Greetings!

I read several blogs regularly, written by people who are very intelligent, write rather well, and have impressive credentials. I claim none of these attributes -- if I possess them to any degree it will show in my work, if not, then my claims to the contrary would be both silly and futile.

Why "Facts and Assumptions"? It is hardly news that people argue and fight over differing views on various subjects. We can look at humanity's sorry history of wars, oppression, abuse, exploitation, subversion and violence to see how bad things can get. And compared with so much of history we have precious little reason to complain or worry today.

But doing well compared with the human environment that generated two world wars, our own Civil War, repeated episodes of economic upheaval, mass starvation and political collapse is pretty faint praise. And simply doing better by comparison is hardly a worthwhile aspiration.

We have tremendous potential as a nation, a culture, a civilization, a species. But to reach that potential we have to overcome weaknesses in how we deal with each other, how we analyze problems and how we reach understandings different from the past.

As Lincoln put it, past dogma is inadequate to the demands of the present. "We must think anew, and act anew," as he said. No matter that our ancestors worked wonders at times, the fact of the matter remains that they were also unable to deal with a multitude of problems that, to one degree or another, plague us today.

And thus this blog. When I worked as a military planner getting a heavy National Guard infantry division prepared to go to war in Iraq, I learned a great deal about a methodology called the "Military Decision Making Process," or MDMP. While it, too, has some shortcomings (like those that resulted in us being unprepared for events in Iraq after the collapse of the Baathist regime), it has tremendous strengths -- objectivity, thoroughness, honesty, realism, and a robust, practical, time-tested set of procedures built on this intellectual base that can be implemented by anyone, anywhere, under even the most challenging circumstances.

There is one step in these procedures that strikes me as both essential and practicable in getting past the apparently irreconciliable differences and annoying chatter about important issues today, whether health care, climate change, the economy, taxes, whatever.

That step is to identify and validate critical facts and assumptions. The media, politicians, commentators, even scholars and scientists, argue endlessly without every doing this. And the arguing continues because each group has its own version of facts and makes its own set of assumptions, while ignoring, denying or repudiating any contrary facts or assumptions. And because they seem to be locked into their respective positions, refusing to acknowledge validity in other views or flaws in their own, there can be no progress.

I hope this blog can help overcome that flaw in our common character. I believe that humanity is capable of tremendous progress, that everyone tries to do what they see as right (people with psychological disease aside). People err -- Goethe put the words in Faust's mouth, "Es irrt der Mensch solang er strebt," the person who strives will make mistakes -- and it takes an exercise of character to admit mistakes and move on!

Facts and assumptions. This is a step in a process for dealing with reality as it is. If you want to make meaningful change in the world, you have to deal with it as it is -- not how you think it is, not how you imagine it may be. Once you see thing clearly, in depth and detail, then you can engage in intelligent discussion about what needs to be done, by whom, how and when. If you don't do this, then you're just flapping your lips...

Identifying and validating facts and assumptions is challenging even inside a single military headquarters, with well-trained staff officers working on a well-defined mission. That is seldom if ever the case outside that environment -- which is where I expect readers (bless each and every one of you!) to be. Out there in the wider world there is far more complexity to deal with, in multiple dimensions.

And so in this blog I intend to develop this process, in depth and detail, for application in the wider world. I want to explore the qualities people need to bring to the table, and try to show how the process can work through analysis of various common issues that strike me as interesting.

I hope to pitch out new posts frequently, and practice what I preach as I do so. And I ask for a bit of patience and forebearance if I err -- we all know what Shakespeare had to say about both error and foregiveness! But I want the thoughts expressed here to be informative, constructive, challenging and stimulating.

So let's have at it!