The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness

A R T I C L E
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The Evolution and Psychology of Future
Consciousness
Tom Lombardo
Rio Salado College
Center for Future Consciousness
United States
Abstract
This paper describes the psychology of future consciousness and its evolution and historical develop-
ment from prehistoric to contemporary times. Visions of the future are described pertaining to ancient religion
and myth; the rise of Western science, rationalism, and the secular theory of progress; the Romantic counter-
reaction; science fiction and future studies; modern Eastern and Western thinking; and contemporary para-
digms highlighting evolution, technology, psychology, society, religion, and integrative perspectives, culminat-
ing in a discussion of wisdom and the Second Enlightenment.
Keywords: Future Consciousness, Psychology, Evolution, History, Mythic Narrative, Science, Enlightenment,
Romanticism, Optimism and Pessimism, Reciprocity, Competition, Progress, Science Fiction, Future Studies,
Technology, Social Theories, Integrative Theories, Eastern and Western Perspectives, Wisdom
Introduction
"It is not the fruits of past success but the living in and for the future in which human intelli-
gence proves itself." (Friedrich von Hayek)
Future consciousness is the total set of psychological abilities, concepts, and experiences
humans use in understanding and dealing with the future. Future consciousness is part of our gener-
al awareness of time, our temporal consciousness of past, present, and future. It includes the normal
human capacities to anticipate, predict, and imagine the future, to have hopes, dreams, and fears
about the future, and to set goals and plans for the future. Future consciousness involves thinking
about the future, evaluating different possibilities and choices, and having feelings, motives, and
attitudes about the future. It also includes the total set of ideas, visions, theories, and beliefs humans
Journal of Futures Studies, August 2007, 12(1): 1 - 24

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Journal of Futures Studies
have about the future – the cognitive and theoretical content of future consciousness
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp.5-6).
The expression "future consciousness" and the systematic study of its nature date
back at least as far as the work of Öystein Sande and Johan Galtung in the 1970s.
Galtung described "future consciousness" as being conscious of what is possible,
probable, and desirable in the future. He surveyed, in his classic Images of the World
in the Year 2000 study, the level of intensity and extent (or length) of future conscious-
ness among a large sample of the general population in ten selected countries in
Europe and Asia. (Ornauer, et.al, 1976; Galtung, 1982) Basing his work on Galtung's
"Ten Nation Study," Sande proposed six fundamental dimensions of future conscious-
ness: Length, level of interest (personal, national, and world), optimism versus pes-
simism, influence, expectations (what people think will happen), and values (what
people want to happen). (Sande, 1972) As my colleague, Jonathon Richter, discusses
at length, a similar concept, "future time perspective," originally inspired by the work
of Kurt Lewin in the 1930s, identifies five dimensions: Extension, coherence, density,
directionality, and affectivity; this very similar conceptual model of consciousness of
the future has been studied by a number of researchers in psychology throughout the
1980s and 1990s. (Richter, 2003)
In this paper I expand upon the psychological scope and detail of these studies
and add evolutionary, historical, and cross cultural perspectives. Building on the work
in my two books, The Evolution of Future Consciousness and Contemporary Futurist
Thought (Lombardo, 2006a; Lombardo, 2006b), I will present a broad theoretical
overview of the evolution, psychological structure, historical development, contempo-
rary breadth, and potential future direction of future consciousness. Some of my main
hypotheses are: Humanity, from its most prehistoric beginnings, has possessed some
rudimentary level of future consciousness; future consciousness has progressively
evolved and diversified through human history; all of the basic capacities of human
psychology are involved in future consciousness; all the main systems of religious,
philosophical, scientific, and social thought have informed future consciousness; and
future consciousness should continue to evolve and enrich in the future. In the conclu-
sion I will propose that the virtue of wisdom, which I describe at the end of this paper,
is the highest evolutionary expression of future consciousness and should be actively
cultivated and pursued in our creative journey into the future.
