I did not start working on Thoughts because I felt I had an extraordinary amount to say to the world. I had a question. A question that at first seemed like simple professional curiosity, but gradually led to more and more questions. In the end, it turned into nearly eighteen months of research, analysis, and systematization. The result is the first version of a knowledge system that enables me today to examine not only isolated stories and ideas, but also the connections, similarities, and differences that emerge between them.
From this work, Thoughts was born.
But how did I get here?
1. The question that started it all
When I was studying ESG and applied sustainability, I encountered three fundamental perspectives with increasing frequency.
Our relationship with the environment (E), our responsibility toward people and communities (S), and questions of governance, decision-making, and accountability (G). While learning these frameworks, my own work was focused precisely on the intersections of education, leadership, community building, and sustainability.
After a while, a thought occurred to me:
If we approach an ancient source of knowledge with today’s ESG questions, what will we find?
I chose the Bible first.
Not because I wanted to prove that the Bible is secretly a modern sustainability handbook. Nor to retrospectively force twenty-first-century concepts onto a text composed millennia ago. Rather, I was curious to see what answers, recurring patterns, and new questions might emerge if I examined these narratives through the lens of humanity, the environment, and responsibility.
2. Eighteen months among stories
The question gradually evolved into a methodology. I did not merely read the narratives; I began processing them in a structured manner. I examined the characters, their decisions, their responsibilities, and their relationships with one another and the created world. Special attention was paid to the consequences of decisions, questions of leadership and service, justice, community, temperance, stewardship of resources, and responsibility toward future generations. Gradually, this work generated tens of thousands of interconnected knowledge elements. At that stage, I was no longer building a simple anthology of texts. I was attempting to create a system in which sources, interpretations, and connections could each be examined independently. Over these eighteen months, however, I learned something else.
The more connections we uncover, the more vital it becomes to recognize what we do not know.
3. The biggest surprise: Governance (G)
At the outset, I expected environmental or social questions to predominate. My categorization system, however, revealed something different. During the analysis, around 75% of the classifications were linked to the G perspective—governance: management, responsibility, decision-making, order, and accountability. This proportion is a direct result of the chosen methodology and classification rules. It does not mean that 75% of biblical content is objectively about corporate governance.
Yet the insight was profound for me.
It raised a new question:
What if governance is not primarily corporate management, but the question of responsibility entrusted to human beings?
After all, we all govern something. Ourselves. Our time. Our relationships. Our work. Certain affairs of our families or communities. Some are entrusted with an institution. Others with children, colleagues, or shared resources. And our decisions have consequences for all of us. The question therefore became increasingly personal:
What am I doing with that which has been entrusted to me?
4. When the stories connected
Processing the biblical narratives gradually gave rise to a knowledge graph. Certain recurring questions became increasingly prominent across the system: power and service, truth and justice, the individual and the community, work and moderation, nature and responsibility, conflict and forgiveness, knowledge and decision-making, present and future.
Then a further question emerged:
- How did other civilizations address these very same questions?
- What do Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, and other cultural and philosophical traditions have to say about them?
- Where do their answers converge?
- And where do they diverge?
From this realization emerged the idea of Rule & Wisdom.
My goal is neither to read identical teachings into every tradition, nor to use the Bible as the measuring stick for other cultures.
Quite the contrary.
I want to explore diverse traditions through their primary sources, in their historical contexts, and wherever possible, guided by their commentators.
Because along the way, a guiding principle became essential to me:
Connection is not identity. Similarity is valuable. Difference is knowledge.
5. Why Thoughts, and not Teachings?
This distinction is particularly important to me.
In the Thoughts section, I do not wish to create the impression that the system provides definitive answers to the great questions of human life.
My purpose is not persuasion. Rather, it is an invitation to reflection, comparison, and dialogue.
A daily thought may stem from a millennia-old narrative, a philosophical insight, a contemporary social dilemma, or a personal experience.
- It may contain observations with which you agree.
- It may also contain ones you would challenge.
That is not a problem.
The value of a thought is not determined solely by whether we agree with it, but by whether it helps us understand something more clearly.
6. How to read the daily thoughts
My hope is that the daily thoughts are not treated merely as quotes consumed in a few seconds.
Instead, let them be short encounters: with a source, with a question, with another perspective—and ultimately, with ourselves.
While reading, it is worth asking five questions:
- What does it claim?
What is the central message? What is actually stated, and what am I adding through my interpretation?
- What is it built upon?
Historical fact, religious teaching, personal experience, philosophical inquiry, or contemporary analysis?
- What other perspectives might exist?
How would someone living in a different era, another community, or another cultural tradition view this?
- What do I think about it?
Do I agree? Do I doubt it? Do I have life experiences that confirm or challenge it?
- What will I do with it?
Does it change anything in how I decide, lead, learn, work, or relate to others?
There is no need to find immediate answers to every question.
Sometimes, looking at something once taken for granted with fresh eyes is already an achievement.
7. Source and interpretation are not the same
One of the most essential methodological rules of this system is keeping sources distinct from the interpretations attached to them. An ancient story carries its origin context, cultural meaning, and intra-traditional interpretation. Applying the lesson of that story to modern circumstances is an entirely different matter. Seeking parallels across other cultural traditions is different still. Similarity does not prove that two traditions teach the same thing. Nor does difference imply that one is mistaken. Recognizing a recurring pattern does not mean we have discovered a universal truth. That is why Thoughts should not just be read, but questioned.
8. Why only 0.2?
After eighteen months of work, it would be easy to claim the system is complete.
I do not believe it is.
I intentionally designate the current release as version 0.2.
Although a significant body of structured knowledge and a working methodological foundation are in place, the work is far from finished. Categories can be refined. Interpretations can be debated. The range of sources can be expanded. The methodology can be developed further, and most importantly: new practitioners, scholars, and cultural communities may pose questions that have not yet occurred to me.
The goal is not to declare triumphantly one day:
- we have understood humanity.
The goal is the gradual development of a knowledge system where more sources can be verified, more cultures can speak in their voices, and more questions can be examined responsibly.
9. An invitation
When I set out with this question two years ago, I did not know where it would lead.
I began exploring an ancient source of knowledge using contemporary professional frameworks.
Along the way, I encountered human questions that reached far beyond the starting point.
And ultimately, I felt the need not merely to process and systematize these thoughts, but to share them.
Not to tell others what to think.
Rather, because I believe human knowledge is enriched not only by individual insights, but by the meeting of diverse perspectives.
I invite you, therefore, not to read the daily Thoughts as finished answers.
Ask questions. Debate. Seek other sources. Compare them with your experience.
And if you find an error or omission in any thought, that too is a valuable contribution.
Because a knowledge system incapable of learning from its shortcomings will eventually lose the very reason it was created.
A thought truly begins to fulfill its purpose when it is no longer mine, but continues in you.
Komáromi Móric
Related reading: The Methodology of Thoughts
