Clues/Participating

Participating

On A Place to Study we participate, not in the website, not in an organization or corporate enterprise. We participate, as in a sport, in a widely shared activity—that of forming human selves, instances of humanity. This is not a zero-sum game. We play, not to win, but to participate, to take part as fully as we can—that is the life each leads. Each does so contingently, for life itself comes to each of us, as a gift. Nevertheless, we participate definitively, for each lives a cumulative set of irrevocable actions for ourselves and for others. We live our lives squeezing inchoate possibility through the constraints of here and now into the receding expanse of lived experience. A Place to Study exists as possibility, one which we can try to bring to life by striving to actualize what it can and should become—a real resource freely available to all as they pursue self-directed activities in the human commons, the wonderful diversity of human lives.

In the shared activity of forming human lives, participating through A Place to Study is contingent and incidental, one possibility among many others. To call A Place to Study a possibility recognizes that it is not yet an actuality. As a possibility one participates in it by striving to instantiate the idea. Hence, participating in A Place to Study at this point involves trying to instantiate it by acting in loco parentis towards it, concentrating on actions that will actualize the possibility as a reality available to all. We can do that by being careful to create initial content for the site that will effectively illustrate the purposes and spirit of it. That willingness to participate from the beginning in ways consistent with the purposes and spirit of the effort is key to self-directed activities in the human commons.

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Currently, we are inviting a few (circa 25-50) to slowly seed A Place to Study with initial content and to experiment with some form of organized activities on the site. These activities will primarily be on the components of The place and in participants user areas. We would like these initial participants to be diverse in age, backgrounds, and interests, several to have sophistication with MediaWiki, and all to be ready and able to push the project forward in ways consonant with its purpose and spirit.