Intelligence (Collective & Quantum) – Page 14

Great on Internet Saving Democracy, Lose It Assuming Democratic Party Will Be There,

March 31, 2006

Jerome Armstrong

This is an absolutely superb book, one of the finest reviews, in a readable form, of all that ails this Nation. The authors are like fighter pilots, performing incredible feats of daring-do, right up to the point where they crash and burn by suggesting that the Democratic Party can win anything at all.

I read a lot–almost exclusively non-fiction about information, intelligence, emerging threats, anti-Americanism, the lack of strategic culture, white collar crime, and the negative impact of US domestic political machinations on our national security and prosperity. This book is one of the single most extraordinary overviews I have ever seen, and if you buy and read only one book this year, this is the book.

I bought the book on faith, but for those who wish that the publisher had done a proper job of posting the table of contents, let me just post that information.

American Reality covers corporate cons, theocons, neocons, and other losers

This Ain't No Party starts with Divided We Fail and then discusses how each of the major movements (labor, environment, women) failed.

The Gravy Train is about white-collar crime–the beltway mafia, the commission mafia, the media, propaganda against our own.

Laying the Groundwork is best summed up by the quote from Mahatma Gandhi on the first flyleaf: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” We WILL win–there are not enough guns on the planet, or enough places for white collar crooks and crooked politicians to hide, to keep us down or avoid our justice.

Civil War discusses the Dean machine and the path to “Netroots.”

The book concludes with Inside the Gate, which I have mixed feelings about–the authors have some thoughtful ideas on challenging every Republican, but they miss the boat completely in failing to understand that the Democratic political leadership is just as corrupt, slightly more stupid, and much less ruthless and effective.

That leads to my two critiques that take away one star, but I certainly do consider this book a must read and the authors to be geniuses and thought leaders:

1) Peter Peterson, in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It does a much better job of laying out the prevailing mood across America, which is essentially, “a pox on both parties.” They have both main-lined bribery, they both lack ethics, vision, strategy, and a commitment to the public interest, and neither party is suited for managing America. What the authors forget, perhaps because of their focus on the Dean revolution (which failed–as did the more electable Edwards). John Kerry was the epitaph of the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton will be its gravestone.

2) The authors make the mistake, from the above starting point, of thinking this is about mobilizing a bigger Democratic base against the Republicans. That will not work. Base on base, the Republicans will win every time in this era; in part because the Democrats have given up faith (see my review of the utterly brilliant The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Rabbi Michael Lerner). As I tried to tell Dean and then Edwards and then Kerry, you do not beat a bigger dog with another dog, you beat them with a dog-catcher. There is only ONE dog-catcher issue in this country, and it is this: does EVERYONE's vote count? The answer is no. Hence, I see the author's well-intentioned guidance going down the drain UNLESS they write a second book, which I eagerly encourage, that does two things this book does not do:

a) Show how an American Independence Party, to be launched on the 4th of July, can have a federalist organization that includes conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and Couch Potatoes all as self-organized units that come together with one goal, and one goal only: crushing the extremist religious-corporate right, and restoring the concept of moral representative democracy to America. Any Congressman who fails to leave either the Republican or Democratic Party, who fails to join the new party, should be defeated in 2008.

b) The authors could write a handbook for organizing the people through a national budget simulation that brings out the issues and demonstrates what Paul Ray has known all along (see my review of “Cultural Creatives” and Google for “New Political Compass”): every issue can attract a mix of ideological views where consensus can be achieved. The problem with our two main parties today is that their corruption eliminates honest representations (see my review of “Breach of Trust” in which the author discusses how forcing Members to vote on the “party line” dishonors their obligation to represent their District). I am prepared to contribute financially if these two authors will establish a web site where we can create a virtual coalition government, with all “wings” of the American Independence Party represented, and where we can use a national budget simulation (it's not policy until its in the budget”) to sort out our spending priorities inclusive of elimination of the double-deficit and a shift of $100B a year toward waging peace. Ralph Nader's book “Crashing the Party” has some good ideas-why can't we do this under the author's guidance, and also pick a coalition cabinet that challenges both Republican and Democratic candidates to do the same and participate in cabinet-level debates under the League of Women Voters?

