Adulthood rites

All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wild

If humans will eventually spread out across the galaxy, then we are among the earliest living beings, with remarkable opportunities to shape the future

You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much. (Published 2016)

The brain reshapes itself for years after adolescence, scientists have found, raising questions about when an adult is mature in the legal sense.

Re:collection | Home

If the yardsticks of maturity are an understanding, respect and recognition of history, then we are still in utero.

What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools

Those who are convinced that there is more to things spend their time chasing it and not finding it often as not, and those who are convinced there isn't find themselves frustrated at the abyss.

Open source confronts its midlife crisis | The Observation Deck

Midlife is tough: the idealism of youth has faded, as has inevitably some of its fitness and vigor. At the same time, the responsibilities of adulthood have grown: the kids that were such a fresh adventure when they were infants and toddlers are now grappling with their own transition into adulthood – and you try to remind yourself that the kids that you have sacrificed so much for probably don’t actually hate your guts, regardless of that post they just liked on the ‘gram. Making things more challenging, while you are navigating the turbulence of teenagers, your own parents are likely entering life’s twilight, needing help in new ways from their adult children. By midlife, in addition to the singular joys of life, you have also likely experienced its terrible sorrows: death, heartbreak, betrayal. Taken together, the fading of youth, the growth in responsibility and the endurance of misfortune can lead to cynicism or (worse) drastic and poorly thought-out choices. Add in a little fear of mortality and some existential dread, and you have the stuff of which midlife crises are made…

Is this the meaning of life? | John Stewart

John Stewart: Developments in evolutionary theory suggest we have a central role to play in the future of the universe

Opinion | We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment (Published 2017)

What best distinguishes human beings from other animals is our foresight, as scientists are just beginning to recognize.

Grow like Trees: An Organic Approach to Societal Regrowth

2026 is the year that system breakdown became impossible to deny.  Democratic norms, societal norms, rule of law, the fabric of the social contract tearing as we watch. Or hide, unwilling or unable to face the unravelling. The hopeful among us see opportunity through the dark.  Tentatively or boldly we

Meaning of Life – Evolution – Reason and Meaning

Below is an excerpt of comments from an astute reader of my  book, The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Perspectives:

LF11 - Cohort Futures

On belonging, becoming, and communities with a clock.

Is Life Just Different? | Quanta Magazine

The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?

Developmental Spaces: Cultural incubators for a time of transformation | Conscious Communities

The whitepaper. Rosie Bell, Boaz Feldman and Rufus Pollock, September 2025.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life as We Don't Know It

Scientists are abandoning conventional thinking to search for extraterrestrial creatures that bear little resemblance to Earthlings

We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age

The transition from small hunter-gatherer societies into complex civilizations gave rise to the first Axial Age. Today, the planetary polycrisis of climate chaos, mass migration, increasing warfare and transformative AI represents a rupture of comparable magnitude.

Meaning in Life as Being Part of Cosmic Evolution

Walt Whitman Below is an excerpt of comments from an astute reader of my  book, The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Perspectives: The scope of the universe …