Dear friends,

As our work evolves, we’re opening a small number of roles to support ongoing projects and future initiatives. We’re inviting people who feel aligned with the work and want to take part.

Campaign Manager (The New Story of Wholeness)

We are seeking an experienced Campaign Manager to lead the public launch of the New Story of Wholeness (NSoW) over the coming year and beyond. This role requires a professional with strong product-led growth instincts, hands-on digital go-to-market (GTM) experience, and at least five years of demonstrated success scaling digital environments within high-growth teams. The CM will orchestrate a coordinated, multi-channel public campaign while managing a distributed team—including social media, media production, and other collaborators—bringing rigor, clarity, and alignment to all outward-facing initiatives. The ideal candidate will combine strategic communications sensibility with operational discipline, integrating creative and technical workstreams to ensure NSoW gains coherent visibility and momentum in the public sphere.

Initiative Leader (Big Picture Visions)

Big Picture Visions (BPV) is an Applied Metatheory Initiative of the Institute of Applied Metatheory aimed at addressing the civilizational “eutopian vacuum” by developing developmentally-informed, pluralistic, and actionable visions of flourishing. The initiative seeks to counter both dystopian paralysis and simplistic techno-optimism by constructing “Concrete Eutopias” grounded in integrative metatheory—visions that are rigorous, non-totalizing, and capable of guiding real-world strategy across governance, economics, ecology, and meaning-making. In this context, IAM seeks a rare hybrid leader who can convene and coordinate a network of leading scholars to collectively author these integrative visions of the future, ensuring that the work remains methodologically transparent, epistemically reflexive, and genuinely pluralistic rather than drifting into abstraction or technocracy.

As Initiative Leader of Big Picture Visions, this person will not simply manage a program but shape an emerging field: designing participatory protocols, stewarding the development of an Eutopian Compass assessment tool, and overseeing a growing library of actionable Concrete Eutopias that can inform philanthropy, policy, education, and movement strategy. The ideal candidate is a rigorously trained scholar with deep fluency in integrative metatheory, developmental theory, and social philosophy, who is also a capable social-impact entrepreneur able to translate high-level ideas into durable institutions, partnerships, and products. Above all, their core strength must be convening—bringing together diverse researchers, thinkers, and practitioners to collaboratively define the “Conditions of Flourishing” and co-create visions that are concrete without being totalizing.

Knowledge Graph Architect

IAM is seeking a Knowledge Graph Architect with 10+ years of relevant experience and a track record of high-level, demonstrable success to design and steward the backbone of the Integrative Commons. The role requires deep fluency in graph data modeling (e.g., Neo4j or equivalent), ontology design, and schema governance. The ideal candidate will be comfortable operating at the intersection of big picture thinking, systems design, and software engineering: defining node and edge taxonomies, ensuring semantic consistency across domains, and building durable pipelines that keep the graph coherent as it evolves. You should be as at home debating the merits of a relation like “grounds,” “refines,” or “tensions_with” as you are writing Cypher, YAML schemas, or validation tooling — and able to point to prior work where your architectural decisions materially shaped outcomes.

You will collaborate with philosophers, domain experts, and AI engineers to ensure that the Commons can serve IAM’s mission of bringing the integrative worldview to life. If you bring a decade-plus of delivery-tested experience in knowledge representation, graph architecture, or related fields—and are motivated by the challenge of building technically robust architectures—this is a role where that work can have lasting impact.

Video Editor (Contract)

IAM is seeking a contract-based Video Editor to support our weekly long-form video output across IAM Media and the Integration podcast. The work involves editing conversations, lectures, and interviews into clear, well-paced videos for YouTube, with an emphasis on respecting the substance and depth of the material.

There is also an opportunity to create short-form clips for social and promotional use. Familiarity with IAM’s work, or with long-form, ideas-driven content more generally, is a strong plus. This is an ongoing contract role, dependent on fit and availability.

 

Dear friends,

As we come to the close of an extraordinary year of learning, discovery and growth, I want to take this opportunity to reflect on the past twelve months and give a preview of what’s ahead for the Institute of Applied Metatheory.

IAM was formed to help meet a particular civilizational moment. Across institutions, cultures, and disciplines, we are experiencing not merely disruption, but structural transformation—the rise of what I call a “Transformation Age” characterized by global morphogenesis, and which yields and is conditioned by a powerful metacrisis (with co-arising crises in sensemaking, meaning, technoeconomy, geopolitics and ecology).

In addition to our historic context, humanity lives and labors under what can only be called broken metaphysics. Barren, small, partial and tired, our prevailing materialist and (post)modernist views of being wither in the nutrient-deprived soil in which they’re planted, in no small part driving much of the metacrisis to begin with. At the same time, a quiet revolution towards a relational, processual, valuable metaphysics of co-becoming arises—a new integrative story of differentiated, participatory wholeness. A time between worlds, yes, but also a time of many worlds: it’s a fascinating and challenging time to be alive.

