The Best Religion

May 4, 2026 //
0

Evolution-wise, ‘survival of the fittest’ denotes lack of adequate comprehension.
Evolution is about survival. Coping with change. Getting through the ‘dire straits’.
Evolution is free. The only thing that matters is to get through. Nothing else but getting through in one piece.
No referee other than the dire straits themselves and no points for the artistic impression.
‘Survival of the fittest’ is ‘getting through in certain conditions’. Getting through after knocking down all competition…
Survival of the fittest is not about coping with change.
Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with winning.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is

History-wise, Cortes’ religion was better than that sported by the Mexica. Which was good enough – as in ‘fittest’ – for the given conditions, inside the Aztec empire, but unable to withstand being challenged from the outside.

‘Now, will you make up your mind? Is there a best religion or not?!?’

Is there a better DNA? Or a better religion?
Better against which benchmark?

Exactly!

DNA is how species translate information from one generation to the next one.
Religion is how cultural species translate, and conserve, Weltanschauung.

Of course there are differences. But I’m more interested in the similarities present.

We have discovered DNA, and genetics, a couple of generations ago. Evolution, as a process, in the XIX-th century.
Yet animal husbandry and plant breeding are as old as agriculture…
Which means that in certain conditions – having reached a certain ‘maturity’ – humans have started to behave ‘as if’.
Our ancestors, lacking any formal knowledge regarding genetics or evolution, somehow managed to breed a variety of farm animals and plant crops. Each adapted, as in bred to fulfill certain needs, to the ‘task at hand’.

DNA/RNA, the existence of genes, supports all life forms. Plants, animals, fungi, viruses and everything else that lives. As far as we know, there is no life form outside the ‘genetic’ realm. There are many forms of life and all of them work according to the same principle. Each species functions in a specific manner, which manner is transmitted from one generation to the other. The relevant information ‘written down’, encoded, in genetic messages is passed from parents to off-springs.
Evolution, the phenomenon, is a consequence, not a goal.
The messages passed from one generation to the next one are not ‘rigid copies’ of the previous ones. When the messages are put together by the previous generation alterations occur inexorably. Whenever an alteration, or a combination thereof, is incompatible with life, the organism sporting that alteration dies. The alteration disappears.
If the individual organism survives, and is able to generate a new generation, the alteration also survives. And may come in handy when something changes in the environment. Or may prove to be too burdensome in certain circumstances.
Individuals sporting certain alterations have better chances to survive in circumstances where the alterations are useful while the ‘normal’, unadulterated, individuals might struggle. Alternatively, alterations which may have survived for a number of generations might become too burdensome after something had changed.
The point being that evolution occurs ‘outside’. None of the individuals has anything to say about the matter.

‘But you just said that animal breeders have altered their farm animals according to their wishes!’

Yes, the animal breeders have influenced the evolution of their animals! The animals themselves, the individual organisms suffering the process of evolution, still had nothing to say about what was happening to them.

Which brings us to religion.
Information being transmitted from one generation of people to the next one and fundamentally shaping the fate of the community. Of the cultural species being defined by each religion.

And this is where the parallel between DNA/genetics and religion stops.

We don’t know for sure what was going on in our past.
Historians and archeologists have a few ideas but those ideas change as more and more information is literally dug out.
But no matter how much we’ll be able to learn in the future about our history it is safe to say that we’ll never know exactly how we got here. In the present.
But it’s also safe to say that the past was different.

And the most obvious difference being the fact that community mattered more.
In the sense that each and every member of the community was acutely aware of the fact that they could not survive alone.
Each and everyone of the adults living a few thousand years ago were vastly more capable than any of us to survive, for a while, in the ‘bush’. Yet all the evidence we’ve gathered so far suggest they lived in close knit communities.

Absence of proof is no proof of absence?
The fact that “all the evidence we’ve gathered so far suggest they lived in close knit communities” doesn’t mean there were no individuals who managed to survive for long periods of time on their own. Or in small groups.
No, it doesn’t!
The fact that “all the evidence we’ve gathered so far suggest they lived in close knit communities” only suggests, strongly, that close knit communities are more likely to survive. And to leave behind discoverable traces of their existence!

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

Karma

April 2, 2026 //
1

What goes around
comes around.

