Godlen Candle Award: Mr. Tom Atlee
OSS '04: To Tom Atlee, founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute, for his sustained leadership in the vanguard of an informed democracy. His book, The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Worlds for All is in the best traditions of Thomas Jefferson, who said “A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.”
We discovered Tom Atlee when we made the leap from being critical of fraud, waste, and abuse within the secret intelligence community simply on the basis of efficiency, and recognized as so many others have before us, that democracy demands public intelligence, and that secret intelligence is inherently pathological and easily corrupted or exploited by unscrupupous politicians. Tom Atlee has been our guide into the world of appreciate inquiry, deliberative dialog, conscious evolution, and citizenship wisdom councils (Jim Rough), and for that, we can never articulate thanks as profound as the difference he has made. Below is his first presentation to OSS '04.