Vis Viva – Chapter #9 – Voices on the Wind

Eric says that after yesterday’s writing we should be a little more true to our predilection for dreaming and start to talk more of ephemera and the sort of things that differ from the day to day, well for most people. Just before I started writing I went outside to collect my thoughts out of the top left hand corner of my eye I saw a flash of cornflower blue and I allowed my eye to look up in the direction whence it came. My eyes followed the line up to the top of one of our yew trees as a large crow hopped onto the very crest of the tree. It waited there a while and then hopped back out of sight. Crows are couriers of power. This was a type of omen, because I was thinking about talking about dreaming and the silent acknowledgment of the crow agreed.

All today I have felt things jangling in a rather positive way in the web of life and my dreaming colour has come to me and into view a number of times, as it usually does when something relevant to me is going on. Tell this to someone in the church of reason and they may well reach for the diagnoses book. Such things though are a little beyond the scope of the normal human medical texts as yet.

The first time these types of phenomena begin to appear it can be both frightening and very easy to get obsessed by them. Now though I have had them for years and years; they no longer freak me out. The colour flashes are not physical plane colour flashes, in that if you were to take a picture with a conventional camera they would not be there. They appear in the perception as if you are seeing them with your eye; they are a flicker in the perceptual field that the brain recognises as seeing in the ocular sense. It clearly is not that though, it is something to do with the web of life, though, some form of oscillation. After monitoring this over a number of years I have found that the shade of colour often has information attached to it, some indication about what one should be doing.

Eric reminds me that we have as far as we can remember always had such things going on and that it was voices on the wind that we first really noticed. He is pretty sure that we have never ever spoken explicitly about this to anyone. These are perhaps the voices from Annwn, the other world of dreams, where everything is connected. They are of an ephemeral and floating kind, they hang haunting on the wind, just within and just beyond hearing. Like the colours one does not hear them with ears, one just hears them with consciousness. The power within registers the voices as a knowing the brain interprets as a hearing; different from insight, inner-sight and intuition, inner-tuition. The quality is very sound like in that it has tonal qualities and cadence, together with a sense of breathing to it. The feeling of breath is what brings the voices on to the wind and, in.

The world these days is a very noisy place and I don’t just mean all the mechanical noise that is around, the mobile phones and all that talking, talking, talking. Everywhere there appears to be a need for some background music sometimes tuned to Prozac station at the supermarket for all the desperate Stepford wives, other times to add some gaiety to the shop floor. That noise is in people’s heads. Go to any train station, fall silent and listen, listen to the incessant internal dialogue running round and around.

Eric says that one has to be quiet, very quiet to hear the voices in the wind and that it is very hard to do in the city. He reckons that if anyone really listens to the winds then they can turn off this internal dialogue and help learn how to listen with every fibre of being and this leads to a heightened state of awareness. Here, in that awareness, one can get a sense of the qualities and tones of the flow of the world, here then one can sense all the interconnectedness and that that tree and me are not that different. One can get a sense of the quantity of the universe and all its immensity, hear then one can get a sense of perspective. The silence beyond the clamour is where it is all at.

When I first heard those voices I thought they were nothing unusual, pretty ordinary and just took them as a day to day thing. Then I saw the film Betty Blue about a French woman who was a little crazy; “C’est seulement le vent, Betty”. After that I doubted whether it was such a good thing to hear these voices and tried to block them out. I found that singing helped a lot here. I lived in the city back then and it was on those late night walks back from the night bus stop when I used to hear them most. I used to get back from working in the club in the early hours of the morning. Even London is quiet then and the voices would come telling me about which plants were used for which ceremonies and that now that the hawthorn is blooming it is a good time for such and such. It was quite spooky, all alone, walking down those streets in North West London. After a while I relaxed about it, hadn’t one of my relatives been a gwrach? Perhaps then this was some lingering talent that I had inherited and I should not be afraid. Best not tell anybody though.

