Category: Musings

The Self-diagnosed Omniscient

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I like this term self-diagnosed omniscient because not only does it sound good but it also has wide applicability. The number of people proclaiming their omniscience from soap boxes on the internet is increasing rapidly.

There are a number of logical implications:

It is impossible to teach or otherwise advise meaningfully anyone who is a self-diagnosed omniscient.

It follows that some of these diagnoses must at best be premature if not wholly inaccurate.

The number of the self-diagnosed omniscient over estimates the true omniscient population at large. The frequency of occurrence of self-diagnosis is high. One suspects that true omniscience is much rarer than that which is self-diagnosed.

What do you reckon?

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Over the years many people have told me what I am thinking according to them. They have speculated and perhaps gossiped about my motivations. Without exception {almost} nobody has checked their speculations and deep omniscient insight into me, with me. Many have felt that they need to offer me the benefit of their extensive, comprehensive and profound wisdom. Clearly they have noted a gaping vacuum in my knowledge which I myself have been totally unaware of. I have been fortunate to have free access to very many willing vocal and erudite teachers, just waiting to teach me, to learn me. I must have a special personal magnetism for opinions which at a magic high field strength draws these out of others in an irresistible way.

I have said this before:

I have never appointed a spokesperson or any kind of port-parole. If anyone, without exception, is claiming to speak on my behalf or have insight into my thinking, they are a liar and a charlatan. I have never asked anyone to speak on my behalf and if anyone claims to be doing this they are a lying bastard. If anyone claims to know where I am coming from they are a deluded lunatic.

Boys will be boys; they will gather round the campfire and make shit up. After a while they may even believe it…

Quack quack…

Blimey guv’nor its Pete Tong

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From time to time one can get the feeling that a miscommunication has taken place and guess that this is because of the host of assumptions made by others. As a consequence Pete Tong will soon be at the decks.

Imagine a conversation between two people.

If only one of them thinks miscommunication has taken place can they both be correct?

It is quite common for people to get the wrong end of the stick but be convinced otherwise.

I have had a recent instance where someone stated something and then put a chain of action in place without checking if it is what I want to do. They have assumed that I want such a thing, that I will be compliant. They did not ask me nor check. They just went ahead.

There have been a number of disconnects in communication between me and French people. There is an anticipation of a kind of response from me which when it does not arrive is difficult for them to assimilate {it seems to me}. If someone makes a statement I do not feel the urge to correct them. I am not in the habit of discussing things with which I do not agree. I do not need to be right. I tend to note the statement and my interaction can stop there.

This kind of miscommunication thing is quite common when group-think imagines an individual aligned to group-think because everybody else is. It also a common happenstance for the type of people one can recognise as “clever Trevor”. Because they self-perceive as wise they imagine others to be fully on board. Rarely do they check. They imagine that one is one of the ducks in a row when in fact one is a mongoose. Because they like ducks and are accustomed to them, they imagine that everyone is a duck.

I am not known for quacking though I might be crackers, a crackpot and otherwise a lunatic…

I hear Pete Tong making his way to the stage…

Thought Experiment – Could a Toltec Fake Science Know-How?

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The notion of Men of Knowledge, Toltecs, and the warrior’s path first came into the public domain via the opus of Carlos Castaneda. Many have been on a mission to prove him wrong and label him a charlatan. Unmasking and debagging and disproving generates a lot of clicks and kudos.

“Look at me aren’t I clever, Trevor?”

In his narratives the Nagual don Juan is wise in plant and fungal lore. Juan takes the piss a lot and makes Carlos trip his nads off. He makes him sew together the lips of lizards. Nevertheless Carlos got an Anthropology Ph.D. for his work at a respectable university in California. Juan is part yokel-part shaman. So for him to remain wise in his own context out bush is more acceptable. In general I’ll speculate that things flaky are more acceptable in California than in London or Oxford, old chap.

What would happen should such a being end up in a world top ten university trying to teach fee paying undergraduates? How long could such a charlatan maintain his disguise?

My own personal view is that a true man of knowledge should have a wide subject coverage and that should include “modern” versions of science.

Théun Mares outlines a putative organisational flow chart:

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So the not doing of a Toltec might be to act as a mainstream science academic for over a decade, publishing papers, writing grant applications, raising venture capital and filing patent applications.

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Could a Toltec fake science know how?

