The power of darkness and silence: Boredom is great for great thinking

A 2026, X post inspired by Helena Henschen's book.

Like a filled kerosene lamp can shine so bright when there’s a power outage, artificial intelligence, by removing the “emotions, biases, or social pressures humans wrestle with”, can shine lots of light on human intelligence. Do we dare see it?

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2025/03/ai-grok-why-does-artificial.html

https://x.com/PerKurowski/status/2016104973222699363

The original comment

I translate the following from Helena Henschen’s (1940-2011) marvelous book "In the shadow of a crime”, 2004

"Sometimes it is necessary to expose yourself to the boredom of loneliness… I welcome the winter power outages.

It is as if the psyche must have silence and time in order to be able to activate and initiate a creation process. I have to get away from everyday life with ever-inbound data that occupies space, a stream of impressions that flows inwards and requires sorting, valuation, and action. It is only when the noise of outer life ceases that a conversion occurs. The power switches direction. From boredom, an opposite outward movement grows.

It seems that boredom and creativity have to do with each other; as well as the listening to nothing.

When the electricity goes out again, a filled kerosene lamp is on the table next to the sofa. I look for the matchbox that I have put next to it, and curl up with a block and a pen in my pocket. I'm prepared; no time is going to be wasted. 

The power outage can last forever, but I do not fall asleep. The brain is on high, the spirits have woken up ..."

P.S. Referencing this book, in 2015 I wrote a letter to the Financial Times that I titled: “We should be grateful for the chance of experience boredom. It is much more valuable than we think.”

P.S As we are left with less and less free unused attention span, we also have less and less time for reflection.

P.S. Filling up their, when awake, 24x7 scarce attention span, deprives our children from that vital educational/forming tool known as boredom; that which inspires them to be creative and teaches them patience. (When I was young, I had to wait for a whole week before the next chapter of Bonanza) 

Below the original text in Swedish 

"Ibland känns det nödvändigt att utsätta sig för ensamhetens tråkighet… jag välkomnar vinterns elavbrott. 

Det är som psyket måste ha tystnad och tid för att kunna aktiveras och sätta igång en skapandeprocess. Jag måste bort från vardagslivet med ständig inkommande data som upptar utrymmet, en ström av intryck som forsar utifrån och in och kräver sortering, värdering och åtgärd. Det är först när slamret från det yttre livet avstannat som de uppstår en konvertering. Strömmen växlar riktning. Ur tråkigheten växer en rörelse från motsatt håll, inifrån och ut. 

Det verkar som om tråkigheten och skapande har med varandra att göra liksom lyssnandet på ingenting."

När elektriciteten bryts igen, står en fylld fotogenlampa på bordet intill soffan. Jag trevar efter tändsticksasken som jag har lagt bredvid den och kryper upp med ett block och en penna i fickan, jag är beredd och ingen tid får förspillas. 

Elavbrottet kan vara hur länge som helst men jag somnar inte. Hjärnan är på högvarv, andarna har vaknat…

"I skuggan av ett brott", 2004 Brombergs

PS. Jag hade turen att veta om denna bok tack vare min Mamma Ingas kära vän Marjorie Cronstedt. Hon sa till mig en gång ”den boken bör du läsa Per”, och i den kopian jag då hittade stod det: “‘Ett litet arv’ från Marjorie. För en lugn stund så småningom. 29/8-2006”  Den är nu för mig, ett mycket kärt arv.

PS. I was lucky enough to know about this book thanks to my Mamma Inga's dear friend Marjorie Cronstedt. Mother told me once "you should read that book Per", and in the copy I then found it said: "'A small inheritance' from Marjorie." For a quiet moment eventually. 29/8-2006” It is now for me, a very dear heirloom.

Would not those willing to cut taxes belong to the anti-Sheriff of Nottingham party?

Sir, E.J. Dionne JR refers to the Republican Party that “only knows how to cut taxes for the very rich”, as “The anti-Robin Hood party”, Washington Post October 2, 2017.

I do not want to enter the discussion of whether taxes should be lowered or raised, but I do believe there  is a fundamental mistake in the terminology used.

