TALE: The Biographical Engagement Project

Oliver Ding

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TALE500

3 min readFeb 3, 2023

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Find creative themes behind a creative life

Five months ago, I launched the Biographical Engagement project for the Life Strategy Center. Later, I was busy writing the book Advanced Life Strategy: Anticipatory Activity System and Life Achievements.

Now it’s time to relaunch it as a sub-project of TALE.

The name of the project is inspired by the Project Engagement approach. We will consider “reading”, “mapping”, and “discussing” a person’s biography as a “Project”. The whole process is called “Biographical Engagement”.

1. Where do we find Biographies?

I personally focus on knowledge creators such as theorists and scientists. I use Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to find biographies. I also directly buy some books for reading.

In the past several years, I read several psychologists’ intellectual biographies. Now I am moving to read biographies about other fields.

2. How to read Biographies?

I start with Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to find primary materials about some knowledge creators.

For example:

Paul Ricoeur
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/

I tend to discover some interesting things from the primary reading.

For example, I pay attention to the following text about Paul Ricoeur,

In the course of developing this anthropology, Ricoeur made several major methodological shifts, partly in response to changes in his intellectual setting as new developments came to speak to the topics he was dealing with, sometimes in ways that challenged his own approach, partly as he pursued questions that had arisen as a result of his published work or that had not yet been considered there.

3. How to engage with biographies?

After finding at least one interesting thing, I move back to my own research thematic spaces.

I will create a connection between the biography and my thematic spaces.

For example, I realized that Ricoeur’s story is a good example of “Attachance” which is a core idea of my thematic spaces.

In this way, I turn Reading into Making. I change my role from a reader into a maker.

From the perspective of the Project Engagement approach, Ricoeur’s several major methodological shifts mean “Moving between Thematic Spaces”.

4. Can you join the Biographical Engagement Project?

Yes!

However, you don’t have to follow my way. You can have your own way of engaging with biographies.

5. Biographical Engagement as Thematic Engagement

I encourage you to consider your Biographical Engagement project as a Thematic Engagement project.

In this way, you have to pay attention to the development of the life themes of a creator.

6. Biographical Engagement as Life Discovery

You can also consider your Biographical Engagement project as a Life Discovery project.

In this way, you have to generate at least one Significant Insight about your own life while reading others’ life stories.

Once you have a significant insight, you can use it to guide you in designing a Developmental Project.

This is the basic method of Life Strategy Activity: Engage > Discover > Action.