Director of
The Wisdom Page & The
Center for Future Consciousness
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Wisdom and the Future
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This Month's Highlights
July, 2017
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Wisdom and the Future has again received the "
All Star Award" from
Constant Contact for excellence, a honor only given to the top 10% of
Constant Contact customers.
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Included in this month's issue of
Wisdom and the Future:
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Election to the Executive Board of the World Futures Studies Federation
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The Executive Board consists of eleven individuals, including the newly elected President Erik Øverland (Norway) and the Director - Secretariat Victor Vahdi Motti (Iran), who is also an Advisory Board member of
The Center for Future Consciousness. Along with Dana Klisanin, I am one of the two USA members on the Board.
 Eric Victor Dana
I am quite happy about being elected to the board, coming on the heels of receiving the
Fellow Award. Both events seem appropriately synchronistic with the publication of my new book this year,
Future Consciousness.
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New Video and New Interview:
Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution & Update on London Presentation
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Future Consciousness is
listed on Amazon for
advance orders (publication date Oct.27th), and you can read more on the
publisher's website page for the book. But you can now
immediately order signed copies of the book through my
CFC email address listed on the website. In-depth coverage of the book, including the entire table of contents of the book, can be found on the
book's webpage on the
Center for Future Consciousness website. Also see the latest on the book and other futurist news items on the
CFC Facebook page, diligently and faithfully maintained by my wife and co-director Jeanne.
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New Video
My introductory presentation on
Future Consciousness at the
Consciousness Conference held at Yale University in June and sponsored by
The Society of Consciousness Studies was videotaped by Simon Senzon, one of the presenters at the conference. You can view the talk at:
Future Consciousness Introductory Video.
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New Interview on
the
Spiritual Media Blog
Created and managed by Matthew Welsh, the
Spiritual Media Blog features interviews, reviews and articles from the top authors and filmmakers in the personal development and spiritual growth field. Recently, Matt interviewed me on my new book
Future Consciousness. He provided a set of excellent questions for the interview, which I believe helped me to highlight many of the unique and key features of my book.
Read the Interview.
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London Visit & Presentation
My introductory talk on the book in London, England at the
Scientific and Medical Network has been scheduled for October 9th, 8 to 10 pm (Doors opening at 7:30 pm). The location for the event is: 38 Denning Road, London NW3 1SU.
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"What Matters": Peace of Mind
Leland Beaumont
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"What Matters" Series
"Wise people seek a life well lived. The recent series on the virtue of the month provides moral guidance, but we must also focus our efforts on what matters most. While the virtues guide us in doing things right, focusing on what matters guides us in doing the right things. Therefore, we have begun a monthly exploration of
What Matters.
Each month explore one topic that suggests how you should spend your time to attain fulfillment and live a meaningful life. What is most significant to you, your family, your community, nation and the world? How does what matters most change as your needs are met, as you gain experience, and as you grow and mature? Series topics will address surviving, thriving, recreation, success, significance, transcendence, and avoiding distractions and dead ends."
Leland Beaumont
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Peace of Mind--Inner Peace
We have busy lives wanting this, chasing after that, stressing over the next deadline, overcoming obstacles, enduring hassles, and tolerating annoyances to struggle through one more day. Yet often without knowing it, what we are truly seeking is Peace of Mind. All we really have is our own experiences, and peace of mind is one of the most pleasant experiences. True peace is inner peace-where else could it be? This month allow yourself to begin enjoying peace of mind.
Leland Beaumont
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Evidence-Based Wisdom Updates - Wisdom Profiles and Articles
Charles Cassidy
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Charles Cassidy on his
Evidence-Based Wisdom
website has added a number of new items to his highly informative and multi-media rich website.
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First there is a new article Charles wrote for International Insights and posted on his website:
"WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT ARMAGEDDON? How Humor Can Save Us From Ourselves"
There's an excellent video accompanying the article.
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Next, there is a new
EBW Dispatches: Wisdom and Meaning with Jeffrey Dean Webster. To quote from the opening paragraph:
"Does searching for meaning in life actually make us happier or even wiser? Well it's not quite as straightforward as you might expect, according to some recent research to emerge from a team in Vancouver, Canada. For a start, seeking meaning and finding it are not the same thing. And even more surprisingly, their research suggests that how we file away our experiences might determine whether we are destined for happiness or for wisdom."
As Charles states, "The
EBW Dispatches Series reports the latest developments from the frontline of wisdom research. Key findings are highlighted and illuminated - with a little help from the researchers themselves."
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As stated at the beginning of this profile "In the eighth interview in the series, Director of The Stein Institute for Research on Ageing, and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, Dilip Jeste talks to
evidencebasedwisdom about the six components of wisdom, the family model of the wise brain, and the future of wisdom-enhancing interventions."
