LF233 Thomas Lombardo – Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution

Thomas Lombardo discusses his book Future Consciousness – The Path to Purposeful Evolution. How do we create a good future? This deceptively simple question is the central challenge of human life. Indeed, the question highlights the most distinctive and empowering capacity of the human mind – to consciously imagine and intentionally pursue preferable futures, a multi-faceted psychological ability within us all that Lombardo refers to as ‘future consciousness’. We stand at what many consider to be a pivotal juncture in human history. Just as technological advancements race ahead with digitization and automation changing the face of society at breathtaking speed, so too we face unprecedented economic, political, social, and environmental crises. In response, many of us attempt to ignore these pressing problems by simply shutting down, lost in the past or the future, the good old days or daydreams of better times to come. Meanwhile, practitioners in the burgeoning field of pop psychology urge us to live in the present moment, the only thing that apparently exists. Both mindsets, however, may prove to be psychological dead-ends. Change, in fact, is the only constant, and stability – of the settled, sustainable kind we seem to crave – is an illusion. Evolution, the meta-process of which humanity is an embedded part, is dynamic. It requires challenge and even crisis to move forward. Order does arise from chaos, but it is unpredictable. Evolution is the drive towards increasing complexity, and it is accelerating just as the universe itself is expanding. We are the universe becoming aware of itself and we have a tremendous responsibility to which current convulsions may ultimately serve to awaken us. Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’ Bernard Xolotl ‘Saturn Return’ Listen to more shows on Legalise Freedom Dot Com.