[Change agent Fran Peavey writes:] One day I was walking through
the Stanford University campus with a friend when I saw a crowd of people with
cameras and video equipment on a little hillside. They were clustered around a
pair of chimpanzees - a male running loose and a female on a chain about
twenty-five feet long. It turned out the male was from Marine World and the
female was being studied for something or other at Stanford. The spectators were
scientists and publicity people trying to get them to mate.
The male was
eager. He grunted and grabbed the female's chain and tugged. She whimpered and
backed away. He pulled again. She pulled back. Watching the chimps' faces, I [a
woman] began to feel sympathy for the female.
Suddenly the female chimp
yanked her chain out of the male's grasp. To my amazement, she walked through
the crowd, straight over to me, and took my hand. Then she led me across the
circle to the only other two women in the crowd, and she joined hands with one
of them. The three of us stood together in a circle. I remember the feeling of
that rough palm against mine. The little chimp had recognized us and reached out
across all the years of evolution to form her own support group.
Quoted from Fran Peavey,
Heart Politics (New Society Publishers, 1986), p. 176
COMMENTARY: Co-intelligence can be as simple as seeing through
categories like "species" or "other" or "alien" or "them" or "enemy" or "bad" to
locate intelligences or forces with which we can ally ourselves. It can be as
simple as feeling compassion so vividly that it dissolves all categories, and we
find ourselves simply reaching out to another being. Co-intelligence arises from
our interconnectedness, our relatedness
to each other and everything. And then it turns around and uses that relatedness
to make something good happen.