Psychological Evolution and Prehistory
Future consciousness is built upon the perceptual awareness of time, of past, pres-
ent, and future. Through perception, humans, as well as animals, are aware of dura-
tion, stability, and change; of becoming and passing away; of patterns, rhythms, and
forms of change; and of an experiential direction to time. The perception of time is
contextual, built on the relative awareness of persistence and change and anchored to
concrete events and the temporal relationships between events in the environment.
Consequently there is no perception of absolute time or the experience of a timeless
and instantaneous now. Perception involves the experience of duration, for persistence
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and change can not be defined independent of duration. Further, although perceptual

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The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness
awareness clearly embodies flow, there is also an awareness of fundamental continu-
ities in the environment. Perception also involves experiences of becoming and pass-
ing away, of discontinuities in time, anchoring the future and the past and giving expe-
riential perceptual time a direction. Perception may be limited in temporal expanse,
but it is not restricted to an absolute and timeless here and now or a totally fluid trans-
formation (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 7-13).
Not only do all animals have basic perceptual abilities, all animals appear to
demonstrate the capacity to learn. Learning involves the acquisition of new behaviors
or new knowledge due to interactions with the environment. Learning reflects the past
but is used in dealing with the present as well as anticipating the future. The phenome-
na of learning and memory illustrate that awareness of the past is tied to awareness of
the future. As we acquire knowledge and understanding of the past, our capacity to
anticipate and predict the future grows – the same areas of the brain are used in recol-
lecting the past and anticipating the future (Lombardo, 2007). Through perception and
ongoing interaction with the environment, animals learn about patterns of change and
regularities in the environment and demonstrate informed anticipation regarding the
future. Temporal consciousness, through learning and memory, expands in both direc-
tions away from the more narrow confines of perception and the relative here and now
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 28-29, 82-83).
Fundamental to the psychology and behavior of animals that can experience emo-
tion, are the complementary feelings of hope and fear. Fear is the emotional anticipa-
tion of something painful or destructive; hope is the emotional anticipation of some-
thing pleasurable or life enhancing. Hope and fear have a future focus – they are antic-
ipatory. Animals and humans act to realize what is hoped for and avoid or escape from
what is feared. Beginning with such primitive emotionally based motives, both ani-
mals and humans show a variety of goal-directed and purposeful types of behavior.
Behavior directed toward a goal is both purposeful and future oriented, since a goal is
something that is realized in the future as a consequence of behavior. When an animal
searches for a mate or for food, the search behavior is future focused. Aside from the
emotional dimension of hope and fear, there can be a cognitive dimension as well,
where the anticipated event (positive or negative) is imagined in the conscious mind,
and perhaps even thought about or ruminated over. Hence, as a concluding general
point, I would suggest that the basic emotions of hope and fear, though clearly elabo-
rated and enriched in humans through thought and other cognitive processes, form the
core of future consciousness and emotionally color and direct all our visions and ideas
about the future (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 13-27; Lombardo, 2006c).
Early hominids such as Australopithecus and Homo habilis undoubtedly exhibited
goal-directed behavior, experienced both hope and fear, and also demonstrated learn-
ing and had memories of the past. But new features of future consciousness emerged
in these earliest prehistoric ancestors of humans. The construction and utilization of
primitive tools is one paradigm example of a new development in future conscious-
ness, since tools are made (in the here and now) to serve some future end. Tool con-
struction and use is also a clear example of planning, for a series of behavioral steps
are executed in a certain order to achieve some end. The immense capacity for the cre-
ation and use of all forms of physical instrumentality, from axes, bowls, and plows to
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Journal of Futures Studies
automobiles, telephones, and computers, is one of the distinguishing features of our
species; through tools we manipulate and affect our environment to achieve complex
ends; we alter our environment to create transformed living and working spaces. In all
cases, future consciousness is integral to the realization of this broad and multi-faceted
ability. The evidence for tool construction and use in Australopithecus is somewhat
controversial, but Homo habilis almost certainly made and used tools (Lombardo,
2006a, pp. 88-89).
