What If We Gеt Some of It Wrong?

A Beginning of an Exploration into Our Human Advantage and Our Collective Stupidity

Natalia Blagoeva | The Human Advantage

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Natalia Blagoeva’s Blog | The Human Advantage

7 min readFeb 22, 2024

Published first on Substack | Nov 29, 2023 — Zurich, Switzerland

I am passionate about unleashing our Human Advantage for an era dominated by AI & machines by tapping into new ways of knowing, deepening our connectedness, and awakening our human powers.

Our Human Advantage

If you are coming from a business background like me, you know that no business can exist unless they have some competitive advantage over their rivals. Sometimes, that competitive advantage is something tiny and easy to copy, and sometimes it’s something significant. Either way, any successful business not only has a substantial advantage, but it’s also aware of it, and consciously masters it and capitalizes on it. That competitive advantage is the foundation of its identity.

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It’s the same when it comes to us individually as human beings, and us collectively as humanity. When we humans are faced with the opportunity to compete or collaborate with the machines, we need to be fully aware of our competitice advantages which are also the foundation of our identity. Yet, in my humble opinion, collectively we are not fully aware of it, we do not master it consistently, and consequently, we do not capitalize on it.

When ChatGPT first came, I asked it: “what are ten ways in which humans differ from machines”, and here is what it answered: “consciousness and self-awareness, creativity and imagination, emotions and feelings, flexibility and adaptability, intuition and judgment, moral reasoning and ethics, social interaction and communication, purpose and motivation, learning and development, physical capabilities and sensory experience.” And it finished by adding: “These differences highlight the unique qualities of human beings and the limitations of machines, despite their advanced abilities in specific areas.”

Instead of reassuring me, that made me feel that we have every right to be scared of the technological revolution, and our role in it. I will dive deeper in all these areas in my later communications. What I would say now is that:

All areas which ChatGPT described are indeed the areas of our Human Advantage but many of them are also areas which we do not understand, we neglect, or at least, we do not know how to master and capitalize on them. Consciousness, intuition and judgement lead the list of not-knowing according to me.

Our Collective Stupidity

“No Rain. No Flowers”

Dedicated to my father who passed away on Nov 29, 2020.

No rain-no flowers is the sign on my umbrella, and I love it because it reminds me how important rain is every time I’m ready to complain from the bad weather.

It reminds me also of my late father who would get upset seeing us jumping with joy that the weather will be great. For us, that meant that there will be clear skies and no rain for months.

My father was a doctor honoris causa, a prominent scientist, and for several terms an University Rector. Yet, he was born in a small village and his childhood memories of growing up were marked by poverty and the Second World War. His further life was marked by academic achievements and significant upward social mobility, but he never forgot his origins and his connection to the land. For him, what modern urban people would consider to be great weather, would be a disaster for Nature and farmers. In his late years, he would get upset at our ignorance of what great weather actually is. He had every right to be upset.

Our separation from our own true nature, from each other and from Nature have nurtured our beliefs and ways of looking at life. These beliefs may have served us in some way but they also brought us many of the challenges we face today.

I am convinced that we need to revisit many of our current beliefs and we need to find our own answers- answers that feel right deep in our hearts.

My invitation today is to look beyound the prevailing rethoric even when we hear seemengly noble causes like equality, diversity, democracy, freedom. Often, when we look closer, we would see that there is a difference between individual understanding, and collective action- most people in individual conversations would come up with a desire for more goodness, rightness and beauty in our lives, and yet, collectively- we seem to be doing everything but that. We seem to be acting many times of Collective Stupidity instead of Collective intelligence.

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE means that the accumulated collective intelligence of a group of people is more than the total sum of people’s individual intelligence, and new ideas from the collective interation arise that could never arise individually.

COLLECTIVE STUPIDITY means that the accumulated collective intelligence of a group of people is less than the total sum of people’s individual intelligence.

One of the reasons we see more Collective Stupidity lately than Collective Intelligence is result of the too much information passed to us. That happens in unprecedented ways through Social Media and the Internet in general. That also explains why we could see on Social Media information that potentially should change the course of humanity to better but it doesn’t. What happens instead is that we get overwhelmed by the amount of information and we do what’s easier. We form our opinions based on the opinions of others who we value for reasons that often have nothing to do with their intellect when it comes to the specific area discussed.

Here are examples of situations in which we believe we are acting of Individual Intelligence, but the result might be a Collective Stupidity.

What if GENDER EQUALITY actually sucks?

I am a woman, and a career woman, and I have nvested a lot of time in the last years in supporting women’s development. And yes, in some countries we still need to strive for women’s rights but I would call that a focus on ensuring every person’s basic human rights rather than the need of gender equality. When it comes to the later, my invitation is to reconsider our aim.

What if instead of fighting for gender equality, we embrace our unique differences and find our commonalities, all at the same time?

If we do that, we may find out that a more healthy approach would be:

for women to support men in strengthening their masculinity, and
for men to support women in strengthening their femininity, and then
we all support each other to integrate our femininine and masculine energies in whatever proportion they are, and
we guarantee the human rights of everyone, and
we cease any form of “fighting” with each other so that we can benefit by the higher collective power and intelligence when we all bring our authentic selves.

What I see instead in the last years is that masculinity in men is under attack, and masculinity in women is celebrated. To avoid any doubt, I am talking of men who want to be referred as “he” and women who want to be referred as “she”. When neither of them behaves authentically, the result will be closer to Collective Stupidity than Collective Intelligence.

What if BEING RIGHT is bitter, not sweet?

Ever since we are kids, we get encouraged to believe that there is one right or best way and we would progress better in life if we maintain a first-mover advantage on what’s right and what’s wrong.

“Being right” in our interactions with others effectively means that we need to form an opinion prior to the interactions, or to be the first to form an opinion during the interaction. Either way, if we are confident, smart and fast, we form our opinion before we listen to others. Then if the crowd does not think on their feet and they follow us just because we are confident, smart and fast, or powerful, we get again the effect of Collective Stupidity as opposed to Collective Intelligence.

The lead person acts out of the assumption that there is nothing new to learn from others. The rest follow because the reward to do that is higher than of if they follow their own intelligence.

Moving away from Collective Stupidity and closer to Collective Intelligence requires acting out of the assumption that smart and wise ideas can come from any individual or group in the crowd. Hense, the post with the most likes on Social Media might not be the smartest or the wisest. Oops…

What if the LIKE-MINDED are the big enemy?

We praise the importance of being surrounded by like-minded people and we love to unite in our hate or disregard to specific people or types of people- “the enemy”. But maybe we got this one totally wrong too.

Being surrounded only by like-minded people might be a curse while knowing how to collaborate with “the enemy” might be the blessing.

Yes, we need to be surrounded by people who support us but I would call them like-hearted people. However, we also need to be with people who challenge enough our perspectives and expose us to diverse viewpoints. The effect is especially good if we perceived them to be the enemy…

A beginning…

These are only some of the things that are on mind. There are a lot more, and as far as those that I touched upon, there is so much depth to be explored…

I am inviting you to join me in encouraging each other to reevaluate our beliefs, to embrace uncertainty, integrate all aspects of being human, cultivate wisdom, and explore and value the richness of our human experience.

It’s an invitation to
listen with our hearts,
think on our feet,
speak truth to bullshit,
and act sacred, not scared

It would be an honor to keep unfolding together the mystery, magic and joy of being human and being alive, as we bring with more easiness health, joy and prosperity in our lives.

With love and gratitude,
💜🙏Natalia