Thomas:
Sometimes, a new word cuts across previous arguments like a Bowie knife hacking a venison limb. Co-stupidity is such a word. No need to add my comments to this article - we are all living in the results of our collective ---------!
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
--
The Co-Intelligence Institute // CII home // Y2K home
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What I most want to communicate about Y2K
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If you only read one page on this site, let it be this one. -- Tom Atlee
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Everything has changed save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophes.
Albert Einstein
"Co-stupidity" describes the collective inability of groups, communities, organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and to deal effectively with what they find. It is the opposite of collective intelligence. But it is vital to understand that to say a group or society is behaving co-stupidly or co-intelligently says nothing about the intelligence of the individuals involved. Some of the most co-stupid groups are made up of brilliant people who use their brilliance to undermine each other so that together they add up to nothing -- or who are trapped in a dysfunctional group process or social system that erodes or wastes their brilliance or, worse yet, transmutes it into collective catastrophe. On the other hand, people of very ordinary or even low intelligence can, if they collaborate well within a well-designed system, generate a level of collective brilliance that far exceeds what they could do under the control of a brilliant leader. Once we are in a group or society, our collective intelligence or stupidity has little to do with how clever or slow we are individually -- and everything to do with how well our system is designed, how good our process is, how wisely we handle information, and how well we all work together.
Y2K arose from a profound societal co-stupidity that does not reside within the specific people and institutions involved so much as within a system that calls forth actions which seem to make sense to the well-intentioned, smart people and organizations involved -- but which, when taken together, add up to potential catastrophe for all of society.
Such co-stupidity is not limited to Y2K, of course. We see it all around us -- not only in business meetings and the halls of government, but in our collective social lives. For example:
* We are collectively creating global warming by driving our cars and running our air conditioners. We don't intend to create global warming -- and most of us who are aware that we are doing it also fervently wish we weren't. But our society and economy are set up so that it is very difficult if not impossible for us to avoid participating in creating global warming. It is ultimately futile to blame and exhort individual citizens about their role in this when the system itself makes it so hard to behave any other way.
* We are poisoning our children with the chemicals of everyday life. Again, we don't want to. But our society produces 75,000 synthetic chemicals, fewer than half of which have been tested for toxicity. As parents, we don't even know which of these chemicals are involved in the things our children do every day, in the air they breathe, in the things they touch. Our children's bodies are affected anyway, whether we know it or not. Childhood asthmas, cancers, brain problems, and other diseases are on a rapid rise. What do we make of this?
* We are destroying our farmland. We are paving it over. We are poisoning our aquifers and watersheds with agricultural chemicals. We are removing nutrients from the soil by growing food and then not returning those nutrients through the composting of human and animal waste. Our use of chemical fertilizers undermines the natural fertility of the soil, so that it yields less and less each year unless more fertilizers are added (i.e., it is addicted to fertilizer). Tons of topsoil are washed or blown away by poor soil management practices. And now "we" (in the form of Monsanto and the USDA) are creating seeds designed to poison the next generation of seeds. And all this is happening while every individual and organization involved is doing their job, playing by the rules, and not intending to destroy the capacity of our nation to feed itself.
As a culture, we don't see -- we don't really get it -- that we're doing these things. Individually and institutionally, we may or may not know something about all this -- but most of our attention is on other problems and other opportunities that are validated by the society we live in. Those individuals and organizations that do see what's happening have to struggle mightily against the current of a system whose design -- unless changed -- virtually guarantees nothing will be done about these problems in time. And this is true of virtually every major social and environmental problem.
This problematic system has been in place for some time. So is it any wonder that in the early 1970s the Pentagon and thousands of companies made Y2K inevitable by preferring to invest in short-term productivity and competitiveness rather than take the giant, significant step of converting their computer codes to four digits? (To have chosen otherwise would have involved vast short-term sacrifices by whatever organization acted first.) Will it be any surprise if panicked people trying to secure their financial future bring the banking system to the edge of collapse by withdrawing all their money? The design of our system itself -- our politics, our economics, our media, our educational system -- makes these behaviors (and their disastrous collective results) as natural as a flood.
Tragedies like this demonstrate that
we lack truly effective ways
to see and reflect on what's happening to our collective destiny and to take action to change course when necessary.
The institutions established for that purpose -- government, media, and education -- are not dealing well with the great threats we face: In 1998 while our government and media should have been taking effective action on Y2K, they were busy having an affair with Monica Lewinsky.
When someone can't put their attention where it is most needed, can't think through their predicament, can't pass the tests of life, we call them stupid. As we have just seen, the capacity for stupidity is not limited to individuals; it infects our collective life, as well. I've been using this word "co-stupidity" to describe the collective inability of our groups, communities, organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and to deal effectively with what they find. Y2K exemplifies co-stupidity, but I think it's pretty clear that Y2K is only one vivid example of a deeper dynamic of co-stupidity we see every day, all around us -- a dynamic that is literally destroying us.
The good news is we don't have to continue this way.
The know-how exists with which to
dramatically improve our collective intelligence.
We could build the capacity to be wise together instead of co-stupid.
I urge you to start exploring this subject, perhaps beginning with my article Raising the Quality of Dialogue about Y2K. In fact, if you learn only one thing about Y2K, I pray that it is this. Because if we can work with the Y2K problem to improve our co-intelligence, it will profoundly improve our capacity to deal with all the other challenges we will face -- many of which are all around us even now, and growing.
If we deal with such challenges in a co-intelligent way, we'll simultaneously build a decent, joyful, sensible civilization for our grandchildren. After all, we've got everything we need for that project right here and now -- except for the capacity to see, think and act together on what we know would be the good thing, the right thing to do. This is our chance to change that.
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It seems to me that the most powerful thing we can do
to deal with the social issues and opportunities we each care about
is to join together to increase our society's ability
to fruitfully deal with ALL the social issues and opportunities we face.
If we do that, then our issues will likely be handled better.
If we don't do that, then our issues will likely continue to be mishandled.
And we will all continue to drift towards unparalleled catastrophes.
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Tom Atlee
April 1999
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Is this a sales pitch?
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My and others' writings on what would constitute co-intelligent politics and governance are listed and described on http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html
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