The Idea: Motivations & Scope
For millennia, humans have pursued strategies for the good life. Societies have developed and practiced concepts of well-being and human flourishing, including Confucian self-enhancement, Buddhism’s Eightfold Path of the Four Noble Truths, Islamic Tazkiyah or adab-inspired humanism, Greco-Roman Stoicism, Hindu paths of Yoga and Ayurveda, as well as relational and earth-connected practices of indigenous communities worldwide. They have invented tools that improve physical and mental self-regulation: meditation, prayer, trance, dance, chant, bodywork, or therapy.
This pilot project creates tools for human flourishing by integrating the study of self-enhancement across deep time and space with neuroimaging, computational neuroscience, and AI technologies enhancing awareness, meaning-making, and human flourishing.
Our proposed transdisciplinary synergizing of humanities disciplines, sciences, and AI react to challenges such as environmental degradation, mass migration, violence, drastic inequality, and the transformation of our social systems, the engine that charts our collective future is broken. In 2022, 66% of 18 to 24-year-olds reported moderate to severe stress, 27% depression, and 12% anxiety—rates that remain high across the workforce until age 54.We have yet to fully acknowledge humans are not living the good life. Beyond the tragedy of unfulfilled lives, there are serious economic costs. According to a 2020 article in The Lancet Global Health, the loss of productivity due to depression and anxiety costs the global economy US$ 1 trillion per year and is projected to reach $16 trillion by 2030.
Our pilot project addresses this global crisis of human agency and well-being by harnessing the research and action networks around MITHIC, MIT HEALS, AHA, the MIT Global Humanities Initiative, the MIT Game Lab, the Presencing Institute, and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. We will develop tools for human flourishing, leveraging our synergies to produce white papers and publications; a database of self-enhancement concepts and practices; AI models for collective sensing and debate computational models and wearable devices, an analog game for mindfulness; contemplative workshops and public symposia; and active engagement with broader educational, policy and media networks.
Goals & Actions
The pilot project consists of four mini-labs, which embody our outcome-oriented methodology of practice.
- LAB 1: Concepts & Practices of Self-enhancement in Deep Time and Space
- LAB 2: Neuroscience of Human Flourishing
- LAB 3: AI Tools for Collective Awareness and Deep Communication
- LAB 4: Public Literacies for Global Human Self-enhancement
LAB 4 is a joint experimental maker space uniting our expert-driven, transdisciplinary research into tangible tools and actions, created at MIT for global use. Through collaboration with the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), we will share innovations with international policymakers, diplomats, businesses, philanthropies, educational institutions, and communities worldwide.