We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Only ‘collective intelligence’ can help us stave off an uninhabitable planet

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from Insurge Intelligence.
Human beings organize ourselves in numerous social forms. But in all and each of these forms, a new form of collective intelligence is required for that social form to fully engage with the challenges it faces; to truly understand them in their systemic and holistic contexts; and to thereby adapt to them powerfully and creatively.

This requires a form of collective intelligence that has not yet been fully cultivated and practiced in human history — though it may well have had various past iterations and manifestations. It will be truly ‘new’, in the sense of building on the best of what we have so far achieved as a species, to deal with the unprecedented scale and convergence of contradiction and change we now face, together, on the planet.
The "only" problem with the above statement and the entire article is that it ignores the present reality that very little of collective intelligence exists! It ignores the stark reality that a class structure exists in which the top or ruling class, the capitalist class, has overwhelming control of decisions that affect every institution of most global societies. Their class power and control stem directly from the use of fossil fuels to extract maximum profits which they add to their mountain of wealth in order to control every institution in most nations of our planet home. 

Thus, the intelligence that does exist is under their control and drives decisions to accumulate more profits and power for their tiny class of humans--not for the benefit of the human species. This drive has nowadays essentially transformed into an addiction to power and control. This tiny class are so blinded by this addiction that they can't see the reality that it is leading to the destruction of habitat that supports human life. The only solution is revolution that can restore a "collective intelligence".