Conscious Personal Evolution

Valuescience is science for addressing a full spectrum of human concerns at their roots and in a sound, integrated manner. It is science for living well and dying at peace, and for contributing to others' doing so.

Werner Erhard, who touched the lives of a million people directly and many more indirectly with his est training and its successors, famously said, "Understanding is the booby prize." In the context of est, in which people enrolled with intent to change for the better, altered behavior—thinking, feeling, and acting differently—rather than some "understanding" of how to behave differently, marked success.

Erhard was a relatively recent figure in a long line extending through widely separated times and places who emphasized primacy of action. Early 16th century Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming, 17th century English historian Thomas Fuller, and 19th century biologist Thomas Huxley are among those who preceded him. Similar conclusions from disparate sources is a hallmark of consilience.

We build this valuescience course upon praxis: theory informing practice and practice informing theory. "Learning" about valuescience without applying that learning is like learning the grammar and vocabulary of a language without ever speaking, writing, listening to, or reading it. We encourage course participants to include in learning action evidencing purposeful personal change. By such action we enhance capacity for subsequent success.

We reference Charles Duhigg's ''The Power of Habit'' to introduce a concept of "keystone habit," behavior to which many others are linked, and which therefore can be means to alter them. We urge course participants to design and execute a practicum for changing a keystone habit.

We understand that some participants prefer to enroll without including a practicum, and we acknowledge that this choice may be sound in some circumstances. If you elect to do this, we still invite you to consider carefully how you may incorporate a specific, well-defined application of valuescience into your life, and how you may take advantage of sangha and teaching team expertise to valuescience more consistently, competently, and consciously, and thereby lay a foundation for future deliberate personal change.

Cognitive Activism

Many thoughtful people have acknowledged teaching as means to become aware of, and push back limits to one's understanding and praxis. Many also have remarked the salutary effects of taking a stand for views outside or even orthogonal or contrary to those in the mainstream. Finally, many accomplished and highly respected leaders in both natural and social science are increasingly emphatic in extolling the virtues of scientists' engaging members of the public in becoming better able to science for individual and collective benefit. When we communicate to promote others’ understanding and application of valuescience we learn it better, become stronger and better able to stand for science, and further common good.

While practicing valuescience may be less than sufficient to ensure that we and others live and die well, it may well be necessary to these ends. Humanity is now so numerous, so powerful, and acting on global scale and with such speed and novelty that errors in discerning value and actions we base upon these pose existential threat. Absent a scientific approach to value—by whatever name—we will almost certainly accelerate into collective impoverishment. As people aware of valuescience and able to muster evidence and reason for its potential to improve individual and collective well-being, course participants have opportunity and responsibility to communicate it to others.

To this end we shape media to deliver an argument for valuescience supported by evidence for its efficacy in addressing some aspect of living and dying well. With these messages we tie personal gain to public service, demonstrating means to resolve a conflict often painfully felt as we seek satisfaction at every level of Maslow's Hierarchy. We aim to do good and do well.

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Valuescience - Shedding Illusion to Live and Die Well

2019-04-05T21:25:19Z

Dschrom: /* Course */

=== ''What do you want? How can you get it? How do you know?'' ===

:''"Ideas about value—about what we want and how to get it—are future-oriented. They rest upon prediction. Science, sole demonstrated means for making predictions better than we can make by chance, is how we more accurately discern and more fully realize value."'' ~ David Schrom, ''[http://www.ecomagic.org/pubs/ValueScienceBklet.doc Valuescience]''

== Course ==

'''Valuescience: Shedding Illusion to Live and Die Well'''

:'''Stanford University PSYC 136A/236A (autumn); PSYC 136B/236B (spring)'''

:'''3 units without practicum; 4 units with practicum'''

:'''Tu, Th 10:30am-11:50am'''

'''Course Description'''

This is a course about living and dying well. We speak of living and dying well because living and dying are ongoing and contemporaneous in each of us, and we've evidence that acknowledging this is essential to doing either well. We address this topic because we perceive it to encompass most, perhaps all human concerns.

Humans live and die well by discerning and realizing value, by knowing what we want and getting it, and by wanting what we get. Because we're evolving organisms in a dynamic environment what we value—ends and means of our lives—also changes.

We live in an era of unprecedentedly rapid, large, and novel changes. Many of these we've set in motion. We're altering society, other parts of nature, artifact fashioned from nature, and information accumulated by humans. Today more than ever before we live and die well by cultivating proficiency in bringing to awareness, questioning, and evolving to be more reliable information about value, especially ideas about how we can know and realize value.

