The headlines of newspapers, television, radio, and cyberspace media remind us every day that our species of over 7 billion members is challenged by ongoing and pending disasters and natural upheavals ? most of them caused by deficiencies in human learning and reasoning. We do not yet understand the implications of bad ideas.  

In this turbulent period of political, economic, and social change, we need (more than ever) a better understanding of the basic role of human beliefs in individual and group behaviors. To understand the impact of our personal worldviews on our interpretations of reality and how we react to it, we must grapple with the memory-building and reshaping functions of our neural circuits, and the role of species consciousness and its existential assumptions.

To make sense of the current complexity of human conflicts today we must take an interdisciplinary approach to self-understanding. Since our science is still rather primitive in its insights into what makes us tick, we have to address our dysfunctions from several angles. I have been working for several months to bring together relevant research on learning and memory in the brain, group beliefs and emotions, and individual patterns of awareness.

Attached here 

is a substantive essay I wrote for the Netherlands-based, international Spanda Journal on the role of worldviews in the development of human societies. It is read by people at all levels with interest in the state of the world.

This attachment 

includes a brief introduction to the Spanda Foundation's work and list of authors for the July issue. I encourage you to register for receipt of this and other issues.

On Tuesday July 17 at 5:00 pm (MDT), I will address this set of issues through a conversation with TV host Regina Meredith about how the human mind matures. We will look at it through our multidimensional individual and group consciousness in a manner somewhat like the popular notion of reincarnation. However, you will be surprised the reality is much more complex and relevant to our current individual and species problems than we have imagined.

The conversation will be streamed on a live Gaiam TV show at this link <http://www.gaiamtv.com/>. If you're not already a member, you can sign on for free for a trial period. (Review some of the Reincarnation Experiment website <reincarnationexperiment.org> if you are not familiar with a scientific oriented approach to reincarnation.) 

On August 4, at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I will continue a discussion of aspects from the Spanda article ? with a particular emphasis of the impact of supernatural worldviews on human history. We will discuss how Romanic-Christian theologians revised the earlier human history of advanced beings (ABs) and retarded evolution of human consciousness. <www.vonward.com> has several sections on current worldviews.

The Michigan conference is the inaugural, annual international conference of the International Big History Association. The IBHA is designed to bring a multidisciplinary approach to important questions. It brings independent scholars like me together with academic researchers, mixing disciplines in a much-needed way. Check out the website here <http://www.ibhanet.org/>. Attend the meeting or follow-up on its accomplishments.

The IBHA seeks to understand the integrated history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods. 

You may also wish to check up on my website <www.vonward.com> for new items, including further very intriguing discoveries of manufactured tunnels under the Bosnian Pyramids project.

With all best wishes, Paul