Connecting to the Future

How to Reach the Next Step in Human Development

“Before metamorphosis” (detail) by Sophie

On this website we will be reporting on our Connecting to the Future project of which the first stage is writing a book.
Will you support our work?

In this book, we want to share our findings in the unknown territory of human experience that we think is of paramount importance to human evolution for the future. In exploring this new land, we have encountered three phenomena: transformation signals, dynamic skills, and ontological invitations. Currently, we see ourselves as a tributary to those who have already set foot there and come back with remarkable information. Informed by this, we have discovered a unique approach to the evolution of human needs and skills. Our story is about how we can move the world toward healthy progress, with new opportunities for us to learn and develop as individuals and collectives.

There has been no other time in history where human influence has been so strong and visible here on Earth. Regarding the future, great new challenges have appeared on our doorstep that demand societies to change. Climate change, the destruction of nature, and growing inequality are some of the symptoms that all point to a very fundamental problem, which is the way we think and act as human beings.

So, the question becomes ‘How do we as human beings need to change and grow to overcome these issues?’ This is what we are tackling in this book. To address that very question, we need to look at our behavior historically as social beings. We also need some robust tools for lighting the way forward. In particular, we need an approach that is practical enough to give us the direction and guidance for the radical change that is needed.

We have lost the connection to the future and it is high time to get it back. Essentially, our connection to the future relies on the ability to transform ourselves through learning.

Currently, we progress predominantly within the existing parameters of our convictions, belief systems, worldviews, or observational disciplines. This means that everything we develop, create, discover, research, and are willing to experience only enters our conscious perception within these parameters. In other words, we are stuck with the ways we have learned to fulfill our basic needs in the last hundreds of years.

The development of industrial societies meant a huge leap forward in how we learned to respond to this call. In essence, our learning has been based on mastering the fulfillment of our basic needs: food, safety, shelter, self-expression, self-determination, and the ability to enjoy. It is only natural that those principles drive our thoughts, feelings and actions. The management of our basic needs over a long period of development has provided us with a powerful skillset that does just that: securing our basic needs through trying to control, regulate and steer life itself. Managing in this sense also means creating a rather static world view that only addresses our basic need skills. All our actions are based on these deeply engrained convictions.

We will take a historical look at the perspective of learning: How the two great influential forces of how to discern and how to correlate have enabled our learning capacity through the development of sensors, processors and drivers. Moreover, we will explore the role of meaning and the sense of future to our abilities to transform. Continue reading…

We need to upgrade our inherited notion that the earth will unconditionally provide us with everything.

Our latest posts

Flat Screenery

by Peter Paul Gerbrands | Jun 16, 2019

I started to write this blog at the train station when I saw all the people looking at their screens. I could only awe at the genius of Thomas Friedman, who already years ago concluded that the world is flat again. Looking over multiple platforms, only one conclusion...

The Dance of Development

by Jan Peeters | Jun 15, 2019

I've been working on this infographic, based on sketches by Peter Paul, to visualize the Dance of Development (name courtesy of Huibert van Wijngaarden) through which humanity has developed. Work in progress…

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In the different stages of this project we need your support

1
In the first stage we need financial support to have the time to be able to think, design and write.

2In the second stage we need help to present the information in more ways than just as a book: in podcasts, videoclips, infographics, presentations, etc.

3Third stage: In dialogue and cooperation with you, the content needs to be broadened and taken further.

If you want to make a financial donation by other means or are motivated to contribute in any way or please contact us.

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