This course is an opportunity to bring accurate, pertinent findings from many disciplines to bear upon three central questions of our lives: (1) "What do I want?" (2) "How can I get it?" and most importantly, (3) "How do I know?" We ask questions (1) and (2) about everything from big choices like career and marriage to little ones like what we'll eat for lunch today. We ask question (3) far less often, yet only to a degree that we rely upon sound means of knowing can we make what we think we know as faithful a representation of self and surrounds as we're able, and only by faithfully representing self and surrounds can we get what we want and want what we get.

All of us have experienced getting what we thought we wanted and feeling disappointed, and all of us have sometimes done what we thought sufficient and come up short. Again and again we think we know how to secure satisfaction only to discover that we're mistaken. With current approaches to value we repeatedly generate overconfidence and error. Though we work to learn from missteps, we rarely delve deeply enough to re-examine our approaches. Even when we do ask, "How do I know?" we're often quick to answer with long-held, well-practiced justifications yet to be critically examined to their roots, and poorly able to withstand such scrutiny.

In this course we explore history, philosophy, ecology, economics, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and more to learn how we may apply science—defined here as behaviors by which we predict with success greater than we can achieve by chance—to discern value—what we want and how to get it—more accurately and to realize it more fully.

We begin by framing our inquiry within a larger context of ecology, evolution, culture, and education. We consider how we've come to current ideas about value, about science, and about their relationship. We examine how we underpin personal, social, and environmental well-being and ills with those ideas.

We then present a case for valuescience, and apply it to achieve more accurate understanding of human past, present, and prospects, to know better what we want, and to get it. We pay particular attention to perceptual, cognitive, and social impediments to valuescience, and to strategies for overcoming these, and we offer opportunity to create sangha, community of practice, while doing so and contributing to others' doing so.

If you are engaged or want to engage in such inquiry and practice, we welcome your partnership in valuescience.
 
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Development of this Valuescience course is an educational endeavor of [http://www.ecomagic.org Magic], a Palo Alto based public service organization founded in 1972 and incorporated in 1979 under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Code. 

[[Category:Course]]

Practicum

2019-03-28T17:32:15Z

Dschrom:

Purposes

We can make knowledge more complete with action. By including a practicum component in this course we provide opportunity to experiment with personal change in partnership with others. We use "experiment" to denote consciously chosen behavior that we carefully observe, record, and analyze.

Criteria

You build your practicum around a "keystone habit" as described by Charles Duhigg in ''The Power of Habit.'' You read relevant sections of this book and use what you learn to identify a keystone habit. Next you experiment with changing this habit. Please design experiment(s) to be completed, including recording and analysis, in three hours per week, Stanford's benchmark for one academic unit of credit. Plan to engage in experimental behavior, to journal your practice, and to note differences in other aspects of life that you perceive to be possibly related to practice.

Content

For example, you might:

*Sleep an additional 15-20 minutes each night
*Exercise 40 minutes on each of three days
*Meditate 30 minutes on each of four days
*Write emails or letters of appreciation for an hour on each of two days
*Take a two-hour hike or bike ride once a week
*Alter idiolect to affect feeling, thought, and perception (e.g., use negative words less often)
*Change dietary pattern (e.g., eliminate corn syrup)
*Do an electronic device "fast" (e.g., during meals, for an hour before bed, FB one day per week)
*Do some combination of the above

Construct a practicum about which you can be wholehearted. Feel free to mix and match: you may adopt one practice for ten weeks, or you may adopt one for two weeks, another for two weeks, or different ones on different days of the week, etc.. Author a life you want with experiment(s) you deem well-suited to you. Please address one or more keystone habits. Please see Duhigg, Charles. (2012). "Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O'Neill." (Chapter 4, pp. 46-56 and appendix). [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8dQDga7c8qYU0UtQ3FLTWJNZzA Link]''The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.'' For the whole book, please visit the following [https://www.forexfactory.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1993591&d Link].

Each instructional team member is engaged in her or his practicum. We've more than a century of practice among us. We're glad to share this experience. You may also find one or more partners among other course participants.

As soon as you've even preliminary ideas about your proposed experiment(s), please submit them as your "Practicum Proposal" on the assignments page in Canvas, and email practicum coordinator hilary@ {ecomagic.org} to let her know that you've done so. We look forward to sharing satisfaction generated by being and doing more as each of us intends.

Grading

A full practicum comprises a proposal and nine weekly reports. Students may complete a practicum with a proposal and five weekly reports. If you reach the date for dropping a course without having submitted sufficient reports to make a complete practicum possible we will require you to change your registration to 3 units.

An approved proposal and each weekly report counts for up to ten points. We deduct one or more points for late submittals. We weight your practicum according to how many submittals you make. Each is 2% of your grade. If you've fewer than 10 submittals, we weight your final an additional 2% for each submittal you miss. (e.g. Submit a proposal and seven reports and your practicum becomes worth 16% of your grade, and your final worth 4% more.)

[[Category:Course]]