About

In 1899, American economist Thorstein Veblen pioneered an effort to connect a science-based human nature to our socioeconomics reality. Veblen demonstrated how our evolutionary instincts and adaptive behaviors shape the institutional framework of American socioeconomics. He argued that socioeconomic phenomena are not static or predictable but rather complex, chaotic systems shaped by the intertwined forces of human biology, culture, and technology.

At best, Veblen was an inconvenient economist. After college, I could never understand why such a brilliant mind—one that offered a science-based perspective on human behavior and its socioeconomic impacts—seemed to have disappeared both inside and outside academia.

Pioneer in Transdisciplinary Economics

Despite his pioneering, transdisciplinary approach to socioeconomics, both academics and non-academics continue to reduce Veblen’s work through narrow disciplinary interpretations. Most academic research on Veblen has remained confined to economics and social sciences. This disciplinary compartmentalization, while valuable in its own right, has fragmented the understanding of his work. Each field examines Veblen through its own principles, often zooming in on narrow aspects without integrating insights from other disciplines. Outside academia, misinterpretations and misunderstandings in the media and on the internet further obscure his revolutionary insights.

A New Cosmological Lens of Human Modus Operandi

Veblen’s transdisciplinary approach provides a powerful “cosmological” lens through which to understand the human modus operandi that drives our socioeconomics. His work reveals a fundamental truth: our socioeconomic “problems” stem from ourselves—“We have met the enemy, and they are us.” He introduced a novel perspective on the forces of human nature and nurture, applying it to socioeconomics as a broader framework for understanding how humans provide for their fundamental needs.

Veblen and Me

After a career spent demystifying high-tech products for broader, non-technical audiences, I took up the challenge of understanding the “big picture” of Veblen’s work and communicating it beyond academic audiences. A century after his death, no one has yet cracked the code for interpreting, synthesizing, and effectively explaining his insights to the general public. I suspected that Veblen’s work was even more relevant today than it was in his own time.

A proverbial light bulb went off in my brain after years of researching Veblen. Veblen’s work cannot be fully understood within the confines of a single academic discipline—or even within an entire category like the social sciences. To grasp the full scope of his insights, I realized that the whole of his work is greater than the sum of its parts. Those parts range across the spectrum of human sciences, biological, social, and physical. What is needed is an approach that synthesizes these individual insights into a mosaic—a holistic understanding of Veblen’s work that transcends disciplinary silos.

Veblen Reimagined Blog

he result of my journey is this blog, where I attempt to present Veblen’s work as a coherent, interconnected whole. When viewed this way, his pioneering insights emerge as more relevant and powerful than ever—perhaps even more so than in his own time, a century after his death. This transdisciplinary perspective is like gaining X-ray vision—a tool for seeing through the invisible ideological force fields that shape our economic mythologies, political ideologies, and theological assumptions about human nature.