a_mahr

What is Collective Wisdom?

This is the opening speech given by Dr. Albrecht Mahr at the Conference on Collective Wisdom, April 28-30, 2006, in Wurzburg, Germany. The
full text of this speech can be found on the CWI website.

The material is broken up into sections so that it may be more easily considered & commented upon. See the left hand column for section topic headings, in the order they appear.

Please add your own thoughts, reflections, and responses to Dr Mahr's words via the 'comments' link under each section, as you are drawn to do so.

What Touches our Hearts?

Over Easter we spent a few days on vacation, and during this time we came across these two – our friendly companions and patron saints for this conference. Many of you may recognize them: one is the archangel Gabriel as he announces the birth of Jesus, and on the right is Mary as she receives this news from Gabriel. They were created in around the year 1280, and they can be found in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Regensburg. The religious or art history background isn’t important for me here – it could just as well be Jewish or Buddhist forms, or simply other human faces. What matters is what the two “angels” – I’ll call them this for simplicity’s sake – are expressing: friendliness; merriment; and a natural lightness and ease.

Pointing to Paradox

So, what is collective wisdom - the subject of our conference? I would like to name just a few traits.

1. With collective wisdom it’s about something apparently paradoxical.
Summed up, collective wisdom can be described this way: “Together we know more.” If an issue important to all of us exercises the effect of an “attractor” and gathers the group around it, a third thing, something new, can take shape in our midst which is more than the sum of all the individuals, and which creates a special connection among us.

Leadership & Experts

2. Collective wisdom doesn’t recognize any particular experts –
there are only experts. Collective wisdom can more easily arise where we lower or eliminate the often so restrictive barriers based on hierarchy, or those based on ethnic or religious affiliation.

The Messiah is One of You...

This incident relates to elements which are central to the unfolding of collective wisdom: recognition and valuing of differences; and with this: consideration and respect as a basic posture towards others; and: esteem and recognition as well for one’s own dignity.

Digression to Stupidity

At this point, I would like to make a small digression on collective stupidity, blindness, oppression, and destructiveness. In light of the collective acts of cruelty continuing up the present day, particularly those of the very recent past, the word “collective” has a sinister and frightening overtone for many of us.

So, let me take a moment to ask: What could turn us, the ca. 700 participants of this conference, into a more or less homogeneous, blind, and destructive mass? How much time would be needed for this – how many decades, or maybe only weeks, days, or even hours? And which external and internal circumstances could lead to this?

Non-Violence & Co-Intelligence

Here in our circles “those over there” might be, for example, religious fundamentalists, right-wing radicals and Neo-Nazis, terrorists, globalizers, and sometimes also “the American government,” etc., etc. From rejection to demeaning and condemning, all the way to the wish and supposedly justifiable actions to make them disappear, there are but a few steps to which each and every one of us is capable.

World Café

Now I would again like to come back to our next step together, the World Café. Peter Senge, who is perhaps known to some of you as an especially astute and far-sighted organization developer, and a very good authority on the World Café, says this about it: “The World Café is not a technique. It is an invitation into a way of being with one another that is already part of our nature.”

Personal & Transpersonal

So, what is it in the end that really touches us, what is this? I believe it’s this: that we can find out what it is that we value and love in ourselves. That we can face our own limitations and faults with sympathy. And that with both our best aspects and our limitations, we can contribute to the well-being of others, indeed to the common good. As Desmond Tutu says: “Contributing to the common good is in one’s own best self-interest.”

Simple Gestures

Can / should we create a better world? I don’t know. To me, this question seems more to confine the space, rather than widen it. But if we follow what really touches and nourishes our hearts, with the light ease and the smile which are natural to the heart, then we allow for movement and the emergence of what our two patron saints are heralding – something new that we don’t yet know, but which we can still entrust ourselves to. What really counts to us, and moves us, therefore really has nothing to do at all with commandments and morals.

Overview & Final Comments

The conference begins and ends with all its currents in the Community Council on the last day. In the Community Council, following old Native American tribal traditions, the entirety of our conference community is reflected in eight basic positions and perspectives on life, corresponding to the eight points on the compass. In the words of Ingrid Ebeling: “From these different perspectives …. we want to look at the conference we’ve gone through together. It’s now about making the multi-faceted things we’ve encountered, the results, the personal and collective experiences of the conference, visible for the community in our own specific way, and to carry this out into the world.”

Please add your thoughts and comments via the 'comments' link below:
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