Each time you visit this page, you’ll find a different randomized selection of Evolutionary Lectures to expand your heart, mind, and soul.
♥ Enjoy & Evolve ♥
🠗 🧙🏽♂️ randomized 🧙🏽♂️ 🠗
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❝ It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.
The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level exposes stark differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem-poor health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness-is more likely to occur in a less-equal society.
Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lay bare the contradictions between material success and social failure in the developed world. But they do not merely tell us what’s wrong. They offer a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Capitalism, Decommodification, Equality, Evolution, Humanism, Inequality, Kate Pickett, Optimism, Public Health, Richard Wilkinson, Society, Spirituality, The Zeitgeist Movement
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❝ A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, “democratic transhumanism,” by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human – “posthuman” or “transhuman” – the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: A.I., Citizenship, Cyborgs, Democracy, Ethics, Evolution, Futurism, Healthcare, History, Humanity, James Hughes, Life, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Posthumanism, Science, Technology, Transhumanism, Universal Healthcare
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Peter Joseph
Origins & Adaptations III
Z-Day Talk [2015]
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: Civilization, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, Peter Joseph, Science, Social Pathology, Society, Technology, The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM, Z-Day
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“Researchers in neuroscience, psychiatry, and clinical practice join other leaders in psychedelic medicine to discuss this rapidly emerging field.”
Categories: Lectures, Panel Discussions, Symposia
Tags: Dr. Anja Loizaga-Velder, Dr. Franklin King, Dr. Julie Holland, Dr. Matthew Johnson, Dr. Rick Doblin, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Drugs, Evolution, Harvard Medical School, Healthcare, History, LSD, MDMA, Mental Health, Michael Pollan, Progress, Psychedelics, Science, Strategy, Transformation
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Bruce Sewick
Treating Addictions Using Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
College of DuPage Seminar [2018]
“Recorded as part of a seminar on Psychedelics: Therapy, Culture and Cluster Headaches. Bruce Sewick LCPC, RDDP, CADC discusses the clinical use of psychedelics particularly in the treatment of alcoholics and addicts. Bruce Sewick is an Adjunct instructor in COD’s Human Services and he teaches the Psychedelic Mindview class.”
Categories: Lectures, Seminars, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Addiction, Addiction Treatment, Bruce Sewick, College of DuPage, Drugs, Entheogenesis, Healthcare, History, LSD, Mental Health, Neuroscience, Progress, Psychedelic Medicine, Psychedelic Science, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, Psychedelics, Psychology, Rat Park, Science, Strategy, Transformation
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Dr. Rick Doblin
Transformational Psychedelics
The Long Now Foundation Seminar [2020]
“Humans have consumed psychedelics for at least the last 10,000 years. The outlawing of psychedelics in most of the world in the 20th century didn’t stop that, but it did put an end to promising research into their psychotherapeutic applications to treat depression, addiction, PTSD, anxiety, and trauma. Today, we’re in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance, with some psychedelics fast on their way to becoming legal medicines. One of the key players behind this movement is Rick Doblin, Ph.D.. In 01986, he founded the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit research and educational organization that has developed the medical and legal framework for the use of psychedelics to treat mental health conditions. MAPS has distributed over $20 million to fund psychedelic research and education, and in 02017 won fast-tracked “Breakthrough Therapy” designation from the FDA for using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With legalization now in sight, what is the future of psychedelic medicine?”
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Video Essays
Tags: Civilization, Culture, Dr. Rick Doblin, Drugs, Evolution, History, MDMA, Politics, Progress, Psychedelics, Strategy, The Long Now Foundation, Transformation, Utopianism, War
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Douglas Rushkoff
Open Source Democracy
Social Philosophy Lecture [2008]
Computers & Society, NYU. Following is the foreword, by Douglas Alexander, to Rushkoff’s paper on the same topic:
“The internet has become an integral part of our lives because it is interactive. That means people are senders of information, rather than simply passive receivers of ‘old’ media. Most importantly of all, we can talk to each other without gatekeepers or editors. This offers exciting possibilities for new social networks, which are enabled – but not determined – by digital technology.
In the software industry, the open source movement emphasises collective cooperation over private ownership. This radical idea may provide the biggest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft. Open source enthusiasts have found a more efficient way of working by pooling their knowledge to encourage innovation.
All this is happening at a time when participation in mainstream electoral politics is declining in many Western countries, including the US and Britain. Our democracies are increasingly resembling old media, with fewer real opportunities for interaction.
What, asks Douglas Rushkoff in this original essay for Demos, would happen if the ‘source code’ of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? ‘An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time,’ he answers.
That’s a profound thought at a time when governments are recognising the limits of centralised political institutions. The open source community recognises that solutions to problems emerge from the interaction and participation of lots of people, not by central planning.
Rushkoff challenges us all to participate in the redesign of political institutions in a way which enables new solutions to social problems to emerge as the result of millions interactions. In this way, online communication may indeed be able to change offline politics.”
