Your understanding of my point is correct. Thank you for your response, confirmation and encouragement.

You can take my point on “the necessity of a “visionary” when it comes to any group setting” much much stronger. I really mean a benevolent dictator.

To quote Kevin Kelly on Wikipedia’s “faster than biological evolution” succes:

But it doesn’t take very long to discover — if we look hard and honestly — that none of these innovations is pure hive mind, and that the supposed paragon of adhocracy — the Wikipedia itself — is itself far from strictly bottom-up. In fact a close inspection of Wikipedia’s process reveals that it has an elite at its center, (and that it does have an elite center is news to most). Turns out there is far more deliberate top-down design management going on than first appears. This is why Wikipedia has worked in such a short time.

Time is what ad-hoc systems need, which we have so little of. The main drawback to pure unadulterated darwinism is that it takes place in biological time — eons. Who has eons to wait during internet time? Nobody. Which is where Jimmy Wales enters the picture.

Source: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/02/the_bottom_is_n.php

And Fritjof Capra, in his book “The Hidden Connection” says: A community operates much more effective when someone is authorized to make and take decisions when there are conflicts of interest or stake (within the community). These social regulations provide the community with a great evolutionary advantage.

Again, thank you for your attention and answer.

Thank you for reading the article and sharing your thoughts.

The philosophy behind the article is one I choose to live my life by, which is simply; in life everything has two creations. First, we create what we desire in our mind, whether it is done consciously on unconsciously. And second, we create whatever we desired in our mind in the physical world. Our thoughts and feelings are the roots for our actions, which are the means to our results.

If I hear you correctly, you are saying that you are in agreement with the approach in the article yourself; however you have experienced disagreements with its acceptance in a group setting. Am I correct in my understanding of what you said? I encourage you to continue to believe in what you find yourself to ring as truth in your heart regardless of what others believe because the universe is bringing this understanding to you since you are ready for it. I have personally been involved in the self-improvement and self-achievement field on a daily basis for over 7 years now. I have come to realize that planning is crucial to achievement because it allows a foundation for one to build upon. Once the foundation is laid, the floor-plans can be altered as the building is built floor upon floor.

I couldn’t agree with you more on the necessity of a “visionary” when it comes to any group setting, personal or business. Without an individual fathering the process of the reason behind the existence of a group, its destiny is at the helm of wherever life chooses to take it.

Again, I thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Great article. And I fully agree with its spirit. However, I have some negative experiences with this approach. Especially with respect to the planning and specific end results part.

Personally, I’m a big fan of ever evolving planning (”agile software development” is my background) and choosing exactly what I want to accomplish and the date by which to do it, I find that some others have serious troubles with this. In fact, some of them even are repulsed by the idea of planning and being very specific with the end results.

I have personally experienced the fragmentation of a group of people sharing a burning desire, but quarreling about exactly the points of end result, planning, and processes. So much so, that it disintegrated the group.

TMO, it has become very important to shape a self-selecting team that attracts not only those individuals sharing the dream, but also share the approach (processes, methods, etc.) to manifest the dream.

The other thing is that, in group efforts, having a “benevolent dictator” is an enormous evolutionary advantage. Evidence of this can be seen in Linus Thorvalds and Linux, Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia, and even Steve Jobs and Apple.

Authoroties like Fritjof Capra and Kevin Kelly emphasize this often overlooked property of successful manifestations and base their views on research from the field of simplexity (complex adaptive systems).

I welcome your views on this topic.

Succes en plezier,

Martien.