Taken from I. Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds In Collision‘:

‘Here is a story, told by …..the Snohomish tribe on Puget Sound, about the origin of the exclamation “Yahu”. “A long time ago, when all the animals were still human beings, the sky was very low. It was so low that the people could not stand erect… They called a meeting together and discussed how they could raise the sky. But they were at a loss to know how to do so. Not one was strong enough to lift the sky. Finally the idea occurred to them that possibly the sky might be moved by the combined efforts of the people, if all of them pushed against it at the same time. But then the question arose of how it would be possible to make all the people exert their efforts at exactly the same moment. For the different peoples would be far away from one another, some would be in this part of the world, others in another part. What signal could be given that all people would lift at precisely the same time? Finally, the word ‘Yahu!’ was invented for this purpose. It was decided that all the people should should ‘Yahu!’ together, and then exert their whole strength in lifting the sky.’

This story was being handed on within the Snohomish tribe hundreds of years ago. It has survived to this day (otherwise, I would not have been able to tell you it) and resonates so aptly with what we should be attending to at this point in time. In ‘Making Peace with the Earth’  the authors point out that by 2100 (at the present rate of change) 50% of all the earths species could be extinct!

In another passage in this intriguing and timely book Javier Perez de Cuellar (former UN Sec-Gen)  ‘for the first time in history, humanity must make political decisions of a normative and legislative character concerning the species and its future. It cannot do so without principles of an ethic of the future, which should become the concern of all and a cornerstone of democracy’. 

So although collaborative intelligence certainly has so  many applications at the micro level (team-building, organizational development, community development etc.) at the macro level it is also a very useful concept. It could be argued that only when we are ready and willing to ‘Yahu’ together as a species will we be able to pull the ship around. In my opinion only when we are willing to ‘Yahu’ at the team level and within organizations will we know what it takes to do it at a broader, more global, level.

As usual I am very interested in hearing what you have to say – feel free to contact me directly by going to my site and emailing me. What do YOU think we could be doing at a team and organizational level to enable the creation of a viable and sustainable world for future generations. Jonas Salk once said that ‘….our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors’.