This is a super book, but the authors repeat the mistake Joe Trippi made early on (see my review of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything: the Internet will not save the Democratic Party. Using the Internet to create a new umbrella party will, however, save democracy. The two should not be confused. The Democratic Party today is Republican Lite, and not worth saving. Bring on book two-I'll buy the first 100 copies!

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: Lou Dobbs on CNN is calling for all Americans disenchanted with the two party system to register as independents. This seems to be catching on. Reuniting America is hot (Unity08 is not–last gasp of the two-party spoils system). If 100 million voters come back to vote after dropping out these past eight years, it is game over on corruption, and a new day for democracy.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: A Simpler Way (Paperback)

5 Star, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Leadership

Simpler way to absorb ideas from Leadership and the New Science,

September 25, 2005

Margaret J Wheatley

Margaret Wheatley is addictive. After reading “Leadership and the New Science” I have bought the rest of her books, and also those that she recommends by contributing a foreword.

This book has a great deal of white space, lots of photos, is double-spaced, but by no means is it simplistic. To play on the title, it is a “simpler way” to absorb the large deep ideas that are documented in “Leadership and the New Science.” If her primary writing were a trilogy, this is the entry-level book, “Finding Our Way” is the intermediate volume, and “Leadership” is the graduate course. However, I recommend they be read in reverse order, because the simpler books are more clearly appreciated if one has the deeper background.

What I find most compelling about this book is the manner in which it captures core ideas from a wide variety of works that have been bubbling into human consciousness in the past 20 years. The bibliography is quite good although by no means all-inclusive (missing Kurzweil, E. O. Wilson, and Stephen Wolfham, as well as Tom Atlee and Bill Moyers, among others).

Among the core ideas in this book that are presented with elegance are the absurdity of thinking that life can have a boss–or that rigid ideas and identities will lead to anything other than rigid non-adjustable organizations. The author stresses the value of diversity, passion, connectedness, humanity and humanness, and tieing it all together, the role of information and of ethics as facilitators for “being.”

There is a very useful discussion of bacteria and the manner in which human attempts to impose machine and medical solutions are ultimately defeated by bacteria. Although Howard Bloom's “Global Brain” is not in the bibliography, everything the authors discuss here is consistent with his concerns about bacteria winning the inter-species war with humanity.

Taking this a step further, I would contrast this book, and the varied books on collective intelligence, wisdom of the crowd, ecological economics (Herman Daly) and so on, with a book I recently reviewed about the National Security Council, aptly titled “Running the World.” The stupidity and arrogance of that title reveals all that we need to know about why U.S. foreign policy is failing, and how desperately we need to take the ideas from this book and apply them to how we manage ourselves and our relationships with other nations, other tribes, other religions, other communities.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: The World Cafe–Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Paperback)

5 Star, Future, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Bridges the Gap From Atlee to Wheatley,

September 25, 2005

Juanita Brown

This remarkable book has a foreword from Margaret Wheatley, genius guru and author of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World who inspired Robert Buckman's tremendous work on Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and it has a review from Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All and founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute.

As I finished this book and dealt with my teen-ager who at 16 is quite certain that even the great schools of Fairfax County are largely boring and dysfunctional, still teaching by rote and testing memory rather than the ability to discover, it occurred to me that this book is in fact a handbook for both educating the world, and for reforming education. Instead of the current didactic form of instruction (one-way lectures) we should be teaching, at every level, interactive discovery. It's not what you can remember from the past, but what what you can discover in tandem with others, and apply constructively!

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: Lots has happened since I reviewed this book, and it was a delight to discover that this long buried insight actually found itself manifested in the new non-profit, the Earth Intelligence Network, whose 24 co-founders recognize that we need an EarthGame where we all play ourselves, and that to save the planet, we must educate the five billion poor “one cell call (or conversation) at a time,” something we can do by giving out free cell phones and recruiting 100 million volunteers with Internet access who among them cover the 183 languages we do not speak–that will create infinite wealth (see books at bottom of this review).

