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<h1>To study . . . .</h1>

<p>Yeah. Here at the start, facing the question, <i>What do I have to say?</i>, seems abrupt, especially with so much white space following. But this question will often recur throughout {{apts}}. Throughout our lives, it's a powerful question with which we inwardly invite ourselves to study. We often voice it silently, addressing our lifeworld as we want it to be or fear that it is.</p>

<p>Asking ourselves, <i>What do I have to say, here?</i>, considering what I have to say, fully and deep down, has great importance sharpening what I can perceive, plan, and do — especially with the "here" added. Here we buffer ourselves from external incentives, aka, "ulterior motives." In many situations, asking ourselves "What do I have to say?" invites all sorts of calculations. But <b>here</b> we work to set all that aside to ask ourselves what we actually think, feel, want, and intend to do.</p> 

<p><b>What do I have to say, here?</b> Let's at the start alert ourselves to its special significance.</p>

<p>Study concerns forming and expressing what we perceive and seek to do, what meaning we find in what takes place in our lives, what we think and intend as we act. By forming and expressing responses to those concerns, we strive to keep alert, thorough, honest, and careful. Our forming and expressing our intentional awareness enlivens our curiosity, our capacity to cooperate, and our realism about our limitations and our powers. Ask yourself, "What do I have to say, here?", not to impress others or to gain influence and preferment, but to examine yourself, to shape your life in your world.</p>

<p>Inertia holds us back. For many years, we've all been educated, formally and informally, some with more effect, others with less. The life possibilities of each turn significantly on how we display our well-assessed acquisition of formal knowledge, suitable opinion and conduct, abstract theory and matters of fact, and a variety of skills for performing conventional accomplishments. It's a matter, not so much about what I have to say, but about what <i>they say</i>, about what <i>is said</i>.</p>

<p>For instance, Wikipedia wants an authority cited for every fact and opinion, and rightly so, for the passive voice, the voice of impersonal knowledge, is what education is all about, structured into its procedures if not in its statements of purpose. Rarely in all our educational experience did the process encourage us to ask, <i>What do I have to say, here?</i>, and even less to express it loud and clear, standing responsible to ourselves and to others for its veracity, probity, and prudence. Education transacts impersonal knowledge; but life actually turns on personal judgment with respect to meaning, intention, and worth.</p>

<p>So — <b>Be bold</b>, even <i>naive</i>; stutter a little, but ask yourself, <i>What do I have to say, here?</i>, and say it as well as you can to see how you and others respond to what you have to say; then to ask yourself again, <i>What do I have to say, here?</i>, both to reiterate and to revise, to cut and to clarify, to reconsider and to reconstruct. {{apts}} serves purposes different from those guiding most educational efforts. As things go along, we'll keep examining how the principles by which it functions work and how they differ from more familiar ones. {{apts}} has lots of places, and each is an opportunity to study, to ask <b>What do I have to say?</b>
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<p>Study differs from education. People ask what the purpose of education is, but study unfolds as a dynamic process, which possesses <i>no set purpose</i>. Instead, persons study purposefully. In studying, we exercise and develop our purposefulness, we form our capacities for intentional living by learning liberally, autonomously.</p>

<p>Always and everywhere, study can and does take place in the midst of the impersonal activities of education, in the interstices of those impersonal activities. And as the interstitial spaces narrow, persons studying feel themselves out of place within impersonal education. Persons studying think and act subjectively, for better and for worse, agents acting on their own judgment. In education everyone has roles to fill. Great effort goes into adapting the roles to make room for subjective study, but it rarely works well....




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{{apts}} serves purposes different from those guiding most educational efforts. As things go along, we'll keep examining the principles by which {{apts}} functions and how they differ from more familiar ones. But here at the start, to avoid confusion let's alert ourselves to the difference.</p>

paused on its threshold, not yet having begun. But all of us who arrive at this start do so having acquired much experience in the lifewords to which we have been born, acquiring much experience between then and the start here and now. 

<p>Yeah. "What do you have to say here?" It's a bit edgy, especially with nothing but whitespace. It intimidates and brings on our shrug or some sour retort. Why?</p>

<p>Asking us what we have to say triggers an expectation: our response should impart information, knowledge about something, a statement of fact. On the spot to do that, we often feel put upon, not having any pertinent information, knowledge, or facts ready to mind to state. Years of schooling, formal and informal, elementary and advanced, etch this expectation into us as we meet all sorts of assessments demonstrating our acquisition of appropriate formal knowledge, predictable opinion and conduct, abstract theory and matters of fact, and a variety of skills for performing conventional accomplishments. Bit by bit, our infantile illusion of all-powerful agency transmutes into the passive will — to get along go along.</p>

<p>We fight that transmutation by studying. We keep building up that declaration as we address the who, what, how, where, and why of it onj {{apts}}. But just to start here, {{apts}} does not address the world of abstract formal knowledge and skills in using it. We are concerned, not with knowing, but with our <i>vital thinking</i>, embedded and entwined continuously in circumstantial complexities, having to act contingently according to imperfect judgment.</p>

<blockquote class="aptsoff"><i>Vital</i>. Consisting in, constituted by, that immaterial force or principle which is present in living beings or organisms and by which they are animated and their functions maintained.<ref>[https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/Entry/224020 OED. A.adj.I.Senses relating to the spirit or principle essential to life.1.a.]</ref></blockquote> -->