photo credit: MikeBlogs

The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.  Carson McCullers

To deal with the global challenges we are facing as a species, we need to choose to become part of global mind.

What does this mean?

Imagine yourself as a neuron. You are connected to many other neurons. You are continuously receiving information from many different directions, deciding which information to pay attention to, and which not. You are constantly synthesizing this flow of information into some form of meaning — a best understanding of the current situation —  and then you share that best understanding with your friends. If neuron Bob is telling me that he thinks we don’t need to worry about global warming, and yet neuron Sarah is telling me that global warming is causing the flooding in Pakistan, then how do I make sense of that, what is the story I tell to others as a result?

What ends up happening, over time, is that each neuron starts to pay more attention to those connections whose information helps make most sense of the world, and pay less attention to those connections whose information increases confusion.

This creates a network that is an integrated, living mirror of the reality that it is experiencing. It is a system that is in a continual process of refining its model of the world, so that its experience of reality makes more sense. This is because it is only from seeing a world that makes some kind of sense, that you can begin to take more effective action.

The function of your brain it to make sense of your world; the function of your social network is to make sense of your collective world, whose complexity requires far more than a single human brain to understand.

By  learning from the stories of others, we can paint a better shared picture to achieve a clearer understanding of the world.

From this understanding arises an equation that describes the potential for a social network to leave a dent in the universe:

O x C x D x A x P = Better Future

O: the openness with which each node deals with information of all kind: its active willingness to learn — (multiplied by)

C: the amount of creative energy each node puts into the network: its willingness to synthesize & share (multiplied by)

D: the cognitive diversity of the network, so that we can collectively see things from the widest range of deeply informed viewpoints possible (multiplied by)

A: the degree of access to resource networks (multiplied by)

P: its shared focus around a common purpose to create a better future for all

This is the formula for how to to be part of global mind.

Choose to act as if you are one of the neurons, to help create a better future.

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

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