Read the Profile.
"The
Wisdom Profiles Series is a collection of original interviews conducted by
evidencebasedwisdom with leading researchers in the field of Wisdom Research or related fields. All participants are working to increase our understanding of wisdom and its place in the modern world."
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Our ongoing thanks to Charles, a
Wisdom Page Advisory Board member, for continuing to add new and interesting articles, interviews, and other provocative items (often multi-media) to his wisdom website.
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Beacon of Hope - Jeanne Lombardo
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Photo by Nate Bittinger
"When will the aliens come to rescue humanity? How will the revolution start? Why don't those few leaders with a moral compass stand up to speak truth to illegitimate power? Where is that flashing beacon of hope?
The Beacon that is Literature
I see little on the horizon to answer these questions. So, I turn to literature. So, I turn to literature. And having neglected some literary landmarks over the years, I dove into Ursula Le Guin's 1974 "ambiguous utopia,"
The Dispossessed. A tale of two worlds cut off from each other by centuries of distrust-the larger planet, Urras, resembling earth with its wars and extreme inequality between rich and poor; and the other, Anarres, a bleak and impoverished moon settled by utopian anarchists-it is a timely story, indeed.
Told through the philosophical voice of Shevek, a physicist from the moon who endeavors to reunite the worlds, it is impossible not to apply its lessons to the current state of affairs in the world. The riots that took place in Hamburg during the G20 summit this last week (anarchist driven perhaps, but also the expression of ordinary people looking for their own beacon of hope) aptly illustrates the anger and frustration."
From:
Jeanne Belisle Lombardo: Committed to Craft; Serious about Story
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Science Fiction:
The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future
Presentations & More Advanced Reviews
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At the recent meeting (June 27) of the Arizona Chapter of the World Future Society I completed my two-part introduction to my new book series:
Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future. The second part was titled:
From the presentation description:
"Beginning with the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1940s, including Heinlein, Asimov, van Vogt, and Clarke, Tom Lombardo successively covers: the Silver Age, with the "explosion" of science fiction cinema, the fantastical psychological science fiction of Alfred Bester, and the meta-realities of Philip K. Dick; the New Wave and the "Dangerous Visions" of the 1960s and 1970s, sex, drugs, and the psychedelic in science fiction, and the rise of popularity of women science fiction writers, such as Ursula LeGuin and James Tiptree, Jr.; "How Science Fiction Conquered the World" in the 1980s, comedy and satire, computer technology and AI, and the emergence of Cyberpunk; Steampunk, Watchmen, ecological and bio-tech science fiction, and mind-blowing experiments in reality in the 1990s; and stories of global consciousness, the "New Weird," alternative realities and universes, passing through the technological singularity, and a thousand Sci-Fi movies (with super-heroes and anti-heroes galore) since the beginning of the new Millennium."
As I am sharing volume one of the book series with futurists and science fiction writers, more advanced reviews of the book are coming in (
see earlier reviews), including:
"From the double viewpoint of a French social scientist and passionate reader/teacher of science-fiction and an international futurist, I can witness the huge yet mostly undervalued impact of science-fiction on the way we create our images of the future. With his new book,
Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future, Thomas LOMBARDO adds a much needed contribution to the path begun with Gaston BERGER and Fred POLLACK. Too often considered as a literary sub-gender, science-fiction is indeed a deep revealer of our worldviews, paradigms, hopes, fears and blindspots. Digging even deeper, Tom clearly exposes the postmodernity of science-fiction as a contemporary myth founder, building the hopes and opening the possibilities for disruptive novelty to happen. The amazingly broad and accurate knowledge Tom displays along his diachronic brilliant analysis, has already made of this first volume a "must-read" and a now unavoidable reference book in the study both of the science-fiction and of the future."
Fabienne GOUX-BAUDIMENT
CEO of proGective, Research Centre for Futures Studies
Associate Professor at ISTIA, University of Angers
Founding member of the French Society for Foresight
Former President of the
WFSF
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Mythology's Scientific Evolution
"Thomas Lombardo's forthcoming work
Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future seems every bit as comprehensive in scope and meticulous in detail as his latest publication,
Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution (due out this Fall, 2017). Beyond scholarly, the first book of his projected multi-volume history of science fiction reads like a labor of love. It honors a scientifically framed genre that in space films of his youth first opened Lombardo's eyes to imagine much wider possibilities of a mythical human future than ordinary boyhood pursuits allowed.