As I remember it was the Sheriff of Nottingham who served as Prince John's chief enforcer, collecting unlimited taxes from the people of Nottingham, and forcing Robin Hood and Little John to take refuge in the Sherwood Forest, where they did no one harm, much the contrary... ask friar Tuck.

Should we not know to whom we are kicking the public-debt-can down the road?

With respect to that congressional authorization for U.S. military operations against U.S. enemies, Senator Elizabeth Warren, very correctly, recently tweeted: 

“Congress owes our troops and their families a full debate to authorize the use of military force before we send them into harm’s way.”

But in the same vein each time an increase of public debt is authorized, or the public-debt-can is kicked further down the road, OMB, or CBO should prepare a detailed report on who are expected to serve that debt.

Because let’s face it, public debt is, before anything, if it is going to be duly served, an anticipation of tax revenues to come... and future taxpayers might like to be informed of that.

To have in black and white that we might be asking our grandchildren to pay for some of our current societal requests, might be a good way to better live up to that intergenerational social contract Edmund Burke spoke about.

We should continuously remind ourselves of that the possibility of contracting debt at reasonable rates, is a strategic asset, which no one has the right to take away from future generations, without a truly overwhelming reason

3 tweets that should rock the world of bank regulators, and one day will

Motorcycles are riskier than cars, so if they have a choice, people prefer cars; so more die in car accidents than in motorcycle ones

Below BB- rated are much riskier than AAAs, so bankers much prefer AAAs, so big crises happens with AAAs turned risky, not with below BB-

Our bank regulators never understood that, and assigned 20% risk weight to AAAs and 150% to below BB-s So now what? http://bit.ly/1TgB6EJ

Regulators and bankers looking out for the same risks

Many lesser impact sanctions, on many more soft-liners (50.000?) are also needed in Venezuela.

The Atlantic Council has just published a document on the issue of “What US sanctions would be most effective in maximizing pressure on President Maduro’s government while minimizing repercussions for the Venezuelan people?”

It includes to “Extend the use of individual sanctions, and potentially some entity-focused sanctions, to fracture the regime soft-liners from the hard-liners with nothing to lose.” 

I agree, but I do not think that only severe sanctions, of some few very responsible hard-liners, like to “block all property belonging to those individuals and entities subject to US jurisdiction and prohibit US persons from engaging in transactions with them”, will suffice.

Lesser impact sanctions, extended to many more soft-liners, could prove easier to implement and be even more effective.

For this it might suffice with USA, Canada, Europe and all those nations that recently signed a declaration in Lima, informing they were now contemplating issuing a blank prohibition to all members of the Constituent Assembly, and of the National Guard, sort of 50.000 Venezuelans, to access any kind of visa. 

If that prohibition could, at a later moment, perhaps also be extended to include all their close relatives, it would ignite many serious discussions and doubts in the homes of the soft-liners.

I believe my one line health sector reform to be better than those long ones proposed by democrats or republicans

You, all suppliers of medicines or health services, thou shall not discriminate [with more than perhaps 5%] in the prices offered to those who pay for those insured against the prices demanded from those uninsured.

PS. Not the first time I have written about it

When regulators, to bankers’ lack of testosterone added their own lack of it, the Western civilization started its descent

Fact: Major bank crises result from unexpected events, criminal behavior, or excessive exposures to something ex ante perceived as safe, but that ex post turned out to be risky.

Fact: No major bank crisis ever has resulted from excessive exposures to something that was perceived as risky when placed on banks’ balance sheets.

Mark Twain with his supposedly: “A banker is one who lends you the umbrella when the sun is out and wants it back as soon as it looks it could rain” would attest to that.

Fact: Nonetheless bank regulators scared witless by the same perceived risks, imposed larger capital requirements for what is ex ante perceived as risky, than for what is ex ante perceived as safe.

That means bank can now leverage more their equity with “the safe” than with “the risky” 

That means bank can now earn higher expected risk adjusted returns on equity on “the safe than on the risky.”

