Archives for category: Choices we make
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Mala Suerte

January 19, 2026 //
0

Make
America
Lonely
Again

What happened next?
The Roaring 20s, Prohibition – and the advent of the Mob, the Great Depression, WWII.
In the rest of the world?
The Great Depression, Fascism, WWII.

Could America have made a difference? As an ‘insider’ rather than as a peeping Tom?

“The United States never joined the League. Most historians hold that the League operated much less effectively without U.S. participation than it would have otherwise. However, even while rejecting membership, the Republican Presidents of the period, and their foreign policy architects, agreed with many of its goals. To the extent that Congress allowed, the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations associated the United States with League efforts on several issues. Constant suspicion in Congress, however, that steady U.S. cooperation with the League would lead to de facto membership prevented a close relationship between Washington and Geneva. Additionally, growing disillusionment with the Treaty of Versailles diminished support for the League in the United States and the international community. Wilson’s insistence that the Covenant be linked to the Treaty was a blunder; over time, the Treaty was discredited as unenforceable, short-sighted, or too extreme in its provisions, and the League’s failure either to enforce or revise it only reinforced U.S. congressional opposition to working with the League under any circumstances. However, the coming of World War II once again demonstrated the need for an effective international organization to mediate disputes, and the United States public and the Roosevelt administration supported and became founding members of the new United Nations.”

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league

Was the World a better place after WWII? Was America happier? Inside rather than outside?

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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

Evolution

January 14, 2026 //
0

‘Adapt to survive’.

‘Intelligent design’ didn’t make much sense. For me. Until now!

Trying to make sense of what’s going on, I’ve suddenly understood how useful it is. The concept!
How many things can be explained using the ‘intelligent design’ paradigm…

January 14, 2026.
NASA is cutting short, for medical reasons, a scientific mission. And brings back 4 astronauts from the International Space Station.
Meaning that NASA, a human ‘agency’, is able to fly people up and down into the sky. At will. And that it cares, for whatever reason, about the well being of those involved.
Meanwhile, in both Bucharest and Kyiv people have to make do without enough heat. In the middle of winter.
Why?

Can any of this be explained without making use of ‘intelligent design’?

But wait! It gets even better…
OK, NASA was well designed in the first place. Operates in a civilized country and is manned by some of the most capable inhabitants of that country.
People in Kyiv are suffering the consequences of a ‘well designed’ conflict.
People in Bucharest experiment the consequences of their own short-sightedness. For 35 years the centralized heating system has been neglected. Underfunded and ineptly maintained. A patent lack of ‘intelligent design’, right?

All these three examples, as well as many others, fit perfectly.
Things too complicated to happen without outside intervention.
Things so different from what is considered to be ‘normal’ that a ‘deus in machina’ is needed as the only possible explanation.

Yet, as I already promised, things go even ‘deeper’.
As you might already know, there are some people who dislike the European Union. And who claim that nothing good comes from ‘Brussels’. That the Europeans would be far happier ‘on their own’, without the ‘obtrusive interventions’ coming from the ‘Commission’.
In this context, it is worth mentioning the fact that, for example, “80% of the apartments situated in Sectorul 3 (one of the 6 boroughs of Bucharest) have been thermally rehabilitated, most of the funds being grants from the EU”

Intelligent design, eh… Convincing people they will fare better outside the EU, when the EU had paid to make their lives more bearable….

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

Driving

January 7, 2026 //
1

Rob Peter to Pay Paul

Riding and driving.
Similar and, yet, so different.

Riding used to be about transporting yourself. On the back of a horse, mostly. Now using a bike, but the principle is the same.
Driving used to be about transporting cargo. Or other people…

The key words here being “used to”.
Nowadays most driving and riding is about transporting single persons. Usually for ‘work related goals’. That despite the fact that almost all merchandise ‘spends time’ inside ‘wheeled transportation devices’.

On the other hand, both driving and riding are about balancing goal, means and sheer luck.

