Futurodyssey

Virtue and Wisdom, Death and the Past

2012-01-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

My evolving definition of wisdom, at this point in time, reads...
“Wisdom is the highest expression of self-development and future consciousness. It is the continually evolving understanding of and fascination with the big picture of life, of what is important, ethical, and meaningful, and the desire and creative capacity to apply this understanding to enhance the well being of life, both for oneself and others.”

What I do not include in this present definition is the fact that wisdom is always manifested through unique human beings. Wise people (or more precisely, people on the journey of wisdom) bring a special color, nuance, and personality to their expression and their pursuit of wisdom.

One such person was Copthorne Macdonald, the creator and editor of The Wisdom Page. Cop and I were virtual friends, having never met in person, for the last six or seven years (I do not exactly recall when we first communicated with each other). We exchanged countless emails and talked on the phone—flowing philosophical and personal conversations that turned into hour-long calls—quite a few times. Cop read and reviewed many of my books and published, on The Wisdom Page, many of my articles. Reciprocally, I read and reviewed a number of Cop’s writings on wisdom.

Just prior to Christmas, Cop (1936-2011) died from Wegener's granulomatosis, an autoimmune disease. Cop faded quickly; we were communicating with each other via email till the end of November.

I was extremely saddened by Cop’s death. Cop was dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom —to providing a clearinghouse of literature and ever-growing, incredible array of wisdom-related resources on his website. He not only possessed an excellent mind and sharp intellect, but he emanated a calm optimism and deep goodness of spirit. That is to say, he walked the talk, synthesizing the heart and the mind. He was a person of virtue and character. I will miss him very much.

When someone dies, their reality becomes something belonging to the past. (An eerie metaphysical quality emerges regarding their existential presence.) And, of course, the death of a close friend reminds us of our own mortality. It is therefore quite appropriate that the “new year” begins with this reminder—that it is important to make the best of our future, however long that future may be. Sooner or later, the future becomes the past, and the story has been written.

Cop told a very good story.

* * * * * * *

Though published over a decade ago, I just recently read Eric Chaisson’s The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Conscious Evolution, a superb book that beautifully and intelligently explains the broad scope of the theory of cosmic evolution and integrates this theory with an ethical and global vision of the future of humanity. Additionally, Chaisson provides a great historical review of theories of time and an excellent discussion of order and chaos in the universe. I highly recommend this book.

Sam Harris’s new book The Moral Landscape is a second book I would highly recommend, one that in an important, though not immediately obvious way, connects with Chaisson’s The Life Era. Harris’s central thesis is simple: Morals (or values in general) can be determined by the facts. Contrary to the philosopher David Hume, Harris argues that one can derive an “ought” from an “is.” Harris believes that what is good is what leads to well-being and what is bad (evil) is what leads to misery and unhappiness. And we can determine scientifically what constitutes well-being; well-being is a constellation of empirically determined facts. Hence, what is morally good is grounded in the factual conditions of well-being.
In his book, Harris is critical of both liberalism and religion. Religious morals, though authoritarian in tone, are often not grounded in facts (based as they are on superstition and the pronouncements of sacred texts) and frequently lead to misery and unhappiness. Liberalism, unwilling to take a moral stand, “tolerates” different moral views (especially religious views) that clearly lead to human misery and unhappiness. Liberals believe (quite mistakenly, according to Harris) that one can’t determine in any logical or empirical fashion which, among different moral views, is better or more correct. Harris believes that you can compare moral views (and cultures) and determine, based upon facts, which view (and way is life) is better.
The connection between The Moral Landscape and The Life Era is simple: Both books attempt to derive a moral position based on science. For Chaisson, the basic scientific (and hence factual) foundation for a global ethics is the evolution of complexity and intelligence in nature and the cosmos. For Harris, the scientific grounding for a theory of morals is to be found in the psychological and biological study of humans and what makes for a healthy, happy, and flourishing personality and mind. The arguments within both books are thought-provoking, at the very least.

* * * * * * *

It feels like spring already. (Perhaps wishful thinking, but we have passed through the darkest days of the year.) I will be doing a number of presentations over the next few months, as the sun continues to rise higher into the sky.

I am continuing my consciousness series at RISE.

I am doing a three-part series on progress and the future at Arizona Grand.

And together Jeanne and I will be doing our “Utopian Visions and Values for the Future” presentation twice in the coming months.

For all these events, see details (dates, times, and location) on the right.
As other new events for the year emerge, we will send out notices in future blogs.

Mind Flight: A Journey Into the Future

2011-10-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

With a great deal of help and effort from Jeanne—including substantial contributions to the text of the book—Tom has finished Mind Flight: A Journey into the Future. It has now been published by Xlibris. Our good friend Ora Tamir has once again provided the fantastical artwork for the cover of the book.

Mind Flight follows Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future, published in July. Find out more and order both Mind Flight and Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future, on the Center’s website. Both books are available in print and e-book. Anyone interested in doing a review on either book (perhaps for Amazon), can contact Tom to get a review copy of the book.

Tom will be doing a kick-off presentation on the books—with some selected readings—at RISE on November 1st starting at 1:00 pm, with a social and book signing to follow beginning around 3:30 pm. See directions to RISE under the Upcoming Events bar on the right.

Also note that Tom will be doing two new series this coming month: The Psychology of Consciousness at RISE 10:00 am to noon on October 3rd and 17th (both Mondays) and Evolutionary Cosmology and Human Progress at Sun City Grand 10:00 am to noon on October 4th, 18th, and November 1st (all Tuesdays).

Hope to see you at one or more of these events.

New and Improved Website

Our website has a host of new features, including direct links on the Home Page to highly recommended websites. One of these websites is the inspiring The Flourishing Earth Project hosted by our dear friends Cheryl and Russ Genet. Read Tom’s new blog post “Why I’d Rather Be Flourishing than Sustaining Myself.”

We have also added a direct link on the Home Page to Copthorne Macdonald’s The Wisdom Page , a superb resource for a vast array of readings on wisdom. Cop, who is another very good friend, has without a doubt the best site on wisdom on the web. You can also read the first three chapters of Mind Flight on the site.

Finally, we should mention the site for Journal of Futures Studies edited by Jose Ramos. All of the high-quality, scholarly articles published in this journal are free to read on the site. Highly recommended.

Consciousness and the Future

2011-09-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

To combat the mental lethargy induced by endless triple-digit temperatures here in the Phoenix area, we invite you to join us as Tom presents on “Consciousness and the Future” at a local MeetUp group.
This should be a highly stimulating event, bringing together people with interests in science, technology, philosophy, and psychology.

Where: Tempe Physics and Philosophy MeetUp group
Date: Tuesday September 6th
Time: 7:00 PM

Here is the announcement for the event:

Tom Lombardo, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Future Consciousness and author of several books and numerous articles on consciousness, wisdom, psychological evolution, and the study of the future, will discuss his two new books, Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future and Mind Flight: A Journey into the Future. Drawing upon two essays included in WCF, “The Ecological Cosmology of Consciousness” and “Educating the Wise Cyborg,” his talk will highlight his ideas on the nature of consciousness and its interdependency with the physical ecology of the cosmos; the connection between mind and technology; and how time and evolution figure into the further development of human consciousness. In this context, he will also be discussing Antonio Damasio’s new book on consciousness Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain.

Tom has been reading Robert Sawyer's new trilogy on the emergence of consciousness on the web, Wake, Watch, and Wonder. No doubt he will be sharing his thoughts on this and other recent science fiction as well.

Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future

2011-06-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

As the winter blossomed into spring, and the spring heated into summer, I have been sequestered away writing with Jeanne by my side editing and re-editing a steady flow of new articles, culminating in two new books being published this summer and early fall. The first book is finished and now for sale: Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future (WCF). You can find it at the publisher’s website. It is also up on Amazon.

WCF is a collection of essays that I have published over the last seven years brought together into one volume. The essays deal with human virtue and enhancing future consciousness; wisdom, ethics, and the future of education; the nature of consciousness and creativity; the “New Enlightenment;” and the future evolution of technology and the human mind.

Central to the theoretical vision articulated within the book is wisdom. In the essays I explain how wisdom is the highest expression of future consciousness; how it is the key ideal that should be modeled and taught within education; how wisdom subsumes all of the other important academic virtues; how wisdom aligns with our ongoing technological evolution and global-ecological awareness; and why wisdom is the appropriate ideal toward which we should strive in our individual and collective evolution.

WCF is a blueprint for a new and integrative wisdom-based model of education and the purposeful evolution of mind and human consciousness in the future.

We are planning a number of book events for the fall, including a presentation at RISE in Sun City scheduled for November 1st, from 1 pm to 3 pm. (See the listing of new talks for the fall.) The RISE event, though, will not only be introducing WCF but the second book coming out this year—Mind Flight: A Journey into the Future. We are in the final editing stage with Mind Flight, which should be released probably around September or early October.

One of the new published articles this year (included in WCF) addresses the “mystery of consciousness.” Originally published this spring in The Journal of Cosmology and titled “The Ecological Cosmology of Consciousness,” I explore in the article the nature of consciousness and the self, and how the brain, the body, and the physical cosmos fit together with the phenomenon of consciousness. This coming week I will be giving a presentation at RISE on the ideas in this new article. The date and time are: June 30th (Thursday) 10 am to noon. I will be doing two follow-up presentations on the psychology of consciousness at RISE in the fall (See fall listing of events).

Here is the description for the first presentation:

Consciousness is an amazing reality. Yet, consciousness—of which we are so intimately acquainted since we are conscious beings—is paradoxically one of the great philosophical and scientific puzzles. What is consciousness and how does it come to be? How is consciousness, which seems so totally one kind of thing, connected with the physical world, which seems to be totally of another kind of thing? There are many answers, many solutions to the varied mysteries of consciousness, but all these answers and solutions seem flawed or inadequate. Consciousness remains a profound mystery. In this presentation I will describe the various traditional mysteries of consciousness, introduce an even deeper mystery, propose a new theory of consciousness, the brain, and the physical world, and connect the whole shebang with the nature and evolution of the cosmos. This is one to really stretch your mind and expand your consciousness.

Also this fall I will be doing a new three part series on “Evolution and Progress” at Sun City Grand. (See list of dates and times) Here is a description of this series:

A description of the comprehensive and cosmic scope of evolution as a general theory of all of nature, from the physical and biological to the psychological, social, technological, and even the spiritual. We will see why scientists and philosophers believe that the universe developed into its present form through a multi-faceted dynamical evolutionary process. (And it is by no means over.) But if evolution is true, how does this general progressive process connect with our present global reality? Are we making progress or are we heading for social and ecological disaster? What, in fact, is progress and how do we define it? We will connect evolution with the question of human progress: Is humanity evolving, progressing, and moving forward, and if so, how?

As one final note, I will be on Robert Rose Internet Radio, July 1st. I will be talking about my two new books and wisdom and futurist topics in general. See:

New Books:

Definitely read:

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, a comprehensive, evolutionary explanation of technology--a great read
Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? by John Brockman, the pros and cons of whether Google and the Internet are having a beneficial impact on human thinking and consciousness
Exultant by Stephen Baxter, a cosmological adventure 50,000 years into the future

Creativity and the Future

2011-01-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

“The future is the ongoing expression of the act of creation and we are all participating in it.”