So the voices came and I listened to many, many winds; the soft gentle rustle as the yew trees play catch with the wind outside today, the haunting Aeolian scythe of wind in the telephone wires, the surf sparkled spray on an Atlantic day surging over the cliffs and the haunting melancholy of a late Spanish moor. The blotting paper wetness of mossy Welsh mist that creeps along a valley wearing a muffler and gloves and the timeless freezing fog of a Blumenthal forest, ancient and pregnant with snow.

Each wind has its own voice and mood. And those words they just kept coming, too. Sometimes it was a snippet of conversation from another land, or a pearl of wisdom. Sometimes it was a voice of trickery that scared me. I would catch a whiff of emotion too, borne on the wind, a tinge of fear here, a cloudburst or anger there. And my moods would match those of the wind, wild and windswept, stagnant and stifling. I learned to read the wind and its shift, both in me and not.

Eric says that the listening had paid dividends of a most peculiar nature. Now that I could listen people told me all sorts of things, things they never told anyone. He says that when people are truly deeply listened to it stirs something in them and acts like a magnet drawing out all those long held back words, it provides a wind to the sail of emotion and the timbre of their expression changes. Their stories come alive and vital. The silence acts as a void that draws and coaxes the first words out.

He reminds me how many times I have listened and for how long I have sat there and waited. He says that true listening is something that the world is bereft of these days. People do not take the time to make space and that what people are really afraid of is silence. He reckons a part of that is because it is for them the unknown and another part of it is that they know the seductiveness of silence and the power it has to make them lose their control. The precious doesn’t like this.

He says that listening can be very healing but reminds me that I have in the past carried that burden for many, many people and to my own detriment. He wonders if people remembered all the things they told me; they might be surprised at the level of disclosure. That is the good thing about introverts we joke; they keep it all in and safe. Yet it is all stored there.

So the voices and the colours are all phenomena experienced by the consciousness and are in some way related to things happening in the fabric of the web of life. The vis viva is animating it all and in heightened awareness the world we perceive can differ from the concrete day to day world which is shared as part of the common dream. These extra things are leaking through the concrete bastions the precious has set up and offer a hint at the other world journey. The other world is here too. It is not at another location, it is just that most of us don’t perceive it because the precious won’t let us.

The dream is fixed and until we wake up in the dream it is the only reality available to us. Yet that dream is Maya, it is Samsara and it is the folly of the precious that keeps it so.

When I stopped the world and saw that it was a dream, I knew I had begun to wake up to a separate reality that is every bit as real as the one that I thought I had been living in. To learn the ways of navigating this place pervaded by power is a work in progress, because that power is very, very real and it transcends the concrete reality of the world. It come before it and sets this dense physical plane in motion. It is the vis viva, that animates the power within and it is the power within that has chosen to experience the challenges of physical plane existence. After physical plane death the power within continues, it is no longer the power within per se; it has re-merged with the power without until such time as it has the next urge to incarnate.

The first step to waking up in the dream is to first of acknowledge that one possible hypothesis is that there is more to life than the “concrete” world, that perhaps that there are other realities and then to start building intent towards waking up in the dream. This is a neat trick because it placates the precious, miss-directs it, after all the precious is still in control because it is testing a hypothesis isn’t it?

What it doesn’t realise is that intent is way beyond the capacity of the precious to understand and because intent is related to true mind and not rationing rational mind; the precious likes the separative-ness of testing a hypothesis with perhaps a yes or no answer because there is an element of separating polarities at the level of true mind too and so it seems somehow familiar.

The next step is to build this intent by doing dreaming practice. Dreaming is best done, at least initially, in quiet with subdued lighting and no noise. The problem is that unless we have trained our bodies to relax properly and function well, the physical form is a source of noise. It doesn’t really matter how one gets one’s body under control, muscle relaxation techniques, martial arts and breathing all work. Then, the internal dialogue must be silenced. This can be done by focusing on a mantram, or visualising a yellow rose for example.

The noise of the precious needs stilled. The use of mantras has inherent in it a trap, the mantra becomes all. It is just a technique and nothing more than that. Working with the sound of Aum can help; it must not become all though, otherwise one cannot go further. When true calm comes the object of visualisation fades and then there is only blackness and silence. It is pretty hard to achieve and “noise” keeps breaking through. This is normal.

