What counts as a group?

Individuals and groups can learn. Each learning has an observer and an observed.

As an example, I might learn about myself or someone else – that’s an individual observing an individual. We might also have a group learn about an individual, or a group learning about a group.

But “I” or that other person is part of groups, and there are many parts to me and anyone else. I might also observe a group, and that group will be part of nested systems and consist of nested systems.

Each system on either side will be a part a nested system. And there is of course interference because an observer often changes what they observe. But all of that aside for a moment, the relationships I want to focus on are these:

• An individual learns about an individual.
• An individual learns about a group.
• A group learns about an individual.
• A group learns about a group.

I am most interested in social systems where the group is the agent of the exploration (so the last 2 items). What does it mean for a group to learn anything?

Integration into groupness

Groupness is itself a gradual thing, depending on how much integration there is.

• Group as a Set of Individual Observers (unintegrated)
  The group might be a set of multiple individuals each doing their individual thinking alone. For example, consider an author about her readers. That is a group, but it’s really a set of individuals because each reader is doing their reading and thinking alone. If we wanted to visualize their thoughts on the book, it would be a collage of individual reactions and learning.
• Collective Consciousness/System as Observer (somewhat integrated)
  Now let’s say a group of readers meets as a book club. They talk about their reactions to the book, and each reader hears the other readers’ reactions, which will then likely change their own reactions. We bounce off of each other. Now the group of readers is more than the sum of its part. The readers of the book club have ideas together that they wouldn’t have had alone.
• Collective Consciousness Making Observations as a Unified Entity (fully integrated)
  The most integrated “groupness” is when the group thinks as one entity. To do that, we need to come together in an integrated group process. For example, let’s say the book club publishes their thoughts and recommendations on a website. They talk about the book (like in the previous bullet point) but then they come up with wording together and somehow approve a collectively vetted statement that says “this is what we think about the book.”

(The factors that “meld” the group together can be explicit – e.g. in the form of governance or facilitation protocols – or implicit – e.g. a question of culture or style.)

We can see this as a continuum of groupness.

Avenues to Groupness

In my reading about group mind and collective consciousness, I encountered different approaches to the “groupness”.

• Groupness via physiological attunement
• Spiritual approaches like “we spaces” where individuals have the experience of transcending into a trans-personal entity.
• process-oriented approaches, like my own in Collective Power where I describe integration and group agency in the light of group process, agreements and governance to further the ability to speak as one.

Are these operating on very different avenues? Are they different ways to describe or achieve the same thing? How interrelated are they?

My working hypothesis is that they operate on different levels but that they mutually reinforce. For example, a spiritual or physiological relationship will ease the explicit processes like decision-making. As an example, a couple who has developed a deep, intuitive understanding of each other through shared experiences and emotional connection may find that they navigate decision-making processes more smoothly. There are countless examples of groups coming together in the same way, for example via spiritual attunement that eases Quaker consensus decision-making. Having a meal together, or group dance can have the same effect.

All the ways of being

It’s important to me to notice that groupness happens on all different avenues. It’s easy to simply go onto an somewhat abstract, spiritual level. But there’s even evidence of integration on a physiological level – think mirror neurons, emotional contagions, or synchronization of breath, heart rate and cortisol.

Read what Dacher Keltner says about it:

We did a study of really poor kids and veterans rafting, and we measured the hormone cortisol, which is a stress hormone. At the start of the day, their hormone levels were all different. They’re separate individuals. By the end of the day, after having rafted with a little collection of people, their hormone levels are the same. Lots of data on that. And, and that’s striking that these processes of collective effervescence — you’re doing rituals in a church, right? You’re chanting at a game. You are greeting people in a ceremony. They sync us up physiologically, which enables lots of good things.

https://onbeing.org/programs/dacher-keltner-the-thrilling-new-science-of-awe/

In a simplified frame of body, mind and spirit, the bodies attune through physiological processes, the minds attune through words, the spirits attune through … values, and transcendent experiences? What other levels of attunement are there?

Prefigurative exercises in groupness

In this project, I want to look at all the ways in which processes and practices can further the integration of groupness. The social transformative systems or social technologies are prefigurative exercises to help us see, experience and act in groupness mode. They are to groups what prepared environments are to child development - ways to learn and experience ourselves and set the foundation for future steps.