Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development (IHCMD)

The Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development (IHCMD), an independent not-for-profit organization, advocates, promotes and facilitates changing how we understand and manage human affairs, a different approach of understanding and managing existence and development, demands and challenges, problems and difficulties, change and changing conditions. Understanding and managing them from the ground up and from the inside out, in their essence, in depth and detail, in a comprehensive, differentiated, but integrated, connected and related way.

To address the problems we face today, persisting and growing environmental, cultural, religious, political, social, economic as well as individual mental problems and difficulties we have to deal with locally and globally around the world today, we need to go beyond instant relief, short and medium-term measures dealing with and controlling only symptoms and consequences. We need to address the causes, deeper-rooted conditions, problems and development that lie behind them. We must deal with the human causes.

In their essence the problems we face are the results and consequences of human behaviour and actions. Behaviour and actions that are rooted in how traditionally and today we understand and manage existence and development. To address the problems and correct the behaviour and actions that have led to them we must change and adopt a different approach of understanding and managing human affairs. We need to understand and manage existence and development, demands and challenges, problems and difficulties, change and changing conditions from the ground up and from the inside out, in their essence, in depth and detail, in a comprehensive, differentiated but integrated, connected and related way.

We must understand and manage human existence and development at the level of the natural conditions of existence, which are common to all human beings, and which in the first instance define and govern human existence and development. Moreover, we must understand and manage them from within the mind and mental existence where we consciously exist and act, where we experience, become aware and consider the conditions of existence and the world around us and how to deal with them. The place where individually we are in charge and in control, where we must actively be engaged and take responsibility for what takes place, what we do, and what we fail to do, establish, develop and maintain in the mind and mental existence; where we make choices and decisions, where we define aims, goals and objectives, where we consider, plan, organize and manage our behaviour and action. It is the place where problems and difficulties, errors and mistakes have their roots and beginnings and where answers and solutions must start.

We need to change and adopt a different approach from how traditionally and today we understand and manage human affairs. Understanding and managing existence and development, demands and challenges, problems and difficulties from the top down and from the outside in, in an externalized, fragmented, generalized and dissociated way in the abstract. Understanding and managing existence and development from the human-created socio-cultural, political, economic, scientific and technological level down to the level of the natural conditions of existence and the individual. Understanding and managing the world around us from within different, competing and conflicting socio-cultural beliefs, views, values, conventions and practices to understand and manage ourselves, the mind and mental existence.

We divide, separate and institutionalize an integrated, related and interacting reality into different issues, subject matters, disciplines, fields of study and areas of human activity, specialization and expertise, each defined and governed by different and competing assumptions, objectives, approaches and practices. We try to create the ideal external socio-cultural and physical-material conditions of an ordered, stable, secure and predictable world around us of easy material abundance, through managing, rearranging, controlling and directing external conditions, others, nature and the natural environment.

IHCMD over the last 20 years has done much of the groundwork on this. Research, study and development establishing the details, knowledge and understanding of how traditionally and today we understand and manage human existence and development, limits, shortcomings, contradictions, errors and mistakes, problematic results and consequences. How we got there and where we need to go from here, the direction of the answers and solutions, the direction we need to take and how to get there.

The Institute is now in the process of finding ways to raise awareness about the larger and more fundamental issues and the direction of the answers and solutions, the direction we need to take in understanding and managing human existence and development; advocating, promoting and facilitating understanding and managing human existence and development in sustainable, secure, equitable and peaceful ways. Understanding and managing them from the ground up and from the inside out, in their essence, in depth and detail, in a comprehensive, a differentiated, but integrated, connected and related way.

Currently, as part of the foundation work, the Institute is developing a new web site, to be launched Oct. 10, 2008, World Mental Health Day, which will present a different approach, view and understanding, a new direction dealing with mental problems, the mind and mental existence. The approach involves de-stigmatizing mental problems and demystifying the mind and mental existence. Understanding and managing mental problems, the mind and mental existence beyond religion and science through active individual engagement, mental work and effort understanding and managing them from within the mind and mental existence. The web site will be for users and practitioners alike.