Various explanations have been presented for the acceleration of brain size in our
ancestors (including the emergence of tools), but a common one is that the increasing
complexity of social organization among our ancestors pushed the evolution of the
brain. Another example of a new form of future consciousness that is connected with
both social organization, as well as the use of tools and hunting behavior, is that our
ancestors collectively hunted and butchered animals and brought the meat back to
their social group before consuming it. This is delayed gratification practiced by the
group to serve the needs of the group – a clear example of social future consciousness
– and in fact, this fundamental mode of behavior is critical to any functioning human
organization in numerous ways (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 89-94).
Early hominids appeared to move from an alpha male-dominated social order,
where the dominant male had free sexual access to all females in the group, to male-
female bonding that involved long term commitment revolving around the raising and
protecting of the young and the sharing of food and sex (Wade, 2006). This long-term
negotiation represented a clear step forward in future consciousness, again with a
social dimension, but now bringing in additional qualities such as fidelity and roman-
tic love (Fisher, 1992). It has been argued that this form of male-female bonding
brought into play decision making, choice, and the capacity of free will overriding the
simple impulsive (and, for the female, submissive) act of sexual intercourse with
whomever whenever (Shlain, 2003).
Another critical development in future consciousness during prehistory was the
psychological discovery or realization of individual death. Death, of course, is an
observable phenomenon in the saga of life, but at some point in our prehistory we
came to realize that death personally awaits us all in the future. Coincident with this
realization we began to bury the dead and perhaps as early as 50,000 years ago had
some conception of religion and possibly an afterlife (Fraser, 1987). Future conscious-
ness now stretched beyond the observable natural world into some type of imagined
world beyond.
Also during the period of 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, when our ancestors had
achieved a relatively modern physique and anatomy, both representational imagery
and spoken language emerged. (The time range for the emergence of full blown
human language is still somewhat controversial.) These twin capacities provided a
monumental boost to future consciousness. If we could paint pictures on the walls of
caves, clearly we possessed the capacity for imagination – mentally representing visu-
al objects that were not present. Language provided a symbolic system, again repre-
senting objects and events not perceptually present, and supported complex thought
patterns. In fact, both representational art and symbolic language offered "thinking
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The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 98-105). Imagination and language, supporting thought, fur-
ther freed the human mind from the confines of the actual and the present and expand-
ed the range of both historical and future consciousness considerably. The psychiatrist
Anthony Reading (2004) strongly argues that language and symbolic thinking was
critical to the emergence of future consciousness. Also, cave paintings from around
40,000 years ago frequently appear to be arranged in an order that is narrative in form
– they look like mythograms – sequences of pictures that tell stories. Story telling,
whether through pictures or words, became a critical emergent feature of future con-
sciousness in the ages to follow (White, 2003; Wade, 2006).
Narrative, Myth, and Abstraction
Mythic thinking is a fundamental mode of human understanding (Donald, 1991)
and was a highly important developmental stage in the evolution of future conscious-
ness. Myths are narratives and serve as a key foundational component in all of the
major world religions. The earliest recorded linguistically expressed thoughts on the
future are myths dating back 5000 years. Archaeological evidence though can trace
back the earliest mythic figures to at least 15,000 years ago, from ancient pictorial and
sculptural representations, and the two major mythic figures identified in these pre-
historical findings are the mother goddess and a male counterpart – either a hunter or a
bull (representing the male side of fertility). The earliest recorded myths in linguistic
narrative form usually contain some version of these two central archetypes, the
female more closely connected with the themes of nurturance, fertility, and coopera-
tion, and the central male archetype more closely associated with competition, vio-
lence, and warfare. In the most ancient myths, the power of creativity, including the
capacity to raise the dead back to life, is associated with the female goddess, but this
shifts over in later myths to the male. The male gains control of the future.
