Jun

27

Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, by Susan Presby Kodish

GS is based on a careful study of human behavior and scientific problem-solving, bridging applied psychology and practical philosophy. Drive Yourself Sane provides time-tested methods for critical and creative thinking and constructive communicating with a variety of problem-solving applications for mental hygiene, personal development, education, business, etc.

Easy to read book about Global Semantics. Why relevant? Because we often confuse the image of something with reality. And that is recipe for insanity. eg. Dalio has this "machine" analogy for mkts and the econ. Fair enough. But the econ and markets are much more: Living organism etc (good to use "etc" as it reminds oneself that it is a lot more…) There is a famous picture that shows an "apple" and underneath the painter wrote: "This is not an Apple."

Humbert G. comments:

Image v. Reality. Dialio is the perfect example. What’s with all the gloomy billionaires?

Larry Williams writes:

Dalio sure looks like a loser always bemoaning the world same as Cooperman how did these guys rise so far?? Then I have been accused of not being smart enough to put my feet on the ground if it weren’t for gravity.

Rich Bubb ponders:

I've been thinking that Dalio is using historical events to try to not repeat AVOIDABLE/PREVENTABLE mistakes. Yet the rhyming of those events is intriguing. Especially the given nature of Nature, current hot wars, insane debt levels, growing militarization actions, natural resource over usage/abuse, wealth distribution, Us vs. Them polarizations, etc. Yep, gloomy.

His 'machine' concept of the Markets & Economics is an "approximation of a likely future" (my words). The coincidences of the factors Dalio describes at some pressure point will often start Change Cycles. We've witnessed this in our own short-lived & humble lifetimes.

The problem is that 'history' will not exactly repeat in some-yet-unknown terms but might rhyme in concept. The timeline/s of historical examples Dalio uses for large changes is/are very long. And the salient concepts, e.g., reserve currency, debt irrationality, Dalio's Big Cycle (some spanning decades or longer), "Dynastic Cycles' Stages", etc., are historically documented and presented in "The Changing World Order" (2021). The tables and 'chartwork' are visual reinforcements throughout, yet intriguing patterns do persistently re-occur.

My takeaway is generally that Major Powers' (Markets, Econ, military conflicts, extinction-level weapons/WMD^6, etc.) either don't see the cliff they are eventually going to go over, or those major powers refuse to find solutions to the recurring Root Causes that Dalio writes about.

I'm not finished with his 'Changing World Order' book. From what I have read, Dalio seems to try to codify history into significantly huge cycles, leading to changes in the World's Order. IMO, given the current situation (in our time, i.e., now) it isn't too difficult to extrapolate what's ahead… gloomy indeed. Maybe Dalio is "gloomy" for one or more reason/s.


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