Archives for posts with tag: alone

Mala Suerte

January 19, 2026 //
0

Make
America
Lonely
Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depth

October 21, 2025 //
0

God blessed them and said to them:
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky
and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 1:28

Engineers are trained to think first. And ‘shoot’ only after they have figured out what was going on. What was going to happen as a consequence of their enacted decision…
Handymen, the hard working people who actually prevent the ‘wheels’ from halting screechingly, are trained – self trained, mostly – to repeat what has worked in the past.

Both engineers and handymen are convinced that they know better. That each of their Weltanschauungs are more appropriate.
Both are right.
The distance between them can be construed as (one of) the depths we need to fathom. If we wish to understand ‘reality’…

An engineer myself, MSc level, I had my midlife crises rather early. Went back to school. BA in Sociology. Trying to understand ‘decision making’. Figure out what reality really is…
How to make a wise decision if you don’t know what’s going on?!?

Almost 20 years later – and a few entries in my blog – I found out that I was not alone. That more than a century ago, another guy – a former mathematician, had already broken the ‘glass-ceiling’.
While ‘process philosophy‘ is as old as philosophy itself – traceable back to Heraclitus, Panta Rhei – it was Alfred N. Whitehead who had introduced enough epistemological order into the matter to make it a ‘real’ issue.

What’s the meaning of all this?
Why haven’t we changed tack since Whitehead gave us such a powerful heads-up?
Why most of us continue as ‘handymen’?!?

Process philosophy, as I understand it – with my engineering mind, is mostly about responsibility.
Marx’s was about ‘taking charge’. Shoot first, ask questions later – if ever, was how communism had been translated into reality. Like all other dictatorial processes…
Whitehead’s – if I read him correctly – is about understanding responsibility. Not about ‘merely’ assuming it but about accepting it. About accepting the fact that it will be us – or our children – at the receiving end of the processes we initiate.

‘Uncomfortable position’ is a very lame expression for feeling alone. When trying to decide ‘what next’…
‘Maybe we should just proceed as we used to?’

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

E Pluribus Unum

February 16, 2024 //
0

We, the people

Imagine yourself living some 4000 years ago.

Yes, you who have enough spare time to read things like these and are open minded enough to continue.
Who don’t worry too much about what you’re going to eat tomorrow and who would like to figure out what life’s about. What’s the meaning of all this which is going on around you.

You who have just figured out you’re different from the rest of the animals.
That you’re able to think.
And that you’ll never make it alone.

That no matter how smart you are, you’ll never be able to pull it on your own.
That no matter how strong you are, now, you’ll always need to be helped by your brethren.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust