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On why sometimes the how of the matter becomes its real substance.

September 2, 2018 //
0

Trump vehemently denies any collusion with Putin’s troll-farms.

And almost all people, implicitly and/or explicitly, accept that the troll-farms had, or at least attempted to have, a certain influence over the American electoral process in 2016.

Does Putin actually control Trump? Did Putin ever imagined that he could control Trump while in office?
That would have been extremely naive… Trump may be influenced – like all other people, but he is a lot harder to control than most of us. Even by himself…
On the other hand, the ‘checks and balances’ are still in place and makes it almost impossible for a foreign agent to exert a sizable influence over the US Government.

Directly, that is…

The particular configuration of the American political spectrum in 2016 had been a huge opportunity for Putin.
He needs to convince those who support him, both inside and outside Russia, that he is a ‘shrewd operator’ and that Russia still belongs to the big boys table.
Meddling into the 2016 presidential campaign accomplished both Putin’s goals.

Maybe another investigation but Mueller’s is in order.
What possessed both major US political parties to nominate such candidates?
Which had so many skeletons in their closets for ‘shrewd operators’ to unearth?

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Categories authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, politics

The fractal nature of things

August 21, 2018 //
0

I’m not going to educate you about what fractals are.
The internet is full of information, go find it. If you care, of course.

I’ll just remind you of an old saying,
‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’

As if nature doesn’t exert itself.
If something works… why invent anything new when you can adapt something which already exists?

In this sense, I somehow must admit that those who believe is God do have a point about this. Sometimes Nature seems to have been fine tuned by an engineer…

Or that engineers have learned a lot from Mother Nature?

Enough with this back slapping between the engineer in me and … whoever is at the other end of this game.

1. The ‘revolving’ principle.

Basically all matter turns around a center, is circled about or finds itself in both situations at the same time.
From the electrons which turn around the nuclei of the atoms to our Sun which spins around the center of the Milky Way.

Behind this principle lies another one.

2. The dynamic equilibrium.

Everything which exists is in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
Both internal and external.
Its components relate to each-other in such a manner as to keep that thing together while the surrounding medium exerts various influences towards that thing.
From the meager proton – whose quarks ‘cooperate’ to constitute a distinct individuality and somehow manage to remain ‘apart’ from the rest of ‘world’ despite the huge forces which keep each atomic nucleus together, to, say, a living organism – which remains alive for only as long as it conserves its ability to interact, both ways, with the environment.

I can probably identify a few more but today I’m going to mention only one more.

N. Killing your host might not be such a good idea.

Remember the fable about the Scorpion and the Frog?

‘Now you really got my attention! How on Earth are you going to spin this into your tale about fractals?!?’

“When syphilis first appeared in Europe in 1495, it was an acute and extremely unpleasant disease. After only a few years it was less severe than it once was, and it changed over the next 50 years into a milder, chronic disease. The severe early symptoms may have been the result of the disease being introduced into a new host population without any resistance mechanisms, but the change in virulence is most likely to have happened because of selection favouring milder strains of the pathogen. The symptoms of the virulent early disease were both debilitating and obvious to potential sexual partners of the infected, and strains that caused less obvious or painful symptoms would have enjoyed a higher transmission rate.”

Robert J. Knell, Syphillis in Renaissance Europe…, 2004

Want some more?
How many people have you seen last winter wiping their noses? How many of them actually had the flu and how many suffered from having a benign ‘cold’.
You must have surely got my drift by now… flu kills many more people than the cold. And Ebola kills far many than the flu. And that’s why the cold viruses have far more chances of finding a host than both flu and Ebola.
On one hand, the more deadly a virus is, the less hosts are left for the next generations of viruses.
And on the other hand, the more dangerous a virus – or any other ‘parasite’, is, the more those in peril will try to do something about it.

N+1. If you can’t beat them, join them.

Now that I’ve mentioned parasites, let’s take a step further and talk about symbiosis.

