The Noosphere and Cosmic Christ: Happy Birthday Teilhard de Chardin
Happy birthday, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1885 – April 10, 1955). Give a listen to this excellent biographical podcast with Ursula King, Andrew Revkin, and David Sloak Wilson.
King: “The human is not finished yet!”
Tippet: “He sees evolution both on a physical… and spiritual… that evolution proceeds towards spirit. Even as he looks towards Peking Man, and see himself as a 21st century human, he imagines future man looking back and seeing a primitive spirituality. He imagines this flowering of consciousness; this evolutionary consciousness.
King: “It’s mind blowing! The whole region of cyberspace… They say Teilhard is the patron saint of the world wide web. He used to say that we will intensify our communication: but what are we doing with it? That’s the big question. We have to create it.”
Though banned from publication in his…
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Teilhard de Chardin 
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end” – Nietzsche
Looks like Friedrich and Teilhard have something in common – the view of man not as an endpoint in the evolutionary process. Who would have thought two such different men would agree, on humanity of all things. The irony is just too much sometime.
That is the first time that I heard the comparison between Teilhard de Chardin and Nietzsche. You are correct of course in that they both viewed humanity as evolving towards something great (albeit they both had very different conceptions of what that greater was).
It is ironic that Nietzsche had great professional success in his philosophy but he suffered from mental illness towards the end of his life. In contrast, Teilhard de Chardin was effectively censored in his philosophy during his lifetime but, despite being effectively exiled, he maintained his joyful outlook until the end.
Thank you again for your comments as they provide a lot to contemplate (per usual).
Peace,
W. Ockham