Archives for category: teleology
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The Blame Game

June 24, 2026 //
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“the greatest lie of all:
others need to change,
we are somehow, in some way,
immune to the need for repentance”

“We’re about to be steam-rolled.”
That was how I wrapped up one of my previous posts.

What next?
‘What happened? What can we do to avoid being steam-rolled?’
Or
‘Whom should we blame?’

Let’s start with a simpler one.
You are the manager of a wheat storing facility.
What do you do if:
1. You discover there’s a (one, 1) mouse on the premises.
2. You discover there’s a mouse infestation present.

1. You trap the mouse. You check how it got in and whether there are more of them.
2. You reconsider the entire pest control system. Something must be amiss if things got this bad before anybody noticed.

Let’s go back to us being about to be steam-rolled.
Finding a culprit, ‘the culprit’, may make sense in the psychological sense. It may make us feel better.
But will it teach us what to do next?

Should we let them go scot-free? The culprits?

When it comes to mice, it’s simple. One individual or an entire infestation, there’s no place for any mouse inside a grain-storing facility.
When it comes to people…

Let’s make another thought experiment.
We are a group of people taking a hike.
We’ve hired a local guide, trusting he knows what he’s doing. The guy was recommended by one of us, who had heard about him from an acquaintance.
Soon into the trip we discover the guide is a moron. Not only he is a complete jerk but also he isn’t familiar with the terrain.
What do we do?
Focus on getting back, safe, or start blaming the person who had recommended the guide? Argue with the moronic jerk, maybe?

Reality check.
People taking a hike, the guide included here, will experience, first hand and very soon, the consequences of being led ‘astray’.
Politicians, and most political commentators, are the last to ‘taste’ the consequences of their medicine being fed to the ordinary people.

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Categories 1989, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

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

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

Truth as a space

May 15, 2026 //
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“It was, of course, Marx who wrote that everything in history happens twice,
“the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

“His main purpose as a dramatist was to shock people out of conventional, hidebound ways of thinking. His view of his work was reflected in the title of his collection Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, published in 1898. Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was not produced until 1902 because of censorship, was included in this collection. Shaw labeled such plays as unpleasant because “their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts.””

“And yet, he was devoted to one of the cruelest figures in the bloody annals of tyranny, and he was a willing dupe of the propaganda that projected the Soviet Union as a workers’ paradise. The great skeptic allowed all his skepticism to melt away when he looked at the picture of Stalin he kept by his mantelpiece.
His support was unwavering. Neither the Great Purge nor the Ukrainian famine, nor even the pact between Stalin and Hitler, seem to have troubled his faith in the genius and historic rectitude of the Soviet dictator. To understand this contradiction, we have to remember the power of wish fulfillment and the way Russia became for many Westerners not a place but an idea, not a mere reality but a fantasy.”https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/why-george-bernard-shaw-had-a-crush-on-stalin.html

I’m not going to delve into any psychological explanations. Read the article if you need some.

The point I’m trying to make here is about the nature of truth.
According to Fintan O’Toole, Shaw – and others – were/are disappointed with “the messiness and inefficiency of democracy”. Which disappointment drives them to “fantasize about Russia as the vigorous counterweight to a supposedly decadent West.”

And here we are. Again, as already noticed by Marx.
At a cross-roads, of sorts.
Russia is – continues to be, at least for now – a ‘vigorous counterweight to the West’.
The West is, undoubtedly, ‘decadent’. In the sense that it no longer ‘works’ as it used to.
Both propositions are ‘true’. Simultaneously.
The problem being that very few people accept their simultaneity…

As a ‘survivor’ – I’d spend the first 28 years of my life under communist rule – I’m fully aware of the fact that ‘Russia’ is far worse than any democratic regime.
As an European, I’m fully aware that things could be better. That the ‘West’ no longer “works as it used to”.
As a relatively well traveled individual, I’m fully aware that the ‘Western ways’ have indeed led us to where we are now. In a far better position than the rest of the people living on this planet. Owing a lot to the rest of the planet, indeed.

