“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 We