Centripetal Intelligence
Organizations, large and small, from family dynamics to unit warfare all struggle to accomplish some task and purpose. Food, shelter, warmth, security and any number of other necessities are forced upon us by Nature and we humans have thrived by grouping into organizations. Needs create the incentive to organize into groups and define group purpose. How we get what we need and how efficiently we get it is based upon intelligence.
Most intelligence is based upon remembering what worked and what failed in the past. Therefore, before all our memories were stored on the internet, we needed our elders to be the repository of family, tribal and cultural wisdom. Hierarchy was the result. Priests, kings and generals. The democratization of information (and access to technology) has flattened the hierarchy and the “follow the leader” model finally has some competition. The next stage of human intelligence is centripetal.
Even if you are not a student of warfare, this progression of intelligence from hierarchy to centripetal can be easily described. And leaving aside the decision to go to war for now, once committed to purpose, what leadership style is most effective? World Wars I and II were the culmination of follow the leader driven warfare backed by industrial economies. Trench warfare with timed attacks ordered from headquarters became massed coordinated assaults with petrol-powered and radio-controlled armored formations.
The early Soviet Union, with its commitment to hierarchy and dogma, was purged by Stalin of three-quarters of its officer core immediately before the German invasion as the Red army was tripling in size. So losing a hundred thousand men in a single day was not uncommon. All because this commitment to follow the leader was raised to its most incompetent zenith. And the allied powers armed with propaganda-driven ideology, mass organization of production and follow the leaders won the war and organized the modern world to enshrine the awesome power of the state to organize mass violence.
Then along comes Vietnam and Afghanistan and many other guerilla wars in between where state-organized violence attempts to beat the innate intelligence of the family, the tribe and the culture. The history of men organizing behind an authority figure for promise of wealth and conquest finally met its counterpoint. Like a sword striking water, follow the leader had no answer to the decentralized wisdom that arises out of the people defending their homes and their neighbors.
The United States was founded upon centripetal intelligence guerrilla warfare against a follow the leader model of a king and his governors backed by a professional army built to follow orders. The Germanic tribes stopped the advance of Rome after the wiping out of any trace of several legions. Given the same weapons, a guerilla organization eventually wins.
Leaving the domain of warfare and enter that of political leadership and we see this same titanic struggle throughout the ages of centralized versus decentralized competition. We feared the organizing power of the Soviet Union for decades, right up until it collapse upon itself trying to keep up with the “Free World”. Today we fear the rise of China led by a single man and cult of personality. Every experience shows this is the weakest long-term way to organize over a billion individual humans. Why follow that leader in war or peace?
Even the individual human that only listens to one tyrannical voice in their mind puts that voice to sleep every night. The ideal human has three centers of power: mind, heart and body all operating in harmony for a unified purpose. One or two centers may temporarily surrender sovereignty to accomplish some need or desire but the system of centripetal intelligence that is a win-win power-sharing organization has won the evolutionary battle.
Bioadministration is inevitable for human governance because this is how we are built. And because all other systems of decision-making are more prone to error and catastrophic failure. The current divide between left and right in the United States will be healed. The destination is already assured. The only question is how hard the ideologues will hold on to their limited wisdom of follow the leader and how many humans will suffer for their surrender of their inner wisdom?
The only rational response to limited intelligence is to create a safe and peaceful container for true wisdom to arrive within that magical space between the known and the unknown. Keeping left and right in dynamic tension with no “winner” or “loser” while constantly breathing into the knowing there’s a solution, even if we cannot see it, is centripetal intelligence. The grand champion of life.