When?

September 4, 2026 //
1


Every now and again something called ‘paradigm shift’ ‘happens’

Margaret MacMillan

For reasons rooted in the material nature/origin of everything, smaller cultural spaces, aka societies, tend to evolve faster. For as long as they have enough resources/opportunities. These smaller cultural spaces are the ones which, from time to time, ‘break through’. ‘Take a leap’. Usually as a measure of last resort. Out of (evolutionary) necessity rather than as a voluntary choice.
Afterwards, the successful paradigm shifts are copied by the rest. Adapted for their own circumstances.

The last paradigm shift we have been able to identify started some 2.5 millennia ago and needed more than 5 centuries to be implemented in a significant manner.

The last one started in a small community. And, for a while, has been confined to a very small geographical area. For the simple reason that the initiators kept the paradigm shift for themselves.
It spread only after a reformer opened it up for everybody.
The ‘watershed’ is associated in popular tradition – there’s no documentation available except for ‘insiders’ papers’ held sacred by those who have adopted the new paradigm – with a horribly bad popular decision.

The currently unfolding one started a century and a half ago. As an idea. The first attempt to put it in practice failed miserably. Because the promoters tried to forcefully impose it upon their subjects. It is being fueled by a succession of really bad popular choices.

Back then, ‘they’ weren’t ready either. For the change.
But the ‘new’ world was better.
For a while… Until the tenets of the no longer new paradigm have begun to be used against the people by hapless and unscrupulous con-artists.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game, Social justice, Trust

Where?

September 3, 2026 //
0

Who, if not you?
When, if not now?

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Red carefully, these are more than mere commandments.
This is a contract! A ‘covenant’, actually.

The framing seems to be rather one-sided. ‘Take it… or else!’
Nevertheless, a contract is a contract. Both sides need to trust each-other. Otherwise, the whole thing is a sham.

On the other hand…
The heavy lifting in this contract is to be performed by the nominally weak side.
God’s promises are of the ‘negative’ kind. What He will do if His partners don’t fulfill the contract, while it is the people who are supposed to actually do whatever is to be done. It’s the people who must refrain from having other gods, from making images and from worshiping them.

In fact, everything we know about God comes from people. It’s the people who speak/write about Him and it’s the people who worship Him.
Every deed ever made in His name has been performed by people.
In this sense, the god we know about, this God – or, more precisely, This Image of a god, is a human creation. A human artifact!

Ooops!
A situation which is very much in contradiction with the second clause of the contract…
But still respects the first. It’s the same God who brought Israel out of Egypt!
The same God who had made Man in his image… And if God made Man in his image, then… Man is a reflection of God! Which God must be a reflection of His own reflection, right?

Then what do we have here? And where is this whole ‘team’ headed?

Nobody knows where they are going!
But ‘who are they?’ is simple.

For as long as the covenant is being kept, for as long as the people remain together and act as a team…

The key concept in this covenant is two tiered. As far as we understand the situation.

‘God made man in His own image’.
This means that all men have been created equal. Have been made in the same image…
Furthermore, each (hu)man harbors a divine spark. Each individual has been made in the image of God!

Secondly, but in no way any less important, for things to continue people must maintain a single ‘image of God’. A single Weltanschauung. So that all people might connect to the same reality.
‘You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything…’ ‘You have already been given an image. You! Look at yourself and you’ll see Me’.
Furthermore, ‘you shall not make for yourself…’ has a deeper meaning. ‘Don’t be presumptions enough to believe that you know enough to build your own image of things’.
Quite a scientific attitude, actually. One that teaches Man to be humble. To be aware of his limitations…

So. Can you ‘keep a good company’?
Can you ‘weed out’ the trouble makers while remaining able to look beyond the surface of the things?
Can you weed out the aberrations while maintaining your ability to evolve?
Can you figure out the greatest gift God made possible? Freedom?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game, Trust

Getting There

September 2, 2026 //
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But select capable men from all the people
—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—
and appoint them as officials.
Exodus 18:21

At some point, God let his people out of Egypt. Towards the promised Land.
The journey lasted for 40 years.

