New Book: The Future Evolution of Consciousness

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As introduced in the May, 2024 issue of the newsletter, over the last couple of years I’ve been working on a new book “The Future Evolution of Consciousness.”

It seems to me that the key factor to focus upon both in addressing our present problems and creating a positive future is to significantly evolve our consciousness. As such, I’ve been writing a book on this topic. 

Beginning with the May issue, I have been publishing online, in Future Consciousness Insights, roughly once a month, drafts of each consecutive chapter in this new book.

In May I started with the Introduction to the book. The complete Introduction is available for viewing on my Center for Future Consciousness website:

https://centerforfutureconsciousness.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/evol-of-consciousness-intro.pdf.  

In this issue I include Chapter Two: Purposeful Human Evolution and Future Consciousness - Part Two

See:https://centerforfutureconsciousness.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/evol-of-consciousness-chap-2-part-two-edited.pdf

The total published set of draft chapters of the book is available for reading on my Center for Future Consciousness website at:

https://centerforfutureconsciousness.com/the-future-evolution-of-consciousness/.

I am looking for feedback and comments on the book. After reading any parts of the draft chapters you can send any comments or feedback to my email: tlombardo1@cox.net.

The Future Evolution of Consciousness

Thomas Lombardo

Chapter Two: Purposeful Human Evolution and Future Consciousness - Part Two

The Purposeful Evolution of Consciousness 

The purposeful evolution of human civilization through future consciousness has involved both physical-environmental and psycho-social dimensions. Of particular note, as evidenced by early recorded narratives and commentaries on human life, throughout recorded history, humans have been engaged in efforts to purposefully evolve their own consciousness. Over the millennia humans have self-reflectively turned their own consciousness on itself, the agent of consciousness attempting to assess its current state of development and sculpture and improve upon itself, just as the conscious human mind has routinely assessed and attempted to evolve the physical world in which it is embedded. 

Through the recorded cultural histories of religion, myth, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, ethics, and social-political thought we observe copious evidence and examples of humans attempting to articulate ways to improve and expand their own conscious selves and minds. We observe an ongoing history, up to the present, of humans developing and implementing various practices to expand their consciousness, improve their ethical character, sharpen their mental skills, enlighten their conscious minds, and achieve greater wisdom and understanding. Whether successful or not, we also observe a rich history of ideas and practices for treating psychological failings, aberrations, dysfunctions of consciousness, and forms of madness and conscious misery. 

Whether self-initiated or forced upon them (or anywhere in between), the general population of humans have adopted numerous belief systems—drawn from the wide array of cultural sources identified above—for understanding and improving their conscious minds and selves, and have followed innumerable practices and methods connected with these belief systems. As one significant example, through the ages, diverse religions and associated ethical codes have powerfully influenced the actions and aspirations of millions of people, providing believers with ideals for preferable states of consciousness and practices for achieving such states. As another important example, we can view the pervasive human practice of child-rearing as a parental effort, based on varied belief systems and values, to purposefully shape and direct the development of the conscious minds of their children. 

All in all, the purposeful evolution of consciousness is ubiquitous and powerful throughout the history of civilization; a big part of our psychological evolution in human civilization has been purposefully and consciously guided. Just as contemporary humanity continues to purposefully strive toward improving and evolving current physical conditions on the earth, humanity as part of this purposeful evolutionary thrust continues to attempt to purposefully evolve human consciousness. As noted in the introduction there are a host of varied contemporary philosophies and approaches focused on ways to further evolve human consciousness. 

Although by and large, humans (whether ancient or modern) do not consciously conceptualize and verbally articulate what they are doing when they attempt to develop and enhance their conscious minds as “purposefully evolving their consciousness,” when they intentionally engage in efforts to improve their minds, their ethical character, or their personal selves, what they are doing is, in fact, attempting to purposefully evolve their consciousness. They are defining and acting upon preferable future directions and goals regarding the evolution and improvement of their consciousness. 

If we introspect on our individual flows of consciousness—of the thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and desires passing through our consciousness—we should note how frequently self-directive we are in attempting to guide and structure what we think and feel. Humans are self-conscious—that is conscious of our own consciousness—and self-evaluative, judging the value of our states of mind, and we routinely and purposefully attempt to guide the conscious flow toward preferable or desirable conscious states. 

Many people might argue that they do not attempt to direct their thoughts or to improve their states of mind, but such a professed laissez-faire approach to life is often purposefully selected and practiced as the most preferable state of consciousness. In such cases, it is a purposeful choice to attempt to go with the flow and not purposefully direct states of mind. 

But given the evaluative nature of human consciousness—that we do not simply observe reality but routinely assess and judge reality—it seems highly unrealistic to believe that even the most carefree or tranquil human minds do not engage in a certain amount of self-directed and intentional improvement of their conscious reality. 