Goals may not be always chosen by the drivers. Yet getting there is determined by the ability of the drivers to ‘do their thing’.
Furthermore, during the voyage, the drivers have also to keep an eye open for the ‘well being’ of their ride. You know… make sure the horses get enough to drink, fill the tank from time to time, checking the lube oil… things like that.
Finally, but not least importantly, the drivers must cope with everything life throws at them.

Which brings us to the point of the day.
Most people don’t get to decide much. Not as autonomously as they do it ‘behind the wheel’. A vast majority of the jobs open for the ‘average guys’ are highly ‘procedured’. Most people have to follow strict sets of instructions, after they reach their working places. Then make ends meet in rather ‘meager economic conditions’ after they get back home. Driving back and forth between those two places define the freest periods of their days.

The way things are going now, global warming and self-driving cars, we must find fresh ways to let our autonomy roam free.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Driven

January 1, 2026 //
0

Civilizations rarely collapse in moments of chaos.
More often, they decay through a sequence of decisions
designed to postpone accountability.
By the time destruction arrives, it feels abrupt
only to those who refused to look directly
at what was already happening.
Genny Harrison

At some point, there were way more driven/ridden horses than wild ones.
Currently, there are substantial numbers of cows, chicken, pigs and so on raised by humans and almost no wild brethren of the above mentioned animals. Same with quite a number of plants.

Are we even aware of the whole situation?

Why?
Because so few of us are still needed when it comes to ‘raising food’?

I’m afraid we’re very soon going to face the consequences.
Directly!

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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Two to tango

December 22, 2025 //
0

Neo-liberalism – a ‘folly’, to be polite – was, and continues to be, a reaction to an all-encompassing left wing etatism. A reaction to the overbearing attitude of the government. Of too many of the governments around the world.
The fact that neo-liberalism has ‘gone too far’, way too far ‘in the right direction’, doesn’t excuse etatism. One folly doesn’t justify another.
Since Milei’s Argentina is a particularly poignant example of neo-liberalism, I may very well point out that ‘it takes two to tango’…
As for the root of all our problems… that’s ideology itself. Left, right… each and everyone of them. Each of every pre-scripted attitudes we tend to adopt when trying to cope with the excesses we need to survive on a daily basis.
We no longer examine the factual reality whenever we need to figure something out. To solve a problem. To cope with a situation.

We check what ‘our’ ideology has to say about the subject…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

What Democracy Is

December 8, 2025 //
0

‘Evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest
as it is about the demise of the unfit‘.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is

As an engineer, I’m more concerned about consequences than fascinated by explanation.
OK, explanation – as in understanding the process – is necessary when trying to improve things. To fine tune. To ‘increase efficiency’…
But ‘survival wise’… sometimes it’s enough to bring things back to square 1. To repair. Specifically when the thing which no longer works used to make wonders.

Passeist? Anti-progressive?!?
No, as I already mentioned, I’m just a ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ engineer. And currently … IT is broken.

Democracy doesn’t work anymore. Not like it used to, anyway!
If we want to fix it, we don’t necessarily need to understand what happened. Only to return democracy back to where it was.
For that, we need to understand what democracy is, not what had happened to it.

Looking back, we notice that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Crumbled under their own weight, usually, and failed abysmally when attacked from outside. Usually, again.
While no democratic regime had ever failed as long as it had managed to conserve its democratic nature.

‘But the Pharaohs have run Ancient Egypt for three millennia, give or take. In a very authoritarian manner…. they were absolute monarchs, you know!’
Not so fast. During those three millennia, The Ancient Egypt had been run by 33 dynasties. By 33 different authoritarian regimes… When each of those dynasties were no longer able to run the country – when each regime fell under the weight of its own mistakes, with or without ‘outside’ contribution – another dynasty, the next one, took over. ‘Usually’ not in a nice manner…
Same goes for all other authoritarian regimes!

While under a democratic regime, whenever those at the helm of the government start behaving badly, or commit too many mistakes, they are changed in a peaceful manner.

