This past week has been a lot of ILE reading on the definition of states as well as power and strategy. It’s interesting comparing business strategy and military strategy. Business strategy is generally defined as low cost, differentiation, dual advantage or niche. Military strategy is based on achieving a desired end state through various means. Underlying philosophies are based on liberalism, realism and constructivism. Liberal thinking in this context is similar to an abundance mindset which seems to be support globalism. Realism seems to support the mindset that actors will always continue to strive for individual power. Constructivism seemed to be the philosophy I was most interested in as I was relatively unfamiliar with the concept. For clarification I reached out to my training partner who is a philosophy PhD to try and better understand it. It seems there’s differing perspectives on constructivism in the context of political science and philosophy. My interpretation of the concept is that there is a subjective component to knowledge. That we create individual patterns based on education (lectures, conversation, written word) and experience to create mental models. We each have variable perspectives that underlie our realities. I look forward to learning more about the concept and hopefully am able to provider a more simple explanation.
Buidling the Elite is a book I’m working through right now and I love the fact that they have the book broken down into a theory and practical component. I think what’s missing from most books right now is that they tend to be either one or the other. Most popular books will have interesting theories, but there is little reflection or change that takes place as a result of it. Instead of the Gnolls Creedo (plan the hunt, hunt, discuss the hunt), they describe the OODA loop concept of observe (gather data about the situation and what’s happening), orient (consider what this data means and what to do about it), decide (choose what to do next), Act (do something). This would definitely need to take practice as it’s system 1 thinking as described by Daniel Kahneman.
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine – has also been an insightful read. I struggle with a lot of Traditional Chinese Medicine concepts as it seems alien from an allopathic or osteopathic background. I do appreciate that they have a system that is seasonal in nature (naturalists) as we (average American) tend to try to do everything all the time and wonder why we run into chronic disease. They made the claim that culturally the TCM system never considered divorcing science from ethics. “Science needs to be lived alongside religion, philosophy, history and aesthetic experience; alone it can lead to great harm.” I’ve been interested in reading more on TCM and Ayurveda. I bought the first two textbooks after going to a Food as Medicine course in 2015, but unfortunately never made it past the first couple chapters. I struggle with balancing trying to keep learning about the traditional approach and what amount of time is appropriate to explore theories based on TCM or Ayurveda.
Seeking Progress 