Home Who and What The Author The Choice Introduction Head Guts Ranking  Mine fields Pig Producing Options Sluice Gate options Regional development Projects Enterprises in ethnic conflict zones Paying for Performance Executive Bonuses  Poverty Reduction Support Sector Support Contact 

The Choice

This picture is the hilt of a traditional Indonesian dagger, the Kris. The Indonesian colleague and Sufi-Muslim who gave it to me explained its shape as being our boat of life, floating into the future with us on board, only able to look backwards. This is an excellent metaphor because one can imagine this 'life' boat moving like a Sisyphus up and down on the waves of life. Behind it is a curved shape, like a Gaussian curve of past events, that makes us believe that the boat will continue its future course along the main inner line of that curve. A decision is indeed an action that takes place now, between past and future. All we have is this curve of past events and our uncertainty in deciding what direction to steer this boat into the future.

Out of the Past into the Future

About past we know there is not such a thing as 'one' past. There are, so to speak, two pasts: One 'objective' and one 'personal'. We are never sure how or to what extent this 'personal' past differs from the 'objective' past and how biased we are in processing and interpreting our experiences.

About our future, we realize that, as the father of Daniel tells his son, in Carlos Zafon's book "The Shadow of the Wind": We people are very very clever; we fly to the moon, make ingenious machines, know about far away universes but none of us is able to say what will happen tomorrow.

The Past

The Future

This uncertainty makes choosing interesting and this section explores the subject and is divided into three:1. How the subject of making a choice has inspired many people. 2. How a good choice is designied and structured, explained in the “Head” part.3. How the weighting of a choice is worked out is shown in the "Guts" part.

Om alle inhoud te kunnen zien hebt u de actuele versie van Adobe Flash Player nodig.