Unsurprisingly, our core belief at IAM is that the primary steering challenge posed by the era is not technological capacity, economic adaptation or political will, but more integrative sensemaking and its adoptability: first, the challenge for leaders is to perceive and act within a world of accelerating complexity without simply amplifying fragmentation or accelerating the metacrisis. And second, our challenge is to help embed the knowledge and social practices of integrative sensemaking into forms that are adoptable within the constraint ecologies of global actors and institutions. IAM has a specific meta-theory of change on how to support these demands—that is, demands to adapt and adopt—and we’re investing to foster the conditions for a worldview movement to support doing so.

In 2025, several strands of IAM’s work that had been developing in parallel—philosophical, sociological, narrative, institutional, and financial—will begin to cohere into a more public-facing strategy in 2026. What unites them is a single underlying concern: how societies generate, transmit, and act from Big Pictures under conditions of accelerating complexity and pluralism.

Several questions have animated our work throughout the year:

• How do we bring the integrative worldview to life? That is, how do we incubate structures that grow to naturally socialize future generations into the freedom and fullness of integrative consciousness?
• How might integrative coherence be achieved without requiring philosophical or identity homogeneity? What constitutes a minimal integrative worldview and what context-independent constraints does it yield?
• How can we concretely deliver at the level of conditions and attractors rather than prescriptions and programs?
• How can plural, decentralized action be coordinated and emergently integrative without reverting to brittle hierarchies, charismatic movements or ideological regulation? What protocols best support integrative emergence?
• What kinds of sensemaking capacities will leaders and institutions need as adaptation cycles outpace institutional learning cycles? And how do we enable the conditions to meet leaders where they are across different constraint environments?
• How do we promote a healthy commons, ensuring generativity and decentralized impact rather than capture as integrative resources spread?

These are not abstract questions for us. They are design constraints that shape everything from our research agenda to our organizational architecture.

With all of that as our IAM’s context, below I outline our strategic agenda for 2026. And, as always, what we do is experimental, provisional and prone to high levels of ambiguity, learning and failure. We work on big, bold visions with passionate non-attachment and a bone-deep sense that at best we build sand castles; ours is a karma yoga.

First, IAM works on consolidation of an integrative philosophy kernel. 
The Transformation Age needs a philosophical foundation that can meet the era on its own terms. IAM is dedicated to supporting scholars to continue refining a coherent, post-disciplinary metatheoretical foundation capable of integrating insights from systems science, meta-studies, developmental psychology, philosophy, sociology, religious studies, complexity theory and more. This work is not about novelty for its own sake, but about teasing coherence from the prior-generation integrative philosophies: a framework robust enough to hold plural perspectives without collapsing into relativism or ideology—an Integrative Philosophy 2.0. It is our view that we need institutional vehicles for asking Big Questions of Big Pictures and efficiently returning powerful, grounded replies.

To meet this mission, in 2025 IAM launched Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice as well as a new scholarly society. The journal addresses a gap in the intellectual ecosystem: the absence of a serious, pluralistic venue dedicated to integrative, cross-disciplinary work that “provides a scholarly home for those forging connections across domains, traditions, and levels of analysis in pursuit of deeper coherence and actionable wisdom. It is a peer-reviewed, inter-, trans-, and archdisciplinary journal committed to advancing the integrative study and applied use of metatheory and systems thinking for engaging with the unprecedented complexity of the 21st century.” The journal has put out a call for papers and is actively inviting submissions.

The journal is a central spine of IAM’s strategy to establish legitimacy and continuity for integrative philosophy and meta-studies over time. We are honored that IAM’s team approaches nearly a hundred experts across different fields, and IAM’s Integration Society has recently added more than thirty scholars from fields ranging from process philosophy and evolutionary-developmental studies to integral philosophy, metamodernism and beyond. Scholars will be showcased through a set of new podcasts and media productions, and have their work supported and socialized by a full-time in-house social media team. The society will be sponsoring monthly, quarterly and annual symposia and various working groups to generate dialogue and new knowledge.

Second, IAM works to foster worldview-producing conditions. 
An important theme this year has been thinking about the Sociology of Big Pictures, which in a resulting white paper I explored what it means to organize for the rise of a worldview. This work begins from a simple but under-examined observation: societies do not function merely through policies, technologies, or incentives, but through large-scale meaning-structures that are first organized by intellectual networks that generate cultural capital and coherent semiosis from within. Networks matter, and ours has been fragmented by the same forces that characterize the “hyperreality” of late Information Age postmodernity and the pluralism-acceleration of social morphogenesis. Variety liberates, but also overwhelms individuals with a complexity gap, and overwhelms institutions as it collapses adaptive cycles to time frames that are shorter than institutional learning cycles can metabolize.