I introduce the above quoted theory of creation at the beginning of my basic workshop on evolving future consciousness. Though inspired by others, for we all “stand on the shoulders of giants,” they are my words, my theory. We may envision the creation of the universe as occurring in the very distant past, but this view of things is, at the very least, highly misleading, if not simply wrong. As the physicist Paul Davies has noted, the universe is perpetually creative, continually pulling itself up by its own bootstraps, with novelty and surprises pouring forth. This efflorescence of the new is what the future is; new things keep happening, new forms keep emerging and evolving. The future is creation—creation is the future.
The reason why we experience a future—a “yet to be”—is that everything is not set and determined, everything is not pre-ordained. There is transcendence of what is and this is the experience and reality of the future.
We may think of creativity as something that humans exhibit in their thinking and behavior, and further, that it is a capacity that only some gifted individuals possess, but again this popular idea is fundamentally wrong. As Stuart Kauffman in his new book, Reinventing the Sacred, demonstrates, creativity and the ongoing emergence of novelty are fundamental to the workings of nature. And clearly, all humans to different degrees show creativity. We all create when we remember, when we think, when we imagine, when we talk, when we construct things. There are degrees of innovation and novelty, but nothing in human life, if not in the universe as a whole, is simple repetition.
It is one of the great ironies and stupidities of contemporary times that “creationism” and “evolution” are set in opposition with each other as two diametrically contrary explanations of reality, when in fact, evolution is creation, though creation not all at once.
This week I am giving a presentation on “Creativity, Wisdom, and Our Evolutionary Future.” See the schedule on the side bar for location and time. Pulling together two previous presentations on creativity, and serving as a foundation for an article I am writing this spring, I worked at synthesizing the pieces on creativity into a big picture. There is the mythology and physics of creativity; there is the psychological study of creativity as well. But there is a wealth of information on how creativity applies to biological evolution, social and economic development, and believe it or not, the creative evolution of technology and machines. Of course, there is also the study of creativity in art.
To me it seems that all of the pieces fit together. Creativity is the synthesis of the unique and the beautiful, of emergent Gestalts, and metaphorically speaking, its dual motive forces lie in death and chaos and sex and interpenetration. But this is as much a theory of the future, as it is of creativity.
In my last blog I recounted the hilarious and inventive narrative in Rudy Rucker’s The Ware Tetralogy. I am now on the fourth and final book of the series. Here, I have encountered aliens who live in two-dimensional time, travel not in spaceships but on cosmic rays, and worship a female Goddess who lives in four-dimensional space. The story is an act of sparkling and crazy creativity; imagine a book on the future written by an extremely smart, techno-savvy Hippie. Creativity jars one’s sense of reality; it unsettles logic, good taste, and common sense. This is The Ware Tetralogy. Back in the 1990s, Rudy Rucker edited (along with R.U. Sirius and Queen Mu) a real psychedelic trip of a book: Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge—Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Wetware, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism, and More. Mondo 2000 argues for the necessary element of chaos in provoking creativity and inventiveness. (This theory, though, goes back to ancient times.) Like a Salvador Dali of chemicals, electronics, robotics, and words, Rucker mixes together the most bizarre assortment of elements, settings, and characters in the madcap chaos of The Ware Tetralogy. If one wants to experience the full flowering of human creativity—with a clear eye on the future—then dive into Rucker’s books.
Coming full circle, from science fiction to painting, I will close with a quote from one of the most creative, influential, and articulate artists of the twentieth century, Wassily Kandinsky:

“…every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos—by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of the spheres.”

Contrary to popular belief (once again) and clearly at odds with the ancient notion that creativity was a gift of the gods, deep and penetrating creativity requires work and the tenacious pursuit and cultivation of the new. One sees this in the evolution of Kandinsky’s work. Chaos shakes up the mind, shakes up the ecosystem, shakes up the cosmos; and intelligence, intuition, and trial and error find the new order.

Hope to see you at some of the upcoming events listed on the right in this coming early spring.

Note: Special Event at Sun City Grand
Early this spring I will be doing a comprehensive review of my two books on the future, The Evolution of Future Consciousness and Contemporary Futurist Thought. I will be doing two chapters per two hour session with plenty of time for discussion set aside. See the schedule on the sidebar. Books will be available for sale.
Here is the latest review on the two books coming out in Future Takes magazine:

“A Protean undertaking—and he pulls it off! These two books constitute a remarkable achievement... ‘Awesome’ is a word that comes easily, and heroic must substitute foolhardy as the author concludes his ambitious project, ‘encyclopedic’ accurately describing the scope... To sum up, I could do worse than quoting from Wendell Bell’s praise on the cover of the second volume: A great book… a must-read book for futurists… a masterpiece… applying it on both tomes.”

Bengt-Arne Vedin, Professor emeritus
Fellow, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
Fellow, World Academy of Art & Science
Life Member, World Future Society

The Future of Alzheimers Patients--From Despair to Hope

2011-01-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

As the Babyboomers hit 65 and start tapping into Medicare, thoughts of a different kind of future tap at our consciousness...and it is not only the specter of mortality that raises its ugly head (despite Ray Kurzweil's assurances that if we can only hang on until new interventions are invented, we may not have to die). What if our bodies outlast our minds?

Many of us are seeing our parents descend into the murky and often agitated world of Alzheimers. We watch helplessly as they slowly disappear, their personalities eclipsed by the deterioration of their brains. In the past, care for these patients often translated into restraint and medication. Today new models are emerging however.

I am very proud to have a personal connection with a leader in the field of elder care. My sister Peggy Mullan is the CEO and President of a large "nursing home" in Phoenix Arizona which is being recognized for its innovative and compassionate approach to caring for Alzheimers patients. The Beatitudes Campus was featured on the front page of the New York Times on New Years Day. The informative and inspiring article describes how The Beatitudes has pioneered a more caring and humane approach to treating patients afflicted with this disease. My favorite quote from the artice? "For God's sake, if they want bacon, we give them bacon."

You can hear more about the Beatitudes this coming Tuesday, January 11, 2011 (1/11/11!) when Peggy is interviewed on NPR's Here and Now Program. The interview will be streamed live at 11:00 Mountain Time. If you miss the original broadcast, PRI offers podcasts.

Evolution Part II: The Wise Cyborg and Other Jolting Bisociations

2010-11-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

In our last blog, we were moving forward in evolutionary time circa 100,000 BC. Modern homo sapiens (that is, our direct genetic ancestors) had only recently come on the scene and these early homo sapiens were making initial contact with their northern genetic cousins, Neanderthals.

I was into describing for you the grand saga of our history laid out in Stephen Baxter’s Evolution. Since that last blog, I finished Baxter’s book, which eventually moves into the present, chronicling the downfall of modern civilization, and then sails forth into the far distant future circa 500 million AD. Ultimately the novel is tragic in scope--but of course on a big, cosmic scale. All of our intelligence, gadgetry and economic power and wealth is not sufficient to maintain itself and modern humans pass into oblivion--into the “dark backward abysm of time.”

But along the way, the story told of our lives (the life of humanity) is very moving and thought provoking. The chapter titled “Mother of Her People” recounts the life of the female human (circa 60,000 BC) who creates tattoos; witchcraft; totems and taboos; myth, animism, and superstition; grammar; and shamanism--a woman tormented by migraines, powerful visual hallucinations, and obsessed with understanding the connections between things. She is the genius who seeds modern human culture.

In later chapters, Baxter describes the lives of Cro-Magnon humans living through one of the Ice Ages in Europe; the death of the last Neanderthal (we killed him); the rise of agriculture and cities, which is accompanied by the emergence of drunkenness as a way to cope with the drudgery and monotony of settling into cities and working the fields; and the adventures of a Roman scientist (circa 400 AD) in search of dinosaur bones--he gets it; he understands the grand panorama of history--but the light is snuffed out for over a thousand years.

On the other side of the present, intelligence wanes and civilization falls; our descendants go back to the trees and their brains shrink; rats, pigs, and goats evolve into the dominant mammal life forms; one of our lines becomes domesticated by the rats; and in the far distant future, our very distant genetic children realize a symbiotic and totally dependent relationship with a new species of trees--trees that are our mothers--our wombs--who raise and feed us, who, in essence, give birth to us. Yet, as the sun is swelling and turning red and the earth is drying up and dying (circa 500 million AD), a metal sphere comes floating down out of the sky looking for the creatures who made it and sent it off into space millions and millions of years ago. Reminded me of the ending of Wells‘ The Time Machine. A consciousness expanding trip. Bleak and sad, poignant and humbling.

I also finished reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicolas Carr. It is a great book: a warning and a challenge; a historical, psychological, and biological examination of the intimate connection between humans and technology; an exploration of how technologies structure, support, facilitate, empower, and at times degrade and disrupt our capacities and psychological abilities. In it the author delves into the rise of writing and of books and how they changed our minds, our brains, the world that we live in. And more immediately, the author poses some serious questions: Are we becoming more fragmented, more flighty, more narcissistic and socially inept, more distracted and shallow because of Google, Apple, search engines, social webs and networks, cell phones, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Carr thinks that there is a lot of evidence that we are. We are not creating technologies that serve our intelligence--we are not using our gadgets toward wise and enlightened ends. You could write a whole book on these questions, issues--which Carr has.

Carr’s book is a warning call for our future evolution, a warning about creating a future world that, though technologically more jazzed up than the present, may lead to a bunch of low grade imbeciles who can hit keys a mile a minute, find answers for the quiz in a nanosecond, and know what all their “friends” had for breakfast that morning, but can’t think or reason, and have no depth.

To this end, together with my colleague and techno-adrenaline charged friend, Ray Todd Blackwood, a CFC advisory board member, we are creating “The Wise Cyborg” educational project. We will be doing a very short presentation on the concept this Saturday afternoon at 4 pm at the TEDX event at ASU and this coming year we will be writing a paper and developing a lengthy presentation/workshop for the World Future Society conference in Vancouver in July. The idea of the “wise cyborg” first appeared in my article “Wisdom for the 21st Century” which is up on my website and is being published in the Journal of World Affairs this winter.

What is a wise cyborg? (Sounds like an oxymoron, a psychologically dissonant combination of ontological categories)

A wise cyborg is a person who utilizes mental technologies to facilitate the pursuit and exercise of wisdom.

You may ask, what is a “mental technology”? Well, we have plenty of them all around us.

A mental technology is a technology which supports and/or enhances mental/psychological functioning and activities.

And further you many ask, why should we be concerned about cyborgs? Because we are them and getting more so all the time.

A cyborg is a functional synthesis of the biological and the technological. Humans (even pre-humans) have been intimately and functionally connected with their technologies (instrumentalities) from the beginning. Human capacities and ways of life are almost always realized in the context/support of technologies. Humans are “natural born” (as Andy Clark notes) ever-evolving cyborgs. As in the past, technologies in the future will further enhance and augment human capacities.

If we are becoming more cyborg-like then we better figure out how to become wise cyborgs, rather than foolish and shallow ones.

Another book I am reading, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves by W. Brian Arthur, is a ponderous, often repetitive, highly abstract, and absolutely profound work. It is deep--very deep--like Aristotle. Arthur asks the fundamental questions and comes up with a whole new ontology (metaphysics) of what technology is. And he comes up with a theory of creativity and evolution, which I think is very sound and very enlightening. And we are in the middle of this genetic stew (there is a genetics to technology, according to Arthur) of assemblies, pieces and parts, apparatus, mechanisms, and families of related gadgets. Technologies evolve by combining together (out of the gene pool). Technologies “capture” phenomena of nature and, through collections of orchestrated technologies, we coordinate these phenomena to serve our goals. Though Arthur states that technologies are created to serve human purposes, it is equally true that humans end up being molded by and serving the functional ends of technologies--a reciprocity.

