Episode Details

James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a scholar, and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Scandinavia and London.His website is http://www.jamestunney.com.

Here he describes the history of the transhumanist movement, with a particular focus on its development in the 1920s – and a view to understanding both proponents and critics. On the positive side, the movement seeks to enhance the human lifespan and human capacities. On the negative side it sometimes treats humans as machines, perhaps even inferior to machines, or perhaps as cogs in a greater machine – denying conscious sovereignty and spirituality.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980).

(Recorded on January 30, 2021)

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You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order The Mystery of the Trapped Light by James Tunney, click here: https://amzn.to/3cPLRR4.

OTHER BOOKS AND VIDEOS SHOWN IN THIS INTERVIEW:

James Tunney, The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution – https://amzn.to/2ugamVh

James Tunney, Ireland I Don’t Recognize Who She Is — https://amzn.to/2UZfExY

James Tunney, Blue Lies September – https://amzn.to/3ak4NFt

John McCarthy, Defending AI Research –

Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine –

Jacques Vallee, The Network Revolution –

Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis –

Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution –

Debashish Banerji (Ed.), Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures –

Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body –

Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future –

Irene Cohen Janca, The Golem of Prague –

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein –

Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Man a Machine –

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man –

Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization –

John Desmond Bernal, The World The Flesh and The Devil –

Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power –

Lewis Mumford, Technics and Human Development –

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength –

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near –

J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds –

George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists –

H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy –

Andrew Brown, J. D. Bernal: The Sage of Science –

Henri de Saint Simon, Social O