The Divinity School | Endemic

The Divinity School

Become A Force of Nature

In earlier eras, divinity faculties catalyzed concrete revolutions in knowledge and justice—Harvard College (1636) and Oxford's Christ Church began as training grounds for clergy, yet matured into research universities. We stand in that lineage, but aim our lens at an expanded cosmology of intelligence—be it through physicalist (fundamental laws), religious (divine will), or naturalistic (entelechy of the life force) perspectives.

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Developing Novel Futures

We teach you to assemble visions big enough and clear enough to move governments, investors, and cultures.

Training Advanced Leaders

Master the Four Powers—Awakened Perception, Visionary Scholarship, Crazy Wisdom, and Passionate Action.

Moving Institutions

Transform isolated excellence into coordinated, comprehensive movements that shift civilization.

Only an institution built for questions of purpose, obligation, and awe can align machines, policies, and institutions with the universe's deep continuity—and help society act on that alignment at scale.

Developing Novel Futures

A One-Year Intensive Program with 60+ Peers & Faculty

We teach you to assemble visions big enough and clear enough to move governments, investors, and cultures.

Each student enters one of two tracks: Horizons of Biological Intelligence or Naturalizing Machine Agency. One is oriented toward discovery, revealing the intelligences already living in ecosystems and organisms. The other is oriented toward invention—designing technologies that participate with, rather than extract from, living systems. Together, these tracks form the intellectual and ethical scaffolding for a new, balanced ontological portfolio, primarily targeting an alternative to the dominant bet on AI monoculture.

Students work in small teams within their tracks to advance a concrete initiative. The form is open: a multimedia story, a policy white paper, a speculative prototype, or a public-facing synthesis that reframes a civilization-scale challenge.

At the program's culmination, all students gather for a final in-person retreat. There, each track presents its work, and the entire cohort must weave their contributions into a single, coherent strategic document—a compelling proposal for governments, foundations, or public institutions to invest in alternative futures to the current trajectory.

Horizons of Biological Intelligence

This track explores emerging fields like cognitive science, collective intelligence, and synthetic biology, revealing that we may have underestimated the number of minded agents in our world. Students develop a compelling vision of how these under-explored realms can accelerate human development and restore our relationship with the natural world.

Naturalizing Machine Agency

This track explores the distinction between human intelligence and machine agency, focusing on their proper alignment. Students develop an innovative approach to understanding machines as beneficial extensions of human agency, creating a framework that will redirect government interests and capital investments.

Recognizing Cognitive Malware

Realigning with Reality's Deep Structure

Malware emerges when our visions stray from reality's deep structure—when exciting ideas become distorted by inherited cognitive patterns.

Many of today's most intractable challenges stem not from poor reasoning or insufficient data, but from deeper metaphysical distortions in our understanding of time, causality, intelligence, and agency.

We call these distortions malware—deep cognitive defaults and unquestioned metaphysical patterns that silently shape how we think, lead, design, and define what's real. While there are dozens of examples, a few common ones are:

  • Linear time → Real transformation doesn't unfold step-by-step. It mutates, thresholds, and leaps.
    Influenced by process thinkers like A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.
  • Additive change → More isn't always better. Transformation often arises through rupture, not accumulation.
    Bonnitta Roy's work on phase shifts and evolutionary asymmetry.
  • Newtonian causality → Cause doesn't always precede effect. In complex systems, effects emerge from fields, not levers.
    Inspired by Simondon and non-linear dynamic systems theory.
  • Disembodied mind → Mind is not a detached observer. It emerges from embodied perception and motion.
    Informed by Evan Thompson, Varela, and sensorimotor enactivism.

By the end of the program, you'll be fluent in identifying foundational errors in dominant systems and skilled at building alternatives that are alive, generative, and aligned with reality's deeper continuities.

Moving Institutions

From Individual Excellence to Coordinated Force

Institutions don't move because of isolated excellence. They move when something novel, coordinated, and comprehensive comes along.

No matter how thoughtful or technically sound your individual project is, it likely isn't enough to shift institutions, redirect capital at scale, or transform civilization's self-understanding.

In the final months of the program, we shift our focus to Passionate Action and organize as a Think Tank for assembling great ideas into a generative force that can work with institutional inertia. Together, we examine what's worth building and why, shaping an intervention compelling enough to stand alongside AI as a credible vision for investment, governance, and meaning.

We end with a four-day in-person immersion, during which we co-create a document, proposal, prototype, or ready-to-launch coalition of activities that scales into something institutions, funders, and movements can clearly see, understand, and embrace.

When a cohort's visions strongly align with institutional opportunities, we actively support these transformative ideas through our established networks. Through this incubation process, we ensure the most compelling and well-developed ideas can take root and create lasting impact in the real world.

Training Advanced Leaders

A One-Year Intensive Program with 60+ Peers & Faculty

How Do We Create The Worlds We Really Want?

Throughout time leaders have forwarded the course of history. However, most were caught in the story of their historical era. Great leaders—those who have changed the course of history—transcend the given reality of their times with penetrating vision and a sense of connection to a divine source, and hold themselves to a higher purpose.

The Divinity School is designed to transform the way you look at the world, face challenges, and set goals for yourself and others. The program forges leaders who can see deeper into reality, make decisions that benefit the whole, and align humanity with the natural intelligence of the universe.

What powers do we need to cultivate in order to lead a population of free and willing participants?

In an era where algorithms are dominating people, we seek leaders endowed with great character, whose power can be enhanced by clarity of perception, enlightened by inclusive vision, awakened to wisdom, and ripened by passionate conviction.

Can Great Leaders Make the Difference We Need?

Today, there's a notable absence of a robust theory of change to guide leaders. As democracy gradually turns into a mere semblance of participation, authoritarian regimes are increasingly sought to prevent impending collapse and chaos.

We envision an approach that both incorporates and transcends all existing methods. We believe it's both feasible and essential to develop exceptional leaders whose character and vision can expedite the transformation of collective identities.

Where Knowledge Ends, we rely on belief.

The nature of belief itself—its essential role in our humanity—is not the same as the belief systems that emerge and evolve in human history.

Moving Institutions

Movements The Divinity School Incubates

Securing the Nation's Future with Advanced Intelligences

Strategic frameworks for navigating the intersection of biological and machine intelligence at national scale.

The Futures We Must Shape

Collective visioning and policy design for regenerative civilizational transitions.

Originals

A platform featuring cutting-edge thinkers whose work aligns with biological intelligence and living systems.

Cognitive Widgets AI

Tools for detecting and correcting cognitive malware in institutional decision-making.

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