Why reconnecting with ‘Gaia’s greatest gift’ — collective intelligence — has become an urgent need in today’s world

‘On the technology path, we find that we are much less than we thought; on the collective wisdom path, we learn that we are much more than we suspected’.

Swarming and flocking behaviours — synchrony — of animals are the most obvious expression of collective intelligence, affording communication and cooperation at a basic level; at its most subtle, it’s an instantaneous knowing shared by members of a group but, crucially, of the wisest course of action that will benefit all.

‘It may be Gaia’s greatest gift to her children,’ Dery Dyer writes in The Return of Collective Intelligence: Ancient wisdom for a world out of balance (Bear & Co, US $18 / UK £13.75, January 2020). ‘And now, with all life on Earth critically endangered, I believe it has become her most urgent imperative.’

Dery is a former editor and publisher of The Tico Times, an English-language newspaper in Costa Rica, where she worked for more than 40 years and, to me, essentially, The Return of Collective Intelligence is an impressive work of long-form journalism. It’s deeply researched, and demonstrates amply Dery’s wide reading; quotes from more than 200 sources make up the bulk of the book and, as such, it’s a veritable mine of information…