Praxis

Valuescience is science for living well and dying at peace. It is practical science.

Werner Erhard, who touched the lives of a million directly and many more indirectly with his est training, famously said, "Understanding is the booby prize." "Knowing" from the neck up is different from the "knowing as acting" Wang Yangming and many others have advocated.

The paramount measure of valuescience practice is living and dying well. This course is about praxis, theory informing practice and practice informing theory. "Learning" about valuescience without applying that learning is like reading a menu without ordering and eating a meal.

We realize that some participants prefer to enroll without including the lab component, and we acknowledge that this choice may be sound in some circumstances. We encourage you to consider carefully how you may incorporate a lab into your life, and take advantage of sangha and teaching team expertise to reap benefit and lay a foundation for future conscious personal change.

Many have acknowledged teaching as means to become aware of limits to one's understanding and to extend it. Many also have remarked the salutary effects of taking a stand for views outside or even orthogonal or contrary to the mainstream. Finally, many have extolled the benefits to self and others of sharing information that can be basis for living and dying well.

Communicating about valuescience we learn it better, we become stronger, and we serve. While valuescience may be less than sufficient to ensure that we and others' live and die well, it may be necessary to these ends. Humanity is now so numerous, so powerful, and acting on such a global scale and with such speed that errors in discerning value pose existential threat. In the absence of a scientific approach to value we will continue to accelerate into collective impoverishment. Standing between humanity and this abyss are those who embrace cognitive activism to advocate for valuescience.