As someone who has been trained to be dysfunctional, overly reliant on “command and control” and predictability, I can certainly see how this book would cause discomfort and inspire disbelief among the mandarins of industry and government, but I can also see this book sensibly defines the only path likely to lead to collective intelligence and collective consensus solutions.

Context, hospitable spaces, questions that matter, encouraging everyone's contribution, cross-pollination of diverse perspectives, listening for patterns, cultivating collective intelligence and insight through dialog instead of debate–this book has it all.

My last annotation in the book is “Wiki!” As smart people like Jock Gill and Howard Rheingold start to think about how to create a global Wiki that enables a World Cafe with a space for every topic, every challenge, every zip code, every neighborhood, I have a strong feeling that “bottom up people power” may at last be in the offing.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler are publishing a new book in April called Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives Knowing their past work, I suspect it will be an epic statement that carries the work of Tom Stewart The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization and Barry Carter Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era to new heights, and that is where I will end this review: the world cafe is about creating wealth and peace through dialog. Done right, there are no limits to our ability to engage one another in conversation, and no limits to the wealth that we might create, the peace we might foster, by so doing.

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: two additional books have had a deep impact on me since this was first written:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

This book is very serious, very valuable. It is worth reading and it is worth sharing with others. It is part of our “Collective Intelligence” and leads straight to Peace Intelligence and Commercial Intellligence. In the next ten years I plan nothing less than the reduction of the secret budget of $60 billion a year, to $12 billion, with the savings redirected toward national education and connection the five billion poor to knowledge so they can create infinite stabilizing wealth.

2005/07/012009/12/04

Review DVD: Cracking the Code to the Extraordinary

3 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Reviews (DVD Only)

Forget this one, get “What in the Bleep”,

July 1, 2005

Ramtha

In comparison with “What the Bleep Do We Know” which I rate at five stars, this is a relatively light-weight and somewhat flakey sideshow. Don't waste your time. I will note that the same blond is in both DVD's–in this one she is a quasi-cult feel good about yourself old hippie, in the better DVD she comes across as a serious person with an important message.

Highlight (this DVD generated one note card, the other one 9):

God is us channeling up and out.

Each of us is an “observer.”

There are multiple worlds, we can transfer between past and future.

Time & space are NOT a continuum.

If you pay attention, you ARE “God.”

*You* create your life, you decide what external “opinions” to act on.

On balance, not worth the time–but I really want to stress this, this woman's contributions in the better DVD that I do recommend, clearly mark her as a serious person worth listening to. This tape is fluff compared to the other one.

What the Bleep Do We Know!?
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

2005/07/012009/12/04

Review DVD: What the Bleep Do We Know!?

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Reviews (DVD Only)

Truly Extraordinary, Absolutely Worth Buying and Absorbing,

July 1, 2005

Marlee Matlin

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links and one line at end.

This DVD is truly extraordinary. I have nine note cards on it. Here is my very positive summary of key points in this very serious DVD that pulls together credible useful thoughts from some real professionals. This movie held my counter-culture teen-agers attention for a full 45 minutes, which is quite extraordinary in and of itself.

1) Multiple realities exist side by side across time and space.

2) You can move outside “your” reality to see yourself from outside or from another reality.

3) Major problem in our culture today is that children are not learning to think or imagine broadly.

4) Much of what we are taught to think is not true.

5) Modern materialism and most religions have stripped individuals of their ability to see that they are both responsible, and capable, for affecting their environment.

5) Quantum physics opens new ways for individuals to grab responsibility and *live* life to its fullest.

6) New model says that internal reality is more important that external reality, and it does impact on the environment.

7) Brains do not know difference between what one sees and what one imagines.

8) Natives upon Columbus' arrival could not “see” the ships–one cannot see what one has not learned to imagine.

9) Sub-atomic world is beyond current physics–it is not about the matter, but rather about the empty space between the matter. It is not matter that is a live but rather the empty space (as in a basketball) that is full of information.

10) Nothing material exists without interaction with a thinking being. Material is NOT independent, on the contrary, it is totally dependent on perception. Perception is about possibilities, not absolutes.

11) Consciousness drives material reality; perception activates signatures.

