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Biographical
I am founder of the nonprofit Co-Intelligence Institute, author of "The Tao of Democracy" and "Reflections on Evolutionary Activism", and a lead contributor to "Collective Intelligence: An Introduction" (edited by Nasreen Taher) and "Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace" (edited by Mark Tovey). I write articles for alternative journals, collaborate on numerous projects and books, have been on several nonprofit boards, and occasionally consult internationally. Born in 1947, I was raised as a Quaker peace and social justice activist. On the 1986 Great Peace March, a nine-month trek undertaken by 400 ordinary people, I experienced bottom-up self-organization and palpable collective intelligence for the first time. This watershed experience changed my life into a search for how to evoke these collective capacities in activist groups, communities, and whole societies. Starting in the mid-1990s, my activist instincts led me to apply my discoveries to the creation of wiser forms of democracy and governance. In 2005 I began a study of evolutionary dynamics that could be used to transform social systems. For the last two years I have also been seriously exploring the emerging and evolving landscape of green, local, humane, self-organizing, co-intelligent economic innovations. I live simply in a nine-bedroom, consensus-based co-op house in Eugene, Oregon, with a changing population of friends, dogs, cats, chickens, plants, books, and chores. While I spend most of my time glued to my computer, talking passionately with colleagues, or hanging out with my beloved partner, Dulcy Lee, I also enjoy reading, walking, writing poetry, playing twelve-string guitar, watching movies, splitting wood and hacking blackberry bushes. My daughter, Jennifer Atlee, is a green building professional in New England who loves hiking and can usually think rings around me. You can find me most currently on my blog, Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge, http://tom-atlee.posterous.com. I can be reached by email at cii AT igc DOT org.
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wholeness, the evolutionary process, the conscious evolution of social systems, co-intelligence, wisdom, collective intelligence, wise democracy, sacred evolutionary activism, the new sciences, systems thinking, group process, group dynamics, social power, climate change, the shadow side of emerging technologies, the new economics of DIY and gifting and sharing, the power of story, the positive transformational use of crises, self-organization