Categories: Essays, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Democracy, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanity, NYU, Open Source, Technology
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❝ Society is broken. We can design our way to a better one.
In our interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If current negative trajectories remain, including growing climate destabilization, biodiversity loss, and economic inequality, an impending future of ecological collapse and societal destabilization will make ‘personal success’ virtually meaningless. Yet our broken social system incentivizes behavior that will only make our problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper―rethinking the very foundation of our social system.
In this engaging, important work, Peter Joseph, founder of the world’s largest grassroots social movement―The Zeitgeist Movement―draws from economics, history, philosophy, and modern public-health research to present a bold case for rethinking activism in the 21st century.
Arguing against the long-standing narrative of universal scarcity and other pervasive myths that defend the current state of affairs, The New Human Rights Movement illuminates the structural causes of poverty, social oppression, and the ongoing degradation of public health, and ultimately presents the case for an updated economic approach. Joseph explores the potential of this grand shift and how we can design our way to a world where the human family has become truly sustainable.
The New Human Rights Movement reveals the critical importance of a unified activism working to overcome the inherent injustice of our system. This book warns against what is in store if we continue to ignore the flaws of our socioeconomic approach, while also revealing the bright and expansive future possible if we succeed.
Will you join the movement? ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: 21st Century, Anti-Capitalism, Capitalism, Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, History, Human Rights, Humanism, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Manifesto, Movement, Oppression, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Capitalism, Post-Scarcity, Poverty, Progress, Purpose, Revolution, Social Justice, Social Pathology, Society, Sociology, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM
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Peter Joseph
Where We Go From Here
Z-Day Talk [2016]
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: Civilization, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, Peter Joseph, Science, Social Pathology, Society, Technology, The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM, Z-Day
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“Research into psychedelic drugs was interrupted in the 1960’s due to regulatory changes. Recently, these compounds are once again studied both as therapeutic agents in psychiatry and as experimental tools to further our understanding of the human brain. David Nutt stands at the forefront of these developments as principal investigator of a team including Robin Carhart-Harris and other researchers at Imperial College, London. Together, they are running clinical trials of psychedelic substances including psilocybin in the treatment of depression. They are also using brain imaging to investigate the effects of psychedelic drugs on activity and connectivity within the brain. At this lecture, he will cover the latest research findings and share his vision of the future of psychedelic science.”
Categories: Lectures, Seminars, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Dr. David Nutt, Drugs, Entheogenesis, Healthcare, Mental Health, Neuroscience, Progress, Psilocybin, Psychedelic Medicine, Psychedelic Science, Psychedelics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Science, Sweden, Transformation
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❝ In their bestseller Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams showed the world how mass collaboration was changing the way businesses communicate, create value, and compete in the new global marketplace.
This sequel shows that in more than a dozen fields—from finance to health care, science to education, the media to the environment—we have reached a historic turning point. Collaborative innovation is revolutionizing not only the way we work, but how we live, learn, create, govern, and care for one another. The wiki revolutions of the Arab Spring were only one example of how rebuilding civilization was not only possible but necessary.
With vivid examples from diverse sectors, Macrowikinomics is a handbook for people everywhere seeking a transformation of industry and institutions by embracing a new set of guiding principles, including openness and interdependence. Tapscott and Williams argue that this new communications medium, like the printing press before it, is enabling nothing less than the birth of a new civilization. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Anthony Williams, Computers & Society, Connection, Counterculture, Cyber Culture, Democracy, Don Tapscott, Evolution, History, Humanity, Media, Networks, Technology, The Internet, Wiki
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Peter Joseph
When Normality Becomes Distortion:
Reflections on a World Gone MadTZM Lecture [2013]
“This program will consider the quality of our beliefs, actions and intents within the overarching context of what supports good public health, prosperity and sustainability and what does not. The subjects of Politics, Economics and Religious Philosophy will be broadly considered, with one basic question asked: Are the dominant views of reality today and the values that arise from them sustainable for the species’ survival?”
“Peter Joseph is the creator of the world famous, award winning Zeitgeist Film Series and founder of the controversial Zeitgeist Movement which seeks to shift our social system into a more sustainable paradigm, Peter continues to focus on media related expressions, including music composition, performance & film production, each with the focus on affecting society for the better. He has also lectured around the world on the topics of social sustainably and has been featured in the New York Times, Russia Today, TedX and many other outlets.”
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: Civilization, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, Peter Joseph, Religion, Science, Social Pathology, Society, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM
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“Walter Houston Clark has defined “religion” as an individual’s inner experience of a Beyond, especially as evidenced by active attempts to harmonize his or her life with that Beyond. The Johns Hopkins experiments suggest that a large fraction of mentally healthy people with spiritual interests can have a profound experience of a Beyond—a mystical-type experience—with the aid of several hours’ preparation and a supervised psilocybin session. Furthermore, most of the study volunteers report that encounter as among the most spiritually significant of their lives and as bringing sustained benefits. How do we get from such experiences (however occasioned) to “religion” in Clark’s sense, and in the sense of a group pursuing spiritual ends? Perhaps that transition is, as Brother David Steindl-Rast claims, inevitable. The talk will address that process, and will argue that some social organizations have strong but unacknowledged religious aspects. It will also ask how nascent religious groups can form in ways that minimize the pathologies that so often have given the “r-word” a bad name, while channeling sociality to cultivate individual and collective well-being.