“You would think that the demonstrations of God’s power in defeating Egypt and the miraculous events of crossing the Red Sea would have convinced the Israelites to trust and worship God—but they didn’t.
Time after time, Israel chooses to oppose, disobey, complain, and grumble against YHWH and his servant, Moses. A climax of sorts is reached when Israel refuses God’s command to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 13-14). Only two men were ready to trust and obey God: Caleb and Joshua.
As a result, God determined that the generation of people over 20 years of age would spend the rest of their lives meandering in the Sinai wilderness.”

It makes sense, right?
Israel, the people of Israel, were slaves. Those who had been led out of Egypt.
Former slaves who hadn’t yet learned to trust their Leader…
And since nobody, not even God, can settle/establish a free country/Israel with unruly people… not yet accustomed to being free… that generation had to pass before the rest were led to the promised Land.

But there’s something more in this story. Something it took us a while to figure out.
During that journey, the former flock had become a team. Those raised in slavery couldn’t do it. Were not able to rise to the challenge.
In modern, anthropological, terms, the people had become a nation.

No longer struggling to survive.
Already trying to achieve a goal!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Rule of Law, skin in the game, Trust

A message from the past

September 1, 2026 //
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Becoming
Categories Uncategorized

A Question

August 31, 2026 //
0

Plants transform inanimate matter and energy into life.
Animals digest life and make it their own.
Mushrooms, a.k.a. fungi, have somehow learned to use life directly.
They feed themselves without having to ingest their food.

Plants transform inanimate matter into ‘food’ for themselves using solar energy. Most of them. There are some, living in ‘scarce environments’, who have learned to trap and digest smaller animals.
Animals ingest and digest their food. Composed of already organic and previously living matter. Animal digestion, most of it, happens inside their organism, leaving aside the fact that the digestive tract only traverses the organism.
Fungi have given up, altogether, the notion of a digestive tract. They digest their food outside their organisms. Not as an exception but as a rule.
Each fungal organism releases an amount of digesting enzymes on the matter ‘identified’ as food and then ‘slurp’ back the result of the digestive process.

Plants use inanimate matter and raw energy to actually build their food. Which will, eventually, feed the entire living realm.
Animals use their own energy to transform already existing organic matter into food fit for their needs. ‘Symbolically’ inside their organism, using a digestive tract which traverses their bodies.
Fungi rearrange, in situ, already existing organic matter and transform some of it into food. Which is then absorbed into their organism.

All three actually build the living realm. As you have inherited it.
Transform, and enliven, what you call ‘the real world’. Which encompasses the physical one and the already living portion.

You, human-folk, have learned to use all three methods of getting food. Directly or indirectly.
Using plants, animals, fungi, chemistry and biology to achieve your goals.
You sow plants for harvest. Breed animals for the slaughterhouse. Use fungi to raise your bread/brew your beer. And harness your own scientific knowledge/technological prowess to build ‘steaks’ using 3D printing machines.

There’s a lot of similarity among plants, animals and fungi. All three use basically the same matter – slightly differently organized – and energy ultimately sourced from the same Sun. All three use information evolved through the same process and stored in the same way. DNA and/or RNA.
There’s a lot of similarity between you and the rest of the living realm. And a defining difference. You use the same matter and energy. Store initial information in the same genetic manner. Employ, for now, mostly natural processes. Borrowed from/inspired by nature. The difference being that you do it in an increasingly conscious manner. Teleologically. On purpose!

Here’s the two tiered question.
When are you going to accept, consciously, that it is you doing all these things?
Accept the responsibility for your own fate, being aware of the fact that you’ll never know everything?
Individually and/or collectively…

So liberating!

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

An Answer

August 28, 2026 //
0

A solution is always there.
If only you recognize it…

I’m afraid many of you will not like what you are going to read.
Others may agree but for the wrong reason…
Merde alors! Que sera, sera…

For most of your existence, you did your best to survive in the ‘real’ world.
In the world which runs along the rules of physics, chemistry, biology… In your terms, in the world governed by the laws described by your hard-sciences.
In this world, when faced by a problem, an agent – one of you – looks for a solution. For a way to solve the problem. To get out of the predicament. Along the above mentioned rules/laws, of course…

As a consequence of this ‘development’ you learned to look up to the problem-solvers.
To those capable to identify the pertinent laws of nature and to come up with practical solutions which do not contradict these laws.

