of evolutionary entrepreneurs has a rich toolkit of models, maps and approaches to work with