Accordingly, IAM is dedicated to supporting a broader network of integrative leaders—people who we find marked by 4 Cs: Consciousness, Curiosity, Complexity and Compassion—to see themselves as part of this novel world-historic movement in human thought and action.

To do so, IAM has formed a new Integrative Worldview Fund to fund initiatives that can support worldview productions. Over the coming years the fund, aided by IAM’s Legacy Circle, will invest millions of dollars toward the buildout of worldview infrastructure, including platforms, tools, institutions, media, and applications that support integrative sensemaking at scale. Rather than focusing narrowly on content or advocacy, the IWF targets the deeper infrastructural layers that shape how meaning circulates and becomes actionable in society.

We believe that many contemporary failures are failures of shared sensemaking at the level of worldview-scale narratives and categories, and that 4C leaders experience an inverse complexity gap throughout their lives—their interior complexity is not mirrored in the worlds they inhabit. And yet the spread of integrative thinking has a basic on-ramp problem, which is that it’s so steep that the ramp becomes a wall. To iterate on this challenge, we’re building a New Story of Wholeness as an experimental digital welcome mat for those new to integrative thinking. The New Story is not doctrine or ideology, but a public-facing narrative and lightweight educational gateway designed to make integrative patterns perceptible and inhabitable for a wider 4C audience. If it succeeds, the New Story might operate as an invitation into a way of seeing reality through a set of integrative lenses without requiring prior allegiance to any particular mode of thought. We’ll see, this is a tough one.

We have also begun a series of important projects meant to validate the contours and claims of the integrative as a worldview: the Cultural Complexity Index seeks to understand the hierarchical complexity of 5,000 years of the world’s knowledge and narrative canon and whether the integrative is a discernible emergent; the Unified Worldview Initiative seeks to explore and describe an endo-natural paradigm that can integrate and dissolve some of the hard problems of the sciences; and the Worldview Studies Initiative seeks to leverage the World Values Survey to understand “global worldview development by generating and analyzing large-scale data on the distribution of major developmental worldviews at the population level”. These initiatives are all doing groundbreaking work whose outputs are already being accepted to publish in peer-reviewed journals in their fields.

Third, IAM works to incubate and foster real-world applications of Big Picture thinking.
Individual liberation and social emancipation—the true north of an integrative worldview and IAM’s animating vision—can only ever occur when someone adopts something. And adoption of any integrative innovation or idea is downstream of context-specific constraint-compatibility. In this view, IAM’s role is not to persuade people or systems to change, but to engineer the conditions under which integrative patterns can most readily and easily be selected for in differing environments. In other words, IAM must work to make integrative social entrepreneurship legible, prestigious, fundable and survivable.

Morphogenesis will not abate anytime soon, and its disruptions create opportunity and tailwinds for integration everywhere. But to meet these opportunities requires engineering for adoption. In pluralistic, incentive-laden societies, social transformation does not occur through superior ideas or even idea networks. It occurs when new solutions engineered from those ideas become more adoptable than existing ones within specific contexts. This makes adoption of applications of Big Picture thinking constraint-limited, not insight-limited. IAM is committed to supporting emergent innovation by institutional leaders, social entrepreneurs, change engineers and cultural influencers who can translate the integrative philosophy kernel into applications that either produce feasible action inside existing adoption contexts, or alter constraints altogether (i.e., incentives, legitimacy, infrastructure) at scale.

To this end, in 2026 we will begin to experiment with a new Integrative Commons that might house Common Resource Pools (CRPs) for decentralized, open source knowledge and action accessible by anyone for anything, with no commitment or identity-gating. This reflects a core conviction of IAM: worldviews do not persist because they are true alone, but because they are embedded. If integrative perspectives are to be viable in the long run, they must be supported by durable intellectual, technological, and institutional forms.

IAM will continue to incubate institutions and applications as a first user of the commons. For example, IAM’s Faith Development Pathway is “dedicated to creating the world’s first open-access protocol for the developmental maturation of faith and ultimate concern”, with a vision of developing a full-fledged Faith Development Institute. The Strategic Metacrisis Mapping Initiative seeks to map the metacrisis and offer digital sensemaking tools for leaders across metacrisis domains to help them better understand and navigate its drivers. IAM has also been spearheading an Evolution of Philanthropy initiative, which continues to interview leaders across the philanthropic world to develop an integrative framework for helping philanthropic institutions evolve to meet the extraordinary challenges of our time. We also have domain specific initiatives incubating in policing, men’s work, AI, and more.

In closing, I’ve been asked why we started IAM in 2023 and not before. My view is limited, but for what it’s worth it didn’t seem the conditions for intellectual synthesis, the movement’s fragmentation, or the geohistoric conditions—enabling constraints all—were yet right to yield the cross-disciplinary focus needed for the integrative movement to produce at a level that is both required and we believe we can become capable (and I’ve been involved since 2006).