After some time practising; the darkness and quiet can be maintained for quite a while. Then one day specks of colour begin to pierce the darkness. Soon the “visual” field in inner space gets blotchy and expands into a rough edged ink blot; eventually the whole of the inner space can be filled with colour. This colour can and will change with time, it will settle down though. This then is how one gets into resonance with the power within and how one learns what part of the spectrum of the vis viva has incarnated. By staying in the colour things come, they are the guidance of your power within. You have learned to actively dream and sooner or later you will have the waking consciousness that the world of the precious is, but a dream. And that dream has inherent in it all the madness of human folly, the Maya and Samsara that cloaks the purpose of the power within and hence your true self. This is the initial act of waking up in the dream.

In parallel to active dreaming there is night time or passive dreaming. Everyone dreams and all one has to do is to remember the dream. This is a direct corollary for waking up in the dream, that is remembering the purpose of the power within and living true to the fate that one has set up for one self, in a sense manifesting the dream of the power within upon the physical plain. To do passive dreaming all one does is set one’s intent on remembering dreams. Sooner or later these can be remembered and written down; it is good to keep a notebook for these. These are the guidance of the power within that point at the next steps in unfolding fate. In time you will be fully conscious in the night time dreams, aware that you are dreaming.

As it is at night so it is in the day.

In time shifting into the dreaming colour can be done in the middle of Shinjuku station at rush hour. Eric says that it might be worth pointing out that when one is fully conscious whilst night dreaming, one can hear things going on in the physical world, be fully conscious of them and still be dreaming. He says that when fully operational in dreaming that consciousness can expand out over very large areas. He says that by listening to the wind and developing sensitivity to all sorts of things what in effect we are doing is training that sense of heightened awareness that the precious likes to keep quiet about. Deep down, you see, the precious knows that humans are capable of a lot more than they are ready to admit to and the precious is a jealous God, who needs constant worship.

The wind is calling now and whispering in my ear; time to finish for today and start again tomorrow.

Eric Rhosynglas

Insignificant Quotes

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.

Dalai Lama XIV

The stars looked down at me from infinite space. We are tiny, they said, but you are insignificant.

Shane Maloney

If your life is founded on what you can see then your success will be insignificant and very brief.

Sunday Adelaja

You’ll come to learn a great deal if you study the insignificant in depth.
Odysseus Elytis

The gift of life is present at every moment — even moments that seem insignificant or unpleasant.

Bryant McGill

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing as dead and as damned as an important thing. The things that really matter are casual, insignificant little things.

Patrick Kavanagh

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

Paul Ricoeur

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

Jocko Willink

What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

Norman Mailer

When people really understand the Big Bang and the whole sweep of the evolution of the universe, it will be clear that humans are fairly insignificant.

George Smoot

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

Mahatma Gandhi

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

Frank McCourt

—-

Small does not mean insignificant.

Theo Paphitis

The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.

Nicolaus Copernicus

One should perform even an insignificant task with respect.

Sarada Devi

Silent Collusion Quotes

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak.

Not to act is to act.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.

Leo Buscaglia

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

Elie Wiesel

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Plato

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

J. K. Rowling

Soul, Conscience and Temptation

In all the “manuals” of religion there is more about the “rules” than the implications thereof. They do not contain a “how to” or a “how not to” guide. This is a terse yet in my view accurate statement.

If one is attempting to adhere to the contents of any such “manual” one is bound to experience some kind of conflict between ideal and socially conditioned behaviour. It says do not steal, but many people do steal. One could argue that in the previous post I have infringed copyright. Yet I am in no way depriving these people of a significant income. People watch pirate videos and justify that this is not theft. They can be economical with the truth in insurance claims and tax returns.

{Theft and fraud which is a subset of theft.}

In esoteric terms the journey of evolution is to seek full integration of the personality, complete Soul infusion thereof and then blowing off the causal vehicle in order to remove the requirement for reincarnation – the fourth initiation.

