About

For the sake of trying to be a better human in the Anthropocene, we're committed to lifelong learning, including responsible travel.

Learning is lifelong because there is too much to know, even to be minimally responsible; because the world is constantly changing, so the minute you think you understand you're already outdated; and, while we can hope there are truths (Truth) to be had, no single human has ever latched on securely enough. The best you can do is simply to keep growing. Thankfully, most people live a long time. You can always start over.

Learning for a lifetime is about more than skill-building for a job or career. Let's take a wider view. Education is liberal – as in the liberal arts – and involve such old-fashioned activities as reading, thinking, even writing, and trying to be clear and persuasive. It requires freedom, and it creates freedom for self and others.

Good humans, growing humans, cultivate a set of virtues appropriate for their time and circumstances, and they develop a unique techne: roughly, an art, craft, or technology, defined as a framework of knowledge and practice – one or more of them over the course of a long lifetime.

Why Pose Ponder?

Posing questions and thinking long and hard – pondering – about possible answers is the best approach to learning anything complex, as a lifetime of learning inevitably will be.

We don't stay in the head or heart, though. Thought is brought to fruition in work and action. "Work" and "action," along with "labor," are Arendtian terms, from her On the Human Condition, in which she promotes a life not merely of philosophy and contemplation but of activity.

Why Travel?

Simply put, seeing the world beyond our local environs is necessary to being an educated person.

College age students should spend at least a semester abroad if at all possible.

Adults increasingly travel for recreation, holiday, and vacation, but they should travel to learn, and learn to travel well.

Given the realities of the Anthropocene and of over-tourism and under-tourism, travel by responsible adults requires a techne for understanding what sustainable travel means and how to put it into practice.