Flourishing in Time

New Director of The Wisdom Page

 With the enthusiastic support of Copthorne Macdonald’s wife Beverly and the members of The Wisdom Page Advisory Board I am going to become the new director of The Wisdom Page. We are going to “move” The Wisdom Page to our server/host and while preserving the legacy, content, and spirit of Cop’s years of dedicated work in developing it, we will in the near future start to evolve it more, in both design and content. As I am sure Cop would have agreed, the way to preserve the site’s value and philosophical thrust is to keep it growing and transforming. There will be Wisdom Page Updates again—with new articles appearing as people submit them. It is both a great honor and opportunity to assume responsibility for this website. As I have told everyone for years, The Wisdom Page is the best resource for readings on wisdom on the Web.

Expansion of the CFC Advisory Board

 I have added two new people to the CFC Advisory Board, Mike Trier and Kiko Suarez. Both Mike and Kiko have been contributing ideas and input into the ongoing growth of the CFC, and given their intelligence (both practical and theoretical), their spirit of collaboration and cooperation, their philosophical support for the CFC, and their overall positive vibes, it became obvious to me that they should be board members. I am very happy that they both agreed to become members. Their pictures and bios should be up on the website within the next couple of days.

New Reviews of Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future and Mind Flight

“...when you complete [Mind Flight], you may transcend it, envelop it and pass through it to the other side. In doing so, you will end up being more. You will see who you want to become and how you want the future to be. And you will understand why.”

Wendell Bell, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Yale University

“Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future... is not only a deep discussion of where human consciousness has come from and where it may go, but also an eloquent statement of humanistic futurism.”

Rick Docksai
World Future Review - World Future Society

[In Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future] one central thesis is clear: attention and commitment to the character virtues the author identifies can equip us with an enhanced capacity to wisely choose among the often confusing and competing alternatives that life presents to us. Certainly the publication of this thoughtful and articulate book is testament to the value of applying such virtues to one’s own life.

Vahid Motlagh - Tehran, Iran
Journal of Futures Studies

Three new reviews on my new books are now available. Wendell Bell has posted a Five-Star Review of Mind Flight on Amazon. A review of Wisdom, Consciousness, and the Future, written by Rick Docksai, was just published in the World Future Society journal World Future Review. And finally, Vahid Motlagh will have a review of WCF coming out in the March issue of Journal of Futures Studies. The entire reviews of Bell and Motlagh can be accessed on the CFC website. All the reviews are very positive. Buy the books; read them; I guarantee you will find them enlightening, thought-provoking, and personally elevating.

Future Consciousness, Ethics, and Psychological Well-Being

In the last CFC Blog I reviewed Sam Harris’s new book The Moral Landscape. Harris’s basic argument in the book is that ethics (determining what is good) should be based on the science of human well-being; morality should be grounded in empirical facts. Well, this last month I read Martin Seligman’s new book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. In Flourish, Seligman presents a theory of psychological well-being, grounded in psychological research (that is science). Seligman sees the concepts of “flourishing” and “well-being” as roughly synonymous, including but not limited to “happiness.”

His theory is fairly simple and straightforward. Well-being (or flourishing) consists of five major factors: Positive emotional states, engagement, positive social relationships, meaning in life, and accomplishment—PERMA for short. Each of these five factors can be measured and empirically assessed, and most noteworthy, can be enhanced within people. It is noteworthy that at least two of these factors—meaning in life and accomplishment—have a future quality to them, and that the general term “flourish” which literally means “to grow well or luxuriantly, to do well, to prosper, to thrive, to be highly productive,” also implies a positive directionality in time or toward the future. “Engagement,” for Seligman, literally means “flow,” a concept based on the work of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, that I have highlighted in my discussions of heightened future consciousness.

Hence, if we pull together Harris and Seligman, and embed their ideas within the context of future consciousness, we see that a theory of ethics based on psychological well-being can be grounded in a set of fundamental psychological qualities (subsumed under the general concept of “to flourish”) and that this theory of well-being is strongly anchored to features of heightened future consciousness. In reading Seligman’s new book I found a wealth of interesting ideas and information, along with a variety of psychological self-assessments the reader can take and score. There is also a great discussion of “True Grit,” a concept developed by one of his former students, Angela Duckworth, which captures the psychological dimension of tenacity and perseverance, another key concept in my theory of heightened future consciousness.