That nutshell summary has vastness behind it.

I will speculate that every being on the planet has been tempted. The extent to which we succumb is varied.

As I have mentioned previously temptation is a thin end of the wedge phenomenon and it is via temptation that the door is prised open to allow darkness and evil to enter.

Some people are so greedy, gluttonous, and insatiable, that the wedge needs little lubrication. Those who want power and the thrill of “getting one over” another being, are easily tempted. The seeker of short cuts and advantage does not see virtue in level playing fields.

I’ll wager that most people have had pangs of conscience. The extent of these pangs varies and how they are acted upon / supressed is a personal choice.

I could suggest that the conscience can be the still small voice of the Soul trying to make itself heard above the cacophony of terrestrial and societal living. That is the true “self” attempting to take over the steering wheel and drive the car of incarnate existence in a less destructive way.

I am not a prude and have few corporeal hang ups. Less than most I speculate.

I have attempted in this life to listen to the real me, my Soul. One of the ways which this manifests for me is dreaming.

Possibly the biggest temptation for me came when I had to extricate myself from a prestigious and very well paid job. I was warned in a dream in no uncertain terms to “get off that road”. There were other “omens” too.

When things were financially tight and we were in the act of moving house, I got a ‘phone message in effect offering me a > € 8000 per month job, tax free, with loads of other “allowances” and diplomatic plates for my car. The ex-wife was seeing € and $ signs rolling in her eyes like in a Disney cartoon. That job would have acted as a way back into the science mainstream. I would be looking into satellite based LIDAR measurements using lasers, not exactly a giant leap for me. I had misgivings when I read the 350 Mb CD-ROM containing the regulations many of which were anti-corruption. I managed to extract myself and there was subsequent fallout from the greedy.

In general temptation for me has not been pecuniary. I have never made a false or exaggerated insurance claim and I am fairly meticulous with my income tax returns. I could easily have made shit up and gotten away with it, but I have not.

Because I am not interested in bossing people about and lording it over, I have had fewer troubles with the temptations of power.

Once the conscience has been drowned out or stifled by putting a pillow over its face and pressing down, the doorway to temptation is wide open. Then the “justifications” which allow and oil the way for the being to succumb, multiply and exponentially so. The slope downwards becomes slippery. Evil finds the particular furrow, the path of least resistance, inherent in each of us.

In my opinion, humans are very clever at finding ways to justify not listening to their conscience. It can be very inconvenient and many have ridden roughly over it. They have temporarily silenced it, yet the little blighter can be tenacious and it can continue to whisper in our ears.

A while back a paranoid man I once knew, who was a nasty piece of work called Terry, said to me that he slept well at night. It was something smug and clever to say. I saw that it was completely untrue and that this man was a liar. In my view this man cared nothing for others and was only in it for himself. He had evil in him. He was fearful, defensive, insecure, and punitive. He tried to bring others down to big himself up. But he earned a lot of money as a CEO. I did not get to see his Soul it was occluded.

He was a very bad and unpleasant influence on many, some aped him and copied his techniques of manipulation into their “play book”. I was relatively immune, not so others. When you come across a petty tyrant like this there is a wealth of learning to be had. This kind of manipulative power is salacious and attractive to some, glamorous even. To others it is fetid and malodorous.

In the news a tory-sleaze barrister is allegedly trying to “get out of” a speeding fine. Entitlement and invincibility, the delusory opium of power, has deranged her senses perhaps. Once the wedge, the burr under the skin, has found purchase it is difficult to extract. The rules are for the plebs and not us on Mt. Olympus.

Let me be clear I am in no way claiming to be an Angel or perfect. I have made mistakes and learned therefrom. I am not immune but I am less susceptible than I once was.

If you hear that still small voice, your conscience, whispering in your ear, listen with discrimination and discernment.

Is it saying to succumb to temptation?

Or is it suggesting that you can rise above this?

There may be a social cost of taking the more helpful and uplifting “guidance”. It may be less convenient and offer fewer apparent “advantages” but in the long run it will probably work out better. There will be less conniving, entanglement, secrecy, and shadow.