All religions worth their salt attempt to fulfill three needs.

A bed-time story, a survival manual and a get-back-on-track strategy.

The bed-time stories depend on what had already happened before their respective inceptions. On the particular histories of the people entertaining those stories. On the respective cultures which have generated each of the religions.
The get-back-on-track strategies, again, depend on the specific social-psychological aspects of each individual civilization using a particular religion.
Unsurprisingly, given the consistent nature of the human being, the survival manual is the same.

Regardless of the specific wordings used by various religions, the core of each of those manuals is faithfully summarized by “what goes around comes around”.
Mind you, I’m speaking here about ‘successful’ religions. About religions which actually help the civilizations which use them to survive for sizeable amounts of time. About effective religions which create a collective mindset capable to cope with ‘the unexpected’.
For example, the religion used by the Aztecs had failed in their hour of need.

Do you have a better explanation for what had happened?
A very small group of lousy invaders – yes, the Spaniards led by Cortes were full of lice – being able to overcome an entire empire demands a better explanation than the technological differences between the two civilizations.
“Yet weaponry alone clearly would not enable Cortés’s tiny force to overcome a large, densely populated society of about twenty-one million. Quite apart from military technology, Cortés ’s expedition benefited from divisions among the indigenous peoples of Mexico. With the aid of Doña Marina, the conquistadors forged alliances with peoples who resented domination by the Mexicas, the leaders of the Aztec empire, and who reinforced the small Spanish army with thousands of veteran warriors. Native allies also provided Spanish forces with logistical support and secure bases in friendly territory.”

The point I’m trying to make here is simple.
The Aztec Empire observed a certain religion. They had to, in order to function as a state. As a social organism.
Which religion allowed (demanded?) the rulers to treat the general population in a certain manner. Which general population ‘made good’ of the first opportunity to rebel.
Little knowing that their new masters were no better than the old ones but …

The Aztec religion wasn’t good enough. Was unable to unite those who observed it into a community. Was unable to convince the believers to behave. To treat the ‘others’ in a respectful manner.
Was unable to convince its believers that ‘what goes around comes around’!

The idea wasn’t mentioned at all in the Aztec ‘bed-time story’?
The faithful stopped believing it at some point? For whatever reason?
The religious leaders had given up promoting the concept? In earnest? As in behaving like they were convinced themselves as opposed to merely paying lip-service to the ‘whole thing’?

Does any of the above even matter?
For us, trying to make sense of what had happened?

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

Observer effect

April 1, 2026 //
0

Karma

Let’s face it!
Decision making is a process steeped in ideology.

We see things through ideologically tinted glasses.
We use ideological shortcuts when evaluating situations.
And we do all this ‘under the radar’.

Most of us are not even aware of all this!
Most of us don’t know that our decision making is so heavily influenced by the cultural programming we have been subjected to during our entire life.
Most of us…

This being the explanation for what’s going on.
The rest, the savvy, use their knowledge on the matter to influence our thinking. Our decision making. To manipulate the masses!
Which manipulatory process is made easier by the fact that we’ve already been taught to ‘do our own research’. Basically, to adopt our own ideology.

‘Do your own research’, an ideology in its own right, is a double edged sword. A double-pointed dagger, to be more precise…
Very efficient when you know what you’re doing and almost sure to mislead an unsuspecting novice…

A professional decider knows to disregard their feelings when making a call.
Each of us is a professional decider when toiling our respective fields of expertise. This being the reason for which we’re good at what we’re doing… For which we feel good about ourselves.

For which we used to feel good about ourselves…

To cut a long story short, until not so long ago, we used to feel good.
Things seemed to be going into the right direction.
No longer.
Many of us, a majority according to what’s going on, are no longer satisfied. With “where the world is headed”.

I used ‘headed’ on purpose.
‘Heading’ would mean that the world is still searching its destination while ‘headed’ accurately describes the predominant feeling.
That ‘somebody’ leads us towards ‘disaster’. That ‘we’ are no longer in charge.

Hence the need to ‘do our own research’. To stop believing what ‘we are told’ and to demand ‘change’.
What ‘change’?!?
Anything but what we already have!

How wise is this?
How wise is for us to allow our dissatisfaction to take over?
How wise is for our handlers to drive us towards uncharted waters?

