The Think Tank
Who We Must Become is presented by the Center for World Philosophy and Religion , an acclaimed international think tank.
What you experience here, the school, the teachings, the media, the community, is the public facing expression of a much larger body of work. Behind every word, every prayer, every video, is a think tank of leading philosophers, scientists, and scholars writing a new worldview in response to existential risk.
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion was co-founded by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein, who serve as its co-presidents. Their ongoing collaborative authorship — at the heart of the Center's Great Library — is joined by Ken Wilber and a wider circle of leading thinkers, including Barbara Marx Hubbard, Howard Bloom, and Aubrey Kincaid, weaving the validated insights of the interior and exterior sciences into a New Story of Value.
Who We Must Become is where that work meets you in a form that is alive, transformative, and inviting. The Center is where the deep philosophical work happens.
About the Center for World Philosophy and Religion
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, CosmoErotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence.
The key argument of the Center is that we live, like in the Renaissance, in a time between worlds and a time between stories. As the world broke down around them, Da Vinci and a small band in the Renaissance told a New Story of Value. That new story, to the extent that its plotlines were accurate, good, true, and beautiful, and firmly rooted in both the interior and exterior sciences, raised all boats and birthed all the great dignities of modernity.
In this new time between worlds and time between stories, where the challenges and risks, as well as the potentials, are exponentially greater than they were in the Renaissance, the Center is doing what the Florentine Platonic Academy did then: bringing together an international group of leading thinkers, weaving the best validated insights across all domains of human knowledge into a New Story of Value adequate to our moment.
The Three Great Questions of CosmoErotic Humanism
Where are we?
The great question of the Universe Story. The Center's response is what Dr. Gafni calls The Universe: A Love Story.
Reality is not merely a fact. Reality is a story. Reality is not merely a story. Reality is a love story—a story of Eros. Reality is not merely a love story. Reality is an evolutionary love story. Reality—and all its forces, interior and exterior—are animated by Eros.
Who are you?
The great question of personal identity. The response is Unique Self Theory, the cornerstone of CosmoErotic Humanism's vision of who we are.
Once you realize that you are an irreducibly unique expression of the Cosmos, you realize that there is a corner of the world that lacks love and can be transformed only by you. Evolution took 13.7 billion years of synchronicity to produce this unique expression—you. You are the personal face of the evolutionary impulse. You are not irrelevant.
What ought we do?
The great question of Eros and ethos. What do we want? What is our deepest heart's desire, both personally and collectively?
There is a covenant between generations in which those alive today must work to avert dystopia and extinction on behalf of those yet to come. This is an inescapable and instructively asymmetrical obligation.
Obligation is not an externally imposed structure but an internal experience of connection between parts and beings, welling up from the fullness of Eros, naturally emergent from the field of value.
The Great Library
At the core of the Center's work is the Great Library of CosmoErotic Humanism, an expansive series of books being written over the coming decades. The Library is the formal articulation of the New Story of Value, written by a collaborative authorship of leading philosophers, scientists, and scholars working under the pseudonym David J. Temple.
David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence.
Much like Romanticism or Existentialism, CosmoErotic Humanism is not merely a theory but a movement that changes the very mood of Reality. It is an invitation to participate in evolving the source code of consciousness and culture towards a cosmocentric ethos for a planetary civilization.
How It All Connects
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion writes the books, holds the symposiums, convenes the philosophers, and articulates the new philosophical worldview.
Who We Must Become takes that worldview into the world. Through the school, the live events, the media, and the community, the work of the Center becomes a living practice you can actually step into.
Two faces of one mission.
One writes the philosophy. The other transmits it into culture.
Go Deeper
To learn about the Center's research, leadership, symposiums, publications, and the full Great Library, visit the Center for World Philosophy and Religion directly.
Visit the Center for World Philosophy and Religion