Please note: This nonprofit website is still under construction. We are still fixing links, upgrading language, and editing materials. But the website is in good enough shape for you to learn about us. If you like what you see, you can sign up for our email list, volunteer, and even donate during this construction period. We're reorganizing this website around a new vision and an integrated four-website pathway, which we call Our Next Bold Adventure, and the developing Shared Quest Network. To see our new vision, click here. You will be taken to the Factnet main website, where you will also find the estimated timeframe for this website's completion and public launch.
What We Mean When We Say “Philosophy”
The dictionary defines philosophy as:
“The rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.”
Using that definition, the new Way of the Universe philosophy is:
-
- A rational way of understanding life (who you are, the nature of the universe, and how to best live in it). And also,
- A set of guiding principles, practices, and solutions also designed for the new challenges and problems of the messy 21st century.
This new philosophy is firmly grounded in the rational investigation of what is true, helpful, and life-sustaining.
The Way of the Universe philosophy is derived from three essential factors:
-
- Traditional values that have been time-tested and proven over the centuries,
- New evolutionary values that represent life-sustaining success patterns proven across the universe's evolutionary history, and
- Current science that uses humanity's best and most advanced rational thinking, analysis, and problem-solving skills.
A value is something we consider important, such as honesty, fairness, or compassion. A principle is a guiding idea or rule that helps us put a value into action. When we practice positive values and principles consistently and thoughtfully, we develop virtues—lasting qualities of good character. For example, valuing honesty and following the principle “tell the truth and correct your mistakes” helps us develop the virtue of truthfulness.
We call this philosophy the Way of the Universe because many of its traditional and newer values and principles align with deep, recurring evolutionary patterns of the universe. Under suitable conditions, cooperation, learning, adaptation, and interdependence can help sustain and renew the cycle of life. Understanding these recurring, life-supporting patterns of evolution can strengthen one's practice, actions, and results in many circumstances, though not all.
What This New Philosophy Is For
New philosophies have appeared throughout history during times of great turmoil, when society needed new solutions to new problems.
The Way of the Universe is intended to help:
Individuals to:
-
-
- Clarify purpose and meaning
- Consciously choose more effective values and principles to live their lives by
- Live more successfully with others. If you practice its principles, it will help you align your life's actions with the universe's most powerful and time-proven evolutionary patterns and experience what has been called the beautiful "flow state or in the zone state more frequently in your daily life.
- Be more rational so that you can analyze situations better, make better choices, and have better life results.
- Clarify and strengthen their identity (without ego inflation)
-
Families, Organizations, and Communities to:
-
-
- Create shared purpose, values, meaning, and direction
- Improve cooperation, trust, and long-term outcomes.
-
Humanity to:
-
-
- Replace the values destroying our world with new values that support humanity's healthy evolution.
- Evolve values, actions, and societies in ways that protect the cycle of life for future generations.
- Address the growing global threats challenging our well-being and survival (see: the world’s critical global polycrisis challenges). This means working more effectively on the urgent systemic challenges and solutions needed to reduce the ongoing damage caused by the global polycrisis.
-
(To quickly see what we’ve already identified as the 15 main underlying causes of humanity's global polycrisis, click the following link. The 15 underlying problems causing or worsening the polycrisis.)
Overall, our core work is helping people think rationally, analyze wisely, and choose and live by life-affirming values and principles, and then to use evidence and thoughtful action to build better lives, communities, corporations, and nations.
How This New Philosophy Changes Everyday Decision-Making
Most philosophies were developed slowly, haphazardly, and with partial information. The Way of the Universe is different because modern science and modern tools allow us to observe the development of past philosophies, and the existence of evolutionary patterns over vast timescales and across many systems.
The Way of the Universe philosophy helps you live a life that is chosen, not accidentally inherited.
Without a conscious philosophy, your beliefs and goals tend to be shaped by:
-
- Cultural noise
- Social pressure
- Misinformation
- Whatever chaos is trending this week
Some mistakes are natural and even useful. But many of life’s most costly mistakes are avoidable when a reality-based philosophy wisely guides values, principles, action, and attitude.
The Goals of the Way of the Universe
The goal and purpose of the Way of the Universe is to provide a modern science-grounded philosophy for humanity’s hardest century. It is designed especially to help people solve modern problems previous societies did not face. It will help people, groups, communities, and organizations better align their values and choices with the long-term common good, despite today's economic, political, social, and ecological challenges.
Humanity has developed 50 major philosophies over the past 5,000 years. Most of these new philosophies were responses to previous philosophies that did not adequately resolve the new problems that had arisen in that society. Today's society faces an accelerating, disruptive polycrisis of local, regional, and national problems that simply did not exist when humanity developed its previous major philosophies.
This new philosophy was also created to address the polycrisis. To do this, it integrates traditional values and principles with the most useful values and principles of evolution to create new, testable, workable solutions to our growing polycrisis. This integration of traditional values and principles with evolutionary values and principles is what makes this new philosophy unique.
The Way of the Universe offers a secular, science-grounded new philosophy and daily practice framework that helps people live well and meaningfully, act ethically, and make wiser choices about how to live in, manage, and reduce the polycrisis.
What About Your Current Philosophy?
Yes, we know that you already have a philosophy. The only question is whether you intentionally chose it or you inherited it by accident, from invisible cultural accumulation, from algorithms, or whatever chaos is trending this week. The real question is: "Has your current philosophy proved adequate for helping you resolve the many new problems of the 21st century that have never existed in any previous society?