Only time will tell whether we can, but my confidence has grown by this third anniversary since IAM’s founding. None of this work is possible without the intellectual seriousness, financial support, and moral encouragement of those who have chosen to engage with IAM, and I remain deeply grateful to all of you who have supported IAM. This work is not fast, and it is not simple—but we believe it is necessary. Our ambition remains sober but substantial: not to win short-term attention, but to make long-term deep coherence more selectable in a fragmented world.

Thank you for being part of this shared effort to think, build, and act in alignment with humanity’s biggest and deepest pictures. Whether you have participated through dialogue, funding, engagement, or quiet attention, you are part of a shared experiment in civilizational responsibility.

With deep appreciation and unbounded love,

Happy new year to you and yours,

Robb Smith
Founder and CEO
Institute of Applied Metatheory

P.S. I thought you might enjoy this letter as a deck and so I had NotebookLM prepare an AI-generated overview for you if it was TLDR. All small mistakes are his, all big ones mine. 🙂

Dear friends,

Worldviews prefigure futures. And philosophies prefigure worldviews. So, since the beginning of the Institute of Applied Metatheory a few years ago, we have been committed to convening a home for the philosophy building, meta-studies, and integrative metatheory development we believe is necessary to underlabor on behalf of the rise of an integrative worldview this century. To that end, I am very excited to announce Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice, a new academic journal dedicated to this mission.

I am joined by Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Hedlund and Managing Editor Brendan Graham Dempsey in hope that Integration can become home for a new integrative knowledge society in which the next chapter of rigorous integrative metatheories might emerge, one of the key components of a strategy I outlined in A Sociology of Big Pictures.

To do so, in addition to the journal and new knowledge society, IAM has recently initiated a new, private online knowledge network, begun sponsoring scholarly symposia around the world, and will be producing a new, dedicated podcast featuring Integration scholars and their work.

I encourage you to visit the website for the journal, which is now inviting papers for its inaugural issue, with areas of particular interest that include:

1. Developing Frameworks for Analysis and Integration of Knowledge
2. Evolution Across Scales
3. Complexity and Systems Approaches
4. Transformations in Worldview
5. Cultural Shifts in the 21st Century
6. Technology, AI, and Collective Intelligence
7. Science, Religion, and Ultimate Concern
8. Responses to the Global Metacrisis
9. Practices for Integration
10. Applications of Big-Picture Frameworks

The tragic irony of entering what I’ve called the Transformation Age on the back of a civilizational metacrisis is that it’s truly an exciting time to be doing the kind of work we do. When worldviews break down and cast us headlong into times of great peril, philosophy becomes essential to help us make better sense of our world and to yield the shifts in our frames and suppositions that enable new futures.

Thank you for being such an important part of the global community working to do so.

Warm loving regards,

Robb

Dear friends,

I am excited to announce The New Story of Wholeness (NSoW), a flagship initiative by the Institute of Applied Metatheory aiming to create a global “Welcome Mat” for the emerging Integrative Worldview, a meta-narrative capable of restoring coherence in a time of fragmentation. NSoW is an ambitious, experimental attempt to bring the worldview to life as a felt, visual, and narrative-based experience on the web for institutional leaders, cultural influencers, and system builders.

The stakes are significant: millions of people already inhabit an integrative worldview, and yet no global Welcome Mat exists that could help them identify as such. And as the only worldview capable of holding the complexity of the 21st century, it is a serious gap that no coherent digital expression has been constructed to make this worldview widely visible, intuitively navigable, or emotionally compelling. Moreover, current educational platforms, institutional narratives, and public discourse remain fragmented in traditional, modern or postmodern paradigms, leaving people disoriented and under-equipped to meet the moment. Without a shared story of wholeness grounded in developmental, systemic, and spiritual coherence, we cannot build the futures we urgently need. The NSoW will innovate toward this need for a Welcome Mat and new story for the 21st century, and will be built around archdisciplinary patterns that make the integrative worldview intelligible and inhabitable.

The central thesis of the New Story of Wholeness is that worldviews can be learned—and thus can be taught, transmitted, and transformed. When properly scaffolded, the integrative worldview can shift not only what people believe, but who they become. The NSoW proposes that by crafting a digital experience that mirrors the integrative worldview in form as well as content—by embedding learning in story, pattern, complexity, and beauty—we can accelerate the transmission of this worldview into culture.

Funded by the IAM Foundation, the project brings together an esteemed team of designers and scholars in an attempt to fuse philosophical depth, archdisciplinary and worldview theory, and immersive design to create an experiential gateway to the next stage of collective consciousness. This project will be interesting, challenging and highly experimental.

And as is so often the case with IAM’s applied metatheory projects, what we learn—whether success or failure—is just another small building block on the road to building the Integrative Worldview’s knowledge economy that can prepare human civilization for the back half of the 21st century.

