Flourish As You Age
BRAIN HEALTH
MENTAL MANAGEMENT
A GOOD DEATH
Let's not just fade away; let's FLOURISH as we age!
The MINDRAMP Podcasts focus on three key components that have been shown to contribute to flourishing in the later years of your life. You will find mini-series of episodes that explore each component.
1) Keeping your brain and body healthy - see The Roots of Brain Health
2) Managing your mental states - see Flourishing
3) Planning the kind of death you want to have - (coming 10/1/24))
You will also find the occasional episodes that focus social concerns that I feel have an impact on our well-being, for example "Elections."
Flourish As You Age
Welcoming Wisdom: A Framework for Flourishing
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In this inaugural episode of Flourish As You Age, host Michael Patterson introduces a new podcast series drawn from his forthcoming book, Welcoming Wisdom: How Mature Minds Can Shape a Kinder, Wiser Future.
The episode offers an overview of the book’s foundational ideas—redefining what it means to flourish as we age, exploring the cognitive strengths of mature minds, and presenting the provocative hypothesis that we may be living on the edge of a Second Axial Age.
Through science, story, and philosophical reflection, Patterson invites listeners into a new vision of aging as evolution—and a call to use our wisdom to guide humanity towards a better future.
If you want to support this work, click above, subscribe to the MINDRAMP Podcast, or sign up for the free Flourish As You Age newsletter for reviews of current research, reflections, updates, and special extras from my book-in-progress
WELCOMING WISDOM: A New Framework for Flourishing As You Age
Welcome to Flourish As You Age, a podcast about living wisely, aging boldly, and shaping a more compassionate future. I’m your host, Michael Patterson.
This is the first episode in a new series subtitled WELCOMING WISDOM. This series features readings and reflections from my upcoming book, Welcoming Wisdom: How Mature Minds Can Shape a Kinder, Wiser Future. The book is both a call to action and a guide for those of us entering life’s later chapters—not just to age well, but to grow into the deeper roles that age makes possible: as mentors, creators, and culture shapers.
Welcoming Wisdom blends science, story, and contemplative insight into a practical philosophy of aging—one that sees maturity not as decline, but as evolution. Over the course of the podcast, we’ll explore seven core mental frameworks—my A–G system of mind management.
A-G is a mnemonic device that helps me remember seven core principles: Attention, Benevolence, Connection, Duality, Equanimity, Flow and Gratitude - principles that various wisdom systems stress as key to flourishing in a long life.
But we begin with the Foundation: a series of chapters that set the stage by introducing the big ideas behind the book. These include what it really means to flourish, what cognitive abilities do mature minds possess, and how to manage the many inner voices that inhabit our minds. We end with my hypothesis that we are living on the cusp of a cultural and cognitive transformation, one that could lead to a kinder wiser future - if guided by the wisdom and virtue of mature minds.
In today’s episode, I’ll briefly introduce the four Foundational chapters Let’s begin.
Foundational Vision: The Evolution of Consciousness Through Mature Minds
Welcoming Wisdom begins with the premise that flourishing is not a fixed state but an evolving capacity—especially in later life. To flourish, we must learn to manage not only our circumstances but our own minds.
The first chapter explores Learning to Flourish. If we set a goal of flourishing as we age, we ought to know just what we mean by flourishing. I’ve come to see flourishing as a dynamic process rooted in neuroplasticity - the malleability of the brain - meaning-making, and emotional resilience. It lays the groundwork for understanding aging not as decline, but as an opportunity for self-development and meaningful contribution to society.
While every individual will have a different understanding of what it means to flourish, it will be useful to review how philosophical traditions and scientific research have interpreted flourishing throughout history and how our contemporary view compare with historical views.
The quest for a good life has been central to human thought across cultures for as long as people have been self-reflective. It’s been called many things—eudaimonia, liberation, happiness, well-being—but at its heart is the aspiration to live fully, to thrive rather than merely survive.
The contemporary philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah contrast historical views with current ideas about happiness. He argues that we have traded a rich, communal understanding of happiness for a shallow, privatized version.
What once involved virtue, justice, and contribution to the common good has been reduced to mood optimization, consumer satisfaction, and personal achievement. I agree and I applaud Appiah’s advice to expand and deepen our definition of happiness—and to revive the sense that flourishing is a moral and communal undertaking, not just an individual feeling.
