HORIZON Webinars

This foundational episode opens the series by returning to the intellectual roots of The Age of Culture Project. In conversation with Michael Frugtniet, D. Paul Schafer reflects on the journey from the Economic Age to the possibility of a Cultural Age, asking whether economics, while one of humanity’s great organising achievements, is now too narrow a framework to guide the future. The episode explores culture not as a sector or leisure activity, but as the “complex whole” through which societies understand meaning, value, wellbeing, responsibility and continuity.

Michael Frugtniet opens the series with a direct reflection on the condition of contemporary society: systems are becoming more efficient, yet public trust, social coherence, meaning and continuity feel increasingly fragile. The monologue frames culture as the missing operating system beneath economics, technology, education and governance — not a decorative layer, but the deeper structure through which societies interpret value, hold memory, form judgment and decide what kind of future is worth building. It sets the central proposition for the season: that the crisis of the present is cultural before it is merely economic or technological.