Award Winner of the Network Book Prize for 2017 by the Scientific and Medical Network for a book written by a member that makes the most significant contribution towards a new world view.
How do we create a good future? This deceptively simple question is the central challenge of human life. Indeed, the question brings to center stage the most distinctive and empowering capacity of the human mind: to be able to consciously imagine, think about, and intentionally pursue preferable futures. I refer to this multi-faceted psychological capacity within all of us as “future consciousness.” Our unique conscious minds, reflecting and amplifying nature’s vast and pervasive evolutionary process, have achieved an evolution in evolution—a jump to purposeful evolution—through future consciousness. Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution reveals how, through the heightening of future consciousness, we can flourish in the flow of evolution and create a good future for ourselves, human society, and the planet.
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Book Reviews
“Lombardo has written a masterpiece, a must-read book, not only for futurists, psychologists, social scientists, scholars, and academics of every type showing them how to improve their thinking about future consciousness, but also for ordinary people to improve the quality of their future daily lives… It is a powerful and convincing statement. Lombardo’s book is one of the most creative I have read.”
Wendell Bell | Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Yale University
“Tom Lombardo is probably the single most impressive thinker, philosopher and author I have met in recent times. His unique perspective about wisdom and future consciousness, his eye for what matters in life and his depth of knowledge and experience make this book a must-have for those concerned about the collective future evolution of human society”.
Kiko Suarez | Vice President, Lumina Foundation
“Tom Lombardo’s worldview is like a multiverse: vast, in depth, multidimensional. Each new book from this world renowned futurist is a new stellar light enlightening the understanding of what it means to be human: be conscious, imagine new worlds, build our collective future. Thanks Tom for this vital breathing!”
Fabienne Goux-Baudiment | Former President of the World Futures Studies Federation CEO of proGective, Associate Professor at ISTIA, University of Angers
“Reading [his new book] one appreciates that Tom Lombardo is an unsung hero whom the world desperately needs to hear from. His contribution demands a global audience in an age of increasing complexity and mega crisis….Dr. Lombardo brings us to the edge of our seats in excitement, passion, love and the desire to self improve with clarity and efficacy, with our eyes looking forward in future consciousness… a must read for all human beings irrespective of race, nationality, class, gender and position.”
Stephen Awoyemi | Miriam Rothschild Scholar, University of Cambridge, UK, President, Society for Conservation Biology, Africa Section, Nigeria
“It would be hard to imagine a book that covers such a vast landscape with the clarity and coherence found in [this book]… Tom Lombardo has connected all the dots: the future(s), agency, creativity, the good, well-being, flourishing, evolution, future consciousness, character, virtue and ultimately wisdom. He assembles an enormous mosaic of how these concepts interact that contains a philosophy of reality and of life that is truly breathtaking.”
Dr. Peter Bishop | Retired Professor, Human Sciences and Studies of the Future, Univ. Houston-Clear Lake, Houston Texas
“Tom Lombardo’s [book] is a masterpiece of creating a deep understanding of the continuum of society’s evolution at the same time that it sets the stage for the ongoing transformation of human consciousness that is needed for the sustainability of humanity during this shift from an Industrial Age to an Ecological Civilization. His book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand how to re-conceptualize the future.”
Rick Smyre | President, Center for Communities of the Future
“Tom Lombardo’s exploration of future consciousness examines a state that many search for in vain, that of full self-actualization, and lays out both the strategic and tactical paths to reach that state. Based in the inherent wisdom of foresight thinking, Dr. Lombardo describes the nature of creative flourishing in both the empirical and spiritual realms. This is an extraordinary accomplishment and deserves the laurels that it will undoubtedly receive.”
Tim Mack | Former President of the World Future Society
“Living a fulfilling life is among the top priorities of almost everyone… The question and answer around this [challenge] has bewildered too many scholars, and ordinary people, throughout history. Dr. Tom Lombardo in his new book builds upon his vast knowledge and experience in diverse fields of expertise…which impressively addresses the evolutionary nature of human consciousness. This book takes an extremely well studied prescriptive approach to help all readers begin and continue a life-long…journey to achieve wisdom…skillfully teaching and communicating deep and complex philosophical ideas in a streamlined and incredibly simple framework and vocabulary.”