Within myth, the future, as well as the past, is portrayed in narrative and dramatic
form and personified through the main gods and goddesses who play out the saga of
nature, human civilization, and the cosmos. Through myth, future consciousness is
personified and dramatized (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 144-156).
It should be noted though that imagery, symbolism, and various forms of repre-
sentational art continue to develop along with the linguistic stream of narrative myth;
imagery is often combined with the word and the story. Even into the present day, the
word and the image both provide highly influential ways to represent the future within
human consciousness (Shlain, 1998).
Certain fundamental themes regarding the nature and meaning of life emerge in
early myths and many of these themes are connected with humanity's growing under-
standing of time and the future. The struggle and oscillation of order and chaos, of
creation and destruction, of love and hate, and good and evil are common themes in
numerous early myths across the globe. Anchored by such complementary or bipolar
archetypal themes, the cyclic theory of time emerges as an extremely influential and
pervasive view, showing up in Egyptian, Taoist, Judaic, and Indian religion and myth.
Time, both past and future, is conceptualized as a circle and a harmonious balancing
of complementary forces. The Taoist Yin-yang is perhaps the paradigm case of this
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Journal of Futures Studies
view of reality and time; everything in reality is conceptualized in terms of balanced
complements (or reciprocities) – male and female, light and darkness, heaven and
earth – and time is an orderly process of unending oscillation between complements.
The future repeats the past, and the future can be foretold, but for the purpose of living
harmoniously with the flow of the Tao, rather than to control it. Yet there is also the
alternative idea, from as early on in the history of human civilization as ancient
Babylonia and Zoroastrianism, that cosmic and human history has a progressive
dimension, often represented as either the triumph of order over chaos or good over
evil. This is the beginning of the linear view of time – of history and the future. Time
is a line, rather than a circle. Further, in the future, humans will need to play an active
role in the realization of this progressive movement to time. We are not seen as pas-
sive in the "shape of things to come" (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 157-185).
In modern psychology, significant research has been devoted to the oppositional
attitudes of optimism and pessimism (Seligman, 1998). As Polak (1973) has argued,
human civilizations thrive when they embrace a positive or progressive vision of their
future (optimism), and human civilizations decline when visions of the future become
pessimistic or apathetic. Basically these two attitudes, of optimism and pessimism,
derive from the basic human emotions of hope (optimism) and fear (pessimism)
regarding the future. Connected to the attitudes of optimism and pessimism are the
psychological attributes of self-efficacy and perceived helplessness. Both individuals
and cultures are optimistic about the future if they believe they have power in guiding
it or the gods are helping them, and are pessimistic and depressed about the future if
they feel helpless or the gods are against them (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 19-23, 48-50).
Mythic narratives of the future also contained an ethical or moral dimension. The
struggle of good and evil is central to the Zoroastrian story of human history and the
future and all major Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and associat-
ed narratives echo this moral interpretation of the unfolding of history. Zoroastrianism
probably influenced all these Western religions, directly or indirectly (Noss, 1999). In
general, most mythic narratives identified various virtues and ethical values to be
emulated and followed in life, and these virtues and values provided a prescriptive
direction for how to live and realize what was best in life, in the present and in the
future. Through the actions of mythic (archetypal) figures represented in these stories,
ideals of thought, emotion, and behavior were illustrated and supported. The norma-
tive or prescriptive dimension of future consciousness that began with the mythic nar-
rative continues up through the present day, and is also tied to the basic human emo-
tion of hope, for what we hope for frequently defines what we believe is the good.
A key normative principle that emerged in ancient times was reciprocity.