“Mitochondria are rod-shaped organelles that can be considered the power generators of the cell, converting oxygen and nutrients into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the chemical energy “currency” of the cell that powers the cell’s metabolic activities. This process is called aerobic respiration and is the reason animals breathe oxygen. Without mitochondria (singular, mitochondrion), higher animals would likely not exist because their cells would only be able to obtain energy from anaerobic respiration (in the absence of oxygen), a process much less efficient than aerobic respiration. In fact, mitochondria enable cells to produce 15 times more ATP than they could otherwise, and complex animals, like humans, need large amounts of energy in order to survive.”
“The mitochondrion is different from most other organelles because it has its own circular DNA (similar to the DNA of prokaryotes) and reproduces independently of the cell in which it is found; an apparent case of endosymbiosis. Scientists hypothesize that millions of years ago small, free-living prokaryotes were engulfed, but not consumed, by larger prokaryotes, perhaps because they were able to resist the digestive enzymes of the host organism. The two organisms developed a symbiotic relationship over time, the larger organism providing the smaller with ample nutrients and the smaller organism providing ATP molecules to the larger one. Eventually, according to this view, the larger organism developed into the eukaryotic cell and the smaller organism into the mitochondrion.“

Another interesting case of symbiosis is that between each of us and the flora which populates our guts and helps us to digest our ‘daily bread’.

Now, do you remember my post about viruses?
Where I mentioned that viruses are organisms which somehow penetrate into their hosts, take over the management mechanisms of said hosts and ‘convince’ them to actually manufacture the next generation of ‘invaders’.
Killing the host cell in the process, but not necessarily the whole host organism.

This being the difference between the common cold, influenza and Ebola viruses.
On one hand.

On the other hand, there’s the difference between a parasite and a symbiont.
A parasite always being a ‘nuisance’ – from the innocuous common cold to the deadly Ebola, while all symbionts bring along quite lot of added value.

‘OK, and where’s the fractal side of all this?’

How many of the politicians you know behave as parasites and how many as symbionts?
Relative to the rest of the society, of course.
How many of the business people you know behave as parasites and how many as symbionts?
How many of the working age people you know….

And do you remember about the dynamic equilibrium which is essential for survival?
Of everything? Including human societies?
Which need ‘division of labour’ and ‘free market’ in order to thrive?

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Categories altruism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Mindset, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Taxes as a cost for doing business.

June 26, 2018 //
0

Basically, ‘doing business’ means obtaining sustenance by being useful to other people.
As opposed to hunting/picking/growing your own food, building your own shelter and using pelts to cover your back.

‘Doing business’ obviously implies trading. Raw materials are being transformed to fit the needs of the intended customers, transported to where they are needed and offered to those who might buy them.

For this process to take place, ‘business’ needs far more than entrepreneurs, customers raw material and workforce.

It needs a suitable environment.

It needs roads, markets – not only ‘stable’ but also safe, and – maybe the most important thing, it needs the right kind of ‘popular sentiment’.
For business to work as intended, people need to have faith in each-other.

Yep, faith!

Who would eat in a restaurant without trusting that the cook hadn’t spit in the soup?
Who would buy a car to drive their children to school without actually believing that the car had been built as it should have been?
Who would even drive on a two way road without believing that the drivers going in the opposite direction will stay on their side of the road?

And do you really think that German farmers of yore – who had enjoyed a relative safety while working their own land, living at the bosom of an extended family and being personally acquainted with all the members of the community,  would have gladly come to the ‘unknown’ city to become industrial workers  during Bismark’s ‘reign’ without the ‘safety net’ extended by the Chancellor?

Taxes are the manner in which we pay for all these.
But they are much more than this.
The willingness of the people to pay taxes means that they have faith that the money will be well spent. That they have faith that those in charge will spend the money wisely and that, in the end, those in charge will be held accountable.

Whenever any of the parties involved in this deal – or both at the same time, no longer trusts the other to do its part of the deal – or tries to use their position to access undue benefits… things go south. Way south.

