We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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Meditations on the relationship between consciousness and culture.
People with deep spiritual conviction—from religious fundamentalists to high Himalayan mystics—possess the greatest existential gift of all: certainty. But these days, it’s not a gift that we find it easy to appreciate. And for good reason. For the last 60 years or so, ever since the unthinkable ...
One unforgettable day in New York City, over ten years ago, I was crossing Park Avenue on my way to give a lecture when a Yellow Cab that had decided not to stop at a red light careened out of control at about forty miles an hour. It sideswiped me and my wife, shortly after we had stepped off the ...
In the second decade of the 21st century, God is no longer “up there” ready to save us. Until very recently, that creative principle was something that we would ask for help from. But I believe we have reached a time in history when God, which I would describe as the energy and intelligence that ...
The best way to learn about sex is to give it up for a while . . . Thirty years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was a serious spiritual seeker. I’m married now, but during that time I had a number of committed relationships, and when I wasn’t in a relationship, I had flings. Being young ...
Sex. What a compelling topic! As a spiritual teacher, whether I’m giving a lecture or leading a retreat, whenever the subject comes up, a very particular form of focused attention immediately takes over the room. Suddenly everyone is listening very closely, hanging on my every word! Why? Because ...
Have you ever had a mystical experience? Wikipedia defines “mysticism” as “the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, or levels of being, or aspects of reality, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being ...
When people think about the future, at least in many of the progressive circles that I move in, do you know what they think about? Gloom and doom. Generally, our collective future is imagined in relationship to many of the truly overwhelming global challenges that we’re facing, like climate change ...
As we approach Earth Day, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about the science vs. religion, materialism vs. spirituality debate. Being a spiritual teacher myself, I generally tend to feel more aligned with mystical and religious sensibilities, because they assert that the spiritual dimension of ...
The world really is getting smaller. I’m a 56-year-old Jewish Baby Boomer from Manhattan who became a spiritual seeker in my early twenties. Typical of so many of my generation, I looked for Enlightenment in the East, not the West. I traveled to India in 1984, and three years later, in a brief ...
A Meditation on the Indefinable Nature of the Divine God is Love. How many times have we heard the word “love” being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that’s the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable. When we use “love” to ...
Have you ever considered for yourself what love actually is? Or do you assume you know what love is, based on what others may have said about this all-important topic? Because I’m a spiritual teacher, I’m asked about love all the time, and what I always find interesting is that people use the same ...
Like many people, I had my most powerful experience of romantic love during my adolescence. I was sixteen years old, and living in Rome at the time. I met a young Italian woman two years my senior and soon fell head over heels into the overwhelming ecstasy and unbearable longing of the romantic ...
Valentine’s Day is here. Time to think about those we love. Even more importantly, time to consider what it means to truly love another. Have you ever deeply thought about what love is? Have you ever considered where it comes from and why we feel drawn to be with certain people over others? Love ...