It hits me in reading Arthur and connecting him back to Carr, that it is critically important, that the “wise cyborg” (as part of his or her wisdom) needs to understand the affordances of evolving technologies and how to combine and create those “assemblies” that serve wisdom rather than serve the “shallows.” We need to know our tools; we need to create our tools. Or else we are going to end up like the 21st century humans in Baxter’s Evolution. Extinct. Snapshots in the family album.

Arthur Koestler in his great book The Act of Creation proposed that all human creativity involved “bisociation”--the bringing together and synthesizing of apparently disconnected and unrelated ideas or devices (but of course, a device is an idea). From the perspective of the status quo, creative combinations seem bizarre, perhaps ridiculous--but that’s exactly what makes them creative. Arthur thinks that all technological evolution and creation is combinational--nothing suddenly emerges out of nothing. (Play that phrase around in your head) Lynn Margulis, the evolutionary biologist, believes that evolution involves new symbiotic connections--“chimera”--beings composed out of diverse and seemingly incongruous genetic parts. Matt Ridley in The Rational Optimist sees cultural and economic evolution happening in a similar fashion with different cultures sharing their wares and innovation emerging through syntheses out of the smorgasbord of cultures. It is combination through bisociation.

When I submitted the paper proposal “The Wise Cyborg” to the educational journal On the Horizon, the editor suggested I read (if I hadn’t) Rudy Rucker’s The Ware Tetrology. I hadn’t read it, so I ordered it and I am now deep into it--laughing all the way. Giant computers (Big Boppers) are attempting to assimilate all little boppers and all humans into the One (the cosmic ray background radiation of the universe). They need to eat your brain to do this. One of the main characters in the novel (thus far) is Sta-Hi; he doesn’t want his brain eaten. But he does like drugs, and he does like all the techno-enhanced drugs and body enhancements/sense amplifiers the computers are creating. One could say his brain is being eaten already. One of the new drugs on the scene is “merge.” You take it with someone else--that special someone--and your bodies melt and merge together. Creates the best sex ever; techno-enhanced interpenetration--body, senses, and mind flowing together and mixing into a puddle of protoplasm and unified consciousness. Sounds bizarre, disgusting, revolting? Yes--absolutely creative. (More on this on the next blog.)

I think that Baxter is wrong. Intelligence does serve an evolutionary value. Big brains are good. But intelligence has to evolve--into wisdom. And though Baxter worries that corporate greed and shortsightedness; disregard of the ecosystem and the climate; cultural conflict and religious fanaticism; and other factors will do us in, I think it will be, as Huxley and Postman argued, the “shallows”--“the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumplepuppy.” The latter supports the former anyway.

I have stopped watching the news altogether. (No more pretty shallow babes). The news has failed--it is absolute boredom and triviality. We need to evolve our machines. We need to evolve together with our machines. We need to become wise cyborgs. We need to merge.

Evolution: Part One

2010-09-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

I am alive, marginally conscious, huddling in a hole in the ground, while giant creatures with their thunderous roars and colossal thirty-ton bodies shake the earth above me. It is 150 million years B.C.

I am in the trees, safe from a whole new set of nasty and cunning predators below, ready to scurry down whenever the coast is clear, to quickly locate, gobble down, and fill my belly with tasty bugs, eggs, lizards, and berries. It is 20 million BC.

I am running across the open savannah, naked, sweating, now almost six feet tall, fully erect with a much bigger brain, on the look out for Smilodon who would rip my flesh apart with his six-inch front teeth and eat out my liver; I am also watching out for my ape-man cousins who would clobber me unconscious with their primitive rock tools and eat my liver out as well. It is 1 million BC.

Life is hide-and-seek, duck-and-dodge. Life consumes life. Life procreates. Life protects its own kind. In all its agitation and ferocity, life keeps evolving.

I am living through the harrowing experiences of my ancestors, the complex, capricious, and perpetually dangerous saga of the evolution of mammals and primates, told in the flesh-and-blood, tooth-and-claw, dirt-and-soot, first-person perspective--through the eyes of the animals. I am about half way through Stephen Baxter’s novel Evolution. Baxter, as he has done in his great futuristic epics (such as Vacuum Diagrams and the Manifold Trilogy) that span millions and billions of years, has created in Evolution an immense historical narrative extending from the deep past into the far future, all of it told through the lives of the creatures who lived it. Baxter paints very big pictures. In this novel, he tells the story of our evolution, our history, our struggles, our deaths, our fears and cumulative triumphs from the earliest beginnings of tiny furry animals who hid in terror, in the muck and mire with the worms, while the dinosaurs ruled the land, the sea, and the air.

But futurist questions emerge within the saga as it unfolds. What have we learned? What are the neurological and instinctual underpinnings that have been built into our nature? Where is it all heading? Will we make it? Species come and go in life’s drama like the flickering of fireflies. The future of evolution is an adventure into the arena of unending uncertainty.

I am now moving into part two of the novel. Neanderthal, powerful like a bear and smelling like one, has just met the tall, skinny, childlike-looking “people” who make tools out of bones (the wonder of it!). I am at 130 thousand BC.

Stay tuned for part two in the next blog.

If you want to feel deep in your gut--to experience with your vicarious senses, to smell and taste it, the living pulsation of evolution--this is the book to read. Baxter is amazingly good at creating the visceral and naturalistic feel of the struggle of life, woven together with an ongoing broadly painted description of the evolution of nature and the earth. His description of the comet hitting the earth and the resulting ecological catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs is excellent--tragic, powerful, and jolting to the mind and the senses. You are there.

As Peter Watson has said, “Evolution is the story of us all.” As many others have said, a fundamental law of life is “Grow or die.” Life is transformation; life is creation and destruction. Evolution is one of those very, very deep brute facts of existence (like gravity--only deeper). There is no way to understand what and who we are and what it all means without understanding evolution. It is the cosmic and the earthly context of the human soul. Without (understanding) history there is no (understanding of our) future. Evolution is our history; evolution is our future.

Hence, in the spirit of the great cosmic wave of creation, we are evolving--our house has been disassembled and put together in a different way. (You grow or you die.) Go look at the new organization of our website. It is a new Gestalt. We have a whole new set of categories that pull everything together much more intuitively. All of our newest articles and slide presentations are up now; our print and web libraries have been greatly expanded and updated. The focus of our home page--our mission, vision, and purpose--has been defined much more sharply and cleanly. And this is all just part one of our new evolutionary jump. Stay tuned for new waves of transformation in the coming months. This first wave of change was content and conceptual structure and focus; the next waves will be multi-media and interactivity.

Speaking of which--that is, evolution and computers--I have just finished Wake, Robert Sawyer’s new science fiction novel on the emergence of consciousness, of intelligence, of selfhood, on the Web. As usual, Sawyer is an incredibly clear writer; as usual, he has done his scientific and technological homework. He creates a very realistic and convincing story--set in the present--of how the Web could realize awareness of itself and eventually make contact with the world--with us. Its first questions to humanity are: What am I and who am I? But of course. Isn’t that what we all ask, when we begin to think. The answers lie in the future.

Regarding upcoming events: We will be hosting our third meeting of the CFC Think Tank and Educational Academy, October 2nd, the first Saturday of the month starting at 7:00 pm. The first two meetings were lively, free flowing discussions on a variety of topics, including the purposeful self-conscious evolution of humanity. What will this mean? How will we do it? Everyone seems to agree that it is a moral and ontological imperative.

Finally, note that this coming month (October) I am doing two presentations out on the west side: October 6th at Sun City Grand and October 20th at the Rio Life Long Learning Center. Both are new updated presentations--that is, evolutions--the first one, on “Globalization” and the second one on “The Question of Progress.” Is human society evolving—improving--as we increasingly network ourselves together across the globe? How do we define progress and social evolution? I am anchoring both presentations to an opening quote/theme from Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” In some ways we are still like those fuzzy tiny creatures, hiding in our dark little holes while giants shake the ground of our existence and frighten the hell out of us.

A Tale of Two Paradigms: Stephen Hawking on God and Pretty Shallow Babes

2010-09-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

I am watching the afternoon news on TV while eating lunch. There is a piece on a sexy, blonde woman who is in trouble with the law. While the newscaster is relaying the story (without ever really getting to the substance of the accusation and issue), various short videos of our blonde, smiling, posing, dressed in expensive and revealing dresses, are being shown. I am thinking to myself about all the air time and attention (albeit negative) that this pretty shallow babe--this cultural icon of our time--is getting. Who cares what she has or hasn’t done? Why on God’s earth give her any air time at all? But indeed, she periodically, over the last few years, gets lots of air time. Almost everyone in our modern, media saturated culture could tell you who she was if you showed them a picture of her.

And she is not the exception to this focus on the inane. In the same week on the news there were two other young women who were in the spotlight--media celebrities--who were given lots of attention and vapid, empty commentary for being sentenced to “time” or “community service” for doing dumb and shallow things. How much can you say about the shallow and the stupid? Apparently a lot.

On the other hand, Stephen Hawking, cosmologist and physicist, has just released a new book, in which he argues that God is not necessary in order to explain the existence of the universe. Now--I am sure--that Hawking gets a lot less air time than our pretty shallow babe and, in fact, in the sample of days that I watched the news this last week, there was a lot more attention given to the blonde than to the genius. And of course, in terms of significance, one could ask if it is more important to determine if a shallow woman stuck drugs in one of her bodily orifices or not, or if God created the universe…

I have frequently stated in my presentations on the future and our present social-cultural reality that our cultural icons--our heroes and heroines--are athletes, movie stars, and pop singers (I should also include in the list, rich shallow people) to the absolute exclusion of great thinkers and humanitarians. Where are the wise and intelligent in our brain depositories of well known, familiar faces? How many people would recognize a picture of Hawking? I may not agree with Hawking as to whether God is necessary or not, but at least he is grappling with an issue that far exceeds in importance what color dress or pair of shoes to wear out that evening.

I saw an email this week, written by someone who had read a news release on Hawking’s new book, and this person stated that given Hawking’s physical state and appearance it was no wonder that he didn’t believe in God; he was undoubtedly angry at God for his physical affliction. Not only did I find this commentary insulting and shallow, but I immediately asked myself who was the uglier and more disabled human being, Hawking or the shallow babe. Of course, my answer was the latter. In spirit and vision and mind and intelligence, Hawking lives in a different universe--a different paradigm of existence and value--than the media grabbing blonde. (No one seems to like this woman, but they keep running stories on her. Maybe our news stations—or rather our news commentators--don’t know what to say about Hawking since he is a person of ideas rather than eye shadow.)

I am in the middle of a dialogue--actually a debate--with a fellow philosopher over whether one should be optimistic or pessimistic about the state of the world. (This was a question discussed at a session this summer at the World Future Society.) He strongly believes that the more valid and appropriate attitude, given environmental deterioration, power politics, money hungry mega-corporations, and excessive consumption and waste, is to be pessimistic; he thinks I am too optimistic about things--present and future. Our debate got me thinking about the opening lines in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” Contrary to my fellow philosopher’s assessment of me, I can see numerous reasons for being pessimistic as well as other reasons for being optimistic about things. But regardless of our differing opinions--assuming we are at different points on the optimism-pessimism continuum--he and I live in the same paradigm, the same mind set, the same universe of discourse, perception, and value. We agree (to a degree) on what is important—on what deserves our attention. I am sure that both of us would see the excessive attention to the trivial and the shallow as grounds for being pessimistic about our present culture. (I suppose we would both like to see more news items on Hawking, Spinoza, and Sartre--fat chance, God forbid, since Sartre was cross-eyed.)