Could a scientist fake Toltec know-how?

Would the Toltec be the not doing of the scientist or vice versa?

Born in the USA – Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania

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Following the Evans thread this morning I came upon my great grandmother Annie Morgan. Who was born in Schulkil County Pennsylvania in 1890.

In the 1891 census they are back in Aberdare. Her parents must have popped over there between 1881 and 1891…It turns out she was the first teacher in the family…

Perhaps they offered some Welsh coal mining expertise… the family is all about steel and coal.

Around forty years ago we had a visit whilst  in Wales from two American women claiming to be relatives.

Perhaps when David and Elizabeth were in Pennsylvania they were staying with relatives in or near the so called Welsh Tract…

Does this mean that I can claim American citizenship by birth?

Far out…

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These below excerpted from Wikipedia

The Welsh Tract, also called the Welsh Barony, was a portion of the Province of Pennsylvania, a British colony in North America (today a U.S. state), settled largely by Welsh-speaking Quakers in the late 17th century. The region is located to the west of Philadelphia. The original settlers, led by John Roberts, negotiated with William Penn in 1684 to constitute the Tract as a separate county whose local government would use the Welsh language. The Barony was never formally created, but the many Welsh settlers gave their communities Welsh names that survive today. A more successful attempt at setting up a Gwladfa (Welsh-speaking colony) occurred two centuries later, in the Chubut Province of Patagonia, Argentina.

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Thomas Holme’s 1687 map of Pennsylvania. “The Welch Tract” appears to the left of center.

Prior to the arrival of Welsh settlers, the land of what would become the Welsh Tract was inhabited by Indigenous peoples, such as the Okehocking band of the Lenape.

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Schuylkill County  is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 143,049. The county seat is Pottsville. The county is part of the Northeast Pennsylvania region of the state.

The county is part of the Pottsville micropolitan statistical area, and borders eight counties: Berks and Lebanon counties to its south, Dauphin and Northumberland counties to its west, Columbia and Luzerne counties to its north, and Carbon and Lehigh counties to its east. The county is approximately 47 miles (76 km) west of Allentown, the state’s third-largest city, and 97 miles (156 km) northwest of Philadelphia, the state’s largest city.

The county was created on March 1, 1811, from parts of Berks and Northampton counties and named for the Schuylkill River, which originates in the county. On March 3, 1818, additional territory in its northeast was added from Columbia and Luzerne counties.

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19th century

Schuylkill County was created via an Act of Assembly on March 1, 1811, from portions of Berks and Northampton counties. More land was added to the county in 1818, from Columbia and Luzerne counties. At the time of its creation, the county had a population of about 6,000.

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The numerous jobs in the mining industry comprised a catalyst for mass immigration to Schuylkill County from the British Isles and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. As mines became more numerous (by 1846 there were 110 operators in the region and 142 collieries in Schuylkill County) and more complex (in 1846 there were 35 collieries below water level), mechanical breakers, steam locomotive, it became more labour-intensive both for accomplishing mining tasks and supporting mining’s peripheral industries. Such industries included manufacturing of explosives, metal screens, pump components, piping, and timber for support. This led to an influx of population into Schuylkill and other anthracite counties to fill these jobs.

Beginning with the Irish immigration in the 1840s, which was fuelled by the Great Famine and followed the end of the Civil War, immigrants from Eastern Europe, including Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Rusyns, Ukrainians, and Belarusians (which were usually known as Ruthenians), often from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, settled in Schuylkill County and laboured in the county coal mines. By the 1880s and 1890s, thousands of Italians immigrated to the county in pursuit of mining jobs.

Llanfihangel y Pennant – Trail Ends – Who are You?

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Some people may think me a bit of a bastard. Well that may be true.

Tracing back along the maternal grandfather line to the village punished by the English for harbouring the fugitive Owain Glyndŵr I have come to the end of the electronic trail.

My great-great-great grandmother Catherine got knocked up as a teenager and was sent away into service {there’s shame on her mind } to a house just North of Harlech. Ten years later she was back home with my great-great-great-great grandmother Dorothy down as pauper and then washerwoman at Pen-y-bont. Catherine had three more illegitimate children over the years. Catherine’s son my great-great grandfather was initially down as a Hughes. With my great-great-great-great grandmother down as mother at age 47…

No doubt the likes of:

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John Hughes 1813-1878 Hen Gapel Nant Gwynant a Oerddwr uchaf

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Might not have approved of Catherine. I don’t think he is a direct bloodline relative but he looks dour and fire and brimstone.

