In his book, On Equilibrium, John Ralston Saul describes the interconnected reality of the three generations of Monarch butterflies that it takes to complete the annual journey of the Monarch lifecycle.

The Monarch butterfly winters in Mexico. It summers in northern Canada. It reproduces in the United States en route. Then it heads south to Mexico again for the following winter.

This extraordinary journey demands that Monarchs travel over thousands of kilometers. The distance is so great that it takes three generations of Monarch butterflies to complete the round trip. The significance of this fact is that no single Monarch has ever made the return journey. Therefore, no single Monarch has ever witnessed the entire process of its own species’ journey.

Yet, collectively, Monarchs fly precisely the same thou- sands of kilometers, year after year. They summer precisely where they always summer in northern Canada. They winter on a few precisely chosen high wooded hills in central Mexico.

Since an individual Monarch completes just one leg of this amazing journey, how do we explain the fact that, somehow, with brains the size of pinheads, all Monarch butterflies know precisely what is expected of them, when it should occur, and how it should unfold?

Saul uses the analogy of the Monarch butterfly journey to explain the phenomenon, shared knowledge. This is the gist of his analysis.

Monarch butterflies are neither exercising instinct nor making  intuitional  choices  that  guide  them  on  their risk-taking journey. They neither make up their minds to follow a nomadic life pattern, nor do they do so because the journey is a product of their understanding of what it is that they are supposed to be doing.

If anything, Monarch butterflies are equipped to dip into a well of innate shared knowledge that guides and sup- ports them throughout a process about which they have no other source of reliable input.

Ralston Saul equates shared knowledge with common sense, and he suggests that the existence of innate shared knowledge is one of life's most complicated realities. He contends that, by very nature, shared knowledge demands a consideration of the whole and that it is, therefore, essentially inclusive and human.