Reciprocity served as the foundation for the idea of justice, as well as trade and ethical
behavior within or between social groups. In the East, the idea is central to both
Confucian and Taoist philosophy. Reciprocity is connected with the idea of coopera-
tion. Robert Wright (2000) argues that the ongoing creation of mutually beneficial
transactions – cooperation that leads to a positive reciprocity - defines the fundamental
progressive direction within the growth of human civilizations. Howard Bloom (2000)
argues that reciprocity (which includes the principle of justice) and conquest are the
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two fundamental forces that have shaped human history. Bringing the psychology of

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The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness
the sexes into this discussion, Riane Eisler (1987, 1995) contends that early goddess-
centered cultures were partnership societies emphasizing cooperation, but these god-
dess-centered cultures were replaced by male centered god cultures that emphasized
domination, war, and competition. Humans appear to have a long history of violence
and conquest dating back tens of thousands of years, at least coincident, if not prior to
the emergence of goddess cultures. All told though, the mythic male and female arche-
types seem to represent two key features of human psychology that have strongly
influenced the nature of future consciousness and more generally the structure and
dynamics of human affairs. Is the future realized through competition, violence, and
domination or is the future realized through cooperation, nurturance, and partnership?
These two mindsets and approaches to life have vied with each other throughout
human history in determining the course of the future. Interestingly the idea of reci-
procity figures in both approaches to life, for "an eye for an eye" – retributive justice –
embodies the idea of reciprocity as well.
Although ideals regarding life and the future initially were represented in mythic
or narrative form, another mode of human understanding became increasingly power-
ful in ancient times and provided an alternative way to represent ethical values, as
well as the nature of reality and human existence. This new mode of thinking was the
abstract, theoretic, and logical/rational. One can observe the beginnings and eventual
ascendancy of this way of thinking in ancient Chinese, Indian, and Judaic writings, but
it is the ancient Greeks who are most closely associated with bringing this cognitive
capacity to full fruition. Instead of describing reality in terms of narratives populated
with personified beings, the abstract theoretic mode of thinking describes reality in
terms of general principles and ideas that are logically or conceptually connected
rather than linked through narrative and drama. Abstract ethical thinking shows up in
Hammurabi's Code and Moses' Ten Commandments, but in the ancient Greeks we
find highly developed abstract philosophies, incorporating ethics, ontology and episte-
mology, and the beginnings of science, in numerous writers, such as Parmenides,
Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 185-204).
The line though between the pre-Greek and the mythic versus the Greek and the
rational/abstract should not be drawn too sharply, for at least two reasons. First, as the
above discussion illustrated, there were clearly theoretic and abstract qualities embed-
ded in mythic-religious thinking. Aside from the theoretic qualities connected with
Taoist philosophy, early Hinduism, as expressed within both the Rig-Veda and the
Upanishads, exhibits a strong abstract dimension within its cosmology and theory of
reality. Second, early Greek philosophers and scientists were almost certainly influ-
enced by ideas that originated in either ancient Egypt or even the East. The idea of an
"eternal one" contained in Parmenides resonates with the Hindu concept of Brahman,
and the idea that reality is flow, involving a ongoing interaction of "opposites", as
espoused by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, sounds very much like the Taoist Yin-
yang.
Further, it should be noted that the ancient Greeks were not simply rational beings
(but then what humans are?). Human emotion – the passions – figured significantly in
Greek life, in art, literature, and social festivals. The classic distinction between the
Apollonian and the Dionysian is intended to capture the two sides of the Greek psy-
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Journal of Futures Studies
che. The Apollonian represents the rational side – the world of order and thought –
whereas the Dionysian, clearly expressed in the various celebratory activities of
ancient Greeks, represents the emotional and passionate side of human life – of per-
sonal abandonment - and is often associated with the chaotic and impulsive
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 185-187). These two modes of experiencing the world, which
are not simply Greek but show up in human psychology across the globe, have clearly
colored and structured the evolution of future consciousness. For example, in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries, the successive European philosophical movements of
the Enlightenment and Romanticism express, respectively, the Apollonian (rational)
and the Dionysian (emotional) approaches to life and to the future. Should reason
guide us into tomorrow or should emotion and passion?