What the Way of the Universe Is and Isn't
What it Is
It is a practical philosophy: We teach modern rational-thinking tools and the Universe Principles, reality- and science-aligned principles of Right Action (what to do) and Right Attitude (how to do it). The Way of the Universe turns the Universe's and evolution's time-proven “what works” success patterns into practical guidance for individuals, families, and communities.
What it isn’t
Not religion. Not spirituality. Not “manifestation.” Not “vibes over evidence.” If science says no, we accept the no.
What “Right” means
“Right” = reality- and science-aligned, rational, and evidence-informed, not morally superior. Think: better map, fewer personal, local, regional, and national faceplants.
Key Qualities of the Way of the Universe Philosophy
The Limited Progressive Evolution principles and discoveries of science (simplified into the Universe Principles of right action and right attitude) expand and clarify our understanding of:
-
- Our place in the universe
- Deeper meaning and purpose
- Identity (beyond social labels and ego stories)
- The optimal way to live successfully with others
This philosophy is designed to be:
-
- Rational and science-grounded
- Universal and timeless in applicability
- Non-denominational (compatible with being religious or non-religious)
- Culturally, racially, and ethnically neutral
- Non-gender-biased
- Whole-brain honoring (reason + compassion + action)
- Agency and action-oriented, balanced with community need.
- Capable, through its new values and principles, of helping resolve the many new problems societies before 1945 did not have to face or manage.
- Capable of helping to resolve and manage the current polycrisis.
- Capable of helping resolve the 20 major causes of humanity's recurring dysfunction and injustice over the last 10,000 years. (For a quick listing of these 20 causes, click here.)
Ultimately, what we are doing with this new philosophy is gathering the old and new values, principles, and actions needed to not only resolve the messy problems of our 21st-century polycrisis, which no generations before 1945 had to deal with, but also working to build and evolve a far less dysfunctional and unjust society and civilization.
The Two Major Educational Areas Covered by the Way of the Universe are:
A. Education on the science-grounded Universe Principles of Right Actions and Right Attitudes. We strongly recommend that you start the 7-Day Universe Principles Experiment here and use the Universe Principles of Right Action and Right Attitude to test if they are as effective and as beneficial as we claim.
B. Rationality, better thinking, and metacognition training from basic to advanced, so that you can think better, analyze better, decide better, and act more effectively. Click here to begin our empowering training on modern rationality tools, thinking, and analytical effectiveness. It will take you to our Universe Institute website, where we conducted this research.
Those two areas and practices are the fundamental core of everything we do. The good news is you can begin them immediately.
A Quick Overview of the Universe Principles of Right Action and Right Attitude
The Universe Principles are organized into four ways reality changes: Through Process, Relationship, Context, and Transformation. Use these Universe Principles as a daily operating system for smarter decisions, better cooperation, and sustainable success as you meet the unique challenges of the 21st century.
The Universe Principles may look different from any other principles you currently follow. They are focused on four key areas where reality changes and can be changed.
Process (what changes over time)
They help you:
Track motion, momentum, timing, and learning loops.
Run small experiments
Use fast feedback
Defend your information
Relationship (what connects to what)
They help you:
Protect wise cooperation. Prevent gaming. Repair quickly.
Keep the exchange fair
Stop free-riding and gaming
Build conflict skill
Context (the big picture)
They help you:
See systems, limits, and the shared commons clearly.
Stay within ecological limits
Protect the commons
Increase accountability
Transformation (when systems reorganize)
They help you:
Build resilience, simplify wisely, scale what works ethically.
Build reserves
Simplify adaptively
Check your plan or strategy correctness and effectiveness before enacting (Called Red Teaming)
There are also Principles of Right Attitude
Why the Universe Principles work today (no mysticism required)
The “Universe Principles” translate the deepest recurring success patterns of Limited Progressive Evolution into modern human-usable guidance: energy budgets, constraints, feedback loops, cooperation guardrails, overshoot risks, and the reality that modern complexity eventually costs more than it returns.
Constraints shape what’s possible
Design your life and institutions around limits, not fantasies.
Feedback loops drive outcomes
Stabilize the good. Interrupt runaway loops (debt, outrage spirals, doomscrolling).
Cooperation is powerful but never free
Cooperation persists when cheating is constrained, and incentives align. Guardrails are love, actually.
Overshoot is a recurring failure mode
Live as limits exist. Reduce demand where possible. Build resilience where necessary.
Complexity has diminishing returns
Simplify ruthlessly. Complexity is a tool, not a personality.
Progress is conditional
Directionality is local, reversible, and not guaranteed. Build it. Defend it. Maintain it.
Go to the Universe Principles page →
About Our Audience and Practitioners
The words early adopters of breakthroughs, smart, and Maslow's self-actualizers describe those individuals. The Way of the Universe practitioners sometimes also refer to themselves as Evolutioneers, or sometimes even Planetary or Universe Citizens. Our audience comprises individuals and organizations seeking a balanced, just, and sustainable success.
You Can Help Spread the Way of the Universe
We’d appreciate your help forwarding this new philosophy to your friends and associates. Sharing this knowledge will make a better world for you, them, and everyone.
If any of the following is true, please spread the practice of this new philosophy:
-
- You like what you’ve heard so far
- You’ve experienced what has been called the “Great Flow of Life” and the benefits of alignment with the great flow.
- You already live by some similar version of these principles
- You feel called to help protect and advance life-affirming evolution
- You feel like a global citizen, or even a citizen of the universe
If you’d like to help, email us at [email protected] and let us know what you’d like to do and the skills you bring.
Current volunteer needs often include: teachers, web developers, administrators, social media specialists, and more.
Quick Start Links
Please sign up for our email list here or by clicking the image below.
You will receive Way of the Universe Community news, events, and updates.
Showing 1 reaction