Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?

I've been in higher ed for way too long. Certainly long enough to know that we need something new that can change the world.

After college, I got my MA in Marriage and Family Therapy, which I practiced on and off for nine years. My first PhD is in Depth Psychology, and my second is in Philosophy and Religion, with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. I also have certificates from Oxford and other places. Lecturing at Harvard in 2024 was a kick.

Over the past two decades, I've taught in lots of interesting transformative programs at various schools, including Pacifica, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Sonoma State, Argosy University, the New School of California, and others. I've designed and taught more than fifty graduate courses on various topics, chaired too many dissertation committees to count, launched the world's first Certificate in Ecotherapy, designed specializations and programs.

I've also been an administrator: former associate provost, acting admissions director, accreditation liaison officer, department chair, director of student services, diversity council executive member, and, more recently, academic program director of Consciousness, Psychology, and Transformation at National University. It has been quite a tour.

I've been privileged to teach, and interact with colleagues who teach, the deep stuff: depth psychology, ecotherapy and ecopsychology, dream studies, storytelling and applied mythology, symbolism and interpretive methods, philosophy and imagination, and of course terrapsychology. I've published books and papers etc. in these areas as well.

But higher ed is under attack in the United States, where transformative programs have withered. I've taught in some that no longer exist. Furthermore, higher ed is largely driven by rising tuition. The money to pay administrators, faculty, and staff has to come from somewhere.

So what if we took all that deep stuff, widened it to apply to groups as well as to individuals, and made it available for reasonable fees? And what if we showed learners how to make lasting change with it?

Some years back, I dreamed that I led a team aboard an abandoned aircraft carrier drifting at sea. Our mission was to power it up, upgrade it, and modify it for peaceful uses. It gives me joy to imagine taking something outdated and converting it into an instrument of deep education.

In this case, an academy to teach lamplighters: reflective creators, healers, and mentors who bring deep reimagining and restorying that rally the human spirit to remind us of who we are at our best. We need change agents who explore new visions, hunt possibilities, surface liberatory counter-narratives, instigate play and joy, support activists, accompany the troubled, and probe old tales for relevant insights for today.

Lamplighters are revolutionaries of the heart, mentors of the mind, strengtheners of the spirit, and nurturers of the soul. These quiet visionaries, deep restoryers, depth and wisdom mentors, and heralds of hope might also serve as worldview therapists and philosophical counselors to address our inner diminishment. They might also choose to be mythietai: tale-tellers of the past who used fiction and folklore to resist injustice.

I took the word "lamplighter" from my fiction: specifically, my Lamplighter Trilogy, which is part of a six-book cycle of speculative fiction that charts humanity's attempts to come of age as a species. One of the characters, the reflective seeker Simeon Mackenzie, dreams up a philosophy of reenchantment arranged in principles he calls the Ten Lamps. They are meant to illuminate our path forward. (My second PhD dissertation, Restorying Our Lore, looked at fiction as a path of wisdom and cultural transformation.)

We lamplighters have our work cut out for us. If we support each other, learn what we can, practice our skills, and refuse to succumb to inhumanity or cynicism, we can and will leave the world a much brighter place. Pronoia Academy is here to prove that.