Strength Before the Storm
Self-force and the ledger of action.
An honest admission
In my last two articles I introduced the Action Being, a person who acts by self-force rather than by mood, and the thinking shield that refuses the second arrow when the Unknown strikes.
A fair question followed: if humans are weak, where does self-force come from?
I will be honest. Self-force probably goes against human nature. The mind prefers comfort, and the second arrow will strike us again and again. I propose self-force anyway, because it is the only solution I can see. But I have come to believe it can be built, and that changes everything.
Strength is built before the storm
Some people can carry loads no ordinary person could lift. They were not born that way. They began with what they could manage and added a little more, again and again, over years. That is Dexterience: skill acquired through practice and self-forced action.
Psychology adds an important clue. Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions shows that deciding a response in advance ("if this happens, I will do that") works far better than relying on willpower in the heated moment.
So self-force is not mainly a heroic effort in the middle of the storm. It is exercised before it:
- In calm moments, decide how you will meet the arrows you can foresee: an accusation, a loss, an insult.
- Practise in small ways every day, so the response becomes familiar.
- When the storm comes, the shield acts almost by itself, because the decision was already made.
This is how weak humans become strong: not by being born strong, but by training strength before it is needed.
A paradox in a prison cell
The human mind is not always logical. Consider a story I often reflect on. Two criminals robbed and killed people. The police caught them and put them in prison. Yet inside the prison, they loved each other deeply and cared for each other tenderly.
Are they bad people or good people? The question has no answer, because it judges persons.
Kirdomicism judges actions, and keeps good and harm in separate accounts. Their care for each other is real positive value. Their crimes are real negative value. Neither erases the other. And the two do not balance, because of reach: their love touched one person, while their crimes touched victims, families and a whole community.
A label of "good" or "bad" cannot hold this paradox. A ledger of actions can.
No need to decode the intruder
When someone attacks us without reason, we want to know why. But the motive is usually hidden: jealousy, fear, ill intent, or simply an unexplained dislike of our face. Often it is hidden even from the attacker.
Trying to decode it is wasted strength. Through Foreality, the Action Being sees what can be seen, the facts and their likely consequences, and acts well without needing to solve another person's mind. Seeing the intruder's fear is part of reality. Being governed by it is the trap.
Humanity's first ledger
As a retired accountant, one fact moves me deeply. Many scholars believe writing itself began as accounting. Over 5,000 years ago in Sumer, clay tokens and tablets recorded goods, work and debts. Humanity's first great information system was a ledger.
Those early economies were largely run through temples and palaces that recorded work and redistributed food to workers. Their rulers periodically declared debt cancellations, "clean slates" that stopped wealth from piling up in a few hands. Paper money came much later, in Song-dynasty China about 1,000 years ago, beginning as deposit and promissory notes.
Somewhere along this road, the ledger came to measure money rather than the result of actions. Today, money rewards what markets price, not what is truly valuable. A caregiver, a night-shift nurse or a volunteer rebuilding a flooded village contributes enormously and earns little. Someone moving money between accounts may earn millions.
I believe those who contribute more deserve a good life. That is why I want to introduce Avalrem, a ledger of the value of action.
Beside money, open to the Unknown
History also warns us. Systems that tied living standards to a central score of contribution often became tools of control, because whoever measured contribution held power over everyone else.
So Avalrem begins as recognition, not payment: a second record of value, standing beside money, that makes visible what money ignores. It is never traded. Others may choose to act on it freely, an employer when hiring, a community when honouring someone, a foundation when giving support. Money spread the same way: because people found it useful, long before it was universal.
Will Avalrem one day go further? Someone living 1,000 years ago could not have imagined how money would work today. Judging the future only by today's reality usually leads to the wrong conclusion. This is where Unknowneology guides me: not as a claim to certainty, but as a refusal to close any door. Unknowneology keeps all possibilities open.
Whether Avalrem stands beside money or one day goes beyond it, I leave to the Unknown. My task is to make it worthy of either future.
An invitation
Strength is trained before the storm. Persons are not good or bad; actions are recorded, and harm is never erased by good. And the oldest human ledger may still have a new chapter to write.
If you could record one action of yours that money has never rewarded, what would it be? I would love to read your answers.
First published on LinkedIn, 11 October 2026. Read and comment on LinkedIn →