Just as it happens in any other deal.

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Categories altruism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, effective communication, man induced fragility, Money, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, politics, Social justice, The kind of world we are building for our children

Power, corruption and time. Part 1

June 19, 2018 //
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“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” Lord Acton.

“If the benevolent ruler stays in power long enough, he eventually concludes that power and wisdom are the same thing. And as he possesses power, he must also possess wisdom. He becomes converted to the seductive thesis that election to public office endows the official with both power and wisdom. At this point, he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient.”

Ben Moreell, Power Corrupts, 2010

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

According to Lord Acton, given enough time, even the most benevolent ruler will, if his opinions go unchallenged, ‘loose his bearings’.
According to Herbert, we’re in an even worse situation. Chances are very slim for a benevolent ruler to even become powerful enough to make a difference… before being overwhelmed by corruption…

Then how come we survived for so long? For so much time?

First of all, until recently, no ruler – regardless of how corrupt/inept or even how powerful, had no means to inflict more than a passing wound to ‘humanhood’. During the last five centuries, things have changed a bit… And no, this is not exclusively about the nuclear button. Cortez, Pizzaro, the African slave traders, Hitler, Stalin and those who had produced the 2008 financial melt down hadn’t used very sophisticated tools…
Secondly, I’m not sure there are nearly enough really bad characters to explain all the man made evil in the world.

Then how could we explain what’s going on?

“If the benevolent ruler stays in power long enough, he eventually concludes that power and wisdom are the same thing. And as he possesses power, he must also possess wisdom.”

Ups!
But does this happen?
The ruler slowly convinces himself or the whole thing is a consequence of the contemporary mantra?
That being elected to office means having beaten your opponents! As if politics were a sort of generalized fighting, not a cooperative effort of the entire community…
Which would, indeed, lead any rational agent to the conclusion that the longer somebody survives in a powerful position, the more ‘right’ he must be…

Then what would be easier to change?
The rational conclusion of those who survive in powerful positions or our current misapprehension about what politics should be?

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Choices we make, cooperation, corruption, democracy, effective communication, Frames of mind, Justitie, limited rationality, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children

Beyond manipulation

June 12, 2018 //
2

For those who have managed to conserve enough naivety, politics is a team job.

For them, ‘political power struggle’ is an oxymoron. A figure of speech.

Unfortunately, those who have lost their political naivety (innocence?, virginity?) have given up all table manners and have introduced the concept of ‘RealPolitik’.
At first in the international arena and then, using the back door, on the domestic stage.

To what consequences?

When Bismark had coined the concept of RealPolitik, the major players in the international arena were following an already ancient mantra. Divide et Impera.

If ‘naive’ politicians attempt to convince their partners, the ‘real ones’ have only one goal in mind. Theirs.
While the ‘naive’ start any interaction by listening to what the others have to say, in an attempt to learn before starting to build a solution – one designed to fulfill the widest possible array of expectations, the ‘realists’ will use every trick up their sleeves to impose ‘their’ solution. The one which best fits ‘their’ interests and which has been devised without/before any proper consultation with the rest of those who will bear the consequences of that solution being implemented.

Some of the politicians whose naivety has been chipped during constant contact with the social reality eventually ‘wise’ up and reach the point where they accept manipulation as a ‘valid’ political tool. They start to hid part of the truth, to promise a tad more than what would be realistically possible… but at least they continue to pay lip service to the notion of ‘liberal democracy’.
The hard core ‘realists’ are way more ‘straightforward’. They burn bridges and give up any pretense of ‘window dressing’. ‘Struggle’ is no longer understood as a figure of speech.

Political struggle descends into the ring. Or, more exactly, the entire Agora becomes a battle field. The whole ‘arrangement’ devolves into a ‘dog eats dog’ situation.

To the glee of the ‘realists’ outside the border. Who can hardly wait for those ‘inside’ to start fighting in earnest. So that the outsiders might, yet again, put ‘divide et impera’ to work.

