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When?

September 4, 2026 //
1


Every now and again something called ‘paradigm shift’ ‘happens’

Margaret MacMillan

For reasons rooted in the material nature/origin of everything, smaller cultural spaces, aka societies, tend to evolve faster. For as long as they have enough resources/opportunities. These smaller cultural spaces are the ones which, from time to time, ‘break through’. ‘Take a leap’. Usually as a measure of last resort. Out of (evolutionary) necessity rather than as a voluntary choice.
Afterwards, the successful paradigm shifts are copied by the rest. Adapted for their own circumstances.

The last paradigm shift we have been able to identify started some 2.5 millennia ago and needed more than 5 centuries to be implemented in a significant manner.

The last one started in a small community. And, for a while, has been confined to a very small geographical area. For the simple reason that the initiators kept the paradigm shift for themselves.
It spread only after a reformer opened it up for everybody.
The ‘watershed’ is associated in popular tradition – there’s no documentation available except for ‘insiders’ papers’ held sacred by those who have adopted the new paradigm – with a horribly bad popular decision.

The currently unfolding one started a century and a half ago. As an idea. The first attempt to put it in practice failed miserably. Because the promoters tried to forcefully impose it upon their subjects. It is being fueled by a succession of really bad popular choices.

Back then, ‘they’ weren’t ready either. For the change.
But the ‘new’ world was better.
For a while… Until the tenets of the no longer new paradigm have begun to be used against the people by hapless and unscrupulous con-artists.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game, Social justice, Trust

Where?

September 3, 2026 //
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Who, if not you?
When, if not now?

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Red carefully, these are more than mere commandments.
This is a contract! A ‘covenant’, actually.

The framing seems to be rather one-sided. ‘Take it… or else!’
Nevertheless, a contract is a contract. Both sides need to trust each-other. Otherwise, the whole thing is a sham.

On the other hand…
The heavy lifting in this contract is to be performed by the nominally weak side.
God’s promises are of the ‘negative’ kind. What He will do if His partners don’t fulfill the contract, while it is the people who are supposed to actually do whatever is to be done. It’s the people who must refrain from having other gods, from making images and from worshiping them.

In fact, everything we know about God comes from people. It’s the people who speak/write about Him and it’s the people who worship Him.
Every deed ever made in His name has been performed by people.
In this sense, the god we know about, this God – or, more precisely, This Image of a god, is a human creation. A human artifact!

Ooops!
A situation which is very much in contradiction with the second clause of the contract…
But still respects the first. It’s the same God who brought Israel out of Egypt!
The same God who had made Man in his image… And if God made Man in his image, then… Man is a reflection of God! Which God must be a reflection of His own reflection, right?

Then what do we have here? And where is this whole ‘team’ headed?

Nobody knows where they are going!
But ‘who are they?’ is simple.

For as long as the covenant is being kept, for as long as the people remain together and act as a team…

The key concept in this covenant is two tiered. As far as we understand the situation.

‘God made man in His own image’.
This means that all men have been created equal. Have been made in the same image…
Furthermore, each (hu)man harbors a divine spark. Each individual has been made in the image of God!

Secondly, but in no way any less important, for things to continue people must maintain a single ‘image of God’. A single Weltanschauung. So that all people might connect to the same reality.
‘You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything…’ ‘You have already been given an image. You! Look at yourself and you’ll see Me’.
Furthermore, ‘you shall not make for yourself…’ has a deeper meaning. ‘Don’t be presumptions enough to believe that you know enough to build your own image of things’.
Quite a scientific attitude, actually. One that teaches Man to be humble. To be aware of his limitations…

So. Can you ‘keep a good company’?
Can you ‘weed out’ the trouble makers while remaining able to look beyond the surface of the things?
Can you weed out the aberrations while maintaining your ability to evolve?
Can you figure out the greatest gift God made possible? Freedom?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game, Trust

Getting There

September 2, 2026 //
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But select capable men from all the people
—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—
and appoint them as officials.
Exodus 18:21

At some point, God let his people out of Egypt. Towards the promised Land.
The journey lasted for 40 years.

“You would think that the demonstrations of God’s power in defeating Egypt and the miraculous events of crossing the Red Sea would have convinced the Israelites to trust and worship God—but they didn’t.
Time after time, Israel chooses to oppose, disobey, complain, and grumble against YHWH and his servant, Moses. A climax of sorts is reached when Israel refuses God’s command to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 13-14). Only two men were ready to trust and obey God: Caleb and Joshua.
As a result, God determined that the generation of people over 20 years of age would spend the rest of their lives meandering in the Sinai wilderness.”

It makes sense, right?
Israel, the people of Israel, were slaves. Those who had been led out of Egypt.
Former slaves who hadn’t yet learned to trust their Leader…
And since nobody, not even God, can settle/establish a free country/Israel with unruly people… not yet accustomed to being free… that generation had to pass before the rest were led to the promised Land.

