Future Consciousness : The Evolution of an Idea
Thomas Lombardo , Ph . D .
Director of the Center , Tom Lombardo , Ph . D ., and Co-Director , Jeanne Belisle Lombardo , M . A ., are experienced educators , presenters , and workshop facilitators . They are regular speakers at the World Future Society conventions and other conferences , as well as at various colleges and educational institutions , nationally and globally . Dr . Lombardo is the writer of numerous books and articles in psychology , philosophy , education , and the future .
Exploring and developing the idea of future consciousness has been a long-standing philosophical journey for me over roughly the last twenty-five years . As a way to introduce my new book Future Consciousness : The Path to Purposeful Evolution ( Lombardo , 2017 )— which presents my latest thoughts on this key idea — allow me to tell the story of how this book and its central concept and associated themes emerged over time .
I first used the expression “ future consciousness ” around 1995 when I created and wrote an introductory textbook for my first futures studies course . My recollection is that one day while I was writing , the expression just emerged in my mind . ( The book The Odyssey of the Future [ 1996 ], although copied and distributed to my students , was never published .) From early on , as I argued in this book , I believed that the enhancement of future consciousness had numerous benefits , both consciousness-expanding and practical , and personal and educational .
“ Future consciousness ” seemed to be an excellent expression to encompass the total and diverse set of normal human psychological abilities and modes of experience and behavior about the future . I saw it as a broader concept than merely those future-oriented activities futurists engage in . It covers more than just thinking about and imagining possible futures . Future consciousness includes the cognitive , emotional-motivational , and personal dimensions of the human mind ; it is a psychologically holistic concept . I saw the various activities of futurists as a professional evolution and refinement of our more psychologically encompassing normal human capacity of future consciousness . And of course , among diverse futurists ( and those writers who are interested in the future who do not call themselves futurists ) there is a great variety of modes of understanding and
22 MAY 2018