So, basically, democracy is a social arrangement which is able to change itself. To adapt! To what happens inside or outside it.
While the authoritarian rulers do their best – or worse? – to conserve their own power/position at the helm, the democratic regimes contribute to the survival of the entire society.
For as long as they manage to conserve their true democratic nature. Their openness. Their ability to depose those who overcome their welcome at the helm of the government.

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Looking back in anger

December 5, 2025 //
0

Corruption kills.
Sometimes literally.

Some ten years ago – 2015, October 30 – a fire broke out in a Bucharest night-club.
64 people died on the spot, including 4 members of the band. “The day we give is the day we die” was one of the tunes Goodbye to Gravity played that night.

The inquiry had determined that corruption was the main cause for what had happened. Safety certificates issued outside any norms, dysfunctional health care, unresponsive authorities… Massive popular protest forced the prime-minister to resign.
Things are better now, in Romania, but only slightly. Too slightly…

The point being that we’ve been warned.
Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.“
Frank Herbert: “It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.“

Both were right.
Power both corrupts and is a magnet for the corruptible!
Hence we need to keep it in check…

Nothing moves without power. We need it. To make things happen.
We also need to survive. To remain alive after things will have happened!

In order to do that, we need to understand something.
About the thing which may derail the whole thing.
About corruption!

Current events – Andriy Yermak resigning his post in Ukraine and Federica Mogherini being detained – are hailed as being ‘flaws’. As highlighting the weakness of Ukraine and the EU, respectively. Their ‘unworthiness’.

I forcefully disagree.
Corruption, like decay, is a natural thing.

Let me put it in a different perspective.
Decay may happen in an abandoned fridge. A closed space in which all kind of ‘unnatural things’ will happen if left unattended.
Decay naturally takes place in a forest. Where ‘no longer living’ organisms ‘turn back to dust’.

A fridge – which is a dead thing, specially when abandoned – is incapable of managing anything. Including a process of decaying.
A forest – which is a meta-living organism, if you’ll allow this expression – thrives as long as natural processes can take place. Decaying being one of the most important ones.

Same thing goes for societies.
Open societies – the ones known as democracies – are no more and no less ‘corrupt’ than the closed ones. The ones usually known as autocracies. In the sense that those in powerful positions are equally tempted by corruption. Equally tempted to misuse their power…
The difference being that the open societies deal with corruption in an open manner. Above the board. In public. In a court of law.
While autocracies deal with the corrupt people only when the autocrat allows it. Only when the autocrat feels that a particular act of corruption is detrimental for his own well being…

So.
Every time an open society exposes an act of corruption, that society becomes stronger.
While autocratic regimes are corrupt from top to bottom. By definition. Very much similar to an abandoned fridge brimming with ‘hairy’ things.

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

Lost Lessons

November 21, 2025 //
0

Winning the war is not enough.


At the end of WWI, the vanquished was left to her own devices. After having been saddled with huge war reparations. The US – whose President, Woodrow Wilson, had been the brain behind the League of Nations – went back into its ‘splendid isolation’.
Adolf Hitler rose to power. Conquered the western part of Europe and then attacked the Soviet Union, convinced that the US would not intervene into the conflict. Convinced that ‘Western Civilization’ had become weak. That the good life enjoyed by those living there had ‘mellowed’ the people. Read ‘castrated’.
Japan was convinced that attacking the US was a good idea. For more or less the same reasons used by Hitler to convince himself that America wasn’t going to fight back.

America had to fight on two fronts. For otherwise all her partners would have been conquered. For otherwise America would have been left alone…

Any resemblance with the current situation, when America seems to be extracting herself from the European front and when Russia has been left to her own devices after loosing the Cold War, is purely coincidental. And since there’s no such thing as a coincidence…

Doing business is not enough.
America and Nazi Germany did a lot of business.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did a lot of business.
The EU and the US did a lot of business with Russia.

WWII is ample proof.
Winning a war is useless unless followed by a workable peace. Which comprises the integration between the victor and the vanquished.

Yet winning the war comes first.
Any attempt to integrate an unrepentant aggressor is doomed to fail.
1938 Munich Agreement and 2014 Crimea should be enough.