But there’s something more in this story. Something it took us a while to figure out.
During that journey, the former flock had become a team. Those raised in slavery couldn’t do it. Were not able to rise to the challenge.
In modern, anthropological, terms, the people had become a nation.

No longer struggling to survive.
Already trying to achieve a goal!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Rule of Law, skin in the game, Trust

Desert Rose to Steam Roller

June 21, 2026 //
1

“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

Inner Workings

March 2, 2026 //
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And God said…
.
.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

“Investigating Witch Trials In 1487, the zealous inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote a treatise that would have a remarkable influence on European history. Blaming women for his own lust, and frustrated by official complacency before what he saw as a monstrous spiritual menace, Kramer penned a practical guide to aid law officers in the identification and prosecution of witches. Fusing theology, lurid anecdotes and advice for those engaged in combating sorcery, The Malleus Maleficarum transports the reader into the dark heart of medieval belief – where fear and the supernatural converged in a gripping struggle for understanding and control.
The book led to the burning of numerous heretics and ‘witches’ and had a lasting impact on the popular image of witchcraft.”

Remember ‘alchemy’?
According to Britannica.com, “a form of speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold and to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life.
Alchemy was the name given in Latin Europe in the 12th century to an aspect of thought that corresponds to astrology, which is apparently an older tradition. Both represent attempts to discover the relationship of man to the cosmos and to exploit that relationship to his benefit. The first of these objectives may be called scientific, the second technological. Astrology is concerned with man’s relationship to “the stars” (including the members of the solar system); alchemy, with terrestrial nature.“

So. In the 12th, men were free to engage in an attempt to discover and exploit in their benefit the relation between themselves and the cosmos. To make every effort they could think of to transform ‘base metals’ into precious ones.
“Alchemists believed that, if their mind, body and spirit were pure, they could create the Philosophers’ Stone – a substance that could heal people from illness and turn base metals into gold.“
Meanwhile, witches – predominantly female – were burned at the stake for attempting basically the same thing. Exploit to their benefit the understanding they had about how things worked in the universe.

Basically, both – the alchemists as well as the witches – attempted the same thing. To perform/accomplish tasks which seemed impossible to the lay people.
Witches were burned when caught by the ‘wrong people’ while the alchemists were feted.

Is there any sense to be made out of all this?!?

Well, let me go back. To the ‘genetic’ moment. When all ‘this’ started.
As I’ve already mentioned, in my blog, I’m an agnostic. I don’t need a god as an explanation for anything. But I don’t know, as in ‘I can’t be sure’, whether any of this has been decisively influenced by a ‘deus ex-machina’. Hence my agnosticism. Furthermore, I’m absolutely convinced that the God worshiped by people is real. Made real by their belief!
Now, anyway you look at the whole thing – believer, agnostic or even atheist – there is no denying that the Bible is choke full of information. Of sense!

‘But… but… how can you say something like that!?!
What sense can you find in a book that inspired people to burn other people?’

Spot on, my dear Watson.
That’s exactly the question I’ve been asking myself!
What happened during those fifteen centuries. Between writing the Bible, as a collective work, and Heinrich Kramer writing Malleus Maleficarum. Between Christians building a certain culture and some people, claiming to belong to the same ‘denomination’, starting to burn witches, but not alchemists, at the stake.
Stay tuned.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Confusion

February 5, 2026 //
0

“Capitalism has already ended and we don’t even know it,”
“Anyone who owns that power can direct you…
to train you, gain your trust, and infuse desires in you.
This is no longer capitalism. Welcome to techno-feudalism.”
Yanis Varoufakis

Speaking to Euronews after his panel at Web Summit Qatar, the former Greek finance minister said the world could be heading toward another crisis like 2008, driven by the rise of stablecoins and powerful tech platforms.

“Capitalism has already ended and we don’t even know it” is, helas, true.
“Techno-feudalism” is, indeed, a pertinent description of the current state of affairs.
Any further than that…

Varoufakis is ‘long’ on money. He’s so heavily invested in this concept that he has somewhat lost his bearings.

For him, capitalism had started to die when public money has been replaced with the private kind. When people have started to replace national currencies with encrypted ones.
I’m afraid this is a huge misunderstanding.
‘Real’ money being replaced with the ‘fiat’ kind was a symptom, not a cause!

I hear you!
For purists, ‘commodity money’ is the real thing while fiat money is printed by the government. Hence ‘commodity money’ is considered to have ‘intrinsic’ value while fiat money is seen as being less valuable than the paper it’s printed on. For some of those purists, bit-coin – and other equivalent coins – are real. In the sense that their valuation comes from the market. ‘Bit-coin is valuable because people keep buying it’.
As if people buying gold, and accepting dollars in exchange for what they have to sell, is not the very same thing! Value being conferred by the free market…
The way I see it, real money is the kind people trust to use while fiat money is the kind which is ‘made’ by somebody.
These two are not mutually exclusive??? But why should they?!?

