IDENTITY

ESSENCE IS MORE BASIC THAN FUNCTION.

Flume is a knowledge-based social enterprise and think-tank-creative. Flume does not exist to merely help remove social problems, but to cultivate clarity, redemption, and human flourishing in their place. To do that, Flume uses a unique first-principled approach to understand social issues in a clear, ordered, integrative, and humane way; and then, through that lens, develop and disseminate meaningful and creative words, ideas, and services that: 1) Empower humanity to seek and find meaning; 2) help the West heal its many divisions towards the unity of diversity; 3) grow human capital in developing nations; 4) enliven a dignified understanding of human nature and human diversity in the public square; and 5) cultivate the good, true, and beautiful in all areas of local and global culture. In simpler terms, Flume exists for humanity.

Deeper, as a mode of being and thought, Flume is not merely interested in data-driven decision making, best practices, evidence-based practices, or industry standards. Rather, Flume is most concerned with what most people miss and what comes first—the philosophical beginnings those very concepts assume. It is in this way, Flume has developed and uses a unique first principled approach that integrates and orders the natural relationship between the humanities and the social sciences—qualities and then quantities. This allows us to find insightful, creative, and holistic flourishing-focused solutions to the many problems we face. And not just solve them, but redemptively cultivate ever greater depths and fruits of the good, true, and beautiful in their place—first in the world of ideas and then in the world of reality.

Said another way, Flume is rooted in the Great Tradition and born to further the Great Conversation in fresh ways that are relevant to our current cultural moment and thus cultivates the good, true, and beautiful in all areas of culture. Not just to make problems go away, but to foster fullness and flourishing in their space. We refer to the particular, holistic, and ordered nature of this integrative framework as The Human Experience, which is summarized in the Human Experience Poster Collection.

This is our phenomenology. It is out of this mode of being our varied divisions, works, words, ideas, and efforts flow—like a flume, taking the inherent nature and potential of the human person and the human experience, and fostering its flourishing even further—first in our minds and then through our hands.