The question, though, that first emerged in my mind when I was reading Harris, is what exactly is involved in determining what goes into psychological well-being. Seligman provides a great example of unpacking the concept and empirically grounding it, but I kept thinking: Is his definition sufficient? Does it capture all the important elements? What might be missing? And how would I decide on this? My intuition tells me that it might not be so straightforward to determine well-being simply based on facts, since well-being (and consequently flourishing) probably contains value judgments. More to come.

More on the Evolution of the Theory of Cosmic Evolution

In my review last month of Eric Chaisson’s book The Life Era, I noted that it appears that the most pervasive and fundamental fact about our universe is cosmic evolution. As Peter Watson has stated, “Evolution is the story of us all” and that includes atoms, galaxies, stars, planets, chemicals, life, humans, culture, and technology—the whole ball of wax. If one were to formulate a “global ethics” or even “cosmic ethics” based on scientific fact, it would need to be grounded in the most basic fact of all: evolution. How does one do this? Kevin Kelly takes a shot at it in his recent book What Technology Wants. He presents a list of thirteen “evolutionary directions in nature and technology” (including increasing freedom, diversity, complexity, sentience, etc.) that he believes we should embrace and purposefully pursue the development of—we should ride and guide the wave.

And then there is synchronicity. After reading Chaisson’s book I received an email from a gentleman in England, Amnon Eden, who had discovered my work on the web and was co-editing a new book of readings on the “technological singularity.” Amnon wanted to know if I could write a short essay for this volume, reviewing—of all things—a volume article by Eric Chaisson titled “A Singular Universe of Many Singularities: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context.” In essence, Chaisson, in his article, argues that there is a fundamental law of cosmic evolution that applies across the board from quarks to culture and computers; that our universe has shown throughout its history “multiple singularities”—that is, significant and highly dramatic jumps in complexity; and hence, though we might think/feel that computers exceeding human intelligence (the theory of the technological singularity) is some very special event in the history of nature, perhaps to be avoided or prevented at all cost, it is not unique (such momentous jumps have happened before) and it is coming—that’s the fact Jack—for it is an expression of the deepest and most pervasive natural process in the universe.

In researching Chaisson’s ideas further and exploring more the general theme of cosmic evolution, I have been reading two new books that I highly recommend: Chaisson’s Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos and Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context, published by NASA, and edited by Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella. The questions addressed in these two books are deep and exceedingly interesting. How do life, mind, culture, and technology fit into the cosmic scheme of things? Are these levels of evolution natural expressions of the ongoing directional transformation of the universe? Further, should we anticipate that life, mind, and consciousness are phenomena we will find throughout the cosmos? In particular, for Chaisson, how does all of the intricate order of nature emerge out of the great energy whoosh and expansive flow we call the “Big Bang”? We are all riding as ripples and whirlpools on this turbulent gargantuan wave. Both books are a trip.

Cosmic Science Fiction and the Possibilities of Mind

And speaking of the cosmic, as you may recall, we left the Time Traveler in 1891, after just recounting to his friends his trip into the far future, where he encountered the child-like Eloi and the gruesome Morlocks, who fed on the Eloi for supper. Feeling guilty and despondent over losing Weena (an Eloi) in the dark woods of the distant future (802,701 AD), the Time Traveler disappears again. Perhaps he intends to go back and save Weena?

Now let us assume that one of the Time Traveler’s friends in 1891 is a writer, who takes copious notes on the Time Traveler’s tale and writes it out as a book and publishes it. The writer is H. G. Wells and the book published (which is indeed an accurate chronicle of the Time Traveler’s fantastic tale) is The Time Machine in 1895.

This is exactly where we take up the tale again. The Time Traveler sets out once more into the future to rescue Weena. But as he is traveling through thousands upon thousands of years he begins to notice that things do not appear the same, as on the first trip, and in the year 657,208 AD, he stops the machine. The earth is dark and cold and there is no sun or stars in the sky. His first trip—his recounting of the trip to his friends, including Wells, and the subsequent publication of The Time Machine—have changed future history.

