I started life as any average child, trying to learn as much as I could from those around me.

For practical reasons I studied mechanical engineering – law or philosophy were dead ends in communist Romania.
After the fall of the ancient regime I started investing in the stock market and became interested in technical analysis. This is how I found out about Daniel Kahneman and the notion of ‘behavioral economics’.
Trying to deepen my understanding about how society works I went back to school, sociology this time. Here I found out about Herbert Simon – bounded rationality – and Catalin Zamfir – what constant uncertainty does to human mind and why ideologies are so powerful. (Unfortunatly Zamfir hasn’t published much, if anything, in English so I have to settle for this as a sketchy replacement)

A couple of months ago I rediscovered Zen. It had grabbed my attention some 35 years ago – I had found some books in a public library, a donation from L’Institute Francais. Sometimes in my spare moments I look up ‘zen’ on the internet and this is what I came across a few moments ago:

“The Path of Foolish Beings

Who are the foolish beings? According to the Shin tradition of Pure Land Buddhism, we all are. Mark Unno explains that only by becoming aware of our limited self and acknowledging our fundamental foolishness can we realize the oneness of all beings and the limitless flow of compassion.”

Maybe I should have sticked with Zen in the first place…