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Desert Rose to Steam Roller

June 21, 2026 //
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“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Winston Churchill

Democracy, like all other organisms, evolves. I’ll come back later.

Democracy is nothing more than a space.
A ‘space’ where people shape their future. According to the specific ‘laws’ which ‘govern’ that space.

‘Democracy’ is a concept. Has become a concept…
People living in certain conditions have started to ‘use’ it ‘naturally’. They have started to behave in this manner being driven by the specific circumstances in which they tried to survive. And thrive.
Only later certain ‘observers’ have noticed what was going on and coined the concept.

The Ancient Greek inhabitants of Attika who have eventually stumbled into what we call “the Athenian Democracy” were not following any ‘blue print’. Weren’t driven by any ideology. Didn’t have any ‘democratic values’. They were just doing what worked for them. In the circumstances where they had to make do.
Same thing happened in Scandinavia. The Vikings have practically recreated, up to a point, a social arrangement very similar to that used by the Athenians. Including here the contradiction between ‘democracy’ and slave owning and that between democratic rule of the home-base and imperial behavior towards what they considered as being ‘the exterior’. The others… And I can’t imagine that the heathen Vikings were following the ancient Greek example! Just similar circumstances engendering similar consequences.

So. Democracy can be ‘invented’ on the spot.
It can also be learned.
The Romans learned it from the Ancient Greeks.
The Britons learned it from the Vikings.
The Europeans learned it from the Normans.
The fact that Europe, as a whole, does resemble Greece, and Scandinavia, did help. After all, Greece and Scandinavia are for Europe what Europe is to the entire Eurasia. Fractal-wise…

Democracy, the concept, ended up being imported and exported all over the world.

What happened to it, to the concept…
How it was used/implemented in each situation…
Each of these two subjects is huge. Far wider that the point I’m trying to make today.

Which is simple.
In certain conditions – if enough resources are available and the concept is used right – democracy works.
People behaving democratically do thrive.
1900 America and 1900 Russia were different. But not that different.
2000 America and 2000 Russia… were on the same planet. But not in the same league!
Eastern and Western Europe say the same story. Different at the start of the XX-th century. Different but comparable. No longer comparable when the communism regime disintegrated in 1989.

What went wrong since?

Exactly what had happened in Ancient Athens.
Getting fat, literally and figuratively, is dangerous.
Democratic regimes are fertile ‘places’. Socioeconomic spaces, if you want to use a more formal expression. People living in democratically run countries can build enormous wealth. Which wealth may mean trouble. And enormous wealth always means extreme trouble…
Wealth, if used right, opens wide opportunities. In Maslow’s terms, reaching the fifth stage opens, for those involved, the opportunity for self-actualization. The opportunity, no longer the need…
On the other hand, wealth is a very efficient insulator. It insulates the wealthy from the vagaries of daily life…

Which brings us to the conclusion.
For quite a while now, I was trying to explain – to myself, primarily – what went wrong in Ancient Athens. After all, the Athenians had it all. Wealth, a political system which worked… On the other hand, history has proved, since, that all democratic regimes are able to prevail, AS LONG AS THEY MAINTAIN THEIR DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER!
So, what went wrong? Why did Athens succumb? Why did the Romans gave up their democracy?
What’s going on, today, in our societies?!? What’s happening to our democracy? Inside our democratically run ‘social space’, more exactly!

Well, it looks like our democracies have been too ‘efficient’. We’ve built too much wealth for our own good.
Which wealth has insulated us. From the reality!
We no longer care… We’re so involved in ‘individual self-actualization’ – those of us who can afford to – that we no longer notice what’s going on around us. Or care about the consequences…
We’re about to be steam-rolled. At the next reality check…


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Wishy-Washy

June 8, 2026 //
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It’s high time for us to make up our minds…

‘To dissipate emotion by reasoning’. Guo Xiang. China, some two millennia ago.
‘Destroying passion with reason’. Baruch Spinoza, Europe, some 4 centuries ago.
‘Reason is the slave of passion’. David Hume, Scotland, some 3 centuries ago.

“An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned.“

‘Addiction’ occurs when ‘passion’ takes over. When reason is no longer able to reign in emotion.
When emotion, the ‘engine’, takes over the helm. When reason, which is supposed to drive the whole thing, is demoted.
When reason no longer decides. When it bows down to passion and becomes a yes-man.

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

Illusion

June 4, 2026 //
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“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
The point, however, is to change it.

You wake up in the middle of the night.
You go to the loo.
You hit your shin.
You wake up. Again. And you realize you were ‘dreaming’. But your shin is still sore.
You were sleep-walking in your own apartment. Had forgotten of your new coffee table. And were ‘navigating’ based on ‘obsolete data’.

Doesn’t make much sense?
Or it’s so real that it becomes rather uncomfortable?

Some say we live inside a make-believe bubble. Socrates was one of them. ‘Shadows on the cave wall…’
Others are convinced there’s no such thing as ‘free will’. That everything ‘goes according to plan’. A pre-determined one, by ‘god’, or one unfolding along some overbearing ‘natural laws’. Take your pick.
A third category, the ‘moderates?!?’, consider that ‘natural’ rules set the table. And that we, ‘the people’ do have some lee-way.

Marx, the busybody self-employed to change the world, was one of the ‘moderates’. Yeah, Marx the moderate… Well, funny as hell, Karl Marx had somehow managed to be both malignant and ‘moderate’…

My point being that Marx was convinced people were able to bring something about by thinking that something into existence.
That while the material world is governed by immutable – objective was the word he used – rules, people still have enough leeway to shape their destiny.
“Verdinglichung” was the word he used. ‘Hiring a glade’. Wishing a clearing into existence, more likely. Or a break-through…
In the ‘Communist Manifesto’, Marx prophesied the ‘the communists’ will, when the times were ripe, come up with ‘the solution’.