Robert Jesse is Convenor of the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP; csp.org). CSP’s interest in non-ordinary states focuses on the betterment of well people, in contrast to the medical-model treatment of patients with psychiatric diagnoses. Through CSP, Bob was instrumental in forming the psilocybin research team at Johns Hopkins University, and he has co-authored three of its scientific papers. He also lead the writing of an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the União do Vegetal’s use of a sacramental tea containing DMT, a controlled substance. A unanimous Court upheld the UDV’s right to its practice. Bob has long participated in the development of the Bay Area spiritual community that draws liberally from the non-creedal, non-hierarchical ways of the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends). His formal training is in electrical engineering and computer science.”
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Johns Hopkins, MAPS, Psilocybin, Psychedelic Science, Psychedelics, Psychology, Religion
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Chris Hedges
The Wages of Rebellion:
The Moral Imperative of RevoltEthical Philosophy Book [2016]
“Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges—who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class—investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges’ message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization.
Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as “sublime madness” — the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this “sublime madness.”
From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Apocalypse, Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Civics, Economics, Ethics, History, Inequality, Philosophy, Rebellion, Revolt, Revolution
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Peter Joseph
Where Are We Now?
TZM Lecture [2009]
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: Civilization, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, Peter Joseph, Science, Social Pathology, Society, Technology, The Venus Project, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM, Z-Day
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❝ In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination―employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service―are suddenly legal. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Awakening, Civil Rights, Colorblindness, Counterculture, Crime, Culture, Drug War, Evolution, Fascism, History, Humanism, Justice, Mass Incarceration, Michelle Alexander, Prison-Industrial Complex, Progress, Racism, The 60s, The New Jim Crow
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❝ The Zeitgeist Movement Defined is the official representative text of the global, non-profit sustainability advocacy organization known as The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). This tediously sourced and highly detailed work argues for a large-scale change in human culture, specifically in the context of economic practice. The dominant theme is that the current socioeconomic system governing the world at this time has severe structural flaws, born out of primitive economic and sociological assumptions originating in our early history, where the inherent severity of these flaws went largely unnoticed.
However, in the early 21st century, these problems have risen prominently, taking the consequential form of increasing social destabilization and ongoing environmental collapse. Yet, this text is not simply about explaining such problems and their root causality – It is also about posing concrete solutions, coupled with a new perspective on social/environmental sustainability and efficiency which, in concert with the tremendous possibility of modern technology and a phenomenon known as ephemeralization, reveals humanity’s current capacity to create an abundant, post-scarcity reality.
While largely misunderstood as being “utopian” or fantasy, this text walks through, step by step, the train of thought and technical industrial reordering needed to update our global society (and its values) to enable these profound new possibilities. While this text can be read strictly from a passive perspective, it was created also to be used as an awareness or activist tool. The Zeitgeist Movement, which has hundreds of chapters across dozens of countries and is perhaps the largest activist organization of its kind, hopes those interested in this direction will join the movement in global solidarity and assist in the culmination of this new social model, for the benefit of the whole of humanity. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Ben McLeish, Computers & Society, Counterculture, Culture, Cyberia, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Matt Berkowitz, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Scarcity, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement
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Terence McKenna
Dreaming Awake at the End of Time
Psychedelic Philosophy Lecture [1998]
“Join Terence McKenna, author, explorer and philosopher for a think along deconstruction of the deepening worldwide weirdness. With his characteristic hope and humor, McKenna examined time and its mysteries, the nature of language, the techniques of ecstasy, high technology and virtual cyberspace, the role of hallucinogenic plants in shamanism and the evolution of human cultures, and the foundations of post-modern spirituality. The lecture and discussion was didactic, syncretic, challenging, eclectic, eidetic and irreverent intellectual adventure.”
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Apocalypse, Culture, Enlightenment, Eschaton, Psychedelics, Shamanism, Terence McKenna
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❝ In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.
Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Awakening, Bay Area, Counterculture, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Cyberculture, Cybernetics, Evolution, Fred Turner, History, Humanism, Optimism, Progress, Silicon Valley, Stuart Brand, The 60s, Utopia, Utopianism, Whole Earth Network
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KRS-ONE
The History of Hip Hop
Black History Month Keynote Lecture [2014]
“Hip Hop Legend KRS-One came to Cal State LA for a Black History Month keynote and dropped some knowledge and enlightenment on our Golden Eagles. Here’s the full speech.”
Categories: Lectures, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Black History, Culture, Enlightenment, Hip-Hop Culture, KRS-ONE, Shamanism