Tom Atlee (born 1947) is an American social, peace and environmental activist and author.

Personal life

Born in an intellectual, activist family of

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

, Atlee experienced social change from an early on. In 1968, he dropped out of

Antioch College Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its f ...

to organize draft resistance to the Vietnam War. In 1976, daughter Jennifer was born. Participating in the Great Peace March of 1986 – a "watershed experience" to Atlee, he "spent the next 15 years exploring group and organizational phenomena". Atlee lives in an intentional community in

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...

Professional life

From 1989–1994 Atlee was editor of Thinkpeace, a national journal of peacemaking strategy and philosophy. In 1991 he went to Belize and to Czechoslovakia as a consultant on ecological social change and community-building. From 1991–1992 Atlee served on the boards of the Ecology Center (Berkeley). In 1996, he founded the Co-Intelligence Institute, a non-profit organization facilitating and researching

self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffi ...

collective intelligence Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiology, politic ...

, participatory modes of governance and

collaborative democracy Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

. An article in ''Utne Reader'' identifies him as a

radical centrist Radical centrism (also called the radical center, the radical centre or the radical middle) is a concept that arose in Western nations in the late 20th century. The '' radical'' in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical ce ...

thinker.

Co-Intelligence

''Co-intelligence'' according to the FAQ on Atlee's institute website is "shared, integrated form of intelligence that we find in and around us when we're most vibrantly alive. It is also found in cultures that sustain themselves harmoniously with nature and neighbor. ... tshows up whenever we pool our personal intelligences to produce results that are more insightful and powerful than the sum of our individual perspectives."

Wise Democracy Pattern Language

Atlee developed the Wise Democracy Pattern language with the support of Martin Rausch. The first edition was created in 2016. According to their website the Wise Democracy Pattern Language is a

pattern language A pattern language is an organized and coherent set of ''patterns'', each of which describes a problem and the core of a solution that can be used in many ways within a specific field of expertise. The term was coined by architect Christopher Alexa ...

that, "highlights dynamic factors and design principles which can make an activity, organization or community more wisely self-governing." The "prime directive" or fundamental principle of Wise Democracy is "“evoke and engage the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole.”

Publications

Books

* Atlee, Tom and Karen Mercer (1996): ''The First Little Book on Co-Intelligence'. The Co-Intelligence Institute. * Atlee, Tom; Judy Laddon and Larry Shook (eds.) (1998): ''Awakening: The Upside of Y2K''. Printed Word * Atlee, Tom and Rosa Zubizarreta (2003):'' The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All''. The Writers' Collective. * Atlee, Tom (2009): ''Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, Poems and Prayers from an Emerging Field of Sacred Social Change''. CreateSpace. * Atlee, Tom (2012): ''Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics''. North Atlantic Books.

References

External links

The Co-Intelligence Institute’s websiteTom Atlee's blogWise Democracy Pattern Language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atlee, Tom American anti–nuclear weapons activists American democracy activists Writers from Eugene, Oregon Radical centrist writers Antioch College alumni 1947 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people)