This is the beginning of Stephen Baxter’s science fiction novel The Time Ships, the sequel to Wells’ The Time Machine. It is the best science fiction novel I have read in years—indeed, one of the best science fiction novels I have ever read. We travel to a war-ravaged Europe in the 1930s where the First World War never ended; we travel fifty million years into the past, where humans create a colony and begin an entirely different human history on the earth; we travel to a future where the Morlocks are cerebral, scientific, and peaceful and the Eloi are warlike, but on a scale almost incomprehensible in scope and carnage; and finally we travel to the beginning of time—the Big Bang—where our A.I. descendants, in “time ships,” create an infinite and eternal universe. What a cosmic trip!

           

Two other noteworthy science fiction novels I have read in the last few months are The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, last year’s Hugo and Nebula winner for best science fiction novel of the year, and The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge, his sequel to his epochal science fiction classic A Fire Upon the Deep. The Wind-Up Girl is a dark, gritty, and highly visceral tale that takes place in Bangkok, Thailand in the 23rd century; the heroine, Emiko, a wind-up girl, is a genetically engineered “pleasure doll” seeking freedom from the exceedingly corrupt, brutal, and treacherous city in which she is repeatedly, cruelly, and quite graphically humiliated and enslaved. A complex story—with a host of conniving, nefarious characters—not for the faint of heart. In Vinge’s new novel, he takes up and further develops his depiction of a world of “pack-minds,” where the aliens are groups of dog/wolf-like creatures who think as single conscious minds; it is the pack that has an ego, a consciousness, and not the individual members. Again, Vinge excels at describing a truly alien form of intelligence and mentality, introducing in this new novel “choir minds,” and also, once again, he creates a host of interesting villains, human and other-wise.

Fantastic New Web Page on Science Fiction

Becoming immersed once again in science fiction this past year, I was inspired to put together an updated “Best Science Fiction Novels of All Time” list. (I had created such lists a couple times in the past.) While there are other lists out there, this list pulls together classic science fiction with current award-winning novels of the last two decades. It is a great resource for science fiction fans looking for recommended readings and a good starting point for readers unfamiliar with the genre. This list is a culmination of over fifty years of reading, thinking about, and teaching science fiction. You will also find a link to it on CFC home page.

Friends and Colleagues Publishing Books

I must be hanging out with the right people. In the past few months, five of my friends and colleagues have published books.

Memories of the Future by Wendell Bell, Transaction Publishers, 2012.



I wrote a review of this autobiography; it should be appearing in the World Future Review, as well as on the CFC website, in the next few months. Wendell Bell is one of the most highly regarded futurists in the world today.


 

Market Whipped: And Not By Choice by Joan Foltz, Alsek Research, 2012, .



 

Joan directs the Arizona Chapter of the World Future Society. As Forbes magazine stated about this book, “It does what 'futurists' do when they do their job right."







   

Science, Wisdom, and the Future: Humanity’s Quest for a Flourishing Earth by (Ed.) Russ and Cheryl Genet, Collins Foundation Press, 2012, 
  

 

Both Jeanne and I have articles in this new anthology; the conference participants who wrote the articles for this book are an interesting and highly diverse group of individuals. See all of Cheryl and Russ’s books at their website, the Flourishing Earth Project.





Maligned by Kathy Papajohn, Martin Sisters Publishing, 2012



I presumably inspired this new science fiction novel through my course on the future—specifically my lectures on the future of biotechnology—which Kathy and her late husband Steve took from me many years ago.





Internet Interviews with Tom and Jeanne

While Tom has done several Internet radio interviews by himself, both Jeanne and Tom recently did an interview on the Dr. Bob Rose Show. We discussed Mind Flight, covering ethics and character virtues; pain and chaos in life; love, marriage, and family; technology and the future, etc. We will be back again to do more. Tom also did an interview on wisdom and future consciousness with Dr. Sirkka Heinonen, Professor of the Finland Futures Research Centre at the WFS conference this last year which can now be viewed on YouTube.

Well, that’s it. This blog is long due to “compressed time.” A lot happened in the last month and undoubtedly there is more to come. The Wisdom Page needs to get up and running again. We will be doing presentations on “utopia” and “progress” in the next couple of months; see our schedule of events. And there are retreats, videos, a series of talks for my fans/students at the Florence State Prison, and a futures course program in the planning stages. Thanks for reading; thanks for your interest and support.

Virtue and Wisdom, Death and the Past

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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?”