Having the courage to express your own view

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki makes the following observation: "You do not need a consensus to tap into the wisdom of a crowd... the search for consensus encourages tepid, lowest-common-denominator solutions which offend no one, rather than exciting everyone. Instead of fostering the free exchange of conflicting views, consensus-driven groups - especially when the members are familiar with each other - tend to trade in the familiar and squelch provocative debate. If, as the saying goes, a camel is a horse produced by a committee, it was undoubtedly made by a committee looking for consensus."

It takes no courage to agree with the prevailing view. But progress only happens when people stand up and question the prevailing view, and when they present information that doesn't fit into the accepted models of 'how things work'. We can't put consciousness in a box, because it's always unfolding. And each one of us experiences the unfolding differently. Courage is choosing to be a peace with the tensions that ever-unfolding consciousness generates... tension between individuals and groups, because of their different experiences and perceptions, and tension within ourselves, as we sit with the things that don't yet make sense to us.

And on that note, I'd like to disagree with Mr Surowiecki... the committee that designed the camel did an excellent job... it kept the end clearly in mind and came up with a design that really works...... it may not be pretty and it smells like hell, but it definitely works!

Longing for home...

The most basic characteristic of choosing to take on the constraints of being human is that we intentionally cut ourselves off from our True Home. And that results in an inevitable pathos - the pain of an often unnamed longing that, for most people, is drowned out, by the immersion in the illusion that being human is what's really real. But no matter how much clamour and we create around us, and no matter how much we egoically alienate ourselves from one another, our hearts cannot help but long for connection.... because there is nothing more true or real than our connectedness. This is what underlies our deep, deep longing for intimacy.... and that's a discussion for another time....

A thought about our way of being in the world....

One of the most fascinating features of our world is that it is jam-packed with people with good hearts. Yet, for the most part, the history of humankind has not been written by such as these. You've all heard the famous words of Edmund Burke that "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". It matters not how you define evil - we see the manifestations of it all around us, every day. The way that we, as a species, live in the world is fundamentally dysfunctional. We are barelling down a one-way track.


It seems, however that the tipping point is fast approaching. Within the space of just the past few years there has been a massive, global acceleration towards the view that dramatic and drastic changes are imminent. There's a fast-growing awareness that Mother Nature will soon not give us any choice about changing our way of being in the world. The changes have already begun. A few minor tweaks on our behalf won't do it. Gaia will self-adjust and the scale of the adjustments is likely to eliminate all remaining traces of arrogance about our role in this amazing, beautiful Earth-system that has hosted us so patiently, for so long. No longer will we be permitted to see ourselves as Masters, standing outside and above, exercising dominance and control.