12) 4000+ meditators dropped crime in Washington DC by 25%. The Chief of Police was a skeptic, and then a believer. People, and their thoughts, DO affect reality.

13) Water is responsive to thinking, more so than other materials. Photographs of water crystallization after good thinking (e.g. thank you written on side of water bottle) are quite amazing.

14) If thoughts can crystallize water, imagine what the collective intelligence and good will of all mankind could do?

15) There are different levels of truth but the deepest level of truth is that we are all one. We are at one with the larger whole that is God (community) and with one another, but religions have become corrupt and prescriptive rather than enlightened and inclusive. Control of God's image is the height of arrogance.

16) Emotion is a memory enhanced by chemical addition (internal). Problem for most is that they are operating as if today were yesterday, applying old mindsets, rather than working as a part of a larger integrated whole.

17) Mind DOES influence the body. Emotional toxins and habits are as powerful as heroin.

18) We must learn to dream better, and to dream bigger dreams.

19) Definitions of beauty and valor (like definitions of crime and insanity) are illusory, false, and have no authority. There is more to life than the definitions, you simply need to seek it and see it.

20) Change your choices, change your life. Be ready for a chemical withdrawal as you abandon bad old habits.

21) It's not about good or evil, black or white. Life is nuances, to be *experienced*. You are you own pilot, you are your own priest.

22) You co-create your future by your thinking, imagination, wanting, your choices. PAY ATTENTION and you will get what you wish.

23) You can influence your body, others, the environment, and the future.

24) We are all one; we are not alone; we are connected; we are collective intelligence; we are, in the whole, both God and Heaven on Earth.

I buy into this. This is serious good stuff.

I used to turn off when people talked about the paranormal, even through CIA spent a lot of money on “remote viewing” and I have two books in line waiting to be read; here are a few links:
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace

2005/06/252009/12/04

Review: The Wealth of Knowledge–Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organisation (Hardcover)

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

One of three best books on creating value in the InfoAge,

June 25, 2005

Thomas A. Stewart

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

Too many people will miss the core message of this book, which is about paying attention to truth and seeking out truth in the context of networks of trust, rather than about managing the process of internal knowledge.

When the author says “It's time to gather the grain and torch the chaff,” his book over-all tells me he is talking about brain-power and a culture of thinking (the grain) and counterproductive information technology and irrelevant financial audits (the chaff).

This is one of those rare books that is not easily summarized and really needs to be read in its entirely. A few items that jumped out at me:

1) Training is a priority and has both return on investment and retention of employee benefits that have been under-estimated.

2) All major organizations (he focused on business, I would certainly add government bureaucracies) have “legal underpinnings, ..systems of governance, ..management disciplines, ..accounting (that) are based on a model of the corporation that has become irrelevant.”

3) Although one reviewer objected to his comments on taxation, the author has a deeper point–the government is failing to steer the knowledge economy because it is still taxing as if we had an industrial economy–this has very severe negative effects.

4) As I read the author's discussion of four trends he credits to John Hagel of I2, it was clear that “intelligence” needs to be applied not only to single organizations, but to entire industries. In my view, this author is quite brilliant and needs to be carefully cultivated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all of the industry associations, and by governments. There are some extremely powerful “macro” opportunities here that his ideas could make very profitable for a group acting in the aggregate.

5) This is one book that should have had footnotes instead of end-notes, for while the author is careful to credit all ideas borrowed from others, it is difficult in the text to follow his thinking in isolation. One idea that is very pertinent to national intelligence and counterintelligence as well as corporate knowledge management is that of the reversal of the value chain–“first sell, then make,” i.e. stop pushing pre-conceived products out the door and get into the business of just enough, just in time knowledge or product creation that is precisely tailored to the real time needs of the client.

6) The author excells at blasting those corporations (and implicitly, major government bureaucracies such as the spy agencies that spend over $30 billion a year of taxpayer funds) that assume that if they only apply more dollars to the problem, they can solve any challenge. “Too often ‘dumb power' produces a higher-level stalemate.” One could add: and at greater cost!