Imagine a Welsh preacher’s accent…

“You shall burn in the fire pits of hell for your lustful and dire sinful transgressions!!!”

My great-great grandfather stayed with Dorothy until he got married. Suddenly in 1871 she was living in a more posh house and he had converted to Jones.

Later Catherine was found living as a widow, though she never married, with a John P Jones {head of family} and her fourth child. She is down as sister to John which may have eased the gossip in Ffestiniog.

I suspect that he was the knocker-upper and hence my great-great-great grandfather…

In 1827 Dorothy may have married Hugh at Llanfihangel y Pennant. She was already a widow in 1841.

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Should I wish to research further I need to visit this isolated church north of Dolbenmaen. The roads here are poor and single track.

The trail ends here. There is an impasse.

In 2007 I looked into taking over the lease of an outdoor centre then owned by Hillingdon Council in order to run an outdoor training centre and place of retreat. The lease was encumbered by various Lottery grant rules and was a nightmare. I suspect the rules have lasped.

It has since been bought and refurbished as Brynkir Coach House

Click here

Back then I met the land owner also a Jones in Beddgelert. He was clearly a big cheese. Jones’s family had sold a part of Snowdon to the National Trust. He was maybe a distant relative

Brynkir, known as Cwm Pennant is just down the valley from Llanfihangel y Pennant.

Maybe one day I’ll swing by the church and ask to look at the register of births, marriages and deaths… I can look at the graves. They were probably too poor to trouble the monumental mason

The trail ends here.

I have a working narrative that is self-consistent now.

Spooky – Who Are You ? – Gwrach

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Last night we watched an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” with Greg Davies.

His search was uncanny in similarity to mine Tremadog , Nantmor etc.. It was so close as to be spooky. He visited places I know well.

So I have been back on the ancestry bus.

In 1841 one of my relatives lived here..

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Somewhere between Sygyn Bach and Cae Du at Sygyn Isaf {not shown on the map}.

Here is the mill…centre left on the map.

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It is rumoured than one of my realtives was a witch…

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Regional Nepotism in Buddhist Narratives ?

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Although my mother, when  sun tanned could negotiate discounts from the Indian traders in the market in Gravesend, I am not of Indian nor Asian genetics. If she wore a sari and a bindi she could pass as Sikh. Yes one could say the Celtic migration had a terminus in a valley to the South East of Snowdown. I was however born a ginge…

As an outsider I note how many so-called previous lives of Buddha are in the general geo-location of Northern India – Himalayas- Afghanistan. He is often a prince and sometimes Brahmin. I note that the vast majority of Tulku rebirths are in Tibet – Nepal – North India – Bhutan area. If not there then there must be some familial nepotism.  Tulku begets tulku out of some follower or nun. I have never heard of a Viking incarnation. Once Buddhism spread East we did not get a sudden burst of Icelandic Bodhisattvas. The streets of Rio were not awash with them dancing at carnival.

My scientific mind notes this discrepancy. It seems unbalanced.

Surely a Bodhisattva reincarnating for the benefit of all sentient beings would not restrict themselves geographically or demographically?  Global impact in isolated countries high up in the mountains is not likely to be high. Skilful means suggests ploughing other wider fields.

There is a kind of perhaps spiritual snobbery. After all the Vedas and Buddhism predate Christianity and Islam. Only the pilgrim skilled in meditation, asceticism and vegetarianism can get enlightened. Beer and twice cooked chips are verboten, interdit. Turmeric is a must.

It is illogical that someone should only be born in the same geolocation if they are to garner a wider experience. If you have not tried rollmop and aquavit…you have missed something.

This for me seems slightly problematic in the around the camp fire tales of Buddha. The other problem I have is with the notion of many Buddhas stretching back millennia. The human vehicle was according to archaeology not as intellectually advanced and capable. All those millennia ago it did not look human.

How could a Buddha be Neanderthal?

There is an evidenced based narrative chronology which errs from the verbatim understanding of canon and Mahayana canon more so. If these are meant to be metaphor and parable, there is less problem.

Nevertheless is seems strange that Buddha only hung out there or thereabouts…