Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning examines the deep-seated patterns of thought that have shaped human history, culture, and worldview. This course explores how different civilizations have constructed their understanding of the world, from ancient mythologies to modern scientific paradigms. Lent delves into the ways these cultural patterns influence our current ecological and social challenges, encouraging participants to re-evaluate beliefs and values. Ideal for those interested in philosophy, history, or sustainability, the course provides a profound exploration of how humanity’s search for meaning has guided our interactions with nature and each other, offering pathways to a more connected future.

This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trailblazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.

Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today’s cultural norms.

Uprooting the tired cliches of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped.

By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.