We tap into central intelligence to assess trends, to make important decisions, and to launch sensitive missions. We pool our national intelligence from different agencies and resources to optimize our foreign relations and national security interests. We build artificial intelligence platforms, software, robotics to perform work faster, organize knowledge more efficiently, process Big Data, and even begin to create new knowledge. We encourage natural talent in different areas; like sports, medicine, music, philosophy, art, and science. But I would argue that we don’t spend enough time sourcing and expanding our inherent natural intelligence for solving intimately personal and globally shared challenges? Could it be that we simply need to awaken natural intelligence again in our lives again?
What is Natural Intelligence?
Natural Intelligence refers to principles of life and to our lifestyle choices that respect the natural limits and boundaries of earth’s resources.
Natural Intelligence refers to an emotional impulse inherent in our universal myth that stimulates us to value and to protect the integrity of all living beings.
Natural Intelligence refers to a deeper, wiser understanding of nature’s survival strategies accumulated over 3+ billion years and etched into the DNA of circa 8.7 million species alive today; wisdom available to us in order to re-tool ourselves with tips, tricks, and design strategies for adapting to increasing rates of global change.
Natural Intelligence refers to the celebration of our own unique natural wisdom, which we pass down through generations across cultures and time in art, music, and story.
Natural Intelligence refers to our intimate, interdependent connection to the larger web of life in the biosphere, whereas even in our physical bodies — 80% of the biological DNA is foreign to our personal DNA. We are of earth. We are already in harmony, connection with life in the biosphere of earth.
Natural Intelligence refers to our innate, universal quest to touch and to expand the brilliant and sacred nature of the living universe.
Quest for Expanding Natural Intelligence in our World
Now, in our quest for expanding Natural Intelligence in our world; I am not suggesting a return to the romantic notion of the “noble savage”. Rather, I am proposing that we resolve forward to increase the vibration of our pure, intuitive selves, so that we may again harmonize with one another and the rest of the living planet.
Clearly, our global society is primed for a re-tuning as (on average/as a whole), we currently consume 1.6 earth’s worth of planetary natural resources per year and by 2030 we may even consume 2 earth’s worth of resources per year if we continue on our current development track (c.f. Global Footprint Network). How is it even possible that we have the capacity to produce an ecologic footprint so gigantic, so as to walk the knife’s edge of biological bankruptcy and to create a nature debt overloaded with interest so high that our seventh generation future will surely struggle to re-pay it? We are more conscious and naturally intelligent that, are we not?
Indeed, we may seek relief in Peter Diamandis’ Abundance theory. Yes, advanced technologies, more efficient tools, naturally intelligent design solutions, and circular/service-oriented business models help mitigate our heavy earth impact; stretch the value and use of our natural capital. But the truth is that we still live on a planet with finite resources and an ever-increasing demand on them from exponentially more people every year. Imagine, we are 7.44 billion people strong and growing toward 9 billion in the next 20-30 years–every one of us with greater energy and resource needs leading into that next now future. Clearly, our ecological footprint will continue to grow on a linear trajectory…
“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.” Native American Proverb
Unless we start course-correcting the tell tale signs of ecosystem collapse– water shortages, extended drought, fires (California, Mexico), hurricanes (Caribbean), dried underground aquifers thirty for recharge (Yemen, Qatar), expanding deserts across once biodiverse savannas (northern Sahara), erosion of organic soils and increased salinity (Pacific, SE Asian islands), reduced cropland productivity (India, US), overgrazing (Eastern Europe, CA), deforestation (SE Asia, SA), rapid rates of species extinction (globally, as urban jungles expand), fisheries collapse (Nordic region), pollinators (bees, bats) at risk, and increased carbon concentration in the atmosphere (accounting now for more than 50% of our eco-footprint)-signs of ecological collapse in big, bright neon signs all around us.
How on earth did we do that…right? How did we ever become so disconnected at the root to have so grossly earth overshoot? We are a good people. We love our children, families, and friends. We work hard for companies and governments, mostly with the right intention to make the world a better place. We are social and communal creatures, who want to live a life of purpose in service to others. So clearly, somewhere in the midst of survival, progress, industry, and production we lost our way.
“A technological and economically developed world which does not leave in its wake a better world and an integrally higher quality of life one can not be considered progress.” Pope Francis
Moving so laser-net fast across a myriad of smart and mobile platforms, relating to one another in our physical world behind virtual screens, playing war games in violent alternate realities that skew our perceptions of reality itself, constructing modern life into sky cities so distant from our indigenous earthen roots, rocketing off planet to explore new stars when the one we inhabit– already uniquely supports the narrow requirements of life, manufacturing even more stuff for transient human use from minerals now mined on meteors, knitting global economies together so deep and so intimate, yet paper-thin…we risk having viscerally, virtually, vitally unplugged from the life force of planet earth. And this is our home!
There is no other place in the infinitely vast star-studded space that we’ve yet found, traveling to distant galaxies 120 light years away, that is close enough or comfortable enough for us to realistically consider colonizing today or tomorrow. There is no Plan B here and now for inhabiting any other planet anywhere else in the universe. There is no Second Earth. Thus, it is imperative to our survival as the Homo sapiens species to pause for moment from our artificially intelligent future and take time to also craft a naturally intelligent narrative that strengthens the Human+Nature+Human bond alongside the Human+Machine.