We’ll see… as the blind man said!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, manipulation, skin in the game

Feedback loop

March 30, 2026 //
0

Observer effect:
the disturbance of a system by the act of observation.

A perfunctory glance down the history alley is enough to convince us.
Democratic decision making is slower than any of the alternatives.
Yet, over the longer time frame, it begets better results.

Democratically run systems are more likely to survive, as long as they manage to preserve their democratic nature.
While autocracies collapse, under their own weight, sooner rather than later. Because of their autarchic nature.
Those running an autocratic regime – a small group to start with and growing smaller and smaller as time passes because that’s how autocracies work – don’t understand the observer effect.

But what is this famous ‘democratic nature’?

Each democratic ‘event’ has three ‘stages’. Like all other decision making processes.
Information gathering, making the call, assessing the outcome.

Electoral campaign.
‘Political scientists’ use the above mentioned term to designate the democratic ‘fact finding phase’.
Leaving aside the fact that people – potential voters – actually live. In the very circumstances they are called to vote about. To evaluate at the ballot box.
Which highlights for us to the first ‘chocking point’.

Individual voters have a limited experience.
Each of us gets in touch with a limited portion of the reality, remembers only some of it and tries to figure out only what each of us is interested in.
If actual voting would take place in ‘absolute darkness’ – each of us voting based exclusively on our own, individual, experience – democracy would be demoted to ‘mob rule’. The largest group of people would run the show according to its own, specific, interest. While all the rest would be sidestepped. Not a sustainable way of running business. Specially when the business at hand is of a social nature.
Hence democracy depends upon a continuous, honest and respectful exchange of information between all the members of a democratic society. People need to know what their neighbors feel about things before voting one way or another. Furthermore, and even more important, people need to care about what other people experience in their daily lives.
‘Political scientists’ – well, some of them – are convinced that ‘efficient campaigning’ is enough to do the trick. To convince enough voters to do as they are told. This conviction has transformed democracy into a war of words. Into a conflict fought inside a space defined by language.
Fighting that war brought us where we are now. For the better and the worse of it.

‘It doesn’t matter what people vote.
The important thing is that votes are counted by the right people.’
I rephrased here a quote attributed to Stalin. The communist dictator.
Si non e vero, e ben trovato. The ‘original attribution’, “It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” aptly describe Stalin’s attitude towards his subjects. The attitude demonstrated by the consequences produced by his actions. By his actualized decisions. His public positions on the matter? Read one of his discourses… He was lying through his teeth? Said one thing and done the very opposite? Judging by the very consequences of his reign? That’s what I meant by saying ‘the autocrats don’t care about/understand the observer effect’.
Enough about vote rigging. The second ‘chocking point’.

Casting the ballots – and counting them, one way or the other – takes us only this far. Where we are ‘now’.
‘Going forward’ we also need to ‘evaluate’.
You might think that evaluation is an integral part of the first phase. It is. The evaluation of the consequences. Before a new round of elections we need indeed to evaluate what the confirmed candidates had done.
I’m talking about another evaluation.
Very soon after the votes had been counted, the confirmed candidates ‘loose’ their masks. Relax their pretenses and start acting their truer selves. That being the moment when we need to evaluate our decisions. Our choices. What we have voted for…

Very soon after they get elected, the vast majority of the confirmed candidates start blaming their predecessors.
‘Things would be far better if the guy before me would had done that. Or refrained from doing the other that’.
‘Yes, I know. That’s why I voted for you! But you’re not delivering. Everything you promised…’
This being the moment when we, each of us, need to evaluate our own actions. Our own decisions!

Yes, ‘they’ have their share of guilt. ‘Had they done everything they promised…’
But first we need to figure out how, and why, WE have fallen for their ‘lies’.
Cause, after all, we are the ones who have put our faith in their promises!
And we are the ones experimenting the consequences.

