So if there are no social intelligences then there are no "organizations
that learn?" I should just direct you to the "learning organization's
list" or have a read in Peter Senge of the MIT Sloan School? Or we could
put you in a Kiva in the Southwest for 13 months with the graduation test
being able to "sense" where a member of the community has gone in the hills
without any hints other then thinking socially together. Would you folks
be underground for years?
Or are you just doing the 19th century individualistic hogwash preached by
the literates who never played a string quartet or sang in an ensemble?
All intelligence is a balance between individual and group. Just because
one had their group intelligence cut off before they were five, or they were
taught by some psychoanalytic parent that connection is a obsessive neurosis
does not mean that it does not exist in healthy individuals elsewhere.
Sports teams learn to think together, Orchestras, String Quartets, an
occasional chorus and of course the wonderful Orpheus Ensemble that performs
without conductor. Duo piano teams learn it and madrigal groups learn to
begin together with their eyes covered in a darkened room. Trapeze Artists
and Ballet Dancers do it but I'm not sure J.S. Mill every got it and I'm
sure Milton Friedman did not. It is probably the reason that clarinetist
Greenspan chose numbers rather than notes. It is one of the things that
the Mohawk Ironworkers learn 80 stories in the air or they don't ever go out
on the beam. One told me last month that as a Connector of giant I beams
he had to "feel" the cable swinging into place behind his head or he would
die. But would he "feel" it if there were not others standing and seeing
the cable in its flight and "sending" the message as to where it was.
Group Intelligence? Ensemble? Composer Pauline Oliveros wrote a series
of "Sonic Meditations" where people had to predict what the other person was
going to imagine and then sing it. Most of the time you would hear the
other person sing the pitch you thought. It was an amazing night at the
Guggenheim years ago when people were doing this on the ramp across the
spiral space that Frank Lloyd built for his museum. An old Italian Guard
was heard to say: "Now I know what the purpose was for this
..........Museum!" It was an improvisation concert hall built for
interconnection across space. At least it worked that way. And then
there are twins. Nothing bothers psychoanalysts more than twins. I think
psychoanalysts would agree with the people who used to leave one of the
twins out on the Glacier at birth because they couldn't stand their "social
intelligence."
One of the tricks at home was our being able to "read" each other's minds
before they asked. I've seen it done with people who I never met before
but were from the same community years after I left. F. David Peat spoke
of it in that 3000 year old Italian Community he has been living in over the
last few years. We call it group intelligence and it is developed by
culture. Some people believe if I can read someone's mind that they are
unfree but I can tell you that true freedom comes from both understanding
that you are alone from the moment you come out of your mother's belly until
you cross the rim of the world. It is hard to be together. It must be
cultivated but if we don't then we will always be limited by this skin as
long as we are alive and that means you never fly. Too bad.
One of the first rules of education is that you can't teach anyone something
that they don't have in their experience already. Might this not be the
issue? All change, and all growth must ultimately come from within.
Even the change that says we are never complete until we experience the mind
of another person or group. Brad, Harry, an improvised march is a
coordinated social intelligence, so is a dance as is a conversation in the
same language. You shouldn't have given up the violin.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] There is no such thing as "social intelligence" I
stand emended.
> Harry Pollard wrote:
> > Brad wrote:
> [snip]
> >> There are, of course, other luxuries we could
> >> choose instead, like coordinated social
> >> intelligence minimizing labor time and
> >> maximizing leisure like to some extent they
> >> seem to do in the old Europe . . .
> >
> >
> > Again, this is nonsense. There is no such thing as a "coordinated social
> > intelligence". There are only individual intelligences.
>
> I have to admit that you have pointed out that I need to find
> a better word or phrase to describe individual intelligences
> cooperatively planning forms of cooperative life that
> are mutually beneficial. What I am against here, of course,
> is that limited and almost if not altogether self-contradictory
> form of social cooperation which consists in certain persons
> agreeing among themselves to turn the whole social
> world, including conscripting the vast numbers of persons not involved in
> the planning into a modified form of war of all against all
> ("competition", "free enterprise"...).
>
> But I have to agree with you that "coordinated social intelligence"
> sounds better than, on reflection, it seems to mean. I'm working on
> this task of rinding a replacement already, and *never* again will
> I use that misfortunate phrase.
>
> >
> > We now have such an incredible power to produce that we can be vastly
> > inefficient and still be able to live well.
> >
> > Why this "incredible power to produce" doesn't translate into an absence
> > of poverty is something that must be thought about. However, thinking
> > about such things seems to be remarkably absent in our uncoordinated
> > social intelligence.
>
> I agree with you here, but you probably would not agree with myu
> agreement. But "uncoordinated social intelligence" doesn't
> describe the economic model of competition any more than
> "coordinated social intelligence" described a humans collegial
> social world. There ain't no social intelligence nowhere.
> Only individuals, some of whom are intelligent and some not,
> and some of the intelligent ones are sociopathic, con men,
> etc.
>
> Oh, well, there are lots of other misnomers out there,
> like calling a form of politics in which "the people"
> "govern" themselves by pulling voting machine levers
> at infrequent intervals a "democracy", instead of maybe
> a representativocracy (government of and by representatives,
> who, with luck, govern for the voters).
>
> I will never use that phrase "social intelligence" again.
> I don't why I didn't see for myself how antithetical
> it is to my beliefs. Engineering and designing systems
> which are easy and pleasant to use for social welfare and
> creative cultural endeavor, and difficult
> to hijack for private greed is a little closer
> to what I think -- I think.
>
> \brad mccormick
>
> >
> > Harry
> >
> >
> > ******************************
> > Harry Pollard
> > Henry George School of LA
> > Box 655
> > Tujunga CA 91042
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Tel: (818) 352-4141
> > Fax: (818) 353-2242
> > *******************************
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
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>
> --
> Let your light so shine before men,
> that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
>
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
>
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