THE PRIME DIRECTIVE
OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION

Somehow, here we are!  And aren’t we human beings amazing!  Really—think about us!

We can only speculate how humans emerged in the universe on planet Earth.  Our sciences reveal much about that fabulous story, and our religions propose mysterious spiritual causes, but still: how little we comprehend of the mystery of us and of our speculative intelligence that has evoked many languages to articulate and communicate our expanding consciousness, both to ourselves and to each other.

Here we are!  Look at the best that our species has done, has made and has become during our adventure of consciousness.  To admire that, to fathom that, and to venture further into human possibility is the aim of a liberal education, an education meant to liberate our own latencies of comprehension and invention.

We humans would seem to be an on-going experiment the Cosmos has cooked up, and we seem designed to seek challenges and try to overcome them, on larger and larger scales, thereby expanding our intellectual and practical capacities—thinking bigger and making better.

Inferring this much about ourselves and our circumstance, we must conclude logically that our prime imperative is to survive as a species and to thrive in the full flourishing of our potentialities— despite those insanities sometimes afflicting us, bordering on the suicidal and even ecocidal.

The human experiment, the experiment of Earth-life itself, must not fail through human stupidity or insanity.  The prime imperative that every human being is charged by the Cosmos to carry out is the preservation and enhancement of life and intelligence on Earth and beyond.

Your liberal education should liberate and enable you to carry out that mission by growing wise—which means to realize what is of highest value for yourself and others, bringing it into being, making it so.

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