Now an accomplished futurist recognized worldwide, Tom Lombardo views science fiction as a powerful public mythology attuned to our technologically advancing times. The first of his volumes on the genre, subtitled
Prometheus to the Martians, begins with a cogent analysis of how religions, cosmologies, and heroic sagas of ancient times and places provided coherent worldviews that embodied shared mythologies, illuminating every aspect of daily life and culture with transcendent meaning. Using numerous aptly chosen examples from speculative philosophy, literature, and emerging sciences Lombardo then charts a detailed course through the centuries to the more widely creative and speculative scientific mythologies of our own times.
Lombardo shows how early modern science fiction writers began to adapt and rework an inheritance of ancient archetypes and narrative forms of mythology, in endlessly novel ways opened up by rapidly accumulating scientific insights into the universe, made possible by accelerating technological advance. In films, novels, fan magazines, comics, TV serials, and films with impressively immense visual and sonic effects, science fiction today explores timely issues and increasingly possible futures, whether hopeful or fearful, utopian or dystopian.
The first volume of Tom Lombardo's engaging history of science fiction suggests how the most sophisticated and thoughtful works of the genre can create "grand narratives" spanning all of space, time, and human experience, exploring manifold dimensions of inner spirit and outer cosmos. Offering mythological vistas hauntingly familiar yet newly imaginative, the best modern science fiction creates anew what Lombardo terms a "totally immersive" sense of the wondrous possibilities of being alive, in a mysteriously evolving and expansive cosmos--awaiting our wise of choice possible futures. His second volume promises an equally exciting trip through a wide variety of more recent works!"
Donald H. Sanborn
Associate Professor Emeritus,
Philosophy and Humanities,
City Colleges of Chicago
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New Video: Jason Merchey's Values & Ethics: From Living Room to Boardroom
Values of the Wise Series
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Jason Merchey, long-time contributor and follower of The Wisdom Page -- his books are featured on
The Wisdom Page home page -- has published a new book
Values and Ethics: From Living Room to Board Room. As Jason states about the book,
"Values & Ethics: From Living Room to Boardroom is the challenging, thought-provoking conversation-starter you've been looking for. It will bring you to a place where dialogue thrives and ancient wisdom and progressive thinking are brought to life. This most recent addition to the
Values of the Wise Series will help you escape the world's hustle and bustle and think about what truly matters: a life of value."
Jason has created an informative introductory video explaining the book.
View the Video.
Jason has a special offer on the book:
"As a
The Wisdom Page subscriber, you will receive free shipping of any of Jason's books on wisdom and values when you use this coupon: FREESHIP4TWP." When you go to the shopping cart, this discount coupon is available for use.
Jason's other books on wisdom and value are:
Also, you can now listen to a large array of free podcasts on values and ethics, including interviews with Copthorne Macdonald and Nicholas Maxwell, at
Values and Ethics Dialogues on Jason's website. The specific podcasts with Cop and Nick can be found at:
Macdonald and Maxwell Interviews.
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New Wisdom Sonnets - Alan Nordstrom
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Alan Nordstrom,
Wisdom Page Advisory Board member and resident poet, has published two new "Wisdom Sonnets."
TOWARD WISDOM
"The marvel and the wonder that we're here,
Alive on Earth within this cosmic realm
Is sure, although our purpose is not clear,
Nor whether we've a captain at our helm.
But, obviously, our prime task's to protect
Our precious habitat that fosters life,
So much in danger now of being wrecked
Because of our antagonistic strife.
Our childhood's past, thus now to grow mature
Is our clear quest, and must not be delayed
For, short of that, our species can't endure
Since there's no one to hasten to our aid.
A Global Wisdom Culture must be born
Or all posterity will be forlorn."
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EVOLUTION'S EDGE
"What next in evolution might emerge
On planet Earth will doubtless be our doing,
And maybe even now we're on the verge
Of what is worthiest for our pursuing.
What would that be but further to enhance
That sapience for which we're doubly named,
Amounting to our noblest advance
Beyond the follies for which we've been blamed.
Wisdom indeed is our implicit goal,
What every human should be striving for;
Without attaining that we can't be whole,
Yet finally achieving it, we'll soar,
The highest state we hope to realize
Is mastering the art of being wise."
Read all of Alan's latest sonnets and essays at
Alan Nordstrom's Blog.
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"Envisioning Our Future" Course:
Leland Beaumont
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This last month, Lee Beaumont emailed me a provocative and rather depressing anecdote:
"Recently a candidate for State Senate met with a small indivisible group I am a member of.
I asked him to share his 50 year plan with us.
He was unprepared and unamused.
He was unimpressed.
I began asking political candidates to share their 50-year plans.
No takers so far.
Continue seeking real good."
Lee
Lee's plan for 2075--a preferable future--is part of his online course Envisioning the Future.
