“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”– Terence McKenna

This week I meet our guest Tom Morgan (LinkedIn, Twitter) in mid-leap as we both make giant bids to meet our destiny and better serve the world. Tom Morgan, who calls himself a “curiosity sherpa” and writes the superb blog What’s Important, worked for years in finance while he grew increasingly compelled by transcendental mysteries. His blog reflects a rare appreciation for the edges of our knowledge and his reputation is for getting high-performing businesspeople to ask deeper questions. In this conversation we discuss complexity and higher intelligences, the heroic metamyth, the alchemy of money, love as an organizing principle in transrational cognition, and holding other people through their personal encounters with the so-called “meaning crisis.”

If this discussion does it for you, look below to find scores more potentially life-changing (certainly mind-altering) talks and essays we discussed therein…

✨ Support The Good Work

• Learn about my new project on wisdom and technology, Humans On The Loop!• Subscribe on Substack or Patreon.• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Server, the Future Fossils Server, and Future Fossils FB Group!• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Buy the music on Bandcamp! This episode features “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts & “Tin Heart” off Double-Edged Sword.• Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I get a small cut from your support of indie booksellers.• Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work.• Read my pitch for Jurassic Worlding, my next book on the future of evolution!

✨ Mentioned Media

Looking Over The Edge – Tom Morgan

For The Person Who Has Everything – Tom Morgan

Adventure Capital: An Interview with Jim O'Shaughnessy – Tom Morgan

Heresies of The Heart – Tom Morgan

The Great Betrayal – Tom Morgan

Tom’s recent five-minute talk at the Sohn Investment Conference

Toward A New Evolutionary Paradigm 1.0 – Michael at SFI in 2019

Intimations Of A New Worldview – Brett Andersen

The Master and His Emissary – Iain McGilchrist

Cognition All The Way Down – Michael Levin and Daniel Dennett at Aeon Magazine

Animism Is Normative Consciousness – Josh Schrei on The Emerald Podcast

The Passion of The Western Mind – Richard Tarnas

Tech Ethics As Psychedelic Parenting – Michael at CBA Innovation Lab

Exodus as Revolution – William Irwin Thompson at the Lindisfarne Association

Picbreeder

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned – Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman

Proof of Spiritual Phenomena – Mona Sobhani

The Phenomenon: Control System, or Developmental Driver? – Stuart Davis

Meditations on Moloch – Slate Star Codex

Studies on Slack – Slate Star Codex

Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. – Michael for Complexity Podcast

✨ Related Episodes:

212 - Manfred Laubichler & Geoffrey West on Life In The Anthropocene & Living Inside The Technosphere

202 - Caveat Magister on Psychomagic, Amusement Parks, & Turning Your Life Into Art

196 - Robert Poynton on Improvisation As A Way of Life

191 - Roland Harwood on Learning To Be Liminal

186 - A Manifesto for Weird Science

161 - On Play & Innovation with Michael Phillip: Hermes, EvoBio, Bitcoin, and Good Noise

150 - A Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs & The Weird with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

125 - Stuart Kauffman on Physics, Life, and The Adjacent Possible

60 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Goes Meta on Everything: Integral Ecology & Impact

45 - Kerri Welch (Fractal Synchronicity & The Future of Time)

3 - Tony Vigorito (Synchronicity)

✨ Other Mentions:

William Irwin Thompson

Carl Jung

Joseph Campbell

Bill Plotkin

Dave Snowden & The Cynefin Framework

Stafford Beer

Frozen 2 (film)

The Matrix (films)