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, corruption, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, Rule of Law, The kind of world we are building for our children

When tools become deadly…

June 9, 2018 //
0

A knife can be used for buttering toast, slicing steak and, occasionally, for slitting  throats.
A gun can be used to hunt dinner, defend a homestead or shoot a rival.
Bare hands can knot laces, caress a woman or choke the life out of an innocent.

What makes us, humans, sometimes transform tools into weapons?

We are astonished when we learn about other animals being able to make and use tools.
Which is good. ‘Astonished’ is the opposite of ‘insensitive’. A.k.a. ‘brain dead’.

How about we, humans, learning from the rest of the animals how to solve whatever issues we have amongst us without  killing each-other?
You are aware that humans and chimpanzees are the only animals who systematically murder adult members of their own species, right?

But what instance is powerful enough to transform tool into weapon?

Human consciousness?

Is this a ‘fatality’?
The simple fact that each of us is consciously aware of the differences between ‘I’ and ‘all the rest’ means that whenever ‘survival instincts’ kick in our humanity necessarily vanishes? Entirely?
And ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ becomes ‘dog eats dog’?

We would have already been dead by now… all of us…
Our ancestors must have discovered a way to balance our propensity to ‘stick with your own kind’ with with our need to learn new things and meet new people!
Or is it that some of us continually come up with fresh reasons for ‘war’ while we, the rest, are too lazy to do anything about it? Despite everything history has ever taught us…

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices that we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, Frames of mind, freedom, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, politics, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

‘Be careful what you wish for…’

May 1, 2018 //
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I’m gonna insert three links.
They might be opened in any order, the link between them is evident, in all directions.

 “It’s a natural and powerful temptation to do unto them as they have done unto others. They have abused, reviled, and humiliated others: So let them be abused, be reviled, be humiliated. Yet if you go that way, you do not repudiate Trump. You become Trump.”

David Frum,
Michelle Wolf Does Unto the White House as It Has Done Unto Others,
The Atlantic, Apr 30, 2018

“It is particularly rich, too, to see a president who brags about his lack of political correctness and willingness to tell it like it is to be so thin-skinned he won’t even attend a party where he knows he’ll be roasted. It is revolting to see members of the press, who should have an adversarial relationship with the White House, comforting the press secretary and standing up for her honor when she is a chief architect of and apologist for these new political norms of idiotic crudeness, rank corruption, and unapologetic deceit.

Reporters allegedly expressed their sympathy to Huckabee Sanders after the dinner. This is insane. Reporters: Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies to you. She is a powerful and influential figure, and it is your job to be a check on her and the administration she speaks for – not to commiserate with her when a comedian makes some salty jokes, and certainly not to be her sympathetic friend.

Michelle Wolf ended her monologue by wishing the audience a good night, and then adding, “Flint still doesn’t have clean water.” “

Jill Filipovic,
The Bizarre Reaction to the WHCD Reveals We’re in Deeper Trouble Than We Thought,
Cosmopolitan, Apr. 30, 2018

“Donald Trump is here tonight! Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald.
And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter –- like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?
But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of
experience. For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice – at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around.
But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey.
And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.
Well handled, sir. Well handled.
Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House.”

Barack Obama,
2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.

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Categories arrogance, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, freedom, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, Rule of Law, Social justice, The kind of world we are building for our children

Don’t shoot the ‘Zuckerberg’.

March 21, 2018 //
2

So.
A bunch of ‘well intended people’ had somehow laid their hands on a ‘trove of personal data’ and used it, commercially, to influence electoral processes.
The data was gathered by ‘creatively’ exploiting the ‘opportunities’ put in place by the very existence of Facebook and by the manner in which so many people chose to use the said ‘social network’.

And most of us blame it on ‘Zuckerberg’.

OK, I can understand the psychology of all this.
I can also understand those who put the entire blame on anybody but ‘Zuckerberg’…

Let’s gather some facts.

