Introduction from Stephen Cocconi, 2026

Our modern era is a hodgepodge of competing beliefs, philosophies, behavior patterns, and historical trends that have converged into the configuration we call the modern world. World, as referenced by Soren Kierkegaard, is the mental creation of all human activities. Yet the Earth is the tangible living biosphere where it all unfolds.

Humans can create their ‘inner world’, their perception of the other – individually or en-mass – and form cultures, societies, nation states, accordingly. Our language provides a range of descriptions from Utopian at one end to Dystopian at the other.  All these formations of attitudes that produce specific and social actions are the culmination of what we have learned and the practices we’ve generated. These are the consequences of past actions we face now. Our actions from here, wise or insane, will have the most permeant consequences for our species because the planet itself, perhaps for the first time, becomes the linchpin of a reality that is within the control of Nature at-large, instead of our own grandiose beliefs about our supremacy.

This web site is meant to provide a lexicon of ideas that have shaped the human animal metaphysically. Believing that a non-physical exists is not new. But The Applied Michael Approach seeks to explain, not justify, glorify, condemn nor moralize the complexity of our psycho-physical architecture, but help us come to terms with it: name it, face it, learn to operate it, and then develop some semblance of peace within ourselves as to stop the  projection of our worse fears onto one another, which is the underlying force of our distrust and hence violence, wastefulness, and destruction.