Jean-François NOUBEL - One Breath Away from the next humanity

APM Convention - Marseille, France - Oct. 2013

Jean-François Noubel speaks to 2800 corporate leaders about the different forms of collective intelligence, and how shifting our invisible social architecture can create quantum leaps in the self, and lead to a global evolution.

As one leading the Collective Intelligence Research Institute,

Jean-François Noubel can sense it,

it is yet a weak signal

that forecasts more radical transformations,

and each of them begin with a deep personal work.

I have 12 minutes...

12 minutes to

share

my passion for evolution,

for evolution of life,

for evolution of consciousness,

with the lenses of a new discipline,

a new research discipline

called collective intelligence.

Collective intelligence tries to understand

why, how, when we put a certain number of beings together,

human beings, plants, animals,

ecosystems...

something happens,

more or less effectively.

But sometimes,

a whole emerges, like a body,

then something magical happens.

Magical for the participants of course,

magical also because

a whole emerges, congruent,

with a self-awareness,

capable of evolving, moving... Here I mean anything like an enterprise that works well,

or this band that we just saw singing,

or a large company.

So I have 12 minutes to talk about this passion, at two levels,

because on the one hand we have

the technology, everything we can see, the objective external side,

and on another hand we have a much more difficult aspect, much more invisible,

I mean what will change inside of us.

In order to give us an idea

about what will shift inside of us,

I propose we do a small exercise together.

Let me show you first...

[deep and long breath]

A long breath.

Why don't we try together?

Ready?

Let's go!

[long collective breath]

Once more...

[long collective breath]

So, what connection?

What connection with the evolution of our species?

I should first come back to collective intelligence,

and to a travel back in time.

We will speak about different forms of collective intelligence

through evolution,

and I will begin with this one,

here, a school of fish...

I could have shown an ant colony,

or a flock of birds,

or one of these big herds of buffalos.

This form of collective intelligence,

likely the first one that appeared on Earth,

we call it "swarm collective intelligence".

One of its main traits, as you can see: the big numbers.

Also at the individual level,

the individual, in this configuration,

doesn't have a great margin of freedom.

The fish follows the school,

same thing in a big herd.

So here comes a question:

in humanity,

do we know it? Does this form of collective intelligence exist in humankind?

Well, not inherently but...

sometimes.

In a street protest or a big event. Here we have an extraordinary view of New York Marathon.

But we know it too --maybe you experienced it no later than this morning--

lot's of people experience it everyday,

like this.

Indeed, when we drive our car,

we don't have a huge degree of freedom,

however at the collective level,

something incredible happens:

a city fills up and empties every day!

Imagine if a team had to plan that!

Same with the ant colony. So, this form of collective intelligence,

has amazing capacities as a whole,

but it also has limitations. Sometimes it can jam,

entire herds can fall off the cliff, etc, etc.

Humans come from another place.

They come from here:

original collective intelligence.

Precisely we call it this way,

a tiny number of individuals.

At some point it works in the opposite way compared to

swarm collective intelligence

because here we have a small number of individuals,

but every individual has a strong individuation.

Humans mostly exist in this configuration,

the one we just saw on stage before my talk, wonderful!

Let's take a look at this jazz band.

I love this picture because

it shows how each and every musician

lives his individuation.

He knows his art, his instrument,

and then he fully meets the others through himself.

It happens at two levels:

horizontally,

he perceives well what every other musician does,

and vertically,

he has a knowing of the whole,

he can feel it,

he can update himself because of it.

Indeed, this has a name: holopticism.

I won't say much about it now, only that it has a name.

The strength of this structure, in collective intelligence, we all know it.

Super agile,

learning,

always adapting,

it reconfigures, just take a look at a sports team

that adapts itself to the unknown all the time.

But it also has its own limitations,

two limitations :

number,

and distance. Of course,

players need to play in a sensorial space

where they can perceive each other,

and see what everyone does.

So for humanity that has known this for a very long time,

with villages, tribes,

a crisis happened,

a major systemic crisis,

a global one at this time.

Yes, when agriculture appeared,

and when cities started to emerge,

with the labor specialization,

an explosion of complexity happened,

and some sort of quantum leap needed to happen.

Here humanity invented an incredible technology:

the writing,

that allowed to escape from oral proximity,

from oral tradition,

to evolve towards big civilizations.

Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamian,

Chinese, Mayan, etc.

Each time, we see this same structure

constituted with casts.

A living God at the top,

and below the high priesthood and nobility.

Below, the artisans, the merchants,

and below again we find

farmers and herders.

And at the very bottom,

a mass,

open to ruthless exploitation,

slaves, villains, Untouchables, etc.

Of course it has evolved.

Nowadays we wouldn't represent it this way: a large company works

with a board of directors.

So we see small groups of original collective intelligence.

Then they organize themselves in pyramid,

with departments, services, etc.

And who has never experienced the silos effect

in large companies?

Speaking of strength and weaknesses, the great strength

of pyramidal collective intelligence,

comes from its capacity to put together

thousands and even millions of people.

In the music realm, we see this great strength

in a symphonic orchestra.

A couple of days ago, when I prepared my slides, my son told me:

"Dad, I can draw what you can't find on the Net"

I wanted to see a chief orchestra, he did this.

So thanks to him, thanks to Estéban.

He really understood the concept.

The strengths and weaknesses of this pyramidal collective intelligence,

we hit them hard today, I think this image shows it well,

the one of the Titanic or a big liner.

The strength, we can also find it in the image...