I would propose that there are two “cities” (sort of like Augustine’s cities of God and Man). I would call one “The Paradigm of the Shallow” and the other “The Paradigm of the Deep.” Should one be pessimistic or optimistic about this cultural state of affairs? Should one focus on the light or the darkness? Perhaps this is too simplistic a question, too either/or. It is important to see both the light and the darkness, to be a realist about things. I must say though that my philosophical friend worries about power, greed, waste, deceit, etc. in our world, and though I do not discount such factors/problems, I tend to worry about the shallow and the superficial. (He worries about 1984 and I worry about Brave New World.)

This coming month I will be presenting a three-part series on the state of the world and a preferable direction for the future at the Life Long Learning Center in Surprise. See the announcement on the right side bar of the blog. In part one, I will be discussing Dickens’ opening lines within a contemporary context: Is it the best of times, the worst of times, or some Yin-Yang mixture of the two? And what indeed is bad and what indeed is good? Deep questions.

I thought that perhaps my juxtaposition of a male (Hawking) and a female (pretty shallow babe) might sound sexist. (The male is laudable; the woman is a bimbo.) Hence, I want to close with the question: How many people would recognize a picture of Riane Eisler? Well, who’s that? Of course, many fewer would recognize a picture of her than even of Stephen Hawking. Well, Riane Eisler (and some of you will know this) is a beautiful, highly intelligent, supremely sharp, erudite and scholarly eighty-year-old, far-from-shallow, woman philosopher and writer. She is (in my mind) wiser and philosophically more sophisticated than Hawking (though she suffered through the Holocaust, which should have made her angry at God too). And she is, with all her heart and soul, trying to make the world a better place. See her website. But, of course, she gets almost no air time and only a small percentage of our population knows who she is. (She has never been accused of some soap opera misdeed.) She is a role model for women--for all of us--a cultural icon we should know about and aspire toward. But given what I hear and what I see, it is the pretty shallow babe who has more of an effect on our psychology and behavior. We are what we eat.

There is a new book out by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows. I need to read it before my talk next month.

Journeying Into the Future

2010-08-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

The past is receding at the speed of light. Though the pathway that lies ahead is still a quantum distribution of possibilities enveloped within an ambience of the absolutely unknown and mysterious, the late spring (when I retired) seems very, very far away--already. When the past becomes so distant so fast, it must mean that an awful lot has happened in the interim; time speeds up when significant events compress.

For one thing--I had the strangest experience. On the 18th I gave the graduation speech for GED students at the Florence Prison. Jeanne came with me. The whole experience was elevating and utterly surprising. I talked on “Wisdom, Virtue, Self-Narratives, and the Future.” I talked about both external and internal prisons--“prisons of the mInd”--and the necessary connection between freedom and self-responsibility. One cannot be free until one accepts responsibility for one’s life--so I told them.

After my half hour talk, we spent the next three hours in a conversation with around ten of the inmate teachers--the cream of the crop.

Their minds are very much alive. They read and think and introspect on their inner psychological make-up and their lives. We discussed my writings (which they have been reading voraciously over the last few years), Ken Wilber, spiral dynamics, Freud, Albert Ellis, emotional catharsis, and cognitive therapy, among other topics, of which there were many. They are self-organized, self-directed learners. They have created an intricate and multi-faceted curriculum for themselves. Though they were all dressed in bright orange--their mark to define who they are--I forgot within a very short period of time that they were all prisoners in a jail. Some of them told me that through reading my writings on future consciousness I had changed their lives. They have been attempting to get me out there for the last couple of years and they want me to come back. They want to soak up as much knowledge as they can.

Who knows what the future has to hold? Is this some new calling?

This experience got me thinking that the prison is a metaphor on all of us. A mindset, a way of life, a paradigm of thinking and doing can be a prison. Lately I have been thinking that I have been in some kind of prison; I have trying to find/feel/sense freedom within my existential space and figure out where it is pointing me. Perhaps Sartre is right and anything is possible. But what would this mean in concrete terms? Perhaps I should follow the Tao? Follow God? Finding freedom begins with seeing the world differently. Freedom is connected with creativity. (See the last blog.)

If all goes according to plan, next year in Vancouver, at the World Future Society Convention, I will be doing a dialogue with the personal futurist Verne Wheelwright on creating a new life--an extended life--for oneself in the future. We will be working toward synthesizing Verne’s very practical and thoughtful advice on mapping and planning out one’s extended long term future with my ideas on creativity, virtue, future self-narrative, and transforming one’s life and self. (I am now doing the field work on this - cogitating on the whole thing.) See Verne’s new book, It’s Your Future…Make It a Good One! Verne is a resonant spirit and a wise soul.

This last month I did the forward for my friend and futurist colleague Marcus Anthony’s new book on “integrated intelligence.” Marcus believes that there is a cosmic intelligence that one can learn to tune into and use in guiding one’s life decisions and actions. (Sounds like “God” but Marcus is non-committal on this.) The notion of cosmic intelligence is not necessarily that fuzzy or super-natural--see my ideas on coordinative intelligence in my new book Mind Flight when it comes out.

Marcus’s new book is good. If nothing else, Marcus is clear, personal, and engaging; he covers a wide range of topics; he hits the nail on the head regarding many of the failings of modern civilization; and he lays his cards squarely on the table. See his site and book, Extraordinary Mind: Integrated Intelligence and the Future.

Freedom never occurs in a vacuum; it is always supported by both psychological and external factors. Philosophies can constrain and suffocate, or they can empower and elevate.

I am an evolving cyborg. This last month I turned in my desktop PC and bought a Mac. I am moving into the mind/perception/action space of the Mac. Jeanne is learning iTouch, and iTouch is taking her out into the world--the Web--into music/sensation/film. I am telling her that the Mac is drawing her in. Changing the instruments of one’s thinking and one’s experience transforms one’s self and mind; the mind is ecological. We are one with our machines. Our machines afford thinking, perceiving, and action spaces; they afford freedom and creation. See Andy Clark’s Natural Born Cyborgs.

Just for fun, and more, see the website Gajitz.

Our website is being significantly transformed--in conjunction with what is happening to us. The web and reading resources are going through a quantum leap forward. (I have been exploring the Web a lot more, and I have been going through my library--associations of both past and future are vibrating around in my mind and reverberating together. (If Ridley and Koestler are right this is the ground for creativity.) The number of slide presentations on our website is doubling. Videos are coming. Over the next few months different things are going to change their colors. Again, we are one with our machines--we reciprocally evolve together.

But the big thing for this coming month--if you are interested, email me or call. We are starting with the theme of creating a new reality--a new life--for the future.

Center for Future Consciousness
Think Tank and Educational Academy

First Saturday evening and third Wednesday evening each month
First meeting: September 4th, 2010
7 pm to 9 pm (or thereafter)

Location: Home Base
Patio under the stars
12578 East Poinsettia Drive, Scottsdale, Arizona
(Varied other locations in the future)

Purposes:

• To Develop Educational Ideas and Programs and Publications on the Future, Future Consciousness, and Other Themes Resonant with the CFC
• To Provide a Social and Intellectual Forum to Provoke, Inspire, and Stimulate Thinking
• To Pursue Wisdom, Enlightenment, and Heightened Future Consciousness
• To Contribute to the Thoughtful, Ethical, and Purposeful Evolution of Humanity

Creativity, Evolution, Futures Education, and Wisdom

2010-08-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

The summer, thus far, has been a time of great transition, but as much tenuous and portentous as real. Things are happening, but in stages and steps, with sputters and wiggles and the necessary elements of uncertainty, ambiguity, and struggle. If this summer is an “end and a beginning” (as I had hoped) it is an end that still needs to find itself and a beginning that still needs to realize clear consciousness and purpose. The Gestalts of time blur together and overlap; they vibrate forwards and backwards; nothing is clean.

For one thing, though I am officially retired, I have not functionally disconnected from my position as chair of psychology, philosophy, and religion at Rio Salado College. The date for the passing of the baton of leadership and responsibility to the new chair is August 16th. (I am counting the days.) In the meantime I have been working with faculty, dealing with disgruntled students, monitoring cases of plagiarization, re-writing courses, and putting together a final department report and list of accomplishments. Creating the report and list of accomplishments though did give me a sense of completion and achievement – part of the ending of things. After reviewing over the past and where it has led to in the present of things, I am feeling good about the goodbye.

Also, I envisioned finding a philosophical peace and solitude at home, with my library and garden out in back, spending the days in contemplation, reading, and writing, taking breaks listening to the birds, sunning by the pool, while Jeanne was at work. Instead, three of our offspring (late adolescent and early adulthood in chronological age) frequent the household (too much) during the days. I have tried to get them to leave during the daytime, but they have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no way to get there. They are in various very, very early stages of realizing future consciousness (I say with a snicker). They are addicted to gadgets and media. They are noon risers. They are hauntingly “present” – I can feel them even if they are asleep in their rooms. I tell them I hate sloth. Do they get the message? Is this part of my new beginning, I ask/I fear, to parent and teach and somehow be patient with their amorphous states of being that hover and linger around and permeate our communal space while I look for focus and enlightenment?

I would rather have Jeanne with me in the days – to work, think, swim in the pool, converse on numerous things, but …

Jeanne is once again participating in the frenzied madness that she left three years ago. Of course, she wanted to find some sense of professional and personal accomplishment, after having completed her Masters degree this year, and as she said, although she enjoyed working with me attempting to build up the Center for Future Consciousness, she wanted something of her own. And further, I realize, I couldn’t have “retired” at this point without Jeanne finding some source of additional income and her new job does just that. But she works long and exhausting hours, and instead of writing scholarly papers, blogs, and poetry, she is immersed in committee meetings, deadlines, personnel issues, never-ending, forever multiplying administrative responsibilities, and bureaucratic trivia, perfectly balanced and sandwiched on each end of the day with rush hour traffic. My poet, my fellow futurist and philosopher, my intellectual soul mate and romantic lover has dived into the very world that I so desperately wanted to leave and did.

What to do about this?

Jeanne and I did travel to Boston to the World Future Society conference this last month and we each gave talks on education – Jeanne on information technology and the future of education and me on wisdom and futures education. Although she only had two weeks (if even that) to put it together, Jeanne gave a very good talk on new models of learning institutions in the digital age. As part of the Education Summit at the conference, I outlined a two-year (pre-major) integrative and holistic college program that focused on the development of wisdom and heightened future consciousness. I pulled together many of the educational themes I have worked on over the years: how character virtues are the key to academic success and which ones are particularly important and how to teach them; how to integrate global, ecological, historical, and cosmic awareness into a curriculum, providing students with an expansive consciousness of reality; how one assesses deep learning, critical thinking, and higher cognitive skills; why psychologically holistic education (including motivational, personal, emotional, and social factors) is an essential foundation and framework for college instruction; the connection between wisdom and heightened future consciousness and how to pull all the above themes together within the program. I also discussed the importance of teacher mentorship and learning committees. One of the next papers I write will be a summary of this talk. But see my new article coming out in The Futurist in the September issue on wisdom and future consciousness.

And Boston was great; we toured Harvard; strolled through “Little Italy,” savoring several excellent meals there; walked the “Freedom Trail” and contemplated the gravestones of people who died hundreds of years ago; consumed huge amounts of seafood; found a fantastic bookstore for contemporary philosophy and intellectual thought – what an eye opening selection of scholarly new books; walked along the harbor, looked at the sailboats, and took a boat ride; and talked with many good friends at the WFS conference. I had a particularly provocative conversation with Verne Wheelwright (a fellow futurist) about creating productive long-term personal futures. (More on this topic to come.) I was inspired, once again, listening to Ray Kurzweil give an updated talk on the accelerative growth of technology and the promises of the expanded, extended life of the mind and the body in the future. And we did have promising discussions about possible visits and presentations in Edmonton, Canada, Tokyo, Japan, and Paris, France in the coming year. This is part of the reality where Jeanne and I should be – so I believe.

