Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the past
fifteen years has probably noticed the surge of interest in mind/body
healing that has recently swept the West, and particularly the U.S.
From PBS's immensely popular “Healing and the Mind” series
with Bill Moyers to the superstar status attained by Deepak Chopra
and Andrew Weil, we've seen the field of mind/body medicine gain a
firm foothold in the modern psyche seemingly overnight. But what hasn't
yet made it onto Oprah is the unique, catalytic, behind-the-scenes
role that the Kalamazoo-based Fetzer Institute has played in this
explosion. And, more importantly, what collective intelligence has
to do with it.
A small, endowed foundation with a spiritual mission, Fetzer
has, since its inception in 1962, earned a reputation as one of the
primary sponsors of research into the upper reaches of human potential.
But unlike most foundations, which issue grants to fund individual
projects, Fetzer is what's known as an “operating foundation,”
which means it takes a more hands-on—and more collective—approach.
As program officer Tom Callanan explains it, “We proactively
go out into a field and ask, 'How can we help advance this field?'
We pull the leaders in the field together, and then instead of competitively
giving grants to the best projects, we say, 'We're going to support
a project to advance the field. How are we going to work together
to do that?'”
As part of its mission to bring thought leaders together, in the
mid-nineties Fetzer built a small conference center in southwestern
Michigan, where it began to host a series of think tanks with the
leading luminaries in mind/body health. The goal, Callanan explains,
was “to create a container where breakthrough thinking could
happen.” But as the discussions got under way, what soon became
clear was that it takes more than great thinkers to make a think tank.
As Callanan put it, “Good conversation doesn't just involve
getting the best people in a room and saying 'Let's talk.'”
Occasionally, an unexpected intimacy and vulnerability would emerge
between the participants. But often the groups struggled to find cohesion.
At times, something magical would occur, and a remarkable collective
creativity would be unleashed. But at other times, the dialogues ended
up being little more than a sharing of diverse ideas and opinions.
They had all the ingredients of a good think tank. But for a foundation
whose goal was to “support the cutting edge of individual and
social transformation,” the results were too unpredictable.
It was out of this recognition that in early 2000, Fetzer launched
a research project to begin to look for ways to increase the effectiveness
of its dialogues and to deepen its understanding of the dynamics of
group wisdom. What was this experience of “magic” that
emerged when groups were at their best? What was the mysterious intelligence
that often seemed to accompany it? And more importantly, what were
the conditions that would make it more likely to occur? With these
questions as a leaping off point, a handful of researchers began to
pull together the fragments of a field still in its infancy, to see
what had been learned by those who had already been working with group
intelligence and how they could be encouraged to join forces to move
the field forward.
It wasn't long before they realized they had gotten more than they
had bargained for. Alan
Briskin, an organizational consultant with a long history of working
in groups, was one of the initial researchers on the project. As he
explains it, “We began by simply seeking out people who we thought
might be able to inform us about these questions, and the response
was so enthusiastic that people not only welcomed the chance to talk
about this, but they directed us to increasing numbers of people in
the field. So the project that we had initially imagined would involve
talking to maybe eight or nine people grew to over sixty interviews.”
The findings of that project were eventually published in a small,
spiral-bound 2001 book entitled: Centered
on the Edge: Mapping a Field of Collective Intelligence and Spiritual
Wisdom. And according to Callanan, along the way, Fetzer learned
enough about collective wisdom for its mind/body healing think tank
“to become one of the collective wisdom engines of the mind/body
health field.” For Fetzer, however, this initial foray would
become but a catalyst for further exploration. Having come across
a field that was ripe for pulling together, the research team, headed
by consultant Sheryl
Erickson, proposed a new, more comprehensive project that would
not only document the body of knowledge that was surfacing but also
would serve as a self-organizing structure around which the field
itself could begin to take shape and move forward. Excited by what
their initial inquiry had opened up, the foundation's board agreed,
and the Collective
Wisdom Initiative was born.
Visit collectivewisdominitiative.org
and you'll find a wildly configured conglomeration of information
on topics from collective intelligence to collective resonance to
group synergy to group creativity. Go through one “doorway”
and you'll land on a long string of “personal
profiles” of people who work in the field. People like Jim
Rough, whose pioneering “Dynamic Facilitation” process
of dialogue has generated phenomenal breakthroughs in the most entrenched
disputes. Or Tom Atlee,
whose initiation into collective intelligence during the Great Peace
March of 1986 inspired him to found the Co-Intelligence
Institute, a networking and research organization committed to
tapping group wisdom for social and political change. Click on another
“doorway” and you'll find a series of interviews with
people about their spontaneous experiences of collective wisdom and
“flow”—from a Marine
sergeant's description of the deep brotherhood he experienced
with his platoon to a police officer's
account of the “collective resonance” that enveloped
her and all the other participants at a heated crime scene. On the
“Concepts” page, you'll
come across research papers and essays with titles like “Group
Magic: An Inquiry into Experiences of Collective Resonance”
and “Exploring Essence:
Collective Wisdom and Group Experience.” Under “Social
Applications,” you'll learn of an experiment in dialogue
that brought together leaders on both sides of the abortion debate—with
some surprising results.
Taking in the site as a whole, what becomes undeniably clear is that
this phenomenon is real. It is happening. And it is more widespread
than one could have imagined. What started as one foundation's attempt
to increase its understanding of “group magic” has become
a nexus for a thriving, connecting, and rapidly expanding community
of individuals for whom furthering the advance of this new collective
potentiality has become nothing less than a life's mission. Through
their efforts, a growing body of knowledge is emerging about the mysterious
ways in which collective wisdom works and how it can be cultivated,
enhanced, and directed toward the greater good.