“Facebook has lost nearly $50 billion in market cap since the data scandal”. recode.net, Mar 20, 2018
“In one day, Zuckerberg’s net worth fell $5 billion”. qz.com,  Second day it had fallen a further 4 billion…
Anyway, some 31 ‘missing’ billions used to belong to some other people but Zuckerberg.
Weren’t they supposed to take good care of their property? Weren’t they supposed to check what Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, was doing with their money?

 

“In Hidden-Camera Exposé, Cambridge Analytica Executives Boast Of Role In Trump Win” npr.org, March 21, 2018
“CA’s CEO wrote that the firm had “teamed up with Leave.EU” — then furiously backpedalled”
Impossible to say how much influence Cambridge Analytica’s efforts had over Trump becoming the 46-th American President or Brexit. If any at all.
Yet who bears more responsibility for these developments?
The guys who came up with those ideas in the first place? Trump and Cameron?
The guys who made them possible? The Republican Party Convention who had nominated Trump to run and the British House of Commons who had voted 544-53 in favor of the “United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016”?
The guys who had campaigned above the board, in any direction?
Those who had exerted their influence ‘under the radar’? ” “We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’sial media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online, and the campaign’s Facebook page is growing in support to the tune of about 3,000 people per day.”

Or those who, through their daily decisions, had created the premises for so many people to convince themselves that Trump was good enough for President and that it would better for Britain to ‘leave’?

Yeah, it’s only normal to blame others for our own mistakes.
But how sustainable is it?

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, limited rationality, manipulation, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Barking up the wrong trees

January 23, 2018 //
0

Autumn of 2008.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange assembled a conference for the investors where some relatively junior guys working for the ‘Global Banking Establishment’ tried to uplift our mood by outlining their bosses’ envisioned reaction to the crises. Something which would later be known as  ‘quantitative easing’.
I asked one of them:
‘The current crises is the straight consequence of money having been used improperly. Are you sure that throwing a fresh amount of it on the market would make things any better?’.
‘Well, nobody has come yet with a better idea…’

Almost ten years later, it seems that ‘throwing fresh money at it’ did revive the market.
Dow Jones has climbed through the clouds, unemployment is low, inflation is low, interest rates are also low…

“Some 120 economies, accounting for three quarters of world GDP, have seen a pickup in growth in year-on-year terms in 2017, the broadest synchronized global growth upsurge since 2010.“, according to the IMF.

Only the very same words could have been used to describe the 1990’s…

But there is something that at least some of us have noticed.

income-inequality-08

©Elliot Wave International (www.elliotwave.com)

Both major economic crises which have scarred us in less than a century have been closely predated by spikes in ‘income inequality’.

To make things worse, we are confronted by yet another fast moving development which pushes us towards uncharted waters.
Large scale replacement of ‘human capital’ by industrial robots, some of them driven by ‘artificial intelligence’.

Reaction has been mixed.

Some of the very rich have pledged to make available to charity important chunks of their estates while other ‘concerned parties’ promote  heavier involvement of the government – ‘guaranteed universal income’, etc., etc…
All these in the name of an illusive ‘equality’.

‘On the other side of the isle’, where inequality is seen as being not only natural but also harmless, people are happy with what’s going on and see no problem in everything continuing to march to the same beat.

I argued earlier that ‘heavy involvement of the government’ has already been experimented. And failed. Check the fate of every communist dictatorship.
Actually, check the fate of all dictatorships.
You’ll find that whenever a society becomes too centralized, that thing alone considerably diminishes its survival chances.
Same outcome whenever people in a group/community evaluate things using a single yardstick/from a single perspective.
To make things worse, the speed of the degenerative process becomes catastrophic when decision making becomes centralized while the reduced number of decision makers are partially blinded by too many of them using a single yardstick to do their job.

We are fast approaching that situation.

