PCC Masters SYmposium: The Age of the Philosopreneur (2021)
On the cusp of an integral paradigm shift, the 21st century is in dire need of individuals who can embody a sense of contrast, complexity, and enchantment. Gone are the days of specialization, as the grand project of revitalizing the Earth and our civilization requires one to perceive, create, and build with holotropic intention. Psychiatrist and transpersonal psychologist, Stanislav Grof, describes the term holotropic as “oriented toward wholeness” or “moving in the direction of wholeness” (from Greek holos = whole and trepo, trepin = moving toward or in the direction of something). This term suggests that in our everyday state of consciousness, we identify with only a small fraction of who we really are. “A modern,” writes Charles Taylor, “who recognizes both these powers [instrumental reason and creative imagination] is constitutionally in tension (Sources of the Self, 390).” Referring to the powers of Romanticism and the Enlightenment, Taylor suggests that the modern being is in a complicated yet enriching moral predicament due to the two drastically different modes of being. Perhaps then, what is needed for a moderner to hold this tension is a new framework for understanding one’s role and participation in an integral world. Rather than having to alternate between practicality and poetry, disenchantment and enchantment, and spirit and matter, I suggest we enter into a new age, the age of the philosopreneur. My framework for the philosopreneur will decipher the value of “in-betweenness,” and how such a mode of perception may enable the liminal aspects of reality to come alive.