A wise person has perspective. They can see the big picture without
losing sight of the small. They can see the part without losing sight
of the whole. They understand the partnerships of day and night, good
and bad, the known and the unknown. They have observed how it all fits
together, including their own limitations and immense ignorance - and
that realization makes them humble, insightful and flexible. They are
free to creatively see and respond to what's actually around them.
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference."
This famous "Serenity Prayer" arises out of, and nurtures, wisdom.
Can communities be wise?
Interestingly, a community of people
(whether a group, a company, a town or a nation) is better equipped to
be wise than an individual. This is true despite the fact most of the
communities we live in or with are clearly foolish, small-minded,
unconscious and/or destructive. Truly wise communities (some of which
operate on millennia-old traditions) are seldom seen or publicized by
our civilization, preoccupied as it is with bustling off to its own
demise.
As individuals, we are inherently more limited than a community.
Although we can consult books and friends and critics, in the end we
are limited to our own single perspective. We are, alas, only one
person, looking at the world from one place, one history, one pattern
of knowing.
A community, on the other hand, can see things through many eyes,
many histories, many ways of knowing. The question is whether it
dismisses or creatively utilizes and integrates that diversity.
Communities are wise to the extent they use diversity well. The
wisest know that every viewpoint represents a part of the truth, and
that it is through the cooperative, creative interplay of viewpoints
that the wisest, most comprehensive and powerful truths emerge. So they
engage in that interplay, that dialogue - a creative controversy or
consensus process that winds its way to wise public judgment.
The best government is that government which enables communities to
do this - to nurture and utilize their wisdom and resources -
especially their diversity - in such a way that they require less and
less government.
A community that can manage itself in a wise and sustainable manner
is one that has mastered democracy. They know they can't depend on
leaders (from dictators to saviours, from representatives to experts)
to do things for them. They know that democratic citizens and leaders
work best in partnership with each other, co-creating each other's
power. They know that leaders must be seen as living extensions of
their own will and wisdom, which must be kept active. They know that
passive "followership" abandons leaders, deprives them of the wisdom
and creativity of the community, and opens them up to the corruptions
of alienated power.
A democratic community grows beyond dependence and paternalism. In a
sense, the more democratic a society is, the more it has "come of age."
Movements for democracy might even be seen as the maturation process of
a culture. A mature society knows how to handle itself in dynamic
context with others, drawing on its inner resources (its diverse
members) and relating responsively and creatively with its environment.
The more it knows how to nurture and use the rich diversity of
individual views and capabilities within it, the more wise (and
democratic) a society will be. It will resist small-minded leadership
and even the dictatorship of the majority. It will cherish dissent as a
wise individual cherishes doubt - as a door to deeper understanding.
However, as we all know, it is not easy to do something creative
with diverse opinions and experiences. It's much easier to settle for
lowest-common-denominator agreements, press for (or give in to)
one-sided decisions, or enforce thoughtless compliance. But a wise,
democratic society knows that such approaches inevitably overlook
important factors and result in poor decisions. A public rush to
judgement is comparable to an individual jumping to conclusions. In the
long run, it only makes things worse.
So a major activity of a democratic community is developing the
skills, procedures, and attitudes needed for people to jointly create
with their diversity. As more people become artists with these
democratic tools, the community's thinking becomes more wise, their
collective behavior more intelligent and successful.
In this process, communities leave domination and fragmentation
(alienated individualism) behind. Those dysfunctional approaches arise
from a false dichotomy between the individual and the group. In fact,
individuality and community are two facets of the same thing - our
alive humanity. Individuals and communities can only be whole and
healthy when they nurture each other. This is the lesson of deep
democracy.
Through building creative partnerships among empowered, deeply
unique individuals and groups, deep democracy enables real community
wisdom to emerge. Peace, justice and fruitful, sustainable lives are
natural concomitants of this process.
Just as a healthy body contains a deep wisdom that enables it to
heal itself and to go about its daily business with energy and
intelligence, so does a deeply democratic society resonate with the
creative, healing wisdom of the body politic.
Copyright 2004 by Tom Atlee
Tom Atlee is the founder and co-director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence Institute. Recently his work has focused on developing our capacity to function as a wise democracy, so we can turn our social and environmental challenges into positive developments for our society. His social change vision is based on new understandings of wholeness which recognize the value of diversity, unity, relationship, context, uniqueness and the spirit inside each of us and the world. Co-intelligence is a form of intelligence grounded in that kind of wholeness. It has collaborative and collective dimensions, which we see clearly in higher forms of politics and governance, the central focus of the Co-Intelligence Institute. Co-intelligence theory also acknowledges many facets of intelligence (like head and heart), wisdom, and the higher forms of intelligence (natural and sacred) that move through and beyond us. Although Tom and the Institute focus on very practical issues of group, social and political dynamics, co-intelligence has many esoteric dimensions as well.
