A question to start with…
It all begins with a question as simple as it is mind-boggling: “Where’s the problem?” Before looking for a solution, we first need to know what we’re trying to solve. Yet a problem never exists entirely independently of the person observing it: it can be experienced as a personal difficulty, arise in a relationship among several people, affect a community or a society, or even involve the world in which we live. It may be old or new, visible or invisible, local or global, immediate or rooted in a long history. It may even be something we don’t yet know how to name. Asking the question “Where’s the problem?” therefore means starting by shifting our perspective before we even attempt to provide an answer…
From the Self to the World
To understand this shift, three focal points can first help us situate the human problem: the self, the other or others, and the world. What constitutes a problem for me may not be one for someone else. What seems obvious from a particular perspective may appear quite different from another. However, we rarely live alone: families, communities, societies, institutions, cultures, and generations shape our relationships, our possibilities, and our perceptions. And we belong to a world that extends far beyond human relationships alone: other species, the environment, material resources, and changes to the planet also contribute to the conditions of our existence. The human problem thus unfolds across scales that are constantly intersecting…
The Problem Wheel
How can we avoid getting lost in this complexity? The Problem Wheel offers a first approach to navigating it. Seven variables - Time, Space, Society, Knowledge, Power, Economy, and Communication - shed light on different dimensions of a single situation. These branch out into 52 reference points, each opening a concrete door: life, death, age, health, food, environment, movement, family, culture, knowledge, education, thought, science, the arts, beliefs, truth, justice, peace, professions, money, languages, writing, media, digital technology, emotions, happiness… The wheel is not a classification system designed to confine reality. It is meant to turn: each new perspective can alter what we thought we understood and reveal other relationships, other questions, other problems…
Pantopic Tools
But simply multiplying perspectives is not enough. We must also learn to connect them. This is the role of pantopic tools: to simultaneously consider what is simple, complicated, and complex; to seek an approach that is at once holistic, heuristic, and humble; and to mobilize an intelligence that integrates the body, the mind, emotions, and – now - the capacity for assisted intelligence. But they also involve navigating between multiple stories and spaces, embracing the diversity of narratives and fostering dialogue among them, or even questioning the words themselves through “indefinitions,” among other approaches. These tools do not provide a single method for solving all problems. Rather, they seek to develop our ability to frame problems more effectively, to understand them better, and to better understand ourselves in the way we frame them…
From questions to conferences
This approach then takes on a collective dimension. The Pantopic Conferences are conceived as assemblies that come together around one or more questions, fostering a dialogue among different experiences, disciplines, cultures, generations, and practices. Each conference thus becomes a new entry point into the human condition. It also produces objects, narratives, creative works, research, and testimonies intended to extend the reflection beyond the moment of the gathering. It is no longer merely a matter of discussing the human condition, but of creating the conditions so that different humanities can address it together…
Toward a Pantopic University of Open Solutions
It is this perspective that naturally leads to the Pantopic University of Open Solutions: a space-time for learning, research, encounter, and experimentation dedicated to human problems and the many ways to address them. A university that champions the interconnection of knowledge, grounded in a new preparatory curriculum that first teaches students to observe, listen, question, compare, and make connections. Not through a fixed and closed approach, but through an “encyclopedagogy” that is constantly updated and renewed throughout one’s life. Its vision is one of open solutions: open to the experiences of the past, the answers of the present, and the possibilities of the future; open to different cultures, different forms of knowledge, and different intelligences; and, above all, open to the possibility that a solution found in one place might become, elsewhere, the starting point for a new question.
Thus, this pantopic path can be summarized in a few steps. Start with “Where is the problem?”, learn to examine it from multiple perspectives, explore it through seven variables and fifty-two reference points, use tools to broaden our understanding of it, bring the humanities together, and transform this encounter into cultural growth—all to encourage learning, seeking, and sharing solutions... And the initial question, “Where is the problem?” encourages us to frame problems more effectively and better understand the world so we can act more effectively—and to act more effectively to defend dignity, justice, and peace everywhere…