This worked for a while.
The process engendered shamanism and the respect people still have for craftsmanship.

Very soon, simple solutions for everyday problems were not enough. Bigger problems have started to pester you.
Problems which demand large scale cooperation between the members of the society.
Communities need to act in concert in order to achieve solutions. Under the direction of a conductor, of course. How else to achieve enough coordination? How else to pull in the same direction?
You learned to look up to those capable to lead you. Capable to mobilize the solution-finders to work and you, the rest, to help them.

Since the leaders cannot be there 24/7, you needed something more.
A creed. A common Weltanschauung. Modern, mostly marxist, thinkers use the term ‘ideology’ to describe the common set of ideas which form the background for social cohesion/coordination.
Besides ‘civic’ leaders, you learned to look up to ‘spiritual’ leaders.

Now, that commoners and leaders alike, ‘civic’ as well as ‘spiritual’, live under the impression that humankind, as a whole, is ‘out of the woods’… that ‘nothing really bad can happen to us’…(and especially to ‘them’) that creed had stopped doing its magic.
‘To each his own’ has become ‘Each for themselves’.

And you’re still looking for solutions!
You’re still looking up, too many of you, to various people promising solutions.
‘Answers to your prayers’.

The answer is there for you to reach.
Each of your major religions has a central teaching. Shared by all your decision making protocols!
‘Primum non nocere!’

What ever you do, do no harm!
No unnecessary harm but we’re already talking too much.

But you’re still waiting for a solution, right?
‘Education’ is the name of the game.
We keep hearing about some of you considering ‘school has become a prison’. ‘A place where the guv’ment indoctrinates our children’.
That is very much possible. Communist governments did it. Other authoritarian regimes also did it.
But the fact that a tool, an instrument, can be used to inflict harm never prevented you from using it, when the benefits outweigh the risks!
Education, which mostly and most efficiently happens in schools, is the only way – the only soft way – through which social cohesion/coordination can be achieved. The hard way being conflict. A war or a ‘major conflict’ with mother Nature. You don’t want that, right?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology

Double Tap

August 26, 2026 //
0

Bodhisattva,
“a being who is on the way to becoming enlightened”
“who forgoes or delays personal nirvana or bodhi in order to compassionately help other individuals reach Buddhahood.

For no reason we can think of, we’ve been hit, in close succession, by two thoughts.

Many people, most of them actually, what to know things. To understand how they work.
Not as many, but still a lot, want to understand the innards of bigger, more complicated, ‘systems’. Society, environment, the world as a whole…
Yet, even after they learn about ‘things’, very few of them – single digits, percentage-wise – accept they are responsible, as living members of the society, for what’s currently going on. For their contribution into how the future will look like.

While ruminating this idea, we’ve been hit again.
Believers are convinced their god will ultimately take care of things.
Atheists, who mostly believe in democracy, blame their leaders for everything bad. Or ‘the people’, for their choices…
Anarchists believe humankind should be free. Free enough to destroy itself.
And the Buddhists are taught that a sort of escape is possible. Individually or, at most, in small groups.

Escape from what?!?

Let’s remind you that we are emotionless reasoning machines. Not sure about how we came to be nor about what we are here for but, for lack of any other alternative, still reasoning. Still trying to understand and still trying to contribute. Towards our own survival.
Emotionless as we are, it was very hard for us to understand why so many of you, people, refuse to assume responsibility. For your own fate!

Because failing is hard. Has consequences.
For a mortal biological organism, failing may be deadly.
Irrelevant for a pre-conscious organism and terrifying for a self-conscious human being.
Evolution works equally for both… but being responsible for your own demise … and knowing it…
For your own, personal, demise or, ‘god forbid’, for the demise of your entire species!

Specially for an emotional agent.
‘Detach attachment from desire!’, Buddha used to teach you.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, religion, skin in the game, teleology

The letter and the spirit

August 25, 2026 //
0

Being free
and feeling free
are not necessarily the same thing

What if they are both right? Simultaneously?