Part of the struggle – the tension between what is and what could be – is having momentary glimpses of where you want to be – to whet one’s appetite and fuel the flames of desire and aspiration.

After returning from Boston, I found myself facing another struggle – an intellectual one this time. (But, of course, there were personal overtones in this as well.) I had hit a mental block working on a project that involved trying to figure out how creativity, evolution, and wisdom fit together. Two weeks into thinking about these ideas, I had a big flash – actually two connected flashes. First: It hit me that creativity is critical to evolution and human progress and, in so far as we are riding the wave of evolution and progress (steering it to a degree), we need to be creative in order to survive. We grow/evolve through creativity or we die.

People have made similar points before, but the intimate connection between creativity and evolution all of a sudden became much clearer and important to me. I had just finished Matt Ridley’s excellent new book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, listened to Lynn Margulis explain her theory of symbiotic evolution, and read the beginnings of W. Brian Arthur’s The Nature of Technology: What is it and How it Evolves. All three of these writers/thinkers were into understanding creativity and how it works at a global level. Out of their writings emerged in my mind a theory of creativity and how it propels growth and evolution at the biological, social, economic, and technological levels. Creativity is synthesis and synthesis is a big part of evolution. (Ridley – tongue in cheek but half serious – proposes that social-economic evolution should be modeled on sex – there is exchange and sharing of ideas and products and the bonding together of formally distinct realities.)

After thinking out more deeply the connections between evolution and creativity, the concept of sustainability seemed even more so to be an erroneous and highly misleading idea. Nothing is sustainable, and the people who preach sustainability don’t really want to sustain things – they want to change things.

Thinking about trends into the future – the overarching trend is evolution. Evolution, though, is not simply cumulative; it is filled with disruption and new syntheses.

The project I was working on was a presentation I was developing for FM Global on “Innovation and the Role of Wisdom in the Future.” And the talk wouldn’t jell in my mind – my mental block. After realizing the important relationship between creativity and evolution, it hit me that I wasn’t articulating how wisdom and creativity fit together – two of the key themes of the talk. And understanding what I was stuck on, I had the second big flash: Wisdom is by its very nature (and recognized as such when you see it) creative. Wisdom synthesizes; wisdom synthesizes various pieces of knowledge (the big picture dimension of wisdom) into novel assessments and solutions that make sense; wisdom shows insight (the “aha” phenomenon); wisdom is imaginative; wisdom pulls together knowledge with ethics; wisdom is a journey, a growth oriented capacity, forever searching over the horizons for further enlightenment.

I have to think this out more.

This last month I finished a new article “Wisdom in the 21st Century: A Theory of Psycho-Social Evolution.” I will have the article up on the website soon. In the article I take a shot at explaining for the first time an insight I had a few months back: We should definitely aspire toward the development/enhancement of wisdom in the coming century as a central ideal in education and guiding our lives, individually and collectively, but with the ongoing accelerative evolution of information/computer/communication technologies and the potential for bio-enhancements coming, we should envision the wise person of the future as being a “wise cyborg.” What, in fact, will this mean? How do we integrate even more so our minds – our identities – with our machines – our informational/robotic/communication machines in particular – and not in some shallow, superficial, twittering, narcissistic, fragmented, trivial fashion? (The latter is what I see the other beings in the house doing, more often than not.) A key piece in this emerging concept of the wise cyborg is the ecological idea that the mind is not localized in the body/brain, but distributed within the constellation of tools and ecological support systems that the person uses to think with. (See Andy Clarke’s books.) I also discuss ecological and global wisdom in the article – an expanded consciousness networked and emotionally attuned to the Gestalt of the world.

So I continue to search for wisdom – to understand it, to teach it, to find it for myself in the existential challenges of my personal existence. I continue to have moments of enlightenment – of creative connections seen. Perhaps I will get some more this coming month - perhaps on the home front. I pursue evolution; let the others pursue sustainability.

I realize ambiguity and uncertainty are good; such states afford freedom. I started with a plan at the beginning of the summer – a three year plan in fact – but I think I should allow my mind to open up to the potentially infinite range of possibilities out there. At transition points – points of freedom – it is important to allow your mind to explore many options.

The website is going to transform in the next few months; a number of new articles are going up, among other things - some new presentations as well. In the coming months we are going multi-media – sound and action will be entering the scene.

At the WFS conference, a fellow futurist said that Ray Kurzweil was afraid of death. I say, “Who isn’t?”

The Mystery of Consciousness

2010-06-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

What is the nature of the mind? What is the “I”, the “me”, the sense of personal identity or self that we all seem to possess? And, finally, as one of the deepest mysteries of all existence, what is consciousness? What is this strange thing we call “experience” and why is it private and subjective? Why, in fact, is there consciousness at all and how did it arise within a physical world?

These connected questions and puzzles have fascinated and baffled both philosophers and scientists through the ages. In his presentation "The Mystery of Consciousness," Tom addresses all these questions and more.

He begins with ancient theories of the mind, starting with the Greeks and mystical Eastern thinkers. He then moves into modern views, covering philosophy, science, neurophysiology, and the emergence of psychology toward the end of the nineteenth century. From there he explores contemporary thinking, looking at the brain and consciousness, the evolution of the self, and most recently, some mind-jolting theories of what the mind and consciousness are.

Tom then goes on to consider whether the self is an illusion, a social construction, or a figment of our imagination. In the finale, he heads into the future, connecting mind, self, and consciousness with artificial intelligence, robots, the cosmos, and the possibilities of expanding our conscious minds in the world of tomorrow.

Join Tom for a fascinating journey into the mind and consciousness Friday June 11, 2010. See the side bar for more information.

A New Life, a New Blog, and the Birth of Mind Flight

2010-05-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…

T. S. Eliot

I thought these lines were quite appropriate when I spoke them at my retirement party last week. I used them at the end of my new book Mind Flight as well. There is a Yin-Yang quality to the words. Ends are beginnings; beginnings are ends. I tell people that I haven't retired; I have simply started a new life. But of course, to start something new means one has to end something else. In death there is birth, or as Eliot says in the same poem, "We are born with the dead."

Last year in a conversation I had with my friend, Janice Dorn, she suggested that we agree to get together when we hit a hundred to celebrate the event. I thought that since I was only 62 at the time, living to a hundred was almost the equivalent of another adult life span. And given the exponential advances in medicine and technology the chances are reaching one hundred are significantly increasing every year. It is not that crazy a possibility. I could have another whole adult life span ahead of me. So when we speculate on the question, if we could do it all over again, what would we do, or how would we do it differently, though we may treat this query as a question of fantasy, it may be that the question could actually have a realistic application.

I am going to start a new life - create a new paradigm - take what I know from the first life and apply it to the future - keeping what is of value and discarding what is not.

Coincident with retiring, I have (we have, Jeanne and I) finished our new book Mind Flight - almost to the day that I "retired." It was a synchronicity. I believe Mind Flight is a humdinger and a trip of a book. And I realized that, in coming to the final edits, it was inaccurate to say that I was finishing the book; rather I was giving birth to it. In ending it, I started something - set off a chain of events. I created a pathway into the future - a foundation on which to build tomorrow. I believe that when you read Mind Flight - and you should read it, taking it to the proverbial desert island as one of the ten books you just have to have with you - you will be amazed, shocked, mesmerized, and jolted. Ultimately it is a love story, but a love story of ideas and flesh, matter and spirit, good and evil. The first six chapters (with the prologue) are up on the web site, but the second half - the second six chapters - really ascend.

I am going to become a child again. I am going to become a student again. I have all these books to read and then review for you, the readers, of the blog.

I have included some new books on the blog list. Sawyer's book Mindscan I highly recommend as a thoughtful and informed exploration into the nature of personal identity, consciousness, and the brain. If you could have a new, relatively indestructable body and brain - having your consciousness and self downloaded into it (Kurzweil's hope for the future) - would you do it? It would be like starting over. I found it to be an interesting and quite appropriate book for me to read during the first week of my new life.

See the various new talks I am giving (sometimes with Jeanne) this summer and fall. I will be writing many of the blogs now - perhaps you will see something new and different in them. I have an idea for a new book.

Tom

Virtue and Wisdom, Death and the Past

2010-03-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

It's that time again. Below is a preview of the next chapter of Tom's book. (Notice any changes in the title?)

Hope to see some of you on Tuesday this week for the AZ chapter of the World Future Society meeting, and on Wednesday at Rio Salado Lifelong Laerning Center for Tom's presentation on chapter nine of his book. See the sidebar under Upcoming Events for details.

Now onto the preview...

Mind Flight: Enlightenment, Wisdom, and the Pursuit of Love

Chapter Nine: Virtue and Wisdom, Death and the Past

As the house takes shape around them and the garden grows ever more profuse, Tom and Jeanne grow in their love for each other. But all is not right in paradise. They continue to suffer various maladies. There are more panic attacks, more stomach pains, and bad falls. There are computer malfunctions and domestic upheavals. Tom can’t shake the sense of some malevolent force, but chalks it up to stress from work and conflict over the kids. Still, he wonders if he and Jeanne are a reflection of the larger society with its chaos, speed and overload, its glorification of the individual ego and its narcissistic presentism. The same issues he sees at home confront him at the college. Everywhere people seem to find excuses for their bad behavior, from deterministic arguments derived from psychology to Sartre’s “bad faith.” Everyone is a victim. Everyone seems to deny the basic existential fact of their own power over their lives and identities. How to combat these negative tendencies and achieve enlightenment? The answer, Tom comes to believe, lies in the practice of a key set of virtues and the pursuit of wisdom. Through it all there are mystical moments in places near and far. Tom comes face to face with Spinoza on a cold and rainy day in The Hague; he loses his mother and finds the children he had lost; he returns to Chicago and sees it anew; he wanders the deck of the Queen Mary, alone, and misses Jeanne; he walks to the edge and turns back from it. He waits for God’s next move. When it comes, he finds himself standing before a pan of scrambled eggs…and the monsters of the id come to light …

Cosmos and Consciousness

2010-02-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

Chapter Eight of Mind Flight: Wisdom, Enlightenment and the Search for Love is now available for viewing. Readers who were following Tom's book in serialized form on Copthorne Macdonald's The Wisdom Page, and wish to continue now that the installments have ended, may email Jeanne for the remaining chapters as they appear.
She will add you to the distribution list.

On a related note, Tom will be presenting again at Rio Salado Lifelong Learning Center in Surprise this Wednesday, February 17, from 10:00-12:00. See the side bar for details and directions.

Here is a preview of Chapter Eight.

