How to
Promote
Human
Flourishing
Defining Human Flourishing
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
As humans, we have the unique capacity to intelligently modify our environments. This is our Agency. As a collective, we have used this capacity to accomplish incredible feats of technological and societal development. But as individuals, agency makes us come alive. Flourishing is thus not characterized by happiness or pleasure alone. Instead, we flourish through the axes of agency: Competency, Expression, and Community. Our focus at Helicon Institute is to promote Human Flourishing by maximizing these traits in both individuals and communities.
No two individuals are exactly alike. A multitude of factors, including our genetics, experience, and intrinsic motivations, ensure that every person is endowed with a unique set of creative, cognitive, and physical strengths. These strengths enable specific ways of interacting with our social and physical environments. While genetics and intrinsic motivation are stable factors to be harnessed, experience can be shaped intentionally towards agency and flourishing. Within the family, community, and institution, each individual should be treated not only as capable in their own right, but with the expectation of growth, given they have access to aligned opportunities. The role of any organization is thus to structure social and technical opportunities around its individual members to foster authentic expression and the development of competency towards a specific communal or institutional goal.
Competency
An individual's competency describes the mastery over the skills and information necessary to modify the systems that influence their environments. Specifically, a competent individual can form an accurate mental model of these systems, imagine how a system would need to change to improve their environments, identify the available levers of change, and act to take advantage of these levers.
Expression
Expression is the individual's mode of communicating their beliefs, perspectives, and desires. In this sense, all expression is art. Some may have a propensity for visual expression, while others prefer to use their voice. Regardless, every mode of expressive output contributes uniquely to the overall discourse concerning any particular topic, and has the power to enlighten or embolden others.
Community
Environments are created through collective effort and intention, so communities will always have more agency than the individual to either change or restrict change. The capability of a community to adapt towards an improvement in their environment depends on the competency, expression, and importantly, the organization of its members. While any one person can advocate for change, a community must move along a vector of consensus and mutual growth. Discourse, compromise, and acceptance are necessary for communal flourishing.
Optimizing
Growth
We promote Human Flourishing by optimizing the development of these three pillars. Each has a natural tendency to expand under the right conditions. They are human traits. Our role is in shaping communal and institutional systems to create and sustain these conditions for their members through partnerships with schools, NGOs, companies, and governmental organizations.
Education
The purpose of education has long been focused on the development of social and practical competency which extends naturally to the pillars of agency and flourishing. However, schools have faced systemic, fiscal, and capacity barriers, limiting their ability to optimize the education of every student. Recent developments in affordable and scalable artificial intelligence systems provide the leverage needed to overcome these historic barriers. We work with institutions in transitioning to a new model of education where every student has sufficient opportunity to develop their competency and expression.
A New Model of EducationExpressive Platforms
Effective Expression needs a platform; platform capture is a skill that requires time, resources, and information. Our role as an institute is to teach individuals and organizations how to capture attention while leveraging natural forms of expression. We, ourselves, also serve as a platform for voices aligned and against our mission. We believe the purpose of expression is to facilitate discourse, and it is this discourse that will produce systems that promote flourishing for all.
Helicon PlatformsCommunity Organization
The sum of a network's capacity for change is much greater than its constituent parts. The act of organization multiplies agency as symbiotic contributors support each other towards a shared set of goals. Our role as community organizers is to facilitate relationships by optimizing the flow of information and resources within a network united by a vision.
Our Network