Vahid V. Motlagh | Executive Board of the World Future Studies Federation, Tehran, Iran
“Tom Lombardo’s [new book] is a most important book in all sorts of ways. His major point is correct: “The central question we ponder and debate within ourselves and among ourselves, across the years and through the decades of our existence on the earth” is “How do we create a good future?” … his answer to how we create a good future is spot on: “by developing a core set of character virtues, most notably and centrally wisdom.” In making his case for his arguments, Lombardo displays an impressive understanding of not only psychology and futures studies (his specialties), but also of global intellectual history, and he does so in a readable prose which avoids any academic jargon. This book deserves a wide readership and appreciation.”
Walter Moss | Professor Emeritus of History, Eastern Michigan University
“Tom has done it again! Always compelling, hugely informative, unconventionally provocative and wisdom inducing, he has created a definitive book on the psychology of future consciousness! A valuable resource for futurists and non-futurists alike.”
Karen Sands, MCC, BCC | GerofuturistSM and Thought Leader on Ageless Aging
“Tom Lombardo has… created a guide to the pursuit of a good future that is applicable to the individual and to society alike. Lombardo bridges the academic and the applied, the theoretical and the practical, offering a tool for self-actualization that is logically developed and clearly expressed. [His] idea of “flourishing in the flow of evolution” captures the ever-changing nature of both present and future realities…a dynamic adaptability that is as inner-directed as outwardly grounded.”
Cynthia Wagner | Former Editor of The Futurist and Editor of Foresight Signals
“As ‘ordinary’ people seeking a good life and good future, character virtues and wisdom are essential to our ability to flourish, evolve, and extend ourselves into tomorrow. [In this book] Tom Lombardo provides insights for achieving a good future and enhancing our future consciousness. Whenever I read his works or listen to his talks I am always compelled to reflect on my own self growth and do something with my new awareness.”
Wanda Tucker | Chair of Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion at Rio Salado College
“Lombardo challenges us to an Odyssey, with wisdom as a beacon for heightening our future consciousness. This grand narrative of evolution of the human mind and of the search for a good future is applicable as thought-provoking reading for both academic courses and individuals.”
Professor Sirkka Heinonen | Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku
“What Dr. Lombardo has the very real possibility for achieving is to provide a template to understand the future-oriented nature of the human mind and the central importance of futurist thinking in the guidance of human society.”
Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D | Assistant Professor, University of Arizona College of Medicine
“Thomas Lombardo is a polymath with a long-standing reputation among his peers for outstandingly comprehensive treatments of whatever topic he takes to write about, and this book is no exception,… a uniquely comprehensive and interdisciplinary contribution to the literature of psychology, futures studies and related intellectual orientations, as well as to ordinary people who possess a strong sense of curiosity and felt responsibility for the future.”
Oliver Markley, Ph.D. | Professor Emeritus, Univ. Houston-Clear Lake
“Lombardo’s emphasis upon human cultural and individual “flourishing” as the core concept of future psychology adroitly sidesteps the frustrating “two cultures” war between the humanities and the sciences… his new work offers an astute look ahead to a truly comprehensive “psychology of the future,” solidly grounded in a thoroughly evolutionary perspective.”
Donald Sanborn | Assoc. Prof, Emeritus, Philosophy, City Colleges of Chicago
“It’s rare today to find anybody writing about the future who can articulate a grand historical vision of social change and also address the specifics of personal transformation. Tom Lombardo’s excellent book does both, and invites us to think about the future in new and exciting ways.”
Alfonso Montuori | Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies
“Lombardo’s book argues with a deep passion that, whether we realize it or not, we are all futurists and the question of creating a good future is what drives us forward every day, in everything we do… A passionate and important book that challenges you to take your everyday thinking and zoom way out… on a whole new epic scale…a deeply wise book for a wise future.”
Charles Cassidy | Director, Evidence-Based Wisdom
Center for Future Consciousness 