Summary

The website presents a comprehensive approach to understanding life through the lens of projects, history, and thematic spaces, integrating individual biography with sociocultural context.

Abstract

The content of the website delves into the "Life Discovery" program, which adopts a project-centered approach to interpret life as a series of interconnected projects and events, paralleling the relationship between individual biography and history. It introduces the concept of "Thematic Space" as a framework for understanding how individuals navigate through various projects, each with its own themes, to enact their life themes. The approach is grounded in the idea that life can be seen as a journey through different thematic spaces, with each project serving as a thematic space for practicing significant life themes. This perspective is supported by the author's previous work and aligns with the notion that projects are both psychological and sociological constructs. The website also provides links to related articles and resources for further exploration of the Life Discovery program and its applications.

Opinions

The author believes that understanding life through a chain of projects offers a valuable "zoom-out" view that can be applied to the Life Discovery Program.
There is an opinion that history can be comprehended as a sequence of events, analogous to how life is understood as a series of projects.
The author connects the Project-centered Approach with the concept of "Thematic Space," suggesting that life's journey involves moving between various thematic spaces.
The website posits that projects are not just activities but thematic spaces where primary and secondary themes are practiced, contributing to the development of one's life themes.

Life Discovery: “Project Engagement” and “Themes of Practice”

Life, History, and Multiverse

The above diagram is a significant insight about the Project-centered approach. I will consider applying it for the next version of the Life Discovery Program since it offers a zoom-out view for the Life-as-Project approach.

History as a chain of Events

On June 29, 2022, I adopted the perspective of sociology to reflect on the notion of “Activity as Project Engagement”. I realized that while we can understand Life as a chain of Projects, we can understand History as a chain of Events.

Thus, we connect “Event — Project”, “Life — History”, and “Life Themes — Cultural Themes” together.

This notion echoes my idea about “Event — Project” in Life as Activity (v0.3).

The Life-as-Project approach uses “events” and “projects” to present social context and individual biography. The difference between “events” and “projects” are individual involvement. If the person directly gets involved in an activity — it means she is the subject of the activity or part of the community of the activity — then the activity is a project of her biography. If the person doesn’t directly get involved in the activity, then the activity is an event of her biography.

Project as Thematic Space

I also connected the Project-centered Approach and the concept of “Thematic Space” together and consider the following schema.

By connecting the Project-centered Approach and the concept of “Thematic Space” together, we can find the following connection:

Life = Project = Thematic Space

While Life is a chain of projects, it can be understood as a journey of moving between various thematic spaces.

Each project has its primary themes and other secondary themes. By joining projects and leaving projects, we are practicing our significant Life Themes. Thus, these projects are Thematic Spaces too.

This insight also echoes the model “Flow — Story — Model”. We can also find more details in Thematic Space: Project as Story.

Life and History

The newest insight of “Life as moving between Thematic Space” also connects the Project Engagement approach and the Themes of Practice framework.

Finally, we see a simple model of the development of life and history:

Life = Projects = Thematic Spaces = Events = History

In this way, the Life-as-Project approach echoes Andy Blunden’s notion of “a project is a concept of both psychology and sociology” (2014,p.15).

I am also working on building a new website for the Platform Ecology project. You can save the following links:

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Life Discovery: “Project Engagement” and “Themes of Practice”

Life, History, and Multiverse

History as a chain of Events

Project as Thematic Space

Life and History

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