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, skin in the game

Which-hunting

March 24, 2026 //
0

This guy used to own, and ‘operate’, an ‘university’…

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Epigenetics

March 16, 2026 //
0

Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes
that affect the way your genes work.
Unlike genetic changes (mutations),
epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the sequence of DNA bases,
but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.
CDC.gov, 31 Jan 2025

So.
XII-th century alchemy was OK. And, eventually, had given birth to science.
All the while, starting with the XV-th century, practicing witchcraft was punished by burning the culprit at the stake.
In the same cultural space! Christian Europe…

Both alchemists and inquisitors read the same Bible. Followed the same precepts.
Both alchemists and witches were involved in the same business. Performed, or tried to, the same kind of feats. Alchemists tried to out-rightly transform the reality, according to their particular wishes, while the witches were accused of achieving ‘unnatural goals’. Saving someone’s life – or that of some animal – who should have ‘normally’ died. Who would have ‘otherwise’ died…
The interesting aspect of this whole thing is this:
Alchemy was considered to be OK. Alchemists believed – and the general public obliged – that everything which existed came to be by design. Was wished into being by God. As a consequence of this belief, the alchemists – and the general public – were convinced that by studying nature they would, eventually, learn something about the will of God. And achieve some results along the way…
Simultaneously, since the feats accomplished by the witches were ‘against the nature’, they must had been performed with the help of the devil. Hence had to be punished.

What about the miracles performed by Jesus?!? And promised by Him to all those who followed his teachings? In earnest…
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew, 17:20

What drove the XV-th century witch-hunters to the conclusion that miracles could be performed only with the help of the Devil?
That God was no longer willing to assist?

“The Black Death was a plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people[2] died, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th-century population.“

‘Reality’ – as in ‘whatever happened on the face of the Earth’ – was considered to be the actualization of the Will of God, remember?
Such a tragedy, “perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population” disappearing in such horrible way, was bound to be interpreted as a punishment. Applied by God to a sinful population.
And since God was perceived to be in a vengeful disposition, any ‘help’ could have come only from the ‘competition’. From the ‘sneaky’ one.

Farfetched? Believers don’t think like that? Don’t blame God for the bad things happening to Man?

Some do not, indeed.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks after visiting Auschwitz:
“And suddenly I knew that when God speaks and human beings refuse to listen, even God is helpless in that situation. He knew that Cain was about to kill Abel, but He didn’t stop him. He knew Pharaoh was about to kill Israelite children. He didn’t stop it. God gives us freedom and never takes it back. But He tells us how to use that freedom. And when human beings refuse to listen, even God is powerless.“

Yet another interpretation?
Of the same cultural tradition?

Indeed, this my very point.
Just as individual living organisms somehow ‘tweak’ the information written in their DNA to increase their chances of survival in the specific conditions present in their environment, we – conscious human beings – have the opportunity, read ‘liberty’, to interpret the cultural traditions passed on to us by our ancestors.
We do that ‘under influence’. Pressured by everything going on around us.
Are we truly free when doing this?
Does our conscience work as intended in such conditions?
When in ‘dire straits’?

Only the future can tell.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Inner Workings

March 2, 2026 //
0

And God said…
.
.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

“Investigating Witch Trials In 1487, the zealous inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote a treatise that would have a remarkable influence on European history. Blaming women for his own lust, and frustrated by official complacency before what he saw as a monstrous spiritual menace, Kramer penned a practical guide to aid law officers in the identification and prosecution of witches. Fusing theology, lurid anecdotes and advice for those engaged in combating sorcery, The Malleus Maleficarum transports the reader into the dark heart of medieval belief – where fear and the supernatural converged in a gripping struggle for understanding and control.
The book led to the burning of numerous heretics and ‘witches’ and had a lasting impact on the popular image of witchcraft.”

Remember ‘alchemy’?
According to Britannica.com, “a form of speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold and to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life.
Alchemy was the name given in Latin Europe in the 12th century to an aspect of thought that corresponds to astrology, which is apparently an older tradition. Both represent attempts to discover the relationship of man to the cosmos and to exploit that relationship to his benefit. The first of these objectives may be called scientific, the second technological. Astrology is concerned with man’s relationship to “the stars” (including the members of the solar system); alchemy, with terrestrial nature.“

So. In the 12th, men were free to engage in an attempt to discover and exploit in their benefit the relation between themselves and the cosmos. To make every effort they could think of to transform ‘base metals’ into precious ones.
“Alchemists believed that, if their mind, body and spirit were pure, they could create the Philosophers’ Stone – a substance that could heal people from illness and turn base metals into gold.“
Meanwhile, witches – predominantly female – were burned at the stake for attempting basically the same thing. Exploit to their benefit the understanding they had about how things worked in the universe.