Loving warm regards,

Robb

Institute of Applied Metatheory and California Institute for Human Science Forge Transformative Partnership

In a move to bridge the gap between metatheoretical academic research and real-world application, the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM) and the Integral Noetic Sciences (INS) department at the California Institute for Human Science (CIHS) are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership. This collaboration aims to harness the strengths of both institutions to foster innovation and address complex social and environmental challenges.

The INS department at CIHS is known for its advanced coursework that delves into the intersections of philosophy of science, consciousness studies, and contemplative traditions. By nurturing scholarly exploration and rigorous research, CIHS has been at the forefront of academic excellence. Complementing this, IAM is dedicated to applying integrative metatheories to evolutionarily-potent real-world contexts, enabling leaders and practitioners to identify high-leverage points for social action and implement transformative initiatives.

This partnership envisions a seamless integration of metatheoretical academic rigor and practical application. PhD students from CIHS will have the unique opportunity to engage directly with IAM’s Applied Metatheory Initiatives, allowing them to apply their theoretical knowledge to pressing societal issues. This hands-on experience will not only enrich their academic journey but also equip them with the tools to drive meaningful change in various social contexts.

The collaboration will unfold in several impactful ways:

• Joint Initiatives: By bringing together CIHS faculty and IAM experts, the partnership will foster interdisciplinary research that pushes the boundaries of current knowledge and explores innovative solutions to complex problems.
• Educational Enrichment: IAM professionals will contribute to the academic environment at CIHS through workshops, seminars, and guest lectures, providing students with diverse perspectives and practical insights that complement their theoretical studies.
• Network Expansion: Both institutions will leverage their extensive networks to create a vibrant community of scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders dedicated to advancing big-picture metatheoretical research and its applications.

At the heart of this partnership is a shared commitment to advancing integrative metatheoretical research and initiatives. By combining CIHS’s academic excellence with IAM’s practical expertise, the collaboration aims to create a pipeline of professional development that extends from graduate education to real-world application. This integrated approach aspires to produce leaders and innovators capable of addressing the multifaceted challenges constituting the metacrisis.

As the partnership evolves, both institutions are excited about the potential to co-create a future where Big Picture academic insights seamlessly inform practical solutions, leading to transformative social impact. This alliance stands as a testament to what might be achieved when metatheory and metapraxis converge with a shared vision for a better world.

About the Institute of Applied Metatheory:

The Institute of Applied Metatheory is an international applied philosophy network dedicated to the education and application of “big picture” philosophical systems. In conjunction with our nonprofit IAM Foundation, we provide scholars, practitioners and organizations with the resources and support they need to advance integrative metatheory and apply it to promising evolutionary leverage points to promote human flourishing in the 21st century.

About the California Institute for Human Science’s Integral Noetic Sciences Department:

The Integral Noetic Sciences department at CIHS provides advanced coursework at the intersection of philosophy of science, consciousness studies, and contemplative traditions. The program aims to foster scholarly exploration, personal development, and mixed-methods research to advance understanding in these fields.

For more information, please contact:

Institute of Applied Metatheory

Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org

California Institute for Human Science

Website: https://cihs.edu/degrees-and-programs/phd-in-integral-noetic-sciences/

Dear Colleagues,

At the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM), we think deeply about the metacrisis and how to build the new structures and institutions we need to address it and lay the groundwork for the Transformation Age that is already underway. But while we do the work to create these institutions of the future, we must also do the work of helping existing institutions evolve to meet the tremendous challenges and opportunities we face now, in the present.

To that end, IAM is pleased to announce a new effort I’m leading called the “Evolution of Philanthropy“ as part of the Integrative Social Sector initiative. The Evolution of Philanthropy is a project that maps out the recent developmental history and trajectory of society’s oldest institution for investing in social change and generating public goods: Philanthropy. Precisely because it enjoys a degree of freedom from shifting market evaluation and political values, philanthropy stands as one of the most critical levers of social transformation currently available to society.

Philanthropic foundations also occupy a unique position at the intersection of theory and practice that should interest us as applied metatheory practitioners. These organizations have the potential to serve as vital bridges between academia and nonprofits, creating new knowledge economies that can translate research into action and practice into theory. This distinctive role enables philanthropy to catalyze the evolution of the entire social sector through the integration of diverse knowledge systems and the cultivation of innovative approaches to complex challenges.

Over the last 35 years, the philanthropic field has gone through two major paradigm shifts, which essentially correlate to the modern and postmodern worldviews. The first shift, which began in the early 90s, is the advent of Strategic Philanthropy, which brought professional rigor, evidence-based methodologies, and outcome-focused approaches to the sector. This modernist turn emphasized measurable results and strategic planning, applying business principles to social change work.

The second shift emerged in the 2010s with the rise of Empowerment Philanthropy, which centered community wisdom and recognized the importance of addressing systemic power imbalances. This postmodern approach fundamentally challenged traditional philanthropic power dynamics, emphasizing equity, inclusion, and power redistribution.

