Our Research Program

We are living in a turbulent period of transition: humanity faces a variety of pressing crises, each causing untold levels of dispossession, dislocation, and despair. We believe these crises reflect a mismatch between the needs of our present age and many of the basic ideas upon which modern societies are built.

COMIT pursues a research agenda organized around a single conviction: that inquiry beginning from the reality of human oneness can transform how humanity understands itself and orders its common life.

Guided by the principle of human oneness and a vision of a more just, peaceful, and prosperous world society, our research program examines these conceptual foundations of modern civilization and seeks to constructively transform them. We strive to transcend the dichotomies that have come to characterize modern thought—between the oneness and diversity of human beings, between human prosperity and ecological flourishing, between scientific advancement and the spiritual heritage of humankind—and to elaborate a fresh and compelling vision of what human relations could become.

What is Human Oneness?

COMIT treats the concept of human oneness as more than a moral aspiration or a call for unity. By human oneness we mean that humanity is, in a fundamental sense, a single people—not despite our differences, but alongside them. Just as the organs of a body are distinct yet inseparable from the whole, human beings and communities are diverse yet bound together in ways that make each person's wellbeing connected to everyone else's. We share a planet, a biosphere, and an increasingly intertwined set of economic, political, and social systems. What happens in one part of the world shapes what is possible in another. No nation, community, or individual can finally stand outside this web of interdependence.

We recognize that this is not a new idea. But we believe it has become newly urgent—and that taking it seriously as an organizing principle, rather than a vague sentiment, can open new ways of thinking about the challenges humanity faces.

Our Research Areas

Our Methods and Approach