Another feature in the evolution of future consciousness in pre-modern times is
the development of history as a discipline of study. Myths, of course, contained histo-
ries of both humanity and the cosmos, but at least as early as Thucydides, history
began to acquire more scientific and abstract qualities. Theories of history emerged,
and these theories connected the past with the future. Temporal consciousness was
expanded and enriched in both directions away from the present, with a principled and
abstract understanding of the past providing a foundation for predicting the future
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 209-210). (To recall, memory serves future consciousness.)
History and the future were, in fact, tied together in both directions. One can concep-
tualize the future as a consequence of the past, but one can conceptualize the past as
guided or directed by "intended future ends." The second mode of thinking is teleolog-
ical and the Greeks, as well as many other cultures, frequently saw the saga of time as
leading to some destined or providentially guided end. The teleological mode of think-
ing about time shows up both in Eastern and Western histories, philosophies, and
myths-religions.
The teleological mindset is clearly present in St. Augustine's vision of the future,
where significant events in the past, such as the story of Adam, Eve and the Garden of
Eden, and the death and resurrection of Christ pre-figure (point toward) coming events
in the future. Human history, according to Augustine, is being guided toward a pre-
determined end involving a transformation of the earth and ascension into Heaven of
all deserving human souls. Augustine's theory of time is linear and progressive and,
although religious and theistic, sets the stage for the secular concept of progress that
emerges in the West in modern times (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 236-241).
Modern History, Evolution, and Science Fiction
The emergence of science in modern times is usually associated with the triumph
of rationalism and empiricism over myth and superstition. Science provided a mode of
understanding and investigation into reality that, its practitioners and advocates
believed, was superior to religion and myth. The principles of rationalism and empiri-
cism, as developed by leaders of the European Enlightenment and the Science
Revolution, presumably provided a method for understanding reality (including the
past) and predicting and more effectively guiding the future. Beginning with Galileo,
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teleological explanations of reality were also rejected – for Galileo, the past deter-

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The Evolution and Psychology of Future Consciousness
mines the future and not vice versa. The philosophers of the Western Enlightenment
embraced the concept of progress in time – that the future could be better than the past
(according to many of them human history had already demonstrated this positive
direction across time) and they believed that the key to maximizing the forward
motion of human civilization was through science and reason. Abandoning a religious
or mythic foundation for ethics and morals, they sought to find secular ideals and val-
ues that could be supported through reason and would provide a normative direction
for the future. Utopian visions emerged, such as in Francis Bacon, Condorcet, Marx,
and Saint-Simon, which outlined ideal societies that could exist in the future if the
principles of science, reason, and secular thinking were followed faithfully
(Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 290-339).
Science was a clear expression of the Apollonian mindset in humans – to attempt
to understand reality in terms of abstract, theoretical, and logical principles. Within
science, the Apollonian was coupled with empiricism – the attempt to understand real-
ity through detailed observation and experimentation. In many respects, the European
Enlightenment was a philosophical, political, and social expression of the scientific
attitude, with the clear intent of applying it to the future direction of humanity.
However, this approach to life ran into opposition and conflict on at least two major
fronts. First, the Romantic reaction rejected the supremacy of reason and science as a
way to understand and find meaning in life, as well as a way to guide the future. For
the Romanticists, science and reason, and their offspring, technology, industry, and
social bureaucracy, were leading to a repressive and inhuman future. What the
Enlightenment philosophers hoped for as a "brave new world," the Romanticists
feared as some dark nightmare or hell on earth (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 357-375).
Secondly, the vision of reality and the future which emerged in Western Europe in
modern times was increasingly attacked as being Eurocentric, elitist, and self-serving.
