In recent months, the Center for Mind and Culture (CMAC) has become part of a broader organization, Just Horizons Alliance. What is this new organization and how does CMAC fit into it?
Just Horizons Alliance is a strategic change engine. A strategic change engine is distinct from change agents such as activists and organizers. It is also not the same thing as an institution interested only in pure research. As a strategic change engine, Just Horizons Alliance exists to facilitate social change by equipping change agents with the resources available from cutting edge research and deep human traditions.
Both of those components, the kind of innovative research done by CMAC and an expansive spirituality, are needed to confront the challenges that humanity faces today. As a strategic change engine, Just Horizons Alliance can do more through its connections with change agents than would be possible through a similar organization only working directly on social change. With challenges such as ecological crises, advances in artificial intelligence, and the eclipse of religious traditions in many societies, many thoughtful people understandably feel unmoored and at a loss for how to respond adequately.
Just Horizons Alliance combines the mind and the heart, research and spirituality, as needed components of an adequate response to these unprecedented challenges. Change agents need to be both well-informed about the concrete realities we face and well-resourced with abilities to connect with the human spirit. With multiple organizations working on different pieces of these issues, Just Horizons Alliance is positioned to provide both of those things.
As most readers already know, CMAC has done significant research around the mind-culture nexus, addressing issues including, but limited to, religion. Using approaches such as agent-based social simulation and neuroscientific studies, CMAC has been addressing pressing questions facing both specific communities and our species as a whole. The work that CMAC does around the mind-culture nexus offers crucial insights for change agents to understand human realities in ways that inform effective social action.
Other components of Just Horizons Alliance are taking this work further by engaging more directly with practical changemaking. Formerly a component of CMAC, DigEthix is becoming a platform for addressing the unprecedent dilemmas created by new technologies such as artificial intelligence. These technologies have the potential for either great positive change or catastrophic consequences for humanity. Using perspectives informed by traditions of ethical reflection, DigEthix will continue to provide unique expertise on this developing landscape of ethical issues posed by new technologies.
Even more practically, Wildhouse Publishing has been ramping up the acquisition, editing, and marketing of books that make expansive spirituality accessible to a broad audience. In contexts where traditional religious institutions are fading but people need spiritual resources to enrich their lives, Wildhouse offers books across multiple genres (nonfiction, poetry, and fiction) that can meet the needs of this audience. It is filling the gap in publishing for spiritual-but-not-religious and similar people who are not finding spiritual resources that connect with their situations.
Along similar lines, Wildheart Evolution, still in its initial stages of development, will provide resources and connections to thought leaders and spiritual innovators. Once its work starts, Wildheart Evolution will convene summits and offer platforms to connect people who are pushing spirituality forward to meet present and future challenges.
Together, the different components of Just Horizons Alliance are collecting resources that may initially seem unrelated in order to meet some of our greatest challenges and deepest needs. As the research arm of this strategic change engine, CMAC provides critical research capabilities and background that can ground spiritual innovation for a new era. Through collaboration, each piece of Just Horizons Alliance is contributing to the broader work of facilitating social change that connects with the best of the human mind and the human heart.
