Becoming Human Project
Philosophy is a way of life,
an invitation to the process
of becoming human:
ascension.
“Samuel Loncar is asking the most important questions our culture needs to answer, and he brings historical context and wisdom to the conversation that our questions require.”
— Jon Morgan Founder & Principal, Sound Fund Advisors
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I became an Army medic in 2017. I went on to work both in the military and as a civilian in an ER, an ambulance, a warehouse, a mobile Covid testing site, and a coal refinery as an EMT.
Prior to 2017 I trained under Samuel Loncar. My training included martial arts, breathing, goal building, resume writing, job interview coaching, and academic tutelage in philosophy, history and religion.
What this training gave me is what the Army calls resilience. In basic training I faced fears and injuries, but most of all my own character vices of cowardice, feeling sorry for myself. I’d remind myself to breathe. Breathing is the most basic function our bodies perform, without it we are not said to be living on our own. I learned to breathe training with Samuel.
In the ER I faced death, despair, impossible problems, and days with no good options and no respite. My body and mind fell back on the training, often. I’d remember to breathe, remember where I came from, why I’m here, remember to be compassionate. Sometimes I’d be in physical danger. Fights sometimes break out in the hospital, and they’re often avoidable. Being calm, remembering to breathe would keep tensions and tempers low. But sometimes someone would snap, and then again breathing, staying loose, remembering how to fall, how to be hit, remembering my body, my position, and breathing would keep me safe.
So what was this training exactly?
It was a full semester lecture and seminar course on the history of philosophy.
It was 6:30 am outdoor martial arts training in January.
It was slow sparring to train timing and breathing in a living room.
It was nights past 10pm discussing what it meant to be human.
It’s hard to pinpoint what the training was, unless I say what it really was: training the mind, body and soul in unison to discover myself and in so doing learn what it means to be human - who I am.
This training has gone everywhere with me ever since, and it will always be part of me.
— Luke P., BioPoetics Client | Army Medic & Yale EMT
We are confused about what it means to be human.
The crisis of the human is at the root of every major crisis in our time. Solving problems of social inequality, AI regulation, and educational reform, among others, all demand a coherent and unified answer to only one question: What does it mean to be human?
Becoming Human Project offers a clear answer.
The project launched in 2020 with the 10-episode series, Becoming Human Origins by Yale-trained philosopher and scholar of science and religion, Samuel Loncar, PhD.
The series brings Loncar’s original scholarship and research to the widest possible audience, and it became the foundation for Loncar’s forthcoming book with Columbia University Press, Philosophy as Religion and Science: From Plato to Posthumanism.
Cultural Diversity & Scientific Rigor
Born in Athens, Greece, Loncar’s ancestors’ diverse origins give him global roots: in Okinawa, Japan, among the Chippewa (or Ojibwe) people, and in Eastern Europe (Poland and Croatia), and motivate his mission to unite the ancient and the modern.
Loncar works with leading scientists, and his scholarship and writing appear in peer-reviewed journals, like Kant Studien and Metaphilosophy, and in popular outlets like the LA Review of Books and The Browser.
In all his scholarship and teaching, Loncar integrates rigorous scholarship with wisdom from all cultures. His original philosophical approach to the project combines cutting-edge scientific research with a profound respect for indigenous culture, bringing intellectual depth and spiritual sensitivity to his work on world philosophy.
“Samuel Loncar is smart and persuasive and a joy to listen to. . . his erudition is so contagious that it makes you want to drop everything. . .”
Costica Bradatan
Philosophy Editor, LA Review of Books
Professor of the Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University
and Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland
Education: The Process of Becoming Human
We conflate schooling, job-training, and certification with education. But training is different than education. Schooling stops at a certain age. Degrees end, and elite institutions are restricted to those with the power to pay. True education only ends when we do; it is a life-long process and should not be restricted to the privileged and elite.
So, at the heart of every educational venture must be a clear answer to the question: What does it mean to be human?
The Becoming Human Project is built on the understanding that all humans are philosophers, destined to achieve the freedom to understand themselves and determine the kind of person they wish to become.
The Project is dedicated to making that education economically viable for everyone, and you can begin now for free.
Start your journey today with this popular video:
How to Become An Individual.
Annual Membership
Learn to ascend.
Wayfinder Membership
As a Wayfinder Becoming Human Project Member, you gain access to the three audio courses that provide the scientifically rigorous and spiritually deep foundation for becoming human in the modern world.
