Building an Integrated Psychology of Learning, Self-Development and Happiness
Big Sky has a deliberately expansive set of goals in order to give it elbow room. The main goal is to build a psychology of learning, self-development and happiness. Another goal, a meta-goal, is to examine the processes of building such a psychology. We understand better by doing. So as we attempt to understand, expand and contribute to the ideas surrounding these topics it makes sense to try our hand at building a Psychology. Big Sky is an experiment in building a psychology and of exposing the processes of doing so.
Big Sky also has the goal of championing the idea that we can and should think about these things for ourselves. Big Sky sets-up-tent in the vicinity of topics that are currently fluid, dynamic and evolving. They could hardly be more interesting or important. Yet they are not sacrosanct, protected or fixed. The more people involved with thinking deeply, creatively, recreationally and uniquely about them the better. By building a psychology from the ground up, in plain view, the hope is that we will expose paths, perspectives and vantage points that might be passed over or left behind in more heavily developed psychologies.
The Cognitive Sciences and Psychology are in a supercharged state of development, flux, convergence, integration, elaboration and change. The speed of this change, the convergence of fields, the evolution of social contexts and culture, evolving communication systems (internal, external, machine, human, language, meta-language), the human relationship to technology, knowledge, culture - this speed simply outstrips our attempts to understand it and its implications. It makes sense to practice building a Psychology because, in reality, we must be prepared to do this over and over again, to tear down, rebuild, adapt and even to cause it to generate emergent perspectives suggested by vantage points that are converging just in front us, currently unseen.