As distinctive and highly evolved powers of consciousness, humans anticipate; humans have goals and values; humans purposefully think and act.These qualities are all fundamental to the human consciousness and come together in the flow and monitoring of our consciousness, just as much as such processes occur in our interactions with the external physical world. To transcend or somehow disconnect from such conscious activities would, in my mind, constitute a state of psychological devolution. 

Moreover, someone who attempts to avoid the purposeful self-direction and improvement of their consciousness, for whatever reason, I believe would be a very problematic human being. It would be a form of immense human conceit and/or deep psychopathology to believe one should avoid attempting to evolve or improve one’s consciousness. 

In summary, the purposeful evolution of consciousness within the flow of consciousness is a fundamental, pervasive, long-standing, and desirable dimension of human consciousness. Pulling together a number of previous points made: Human nature is evolutionary and transformative; consciousness, and in particular human consciousness, is evolutionary; and humans engage in purposeful evolution—an evolution in evolution—and have with great power and persistency applied this capacity both to the physical world and their own consciousness. Consequently, in considering the future evolution of consciousness we should anticipate that the future evolution of consciousness, to a significant degree, will be a purposefully directed process.  

* * *

You can complete the reading of this book installment--with added references and footnotes--at Purposeful Human Evolution and Future Consciousness: Part Two

https://centerforfutureconsciousness.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/evol-of-consciousness-chap-2-part-two-edited.pdf

The Holistic Historical Evolution of Human Civilization

In writing chapter two of The Future Evolution of Consciousness, in the second half of the chapter I focused on the historical evolution of future consciousness. (See the reading above) The historical evolution of future consciousness though occurred in the context of the overall evolution of human civilization. As such, I created an "Appendix" for the book, which provides a relatively succinct outline of the history of human civilization from circa 5000 - 3000 BCE to contemporary times. Included below is this "Appendix," which can be read as a self-contained summary of key developments, along with a set of conclusions, regarding human history.

If the reader sees any important omissions from this historical summary, please email me.

Introduction

The three-tier division of the evolution of human civilization into the Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Revolutions is a very broad and generalized model of the developmental history of humanity. Moving to a more fine-grained analysis, recorded human history can be parsed into an array of more specific stages and notable changes and events. Although often regional in origin, these important changes and developments, to various degrees, often have had significant global impact.

It is important to note though that human evolution was ongoing across all regions of the globe. Moreover, advances, innovations, and increasing complexity repeatedly occurred across all major spheres of human existence, including the technological, societal, religious, cultural, economic, agricultural, psychological, and artistic. Providing a more detailed and dramatic overview of the evolution of humanity in recorded history—filled with “sound and fury” and “agony and ecstasy” and victory and defeat—what follows is a chronological summary of a number of such key markers, events, trends, and advances in human evolution over roughly the last five thousand years, with general time periods included. 

The Ancient Period

(See Lombardo, The Evolution of Future Consciousness, “Ancient Myth, Religion, and Philosophy” for more detail on the philosophical and religious dimensions of this period.)



• Early advances in metallurgy—the control and manipulation of material substances and basic chemistry leading to improved and/or new tools and instruments—from the Stone Age to the Copper Age (5000 BCE to 3300 BCE)
• The emergence of Sumerian nation states and successive empires (including Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylon) and the ancient Egyptian empire (3000 to 1000 BCE), involving the construction of the Pyramids and other architectural “wonders of the ancient world;” the first major cities; the evolution of both polytheism and monotheism (the latter through the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten); mass slavery and the ongoing deification of royalty (rule through inheritance); the development of astrological (astronomical) consciousness, including the Zodiac and the charting of the paths of the planets (“wanderers”); the invention of papyrus, the sail, the wheel, and the plough; the writing of the archetypal Epic of Gilgamesh (including the saga of the “Great Flood”); the creation of Hammurabi’s Code of laws; the creation of the first library as a repository of historical records and the ongoing accumulation of human knowledge; and recurrent wars of conquest, expansion, and contraction among these earliest civilizations
• “Animistic Naturalism” as a ubiquitous mode of consciousness (a world full of gods) and the earliest recorded myths explaining the origin of humanity and the earth (probably extending back prior to recorded history but in evidence between 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE)
• Further advances in metallurgy: the emergence of the Bronze Age (3300 BCE to 1200 BCE) 
• The beginnings of ancient Chinese (Xia and Shang Dynasties with rule through inheritance) (2100 to 1100 BCE) and Indian (Indus Valley) (2500 to 1900 BCE) civilizations, the latter generating the beginnings of Hinduism (the creation of the Rigveda 1900 to 1200 BCE) and the first public sewage and sanitation systems
• The rise and fall of Minoan (ancient Crete) civilization—a hypothesized Goddess-centered religious culture and the first advanced urbanized civilization in Europe—in the Mediterranean; the creation of an extensive trading network; a Bronze Age civilization (2000 to 1100 BCE) 
• Moses, the Exodus, and the emergence of the Ten Commandments (ca 1500 to 1400 BCE) 
• Continued advances in metallurgy with the emergence of the Iron Age (1300 to 500 BCE) 
• The Axial Age of philosophical enlightenment and religious inspiration (800 to 300 BCE) in Europe and Asia, including such key influential figures as Confucius, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Elijah, Zoroaster (Zarathustra), the Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles), Socrates, Plato, and the writers of the Upanishads, and the beginnings of many philosophical, religious, and spiritual movements, including Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Platonic Rationalism and Idealism, and Confucianism; Homer and the creation of the Iliad and the Odyssey (ca. 750 BCE); the beginnings of Western histories in Hesiod and Thucydides; the evolution of the Chinese book of divination the I Ching (“Book of Changes”) (ca 1000 to 200 BCE)
• Theories of Cyclic, Linear, and Progressive Time in Taoism, Ancient Egypt/Babylonia, Zoroaster, Hesiod, and later Lucretius 
• The ascent of ancient Greek and Hellenistic civilization (700 to 300 BCE) and the beginnings of Western democracy and Western abstract naturalistic philosophy (Aristotle and Democritus), and grounded in Egyptian and Sumerian ideas, the further development of mathematics and geometry (Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes) 