7) The bottom line of this truly inspired and original book comes in the concluding chapters when the author very ably discusses how it is not knowledge per se that creates the value, but rather the leadership, the culture, and infrastructure (one infers a networked infrastructure, not a hard-wired bunker). These are the essential ingredients for fostering both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, something neither the CIA nor the FBI understood at the management level in the years prior to 9-11.

Final note: I missed the pre-cursor to this book, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1997) and just read it. I recommend both books, and in some ways, it is better to read this book first. I also recommend Robert Buckman's Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization, and the book, The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth as ideal companions to this path-finding work.

Recently published (2006 and on), see also, with reviews:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)

2005/05/072010/12/18

Review (Guest): The Phenomenon of Man

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

5.0 out of 5 stars The Theory of Global Human Consciousness

May 7, 2005

By “Patrick” (Los Angeles, Ca.) – See all my reviews

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1945) was a Jesuit Priest, theologian, philosopher, and paleontologist who expanded on the concept of the noosphere originated by the Russian mineralogist and geochemist, Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863-1945) who also originated the concept of the biosphere- the “life zone” where all biological life exists between the crust of the earth to the lower atmosphere or the “life envelope” surrounding our planet.

The “noosphere” or “thinking layer”, according to Chardin, comes about at that point in time when humans evolve to the realization of a global human consciousness and is totally aware of itself and then headed for the ultimate destination- the “Omega Point” or “Kingdom of God”. At this point, the earth is enveloped by a collective human consciousness.

Chardin uses both science and theology to support this theory and his dissertation on this is fascinating and thought provoking. Unlike most of his religious peers, he was a proponent of directional evolution and that Darwin had hit upon the proof of God's intent, that final destination of the human conscious evolution where the Creator is realized. Darwin, of course, preferred to distance himself from theological assumptions of species evolution, especially so with us humans and his religious wife.

Chardin distinguishes humans from all other life-forms because of our abilities to contemplate our existence, hence, the uniqueness of or the “phenomenon of man”. Hopefully, he concludes, that the human family will evolve to be totally conscience, intelligent and loving, cooperative, and rising far above our current chaotic existence. Amen to that lofty, but desirable goal!

The evolutionary path of the noosphere is laid out in Chardin's earth evolution and stated as: “We have been following the successive stages of the same grand progression from the fluid contours of the early earth. Beneath the pulsations of geo-chemistry, of geo-tectonic and of geo-biology, we have detected one and the same fundamental process, always recognizable-the one which was given material form in the first cells and was continued in the construction of nervous systems. We saw geogenesis promoted to biogenesis, which turned out in the end to be nothing less psychogenesis.” (p 181). And leading therefore, to “noosgenesis” or global consciousness. Finally, and due to the interconnectedness and seemingly intentional direction of life on earth, Chardin gives Earth a soul: Gaia thinking- Earth “intentionally” supports life.

No wonder then that Chardin is referenced and quoted in a mountain of science and religious works. His theories have influenced such great thinkers as: Lewis Thomas (“The Lives of a Cell”), Buckminster Fuller (“The Dymaxion Map”), the Gaia Theory- Earth as a conscious, intentional, self-regulating life-support system and expounded upon by Guy Murchie (“The Seven Mysteries of Life”) and later by James Lovelock (Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine”), Thomas Berry (“The Dream of the Earth”) and many, many more.

Chardin traveled the world on his scientific investigations and he was present at the discovery of the Peking Man in China. Some historians have intimated that much of Chardin's travels were at the behest of the Catholic Church for they were not thrilled with his attempts to blend science and religion and the farther away from Rome he was, the better.

The church cautioned him not to publish any of his works and faithful to that edict, he left them to a friend in the U.S. to publish posthumously to avoid further conflict and retaliation from the Church- bad memories of the history of the Catholic Church's terrible treatment of scientist and thinkers whose musings drifted from repressive, suffocating church dogma, i.e., Galileo Galilei, et al.

No matter where one's leanings are on religion or science, this is a potent dissertation on bringing science and religion together for awe and respect of life and eventual peace on Earth through global consciousness.

Category: Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Review: Crashing the Gate–Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (Hardcover)