Hello – I'm James.
We are not meat robots floating in a meaningless universe.
We are sparklingly aware, divine and dazzling whole humans immersed in a living cosmos.
We're at a point in the human journey where we can no longer rely on old ways of thinking (whether religious or scientific) to tell us what is true about the world.
We can find better ways to live by charting a path beyond categories such as religion and science, spirituality and philosophy.
To live more generative and vital lives, we need to rethink what being human means.
Subscribe to Future:human below, and let's get on the road.
Future:human.
Letters on the road to a more human future.
A few times a month, we take some time to reflect on the meaning that your life brings to you, the nature of the human journey and our place in the cosmos, so you can track new inroads towards a richer, fuller and wiser life.
What wisdom means for you can’t be found in a cookie-cutter ensemble of commonplace ideas. It’s enmeshed in your life.
We’re at a point in the human journey where prescription and dogma no longer serve us.
What wisdom means for you can’t be found in a cookie-cutter ensemble of commonplace ideas. It’s enmeshed in your life.
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
— J R R Tolkien
Still, there are truths and guideposts that can help us to live wiser human lives.
Coming to terms with these truths and guideposts is part and parcel of becoming whole human.
I’m not naming a specific religion, process, perspective or attitude for you. We’re at a point in our human journey where specificity and dogma no longer serve us.
Even the idea of being spiritual, for instance, locks us into a set of patterned responses that shore up a set of intolerant impulses instead of enriching our lives.
These are foundational cultural assumptions that we need to open up.
So instead, let’s meet at the crossroads.
Around here, we follow a small number of principles:
- Scientific materialism is just one way to interpret science. There are other perspectives that keep the mind and human life central. You don't have to follow scientism to believe in science.
- Mystical, paranormal and other surreal experiences are intimate parts of the human condition. You can let them stand without either believing everything you see and hear or explaining the weird away.
- Valuing religion doesn't mean you have to buy into a specific tradition. You don't have to be religious to value belief. You can bring a reflexive, reflective attitude to religious experience.
We don't tie ourselves to any spiritual, philosophical or scientific attitude.
Instead, we embrace intelligent ambivalence, curious openness, and — above all — our whole human heart.
Such a religion of no religion is not antireligion or simple secularism. It is inflected by the religious past and recognizes the cosmic truth of some forms of mystical experience …
But it also rejects identification with any particular historical, doctrinal, and institutional embodiment of those experiences. It sees these not as “choices,” but as plural “expressions” of a shared human spirit.
— Jeff Kripal, The Flip
About me
I’m a scientist with a PhD background in materials science and a senior editor working in education, specialising in grading and assessment.
My current interests range from investing to anthropology, data science to depth psychology, media to mysticism, and from comparative religion to the philosophy of science. It's a big world out there (and inside too).