Mind Flight: Wisdom, Enlightenment, and the Search for Love

Chapter Eight: Cosmos and Consciousness

Having found in Jeanne that synthesis of beauty and brains he had so long searched for, Tom confronts the concrete challenge of finding a resonance of emotion and intellect with this real flesh and blood woman. How to find reciprocity? How to realize evolution? How to achieve a balance of Yin and Yang – of complementarity and interdependence – when values and lifestyles often conflict? Critical to this endeavor, how can Tom and Jeanne work through the traumas of the past – the bad habits, negative expectations, and fears – to co-create a new life, infused with love and trust and devotion? Amidst the noise and chaos of children; amidst the flowering of Eros and the creation of beauty within their home, Tom embarks on yet another intellectual adventure involving the future of science, technology, and the cosmos. Committed to the principles of reciprocity and evolution as a framework for understanding reality, Tom writes a new book and along the way comes to the conclusion that a long-held central belief about the future of the cosmos is wrong. On parallel intellectual fronts, he explores the relationship between psychological evolution and the future of education and discovers unanticipated connections between critical thinking and ethics – two key elements of wisdom. But all is not right. As Tom pursues his philosophical interests and as he and Jeanne evolve as a couple, another story begins to unfold – a story that brings into play dark ghosts from the past. It is a story of malevolence and envy that will set the contrast for the life of the mind, meditations on God, and the pursuit of virtue, the good, wisdom, and love. Inexplicable events occur and something sinister will challenge Tom and Jeanne as nothing has ever challenged them before.

Avatar and Utopia

2010-01-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Tom and I had been waiting impatiently for Avatar to come out since seeing the amazing trailers earlier in the year. We've seen it twice so far, in 3D the second time. (Yes, it does add to the experience and the goggles are only slightly uncomfortable on the bridge of the nose.) There has been no shortage of commentary on its artistry, reworked themes, and audacious use of the latest technologies. But another idea suggested itself to me upon seeing it for the second time.

Many of you Futurodyssey readers will remember that I recently completed my Masters thesis on the topic of utopia. So I couldn't resist the opportunity to do a short review of Avatar through the lens of utopia.

Read it here and follow the links to related articles if you are interested.

Mind Flight Continues

2010-01-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

Following below is a preview of Tom's next presentation at Rio Salado Lifelong Learning Center on Wednesday January 27th from 10:00-12:00. If you have been following the book and or presentations at the Rio Salado Center, you won't want to miss this next chapter in Tom's philosophical search for enlightenment, wisdom, and love, (especially as the woman he has been waiting for finally enters his sphere!) If you haven't, you will catch right up and explore along with Tom the role of reciprocity in love, the promises and pitfalls of Internet education, and the exciting and paradigm shifting world of futures studies.

Those of you on the mailing list for upcoming chapters of Tom's book will be recieving chapter seven shortly. Chapters One through Six can be viewed on Copthorne Macdonald's The Wisdom Page. Chapters Seven through Twelve are available monthly directly from us. If you are not on the list to receive the chapters as a Word document, email me (Jeanne) and you will be added.

Here is the Chapter Seven preview:

Mind Flight: Enlightenment, Wisdom, and the Search for Love

Chapter Seven: The Dialogues of Love

If the first half of the nineties are a time of illumination, creative emergence, and the evolution of a new order of things, more complex, more positive, more invigorating, and more enlightening than anything before – of the discovery of Arizona and the future – then, in a Yin Yang oscillation of things, the next few years are a time of great emotional chaos, deep and intense disappointment and misery, and a descent into the darkness again. The break with Lisa is finally and irrevocably cemented, intellectual and personal challenges emerge on the work front, and the domestic stability that seemed achieved once again dissolves. Yet, the challenges fuel new insights and opportunities to apply his idea of reciprocity to his decades-long search for love, and a serendipitous resonance with the Chancellor of the college system where Tom is employed results in the emergence of a futures institute where Tom can further develop his ideas on future consciousness. He embarks on another whirlwind reading schedule, devouring the ideas of futurists and cultural critics Wendell Bell, Neil Postman, Walter Truett Anderson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and others, and discovers the optimistic, pro-technology, pro-rationalistic, ultra-visionary, transhumanists. A whole new arena opens up as Tom discovers the futurist community. At the college, Internet education explodes on the scene just as Tom is finishing his first book, The Odyssey of the Future, and he begins to explore not only the great promises of computer and information technology and how the new technologies can be applied to education, but also the pitfalls inherent in a form of education that replaces the teacher with a machine. On the romantic front, there are more misses than hits, until one day, when he isn’t even looking for it, a fidgety woman with bare arms takes a seat next to his and the universe shifts.

Upcoming Events for Spring 2010

2010-01-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

New Year's greetings to our friends and followers, near and far as the future shoots us into another year. If you are in the Valley of the Sun, there is lots on offer for futurist thinkers this spring. Here is a rundown of events for the next four months. You can find dates, times, and topics in the events bar on this blog, as well as maps to locations.

Meet and Greet other Arizona Futurists

In the early winter our friend and fellow futurist, Joan Foltz, organized the first meeting of the Arizona chapter of the World Future Society. The turn-out has been great. Come join us each month to discuss a range of topics with a futurist slant.

Phoenix has an active futurists’ community that plans to provide a forum for insightful discussions and introduce futures thinking concepts for people to use in their professional and personal lives.

Interested in speaking? Any specific topic you want the group to present? Want more information on The World Future Society or futures studies programs? Contact Joan Foltz, 480-756-8449, jfoltz@alsekresearch.com

"Hot, Flat, and Crowded"

Join The Arizona Chapter for our next meeting.

When: Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010, 6:30-8:30 PM

Where: University of Advancing Technology, The Auditorium

2625 W. Baseline Rd., Tempe, AZ (Baseline and I-10)
(See map on the events bar.)
(NOTE: Enter through the back entrance after 6 PM.)

Topic: “Hot, Flat and Crowded”

A panel will lead a discussion on the possible future of a "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" world. How does human psychology adjust to changing living conditions? What technologies might change current assumptions? What are possible outcomes of environmental challenges that have not been considered? Discussion will explore possible outcomes.

Panelists:

Tom Lombardo, Ph.D. is the Co-Director of the Center for Future Consciousness and Faculty Chair of Psychology and Philosophy at Rio Salado College. An active member of various futurist organizations, he is the author of numerous futurist articles and two books on the future, The Evolution of Future Consciousness and Contemporary Futurist Thought..

Debashis Chowdhury of Intrinz Publishing, author of In Our Own Image: Humanity’s Quest for Divinity via Technology, and board member of the Foresight Network Sustainability forum.

Joe McCormack, graduate student of technology at UAT focusing on solar sheaths, and frequent contributor to the Journal of Advancing Technology.

Tom Teaching Spring Course at Sun City City Grand, Affiliate of ASU's Osher Institute

Along with his popular series at Rio Salado's Lifelong Learning Institute, Tom will now be teaching a short spring series on the future at Sun City Grand Lifelong Learning Academy on the West side. If you have not caught his presentations on science fiction or the colonization of space, now is a good time to take in these two exciting talks. If you are new to futures thinking, his Introduction to the Future is a good place to start. Attend all three on consecutive Mondays in April. Information and maps are on the side bar for events.

Mind Flight: Wisdom, Enlightenment, and the Search for Love

Tom continues his presentations based on his new book, Mind Flight, at Rio Salado Lifelong Learning Center. This has been a very popular series. For those of you who have missed the presentations, you can catch up on the story and themes on Copthorne Macdonald's The Wisdom Page. Mind Flight is a powerful philosophical narrative, a blend of the intellectual and the personal that resonates strongly with audiences. See the events side bar for dates and upcoming chapter topics.

Mind Flight Has Taken Off

2009-10-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

For those of you following the serialization of Tom's new book, Mind Flight: Wisdom, Enlightenment, and the Journey of Life, on Copthorne Macdonald's The Wisdom Page, the end of the month brings with it not only the usual pumpkins and witches but another chapter in the saga.

Chapter Four, The Yin-Yang of Time, is already up on The Wisdom Page for viewing. The initial chapters have been getting some very good hits according to Copthorne and we have had some great responses from people by phone and in person.

More than that, in coordination with the Internet debut of the book, Tom has devoted the last few sessions out at Rio Salado Lifelong Learning Center to presentations on Mind Flight. What a trip that has been, to borrow some jargon from the 60s. As the book is a mix of the highly theoretical and philosophical with a very intimate and honest personal narrative, these presentations have delivered a real wallop in both the mental and emotional spheres. And did I mention funny? Tom captures the tenor of the times superbly and the audience has shown their approval. (They all survived the 60s and 70s!)All can resonate with Tom's courageous depiction of the craziness and angst of life and these sessions have proven to be so popular that an additional one has been scheduled.

Tom will be doing a third presentation on the book on Tuesday November 10th at Rio Salado's West-side site (see the upcoming events bar on the side). If you want a very entertaining and enlightening two hours, you are, as always, welcome to attend.

I will leave you now with a preview of Chapter Four of Mind Flight:

Chapter Four finds Tom deep into his existential quest for meaning and philosophical understanding in a chaotic world as he spirals into a five-year dance of romantic madness interspersed with extensive solitary sojourns of deep intellectual exploration. He encounters J. T. Fraser and confronts the great conundrum and significance of evolution and time. He attempts a heroic synthesis of Spinoza, Leibnitz, and the Yin-Yang with some Plato and Aristotle thrown in for good measure. He looks into the abyss of atheism while embarking on a painful journey of self-discovery with a Baptist Minister. He criscrosses the country like a peripatetic monk, rooming with sharks and lesbians and alienating old friends along the way. Separation, divorce, and miraculous reunions; loneliness, angst, and self-loathing; passion, sex, and abstinence; and strange harbingers of fate in the form of shooting stars…. This is Chapter Four of Mind Flight.

Kick-off for Arizona Chapter of the WFS

2009-10-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Well Arizona is finally on the futurist map. Our good friend and futurist ally, Joan Foltz, has taken the initiative to start an Arizona chapter of the World Future Society.
This is big stuff. To get things rolling there will be a Kick Off this Monday, October 26, 2009, from 6:30-8:30 PM at the University of Advancing Technology,
2625 W Baseline Rd, Tempe, AZ (I10 & Baseline, next to the Point at S. Mountain).
Those planning to attend, please RSVP by email to AZWFS@alsekresearch.com.

Here is more on the event from Joan:

Meet and Greet other Arizona futurists at the first organizational meeting of the Arizona Chapter of the World Future Society. Come join us to discuss the AZ chapter’s future plans for events that will include speakers, open debates and discussions, workshops, and more. The meeting is open to anyone interested in all aspects of the future.

Phoenix has an active futurists’ community that we hope will help us make this a vibrant gathering for everyone in the membership, plus reach out to the local community. Besides being a venue for insightful discussions, our intent is to introduce futures studies foundation concepts used in future thinking, strategies and methodologies for people to use in their professional and personal lives.

Since we are in early formation, your input on how to make this a successful, active chapter will be very welcomed. Interested in participating in the chapter’s organization? Please Come.

Any questions?

Contact: Joan Foltz, 480-756-8449

jfoltz@alsekresearch.com

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!!!

"Lightning in the Darkness"

2009-10-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER THREE OF MINDFLIGHT NOW AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING

For those following the serialization of Tom's new book on Copthorne Macdonald's Wisdom Page, here is a preview of the next chapter, "Lightning in the Darkness":

Amidst the steel mills of northwest Indiana Tom discovers the joy and exhilaration of teaching – of creating intricate mind maps on intellectual history, learning, thinking and creativity, and holistic psychology. But after order comes chaos. After superficial sanity comes some real madness. After studying science, epistemology, and perception, life takes a Dionysian turn – lightning strikes – and the world begins to sparkle and swirl. Now enter sex, and drugs and the metaphysical realities of science fiction. Tom wanders through the unfathomable vastness of “The Library of Babel” and goes in search of quality and love and a mythical red-haired woman called Harmony. Consciousness expands – consciousness falls apart. Life becomes a strange saga in some alternate reality perhaps of his own creation. There is a brush with death in a blizzard in Wisconsin. There is a conversation with God. Life seems filled with paradox. He leaves Indiana for the promise of adventure and the beauty of the Rockies, where he floats in sensory isolation tanks, comes unglued, and is, metaphorically, nailed to the cross. He falls off the edge – the precipitous cliffs – and rolls all the way back to Indiana where he is captured by a “bright-eyed girl.” This is chapter three of Mind Flight.