Basically, both – the alchemists as well as the witches – attempted the same thing. To perform/accomplish tasks which seemed impossible to the lay people.
Witches were burned when caught by the ‘wrong people’ while the alchemists were feted.

Is there any sense to be made out of all this?!?

Well, let me go back. To the ‘genetic’ moment. When all ‘this’ started.
As I’ve already mentioned, in my blog, I’m an agnostic. I don’t need a god as an explanation for anything. But I don’t know, as in ‘I can’t be sure’, whether any of this has been decisively influenced by a ‘deus ex-machina’. Hence my agnosticism. Furthermore, I’m absolutely convinced that the God worshiped by people is real. Made real by their belief!
Now, anyway you look at the whole thing – believer, agnostic or even atheist – there is no denying that the Bible is choke full of information. Of sense!

‘But… but… how can you say something like that!?!
What sense can you find in a book that inspired people to burn other people?’

Spot on, my dear Watson.
That’s exactly the question I’ve been asking myself!
What happened during those fifteen centuries. Between writing the Bible, as a collective work, and Heinrich Kramer writing Malleus Maleficarum. Between Christians building a certain culture and some people, claiming to belong to the same ‘denomination’, starting to burn witches, but not alchemists, at the stake.
Stay tuned.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Absurd? Not really!

February 28, 2026 //
0

“The absurd dramatists felt that conventional language had failed man
–it was an inadequate means of communication.”
“Essentially, the dramatists are trying to emphasize a disconnect
between “word and object, meaning and reality, consciousness and the world” (Blocker 1).
Moreover, in doing so they expose how unreliable language is; one can easily say one thing and do the opposite.”
Delanie Laws

I posited in my previous posts that:
a. Language is inherent to life. Since there can be no life unless there is a functional coordination between the inner reality of the living organism and the environment which constitutes the ‘outer’ reality.
b. Language evolves. According to what needs to be coordinated. And, since the advent of man, according to their ‘wishes’.

Fast forward to the present.
To the world of alternative facts…

Delanies Lawes, the author of a very interesting paper, “The Theater of the Absurd”, gives us a heads up.
‘Language is unreliable, “one can easily say one thing and do the opposite” ‘.
She ends her study by pointing out “Essentially, the absurd dramatists redefined the art form and created a space in which succeeding movements could flourish.”

Reading forward, I came across an explanation by Kathrin Busch. Clarifying – for us, ordinary people – what Walter Benjamin meant when making the difference between ‘through language’ and ‘in language’.
“he also draws a clear distinction between expression through language and expression within language. A specific content, i.e. what is meant by the word, is communicated through language – as befits its instrumental use. Items of information and semantic content are conveyed through the language as it is defined instrumentally. In contrast, something else again is communicated in language: a very particular type of meaning emerges in the expression or in the manner of speaking and this meaning in no way has to match the content of what is being said. Benjamin now imposes the mode of speaking, the form of language, on the concept of language in general, thereby implying that, for him, the form of articulation is more fundamental for language than the communicable nature of semantic contents or their referentiality. Benjamin’s argument thus goes considerably further than simply stating that the meaning of what is being said is inseparable from the way of saying it, that the content of a speech act is intrinsically bound up with its form. Rather, the more radical argument that the form of speech can produce a completely different, independent and above all latent meaning must be made…”
“However, Benjamin doesn’t just mean that, within a language – in poetic usage for example – the “how” of the act of saying is relevant, but that every language is itself such a form of saying. Language is precisely the formative principle of expression in general. Here, Benjamin picks up on Humboldt’s concept of the inner form of language. According to this, a specific form of saying is expressed in a particular language and, at the same time, a particular cultural significance is generated through this linguistic form.”