Now, we believe we are witnessing the emergence of a third paradigm: Integrative Philanthropy. This approach transcends and includes the strengths of both previous paradigms while adding the sophisticated understanding of how complex systems actually evolve and transform that integrative metatheory provides. Rather than imposing predetermined solutions or assuming local wisdom alone can address systemic challenges, Integrative Philanthropy works with natural developmental processes while integrating multiple forms of knowledge and action.

This developmental systems map illuminates this evolution across multiple dimensions, including:

• Vision and Viewpoint: How philanthropic leaders understand their role and make sense of complexity
• Programs and Practices: The methodologies and tools used in grantmaking and evaluation
• Strategy and Systems: Approaches to structuring systems change at multiple levels of scale
• Culture and Collaboration: How organizations work together and build shared meaning

We believe this framework offers philanthropic leaders and organizations practical guidance for developing more sophisticated capabilities for catalyzing systems change while avoiding the reductionism of previous paradigms.

I invite you to explore the full developmental systems map here:

I welcome your feedback and look forward to engaging in deeper conversations with you about this vision for how philanthropy can evolve to better address the unprecedented challenges of our time. If you would be interested in learning more about this project or getting involved, please submit your interest here. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaaleonard/

Thank you for being a part of this integrative movement.

In gratitude,

Josh Leonard
Institute of Applied Metatheory

 

About Josh Leonard

Josh Leonard is a seasoned social impact organizational leader with more than two decades of real-world experience developing strategy, culture, programs, and leaders through an integral lens. He brings 10+ years of executive leadership with the YMCA and the Institute for Cultural Evolution to bear on the emerging challenges organizations face today in grappling with the complexity of the 21st century. He has designed, led, and evaluated programs; nurtured thriving offline and online communities; led large, diverse staff teams; managed complex eight-figure budgets; created powerful leadership development programs; led strategic planning initiatives; and developed high-performing boards. Josh is a developmental leader who is adept at facilitating growth in individuals, teams, and organizations to achieve their goals for impact.

The Institute of Applied Metatheory is proud to introduce the Unified Worldview Initiative (UWI) — a bold and timely effort to help close one of the most critical rifts in modern civilization: the Enlightenment Gap.

For centuries, humanity has struggled to unite our understanding of mind and consciousness with that of matter and mechanism, leaving our worldviews fractured and our collective sense-making incomplete. The UWI is a response to this fragmentation—a transdisciplinary effort to build a more coherent, complete, and Integrative worldview for the 21st century.

Led by Dr. Gregg Henriques (originator of the Unified Theory of Knowledge), and supported by an esteemed team of integrative metatheorists, the UWI aims to synthesize three of the most powerful frameworks for understanding human nature and reality:

• Integral Theory
• Critical Realism
• The Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK)

This ambitious integration will unfold in three key phases:

1. Metatheoretical Mapping & Synthesis
   A rigorous comparative analysis of ontologies, epistemologies, and developmental logics, culminating in a comprehensive white paper.
2. Dialogical Deepening through Symposia
   A series of high-level conversations with leading thinkers to explore, refine, and challenge the emerging integration.
3. Worldview Activation & Dissemination
   A book-length treatment, public dialogues, and accessible media to bring this new synthesis into wider awareness and action.

Why it matters:

We are living through a planetary inflection point—what some call the metacrisis — marked by runaway complexity, existential uncertainty, and the breakdown of shared meaning. At the heart of this turbulence lies an incomplete picture of who we are and how we fit into the cosmos. The UWI seeks to provide a more unified ontological and epistemological frame that can support better science, deeper meaning, and more humane systems.

This is not just theoretical work. It’s the groundwork for a civilization capable of meeting complexity with clarity, fragmentation with integration, and despair with purpose.

Get Involved

If you are committed to worldview integration, transdisciplinary synthesis, or re-enchanting the sciences:

• Join our upcoming symposia series
• Collaborate with us as a scholar, institution, or thought leader
• Support the effort through partnership, critique, or amplification

Together, we can help build the scaffolding for the next stage of human understanding.

 

About Dr. Gregg Henriques
Dr. Gregg Henriques, Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University, is a clinical and theoretical psychologist. He is the founder of UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, which is a new system of understanding that bridges the sciences and humanities into a coherent whole. Dr. Henriques is author of three books, UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge (2024), A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (2022), and A New Unified Theory of Psychology (2011), and he has published many professional papers in the field’s top journals. He also has a popular blog on Psychology Today, called Theory of Knowledge, which has over 500 essays and received over 10 million views. Dr. Henriques is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and is a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia. He teaches classes in psychotherapy, personality, personality assessment, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Vermont and did his postdoctoral training under Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dear friends,

I’m thrilled to introduce you to The Strategic Metacrisis Mapping Initiative, the Institute of Applied Metatheory’s newest Applied Metatheory Initiative, led by Nick Hedlund, Ph.D., aiming to “build a big picture of the world’s biggest problem.”