• The spread of the ancient Persian Empire (550 to 330 BCE)—the most expansive human empire up to that point in time—which included a number of wars of stalemate with ancient Greek city-states; eventually conquered by Alexander the Great 
• The rapidly expanding but short-lived transcontinental empire of the Macedonian Alexander the Great (300 BCE), extending as far as Egypt and India, and involving the spread of ancient Greek ideas into the Middle East and Asia
• The successive Zhou (1000 to 250 BCE) and Han (200 BCE to 200 CE) empires and dynasties in ancient China; the emerging unification of China; and the development of cast iron, the blast furnace, woodblock printing, paper, and the beginnings of the construction of “The Great Wall”  

Complete reading the essay at: The Holistic Historical Evolution of Human Civilization

https://centerforfutureconsciousness.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/holistic-history-of-human-civilization.pdf

The Evolution of Science Fiction:

Complete YouTube Series

Consisting of thirty-four videos, I recently completed, with the superb help and support of Tery Spataro, my Evolution of Science Fiction Webinar Series. All the videos on the playlist, chronologically ordered, are available for viewing on my You Tube channel at: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIvBA8u8-18QzwxllJrzh6OAKVAUYfNmS. 

The series consists of videos covering each major period in the evolution of science fiction from ancient times to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. For those viewers interested in a condensed accelerative overview of the entire history of science fiction, you can watch the “Comprehensive History of Science Fiction” video (part of the series) at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dqu4YJvXrA&list=PLIvBA8u8-18QzwxllJrzh6OAKVAUYfNmS&index=30&t=9s . 

For those unfamiliar with the series, here’s a quick introduction to its content: 

“Combining colorful slide presentations and in-depth analysis, in these webinars, based on my emerging book series Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future, I examine the evolutionary history of science fiction from ancient to contemporary times. I delve into the mythological origins and dimensions of science fiction; fantasy versus science fiction; the rise of the modern scientific world view; utopias and dystopias through the ages; the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Gothic horror; the impact of evolutionary theory on science fiction; Wells, Stapledon, and the integration of futures studies and science fiction; robots, techno-intelligence, and aliens; time travel and alternate realities; fantastical adventures, space exploration, and the emergence of Space Operas; the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the New Wave, Feminist Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and the "New Weird;" social, psychological, and religious science fiction; and numerous other key themes and dimensions of science fiction. Covering science fiction literature, art, cinema, and comics, I discuss in depth the appeal, value, and influence of science fiction on the modern world and the impact of intellectual and cultural trends on the evolution of science fiction.”

New Center for Future Consciousness Website

The Center for Future Consciousness website has been totally redesigned and moved to a Word Press platform allowing for continual and speedy updates and revisions in the future. The website address for the Center is still the same address (url) as before: www.centerforfutureconsciousness.com. And all the content of the previous website is still available on the new website.

Some of the most significant updates to the new website, include:

• An updated and complete listing of all my published books (CFC Book Page) with new reviews and extended descriptions of my newest books.
• An updated list of my Library of Best Science Fiction Novels, adding over 60 new novels to the previous list and including over twenty newly listed and ranked novels of the last two decades.
• An updated list of my Library of Best Science Fiction Movies, adding over 100 new movies to the previous list and now covering movies up to 2024.

With the hard work of Tery Spataro, the CFC YouTube Channel has been greatly expanded. Among the sixty available videos and podcasts on the CFC Channel are all the previous Evolution of Science Fiction Webinars—twenty-eight two-hour videos—now free for viewing.

Go to Tom Lombardo YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tomlombardo75/playlists for the complete listing and links for all CFC videos.

The playlists on the CFC Channel include:

• Introduction to the Center for Future Consciousness
• The Future
• Philosophy
• Contemporary Trends and Theories
• Future Consciousness & the Evolution of Consciousness
• The Evolution of Science Fiction Webinar Series
• Other Science Fiction Presentations