Here we have an extraordinary technology,

that drives and transports people,

a great number of people from one corner of the planet to the other.

At the same time, an error in the command, or a criminal intent,

and it can turn into a catastrophe.

It shows that pyramidal collective intelligence

has a very very low resilience.

If something does wrong in the head, everything can collapse.

It has a poor adaptability too. It knows very well how to develop processes,

repeat them,

repeat them in advance,

but if later some change occurs,

it doesn't operate well. We find ourselves confronted to a shift,

a necessity, facing a wall of complexity that obliges us to reinvent ourselves.

So what happens? Well,

we enter, fully,

inside a new form of collective intelligence that we call

holomidal.

Holomidal, from "holos" -- holistic,

Here, you see this picture of the Internet that I like very much,

a little old already,

how servers connect with one another.

It emerges.

No one organizes it top down.

It emerges and it self-organizes.

We find this structure in a forest too,

under our feet, the rhizome.

Same thing, same structure. In our brain too.

And now, as you know, we have social networks everywhere.

All the social fabric self-organizes itself and we find again

the advantages of pyramidal collective intelligence

--involving many people--

however coming with the resilience and self-organizing capacity

of original collective intelligence.

It adapts itself, it learns fairly well,

it reconfigures all the time,

it organizes itself into semantic tribes,

etc, etc.

So,

knowing that,

we can easily get,

hence our coming together to look at it,

that a dramatic transition has begun.

From now on I could talk about

what will happen, 3D printers for instance.

A great deal of industrial production,

centralized, pyramidal,

will become completely distributed.

I could also talk about the end of money and the rise of post-monetary society,

because if we want to transition from an competition-based economy

to a mutualistic economy,

then we can't use anymore this old technology called money.

We will have much more powerful tools!

But for now,

I would like to talk about the inner aspect of the self.

The most difficult thing that I feel passionate about,

that makes me wonder almost 24/7...

How will a human being experience existence inside himself in the coming years?

To address this question, let's take an example:

social codes.

More precisely, I will put my focus on social codes we use for conversation.

When we speak, when we have, a conversation around the table,

or a political debate,

what happens?

First thing we notice, people speak right after another, very very quick.

No space for silence, and no space for breathing time.

Furthermore,

we interrupt one another.

Believe it or not, I see it in most cultures.

Not all of them, but globally people interrupt one another.

It means, if I interrupt someone, that what I want to say

has more importance than what the person in front of me has to say.

Now let's imagine, let's place ourselves in a new situation,

we change the following social code:

we don't take the floor anymore

unless we have done a long breath before.

Imagine

inside yourself,

if you began to do that,

the consequences

that it would have

for the collective, if a collective starts doing that,

at your work, in your family,

and if you begin to do this as a practice.

Imagine the consequences that this sole change of social code can have,

a long breath before speaking.

When I give seminars,

and I ask the participants

what benefits we would have if we breath?

Everyone knows!

It allows an inner connection with ourself,

it brings peace,

if gives perspective,

it opens to the feeling of our emotions, our body, it offers an inner reconnection.

It allows to feel the other,

to sense the group,

and the emotions that want to rise.

It also invites inspiration.

Breathing means expiring and therefore 'inspiring'.

However we don't do it.

Why don't we do it? Why? Because of a signature behind all this speed

during the flow of words we have in conversations.

The mental comes into the play.

Pyramidal collective intelligence,

the world of pyramidal collective intelligence

invented, developed, over-developed the mental,

the conceptual view.

The mental operates very fast.

It runs very very fast. It speaks very fast,

and it knows very well how to maintain its own paradigm.

Escaping a paradigm requires we deactivate the mental.

This breathing can become a full meditation.

I have trained lot's of people to breathing techniques,

not just individuals, but collectives too,

including companies.

Everyone of them, without exception, told me:

"it changed our vision of the world",

"it changed my relationship with myself, my relationship with others",

"we don't make the same decisions together",

"we don't see the world the same way",

"our whole company, our whole strategy have changed".

Notice I don't speak about millions of $ to invest in R&D.

I just talk about breathing. This breathing

brings us to this question of personal change,

and how we perceive ourselves from the inside,

how it will evolve, with,

now,

an essential question, indeed,

about the perception of ourselves. So let's imagine ourselves

in the dark,

inside a forest, and I will finish on that.

I turn my flashlight on,

And now I begin to scan my environment with it,

Here I see a tree, there I see a rock...

By directing the beam in different directions I can now decide where to make my next steps.

Doing so, I build a kind of reality of proximity.

The mental operates exactly like this.

A beam that sees parts and connects them with one another,

and thanks to this, I can walk. It works not so bad...

Now if I turn my flashlight off,

and I decide allow the night light to infuse me,

light from the stars, from the moon,

then something else happens. First I accustom myself.

I lose the precise details of my immediate environment

while a much vaster reality begins to open itself to me.

All the people who open themselves this way will have their own words to express this.

I like to use the word "transrational". Transrational happens when we go beyond the rational.

Indeed, we still have the rational at our disposal, I can still turn my flashlight on again,

always.

And at any time I can turn if off too, and open myself to a vaster reality.

This vaster reality

can also come from changing some social codes.

Back to social codes, and back to the breathing we did together at the start.

So, as I said, evolution will not occur only by means of 3D printers or the Internet...

yes, quite interesting, go and see, you will learn tons of things,

at the same time I invite you to think

about what will change inside you,

through social codes, ontology, language structure,

through our postures, our relationship to our body...

In the end, who knows if

the next humanity

doesn't stand just one breath away.

Thank you!