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The world in 2025 seems to be coming apart at the seams. The problems that we face today are radically different from the ones that humans have faced throughout most of history. In the past, we mostly struggled against natural elements (floods, drought, cold, hurricanes, obstacles to mobility, and so on), but now our problems are mostly reflexive, which means they were caused by humans.
Modern human systems, such as industrial agriculture and massive cities, allow us to thrive, but they also pose tremendous risks. We depend on technologies that have damaging side effects, but we cannot abandon those technologies because they sustain us.
To escape from the cage we have built for ourselves, many groups are devising new modes of thought, but the solutions are still within the orbit of individual consciousness, as if each person thinking differently can alter the course we are on. What is needed are new modes of thought that lead to new institutions. So far, millions of people have changed consciousness (or claimed to), but institutions remain mired in old ways of thinking and operating.
We at IAPT do not pretend to have answers. At present, we are still trying to formulate better questions. We believe that process philosophy (also known as constructive postmodernism or philosophy of organism) is the most fruitful and comprehensive philosophy available today. It has already proven valuable in promoting interreligious dialogue that has helped people from one tradition learn about the insights and practices of others. It has also helped people recognize the forgotten value of their own traditions. Process thought affirms the value and validity of knowledge derived from intuition and the study of tradition, in addition to knowledge derived from science.
We are convinced that process thought can help us achieve insights across many other domains, not just interreligious dialogue or the reclaiming of old traditions. Specifically, we are looking for ways to reconfigure our understanding of social problems that seem insoluble within our present frame of mind.
We are seeking methodologies that might help us untie knots within institutions, so that we might create economic justice, restore healthy food systems (from farm to fork), reverse vicious cycles in social dynamics, promote the efficacy of small-group decision-making, interrupt the preconditions of socially conditioned racism, enable city dwellers to reconnect with nature, and improve mental health at the cultural level (beyond psychological models).
Take the problem of addiction, for example. This is mostly considered and treated as an individual affliction. But since there are significant differences across cultures in rates and types of addiction, there is clearly a social component. However, because of a philosophical bias in all forms of modern science, the social dimensions of addiction are largely invisible, undertheorized, and rarely treated.
Mental health institutions are mostly clinical, which means they are oriented around the recovery of individuals. What if it were possible to take action that would reduce the incidence of addiction in an entire population by 25%? Wouldn't that be worth pursuing?
This is just one example among dozens or hundreds of conditions that might be subject to incremental improvement on a mass scale if researchers were looking for ways to heal entire cultures or economies and not just individuals. Process thought is unusual in its affinity with this collective approach because it emphasizes the social nature of all human behavior. Social conditioning is part of many theories, of course, but process thought takes that principle to a new level.
Because process thought developed in the U.S. mostly in the context of religious studies, it has been slow to take up the more mundane tasks of social improvement that it could potentially foster. The purpose of IAPT is to explore some of those possibilities in the hope that process thought might serve a broader range of issues and concerns than it has until now.
For the moment, we are just getting started, and this website is under construction. But if you are inspired by this idea and want to contribute, please write to us at info.iaptus@gmail.com with your ideas. Apologies if we take time to respond. We are busy with many tasks.