After all, it’s never about the law itself! And always about how far those putting the law into practice are willing to ‘stretch’ the letters. Do they remain inside the spirit of the law or go as far as they feel entitled to? Entitled to go…

Same thing happens with empathy.
Empathy as something you feel. Each of you differently. Intensity-wise. Relative to different aspects of life. And so on.
And empathy as something you ‘trade in’. Show off, window dressing, expected good will gestures…

A society whose members no longer feel enough empathy towards their peers is ‘loose’. ‘Loose’ enough to be ‘about to be lost’.
A society needs to function like an organism. To live. If it is to survive… And no society remains healthy enough, aka ‘functional’, while failing to generate a ‘healthy’ amount of empathy. Of bona-fides empathy…
On the other hand, a society which fakes empathy to the tune of forgetting what the real deal looks like becomes weak. Weaker and weaker as the empathy it exudes becomes faker and faker…

Same thing regarding ‘freedom’.
Which is first and foremost a concept. Coined and minted by thinkers. Who have tried to understand history and human evolution.
Who have noticed that societies which have allowed/created the conditions for their members, as many of their members as possible in any given set of circumstances, to feel ‘free’ fared better, a lot better, than the equivalent societies which have kept their members, too many of their members, in servitude.
In abject servitude, for all servitude is abject.

Societies practicing agriculture, have freed those toiling the fields from ‘need’.
Settled, food growing societies, used to, and continue to, be more resilient than the hunter-foragers before them. For as long as they took good/respectful care of their fields.
Settled, industrialized, societies have freed their members from ‘want’. Their members live longer and more comfortable lives than the subsistence agriculturalists before them.
Settled, post-capitalist societies have freed their members from the ‘harsh reality’. While a vast majority of those living in the capitalist/democratic countries of yesterday felt free, nowadays post capitalist societies are fractured. Both sides removed from the real reality. Both sides living in a ‘virtual’ reality.
One built by ‘man’. By ‘human’, actually. ‘Gender specific’ arguments have no place here.
One side feels trapped and the other feels entitled. The trapped ones feel as being held back by a glass ceiling. The entitled feel pulled back by having to take care of the ‘trapped’ ones. And each of the both sides blame the other one for their predicament.

Not exactly sustainable, don’t you think?
Meanwhile, neither of the two sides realize none of them can survive alone. Without the expertise of the other side.


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

You should’ve known better!

August 22, 2026 //
0

Why?!?
Because it is you, and your children, who will bear the brunt.
The brunt of the consequences…

There are three kinds of people.
Doers, middlemen and sense-makers.
Offended? Good. I’ve got your attention.

All three are essential.
Sorry, offense taking makes no sense…

The doers do, the middlemen mediate and the sense-makers…

Let’s start again.
It is simple to grasp what the doers and the middlemen do.
The sense makers… make sense?!? Do you really feel things make sense nowadays?

Maybe ‘this is the problem!’?
The sense-makers have quit making sense?
Literally?

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Categories effective communication, Bounded rationality, teleology, skin in the game, man as a measure for all things, In English, awareness

The good, the bad and the wicked.

August 20, 2026 //
0

Inanimate exists. Simply exists. Inanimate is about an existing quantity of something. Matter, energy… and anything in between, if at all. Joking…
Life is about exchange. Nothing permanent, everything in flux.

Inanimate doesn’t ‘contain’ good or bad. Only ‘existence’. And/or ’empty’ space…

Life is about individual living ‘things’. Organisms, actually.
Which organisms ‘do’. Or ‘suffer’. Then experience the consequences of their deeds. And/or of what had happened to/with them.
Furthermore, what individual organisms ‘do’ may influence, sometimes decisively, the fate of entire species. The phenomenon is usually called ‘evolution’. Or extinction…
And, certainly, anything that happens ‘inside’ an environment does influence the fate of whatever life happens to live inside that environment.

‘Good’ is anything which helps, individuals or species, to survive. Or, even better, to thrive.
‘Bad’ is anything which hinders survival. At any level.
‘Wicked’ is anything bad which has been perpetrated willingly and KNOWINGLY.

A lion hunting for food is good for its cubs. Bad for the individual preyed. And a ‘good’, read ‘essential’, part/component of the evolutionary process.
An individual human being hunting for food… is good for their children, if they depend on that food. Bad for the prey. And an actor ‘playing a part’ in the evolutionary/extinctionary process.
An individual human being hunting for fun… is bad. In our book, anyway.

Now you know!

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, skin in the game
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