Origins, fundaments, root causes

When A. and I bought our first property, a flat in Leiden, I started by completely fixing up … the cellar, our storage space, before even touching the living quarters. I liked Classics as the root for Western culture. I was interested in pre-Socratic philosophy as it provided the basic materials for so much that came afterward. I thought it was essential to comprehend the hellishly complicated and t the same time quite boring history of doxography which transmitted the few bits and pieces of pre-Socratic philosophy we still possess. I liked the Whorf-Sapir thesis (linguistic structure determines thought structure; I tried to show that philosophical thinking was also determined by linguistic structures, but didn’t really manage. Nevertheless it made me deeply suspicious of the universalistic claims of what I think are completely language-based thought systems, such as Heidegger’s). I was thrilled to discover Indo-European linguistics, then Nostratics (supposedly the roots of Indo-European, Ural-Altaic and Finno-Ugric language groups). I enjoy the mother of sciences, mathematics, and its history (without being a star at it I hasten to add). I strongly believe that a 100% legalisation of drugs (hard drugs, soft drugs, glue, nutmeg, you name it…) is the only fundamentally realistic way (apart from the tiny detail of political feasibility) to make the drugs trade chain (including Colombian mafia, terrorist financing, undermining of productive sectors in developing countries, etc.) collapse, which would make prices collapse, and give drug users a perspective to have a fair chance at a more or less normal life (this is the fast explanation, no time for subtleties here).

All this, of which the common denominator is origins, fundaments, root causes, came to mind when I thought today about my relatively recent interest in economics, governance, especially financial governance, and public finance management. I have become convinced (I guess it is obvious anyway to the real experts in the field, but I won’t believe it until I see it) that these are among the root issues for understanding and mending development problems, most certainly in our host country. OK, so much for pointing out the obvious….

I had quite a productive day today: in the peace and quiet of my hotel room I managed to draft a tailor made manual to our budgetary aid for our government. If we manage to disburse, against all odds, the 14 million euros reserved for budgetary aid, I will have reason to consider my four-year stint in Africa a success.

This evening I went to see one of my few colleagues who is also a friend to meet his family and some friends of his. They live in a beautiful house in a beautiful part of Brussels, Uccle. Nice family dinner atmosphere.

One more meeting tomorrow morning, then back to Africa in the evening. Not looking forward to the tons of reporting to be done the next couple of weeks.