John Kesler with Carole and David Schwinn
1"We lie in the lap of an immense intelligence. But that intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium." John Dewey
When we were told by our nation’s leaders after the tragic events of 9/11 that our job as citizen fighters of terrorism was to carry on with our normal day-to- day activities, the message conveyed was that it is the government’s job to take care of us in times of crisis at home and abroad. Those who took comfort in those words, assuming that the government did, indeed, have the intelligence, integrity, capacity and range of options available to address any looming threats to our security, soon learned that the government’s intelligence was flawed, its integrity questionable, its capacity severely limited, and that the primary and preferred means of intervention were military incursions abroad and restraints on civil liberties at home.
The effectiveness of these approaches has proven to be far less than promised by their vocal advocates and, by nearly all accounts, the security of the homeland is no better, if not worse, than it was prior to the fateful events of 2001. If further proof was required, the horrific experiences of those impacted by hurricanes Rita and Katrina provided haunting, visual evidence that depending on some far away, larger than life, complex bureaucracy for our safety is pure folly. While the larger bureaucracy’s role in national security will not, should not and cannot be diminished, truth be told, none of us will be
1 The authors are associated with Ingenius, a Michigan-based consulting organization
focusing on an integral community building approach to increasing civic intelligence.
secure until the human capacity for addressing the critical challenges of our time is deeply embedded in our communities and organizations, and at all levels of society.
The term that perhaps best describes the human capacity that is required in these times is civic intelligence. Originally defined by Doug Schuler of Evergreen State University2 as “the ability of groups and organizations and, ideally, society as a whole to conceive and implement effective, equitable, and sustainable approaches to shared problems,” the term implies that there is a developmental process through which this higher order mode of perceiving and functioning on behalf of the common good can evolve. Surely the deliberative democracy, co-intelligence, and a wide variety of other community building initiatives, including the safe, healthy, sustainable, resilient and other movements, aim to develop this human capacity. A plethora of communal and conversational methodologies including multiple forms of dialogue and forums for participation including circles, world café, citizen juries and others are being used extensively for precisely this purpose. This paper suggests that the effectiveness of all of these efforts and initiatives could be enhanced by an understanding of civic intelligence as a developmental process that can be influenced through highly skilled integral dialogue and facilitation.
Five Levels of Civic Intelligence
Describing civic intelligence as a human capacity to be developed puts it in a category of other intelligences, including those described by Howard Gardner, as well as other intelligences more recently proposed including Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Intelligence. Like most of these other intelligences, each major emergent developmental level of civic intelligence reflects its own characteristic motivations, framing and capacity. Each successively higher level of emergent capacity and competence transcends and includes lower levels.
The five levels of civic intelligence awareness discussed here represent the range of development of what could be called “personal” as opposed to pre- personal and trans-personal. The personal range reflects the relational core
2 See Schuler’s Civic Intelligence and the Public Sphere in this book or at
CIVIC INTELLIGENCE AND THE SECURITY OF THE HOMELAND
energy of interfacing with others in a spirit of reciprocity. Since relational reciprocity dynamics between the individual and others is the foundation of civility, this range of reciprocity dynamics is also referred to as the civil range.
Figure 1: Matrix of Civic Intelligence Awareness Levels
CI LEVEL MOTIVATION FRAMING CAPACITY
Level C+1 Member/Social Order
Physical wants and needs; respect for power
Fundamentalist outlook, derived from higher spiritual truths or cultural imperatives. There is one truth and it should be enforced. Non- believers are infidels.
Capacity for functioning freely and responsibly within clear and well-enforced civil rules. Lashing out at nonbelievers is justifiable behavior. Level C+2 Individual/ Recognize Peer Drive to achieve one’s own self interest; respect for fairness
Self-centered
perspective, but able to see one’s self in the other, to recognize a peer.
Capacity for negotiating one’s self- interests based on rules of transactional fairness. Unilateralism is justified in service to one’s own ends. Level C+3
Citizen/Culture Centric
Preservation of society in order to protect rights of self and others; respect for cultural values
Community-centered perspective, able to recognize needs of one’s own community
Capacity for mutually beneficial exchange, based on a framework of shared values and symbols. Relative denigration of other cultures is justified. Level C+4 Individuation/ World Centric Working toward global human rights and democracy; respect for universal human rights
Global vision and
sensibilities Can see the relevance of other human perspectives. Exploitation of nature, non-human life, and the less-developed world is justified. Level C+5 Integral/Life World Centric Goal of flourishing: health and life- affirming functioning of the whole; respect for all life
Deep identification with all life and the planet
Capacity to affirm all life and understand the interrelations among all living and nonliving entities