Cultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos course

What's after anti-racism? Try Cultural Intelligence.

I’m excited to announce my upcoming online course, Cultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos, presented through the Aligned Center. 

Humanity is in trouble. Greg proposes that developing Cultural intelligence may get us out of this mess. We swim in culture, but often are not aware of its power. Greg putting his intellectual heft into explicating the idea of Cultural Intelligence, and developing actionable interventions, is a noble quest. He is onto something big and I am cheering him on. 

—Hugh B. Cummings, MD, FAPA, former Medical Director for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

I'm so happy to see Greg take on this missing piece of the "puzzle." We already have much to thank him for

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including his recent work on ways the practices inherent in jazz can strengthen organizations

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and now this. 

A deep bow of gratitude to Greg for his serious contribution to making the world work for everyone. 

—Liv Wright, writer and business consultant

As my recent blog posts, Culture vs Race: American Identity Hangs in the Balance and Culture vs Race Part II, indicate, I firmly believe that culture, properly conceived and enacted, is a way out of the hell hole of race and racism, two ideas that are like Siamese twins. 

This nation’s current racial and cultural crises have provoked a dire need to reexamine our understanding of race and reflect on our own blind spots. I invite you join me virtually at the Aligned Center to delve into our crisis of meaning and the meaning of crisis in my new nine-week series.

Greg Thomas sees through and across our many cultural divides with wisdom and balance. Working with him has provided me true insight into larger social trends that I have spent decades trying  to understand. Greg comes to his knowledge honestly, through a deep commitment to learning as well as his cultivation of personal and professional connections with many of our country's leading intellectuals. I recommend his work without reservation. 

—Mark Forman, clinical psychologist, author of A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy and The Monster’s Journey: From Trauma to Connection

In the last few decades we’ve come to understand the value of emotional intelligence in our personal lives and interpersonal relationships. In this course, I explore culture as another form of intelligence—a discipline of human values, feelings and behavior that enrich our own lives and that of our fellow citizens (and even our opponents). I identify three stages of cultural intelligence: cultural literacy, culture-in-action, and personal application via conscious culture.

Emotional intelligence, social intelligence, scientific intelligence and spiritual intelligence provide essential insights into the human experience. In the course, we’ll investigate how cultural intelligence may be a final piece of this cosmic puzzle to co-evolve a better, brighter and more coherent future for our families, neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, nations, and the global community.

Greg is a rare teacher whose mastery of Cognitive Complexity is matched by his Embodied Wisdom. If anyone can help us both honor and transcend race—owning and healing our individual and collective trauma with deepening awareness and the timeless solidarity of (cosmic) love—it is this softly spoken yet fiercely powerful human. 

—Nick Jankel, co-founder, Switch On, author of Now Lead the Change

In the course, we’ll also pursue questions such as:

• How did (and do) Black Americans utilize conscious culture to survive in and with style despite lack of freedom during enslavement and Jim Crow in social, political, and economic terms?

• If the history of Western civilization reveals both dignity and disaster, what lessons can be drawn on from the former and avoided from the latter?

• Must we passively be beholden to the imprint of our social and unconscious cultural conditioning and wounds, or can we actively shape our own beliefs and responses to life as free cultural agents?

• What steps can be taken to advance cultural agency?

• If we viewed the cosmos, the universe, as alive rather than as dead matter, how might that change our relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the world?

Throughout the course, I will suggest that the next stage of human development demands cultural intelligence as a guide, as a vision and story for a heightened quality of life.

Join me for this nine-week series on Wednesday nights from 7-9 pm EST beginning on October 14, 2020. Here is the hyperlink for detailed information on the class sessions and to sign up:

Cultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos. There’s a discounted rate from now through Oct. 1, 2020.

Greg Thomas's Cultural Intelligence concept demonstrates his deep thought on the subject. My many dialogues with him over the years make me confident that his teachings will open up new understanding, and provoke those in tune with growth a closer path to their truth. Greg is an essential voice of enlightenment. For a balanced and nuanced take on Cultural Intelligence, run as fast as you can to hear what he has to say.

—Donald Harrison, Jazz Innovator and Master Saxophonist