Ray Kurzweil is convinced that by 2029 we’ll reach something he calls ‘singularity‘.
I’m afraid we’ve been dwelling that place for sometime now. No, we’re not yet “able to create virtually any physical product just from information, resulting in radical wealth creation.”
Mathematically speaking, ‘singularity’ is a place where anything can happen. When nothing is ‘defined’.
Very much like when somebody tries to divide a finite number to zero.

Same thing with ‘truth’.
Oscar Hoffman, a Romanian Professor of Sociology, kept telling us, his students, that ‘in order to be true, a proposition needs to be both logically correct and to make sense. Epistemologically speaking.
I’ve recently realized, see ‘alternative facts’, that Hoffman’s words were ‘right’ but incomplete.
In order to be true, a proposition needs to be logically correct, epistemologically sound AND accepted as such by those who experience the facts described by the proposition.

Otherwise, that proposition is useless.
Truth is useless if divided by zero. Accepted, in full, by nobody.
Those ‘caught in the experiment’ will continue to ‘enjoy’ the consequences.
Defending their respective side of ‘the truth’…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology

The Story

May 6, 2026 //
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“Musk and Altman are so big, so larger than life, and so unrelatable,”
says University of San Diego professor Sarah Federman,
who specialises in conflict resolution.
“That’s what makes them so delicious to watch as they clash.”

The past is no longer here.
The future is not yet.

We learn about the past and discuss about the future.

The present, the place we live in, is a story. Information about the past mingled with professed intentions about the future.

Which future heavily depends, decisively even, on how we treat the story.
On how we tell it and on how we read it.
On how we relate to it. To what unfolds around us…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

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

The Best Religion

May 4, 2026 //
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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

Alone. And afraid…

February 23, 2026 //
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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

Language

February 18, 2026 //
0

Since the early days of Photoshop in the 1990s,
developments in image fakery have seen us looking at photographs with rising suspicion.
But the Rijksmuseum’s latest photography exhibition asks a pertinent question:
Have photographs ever told the truth?

As I mentioned earlier, individual organisms remain alive for only as long as:
They manage to keep their innards in and most of everything else out. Or, in more formal parlance, to maintain their structural integrity.
They manage to take in what they need in order to continue their metabolism and to excrete the consequences of the before mentioned metabolism.

To perform those tasks, organisms need two things.
Matter and rules. Substance distributed in such manner as to constitute the organism we’re talking about and instructions regarding what to do in each circumstance.
For example, while not all organisms need to breathe, all of them need to take in some ‘matter’. Use some of it for ‘maintenance purposes’ and the rest as fuel. In order to recognize the precise substances needed, each organism needs very specific ‘filters’. And information from ‘inside’ regarding the amount needed in each moment of time. Then, once the required quantities of those respective substances have been ‘ingested’, the organism needs to perform certain precise tasks in order to obtain the necessary results.
Not to mention the fact that ‘substance distributed in such a manner as to constitute the organism we’re talking about’ has to be ‘distributed’ in a certain manner… yet even more information!

So life is about matter and information. Big deal! Nothing new under the sun…
Even Pulcinella knows that living organisms rely on genes to pass information from one generation to the next one.

True enough.
My point being that transfer of information is inherent to being alive!

A ‘new born’ cannot ‘become’ unless the pertinent information is ‘put forward’ by its ‘parents’.
And it cannot remain alive unless information continues to flow between the individual organism and the environment where it lives. As well as inside the above mentioned organism…

But there’s a problem here.
I keep saying ‘information’. But what is it? How do we recognize a signal as being information?
The answer is contained in the question. To have information we need signals and a key to interpret the inputs.
For instance, ‘get some more oxygen, or ‘food’ ‘, and a receiving agent, capable of performing the task, which can decipher the signal. ‘Lungs’, or ‘guts’, able to simultaneously understand the signal and to fulfill the need expressed by the ‘managing center’.

To cut a long story short, languaging is how things work in the living world.


True or false?
Does it make any sense to sent false signals?
To interpret them ‘differently’?

‘Living’?!?
What does it mean, after all?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, biology, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Driven

January 1, 2026 //
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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
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