aspirational flourishing • gary e. davis • berkeley


	Project

	aspirational flourishing gary e. davis	January 1, 2026

“Another singularity” aspires newly, which is integral to flourishing. “Aspirations respond to welcomed challenges,” I noted some years ago, “which include (for me, prevalently) making the most of one’s learnability, which forms (in time) more—
higher—singularity, relative to opportunity made as well as given.”

That may lead to audacities of engagement, in my instance a conception of self-enhanciveness which is recursively generative: manifoldly purposive, mindful, project-ive, protean (2011 | 2020 | 2023 | 2018) , and progressive.

An ideal is a conception of highness, “a standard of perfection” perhaps (M-W Unabridged 1 b), given the feasibility of perfection, but more-commonly
“a model for imitation” (2) or a goal (3).

So, I’m away into a highland of my own ideality if I regard ideals as deep-structural Values mirrored by appealing horizons.

Genuine fictionality often draws an audience into appealing horizons.
The model world is fabulation of desired or aspiring orientation.

Appeal of the ideal is its appealing draw, its action-orienting gravity, especially when expressing wide focus and/or high depth (intimations of focal holism or mindfulness).

We each aspire for a better quality of life through ideals, giving way to the appeal. Being oriented by authentic aspirations and feasible (“realistic”) ideals has self-enhancive, selfidentical Value for pragmatic thinking.

We want our life altogether to have overall purpose (which I call “A-Project-ivity”) which coheres important activity through Time. A sense of focused Value for a project is its fittingness (its inclusive fitness) in the long view of one’s life.

The idealism of being a person, person-al being, is hallmarked by literary appeals, which (like all ideals) may inform model standards for evaluting actual experience, rather than orienting preferences.

"Ideally, educational leadership seeks to cultivate sensibilities to a highly capable degree of self-directed learning and flourishing of selformativity, “

Open inquiry in research is idealistic in its orientation by model-theoretic hypotheses, such that the better theory is more realistically congruent with modeled expectations.

Conceptual appeal in humanities depends on idealization (prospecting range for an appealingly given domain) regardless of affinity for overt Idealism.

The singularity of a life is an idealization of projective and recollective cohering which allows confidence that one’s identity expresses one’s ownmost life.

Admiration of one’s exemplarity—as parent, teacher, mentor, noble actor, hero, romantic figure, etc—certainly intimates idealization (but not by one’s own awowal!)

Motivating anticipations of perfectability are never fulfilled, yet draw us onward for higher, deeper, wider, or more intmate presence (capability, appreciation, valuing, exemplarity, etc.), like the ever-receding horizon of the traveler who loves the mystery of what’s to happen.

“How may idealization be best aligned with interests of better humanity?”
Ideality mirrors futurity of recursive generativity in Our evolving.

The better angels of our nature are engaged in the implicit Project of Humanity which idealizes better futures through being good ancestors.

Being drawn into conceptually horizonal appeals, insatiably receding as
I live intrinsic desire (autogeny of intelligibility’s self-enhancive efficacy) enowns Work for its own sake (long before considerations of shared display:
a hermeneutical appropriation of the high enowning).

Yet, it’s also audacious ambition, in humility, “wanting to be—being—ventur-
some, tenacious, diligent, and realistic,” while also “being mindful, consci-
entious, reliable, deliberative, well-informed, truly intuitive, careful, genuine, empathic, generous, gracious, and considerate, “ which may seem pretentious, like claiming virtue, but it’s not, and I don’t claim otherwise, though I’m relatively alien.

Aspiring to grand receptiveness across life and world continuua may flounder too much, but so commonly do many odysseys and the arts of doing science.
So, too, for conceptual prospecting.

Holding good appeals of fulfilling engagement with ecological complexity follows appeals of wholly flourishing life, others’ leading ideas (“pursuing extraordinary mind”), thus the lead of a specific humanity.

Aspiration for comprehensive interdomainal comprehension may seem foolish, but I learn a lot being “drawn into wilderness… just drawn. ”

Being possessed in a Flow of it giving way is ecogenic.

Being drawn into wholehearted venturing for comprehensiveness advances long-term action-oriental reliability of holistic understanding.

That is, such venturing—protean and progressive—responds to appeals
of emerging better humanity.