Advantage 94 – Promotes swarm intelligence in humans

Excerpt from the book »Gradido – Natural Economy of Life«

»Nature does not know a teaching space, only masterpieces«.

– Johann Peter Hebel

German poet

Have you ever observed a swarm of migrating birds gathering to fly south together, twittering wildly, flying around a little here and there, and then suddenly flying off without any recognisable reason in a closed formation as if they were a single organism? They change their flight direction together in a single moment without even two birds colliding. The strongest birds fly at the front so that the others can take advantage of their wind shadow. When the birds at the front are exhausted they join the ranks behind and other birds take over the leadership. All this happens seemingly automatically. 

Or have you ever observed a bee colony or an ant heap? How does each of these small insects know what to do so exactly? The queen cannot take care of them as she is too occupied with reproduction.

When a group of individual beings begins to behave more intelligently than would be possible for the individual members of the group, we call this group intelligence or swarm intelligence. Behavioural scientists have been investigating this phenomenon in animals for a long time.

And what about human beings? Can humans also possess swarm intelligence or does a group of humans rather develop »swarm stupidity«, as critics claim? This is an issue for complexity research.

Two requirements seem to be crucial for success:

1. A clear objective
2. Only a few rules.

Ailing businesses have been restructured within a short time in this way. The staff were convened and committed themselves to the common goal of saving the company and making it successful again. It was made clear to the staff that absolute confidence was placed in their competence. Each of them knew best how something was to be done in their own job and what possibly needed improving. Accordingly, a simple rule might be: everybody does their best. After a few months the company was in the black again and the staff were proud of their achievement: together they had helped save their enterprise and were able to go on working under good conditions.

What was possible for this company can also be accomplished by the whole of humanity. After the introduction of the Natural Economy of Life we will also look back in pride because together we helped to save the »enterprise of humanity«. And – God willing – we will be allowed to go on living under good conditions.

In our case the goal is to survive together in worldwide prosperity in peace and in harmony with nature. An objective that considers the good of the individual as much as the good of the community and the good of the big scheme of things. The simple rules have been copied from nature. They are the fundamental rules of the Natural Economy of Life – the threefold good and the threefold creation of money derived from it in conjunction with the principle of transience. If we can agree on this, humanity will develop swarm intelligence. In this way we have excellent chances of finding our way back to paradise together.