The Problem
The systems that once organized human life are visibly failing
The present moment is marked by a distinctive rupture. Work, institutions, and shared narratives no longer reliably provide what humans need to live well.
A school and research-oriented institution concerned with what supports human agency, coherence, and meaning in a time of rapid technological and institutional change.
We bring together research, education, and small-scale experimentation to study how lives and institutions shape what people come to value over time.
The Problem
The present moment is marked by a distinctive rupture. Work, institutions, and shared narratives no longer reliably provide what humans need to live well.
Modern institutions have outsourced meaning to economic success, individual preference, and short-term optimization. Research shows this is insufficient. When institutions abdicate responsibility for meaning, the burden shifts onto individuals in ways most cannot sustain—resulting in burnout, cynicism, or nihilism.
Many people experience themselves as busy but not agentic—active without authorship. Algorithmic management reduces perceived alternatives. Institutional incentives fragment responsibility. Short-term metrics collapse long-term ownership. This is not a failure of motivation. It is a failure of institutional design.
Contemporary life produces rapid role-switching, constant self-reinvention, conflicting value signals, and temporal compression. Research documents increasing identity diffusion, narrative incoherence, and difficulty sustaining long-term commitments. The result is not freedom, but fragmentation.
AI increasingly performs cognitive and productive tasks. The old justification—"I am valuable because I produce better outcomes than machines"—is eroding. If productivity is no longer the core measure, what is of value to human life? This existential dimension remains unaddressed.
This is not a skills
problem, not a leadership problem, not a wellbeing problem.
It is a reorientation problem.
Our Response
We do not offer doctrines or solutions. We work to hold and explore questions that modern systems tend to ignore.
An organization oriented toward what is of value to life exists not to provide certainty, but to ensure that the deepest human questions are neither ignored nor trivialized at a moment when they have become unavoidable.
Learn MoreOur Approach
Clarifying where current systems fail humans, what developmental needs are unmet, and which assumptions about human value are no longer tenable.
Translating insights into learning environments, organizational structures, rituals, rhythms, norms, and governance models. Design as an ethical act.
Testing early prototypes through labs, fellowships, and institutional pilots—evaluated not by immediate success, but by what they reveal over time.
Orientation
The following are orientation claims—statements that guide inquiry, design, and experimentation. They are not doctrine.
"This movement is not an answer. It is a beginning."
Periods of civilizational transition are not resolved by final answers, but by institutions that hold essential questions, protect human development, and enable responsible experimentation.