The purpose of The Wellspring Publishing Group is to provide a "virtual space" for those who wish to participate in the project of learning to be human — based upon the premise that this is something that is at best poorly or not at all understood among the human residents of planet Earth.[2]

If so, then it is not reasonable to expect that anybody on the planet is qualified to teach the matter hereby assigned to be learned; and that the "assignment" of such matter can only be made by those individuals themselves who have a desire to learn it. It is a matter only to be "pulled," never "pushed."

The project of learning to be human is therefore necessarily a kind of "bootstrap" operation in which its self-selected participants are more or less on an equal footing: each with something unique to contribute to the gradual illumination of us all; and each with much to learn from our peers, and from our collaborative explorations of virtually anything that excites human interest. One among us has observed that this sounds about like the classical curriculum that used to be called a "liberal education" — although it may turn out in practice to be considerably more broad and unbounded than any imaginable pre-conceived "curriculum."

The primary hub of our cumulative explorations is The Wellspring Library, which contains items developed or recommended by ourselves and others, considered to be germane to the evolutionary process of learning to be human.

Our pursuit of learning to be human emphasizes cooperative, collaborative relationships, amongst ourselves, with our planet, and with Cosmos at large; and deemphasizes, and avoids as much as possible, relationships of other kinds. This approach is implied by a phrase in a quotation included on The Wellspring Library Quotations Page:

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

It is our aspiration to be the change we want to see; and we encourage others to be the change they want to see. This, we believe, is the essence of onward and unending conscious human evolution — in which the changes that prove most effective and beneficial in practice will eventually emerge in replacement of those that prove to be less effective or beneficial to the practice of being human.

In Case You Get Lost:
In the navigation column near the top of every page on this site you will find a link to the Site Map, which may help you find whatever page you wish to visit.

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1. Douglas Addams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Chapter 2:

A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin in search of a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon with a great deal of optimism, because he knew that the only source of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It was called a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered it before.

It claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

2. If clear understanding of "how to be human" were widespread among contemporary and historical humans, then would it not be reasonable to expect more widespread satisfaction with "the human condition" among humans than seems to be the case at present, and historically? See the WPG Vision Statement for further discussion.