The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
John D. Stempel, “The IMpact of Religion on Intelligence”
Slated for Peacekeeping Intelligence Book II (Fall 2009)
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)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars From 1989, Not Updated, Superb Never-the-Less
April 28, 2005
Robert E. Ornstein, Paul Ehrlich
EDIT 20 Dec 07 to add links.
This superb book was published in 1989 and is being reissued, and I am very glad it has come out again. I bought it because it was recommended by Tom Atlee, seer of the Co-Intelligence Institute, and I found it very worthwhile.
As I reflect on the book, I appreciate two key points from the book:
1) The evolution of our brains and our ability to sense cataclysmic change that takes place over long periods of time is simply not going fast enough–the only thing that can make a difference is accelerated cultural evolution, which I find quite fascinating, because cultural evolution as the authors describe it harkens to noosphere, World Brain, co-intelligence, and what the Swedes are calling M4 IS: multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information sharing–what I think of as Open Source Intelligence–personal, public, & political.
2) One of the more compelling points the authors make is that not only are politicians being elected and rewarded on the basis of short-term decisions that are by many measures intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt, but the so-called knowledge workers–the scientists, engineers, and others who should be “blowing the whistle,” are so specialized that there is a real lack of integrative knowledge. I realized toward the end of the book, page 248 exactly, that Knowledge Integration & Information Sharing must become the new norm.
This is a tremendous book that is loaded with gems of insight. I have it heavily marked up. Although it integrates and reminds me of ideas ably explored in other books, such as Health of Nations, Cultural Creatives, Clock of the Long Now, ATTENTION, Limits to Growth, and Forbidden Knowledge, these two authors have integrated their “brief” in a very readable way–as one person says on the book jacket, they effectively weave together many strands of knowledge.
The annotated bibliography is quite good, and causes me to be disappointed that the publishers did not provide for the updating of the bibliography–the ideas being blended are timeless and need no update.
Two notes toward the end were quite interesting. They speculate that Japan may be the first modern nation to collapse, if it is subject to disruption of the global trade and transportation system. They also have high praise for Global 2000, an integrative work whose predictions for the 2000 period (written in the 1970's, I believe) are turning out to be quite accurate.
Finally, woven throughout the book, is the simple fact that we are now burning up our savings–consuming the Earth at a much faster rate than it can replenish itself. We are very much out of harmony with our sustaining environment, and at grave risk of self-destruction. Interestingly, they remind of the Durants last word in “The Lessons of History:” that the only revolution, the only sustainable revolution, is that which takes place in the human mind. As these authors would have it, if we do not develop a new collective mind capable of integrating, understanding, and acting sensible, for the long term, on what we can know as a collective mind, then our grandchildren will become prey for the cockroaches of the future.
At a time when the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Ambassador Negroponte, is seriously contemplating the establishment of a national Open Source (Information) Agency as recommended by the 9-11 Commission, to get a grip on all the historical and current knowledge, both scientific and social, that we have lost touch with, I can think of just three books I would recommend to the DNI as a foundation for his reflections: this one, Buckman's “Creating a Knowledge Driven Organization,” and Wheatley's “Leadership and the New Science.” I would end his tutorial, or perhaps inspire it, by screening Tom Atlee's video, “From Group Magic to a Wise Democracy.”
Strangely, for I tend to be very gloomy about our prospects these days, I find that this book has cheered me somewhat. I sense the possibility of a break-out through a combination of wise information acquisition and sharing policies, and the application of the new technologies that L-3, CISCO, and IBM, among others, are bringing out, technologies that put intelligence on the edge of the network, and permit the creation of infinitely scalable and shareable synthetic information exactly suited to any need at any level.
There *is* an answer to all that ails us, and these two authors discuss it in a very capable manner.
See also, with reviews:
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
World brain
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
I am sure this book will alter the perceptions of any management team in any domain. At a larger level of international information sharing, what the Swedes are calling M4 IS (multi-national, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional (or multi-domain) information sharing), this book is the single best and most practical book for turning Industrial era organizations into Information era organizations.
There have been other great books that captured some of these ideas early on, from the popular (Alvin and Heidi Toffler's POWERSHIFT, Paul Strassmann's Information PayOff) to the inspired (Thomas Stewart's Wealth of Knowledge, Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth : A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era), but this is the one that I think absolutely must be read by every flag officer and every colonel aspiring to be a flag officer, and their counterparts across all industries.
Heavily marked up, this book is already a classic. The author is brilliant in an elegant understandable manner in making several key points in an action-oriented implementation-facilitating fashion:
1) Technology is the easy part–changing the culture is the hard part (from information hoarding to information sharing)
2) Command and control stovepipes are a big part of the problem–we have to nurture trust and responsibility in all levels by giving all levels access to all information (within reason).
3) Communications, computers, and library services as well as external business intelligence services all have to be rolled together under one executive that has “direct report” relationship with the CEO–it is the networking of humans and their knowledge that has value, not the hardware and software and hard-wired comms lines
4) If you are not rolling over half your software and hardware each year, with nothing in your C4I system more than two years old at any one time, then you are losing capacity, productivity, and profit
5) 85% of what you know cannot be captured in structured knowledge archives–only a living network can allow employees to provide just enough, just in time articulation of answers that can be created in real time–this allows a *dramatic* shortening of the business information answer cycle, from months to hours.
6) If the CEO does not get it, live it, and enforce it, it will not happen.
The author shares with us practical real-world experience that makes this book a real-world manifestor rather than just a visionary proposal. His practical suggestions lead directly to the possibilities of global issue networks such as J.F. Rischard recommends in his HIGH NOON: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, but this book by Robert Buckman is the real deal, a true “revolution in business affairs.”
We've reached a tipping point. The day this book reached airport bookstores, the world changed. From this point forward, we are either implementing this author's wisdom and gaining value, or not.
