I mentioned, in a recent blog, the need to formulate the dimensions of our existence.  I want to pursue this mystery about 'being human' now.

The existence of two realities is weighing on me every day in every way.  Do you remember C.P. Snow's famous Two Cultures lecture (and later book)?  That Science v Humanities debate came and went because it was targeted at UK society of 1959: over half a century ago.  In any case, the sciences are now doing fine, in the UK and everywhere.  The PR machine has been cranked up and is doing a fantastic job. 

However, there is now a conflict as to which reality is to be scientifically investigated.  It's fundamental to understanding being human, and it is emerging as a battle for pre-eminence.  I call the two realities: Psychosocial Reality and Empirical Reality. The one you bring into being by your choices, and you have the power to alter.  The other exists independently of your choices and you only have More...

The tax system is over-complicated and unfair. What is the simple solution?  What is the new start that is required?

The Glass-Steagall Act associated with the Great Depression was just 37 pages long.  It did the obvious thing of separating deposit-insured banks from firms taking investment risks.  It worked fine for decades.  The repeal of this Act in the late 1990s was the trigger-cause of the global financial crisis.  It was the step too far by the political-financial elites that was 100% predictable in THEE's schema.

Without it there would still have been a crisis of government debt or some other catastrophic malfeasance intrinsic to vested-interest plutocratic pluralism, but we would not More...

I just read about a new tax scheme that has had over $20m of research expenditure.  It's basically a good scheme but, frankly, the research was mostly a waste of money.  It would be simpler to see that taxation has gone wrong and wronger as an aspect of political manipulation.  We experience the effects of bad choices in the past. The misuse and abuse of the tax system has had little concern for the well-being of the country: at least any country that claims to be a democracy.  The bad choices were made because the focus was on election campaigns.  If you stop viewing taxation as an ideological issue of higher or lower taxes, you may start to see some easy solutions.

Many social issues have simple easy solutions.  Especially if the problem seems complicated and overwhelming.  The mess is so extreme because it is the effect of bad choices.  The issues then become overwhelming because of political factors. 

Exactly the same thing happens in people's lives. More...

If you can help with WILLINGNESS, you will simultaneously help me in my struggle to grasp CHANGE.  Both are intrinsic to pursuing our endeavours.

I explained in my last blog how I try to get things progressively clearer.

A crucial feature is ensuring the pattern is right: which means that other elements in the system work well.  I call this structural corroboration.  

So right now, I want help for something in Personal Endeavour that may be so approximate that it is wrong and misleading.  Understanding Endeavour depends on properly appreciating the seven Root Levels that constitute it and define it fully.  Of these, CHANGE has proved to be the toughest nut to crack.  I'm depending on work in other areas to provide more clues before I launch an assault on its bastions.More...

Getting going on any framework is difficult.  What is so obvious at the end of the inquiry is almost wholly obscure at the outset.  I feel like a person who is blindfolded in a multi-dimensional maze.  Insight seems absent. 

My experience and knowledge give me the courage to start.  But they never take me very far.  I find that I have to move forward using two methods in intense discussions.  These are: successive approximation and structural checking.

Successive approximation means that I make a stab at knowing—a name for something, or a formulation, or a property—and see how it works.  Usually not very well.  So I think about how to improve it … and then make another stab.  That will probably More...