Your conscience might just be your Soul starting to ask for the steering wheel.

Stereotype and Social Conditioning in “Religion”

In so far as I can tell there is nothing in the source code for Christianity, a.k.a. The Bible, that suggests opulent robes, gold ornament and the accumulation of wealth, is Godly practice. It does not promote show nor lording it over. Feeding the five thousand is better than having a gourmet dinner and fine wine in a Bishops’ palace. It does not suggest kissing rings or bowing before priests neither does it recommend kiddy fiddling.

If you picture Buddha, then the most likely frame of refence is a garden ornament bought at a garden centre or online. If you think of meditation, you might imagine someone sat in the lotus position either clad in sexy yoga pants or monk’s robes. You might imagine abstemious behaviour and softly spoken calmness. The voice might even be affected. You might imagine a monk to be holy and enlightened, when in fact most are struggling and at the start of journey. You might associate the word wholesome and not inner conflict. People are pictured benign and not in constant battle with self. The image is of success and not travail.

I have seen novices in the lunch queue at a Thai forest Buddhist centre. They looked eager and you could almost hear the stomachs grumbling in anticipation. They were like cats waiting for you to open a packet of Whiskas.

Although familiar with the Jesus story and the Old Testament shenanigans, the West knows less about the Buddhist hagiography. There are some parallels between Jesus and Siddhartha.

People put priests on a pedestal. They create some quasi-idealistic view. One encouraged by the priesthood so as to ensure power and position. Always religion and power have walked hand in hand. Humans have manged to twist fundamental teachings to serve power imbalance and enforce obedience.  

Religious artwork so often, at least in the past, has depicted holy or saintly figures as radiation emitters with plasma coronas or halos. If you saw Buddha or Christ in person, you might ask them, “hey man, where is the groovy disc that I see around your head in your Insta-feed?”

In Buddhism you can sit under a bodhi tree or deep in a cave to gain enlightenment. You would not be sat on a mat in a porch, with a glass {or two} of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a packet of Marlboro lights and an ashtray, come rain or shine.

——

No monk or priest is ever seen farting of having a J Arthur (1). Though I suspect that these practices are not uncommon. They may even defecate and take a piss.

I will postulate that for the vast majority of people there is stereotype, social conditioning and prejudice associated with any and all kinds of religion.

I have been stereotyped as being an academic “boffin” despite the lack of leather patches on the sleeves of my jacket and my relative ability in performing common or garden everyday tasks. The brother in law thinks that I might be “clever” but on the other hand is not so keen when my opinions differ from his.  There are stereotypes associated with the religion of “science”. Covid brought these to the fore with “Professor doom” etc..

I have gotten several parts drunk with a catholic priest at a bar in Bristol and had a brilliant craic chatting with him. He cared deeply for his flock at Brixton prison.

It is not until you spend substantial quality time with anyone that you can get even a smidgeon of an idea concerning what they are like or what values they have.

This marketing phrase “Wellness” is often associated with wholesome and meditative practice. It is marketing. Many of the purveyors are form obsessed and shag like rabbits.

Marketing and image have sullied many things over the years. Fad, fashion and trend are not synonyms for spiritual evolution.

I am writing under the name drquantumyogi. Unlike many people who use the word quantum for marketing I can, hand on heart, claim to have an understanding of quantum which is better than the top 2% of the population.

If I was to market myself as a meditation type dude, I might use an image like this…

—–

I am 58 years old, > 95 kg in mass and there is no way on earth that I could do a lotus position.

There are a lot of people who make money out of coaching people towards, wealth, happiness etc…

There is a lot of image, a whole lot of show and much attachment. Business is business.

I guess we all pay our money and take our choice. If we make a donation at church, then we might grease our way into heaven. If we give alms to the Sangha, then we have accumulated good merit.

It is all about motivation…

—————————————-

What do you think of my postulate?

Does it ring true?

———————————————–

1.) J. Arthur Rank has also been used as cockney rhyming slang, both for “bank” and “wank” (slang for masturbation), typically shortened to “J. Arthur” or just “Arthur”. In golf, especially in the United Kingdom, a “J. Arthur” is slang for a shank.