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World Futures Studies Federation
Conference in Norway
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The
World Futures Studies Federation recently held its 22nd World Conference June 7-10 in Jondal, Hardanger, Norway (Airport Bergen):
As outgoing
WFSF President, Dr Jennifer Gidley stated: "There has never been a time more important to focus on the futures of humankind than right now, when our very survival is at stake."
Outgoing President Jennifer Gidley and former President Johan Galtung
See the
Conference Website
for information on the theme of the conference and a program of the various presentations given over the three days.
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The Influential Mind
Book Review by Leland Beaumont
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"In this book the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London shares her research and insights into what the brain reveals about our power to change others. Our intuition and common sense about how we can influence others is often proven wrong by the evidence presented throughout the book.
The book is well written, and draws on primary and secondary research to support many helpful and often surprising findings. Clever illustrations summarize the key points of each chapter, and I enjoyed learning:
+ "People with stronger analytic abilities are more likely to twist data at will than people with low reasoning ability." ... "These findings debunk the idea that motivated reasoning is somewhat a trait of less intelligent people."
+ It is more effective to influence behavior by building on common ground than by demonstrating the errors in peoples' arguments. "To successfully elicit change, we therefore need to identify common motivations."
+ People around us are influenced instantly, constantly, and unconsciously by our emotions. Our emotions are contagious and very influential.
+ Anticipating rewards promotes action, while fear and warnings inhibit action.
+ Expanding peoples' sense of agency-ways we are able to govern our surroundings-makes us happier, healthier, more productive, and more compliant.
+ Messages framed to highlight the possibility of progress are more influential that messages warning of impending doom.
+ People go to great lengths to uncover good news and avoid bad news. The cost becoming certain of a bad outcome is losing the option to believe what you would like to believe.
+ We avoid risk when we are intimidated or under stress. We may start "playing it safe" even when bolder action is the better choice.
+ We learn quickly from others in social settings, even if the influential majority has it wrong.
+ The opinion of an eight year old was crucial in deciding to publish the first Harry Potter book.
Author Tali Sharot delivers on her promise to demonstrate how we can influence the people around us by adopting effective approaches and discarding common, yet ineffective approaches. The book is accessible, authoritative, coherent, engaging, enlightening, factual, interesting, important, up-to-date, well organized, and well-written.
The book is well researched, the arguments are clear, and authoritative references support the text, however contrary evidence, alternative interpretations, and dissenting points of view are rarely presented.
Sound arguments based on valid logic and representative evidence are presented with an engaging flair that results in an enjoyable read. Interesting stories and rigorous research meld into this readable and authoritative treatment of an important and timely topic."
Leland Beaumont
The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others
By: Tali Sharot
Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN 978-1627792653
256 pages
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Nicholas Maxwell
New Articles
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"We Aren't Built to Live in the Moment"
by Martin Seligman and John Tierney
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Victor Vahdi Motti forwarded this provocative article from
The New York Times on the centrality of future-oriented thinking and action in human psychology. To quote from the opening of the article,
"We are misnamed. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the "wise man," but that's more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart from other animals? Various answers have been proposed - language, tools, cooperation, culture, tasting bad to predators - but none is unique to humans. What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society.
A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered..."
I wrote back to Victor and told him this is basically what I have been saying for over a decade about the central role of future consciousness in the human mind.
Read the article.
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"The Universe May be Conscious" by Philip Perry
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Kiko Suarez,
CFC Advisory Board member, recommended this interesting article from
Big Think on consciousness and the universe.
To quote from the article,
"What consciousness is and where it emanates from has stymied great minds in societies across the globe since the dawn of speculation...There are a few prevailing theories. The first is materialism...The second theory is mind-body dualism...Then there's a third option which is gaining ground in some scientific circles, panpsychism. In this view, the entire universe is inhabited by consciousness.
A handful of scientists are starting to warm to this theory, but it's still a matter of great debate. Truth be told, panpsychism sounds very much like what the Hindus and Buddhists call the Brahman, the tremendous universal Godhead of which we are all a part."
Read the article.
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Have a look at the latest issue of
Foresight Signals published by
AAI Foresight, which highlights new books on the future being published this summer and fall.
Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution is included.
Read
Mapping Megatrends, BOLO Books, Futurists Wanted, and more
AAI Foresight was founded by Tim Mack, Esq., the former President of the
World Future Society, and ably assisted by Cynthia Wagner, Consulting Editor and former Editor of
The Futurist.
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Archive Pages for Center for Future Consciousness and Wisdom Page
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The reader can subscribe to
Wisdom and the Future either on
The Wisdom Page or the
Center for Future Consciousness Page. See
The Wisdom Page Contact Page
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