Patterns of Meaning: With special guest Jeremy Lent

Patterns of Meaning: How different conceptions of the universe shaped history--and will shape our future.

How did we get here? What would it take for our civilization to avoid collapse or a techno-nightmare, and instead achieve a future of sustainable flourishing?
This talk explores how our current series of crises are fundamentally driven by our dominant worldview. We'll investigate the underlying pattern to Western cognition that has been responsible for both its Scientific and Industrial revolutions, as well as its devastating destruction of indigenous cultures around the world and our current global rush towards possible catastrophe.
We'll discover why, to steer humanity to a future of dignity and flourishing, we need a fundamental shift in underlying values-a new global consciousness based on an underlying sense of connectedness.
The talk is based on Lent's recently published book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, which traces how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have shaped history.

Jeremy Lent is an author whose writings investigate the patterns of thought that have led our civilization to its current crisis of sustainability. In addition to The Patterning Instinct, he is author of the science-fiction novel Requiem of the Human Soul. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview, both scientifically rigorous and intrinsically meaningful, that could enable humanity to flourish sustainably on the earth.