The Nature of Wisdom in a Wise Democracy
Tom Atlee
Co-Intelligence Institute
What is wisdom of the whole, by the whole, for the whole?
Wisdom in a wise democracy involves taking into account what needs to be taken into account for long term broad benefit.
We view wisdom as an expansion of intelligence that enables us to align our understanding and action with more of what’s going on and more of what’s needed as we seek to ensure beneficial outcomes over the long haul.
So the wisdom we’re seeking is necessarily co-created by diverse people and firmly grounded in an expanded sense of reality – especially embracing the aliveness of human and natural systems and interactions.
Given our tenuous global situation, we need such wisdom to guide our collective activities in life-serving directions.
Efforts to make democracy wiser may tap many sources of wisdom – from nature’s evolved solutions and humanity’s widely acknowledged ethical standards to systems thinking and creative conversations among diverse people and perspectives, as well as expanded empathy and ongoing review of the impacts of whatever we have chosen to do.
Our challenge is to weave all this together into “wisdom-generating” processes and institutions that can regularly produce the life-serving guidance we need.
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