OUR ESSENCE AND NAME

ESSENCE IS MORE BASIC THAN IDENTITY.

Flume is an integrative knowledge-based company that blends three modes of being:

Socially entrepreneurial. As an L3C, Flume integrates the best of business and social work to ensure it is agile, transparent, embodies the human element, and always aimed at flourishing cultures with the true, good, and beautiful.

Think Tank. Flume is a humanities-rich think tank that exists to understand and foster paradigm shifts concerning the universal human experience, the shared dignity and yet singularity of all human persons, the nature, role, and significance of worldviews, and the properly organic means to flourish both humanity and culture.

Creative. Flume exists to foster the human element in and through every area of the public square by telling a better story—one that is comprehensive, cohesive, humane, and shows how good overcomes evil.

From this integrative essence flows Flume’s Academic Studio, Imprint, Idea(l) Development, Consulting, and on-line presence via Substack and select social media platforms.

This reality is also represented in our name…

NAME

People often ask where the name “Flume” comes from. It’s not from Bon Iver’s amazing song, but we won’t correct you if you thought so. Anyway, for us, here is where our name comes from:

Flume (flu:m; floom), noun.

from Old French flum, from Latin flumen “river”, from fluere “to flow.”

  1. A deep narrow channel or ravine with a mountain stream or torrent running through it.

  2. An artificial channel conveying water; utilizes the inherent power of nature to transport heavy materials such as logs or timber.

  3. A water-chute ride at an amusement park.

  4. The “lum” of the word is also the Latin root for: light, to shine, or to enlighten, as with truth and knowledge.

All together, by maximizing the natural potentials of the earth and the felt human experience, the name “Flume” summarizes our desire to be a conduit of truth, clarity, creativity, exceptionalism, and enlightenment—in and through every area of life, society, and culture. A means to capture the good, true, and beautiful, and to redemptively cultivate and spread it further, worldwide and for generations to come.