Conventional language has failed man… one can easily say one thing and do the opposite…
Hence conventional language has failed man by not being rigid enough. By being a flexible enough ‘space’ where man might say one thing while doing the exact opposite…
Well… not so fast!
“Essentially, the absurd dramatists redefined the art form and created a space in which succeeding movements could flourish.”
By using language in a specific manner, theirs, the absurd dramatists created, opened up, the space for was going to happen next…

Not that different from what Benjamin, and Humboldt, had to say about the matter. That by using language, people build culture. And civilization.
Interact with their environment. Benjamin was also speaking about the “language of things“.
Coordinate their actions. One way or the other. Act as a team or deceive their marks…

The point being that all these people say the same thing.
Using different words and, maybe, even without realizing how close they fit together.

Language is far more than what we say. Far more than what we do…

Basically, language is the interface we use to interact with the rest.
A tool.
A tool which seems to have a mind of its own, but only because it is wielded simultaneously by all of us.


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Khoordination

February 26, 2026 //
0

In all the Southern African Khoisan languages,
strict rules govern where particular consonants may appear in a word:
all the clicks and most of the nonclicks must appear at the beginning of a word
and must be followed by a vowel…

I have already convinced myself that language is inherent to life.
That each living organism remains in an animate state for only as long as a flow of information continues to coordinate the processes which make life possible. And since information needs to have the same meaning at both ends of a ‘conversation’, each coordination effort depends on information being conveyed using a language.

Successful coordination depends on information being conveyed in such a manner as to make sense, the same sense, for all those involved in conversation!

A perfunctory look at a world-wide map is enough to determine that there are three ‘dead-ends’.
Places not that hard to go to but almost impossible to return from. Specially for our distant ancestors. Hunter-gatherers who lived off the land. Some of whom moved over whenever the population became too numerous for the place they inhabited at any given moment. If the new place was good enough, they thrived. Then, at some point, some of them went even further.
If not…if the new place wasn’t that good … the best they could do was to survive. Going back was no option. The old place was already full when they left.
The Namibian dessert in South Africa, the Southern tip of South America and Australia. OK, now that I remembered, I must add the Easter Island to the roster. Make it three and a tiny bit.

‘Living at the end of the trail’ means little to almost no interaction with your neighbors. Until the pestering Europeans started to ‘discover’ the world… but that’s another subject.
While people living in the ‘middle of the action’ – the Ancient Egyptians make a very good example – meant having plenty of ‘intercourse’ with the neighbors.

The Khoisan family of languages use a huge number of phonemes but in a rather rigid manner.
The Australian Aboriginal Languages use 15 to 25 consonants and a system of 3 vowels ‘phonetically stretched’ to make 6 to 8 vowel sounds.
The Chonan languages, spoken until recently in Patagonia, use 23 consonants and three to five vowels.

These are facts. Which can be checked online.

What can we make of them?
Other than building an interpretation? An attempt to make some sense out of them? Knowing very well that any interpretation will remain just that? A simple, impossible to prove, interpretation…

The Khoisan didn’t have to travel much. To get there.
If the cradle of modern mankind was somewhere in Ethiopia, it was a short walk in the park – well, in the savanna – from there to the Kalahari dessert. And, since we’re talking about the early days of humankind, probably the Khoisan were the first modern humans to take that walk. Meaning that they didn’t meet anybody during the journey.

Let me remind you that 70 000 years ago – read all about it over the internet – Homo sapiens almost disappeared. Population bottleneck due to a super-volcano event. 1000 to 10 000 of them survived, somewhere in Africa, and then moved about and reached almost every corner of the round Earth.

Going back to the Khoisan, what can we infer from the fact that they:
– use so many phonemes, some of which are clicks
– live in the same area since the start of human history?

Also to be taken into consideration:
Some languages belonging to the Bantu family (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and others) have borrowed some of the clicks used by the Khoisan. After the Bantu have arrived in the general area, came in contact with the Khoisan and drove them even further into the dessert. Some 1800 years ago.

So why would a ‘sophisticated’ civilization borrow sounds from hunter-gatherers living, literally, in the stone age? Taking into account that the Bantu used agriculture to provide for themselves and were savvy enough to transform iron ore into everyday tools…

Pidgin.
English, Dutch and Portuguese colonists needed to get in contact with the locals. To ‘coordinate’ with them.
To learn from them about the specifics of the place where they tried to make a living.
Hence ‘pidgin’. Various pidgins, depending on the circumstances.