Created by writer, speaker, and Yale-trained philosopher and scholar of science and religion, Samuel Loncar, PhD., the courses are profound yet accessible to a wide audience, and they offer an intellectually systematic and personally transformative experience for anyone seeking to become human.
What is included in my membership?
Becoming Human: Origins
10 episodes | approximately 10 hours of material
You’ve been sold a story. The story says that science rescued modern people from superstition and religion.
This is the dominant narrative of science and religion that has been taught as settled fact. But it’s not the true story.
Drawing on a decade of original research at Yale, this 10-episode (10-hour) series, offers philosopher Samuel Loncar’s groundbreaking interpretation of the hidden history uniting philosophy, science, and religion.
Beginning with Socrates as a revolutionary martyr and culminating in the death of God and Reason, this series exposes the hidden common ancestry uniting categories like Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment, Marxism, and modern Science.
These movements appear distinct and radically opposed, but they are not. They are merely different moments in a single narrative that has never been fully told: the true history of world philosophy. That story begins with the gods.
Becoming Human: Origins historicizes the modern secular narrative that dismisses traditional and indigenous ways as ignonant superstitious, and presents philosophy, science, and diverse living traditions as interconnected within the story of the human quest for knowledge.
Becoming Human: Origins finally explains:
Why Silicon Valley is full of gods
Why scientism poses a serious threat to modern science
Why we have entered the post-human age
Why atheists are deeply religious
Why secular philosophy is a modern myth
Why indigenous ways of life are not superstitious
Why antisemitism endures as the shared belief among totally opposed political and social groups
Why we face a profound crisis around what does it mean to be human and what we can practically do about it
$1,500 value
“Becoming Human: Origins. . .is a rare mix of the accessible and the profound. This series helped me see how my work, writing, and study were a part of a larger project of what it means to be and become truly human.
The only danger in starting this series is that all your other listening will be displaced as you wonder where Samuel Loncar will take you next. ”
Rev. Timothy McMahan King
author, speaker, Senior Fellow for Clergy for a New Drug Policy, & the owner of Vagabond Strategies
The World, the Soul, & the Gods
3 episodes | approximately 1.5 hours of material
This course gives a clear overview of the history of our idea of the world, our concept of life and how it evolved from the idea of the soul in antiquity into the modern self, and of the gods as crucial aspects of human psychology, history, and myth.
The course provides a scientifically informed and mythologically sensitive vision of the life in its individual, earthly, and cosmic dimensions, helping anyone understand the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific stakes of our current ecological crisis.
$100 value
Philosophy as A Way of Life
Guidebook
This guidebook is designed to practically introduce you to philosophy as a way of life. Its guided pages help keep track of the key concepts from The World, the Soul, and the Gods, and it offers journal prompts and suggested practices so that you can begin authentically living the philosophical life right away.
“I am someone without a college degree who enjoys learning how to better understand myself and the world. I just finished Loncar’s Becoming Human: Origins and his Greek Philosophy Course, which were fun and made philosophical topics relevant and easy to understand.
Thank you!”
Nerissa R.
Becoming Human Project Member
The Modern Crisis of Choice: How to Find Personal Freedom
3 episodes | approximately 2 hours of content
This course is a deep-dive into the modern crisis of choice, referenced in episode one of Becoming Humans: Origins.
What does it mean to be modern? It means you have to choose everything. We are afflicted by our multiplicity of choice. Yet rather than liberating us, this abundance often leaves us anxious and uncertain.
Choices are stressful because choice is not freedom. Yet their subtle difference eludes us, leaving us stressed and confused. So how can we tell the difference between a true choice and a false one?
In this course, Dr. Loncar shares his understanding of the philosophical problem of freedom and offers you transformative and practical insights—drawing on Aristotle, the Tao Te Ching, and Kierkegaard—that will help you move from false choice to personal freedom.
$100 value
Start Becoming Human Today
Wayfinder Annual Memberships
Memberships are billed monthly or annually.
FAQs
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No membership is needed to purchase a course.
If you are already a member and purchase another course, like Becoming Human: Origins, it will be added to your account. Simply use your login at purchase to add it to your library.
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Your membership is accessible through your personal log-in, the created with your first course or membership purchase.
Memberships provide access to your membership resources + all course purchases.
Please use it at check out for any new purchase to build your library.