Book Review: Co-Intelligence

Introduction

Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity by Tom Atlee is an exploration of the co-intelligence that arises from wholeness, interconnectedness, and creativity. Co-intelligence has been the focus of Tom Atlee’s work for over 30 years. The book contains a rich set of materials on co-intelligence and how to use it.

What is Co-Intelligence?

Co-intelligence itself is not something Tom Atlee has invented. He explores the larger dynamic of co-intelligence in the book. Co-intelligence can be understood as a paradigm shift. I will come back to that. Tom Atlee asks:

How might we benefit from treating intelligence as if wholes and wholeness mattered, as if interconnectedness and interactivity were fundamental to reality, [and] as if intrinsic and constant co-creativity were what’s going on? How would that differ from our usual view of intelligence as something generated by an individual’s brain as they notice patterns and solve problems?
—Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity

We can see how well, or poorly, people are working together when they are responding to situations. Co-intelligence is always present to different degrees and takes multiple forms. Tom Atlee describes co-intelligence as follows:

From a co-intelligence perspective, intelligence includes all the skills we use to solve problems and conflicts, to recognize opportunities and threats, to generate ideas and initiatives, to maintain healthy relationships and lives – in short, to respond to life in ways that work well. […] We can think of intelligence as a set of skills we use to continually create an evolving “fit” between ourselves and the changing world around us. […] The elegance and success with which we do both is the measure of our intelligence.
—Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity

Why is Wholeness Important?

Wholeness is the central principle of co-intelligence, but the subject of wholeness, as a whole, is elusive. There are many manifestations and dimensions of wholeness. Many factors contribute or detract from it. And yet, so much is grounded in wholeness in one way or the other. Tom Atlee explains:

In co-intelligence work, “wholeness” refers primarily to the inclusive, ever-evolving coherence of life, the way it all fits and hangs together. This includes the various parts and aspects of life and the relational dynamics between them. A parallel inquiry includes the coherence of wholes themselves, as evolving complex processes that dance and learn with and within their contexts. These expressions of coherence – of unity and difference dancing together – underlie familiar concepts such as health, integrity, wholesomeness, holiness, and other holistic concepts.
In my work with co-intelligence, I find it most useful to hold wholeness as both central and not precisely defined. I experience it as something we need to “get the feel of.”
—Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity

The most fundamental principle of wholeness is that it is irreducible to its parts. The wholeness lies within, between, and beyond the parts. When we consider living beings, we need to take into account their unique aliveness, as well as their contexts and lived histories. Tom Atlee writes that we need “to move beyond a focus on their separateness and utility to us, to their unique character, value, and place in the whole”.

Tom Atlee emphasizes that if we took wholeness seriously, then we would “realize that there was more to whatever we are dealing with than we could articulate and analyze”. There is “much more to us – as whole individuals and groups – than any particular label, role, or aspect of who we are”.

Wholeness is dynamic. Its inherent inter-connectedness and dynamic interactivity means that it is in constant change. Not only is everything interconnected, but life itself has agency over what happens next. We shape the world with everything we do – and don’t do. Tom Atlee writes:

Every action, no matter how small, contributes to the unfolding of the world’s future. We can’t not participate.
—Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity

The inter-connectedness also means that there usually are multiple causes that, furthermore, depends on the context. Tom Atlee reminds us that:

The world is too complex for linear causation. Instead of linear control, our power lies in influencing the things that shape co-creativity […]
—Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity

Conclusion

Tom Atlee sees wholeness as the central principle of co-intelligence, but inter-connectedness and co-creativity are so important supporting principles that he addresses them too in the book. He emphasizes that co-intelligence is bigger and deeper than collective intelligence.

There is a kind of (direct) knowing that taps (directly) into the wholeness. It’s about sensing what is needed in any given situation just-in-time. It involves taking wholeness seriously, realizing that inter-connectedness is fundamental, and that co-creativity is always ongoing.

Co-intelligence is truly a paradigm shift. It is a way of seeing (and thinking) that is radically different from the (mechanical) worldview of isolated “things” impacting each other externally. It’s about seeing reality as whole, complex, and mutually co-creative. From this point of view each “thing”, or being, or situation, is a co-evolving manifestation of flows, relationships, and contexts.

Tom Atlee’s book is very interesting and I read it with great interest! The book helps us see, improve, and expand the co-intelligence in our midst. This is not merely of theoretical interest. It’s about responding to situations in ways that work well for the whole – the whole organization, the whole community, the whole society, the whole living world.

We are all co-intelligently participating in the unfolding of what is going to happen next.

Introduction

What is Co-Intelligence?

Why is Wholeness Important?

Conclusion

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