Different non-Western cultures around the world, based upon their respective histories
and values, had developed alternative views of reality and the future, but the modern
West seemed intent upon assimilating everyone into their mindset and way of life
regarding the future (Watson, 2005; Nisbet, 1994; Sardar, 1999a).
As noted earlier, humanity (predominately with males) has a long history of war-
like behavior, violence, and conquest. This general mindset and mode of behavior is
not limited to the West, but shows up pervasively across the globe (Bloom, 1995;
Ghiglieri, 1999). Further, the psychology of violence and conquest provides a "dark
vein" within the complex tapestry of future consciousness in that conquest through
war and violence has a strong future focus to it – the intent is to forcefully direct the
future (of others) toward a specific end. Conquest can occur through various ways and
not just military violence. There can be economic, political, or cultural competition
with the intent to vanquish or assimilate the adversary. The spread of Western culture
throughout the modern world over the last two centuries, whether through military
might or social indoctrination, has been frequently seen as an attempt to conquer and
dominate the minds and behaviors of people around the world. Clearly what is at stake
here is what vision (or visions) of the future will control the direction of humanity. I
highlight this point, since when I turn to contemporary theories of the future, it is
important to see that different contemporary theories exist in a state of competition
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Journal of Futures Studies
with each other. We not only fight over the future through physical violence, we also
fight over it at a social and psychological level, attempting to conquer the minds of
others through ideas, arguments, promises, economics, and enticing images.
The competitive vision of reality provided another major theme in nineteenth-cen-
tury Western thinking on progress and the future. First, Adam Smith formulated the
basic principles of economic capitalism which promised, at least at a material level,
continued progress in the future based on the idea of competitive production and con-
sumer selection of the best products in the marketplace (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 320-
322). Second, the idea of evolution in the natural world emerged as a central idea in
science, especially after the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species. Though
Darwin also talked about cooperation in nature, the ideas of competition and "survival
of the fittest" became more closely associated with his theory. Evolution provided a
general scientific theory of progressive change through history that did not depend
upon supernatural or mythic forces, and this theory would serve as the foundation and
inspiration for numerous perspectives of the future (secular and even religious) of the
future in the century and a half ahead up to the present (Lombardo, 2006a, pp. 375-
412).
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new form of future consciousness
exploded on the scene, combining elements of myth, Enlightenment and Romantic
philosophy, science, and evolutionary theory. Beginning in the writings of Jules Verne
and H. G. Wells, science fiction synthesized the narrative form and archetypal and
moral features of myth with the techno-scientific and secular extrapolations of
Western thinking. Science fiction was born with an equal mixture of fear and hope
regarding the future, bringing both the optimism of science and the Enlightenment and
the pessimism of Romanticism regarding the secular and technological promises of
the modern West. It was also both Apollonian and Dionysian, weaving abstract and
theoretical science together with human passion, adventure, excitement, and terror.
Both awe and wonder, as well as fear and trembling, were experienced within science
fiction; the future was felt as well as thought and imagined. The future was also per-
sonified through the characters of its stories.
Though science fiction is often narrowly identified with technological extrapola-
tion, space travel, aliens, and robots and computers run amuck, as the twentieth centu-
ry unfolded, with its social, political, and cultural dramas, science fiction evolved into
rich and comprehensive story telling about the future, covering all aspects of the
future, from science and technology, to psychology and future human evolution, the
sexes, society, religion, and the environment. The future of cities, the future of war,
the future of love and human relationships, the future of life on the earth, and the
future of spirituality, among many other topics, has been fodder for its stories. Science
fiction can be seen as thought experiments about the future – "what if" scenarios – but
perhaps most centrally, as embodying the new mythology of the future (Lombardo,
2006b).
One key strength of science fiction is the diversity of its visions of the future.
There are, of course, both optimistic and pessimistic visions, plus many other ones
that do not fit neatly into either category (include the strange, bizarre, and disconcert-
10
ing). Drawing upon some classics in contemporary science fiction, we also find the

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