Frail and Feeble Mind: Challenges to Emerging Global Consciousness

This presentation addresses the centrifugal (atomistic) and centripetal (integral) forces bearing on the emergence of a Global Brain and global consciousness. It explores the transformational possibilities of a unified global human consciousness potentially achieved through technology, quantum convergence, and spiritual awakening. It also considers the threats to such a growing awareness from economic and environmental disasters, survivalism, narrow mindedness, greed, and pervasive traditional structures of belief and behavior. It applies Integral, critical futures, and meta-narrative analysis of the forces of convergence and the forces of resistance to global thrival.

Bio: Dr Jones was recently Secretary- General of the World Futures Studies Federation (2001-2005) and now an Executive Board member (2005-2009). Jones was born in the suburbs outside of San Francisco, California USA and raised by parents (first decade) who became missionaries to Latin America (second decade) and he then lived in Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Paraguay. After military service, Jones moved in 1977 to Hawaii with his young daughter Erika to finish his university training.

At the University of Hawaii at Manoa he received his: B.A. in Political Science (1980); M.A. in Alternative Futures, Thesis - Alternative Futures of Space Development (1983); and, Ph.D. in Political Science, Dissertation - Gaia Futures (1989). He was an undergraduate intern with the Hawaii State Senate Judiciary Committee was among the first futures interns with the Institute for Alternative Futures (Washington, D.C.). While in Hawaii he worked as a researcher with the East-West Center, the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research, the Social Science Research Institute, and the Pacific Basin Development Center. Projects included the futures of high technology and telecommunications, alternatives to dispute resolution, climate change and sea level rise, recycling, and coastal zone management. He worked in Tuvalu, American and Western Samoa, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Fiji, and all the major Hawaiian islands.

In 1992, Jones took a position as Professor of Political Science at Eastern Oregon University where he taught American Institutions, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Futures Studies. He served on the Statewide AIDS Planning Committee, executive board of the Model United Nations of the Far West (MUNFW), was active in the Solsys Simulation, the annual CONTACT conference, and the activities of the World Futures Studies Federation (Fellow). In 2000, Jones accepted position as Visiting Associate Professor in the M.S. Studies of the Future program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake where he taught for three years. Courses taught included: Introduction to Futures Studies, World Futures, Qualitative Methods, Women's Futures, Political Design, and Public Service Leadership. While at EOU and at UHCL, he developed a number of these face-to-face courses into online, web-based distance education courses.

Jones has had four major areas of academic and research specialization:

• Futures Studies: alternative futures methodologies, scenario-building, visioning and preferred futures, and workshop design;

• Space Development: space settlements and political design, politics of SETI and First Contact, and long-term space migration;

• Gaian Politics and Futures: women's futures, deep ecology, sustainable futures, indigenous peoples' movements, and the "new" sciences; and,

• Instructional Technology: web- based education, telecommunications futures, role-playing and computer simulations, multi-image presentation, and the politics of media.

Jones has attended WFSF courses in Dubrovnik , Croatia and Budapest , Hungary , and futures conferences in the USA , Sweden , Spain , Costa Rica , Hungary , Finland , Russia , Romania , Hawaii , Australia , Taiwan , Japan , and has been actively involved in the WFSF since 1981. He currently lives in the beach community of Lanikai in Kailua , Hawai`i . He is a professional consulting futurist and public speaker (neoFutures.com) specializing in emerging issues analysis and environmental futures.