Hi everyone, I am launching a new initiative called The Civic Enlightenment Project https://civicenlightenment.org/ This grew out of my prior initiative (The Enlightened Worldview Project). More than just a rebrand, our new name and approach reflects a deliberate shift to emphasize the vital civic nature of our mission, which encompasses both meaningful political engagement and holistic community development. This project’s mission is to develop protocols for collaboration across civil society hubs and to create and foster meta-hubs in multiple cities and regions. We also want to help new civil society hubs get created. These might, for example, be hubs for civic engagement and democracy promotion, current events sensemaking and participatory journalism, cognitive and emotional inner development, arts and culture, etc. We want to start by developing a network of local and regional community leaders and we’re planning on setting up a process for mutually supporting each other and building on each other’s knowledge and experience. This is an initiative of Nick Hedlund’s Eudaimonia Institute, operating autonomously. We want to invite you to join our network. Please reach out to me if you have any interest.
Greetings Brandon.
An excerpt from a dialogue between Yogananda and Ramana Maharshi in 1935
Yogananda] asked : How is the spiritual uplift of the people to be effected? What are the instructions to be given them?
Maharshi: They differ according to the temperaments of the individuals and the spiritual ripeness of their minds. There cannot be any instruction en masse.
I always find myself perplexed when I come across new pitches for a collective effort, as they never, ever seem to last for long, and it always comes back to Wilber’s Upper Left Quadrant as the CPU (central processing unit).
Granted, Maharshi’s is/was just one man’s perspective. And who knows? Maybe, the times being what they are, collective effort will get traction, but my gut tells me things are moving along right on schedule, as we tear each other and the world apart, and find impetus for individual growth within this volatile collective context.
Hi Brandon, congrats on the initiative. Would love to learn more about how you’re doing this and whom you’re engaging with. I noted that IAM, MetaIntegral, and others are promoting similar initiatives to spread integrative worldviews at, hopefully, speed and scale. Will be good to learn from each other and see where some of these activities can be synergized. I’m in Sean Esbjorn-Hargens’s Varieties of Integral course where this is a theme of common interest. I’m involved in several leadership development initiatives in Asia and around the world that have a similar approach. Best wishes.
On the arts and culture front, let me call out Cosmos Cooperative. This is an artists co-op with in-house magazine & publishing imprint. It was founded ten years ago by Marco Morelli and is going from strength to strength. Marco is integral to Integral, being one of the four co-authors of Integral Life Practice, along with Terry Patten, Adam Leonard and Ken Wilber himself.
@Coach_Wouter Yes, IAM is indeed working to promote integrative worldviews and spread them at speed and scale. One such initiative is called A New Story of Wholeness. From what I understand, it would be more of a LL cultural transformation initiative. The Civic Enlightenment Project is oriented toward the UR and LL quadrants - creating the social infrastructure and institutional reform that is needed to enhance democracy, promote sustainable living, strengthen communities, and improve overall well-being. People need to connect with each other in-person more regularly and with more depth. These in-person communities can be connected into networks within cities (meta-hub) and to national and international NGOs (affiliate networks). IAM is not yet in this space, but I have offered to Robb Smith that IAM could perhaps be a partner in this initiative. Also MetaIntegral is not yet involved in anything quite so similar to what I am describing here. MetaIntegral is perhaps the world leader in all-quadrant multi-impact and multi-capital calculations. If they wanted to partner with us on this initiative then that would be welcome.
@ksv thanks for this suggestion. I haven’t met Marco Morelli yet. Does this organization Cosmos Cooperative do events? Do they operate in multiple cities and regions? I should reach out to them, but I’m also interested to learn a bit more from your experience if you’d care to share.
This project looks great, but do you think you can pursue it successfully in the era of fascism in America? The US is not heading for authoritarian, one-man rule – it is already there. Can you just blithely pursue enlightenment while hoping for a return to liberal democracy or should you join the protest movement that seems to be the only force capable of preventing the dictator from completely consolidating his power?
Hi Charles, indeed you bring up a disappointing but unavoidable reality. Now, we are not just blithely pursuing enlightenment, but we are instead working on building the kinds of community groups that are needed to preserve democracy, the rule of law, and the ability to make sense of fact from fiction. If we are able to plant seeds of enough community groups in various cities and regions - through partnerships with other organizations and proper coordination - then we might be able to resist this decent into fascism and authoritarianism.
Good to know. Please keep us posted.
Interested to learn more for Wisconsin