What is an underlying question that gives form
to your work or interest in this field?
What is the nature of awakening in collective consciousness
that will enable us to come together as a human family and build a sustainable,
sociable, and soulful future for all life on Earth?
What is your personal experience of collective
wisdom in groups?
Over the past 30 years, I’ve had a wide range of
experience with the collective wisdom and consciousness of groups: 1)
Quaker meetings (particularly during the 1960s during the anti-war movement)
in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.; 2) As a student involved in anti-war
protests in the 1960s, I participated in large demonstrations and teach-ins
at theUniversity of Pennsylvania; 3) I’ve participated in a weekly
gestalt group over nearly a two year period with roughly fifteen people;
4) For two years I worked as a senior staff member of a joint Presidential-Congressional
Commission on the American Future and saw the collective intelligence
of the commission at work, and I saw its shadow side as well; 5) I’ve
given more than a hundred talks and workshops where I’ve asked
the people to vote as a community regarding their collective views on,
for example, the life-stage of the human family; 6) I’ve co-founded
three non-profits concerned with media accountability and this has required
building coalitions among groups that are often at odds with one another
(rich, poor, business, labor, ethnic, racial, and gender-based groups,
etc.) and so required a common recognition of a higher wisdom for working
together; 7) I’ve done policy analysis in research teams of three
to nine persons (for the President’s Science Advisor, the National
Science Foundation, and others) and this has involved tapping into the
collective intelligence/wisdom of the teams; 8) I’ve co-created
an “electronic town meeting” in the San Francisco Bay Area
seen by over 300,000 people with feedback from a scientific sampling
of citizens so the views accurately reflect the collective wisdom of
the body politic; 9) I’ve played varsity basketball and football
in high school and this involved learning about a collective capacity
for intelligent action; and 10) I’ve lived in a family and raised
three sons.
What is it about the work in this field that excites
you and connects you to your own deepest self?
I am most excited about the potential for our collective
awakening (as communities, countries, and as a species) and mobilizing
our collective wisdom to create a future that is sustainable, satisfying,
and soulful. I am interested in approaches ranging from the very practical
(grass roots community organizing on behalf of a more conscious use
of our mass media), to the theoretical (see the theory of cultural evolution
developed in my book Awakening
Earth which explores the co-evolution of culture and consciousness),
to the technological (developing online learning and dialogue communities
that explore key questions for humanity's future), and to the personal
(speaking and workshops that bring in these themes). Discovering our
collective wisdom involves directly tapping into our potentials for
collective knowing and so necessarily connects me with my deeper sensibilities
and knowing.
Please provide a brief storyline or snapshot of
what brought you to this work.
One major catalyst was involvement in the social change
movements of the 1960s embodying a collective wisdom. Another catalyst
that brought me to this work occurred in the early 1970s when I was
a regular participant in a range of scientific experiments in parapsychology
over a period of three years while I worked at the think-tank SRI International.
This experiential understanding has been furthered by many years of
meditation practice. Then in 1978, I invested a half-year in a self-directed
meditation retreat to explore the social expression of the evolution
of consciousness and, from this came an “awakening experience”
that manifested fifteen years later in the book, Awakening Earth, an
exploration of the co-evolution of culture and consciousness. Related
work includes the reports, Collective Consciousness and Cultural Healing
and the report, Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging
Paradigm both completed in 1997. More recently, I authored the book
Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future (2000)
that has extensive writing on the theme of awakening our collective
wisdom. More practical work to transform collective consciousness began
in 1981 when I co-founded and directed for a decade the non-profit organization,
Choosing Our Future, whose mission was to transform our capacity for
collective knowing and reflection via the mass media (our social brain)
and electronic town meetings.
How would you like to be available to others in
this field?
I see my involvement in this field in four major ways:
1) in-depth research that builds upon prior work of the past 30+ years;
2) collective inquiry into our collective intelligence in learning circles
and related situations; 3) direct action for awakening and mobilizing
our collective wisdom; e.g., the work to foster a healthy reflective
consciousness at a societal scale through electronic town meetings (applying
principles of mind-body medicine to our social mind and body); and 4)
participation in non-verbal, experiential processes that tap into our
collective wisdom (from work in parapsychology to group rituals). I
am available to talk with others and have extensive written materials
available for free on my website: www.awakeningearth.org.
Links to this site or others:
Awakening Earth
- Duane's website concerned with building a sustainable and compassionate
future
What Is Enlightenment Magazine
Columns:
The Gathering World
Storm and the Urgency of Our Awakening - Feb/Apr 2004
Our Collective Awakening and the
Politics of Consciousness - May/July 2004
Awakening the Double Wisdom of
Civilizations - Nov/Dec 2004
Evolve
- Barbara Marx Hubbard's "global community center for conscious
evolution"
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