Consequence 1: That day banks finds that excessive exposures to what was perceived, decreed or concocted as safe turns out risky, something that happens sooner or later, like with the AAA rated securities or sovereigns like Greece, the banks will stand their more naked than usual.

As Voltaire said: “May God defend me from my friends, I can defend myself from my enemies”

Consequence 2: Bank stop financing the "riskier" future the next generations need to be financed, like SMEs and entrepreneurs; in favor of refinancing the "safer" present.

As John A Shedd said: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for”.

Our current regulators had no clue of what they were doing. In order to hang on to their jobs and hide their mistake, they are clouding the whole issue with more and more complexity.

They must be stopped, remembering of course Einstein’s: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.

God make us daring!

Here a more detailed analysis of this awful regulatory mistake

Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Want to see how your client Maduro teargasses young Venezuelan students in a closed truck?

Here is what I opine on that financing

“The inevitable climate solution” also helps to face structural unemployment, economic growth, and inequality

George P. Shultz and Lawrence Summers sign up completely on a revenue neutral carbon tax proposed by the Climate Leadership Council. “The inevitable climate solution” Washington Post, June 20.

Indeed a carbon tax which revenues are equally redistributed to all is the way of how to align the market signal that will help to face the current environmental challenges, the current concerns about inequality, the current proposals of a universal basic income to face growing structural unemployment, and the current concerns about the lack of sustainable economic growth.

So please, even if this could make Trump to become a greater green hero than Al Gore, swallow it, for the best of our young.

http://ourpiedaterre.blogspot.com/2017/04/solutions-that-share-out-all-benefits.html

@PerKurowski​

A simple but complex question from a humble Venezuelan economist to any outstanding Venezuelan international lawyer

The 1999 Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic ofVenezuela establishes:

"Article 12. Mining and hydrocarbon deposits, whatever their nature, existing in the national territory, under the territorial sea bed, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, belong to the Republic, are the property of the Public domain and, therefore, inalienable and imprescriptible. "

Suppose a Revised Constitution would establish: "Article 12. Mining and hydrocarbon deposits, whatever their nature, existing in the national territory, under the territorial sea bed, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, belong to Venezuelan citizens, as long as they live and, therefore, inalienable and imprescriptible."

Suppose also that the current PDVSA bankruptcy and all its assets are acquired by a PDVSA II or by any other national or foreign company that, on behalf of the citizens of Venezuela, has been entrusted to extract and market that oil providentially deposited in Venezuela. 

So then a tanker would be transporting, not the oil of a sovereign country, but the oil privately owned by millions of Venezuelan citizens.  My question to expert lawyers would then be:

Could the financiers of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, or old PDVSA, embargo that tanker? Could a tanker for instance belonging to ExxonMobil, be seized by creditors of the United States or the state of Texas in the event that any of the latter fail to meet financial obligations?

Of course, current Venezuela and Pdvsa creditors would claim before judges they always lent against estimated future oil revenues. But, can a government mortgage something that the constitution itself declares as inalienable?

Would the world, knowing then that the oil revenues carried by the tanker would be delivered directly to millions of Venezuelans, the rightful owners of the oil, and which will help these to satisfy some basic human needs, like food and medicines ... allow that tanker to be embargoed in order to satisfy the cravings of a few speculating financiers?

Dear friends, our Venezuela has been ransacked. It is the obligation of every Venezuelan to seek to try to save our nation in any way we can. 

If expert lawyers respond to me with a "You’re crazy Kurowski, that’s not possible", then, shamelessly, I’ll try to find other ways.

And if that means governments’ of Venezuela will not get access to credit in the future, I would almost count that as a blessing.

And don’t tell me I did not warn the creditors before!

PS. This is loosely translated from here

Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein should perhaps go to jail, for violating the FCPA, or be fired, for being too dumb

1. For years (decades) I've argued that any sovereign (and I really mean any sovereign) that has to pay something like 100-200% more in interest rates than that sovereign who at that time pays the least, in order to obtain finance, has not earned the right to take on public debt, and with that to mortgage its future generations of citizens. 

