Future Transformations

This project, combining essays and dialogues with aphorisms, goes way beyond the scope of John O'Loughlin's earlier philosophical works in outlining what he contends to be the logical stages of evolution beyond man which will have to be passed through before definitive salvation can be achieved in a transcendent goal of evolution ... analogous to Teilhard de Chardin's 'Omega Point' or even to Bunyan's 'Celestial City'. One could say that he has attempted to concretize Nietzschean notions concerning man's 'overcoming' ... in respect of specific post-human stages of ensuing life. Hitherto, when he wrote about more advanced stages of life, it was generally within the scope and definition of man. Here, by contrast, the attainment to a more artificial stage of evolution is, ipso facto, chronologically beyond man and thus implicitly superhuman if not supra-human. Such was the revolutionary break with his earlier Huxley-inspired way of thinking that occurred in the Spring of 1982, and it is, we believe, of momentous significance! Henceforth John O'Loughlin's philosophical task was largely to be a refinement upon and modification of contentions outlined here. Obviously, in the many years that have passed since then, several changes, some of which were quite drastic, have occurred in his overall evolutionary perspective. But the beginnings of his mature philosophical oeuvre are to be found here, in 'Future Transformations', and it was from this time onwards that he began to grow in what he likes to think of as a sort of messianic self-awareness. - A Centretruths Editorial