The Collective Conscious: Design-Thinking Democracy

 

 

“We’ve tended to think of human rationality as something located deep inside our brains. Whereas new psychological research shows that rationality is achieved through collaboration with people in groups and in a particular environment,” says Heath. 

 

He believes that if we acknowledge our mental limitations, we can design a democracy that takes into account our cognitive flaws.

 

“You change the structure, and the way things operate is going to change. But at the moment, the incentives are all there to do things at a base level.”

 

Or, to put in a more familiar narrative - we human beings are flawed, imperfect.  It's only through committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves can the promised land be achieved.

 

Rumi would have loved the concept of Networked Intelligence - he'd probably laugh and say something about schools of fishes contemplating the existence of the ocean.

 

The story isn't new.  The context isn't new.  The objectives aren't new. 

 

What changes is the frame.