Extreme wealth polarization means that economic resources become concentrated in very few hands. Hence economic decision making.
And since policies cannot be put in place without resources…

The funny thing is that this concentration of power/decision making take place regardless of property remaining private or communism taking over.
As long as those who control the whole system are too few, ‘who owns it’ makes no difference.
Absolute monarchies faltered in the very same way as their communist successors.

It doesn’t matter whether an universal basic income would be supported by a tax exacting government or by a small coterie of ‘concerned investors’, sooner or later any such arrangement would become sour.

One other thing.
Claims for equality might become so deafening as to impede clear thinking.

Just as money is a very good tool/servant but a lousy goal/master, equality is a commendable goal but a lousy tool.
Human beings ‘work best’ as autonomous individuals who cooperate freely inside what has been described as ‘free market’.
Whenever that market was cornered, either from outside – by the government, or from inside – too many of the players acting in ‘concert’/sync because they had been ‘mesmerized’, remember the ‘Tulip mania” of yore? – it had faltered. Sometimes abysmally.
Attempting to fit everybody in a ‘one size fits all’ mould would be catastrophic.
Just as catastrophic as when less and less people can develop and express their true potential. Remember that we haven’t changed, biologically, during the last 50 000 years or so. But, generation after generation, we’ve been able to do more and more things simply because each generation made it easier for the next one. Most of the times, anyway.
Let’s not change this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., arrogance, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, Frames of mind, freedom, man induced fragility, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

How much Plato?

December 19, 2017 //
2

Let me first clear up something.
I’m an engineer. Converted to sociology, indeed, but still an engineer.
So don’t expect any fancy wording or very sophisticated philosophical considerations!

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we’ve just arrived on this planet. Just ‘you and me’, not ‘us humans’.
Being sent by some alien civilization to see what’s going on here.
Like we, ‘the civilized people’, study the natives still living in the Amazonian forest – minimum contact and so on, no intention what-so-ever to invade the territory or any other-way purposely intervene in the natural evolution of things.

I don’t know about you, but my report would be something like this:

The most interesting aspect of the planet is the manner in which the intelligent inhabitants have evolved.
Those living in a relatively small and isolated corner of the landmass have somehow developed the most consequential culture and then imposed some very important aspects of it on most of the rest.

Even more baffling is the fact that all major religions observed on this planet start from the same tenet.

the golden rule

The only thing which singles out those who had managed to impose their culture on most the rest being that they apply the rule in a ‘pro-active’ manner.
‘Do unto others what you wish others to do unto you’ versus ‘do not do unto others what you don’t like being done unto you’. ‘Normative’ versus ‘preemptive’.

– Why are you so baffled about any of this? The universal law of evolution maintains that things which are not suitable enough for the environment where they happen to exist will eventually disappear… Each culture produces a certain civilization – modifies the environment according to its wishes/as a consequence of its mistakes, and the other cultures have to adapt/evolve to the new situation… nothing new or peculiar here…

– Nothing new, indeed, except for the fact that while most of the cultures on this planet learned to ‘live and let live’ – “do not do unto others…”, while the two most successful ones have adopted the slightly but very consequentially different “do unto others…”, a.k.a. ‘who’s not like us is against us’….

– Is there any explanation for the most aggressive attitude being the most successful one?
Until now, at least… considering that the two cultures which share the ‘do unto others what you wish to be done unto you’ attitude seem to ‘have worked themselves up’ into a rather ‘confrontational situation’… both intra and inter culturally…

– The only putative explanation I can come up with for such a divergent evolution is that Plato, the seminal intellectual figure of the ‘doers’, taught his followers not only that the world is knowable but also that he who has reached a learned state must, forcefully if necessary, lead his peers to the ‘light’ he had found while the ‘significant others’ believe that the learned ones should speak out, at their discretion, only when somebody asks them to.

.

.

– One more thing.
The immediate consequence of Plato’s teachings was that Alexander – an emperor who was tutored by Plato’s eminent student, Aristotle, had conquered most of the then civilized world only to die, untimely, a drunkard’s death… intoxicated by booze, intoxicated by power… who cares?

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Categories authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children
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