063 Tim Freke – Emergentism, Unividualism, and a New Wave of Benevolence

Philosopher and author Tim Freke joins Terry to explore the personal, cultural, and global implications of an integration of our best rational and spiritual understandings of reality. Tim Freke is an English philosopher and author of 35 books, including a Sunday Times bestseller and Daily Telegraph 'Book of the Year'. He is the founder of ‘Unividualism’, which combines evolutionary science and deep spirituality to offer a visionary new understanding of the nature of reality and the purpose of life.

Tim and Terry begin by revisiting fundamental philosophical questions of eros, entropy, telos, and consciousness itself. Then, they examine our current existential crisis in the context of history — considering the nature of “chaos” and the tendency for each generation to imagine it’s living in the “worst of times.” Tim especially points to how our personal awakenings draw us into a care and benevolence for everyone and everything, and how this may be our biggest evolutionary advantage.

They then explore the implications of “paralogical” (both/and) thinking, Tim’s concept of “unividualism,” and how joy and grief coexist at the knife-edge of emergence, knowing that everything we love might be both collapsing and evolving and emerging into sublimity. Ultimately, Tim suggests that the whole point is the miraculous process of evolutionary emergence, where something that has never existed before is birthed into being — again and again. If emergence is the nature of the Divine, then what is emerging is... God!

For more information on Tim Freke and Terry Patten, check out the following resources:

• Tim Freke’s Website
• Tim’s overview of Unividualism
• Books by Tim Freke
• Terry’s nonprofit website A New Republic of the Heart
• Terry’s book, A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries
• Terry Patten’s website