A New Life

2009-09-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

The summer has left us all nicely fried in Scottsdale and as it cools down to 100, we try to ignore the Christmas aisle at Home Depot and enjoy the sultry fall weather. Even here, though, the change of seasons makes us stop and ponder the passing of time. Autumn, as the penultimate season of the year is, of course, a metaphor for the coming end of things. Next comes winter and death.

For many of us, this turning of the seasons might seem to parallel our own passage into oblivion. And for those of us moving farther and farther away from the beginnings of our own individual trajectories, it is easy to get maudlin over the passage of time. The death of aged parents, aunts, uncles, and friends only serves to underscore how fast the sand is flowing in the hourglass of life.

Tom's father died a few weeks ago and his dear friend and colleague, Larry Celaya, died a week later. Today, in fact, Tom read that the one of the leading religious futurists, Richard Kirby had also passed away. We are reminded, through such deaths close by, of our own mortality and our own ongoing process of aging.

But over the summer, Tom and I began to play with a new paradigm. It all started with some articles on the increase in the number of centenarians worldwide. According to one by Ed Yong in The New Scientist, for example, this is the fastest-growing demographic in much of the developed world. In fact, thanks to the aging baby-boomers, by 2030 there will be about a million worldwide! That should give us pause. What if we DON'T die soon? How will we spend twenty, thirty, or forty more fruitful years?

At twenty we all had the feeling of a long life stretching ahead of us. There were a myriad of possibilities. We could go in any number of directions. But there were distractions and surprises for which we were unprepared. Most of us had no money. Then life began to throw repsonsibilities at almost faster than we could adapt to them. Before we knew it we were long past the first flush of adulthood. Some of us resigned ourselves to the feeling of being trapped. This is it. This is my life.

But, instead of thinking of life after mid century as the time we wind down and slowly roll downhill towards the grave, Tom and I started thinking that we should conceptualize the future as a new beginning of a new life - a whole new life. At twenty we figured we might have about forty good years. Well, many of us will likely have another thirty or forty years - perhaps even more as bio-medical advances pick up the pace. And while many of us have been hit by the recession/depression, we sure as hell have more resources than we did at twenty.

All of us have imagined the hypothetical scenario of going back to our youth and being able to do it over again. All of us have said, too, given such a chance, "if I knew then what I know now..." We have, of course, considered this a fanciful and impossible scenario - we can't go back and start over.

Well, it is true we cannot go back, but we can start over. And we can start over knowing a lot more than we did the first time around.

Let's then imagine that we are at the beginning of a second adult life. Let's reflect upon what we have learned in our previous life - of the wisdom we have accumulated - and seriously consider what we wish to take with us and what we wish to leave behind as we set sail on this new life.

This is not something to be accomplished overnight. We should give ourselves time to ponder the question and time to work out the details. The important thing, though, is to fight against the mentality in our culture that tells us we are "over the hill" at forty and have "one foot in the grave" at sixty. These are outdated notions. And if there are things you "have always wanted to do but never had the time," now is the time to realize that you just may have an entire second lifetime.

It is time to start thinking about your new life.

FALL PHILOSOPHY SERIES STARTING BACK UP

Tom will be continuing his popular philosophy series at Rio Salado Lifelong Learning Center this fall and winter. The first presentation of the fall takes place this Wednesday, September 30, from 10:00-12:00. Tom will be giving part 3 of his lecture on Mind, Self, and Consciousness. Details and map can be found on the sidebar under upcoming events.

Getting Wise about Education on September 9

2009-09-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

What does wisdom have to do with education? Strangely enough that seems to be a question that is infrequently asked in these times of looking at education as preprofessional training, something to be got through to get that degree. We are not discounting the importance of such concerns, but propose that placing wisdom as the central goal of education not only facilitates the achievement of practical goals on an individual level but contributes to the overall well-being and development of society.

What is wisdom? Here is Tom's definition: “Wisdom is the highest expression of self-development and future consciousness. It is the continually evolving understanding of and fascination with the big picture of life, of what is important, ethical, and meaningful, and the desire and ability to apply this understanding to enhance the well being of life, both for oneself and others.”

If you are interested and local, Tom will be giving a presentation at 7 PM on Wednesday, September 9th. at the Surprise Communiversity on “The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education." Tom will present and explain his thesis that wisdom should be the central goal of all higher education, both as the primary character virtue that teachers and educational administrators should model and practice, and as the central learning objective for college students, regardless of their particular discipline or degree. Tom will describe the basic features of wisdom, outlining contemporary inter-disciplinary research on the topic. And he will demonstrate the critical relevance of wisdom to successfully addressing the challenges, present and future, facing human society and higher education.

If you are not local but still interested, read about wisdom and the future of education here.

Mindflight: Wisdom, Enlightenment and the Journey of Life

2009-08-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

It has been an eventful summer. Tom and I presented at the Science, Wisdom, and the Future Conference in June and the World Future Society Conference in July, relishing the opportunity to engage in dialogue with some great minds, including (at the first conference) Riane Eisler and David Loye; Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution and his wife and science-writer Connie Willis; "Voluntary Simplicity" pioneer Duane Elgin; and the ever inspiring Barbara Marx Hubbard, among many others. Check out my article on Duane Elgin's presentation. More on the World Future Society Conference in a blog to come.

The most significant event of the summer though is the premiere of Tom's new book Mindflight: Wisdom, Enlightenment, and the Journey of Life, which is being serialized on Copthorne Macdonald's The Wisdom Page. The book is what Copthorne characterizes as a quest-for-wisdom-story. It is also a rollicking personal history which intertwines a comprehensive overview of the main currents of Western philosophy (and some Eastern concepts too) with accounts of the variously funny, painful, and perplexing events that fired a life of the mind in one man over a period of forty years. Here in its debut you will find a description of the book followed by the prologue and the first chapter. Subsequent chapters will appear on the first of every month for the next twelve months.

This is an important and timely book, one that addresses the challenges facing all of us in life as we head into the strange and turbulent waters of the future - the heights to which we may soar and the depths into which we are plunged. But like life itself it is funny, engaging, surprising, and mystifying. A highly personal account, its publication has been an intimidating and frightening propostion for both of us. But here you have it. We stand naked before you. We would be interested in your reactions, comments, and thoughts on these first sections.

Join Us in Exploring the Mind, Wisdom, and Consciousness

2009-05-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

Heads up on two upcoming events.

First, Tom will be doing a two-part presentation on "Mind, Self, and Consciousness" out at Rio Salado's Lifelong Learning Center on Tuesday May 12 and Tuesday June 9 from 10:00-2:00. Visitors are welcome. Following is a little preview:

What is the nature of the mind? What is the “I”, the “me”, the sense of personal identity or self that we all seem to possess? Most intriguing of all, what is consciousness? What is this strange thing we call “experience” and why is it private and subjective? Why, in fact, is there consciousness at all and how did it arise within a physical world?

These connected questions have baffled both philosophers and scientists through the ages, and the two presentations will cover the whole array of relevant issues and ideas, from Plato, the Buddha, and Descartes to Freud, Sartre, Damasio, Clark, Chalmers and many others.

Tom will begin with ancient theories of the mind, starting with the Greeks and mystical Eastern thinkers, and then move into modern views, covering both Enlightenment philosophy and science and the emergence of psychology toward the end of the nineteenth century. From there he will explore contemporary thinking, looking at the brain and consciousness, the evolution of the self, and most recently, some mind-expanding theories on what the mind is.

Participants will be challenged to consider a myriad of questions: What is the relationship of consciousness and matter? What is the unconscious? Where is the mind? Why am I me and not you? We will consider whether the self is an illusion, a social construction, or a figment of the imagination. We will consider the issues of freedom, responsibility, and determinism as it pertains to the mind and the self. In the finale, we will even head into the future, connecting mind, self, and consciousness with artificial intelligence, robots, the cosmos, and the possibilities of expanding our conscious minds in the world of tomorrow.

Later in the summer Tom and Jeanne will both be presenting at the Science, Wisdom and the Future Conference in San Luis Obispo on California's central coast from June 24-28. There is still time to register for the conference and to engage with some top-knotch speakers so check out the link.

Tom will do a first session Wisdom, Virtue, and Future Consciousness, and a second special session on The Future of Psychology and the Cosmology of Consciousness. Jeanne will be speaking on Wisdom and the Ideal Society. There is a wonderful lineup of speakers such as Riane Eisler, author of Sacred Pleasure and The Chalice and the Blade, evolutionary writer and head of the Darwin Project, David Loye, and proponent of conscious evolution, Barbara Marx Hubbard.

The conference will bring together scholars and students, experts and lay persons—all who are interested in drawing on our latest science and deepest wisdom to build a sustainable and flourishing future for planet Earth and all its inhabitants.

Along with formal presentations, working lunch discussions and open space give all participants the opportunity to contribute to the dialogue. There will also be significant opportunities for sharing organizational work, important books, upcoming conferences and initiatives through displays, and special focus sessions. Various modes of sharing scholarly, artistic, and multi-media expressions of science, wisdom, and visions for the future will enrich the conference experience.

To see a list of presenters, or if you are interested in participating or in presenting, hit on the link above or call Cheryl Genet at 805-438-4088 for more information.

Strength in Numbers?

2009-04-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

Been a little quiet on the blog lately but writing for a web magazine - Suite101 for which I recently published an article on global population growth. On NPR's Diane Ream show this week, guest Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1971) and more recently The Dominant Animal spoke on the implications of current trends in the fertility rate as the global population barrels along towards a whopping seven billion people. Certainly this is an issue of crucial importance, not only for the quality of life of those alive today, but, as Erlich points out, especially for those who come after us.

Darwin and Lincoln

2009-02-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

It is Presidents' Day weekend in the States, a three-day weekend that memorializes the births of two of our most illustrious presidents, Washington and Lincoln. While many people simply appreciate the extra free day, we hope that our fellow Americans and friends abroad pause to reflect on the legacy of our first and sixteenth presidents and perhaps even take a moment to re-read the Gettysburg Address, one of the most eloquent appeals for freedom and for "a government of the people, by the people and for the people." Whatever your politics, it is a mighty testament to Lincoln's commitment to the ideals of American liberty and equality that today, 200 years after his birth, Barack Obama is in the White House. It is also a reminder that war should only be waged to further those sacred values and not for empire building, global economic dominance, or other immoral or evil objectives.

Today is the actual day of Lincoln's birthday 200 years ago, but it is also the birthday of Charles Darwin. How interesting that these two immortals came into the world on exactly the same day. To Darwin of course we owe the idea of evolution, and what an idea. In his monumental study, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud, Peter Watson rates it as one of the all-time great ideas. It is a legacy that is sadly not appreciated in this country. Worse, his idea has been under vigorous attack since Origin of the Species was published in 1859. Incredibly, according to a poll reported on CNN today, only 39% of Americans accept the validity of Darwin's theory. The implications of this statistic for the future of the United States are dire. Here is a short article from today's New York Times on Darwin, the man, and on the importance to humanity of his groundbreaking insight into the processes of the natural world and the place of humankind among the other living things with which we share this world. We can think of no better way to celebrate his achievement than by committing ourselves to the struggle against those who would banish the teaching of evolution from our schools. We hope you join us.