In a Previous Incarnation…

This afternoon we have been up to the coast to enjoy one of the unspoiled and unpopulated beaches {at this time of year}. It was very tranquil and beautiful.

In a previous incarnation, about two decades ago, I designed and directed transferrable skills courses for science Ph.D. students. A major part of this was getting them to present their research in a manner comprehensible to funders, employers, and other members of the human race.

{As opposed to Ph.Ds.}

Many were very precious and unwilling to stray from the safe grounds of familiar and mathematical jargon. To do so was to make it dirty and impure.

“I am measuring the temporal evolution of the third order hyperpolarizability tensor of growing nascent Si (100) surfaces using femtosecond lasers during MBE growth.”

“I use lasers to understand semiconductor production better.”

But that was in a previous incarnation.

When I got home this afternoon, I opened my email box and I found a link to this:

« La Journée des Doctorants de Lannion 2023 aura lieu le 13 juin prochain à l’ENSSAT. Pilotée par l’association des doctorants de Lannion (ADL), cette journée a vocation à rassembler les doctorants, chercheurs et masters recherche de Lannion ainsi les acteurs privés et publics de la recherche. La ville de Lannion compte 60 doctorants dans des domaines aussi variés que la photonique, l’informatique, la chimie, les télécoms, … »

« Parmi les temps forts de la journée, une table ronde sur les opportunités après la thèse et un concours « Vulgarise ta thèse » ; 4 minutes pour présenter sa thèse à un public expert, néophyte ou complètement extérieur ! La meilleure présentation sera dotée d’un prix de 200 €. »

I have judged all sorts of poster presentations and because of my listening skills I can usually get the nervous to talk well. They are looking to get an international outlook. And here I am, half an hour away.

But I am not Coca-cola and have not been for nigh on two decades…

It is kind of funny.

What you do in one life is not necessarily transferrable to the next…

Weird…

Introversion and Nothing to Defend

Before I get back to my search for the Great White Lodge, The Nameless One and Ganesh, I thought I would l make a little detour.

I have been unusually fortunate in this lifetime because so many people have told me who and what I am, have given me the benefit of their wise advice and tried to teach me just how clever they are. I am clearly deeply in need of their teaching and education.

I have also noted that many have tried to beat me, to get one over on me and have wanted to compete against me.

When I learned “officially” that I was introverted INFJ and I told people that I was introverted many had difficulty accepting that diagnosis. They had me down perhaps as an extroverted go-getter. This difference in perception was to me, like so many other things, quietly interesting. I knew I was introverted. My mother used to joke about Marlene Dietrich. “I need to be alone.”

—–

Many have deemed themselves cleverer and more intelligent than me. They have even indicated this to me verbally.

I think it fair to say that my intellect is above average and it is with such an intellect, a scientific training, and a pictorial understanding of symmetry that I have studied the esoteric. Being a tenacious researcher, I have probably looked further and deeper than most.

There are many who like a good argy-bargy and a squabble. They can use this to test their apparent knowledge. There are others who are adamant. They can take no response or silence as tacit agreement. They can feel validated if there is no counter-argument. They may claim a mental victory and chalk one up metaphorically.

Introverts are not prone to wasting either time or breath. As a consequence, they let many things pass whilst condemning people to the “this bloke is a wanker” pile.

——

It really is a non-sequitur for some if you do not argue the toss.

If you have nothing to defend you can live life with greater economy and not waste time and energy. Those who want to win and score points fail to understand that you cannot be arsed. Squabbling like a three year old is not attractive to everyone.

I can think of many, many occasions, when people have assumed that I concur by my silence and they have been very wrong. It is not my job to think for them.

If one is self-absorbed, it can be difficult to perceive what is actually transpiring.

I am not interested in being right and winning squabbles.

{Some people call these, erroneously, arguments.}

Frame of Reference, Terms of Reference

I’ll kick this off with a suggestion.

