Welcome to Verstreuen—meaning “to scatter”—where I unpack the ideas I’ve collected this week in my 🗃️ Zettelkasten, “note box,” personal knowledge management system. Here, I’ll share the highlights, insights, and stories I find interesting—and think you will too!

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🗃️ This Week’s Highlights

This week's notes come from 82 new additions to the Zettelkasten—here’s the three that stood out most to share with you:

🟨 How "Development" Became a Cold War Ideology

🟦 Why Miscommunication is so Common

🟥 A Formula for Sustainable Momentum

I picked up World Systems Analysis: An Introduction after a recommendation from my girlfriend, who’s deep in PhD research. I expected a dense, academic read—but have been pleasantly surprised by its engaging and insightful ideas. The opening chapters explore how knowledge itself became structured and professionalized, and how those structures quietly shaped the global order.

Skipping ahead to post-WWII: as the United States rose to global dominance, its universities became intellectual powerhouses, shaping thought across economics, politics, and culture. Around the same time, the U.S. subtly—and strategically—introduced the concept of “development” to reinforce its position as the global ideal.

This wasn’t just economic theory—it was geopolitical strategy. The idea of development, most famously formalized in Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth, cast the U.S. as the end goal that “less developed” nations were expected to emulate. Development was framed less as a path shaped by local context and more as a one-size-fits-all trajectory—one that conveniently placed the U.S. at the finish line.

The Soviet Union knew a good thing when it saw one. It too adopted a similar model of staged development, adjusting the language for ideological purposes, but the basic model was the same. They did however make one significant change:

The Soviet Union, not the United States, was used as the model state in the Soviet version.

**🗃️**

CAT!

There it is—just one word, and your brain conjured an image. Maybe it was your neighborhood cat, running by. Maybe it was your own pet. But it wasn’t the animal itself you experienced—it was your idea of it. The word triggered a concept, not a creature.

In Being Logical, human knowledge is broken into three distinct components:

1. The object — the actual thing in reality.

2. The idea — the concept of that thing we hold in our minds.

3. The language — the words we use to describe the idea.

When we communicate, we’re not sharing the object—we’re sharing words about an idea of the object. That means we’re always at least two layers removed from reality in any conversation.

And that distance has consequences.

It’s why miscommunication is so common: we assume we’re talking about the same thing, but we’re really exchanging abstractions. My idea of a “cat” might be a Siamese curled on a bookshelf. Yours might be a dilute tortie staring aggressively. Neither of us is wrong—but we’re already operating in different mental universes.

Language can be precise, but it’s also inherently reductive. It distills rich, lived experiences into simplified symbols—and in that process, nuance is lost and meaning flattened. The ideas we share are already limited by what we’ve seen, felt, and experienced. So when we communicate, we’re not just putting experience into words—we’re also drawing from ideas already shaped by our own perspective. And because communication underlies so much of what we do, this layering of abstraction quietly shapes how we connect, decide, and understand.

But there is a solution:

language and ideas are two layers removed from the object, direct experience collapses that distance. That’s why hands-on learning, showing not telling, or even visceral storytelling cuts through in ways abstract communication often can’t.

When you see something with your own eyes, touch it, build it, or demonstrate it to someone else—you’re not just exchanging ideas about a thing. You’re encountering the thing itself. You collapse the layers. You bypass the abstraction and engage directly with the object.

In the end, ideas and words are only approximations. Real understanding lives closer to the source—in what we do, see, and experience for ourselves.

**🗃️**

This lyric might seem simple, but it’s a modern manifesto: hustle plus passion is a life equation for momentum. Hustle alone is grind. Passion alone is fantasy. But together—they move things forward.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this through the lens of my side project, Tangram Tools. I’ve had real passion for the idea, but if I’m honest, it hasn’t gone anywhere. I haven’t been hustling—haven’t been getting it in front of people, gathering feedback, or pushing it forward. The energy was there, but the effort wasn’t.

Strangely enough, writing this newsletter helped me realize that. Verstreuen is something I’ve come to hustle for. I carve out time to write it, share it, ask for feedback—even though I only have 11 subscribers. But I’m also genuinely passionate about it. I care about making it better. That mix—drive and direction—is why it’s started to build momentum, even in a small way.

The lesson isn’t new, but it’s real: hustle without passion leads to burnout. Passion without hustle stays stuck in your head. But when the two meet—when consistent effort meets genuine care—that’s when things start to move.

Passion is the compass. Hustle is the engine.

**🗃️**

Closing Thoughts

This week’s notes were a reminder of how deeply our thinking is shaped by the systems, language, and assumptions we’ve inherited—often without even realizing it. Whether it’s the concept of “development” as a geopolitical strategy, the way language influences our understanding, or how we define success, much of our worldview is built on foundations we rarely pause to question.

But that’s also where the opportunity lies. When we slow down and examine those layers, we start to see more clearly. We begin to recognize what’s shaping us—and where we might want to choose a different path.

That clarity is more than insight—it’s a turning point. It allows us to move from passive inheritance to active choice. And in that shift, we begin to shape not only how we think, but how we live—and ultimately, the kind of world we help create.

Thanks for reading Verstreuen

Thanks for taking the time to explore and reflect on my notes with me. If any ideas particularly resonated or challenged you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

👋 Until next week.

-GH

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