Back to Varoufakis’ confusion. Which is a continuation of that between capitalism and the primitive accumulation of money.
Crassus, a very wealthy contemporary of Caesar, was loaded. Full of money. The real kind… Loads and loads of gold coins.
Did that, Crassus owning an insane amount of money, made him an early capitalist?!?

Capitalism, the one hailed by Adam Smith, is about trust, not about money!
We became capitalists the moment we started doing business with each other. When when trade was no longer sanctioned by the lord.
When commerce no longer had to be ‘protected’ by the Mafia which previously controlled the territory. As was the case during the feudal era.
Hence the insistence of those who know what they are talking about when it comes to market freedom!
I repeat, capitalism began when market participants had enough mutual trust to trade directly. To deal with their partners without any intervention or mediation from the the powerful of the day.

And yes, if we look from this angle, capitalism has disappeared. People, those who populate the market, have lost both their trust and their freedom.
The vast majority of them are obsessed with profit. And the obsessed are anything but free!
Meanwhile none of them trust their business partners anymore. In earnest…
People continue to trade because they rationalize their greed. Consider that chasing the fast buck is the rational thing to do and are convinced everybody in the market are equally ‘reasonable’. That since all of them chase the same thing, all of them will act rationally. Hence predictably…

Which, as we innocently discover periodically, is nothing but horse manure. Bull-shit. Pure and unadulterated crap!

Crassus wasn’t chasing even more money!
He wanted power…

Another fallacy we keep entertaining is that ‘people respect the law’. And are going to fulfill ‘the contract’, without any outside intervention.
We’ve grown accustomed with contracts being fulfilled, in good faith, during the ‘good old days’. When a handshake was enough.
Nowadays… contracts are fulfilled only because the parties don’t want trouble. And this is not at all the same thing!

Unfortunately, Varoufakis is right. Capitalism is dying.
But I’m afraid Varoufakis still has no clue about what capitalism really is!
Used to be…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, Rule of Law, skin in the game, Trust

Words.

January 9, 2026 //
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE?
DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH?
THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION
OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
“How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please read the story of what happened and what it tells us about the nature of human nature.”
–Professor Philip G. Zimbardo

1971

A group of California students was divided in two. Half were told to act as prison guards and the other half to obey the first. The experiment was meant to last for two weeks but was cut short after six days.
“I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was “off.” Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.” Professor Philip G. Zimbardo.

2025-2026

People living in the US have been told that some of them don’t belong there. That if and when those who do not will have been removed, the rest will resume their previously ‘great’ lives.


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

To Whom?!?

November 18, 2025 //
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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

Choices.

November 15, 2025 //
0

Consequences.
We are the consequences of the decisions we take.
Of the choices we make.

As biological organisms, our fate, both individually and as a species, depends on whether circumstances remain habitable. Whether we can continue to live.

As rational humans, our individual destinies depend on luck, genes and on our ability to make good decisions.

‘Good’ decisions!
The tricky part being that nobody knows in advance the consequences of our decisions… whether a decision we consider to be good – when we take it – will remain so after its consequences will have been evaluated. After enough time will have passed for the full gamut of consequences to unfold…

To make things easier, humanity has developed ‘culture’.
Layered information which has morphed into ‘Weltanshauung’. Experience distilled into knowledge and accrued in time. Advice we no longer need to ask, only to remember.
When in a hurry, we do as we always used to. Back to the tried and tested.

But there’s a small problem here.
The cultural norms might have been ‘tried and tested’, hence ‘right’, but are we applying the appropriate norm in the given circumstances? Have we interpreted whatever information we have in the right way?

Ukraine is at war. Resisting aggression against all odds. Despite some of those in power attempting to access ‘undeserved rewards’. Unfortunately, war profiteering and corruption are as old as civilization…

“Earlier this week, NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) and SAPO (Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office) said top company officials demanded illicit commissions of 10-15% from contractors.
The corruption allegations center on contracts linked to Energoatom, which provides most of Ukraine’s electricity.
According to investigators, an organized criminal group laundered the funds through an office in central Kyiv linked to the family of former lawmaker and suspected traitor Andriy Derkach. Among those named in the case was then-Energy Minister and later Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko.”
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/64185

How do we choose to evaluate the current development?

As yet another step in the right direction? A country at war cleaning up its act?

Or…

Further more, what will we choose to DO?… after we will have chosen an interpretation to fit our ‘general disposition’… ’cause, unfortunately again, this is how we tend to evaluate things! Specially when we’re not diligent enough. Allow our ‘general disposition’ to take over and permit our reason to cowardly back off …

Help Ukraine to defend itself? And the rest of Europe? Freedom in general!
Or give up? On Ukraine, on cultural norms which seemed set in stone until not so long ago…

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Categories 1989, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust
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