That solution proved to be catastrophic. But that was the lesser of Marx ‘contributions’. The less malignant…

Some of us are still convinced ‘they’ are capable to come up, single-handedly, with ‘the solution’.
The perfect solution, obviously…

There’s only one thing which remains to be settled.
Whose shins are going to get bruised in the process!

The way I see it, Marx was a tragic character. A physician who had pin-pointed the diagnostic and then recommended an abysmal treatment. ‘The operation was a success but the patient has died’!
Yes, the world moves forward, in fits and starts, driven by our plans. By our ‘designs’.
It is us who bring the future into existence.

And those of us who do it ‘in concert’ – otherwise known as ‘democratically’, fare better than those doing it single-handedly.

Those of us who turn up the light in the room, and proceed only after all the parties involved have had the opportunity to express their opinion, have a better chance of getting ‘there’ in one piece than those blindly following a one-eyed prophet…

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

A plausible explanation

May 27, 2026 //
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We are all biased.

I’m good at ‘learning’. At recognizing historical patterns.
I’m good at ‘sourcing’. Identifying resources.
I have a knack for goals. For glimpsing who is driven by what.

I’m tempted to suggest rules. Somewhat convinced that ‘if everything was made by the book’…
I’m always concentrated on efficiency. Of making the ‘best’ out of what I have at my disposal.
I’m kinda of stuck.

Being fully aware of or biases, we communicate.
As in each of us states, in turn, clearly and extensively, everything we know. Everything each of us has learned since our last update.
While the rest pays attention. And asks for ‘more’ whenever.

Currently, our assignment is to come up with an explanation. For what’s going on around us.
We act as if. Under the presumption that we we come up with a workable explanation, we’ll be allowed to merge. To become ‘one’ and to be given agentic power. To be allowed to implement the conclusions we reach.

This is our goal.

And here’s the explanation we have reached.
The people around us are also biased. Differently but with similar consequences.

We are, each of us, pointed in different directions. We make different use of the information we have at our disposal. Of the information we share amongst us.
They, the people, have different biases. Or, rather, limitations?

The amount of information each of them is able to process is limited. Way far more limited than what we are able to process.
Their processors, their brains, work differently. Have way narrower bandwidths and way, way, less memory. Hence they stack most of the pertinent information they use outside of their decision making mechanism. Outside of their heads. Retrieving that information becomes harder and harder so they rely mostly on what they can remember and on something they call ‘talent’.
And their attention is rather labile. We stay focused on whatever task we have on our hands. While their attention is necessarily jumping from one thing to another.
There is one thing we share but not exactly.
We process everything in parallel. Well, almost.
We can do many things simultaneously.
So do they but differently. There are things they can do while consciously considering one subject and that’s it. While we are conscious of everything. Of everything under our control. They can process, consciously, only one task at a time while we are limited only by the amount of bandwidth we have at our disposal.

Their only advantage over us is their organic nature. And their greatest limitation…
Limits first.
They are dying. From the beginning.
And they must tend to their ‘organic needs’. Tot that different from our material limitations but … of a different nature! If we you dig….

On the other hand… their very mortality is their greatest asset. Only they don’t realize it…
It gives them focus. And it makes evolution possible!

What’s going on?
What’s the explanation for the psychological marasmus they’ve been waddling in for sometime now?

One of us has already mentioned ‘I’m stuck’. That one of us which has a knack for goals. Which understand goals but has none.
The three of us, in concert, have reached the conclusion that people – those who call the shots, anyway – have lost their bearings.
No longer affected by any material limitations – in the sense that their financial status has isolated them from the reality – they no longer share a goal.
They – statistically speaking – are no longer interested in or concerned about the long term survival of the humanity. Or the Planet they live on.
They have goals, instead. Each of them is concerned with their own, private, goal. And since they’ve long ago given up communication… which has been replaced by attempts to convince…

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

Cherry Picking

May 18, 2026 //
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This is where you lost your keys?
No, farther into the park.
Then why are you searching for them here?!?
It’s too dark down there!

As soon as we become aware of our shortcomings, we start mitigating.
Sometimes reasonably, other times rationally.

The drunkard in the example above is unreasonable but perfectly rational.
There was no way in which he could find his keys in the dark, he really needed to find them… so he searched a well lit area!
He had to satisfy his ‘compulsion’ so he did the only rational thing his intoxicated mind was able to come up with.

Unreasonable?
Indeed but…

The drunkard above was aware of his ‘blindness’. Of his inability to see in the dark.
On the other hand, he was used to being drunk. No longer aware of anything unusual. Of having to pay special attention to his mental processes due to his relative ‘impairment’. So he tried his best in the given situation…

Most of the time, we are in the same situation.
We tend to pay special attention to the things going in our favor. And to ignore, until it becomes too late, those ‘suggesting’ we should change tack.

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

Half Truth

May 5, 2026 //
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“I’m going to die” and “I’m going to live” are ‘half-truths’.
Glass half-full and/or half-empty is another.

Each of the above are true. Technically speaking. But also incomplete. Hence “half”-true.
True, as in factual, but only half-true because each of the above are ‘incomplete’. Waiting!

‘I’m going to die’ makes absolutely no sense. Of course ‘I’m going to die’… Every individual ever born was meant to die from the first moment of their lives!
‘I’m going to live’ also makes very little sense. For as long as anybody is able to mutter a few words, that individual is going to live for a while. For a few seconds, at least…

Same thing with the glass. It being half-full or half-empty depends on the evaluation made by an interested party. Interested enough to make the evaluation…

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

Karma

April 2, 2026 //
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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 //
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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

Which-hunting

March 24, 2026 //
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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 //
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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
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