
The Future is part of the Extended Seminars Collection. Alan discusses the ways in which methods of communication, religion, social constructs, and political themes have developed over time.
3.7.2 The Future of Communications Part 2
So then, let's inquire carefully into the origin of all this, because before we explore the future of communication, through symbols, through words, we've got to look a little bit at its past. At some point in the development of mankind, and nobody historically knows...
3.7.3 The Future of Communications Part 3
So then, it has been said that our modern systems of communication are an extension into the external world of man’s nervous system. Telephones, telegraph, radio, television: all this network of electronic devices is extending our nervous system in the same way as a...
3.7.4 The Future of Communications Part 4
When we communicate what are we really communicating about? What is the content of communication? Because you see, McLuhan's come up with a very strange idea, that the medium itself is the message or putting it in a punny way to make it clearer, the medium is the...
3.7.5 The Future of Communications Part 5
You may remember that this morning I described the situation as follows. I'm talking to you, and you understand what my words mean. Situation A. Situation B is taking the situation A as a whole my talking to you, and you understanding what I mean what does that...
3.7.6 The Future of Communications Part 6
I suppose some of you have read a book of mine called The Joyous Cosmology, in which I referred to once a very curious experience I had with Hindu music. I happen to have acquired from Timothy Leary some of this extraordinary Mexican mushroom. And I was feeling awful....
3.7.7 The Future of Politics Part 1
This then, is the last seminar in the series of seminars on the future. Devoted to the subject of the future of politics. All along, I've been emphasizing a particular point. Which is this: that the very idea of the future, has something spurious in it. That to live...
3.7.8 The Future of Politics Part 2
So now, I want to contrast out of Asian sources, two great theories about politics. Respectively, from two books. The first book is the author Shastra. Which is the manual of political wisdom, originating from what you might call the great period of medieval India....
3.7.9 The Future of Politics Part 3
At the end of the question period yesterday, I said we had come to something which I would have to take up today. And this arose because we were discussing the problem of prediction, which is of course related to the problem of control. I had made a passing reference...
3.7.15 Time and the Future Part 1
So this is the first of a series of four weekends devoted to the subject of the future. And each session is pretty much each weekend is pretty much self-contained. There's a certain continuity but it's moving towards the center point from various different points on a...
3.7.16 Time and the Future Part 2
I was discussing this morning. The way in which time which is a measure of motion, involves us in certain illusions. Principally what I call the historical illusion. That is to say, that the meaning of human life lies in living through a progression of events, which...
3.7.17 Time and the Future Part 3
At the end of the question period yesterday, I said with under something which I would have to take up today. And this arose because we were discussing the problem of prediction. Which is of course related to the problem of control. I had made a passing reference in...
3.7.18 Time and the Future Part 4
Well we come out of the most difficult part of the seminar. And in, by way of preface, I want to say, to reemphasize the point that I've made already, that in presenting ideas, I exaggerate. The reason for this is. That they are that insofar as I present ideas....
3.7.1 The Future of Communications Part 1
This is part of a series of seminars on the future. And, last weekend, we were discussing the very nature of time. And I want to give a sort of summary of what we were talking about before going into this particular weekend's discussion which is the future of...
3.7.11 The Future of Religion Part 1
This weekend is devoted to the future of religion, and I've introduced one kind of paradoxical gimmick into the series of seminars by saying that the best kind of future we can envisage is one in which we get rid of the idea of the future as a an area of experience...
3.7.12 The Future of Religion Part 2
Well, now the next question that arises in discussing the future of religion is whether Judaism and Christianity can in some way be saved? And this is a question with many aspects to it. It isn't only a question of the reinterpretation of doctrines, what [the] Pope...
3.7.14 The Future of Religion Part 4
In this morning's seminar, I was talking about the religion of no religion. From a social point of view, I said that this afternoon I would talk about it from an individual or personal point of view. And I was suggesting that society as a cohesive force needs a...
3.7.13 The Future of Religion Part 3
First of all, the problem of the death of God. Theology. And secondly, the problem of whether the Jewish and Christian traditions can be in some way revived. Today, I am going to talk about the future of religion in the first session from a social point of view. And...
3.7.10 The Future of Politics Part 4
3.7.1 The Future of Communications Part 1
This is part of a series of seminars on the future. And, last weekend, we were discussing the very nature of time. And I want to give a sort of summary of what we were talking about before going into this particular weekend's discussion which is the future of...