So, the first Foundational Chapter of my book explores a deeper definition of flourishing and examines how we might go about achieving it. Upcoming podcasts will explore these various aspects of flourishing
In The Mature Mind - the second chapter - I examine Dr. Gene Cohen’s concept of Developmental Intelligence—cognitive and emotional strengths that deepen with age - not in spite of age, but because of age. Cohen believed that mature minds are capable of developing high-level cognition - what some call post formal thought.
Three of the hallmarks of developmental intelligence are: 1) relativistic thinking - the ability to see things in context and from multiple perspectives, 2) Dualistic Thinking, which essentially means a tolerance for ambiguity and a recognition that all things contain their opposite, like the Yin/Yang idea that you might be familiar with. And 3) Systematic thinking - being able to see the big picture, to connect the dots.
And, importantly, I believe that high-level cognition involves the development of strong ethical and moral standards. So developmental intelligence is not just about abstract ideas, but is concerned with living a better, more virtuous life.
Mature minds are not merely older minds; they are minds shaped and honed by experience, reflection, and a commitment to growth. They are uniquely positioned to drive cultural evolution in a just and ethical direction.
To understand how to flourish and to cultivate developmental intelligence we need to understand a bit about how our minds work. In this regard, I find it useful to think of our mind as having multiple components - even multiple, semi-in depended minds.This framework is examined in the chapter called Multiple Minds. It encourages us to examine the brain as a dynamic ecosystem of specialized, often competing systems.
Iain McGilchrist, for example, has done brilliant work exploring hemispheric lateraliztion, the study of how the left and right hemispheres of our brain interpret the world in very different ways, and how competition between the hemispheres causes confusion and conflict. We also examine other examples of multiple brains and how they can undermine our happiness and ability to think clearly.
Flourishing, we argue, depends not on eliminating tension but on orchestrating it—on learning to foster collaboration among the many minds we possess.
This leads us the final chapter of the Foundation section. It is called A Second Axial Age, which needs some explanation. In 1952, German Philosopher Karl Jaspers introduced the idea that around 800-200 BC, the human mind experienced a profound transformation of consciousness.
Thinkers on multiple continents began to reflect not only on the world, but on the workings of the mind itself. This was the dawn of metacognition - the ability to think about our thinking and to be aware of our own awareness. This age gave rise to moral reasoning, and the examination of the interior self. It was a leap in human evolution that gave birth to philosophy, ethics, and spiritual exploration. But it also came with a price.
With self-reflection came self-consciousness—and with that inward gaze came anxiety, regret, alienation, and a sense of separation from the natural order. The very capacity that allowed us to imagine justice also enabled us to fear death. The same mental powers that fostered empathy and compassion also gave rise to shame, guilt, and inner conflict.
As the Buddha taught, suffering—dukkha—is baked into this form of consciousness. Self-awareness awakened us, but also unsettled us. Ego-centrism alienated us from others and from the natural world.
This chapter proposes that we are now on the cusp of a Second Axial Age—an opportunity to evolve again, not by rejecting these ambivalent cognitive gifts, but by integrating their dualities more wisely. If the first Axial Age made us self-aware, the second must teach us to be self-transcendent— to move beyond egocentric self-interest to embrace a larger ecology of mind, society, and spirit. This is not about returning to pre-Axial simplicity, but about developing mature minds that can hold opposites, navigate complexity, and flourish without fragmentation.
That’s the meaning of the book’s title. My aim is to encourage everyone to welcome wisdom, welcome the sophistication and moral depth that springs from long experience and deep learning. And further, to use our mature minds to shape a kinder, wiser future.
Welcoming Wisdom: How Mature Minds Can Shape a Kinder, Wiser Future.
So, to review, that’s a brief overview of the four chapters that comprise the FOUNDATIONS section of my work-in-progress called WELCOMING WISDOM.
These chapters try to establish a clear and ethical definition of flourishing. They suggest that mature minds have the unique capacity to develop and manage high-level thinking, and they examine how cultivating collaboration among our multiple minds can foster personal flourishing and ethical social responsibility. Finally, I suggest that mature minds have the power and the responsibility to direct the ongoing evolution of the human mind towards a kinder and wiser future.
If this sparked something in you, I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and to join my newsletter at FlourishAsYouAge.com.
In the next episode I’ll begin exploring the first of the Foundational Chapters, - Flourishing. Just what does it mean to flourish? I hope you will join me.
All right! Thanks for listening. Until next time: here's hoping you welcome wisdom and flourish throughout your life.