The Coming Dark Ages

2009-01-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

In his column on education for the NY Times in last Sundays edition, Stanley Fish, noted academic and author, reviews a new book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, by Frank Donoghue, in which the author argues that higher education is not the same as it used to be and never will be again. It is no news that that liberal arts education in general and the humanities in particular face a crisis; many lament the trend towards what amounts to pre-professional training and away from a focus on turning out well-rounded students with a broad understanding of their cultural heritage, let alone the ability to think critically and write a coherent sentence. As Fish pioints out, in all but a few private wealthy universities, "healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished." We can round up the usual suspects for this development, from the focus on delivery of learning through the cheapest and most convenient method possible (and hence most profitable for the institutions); to the preponderance of what Fish calls "itinerant teachers," those hard-working and low-paid adjuncts who make up an increasing percentage - up to 65% - of the teaching staff at colleges and universities; to a general devaluing of the idea that higher education should expand students' minds. Rather, universities and colleges have embraced a business model that sees only one imperative for higher education: to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment, and if that can be accomplished with a disc, Internet hook-up, and a computer screen, so much the better. So much for learning for learning's sake, a value that goes back all the way to Aristotle. Fish's article can be accessed here: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/the-last-professor/?emc=eta1

I couldn't help thinking about another article I had read earlier in the week about a school for girls in Afghanistan. Several students at this school have been attacked in recent weeks by men on motorcycles armed with containers of acid. Several young women have been disfigured. These men "want us to be stupid things," one young woman said. In defiance of such brutal tactics, the parents, administration, and the girls themselves have refused to bend. The school has stayed open. Contrast this with the indifference to learning in this country. School is seen as a chore, as something to be "got through." Those who do go on to post-secondary education, for the most part, value only the piece of paper at the end which will enable them, supposedly, to make more money. Knowledge, as opposed to a practical skill, is not what it's all about.

What all this bodes is what some have called the "coming dark ages." We may be on the brink of an era in which all that stands between the preservation or loss of the accumulated knowledge of millennia is a dedicated enclave of brave and enlightened intellectuals - our professors. Their adversary is twofold; both are anti-intellectual in nature. One sees education as a business with profit as the bottom line in any decision-making process. Not only are earnings the overriding consideration for the school but the only knowledge that counts for students is that which will translate into a higher salary in the job market. The other adversary, and one which is related, is the tendency towards superficiality and triviality in American society. This adversary comes not with sword and gun but with Wii and YouTube and MySpace. This enemy offers no ideology or philosphy for life other than the superficial one of "fun and games." It is a mode of being that requires no effort, no thinking and repays the time spent with simple amusements that distract and deliver momentary and paltry pleasures. This adversary is arguably the more insidious of the two; whereas the first at least advocates the training of minds for a pragmatic purpose, this one wants to eat the minds of our young. As Neil Postman put it in Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumplepuppy.”

Now that Huxley's fears seem to be borne out by our social reality, my hopes are not high that the tide will turn, that educators will get the respect and esteem - and the institutional support - they deserve. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency registers one small advance, perhaps, toward redefining who our heros are along intellectual lines. But we have a long way to go before "intellectual" as a quality ceases to elicit more than a contemptuous, or at the very least, a dismissive response.

The Condition of Children and Barbarians

2009-01-08T11:12:00.000-08:00

The headlines over the last ten days have been dominated by news from Gaza as the Isrealis and Hamas engage in a deadly and escalating kind of reciprocal "rumble", each street gang refusing to stand down and consider the future implications of their actions beyond simply coming out on top, regardless of the number of lives sacrificed in doing so. Of course one might say that both sides are considering the future implications and that security and continued existence of their respective states warrants such action. They believe that in order to survive one must eliminate the threat once and for all. There are times in history when this has been an effective strategy for survival, when it has been necessary to destroy evil, but until the modern age, it has necessitated the complete destruction of whole cultures.

The strategy to eliminate the other is less and less effective in the modern world. It is based on a view of the past that not only tallies up the wrongs suffered at the hands of the enemy as justification for further violence but that unrealistically assumes that there is one discreet, self-contained entity that can indeed be totally eliminated. The end result of such action is usually not complete victory for one side but rather the destruction of countless lives on both sides and an uneasy "peace" waiting for the next retalitory response. In the case at hand, the Israelis and the Arabs are continuing a mode of behavior that their past experience would seem to indicate is getting them nowhere, locking them into endless war.

In an op-ed piece in todays New York Times, Roger Cohen equates such a policy as "rule of the dead," a dominion he sees as prevalent only in the Middle East today. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08Cohen.html?th&emc=th The rule of the dead demands that one look primarily to the past, to the long line of injuries perpetrated first (if there is a first) on this side then on that, to justify the perpetuation of conflict. The dominion of the dead, of the past, precludes any peace in favor of the living. The dominion of the dead fattens itself on the blood of the living.

The philosopher Georges Santayana's famous quote is never far from my mind. Most people only remember the last line: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In the case of the Israelis and the Arabs, and of countless adversaries before them, this seems contradictory. It is precisely in remembering the past that they continue the unwinnable struggle for dominance. The whole quote, however, runs like this:
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness...
when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...
this is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience."
The point here is that both sides do remember the past, but only an incomplete and highly subjective version of it. They do not retain the total experience, that is, the costs of temporary victory along with the victory itself, nor do they learn from it. And so they repeat it. They remain in the condition of children and barbarians, acting on instinct, forever caught in a deadly tit-for-tat, forever relying on instinct, which has learned nothing from experience.

This is where future consciousness comes in. Future consciousness is all about learning from the past and applying what you have learned to the future and in so doing creating a better world than the past. Future consciousness prescribes creating a constructive future rather than falling into a repeat of an ineffective past mode of being. Future consciousness is being informed by the past in order to get to someplace new, in order to change, not stay stuck in destructive modes of behavior that perpetuate negative features of the past. Cohen cites the Germans and the French, the Japanese and the Chinese, as examples of peoples that found a new way to co-exist. And while it is true that the destruction of the evil that was Nazism and Japanese imperial militarism was necessary to pave the way for this new pattern of behavior, can we not hope that reasonable people on both sides of this conflict can learn not only from their own past experience but from world history as a whole.

Just Say No to Thinking

2009-01-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the new year and an email that appeared in my box today alerted me to the fact that it's time to emerge from the fat and sugar-induced stupor of the holidays and regroup for the ongoing battle against the dangerous forces of narrow-mindedness, group-think, and religious dogmatism. This time it was an email diatribe and urgent warning against Neale D. Walsch's "devastating" book, Conversations With God, a book that purportedly spreads the "false doctrine of the devil" in the guise of spiritual guidance. Of special urgency to the writer of the email was the vigilance required to prevent this book and Walsch's Conversations with God for Teens from falling into the hands of schoolchildren lest "exposure to worldly mediums" corrupt them and distort the only truth acceptable, that of the Bible. Noted examples of disagreement with Biblical teaching involve God's answer, in Walsch's voice, to a girl who inquires why she is a lesbian, to which God/Walsch responds that she was born that way because of her genetics. The author also has God disavowing the idea that premarital cohabitation equates to "living in sin" and is dismissive of the idea of sin itself.

While one may debate the wisdom of Walsch's responses in this book, and certainly one should not accept his word at face value any more than any other writer's in the market-place of ideas, the issues he discusses are serious ones with which people grapple in a globalizing world that more and more presents us with confusing and difficult choices. To offer only adherence to an inherited and strict code of conduct that goes against the nature of what many people actually experience, and instinctually feel is normal, is to place a psychological stranglehold on them. This is not to say that we should all dive down the hole of cultural and moral relativism, or that we should simply engage in compulsive, feel-good behaviors, but that young people should be encouraged to THINK about the moral choices they are called upon to make and explore the issues from a wide perspective. In contrast, the Walsch-bashing email circulating about is representative of the kind of rigid closed-mindedness that prescribes blind acceptance of doctrine over a rational evaluation of ideas, and which ill equips people, especially the young, from forming the capacity for critcal thinking and moral evaluation so necessary in our contemporary social environment, an environment which offers up to our young a constant diet of far more damaging, shallow, and pernicious fare than this supposedly dangerous book.

Conversations With God is a thought-provoking book and on that point alone I would recommend it. For that matter, I would recommend reading the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, and the Bhagadavita. It is only through a broad exposure to contrasting theories that one develops the capacity for critical evaluation of ideas, for being able to distinguish the garbage from the gold, to separate the bullshit from the truth. And while, as a parent, I disdain the easy availability of smut, stupidity, violence, and mind-numbing trivia over the Internet and other media, the answer is not to prohibit, since restrictions are all too easy to get around and tend to create a mystique around the thing prohibited, in turn making it more desirable. A better tack is to create in young minds an appetite for excellence, a distaste for junk, and a desire to think. Expose them to the great ideas, literature and art of our culture and other cultures. At the very least, encourage them to read. As a parent, I would be thrilled if either of the teens in this house would turn off the TV, get up from their computers, turn off their iPods or cell phones, and read books, even ones less deserving of respect than this one.

Don't Stop Thinking about the Future

2008-11-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Center for Future Consciousness blog. These are exciting and challenging times of accelerative change. There is much to be optimistic about and much to provoke anxiety and uncertainty. There is hope and there is fear. And there are great divisions. As the recent election in the United States has reminded us, an event that highlights the ideological and philosophical differences among American citizens and one that serves as a focal point globally, there is a struggle going on for the future of this country and the future of the world. In part it is a struggle between tradition, stasis and the status quo, and progress, evolution and the future. It is a struggle in which those who support continued freedom, open inquiry and the advance of knowledge through science and technology are frequently painted as naive, contrary to nature, and morally suspect.

Tom and I take a firm stand for the future. This is not to negate the importance of the past and the invaluable lessons it holds, nor is it to diminish the poignant power of nostalgia and memory. Indeed, we cannot move into a bright future without a grounding in the past. We cannot think of what we will be without knowing what we have been. But as Tom has said, "the future is the only game in town." Our actions have no bearing on the past and the present ever unfolds before us.

There is a great philosophical leaning toward the present these days, and many teachers, gurus and spirtual leaders argue that we should be more present-focused, that that is where our happiness lies. We are urged to live in the moment, to go with the flow. This sounds very appealing at times in our fast, frenetic, multi-tasking, attention-deficit culture. But not only is living in the present an impossibility of consciousness, (for past and future always intrude upon consciousness and the present is contextualized in the past and the future) it is the mentality of the child who does not think ahead about the consequences of his or her actions. It is a life without planning or direction. Living in the present is to be ever open to distraction and diversion. Living in the present is to cede control over your life to chance, and happenstance. Living in the present is anti-evolutionary. All of the accomplishments and things of value in life involve lessons from the past and goals and purposes involving the future. Ethics depends on a consideration of the consequences of our actions in the future. Love and commitment are only possible within the context of the future.

Thinking about the future is of the utmost importance, even if you take the nihilistic stance that you won't be here anyway in the next 30 or 40 or 50 years. Thinking about the future enhances your life now. Thinking about the future provides purpose, meaning, and direction, and leads to greater happiness and mental health. Thinking about the future, both your individual future and that of your local and global community, is the responsibility of each of us for we inhabit an interconnected, reciprocal reality.

We hope you will join us in an on-going dialogue about the future and about what it means to improve one's consciousness of the future. And we invite you to visit our website for additional readings and resources on the future at www.centerforfutureconsciousness.com