There is an emerging consensus of a profound, global “metacrisis” characterized by entangled, interpenetrating, and co-arising 1. ecosocial (ecological, political-economic, technological), 2. spiritual (meaning-making), 3. ethical, and 4. epistemic (sensemaking) crises, and their interconnected root causes. The Strategic Metacrisis Mapping Initiative will convene novel intellectual and social resources necessary to map and more fully understand the reality of the global metacrisis and its implications for meaning-making. Leveraging a metatheoretically-integrative Visionary Realism—a comprehensive, Complex Integral Realist Big Picture philosophy—the project will use a retroductive method to generate a map of the ecology of causal mechanisms, reality distortions, and symptoms of the global metacrisis’s four primary domains assessed across five major worldviews (i.e., stages of human sensemaking and meaning-making). The project will develop a web-based interactive topology (i.e., big picture) of the metacrisis, convene an innovation lab-style symposia for expert coordination and validation, and one or more papers.

In our view, the metacrisis is best understood not as a coincidental collection of single crises but as a totality that calls out to be seen, evaluated and understood as an emergent holism and one challenging us to improve humanity’s capacity for understanding and meeting higher-order complexity on its own terms. Therefore, this project aims to use a sophisticated, integrative, and comprehensive philosophy to show what is possible when we leverage Big Pictures to support new forms of sensemaking and meta-strategizing about complex, wicked problems.

We aim to show that Big Pictures are emancipatory precisely because they non-reductively ground complex phenomena in the sense that they are tractable and to some degree rationally accessible. If ever there was a critically decisive, numinous, and opportune moment in human history—a kairos, as the ancient Greeks would have it—this is it. The stakes for our future on this planet could not be higher. The process of building a “big picture of the world’s biggest problem” is not only the foundation of a 21st-century orienting praxis for scholars, policymakers, philanthropists, social impact leaders, and others; it is also a living engagement into an emerging, fuller integrative worldview that is capable of re-enchanting questions of ultimate concern with a profound, post-rational sense of faith.

We hope you join us in our excitement to support and foster this critical initiative.

Warmly,
Robb

 

About Nick Hedlund
Nick Hedlund, Ph.D., is leader of the Strategic Metacrisis Mapping Initiative at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, and founding director of the Eudaimonia Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy & Social Science from University College London and was an exchange scholar at Yale University. Nick’s work explores the intersection of metatheory and the cultural and psychological dimensions of global transformation. As a Ph.D. researcher, Nick studied under Arthur Petersen and Roy Bhaskar to develop a new metatheoretical framework for emancipatory social research known as visionary realism, applying it to address the metacrisis. He served as executive director of the Integral Research Center at the MetaIntegral Foundation and has served as adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University, associate director of the Integral Ecology Center, associate organizer of the biennial Integral Theory Conference, and organizer of four International Critical Realism & Integral Theory Symposia. His articles have appeared in journals such as the Environment and Public Policy and the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. He edited a book with Roy Bhaskar, Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, and Mervyn Hartwig entitled Metatheory for the 21st-Century: Critical Realism and Integral Theory in Dialogue (Routledge, 2016). Its companion volumes, Big-Picture Perspectives on Planetary Flourishing: Metatheory for the Anthropocene, Volume I was published in 2022, and Integrative Responses to the Global Metacrisis: Metatheory for the Anthropocene, Volume II (Routledge) is due out in 2025. Nick holds a Bachelor’s degree (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in Culture, Ecology, and Consciousness from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Master’s in Integral Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, and a (second) Master’s in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Through the course of his studies, he has received several academic awards and honors including the Jacob Van Ek Scholar Award, the Honors Graduating Senior Scholarship Award for his undergraduate thesis, and the Yale UCL Collaborative Bursary. Currently, he teaches integral philosophy and consciousness studies in the Integral Noetic Sciences Program at the California Institute for Human Science.

Dear friends,

I am excited and humbled to introduce you to SALT for Climate, The Institute of Applied Metatheory’s newest IAM Foundation Incubation Grant recipient, led by Dr. Gail Hochachka, PhD and Lisa Genki Gibson.

The Sensemaking, Action, and Leadership Training (SALT) for Climate initiative addresses a critical blindspot in today’s climate action efforts, which have not put more conscious sensemaking as the core and highest-leverage foundation upon which all climate action must be built.

By drawing on cutting-edge climate research, nuanced facilitation in human interiors, and Big Picture metatheories, SALT for Climate seeks to help climate actors heal the psychosocial blindspots in prevailing technical, scientific and philosophical paradigms. The team at SALT for Climate aims to bridge the disconnect between climate policies and public perception, which often leads to stalled initiatives and societal polarization. By developing and delivering specialized sensemaking and leadership training and coaching that can be scaled globally, the climate sensemaking initiative enhances the emotional, social, and consciousness capacities of climate leaders. This scalable approach is a long lever that can unleash liberating praxis and leadership skill at every level of the climate action spiral, not only complementing the scientific and technical aspects of climate action but also fostering deeper public engagement and support.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Gail Hochachka, PhD and Lisa Genki Gibson to the Institute of Applied Metatheory (fuller biographies below).