The more “intelligent” you are according how these things are traditionally measured within the socio-political construct, the less likely it is that you will believe that anything lies completely outside your frame of reference and the more prone you will be to a form of intellectual arrogance. You will find it hard to believe that there are any things which you cannot get your head around.

It is common practice in the socio-political construct to launch an inquiry from time to time. For example, into the cost-cutting achieved by installing flammable cladding to high rise accommodation. There is often a great deal of argy-bargy into and about the terms of reference of any putative inquiry. This negotiation often ends in removing any teeth or bite from the act of show called an inquiry.  These are usually interminable. The jargon laden reports are boring, soporific, unintelligible and cause loss of will to live in the reader. Window dressing is window dressing and it can be used to placate the public with a “show trial” of going through the motions as measured by the metric tonne of paper produced. People may even be sufficiently deluded to imagine that toothless inquiries address problems.

If something genuinely new arrives, people will no doubt try to shoe-horn it into their frame of reference or terms of reference. After all some people insist that life should comply with their terms. Instead of being fluid, open minded and flexible, they insist on the application of a whopping great shoe-horn.

There is no way of getting over to a pseudo-omniscient being {self-diagnosed} that their whole approach does not nor cannot it ever work. They will keep on trying to the mantra of “this is the way we have always done this; this is our precedent.”

When there is no precedent relying on precedent is folly!!

I have sat on enough tedious academic committees to see terms of reference dogma enacted to the very letter.

I know this game…

—–

Some things are outside of our frame of reference and beyond the terms of reference to which we want them to comply.

Simple.

People struggle to accept it.

Great Ideas and Assumed Understanding

There has been a fair bit in the press about the Rwanda anti-immigration “strategy” and the send back the boats to France mind-set has purchase in the English mentality. The immigration mentioned here hardly scratches the surface compared to that of the Rio Grande. It is odd that many of those who are anti-immigration are first or second generation immigrants themselves. When people tout Rwanda as a safe destination, they do not include images of the Rwandan genocide.

——

There is an assumed understanding that “stable” Rwanda will not regress at least when pitching the “great idea” to the public. Again, Northeast Africa is in throes of conflict.

It is my thesis that people turned on by a so-called “great idea” often do not bother to think things through at any depth.

During the wife’s illness the level of on the ground support I have had is zero. I have also found myself supporting some of her friends and her family. Yet the French medical system has not once asked me if I can cope nor what level of support I might have. I can speculate that there is an assumption of proximal and helpful family. {It seems to me family is bigger and the ties are closer here.}

They do not get that we live alone and without either ‘phone or personal contact.

Nobody has checked that I understand what is being said to me. Not once has anyone asked if I understand. There was no social care visit to check that our home was suitable to receive a very severely ill patient and that I could cook beyond beans on toast.

I have had people talk at me in French. If they talk too fast, I can just glaze over, switching off any attempt to understand. This could be a tad dangerous. My face can be deadpan. But I can research on the internet and I have a science background. I am pretty self-reliant and only in utter emergency am I likely to ask for help. There was an assumption that I would telephone the nurses for information when the wife was very ill. This assumption was wrong.

It seems there is an embarrassment about initiating conversation with someone who might not speak French well which is almost pathological in some people.

It is kind of bizarre on one level. In the hospital I am assumed to understand complex technical information and in public because of my “poor” French I am assumed to be a stupid Inglish.

There is a level of assumed understanding which is underestimated in the latter case. I can probably read and understand more complex texts in French than your average Jean-Jacques or Marie-Claire. Do they read Camus?

I am not having a go. People do different things in different countries and the approach varies. In Britain they are shit-scared of litigation. In France personal responsibility is more important and despite the size of “state” it is less of a nanny.

What is common across all cultures is “assumed understanding”. People are too scared to check if they have understood, by asking.  It is bit of folly. Nobody wants to look an imbecile by checking if they have gotten the right end of the stick or not.

It is my other thesis that assumed understanding, including my own, is often wrong and almost inevitably incomplete. People assume understanding far more often than is wise.