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

To Whom?!?

November 18, 2025 //
0

Things – every’thing’, actually – are/is relative.
Relative to the agent evaluating each of those things.
Accordin’ to Einstein, that is.
He was the one who taught us to use whatever reference frame suits our needs.

Do you reckon anybody wasted any time or energy thinking about freedom before the advent of slavery?
Me neither.
Forget about the fact that, in those times, people didn’t have much time left for abstract thinking. Finding food and enjoying it with friends kind of drains your energy when you have to do it yourself… The point being that, in those times, everybody was free. Hence ‘had’ nothing to compare freedom with… No lack of freedom, no reason to speak/think about it.
No reason to notice the thing and no reason to coin the concept…

Hunter-gatherers have no use for ‘property’. Personal objects are just that and everything else either belongs to Mother Nature or to the entire group. And this goes without saying. Or thinking about it. People share everything as a matter of fact and common sense discourages the others to use anybody’s personal objects unless in an emergency.
Agriculture – either herding animals or growing crops – changed everything. Property, both as a concept and as an everyday manner of dealing with ‘things’, was invented and introduced in daily use. Productivity increased dramatically. Which made it possible for people to have ‘spare time’. For thinking.
And for planning…

‘The neighbors have better crops. Let’s go take some for us. And while we’re at it, let’s take some of their women too’.
The first slave was probably the first person to long for freedom…

‘Cheap’ slave work coupled with the increased social productivity induced by a markedly improved technology for obtaining food meant that some individuals could afford the luxury of thinking.
The Ancient Athenians had both slaves and philosophers. The slaves did whatever was needed to be done while some of the ‘beneficiaries’ had enough time, and energy, to let their minds ‘free’. To roam free in search for meaning.
To coin the concept and to explore freedom…

Relative “To whom”? To us!
We’re responsible for freedom and freedom is relative to us.
We have invented it. We’re the ones using it. In the sense that we’re the ones who need to notice that freer communities fare a lot better than the less free.

So freedom is relative both to those thinking about it and to each particular community.
To each particular community which puts freedom into practice!

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, freedom, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Getting there.

November 16, 2025 //
0

The answer you get depends on the question you try to answer…

“To see Steve Lazarides, Banksy’s former manager, tag his creative genius by staging an unsanctioned exhibit, complete with a souvenir shop, is the greed Banksy graffitied against,” Chapman responded by email. “I can only await his response – and I envision a large mural featuring a rat with a human face.”

‘Art’s uneasy alliance with capitalism’…
‘the greed Bansky graffitied against’!

I gather from Chapman’s words that Bansky has a grudge with greed, not necessarily with capitalism itself.
And I wonder how ‘art’ and ‘capitalism’ may ever enter into an alliance. However uneasy…

Both art and capitalism are, first and foremost, concepts.
On a more practical level, both can be construed as ‘places’.
Art is the place where people so inclined ‘do their thing’.
Capitalism is a social arrangement. The current manner in which most social organisms – nations, in modern parlance – run their economies. Organize the constant exchange between them, nations, and their environment. As well as the economic relations which exist between the individual members of each society.

OK, artists do need to eat… to wear clothes, to use a shelter… Artists are involved in the economic life of the society at large. So artists do have capitalist ties with the rest of the world. Organic ties, not agentic ones. The artists’ need to eat does not depend on their will. Only their greed, in as much as they allow that sentiment to manifest itself.

Which brings us back to Bansky…
I understand from Chapman’s words that Bansky has a grudge against greed!
Which is fine by me…

Some other people, quite a few, have developed a grudge against capitalism itself.
Google ‘anti capitalist art’.
Click ‘images’.
Most of the ideas present there are valid. Many of those yielding a lot of power, a lot of ‘capitalist power’, do behave badly. Are too greedy. Disrespectful. Towards other people and towards the environment.
But should we toss the baby out with the dirty bath water?

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crises, awareness, Choices we make, corruption, effective communication, In English, Trust
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