Tom Atlee: Update on Co-Intelligence Work in Progress

Dear friends,

As we ask for your support for our ongoing work, we want to share a few thoughts on the nature of that work.

We are coming to see co-intelligence as the capacity of life and all of us to consciously participate in dynamic, evolving wholeness – in ourselves, in our groups and communities, in the life of our world, and in the wondrous ongoing story of our universe.

There is real joy in such participation.  There is also abundance, peace, justice, and sustainability… and deep meaning and wisdom.

The Co-intelligence Institute seeks to help co-intelligent participation become an indelible part of our cultures, our political and economic systems, and the ways we all think, feel, and live our lives.

Today's crises make it increasingly hard to live in the old ways.  We are rapidly learning we can't be oblivious participants, acting as if we are separate from each other and the world, treating life as if it is there just to torment or serve us.

The newly obvious consequences of those behaviors and attitudes have inspired a global wave of evolutionary engagement – what Swami Beyondananda calls “the Great Upwising” – creating new and better ways to participate consciously and vibrantly in and with life, together.

That global wave includes the Co-Intelligence Institute as a thinktank, networking center, curator and promoter of new ideas, approaches, and stories. Wherever we find true peace, justice, sustainability, spirit, and community, we find the marks of co-intelligence, to learn from and teach with.

The first half of 2013 saw us engaged in some intense work, including these activities:
*  We produced three landmark essays on participatory power, participatory leadership, and participatory wisdom – as well as a new account of co-inteligence – all of them chapters for an upcoming book on participatory sustainability.
*  We joined with the Institute for the Future to test a new approach to co-designing more life-enhancing forms of governance http://reconcon.govfutures.org/.
*  We shared inquiries and discoveries with numerous innovators, colleagues, and classes – and with you – in blogs, emails, phone calls, and face to face conversations.
*  We were inspired to re-vision our own ways of engaging with the world, a process still underway.

Among our expectations for the second half of 2013 are these:
*  We will be developing and sharing coherent visions of the rapidly emerging, extremely exciting bottom-up economy http://co-intelligence.org/Economics.html .
*  We plan to spread co-intelligence ideas through Wikipedia, Amazon, leading blogs, and possibly short videos.
*  We intend to begin development of broadly useful co-intelligence pattern cards inspired by the GroupWorks deck http://groupworksdeck.org (which we helped create).
*  We aim to promote innovative citizen-government initiatives we have undertaken in two communities.
*  We will promote new understanding of the special role of random selection and systems thinking to awaken a wiser, more potent voice of We the People.

Participate with us in this exciting work.  Send us your thoughts.  Help sustain us.  Your support goes a very long way.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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