Future Fossils Podcast Ep. 8 - Kingsley Dennis (New Monasticism)

In this episode we hang out with Kingsley Dennis, prolific author and one of the most articulate voices in the emerging global movement of “new monasticism.”

“The battlefield has gone more and more internally, more into our minds.”

Kingsley Dennis

http://kingsleydennis.com/

Kingsley joined us from his gorgeous home in Spain to talk about…well, almost everything:

– Reimagining the planet as a living cell with the help of biologist Lewis Thomas;

– Flocking and schooling behavior in humans, and how outlier “weirdos” form the skin/edges/sensate drivers of culture (a shift from the periphery, not the center);

– Gregory Bateson’s “difference that makes a difference” and information as inherently meaningful (a qualitative dimension to “data” that we largely ignore, but will be integrated into the wisdom of a mature society);

– Violent revolutions in the aftermath of new information technologies, and the deconstruction of hierarchical control – trees falling and saplings springing up;

– Time compression in a digital society and the increasingly inhospitable urban environment optimized for machines;

– Time compression in psychology and increased rates of travel and communication;

– New generations will be brought up in a fully digital society, and their epigenetic response will sprout new organs of perception, instinctively more adjusted and naturalized to time-space compression;

– Evolutionary whiplash vs. cruising altitude comfort/complacency;

– Soul work and evolution through difficulty:

“Disruptive energy is actually needed in order to catalyze the shift to a different order [but] it’s hard to talk about this without sounding distant.”