The Human Hive is powered by individuals. This is rather paradoxical because it is the collection of people that we tend to notice in the Human Hive. But the collective (or in terms of the Integral Model, the social holon) is composed of individual holons. Individual people are whole systems who power and empower the collective.

Each person has an Inner Intelligence that is the “I” power of the city. Inner Intelligence is the seat of intentional consciousness, attention, interior experience and intelligences or lines of development, including but not limited to: emotional, cognitive and spiritual intelligences. The research of Howard Gardner, Ken Wilber and Clare Graves all support the theory that our Inner Intelligences exist in multiple lines that parallel, support, influence and amplify one another. If you think of each intelligence like a note on an instrument, each of us has a distinct combination of Inner Intelligences that emerge as a unique and beautifully coloured “chord”.

Our Inner Intelligences translate into intentional consciousness. When we hear (or more likely just imagine) the chords of consciousness sounding individually in the city, we realize how highly complex and highly dynamic is the life of consciousness in the city. If we were able to examine the city like a PET scan or fMRI scan does a brain, we would see that intentional intelligences are constantly being turned on and off, energized in different centers, and that intelligences are widely distributed. We would also see its sleeping, waking, dreaming cycles as individuals came and went from centers of rest, recreation, work and transportation. We might even start to see a city divided into left hemispheres (where the doing tasks of work and industry are located) and right hemispheres (where the being and belonging relationships of home and recreation are located). Or we might see/hear – in an experience of inner synesthesia – the city’s cognitive, emotional, cultural and spiritual intelligences. Each of us is a pulsing, throbbing cell in Gaia’s  reflective organ (as James Lovelock proposes)!!

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This blog is a prologue to the Integral City webinar conference  City 2.0 Co-Creating the Future of the Human Hive . We are inventing a new operating system for the city.  Click to get more details re the Free Expo and eLaboratory membership  scheduled September 4-27  2012. You are invited to attend and participate.