Cultish Behaviour

This, in italics, from Wikipedia:

Pathological science is an area of research where “people are tricked into false results … by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.” The term was first used by Irving Langmuir, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, during a 1953 colloquium at the Knolls Research Laboratory. Langmuir said a pathological science is an area of research that simply will not “go away”—long after it was given up on as “false” by the majority of scientists in the field. He called pathological science “the science of things that aren’t so.”

Bart Simon lists it among practices pretending to be science: “categories … such as … pseudoscience, amateur science, deviant or fraudulent science, bad science, junk science, and popular science … pathological science, cargo-cult science, and voodoo science.” Examples of pathological science include the Martian canals, N-rays, polywater, and cold fusion. The theories and conclusions behind all of these examples are currently rejected or disregarded by the majority of scientists.”

The so-called “mainstream” never considers for a moment that it exhibits cultish behaviour yet it does shun, mock and excommunicate. Anyone who transgresses creed or dogma ceases to be socially acceptable. We are right they {singular} are wrong. They have transgressed.

In the Karate Kid original the Cobra Kai are encouraged to err from the warrior spirit by a crazed sensei. “Power over” turns promising organisations into the cult of the personality. Socio-political access and association with upper echelons of any societal hierarchy can corrupt. As a once so-called leader in a new age organisation and having had possession of shares with a paper value of £2 million I have seen how “power” might have an influence on knicker elastic. There are temptations of power which many yield to.

It could be argued that I have been “shunned” by UK academia.

With one very short lived exception, I have not spoken with anyone therein for 15 years. There has been virtually no response when I have attempted to correspond, what response I have had has been ultra-political with one eye for residual paper trail and plausible deniability. For whatever reason ResearchGate will not now give me an account. Without getting paranoid and “it is not fair” in a Trump like manner, these statements are factual and not emotive.

Make of this what you will…

Despite my considerable technical expertise, I was unable to secure employment and I lost count of the number of job applications I made. I put several toes in the water in the UK venture community and for me the water was ice cold. In Europe this was not the case. These are all circumstantial “evidence”.

Many societies are closed shops and have the “not invented here” mantra as lifeblood. They imagine it is their job to evangelise to the world. Science outreach can be seen as evangelism too! Nobody likes to consider that they have coercive control in their midst. They may dress it as “management” but there can be a thin line between management and coercive control. Dominic Raab has recently stepped down in a hissy fit because of his robust “management” practises.   

The problem can be framed like this.

Are they twisting your melon or are you a few cards short of a deck and forever wistfully seeking that lost marble. Are you as mad as box of frogs?

If I understand it correctly exclusion to the “naughty step” is a part of modern parental guidance. Exclusion works as a massive stick in these days of fear of missing out.

In the old days, if I had been naughty, my father used to clip me one, that was until when I was fifteen and studying karate. He went to clip me and I blocked him. That was the last time.

It could be argued then that I have been on the “naughty step” for fifteen years.

In the new age group I mentioned, whilst I was there it was relatively benign. It got a whole lot worse after I left, by account. I always take things relayed to me with a pinch of salt. The ex-protagonists still treat me with suspicion. Maybe they were indoctrinated against me. I don’t think they have healed from their experiences. If I am still a bogeyman, their melon has not been untwisted yet.

Cultish behaviour or coercive control is way more prevalent that we might like to admit. It is a sad phenomenon related to the chicken-coop pecking order mentality.

Say for example someone is bad mouthing me and putting me down, is that a form of melon twisting / manipulation? Am I fair game?

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“The term fair game is used to describe policies and practices carried out by the Church of Scientology towards people and groups it perceives as its enemies. Founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, established the policy in the 1950s, in response to criticism both from within and outside his organization. Individuals or groups who are “fair game” are judged to be a threat to the Church and, according to the policy, can be punished and harassed using any and all means possible. In 1968, Hubbard officially cancelled use of the term “fair game” because of negative public relations it caused, although the Church’s aggressive response to criticism continued.”

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It is all a bit sad really.

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How robust are your management practices?

Is there any hint of cultish behaviour at your bring your own booze cheese and wine parties?