What do we build next?
Bret Warshawsky is a writer, speaker, futurist, creative systems builder and the founder of Social Effects NJ. Based in Howell, New Jersey, he works across filmmaking, evolutionary and spiritual philanthropy, mental health reformation and the design of systems that help people create together.
His work follows a question that has taken him through film school, psychiatric institutions, international communities, software experiments and the gift economy: what helps human beings and human systems come alive, and what could we build differently?
A mind that moves between worlds
Bret describes his approach as a neurodivergent remix: associative, cross-disciplinary and sometimes deliberately eccentric. He brings ideas from living-systems theory, complexity, philosophy, spirituality, technology, media and culture into conversation, looking for relationships and design principles that can travel between them.
An autodidact, he takes inspiration from Buckminster Fuller’s comprehensivism. The practice is one of synthesis: asking whether a pattern illuminates something useful, trying it in the world and remaining willing to revise it. His preferred working loop is history, insight, design, experiment, evidence and revision.
From personal history to public work
His mental health work began with his own experience. At nineteen, while studying film in New York, Bret was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and involuntarily hospitalized. Questions of dignity, consent, meaning and who gets to interpret another person’s experience became central to his life.
In 2011 he contributed a chapter, “The Hero’s Journey,” to Lisa Nichols’s Unbreakable Spirit. His developing docuseries of the same name continues that story, following a decades-long inquiry into how people in distress might be met with greater agency, relationship, community and care. He has also shared his personal account in The Syntony Times.
Through the Mental Health Reformation, he brings that inquiry into questions of housing, peer support, culture and civic infrastructure. Storylivingry Campus is one proposed experiment: a place combining community, meaningful work, creativity and support. The question is what people could return to and participate in, as well as how a system responds to crisis.
Co-creation as fieldwork
For more than a decade, Bret lived and collaborated internationally among conscious-evolution networks, artists, founders, spiritual communities and people experimenting with how human beings organize themselves. He worked directly with the late futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, whose work in conscious evolution and co-creation became an important influence.
During the 2010s, he helped develop Noomap, an early holonic and fractal software experiment. It explored how people could map intentions, skills, gifts, resources and relationships, then organize around shared possibilities. He called the aspiration “crowd creation.”
In Rotterdam, he co-created Synergy Hub 1.0, a sixteen-month living experiment in gift economy, shared resources, self-organization and collective intelligence. These experiences made collaboration a practical inquiry, with all the difficulties and discoveries of people trying to live their ideas together.
Philanthropy as a way of living
Since publishing his Spiritual Philanthropy statement in 2011, Bret has explored philanthropy as love of humanity expressed through the circulation of resources. Money matters, alongside time, skills, shelter, space, introductions, attention, courage and care. Gifts and relationships have supported much of his own life and collaborative work.
Fuller’s ideas of livingry, trim-tab thinking and design for humanity remain part of his intellectual root system. He adopted the creative persona “R. Bretminster Fullofit” as an homage, a piece of performance art and a playful way to carry those questions into the age of networks and AI.
Storylivingry and the living archive
Storylivingry brings together story, technology and lived experiments. A story can help people imagine a possibility, convene collaborators and shape an experiment. What happens in the world then becomes material for the next story. Bret calls one expression of this approach Fractal Impact Entertainment.
A months-long recorded process with a psychiatrist also led him to explore the personal archive as an active resource. Using transcripts and AI-assisted memory, he revisited recurring ideas, contradictions and changing interpretations. His interest is in tools that help people question their own accounts, recover context and deepen human conversations.
He writes about these questions, along with philosophy, philanthropy, culture and mental health, in The Syntony Times.
Returning to film, and to New Jersey
At Social Effects NJ, Bret is bringing these strands together through education, awareness, entertainment and practical services, while developing a foundation and an LLC around the shared work. Filmanthropy by Design and Regenerative Filmmaking ask how generosity and community benefit can be designed into the making of a film.
The Filmanthropy Ledger gathers more than a century of giving through film. His research includes conversations with pioneers behind its entries, including Eva Radke of Film Biz Recycling and Skater Girl producer Vinati Makijany. The practical interest is in what those examples make possible for the next production.
Don’t only make a film about a better world. Use the production to help build the thing the story is about.
That principle also connects his developing Unbreakable Spirit docuseries with the Mental Health Reformation: the making can convene people, direct resources, build relationships and support experiments that feed back into the story. The work is still unfolding. “What do we build next?” remains its invitation.