leadership

This isn't a discussion of the merits and tragedies of religion. This is a strategy about circumventing the factors precipitating conflict in the first place. If acquisition and control over limited resources creates the needs for conflict and the shapes/forms thereof, then what happens as these factors themselves become scarce? What if the reasons for war were themselves scarce?

The Articles of Confederation may have been a more idealistic government, but let's be serious here: do you really think they intended that to last? Not really. It was good enough. Good enough to give our founders about a decade to figure out what would be great enough to last centuries. That's what I mean. Yeh, Thomas Jefferson might have wanted the Articles to last. It didn't have the power or mechanism to tax states. That's like asking the Red Cross to run your government. But this is what I mean: they knew it was going to play out like that. And what would you do?

Your understanding of the system is your most valuable asset. You can't forget that. Your understanding of how things really work. And politicians know that. People in general know that. Some people will tend to obfuscate a system, so it appears to work in one way, but there are other, less visible factors at work. How you model the system and perceive the relationships between people is incredibly valuable. This is in constant flux. It's not going to be the same from year to year. The only constant is change. Just because you figured out how it worked in 2010 doesn't mean it's going to be like that in 2020. The ability to anticipate that change is powerful as well.

And if we consider humanity to be the product of all the ideas available to our collective minds, shouldn't we embrace diversity of mind, body and culture as strengths? These people who have endured challenge after challenge in their lives and whose minds will no doubt contain a wholly different range of memories and ideas: we should see them as luminaries who can see things we could never imagine.

Thinking back to the 19th century economy, it amazes me to think back to previous centuries before the internet and phone systems. I find myself pondering what it would be like to remain a step ahead of your competition at that time.

Energy committed towards any action is a good measure for weighting an opponent's intent behind an action. Here, energy implies cost of some kind: money, redirection of resources, utilization of assets. Gauging the opportunity cost in pursuing a plan of action is an even better measure of whether or not an opponent's move can be read to imply associated intent. Because signaling is so important, everyone and especially larger corporations wants to mask their intent behind actions.

Finding true success means that you have to understand everything at a much deeper level. Once you have this deeper understanding, then you can exploit that knowledge differential towards your success. This knowledge differential is the difference between your deeper understanding of a subject against that of the commonly understood model for your subject of interest. But you need to be intimately familiar with each model!

If you know about the long term goals and mission of this person's organization, looking at how they posture themselves and their organization can speak volumes about those goals. How do they say they say? What are their motivations behind the structure of their message? How are current events and market conditions affecting their message today as compared to the past? What are the obvious points they could be making, but haven't mentioned and why? Do how they stay on message or circle back from a risky area? Does it seem like the interviewer or this person veered off track and why? What was the outcome of seemingly off the cuff statements and questions? Good? Bad?

Non possidentem multa vocaveris recte beatum; rectius occupat nomen beati, qui deorum muneribus sapienter uti duramque callet pauperiem pati peiusque leto flagitium timet, non ille pro caris amicis aut patria timidus perire.