Center for Mind and Culture

07/03/2024

Check out the second half of our interview with CMAC/IBCSR alum and filmmaker Jenn Lindsay, where she discusses the making and funding of her upcoming film Minding Shadows.

https://mindandculture.org/interview-with-filmmaker-jenn-lindsay-part-2-the-making-of-minding-shadows/

07/01/2024

Check out the first part of our interview with filmmaker and CMAC alum Jenn Lindsay, who describes the role of CMAC and IBCSR in launching her work in documentary film. https://mindandculture.org/interview-with-filmmaker-jenn-lindsay-part-1-cmac-as-launchpad/

06/26/2024

Just Horizons Alliance, which is now CMAC's parent organization, is seeking a Boston-based Operations Manager with training and experience in non-profit management. See our job posting here:

Just Horizons Alliance is a strategic change engine focused on fusing knowledge and wisdom for a more just and hopeful future. Our programming initiatives – research, publishing, tech ethics, virtue education, expansive spirituality, and dialogue about preparedness for the future – reflect this ...

06/20/2024

Have you heard about LISDA? Do you know what it is? In this first part of a three-part interview, CMAC postdoctoral fellow and LISDA project manager Rachel Bacon explains the origin of this exciting work on Seventh-day Adventists.

What is LISDA? (Part 1)Stephen WaldronJune 20, 2024Meet CMAC We recently interviewed CMAC Postdoctoral Fellow Rachel Bacon and Research Assistant Abigail Wester about the LISDA project. In Part 1 of the three-part interview, Rachel describes the history of the project and how it came to be hosted at...

05/20/2024

Congratulations to our dedicated research assistants and interns graduating this semester! 🥳
Alvin, Matthew, Abigail, Luca, Luis, Somayya, Douglas, and Jessie have contributed to a number of CMAC projects over the last few years. We are excited to see what they do next!

05/07/2024

Change in population size is determined by three factors: how many babies are born (fertility), how many people die (mortality), and how many people enter or exit that geographic region (migration). However, when we bring religion into the picture, there are some additional nuances we have to consider.

For example, fertility rate varies between religious groups. Additionally, we are analyzing religious switching, which describes when someone changes their (non)religious identity. These numbers vary by religion and country.

We’ve synthesized these factors and more from demographic statistics, values and belief surveys, as well as ethnographic and qualitative sources. The result is novel datasets, which serve as the foundation for our demographic projections and computational models.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2153599X.2024.2305447 Modeling Religious Change

This article presents the Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R), explains how it was constructed, and outlines its potential for helping to address long-standing research questions in ...

04/11/2024

Do you think that our world needs more vibrant rituals?

In a culture short on life-giving practices and rituals for non-religious people, our goal is to create a resource to enliven the spiritual quests of people outside or on the margins of organized religions. We are searching for thoughtful, accessible, impactful ritual practices that can be adopted by those whose needs are not met by traditional religions or spiritualities.

If you are a spiritual-but-not-religious ritual practitioner who develops, adapts, and/or officiates novel ritual practices, we want to hear from you! We are seeking submissions from a diverse community who, by sharing their ritual practices with a broad audience, can help to enrich secular culture with life-giving rituals.

*All ritual submissions must be completely original*
Learn more about our project at https://uncommonrituals.com

03/25/2024

CMAC has been re-evaluating how to focus our research efforts and amplify real-world impact. We asked ourselves, what could it mean to translate our religion and spirituality research for the benefit of others? We need a revolution of mind and spirit.

CMAC's Board of Directors has voted to merge with Wildheart Evolution in order to form a new entity: Just Horizons Alliance.

Just Horizons Alliance is a new kind of nonprofit that fuses decades of experience in innovative, prosocial research with support for expansive, non-sectarian spirituality. Research serves as our compass, guiding us toward a future that is just and sustainable, humane, and hopeful. Spirituality is what ignites the motivation to make it real.

Just Horizons has deep roots in scientific and humanities research, building on years of expertise and experience within CMAC. From the beginning, CMAC has pushed to solve real-world problems within the complex interplay of minds and cultures that shape human life. Utilizing nontraditional and interdisciplinary methods, we have studied religious change and emerging forms of spirituality in cultural evolutionary frameworks.

Spiritual adaptation is crucial to human flourishing and survival in our current cultural-evolutionary moment. Real, sustainable change requires not only evidence-based solutions, but also a deep engagement with the human mind and spirit. JHA is committed to this transformative journey toward a more just, meaningful, healthy, and spiritually connected world.

We'll have much more to share on this new venture over the coming weeks and months — stay tuned!

02/28/2024

Human behavior is driven by decision processes about whether to comply with advice from public-health experts and instructions from officials charged with managing pandemic response within organizations and governmental regions. In a new article, CMAC researchers Wesley Wildman, George Hodulik, and LeRon Shults demonstrate that human values are influential factors in a pandemic simulation. The Artificial Organization is an existing, agent-based, decision-support tool for pandemic management, with added behavioral parameters on political ideology, the spread of values, and the interactions between political values and compliance decisions in the US. Even before real-world testing, the results of this study suggest public-health messaging might be more effective if it were to engage values rather than only stress compliance with public-health recommendations.

Wesley Wildman, George Hodulik, and F. LeRon Shults Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation Abstract: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made abundantly evident that human behavior is a critical factor in determining whether interventions intended to manage infection spread are effective. Hum...

01/26/2024

What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? An upcoming book from CMACers Wesley Wildman and LeRon Shults introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates.

The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many disciplines, including the scientific study of religion, and evaluate the relative importance of those causal theories in processes of civilizational change. Materially, the book sheds new light on major debates among historians, archaeologists, and other social theorists on the role of religion within these major transitions.

"Modeling Religion: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilizations" is available for pre-order now.

What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book intr…

01/08/2024

Our consulting arm nexusSIM offers a range of services to make academics’ computational and data-science goals achievable. We help public-interest researchers by transforming data and ideas into impactful contributions using high-tech tools, analyses, and visualizations.

We've completed 8 contracts and partnered on 8 agent-based models in the two years since nexusSIM was formed. In 2023 alone, we began work on 4 new projects, all in the public health sector, and we participated in 2 NIH grant submissions. We’re excited to see the real-world impact of these projects. By connecting academics with computer scientists and data experts, we spark crucial conversations that drive real change.

12/08/2023

You might be able to tell that we had fun at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in November 😄
There were great conversations about complexity, human behavior, and the scientific study of religion at the CMAC booth and lunch event. We also shared initial findings and public access tools for our Modeling Religious Change project.
Thanks to everyone who joined us and be sure to stay tuned for more news to come!