If you believe humanity needs to apply integrative Big Pictures to our most pressing social-evolutionary leverage points, and are passionate about supporting concrete initiatives like SALT for Climate, please consider supporting the IAM Foundation.

We will share more exciting developments from the IAM network soon, but thank you to all of you who have reached out to join IAM or support our work.

Loving regards,
Robb Smith

 

Gail Hochachka
Dr. Gail Hochachka, PhD, is a researcher, thought-catalyzer, facilitator, and coach. She has pursued a unique area of research on the human dimensions of climate change: on the diverse ways people make meaning about climate change, on how to find shared meaning in diverse settings, and on how to accelerate climate action in a transformative manner. She does speaking events and convenes novel conversations amongst experts, inviting collaborative wayfinding on the climate challenge. Gail also teaches graduate courses at UBC, such as on Climate Communications and Engagement, and she is an associate-level Integral Coach. With SALT for Climate, she seeks to move research into practice, at the very leverage points where greater climate action can happen.

Lisa Gibson
Lisa Genki Gibson is a systems change consultant, educator, facilitator, and coach, with a background in social justice, gender and development, and community engagement across multiple, complex issues. She specializes in working with individuals, organizations and multistakeholder spaces to embed systemic change, transform belief systems, and construct alliances across diversity towards clarified action. As a Zen teacher in the Soto Zen lineage, Lisa also brings invaluable dexterity and nuance in working with human interiority to the project team.

Dear friends,

I am absolutely thrilled to begin to introduce you to our newest members of the IAM Network, which we’ll be doing over the coming weeks as we announce the awardees of the first IAM Foundation Incubation Grants. Many of these people are well-known experts and luminaries in the integrative metatheory field, and we have been grateful and extremely enthused to select these projects from the more than 50 proposals we received from around the world.

Over the coming months, you will see an acceleration of the activity and knowledge flow through the Institute after the relative quiet of foundation-building we’ve been doing, and I’m excited to be able to announce more of our Applied Metatheory Initiatives (AMIs) in the coming weeks and months. Needless to say, each AMI we’ve chosen meets the criteria we set out when we began, holding the potential to make an extremely transformational impact to a critical dimension of the modern lifeworld—with the possibility to grow from a small, incubated idea into a toolkit into a program and perhaps even into a full-blown institution—while also being led by exceptional, mature and embodied leaders in their respective domains.

With that, please join me in welcoming Brendan Graham Dempsey to IAM. Brendan will be leading the Cultural Complexity Index project, a vision that, like Brendan, I’d been dreaming about for years and was eager to help support:

The Cultural Complexity Index (CCI) targets the significant yet under-researched issue of human cultural complexification by offering quantifiable data to support theories and visibility of cultural evolution and civilizational analysis. This project addresses the need for sophisticated, integrative metatheoretical models to tackle today’s complex global challenges, aiming to move cultural complexification theories from speculative sociology to a robust social science. Utilizing the Computerized Lectical Assessment System (CLAS) to analyze hierarchical complexity in historical and contemporary texts, the CCI will produce reliable data to inform academic discourse, promote integrative thinking, and challenge the prevailing academic paradigms rooted in cultural relativism. The failure to consider the non-arbitrary relationships among cultural systems and their potential for coordinated integration has led to confusion around values and meaning in pluralistic societies. This well-intentioned relativism fuels nihilism, radical post-truth ideologies, social decoherence, and political tribalism. To address these issues and advance complex, integrative perspectives essential for tackling today’s complex problems, it is crucial to shift knowledge-generating paradigms toward a quantifiable understanding of cultural complexification. By generating multiple academic papers and a comprehensive book, the project aims to catalyze a paradigm shift in how cultural evolution is understood and valued, providing essential insights for addressing the complex problems of our time.

About Brendan:
Brendan is a writer, poet, farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most. He holds a BA in religious studies from the University of Vermont and a master’s in religion and art from Yale University. He is the author of the 7-volume Metamodern Spirituality Series and, most recently, Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.

Please join me in welcoming Brendan to the IAM Network. Expect to hear more about the progress of this initiative in the coming months.

If you are inspired by initiatives like the Cultural Complexity Index and want to support IAM’s mission, please consider making a donation to the IAM Foundation. Your financial support directly fuels these groundbreaking projects. To contribute, email us at iam@appliedmetatheory.org.

We look forward to sharing more exciting developments as we work together to advance integrative metatheory and address the complex challenges of our time.

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm.

Best regards,
Robb Smith