Now, what if the English, Dutch and Portuguese colonists could not go back? Reconnect to their original bases?
For how long do you think they would have been able to preserve their original language?
Keep in mind that the Bantu colonists did not use writing to preserve knowledge. Or their original language…

So, where are we now?
A preliminary conclusion, not talking about a geographical position…

The Khoisan, after the shortest migration ever, continue to use a huge number of phonemes but in a rather rigid manner.
The Australian Aboriginals and the Patagonian natives, after migrating to the other side of the world, literally, make do with less than half the phonemes used by the Khoisan. Leading a more or less similar way of life. Subsisting, for so long, in a such meager environment as to transform survival in a form of art.
The more ‘sophisticated’ travelers who arrived later – in comparatively small numbers, at first – have integrated at least some of the native language into theirs. Needing to get in touch with the reality present in that place, to coordinate their efforts with that reality, the newcomers had to get in touch, to coordinate, with the locals. In order for that coordination to happen, a new language was developed. Out of what? Out of what the two people had at their disposal. The two already present languages..

In this context, we need to remember the fact that the natives were very curious about the travelers. At the beginning, at least…

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

Alone. And afraid…

February 23, 2026 //
0

We are terrified of the unknown.
We don’t know what that is, so it may be dangerous.
We are also afraid of the incomprehensible. Of things which challenge our already held convictions. Which challenge the things we currently believe to be ‘true’.

We turn our backs to the unknown and ignore, if we can, the incomprehensible.
If what we don’t understand seems ‘far enough’, without much direct impact on us, it’s simple. We just ignore it and that’s it. Especially if it doesn’t carry any emotional charge.
But if it affects us, directly or emotionally, we perceive the unknown as being abnormal. And declare it as such. An abomination…

By being familiar, the things which surround us make us feel safe. We’re familiar with them, we entertain the notion that we understand them, so we know what to expect of them. We end up feeling ‘good’ in their presence.
Things that come into flagrant conflict with the familiar, which challenge the order we consider to be natural, are also considered to be aberrations! So we don’t pay attention to them. They are not part of our familiar, they are considered rare. Rare, aberrant and, consequently, not worth taking into account.

But after we find out… Or after we’re no longer able to ignore what’s going on…

A mafia-like gang sexually exploiting underage girls.
One of them – at least one – commits suicide. The public assumes that if there had been others, the press would have brought it forward.
For some people, sexual abuse is part of the things that happen. Which is not OK, not ‘good’, but still part of everyday life. Like earthquakes. For these people, the suicide of the victim is an aberration. Something that should not have happened! If the rest of the girls survived… it means that there was something ‘more’ involved. It was she who was not strong enough. Her support system was not adequate. Or something else might have pushed her in the wrong direction… After all, it doesn’t matter! An ‘aberration’… One of those things which are not worth much of our attention…

For other people, sexual abuse is something caused by aberrant individuals!
An aberration from one end to the other! Earthquakes are normal, sexual abuse is not!
For this kind of people, sexual abuse cannot be normalized! Under any circumstances.

This is where the interesting part starts.
Even those who think that sexual abuse is part of life don’t feel good when they learn about specific cases. When the victims ‘get names’. They know that it ‘happens’ but they don’t think about this phenomenon all the time. They have nothing to do with it, it doesn’t affect them… Until they can’t pretend anymore. Until it affects them. Not necessarily in a direct manner… Until the reality of the fact can no longer be ignored!
To escape the psychological discomfort they experience very suddenly, these people need to do something. Quick!

‘Aberration’ to the rescue!
Epstein becomes an aberration.
Andrew becomes an aberration.
Even the victim who committed suicide becomes an aberration!
In reality, ‘the aberration’ is that these things happened at all! That they happened before our own eyes!

This aberration could unfold, for so long, only because too many of us are ‘resigned to the fact’ that sexual abuse is ‘a part of life’. A ‘normal thing’. ‘Normal’ at least as long as it doesn’t affect us….

This aberration – industrial-scale sexual abuse, practiced by apparently ‘respectable’ people revealing their true nature under Epstein’s ‘direction’ – has been made possible precisely by too many of us having chosen to ignore the information ‘sloshing’ around our feet!
‘Silently’ shouted by the victims we have chosen to ignore. Until it was too late…

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology
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