This course concluded in June 2025 and is now self-paced.
Futures discourse offers two major narratives: a better world is coming, or the end is near. ¿Por qué no los dos? After all, we’re living through the folding-over, twisting, rupturing, and remix of every familiar dyad — self and other, nature and technology, past and future, art and science, creation and discovery. In an age of artificial minds and Eldritch hyperobjects, it’s easy to feel anxious but there is another way to surf the psychedelic experience wrought by the effects of exponential information technologies… a playful, curious embrace of our metamorphosis anchored in deep time, psychedelic futurism, and the zones where science meets contemplative tradition. It’s time to hack the mythic frameworks that no longer seem to cut it and make art with them. Inspired by the work of scholars like William Irwin Thompson, Timothy Morton, Erik Davis, Richard Doyle, and Federico Campagna — and drawing on over twenty years of research into evolutionary dynamics, complex systems science, integral metatheory, and psychonautic high weirdness — paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield will take us on a guided off-road romp through the bizarre and wonderful moirés of biology, philosophy, and mysticism to help us make new sense of our century’s metamorphoses and find stable features we can count on in the strange new worlds to come. This course concluded in June 2025 and is now self-paced. Students will get to:Schedule
Why Take This Course?
Michael Garfield is the author of the forthcoming book How To Live In The Future, an artist, musician, and independent scholar exploring wisdom in the age of magical technologies at Humans On The Loop. His nonlinear resumé links vertebrate paleontology, scientific illustration, public speaking, innovation research, community management, fine art, and stints at The Santa Fe Institute, Mozilla, and The Long Now Foundation. He works as a freelance consultant and welcomes collaborations with anyone who can benefit from working with a weirdo visionary multitool.