The current rate the US has to pay for 5-year money is about 2%.

2. There are plenty of persons currently in jail in the US because of acts committed against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

3. Goldman Sachs, has just handed over about US$800 million to the notoriously corrupt, criminal and human rights violating government of Venezuela, in order to obtain $2.8billion Venezuelan bonds paying a 12.75% interest rate, which if repaid would provide GS with about a 42% yearly return, 2.000% more than what US pays. Has it in fact not committed the mother of all corruptions acts punishable under the FCPA?

4. Of course, if Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, can see a 42% return for lending to a sovereign, and not conclude that something extremely corrupt and fishy is going on, then he should, as a minimum minimorum, instead be fired for being too dumb.

Many people have been arguing for decades for the need of a Sovereign Debt Rescheduling Mechanism (SDRM). I agree with that, but that must begin with classifying credits as bona-fide, doubtful, or outright odious. This specific Venezuela debt referred to here, clearly belongs to the latter, and should not be repaid.

PS. Venezuela, a nation with tremendous food and medicine shortages sells gas at less than US$ 2 cents a gallon. What else can I say?

PS. If the elites do not socially sanction those they should sanction, there will be no society left to sanction.

PS. Today June 27, 2017, Maduro, he who was financed by Goldman Sachs stated "If we don't win with votes we will win with our weapons".

PS. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/venezuela

PS. Still, November 2018, and not the slightest sign of a "Sorry" from Lloyd Blankfein. Did he earn a big bonus for mistreating Venezuela? Are all those working in Goldman Sachs really proud of this?

“Whut you goin' to do when a [lefty] starts to talk purty? I'm jist a [socialist] who cain't say no”

Socialists are never ever able to resist the siren songs of false sirens like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, or Cuba and the Castro brothers. They always remind me of Oklahoma’s Ado Annie singing “I Cain't Say No!”

“Whut you goin' to do when a [lefty] gits flirty

And starts to talk purty? whut you goin' to do?

Whut you goin' to do when he talks that way

Spit in his eye?

I'm jist a [socialist] who cain't say no”

Here for instance Noam Chomsky: “What's so exciting about visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."

Here for instance Sean Penn: “Maduro is similar to Chavez in that he is ‘in love with his people and his country’”
Of course there are those not so much convinced by purty talk but much more by purty pay, like here Pablo Iglesias

Like here are 70 more like-minded / like to purty leftist talk blinded

Blekinge Museum: A museum... of my times gone by

About a month ago I had the chance to visit a wonderful small regional museum in Sweden, the Blekinge Museum. It lies very close to my recently deceased mother’s family house, in which I spent a lot of time in my youth. It was a shocking and a humbling experience. It was not a museum of very old times gone by; it was a museum of so much of, since 1950, my times gone by.

Images of heavy horses pulling carriages full of hay, Olivetti accounting machines, telephone exchanges with hundreds of cables, old bicycles, wrinkled by rough seas rowing boats, and hundred similar items that I have lived with, but that mostly no longer exists, and are much less used, shouted out… “Per, what on earth do you know about tomorrow… what does anyone know?”

Coming out of the museum, more than ever, I felt like praying “God make us daring”; or at least God make my children, grandchildren and their descendants daring, so that they are not among the so many to be left behind… doomed (by automation and robots) to end up like the heavy horses of my time. God let them live free, and faraway from the high priests of complacency.

And as for me, as an economist, as a citizen, as a parent and grandparent, if I only look back, and do not do our utmost to imagine what lies around the corners of tomorrow then, like old soldiers (and heavy horses) I might perhaps just better fade away.

Does all what we older have lived not mean anything for the young? Of course, it should signify a lot… but much more in terms of wisdom, than in terms of knowledge.

The sad fact that my mother had passed away just weeks earlier, on February 10, clearly made me reflect on our intergenerational responsibilities.

PS. Since 2023, blessed by in my lifetime being able to dialogue with AI, ChatGPT so as to get a glimpse of the future, more questions arise daily. E.g., whether if driving instructors will be among the many Heavy Horses of tomorrow.

@PerKurowski