Category: personal development

Slapdash or Thorough?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

With human nature being as it is if you offer someone an apparently low risk “quick” shortcut to just about any situation, they will take it in preference over a risky more long term perhaps considered path. In movies this shortcut mentality often leads people into dire situations which might have been avoided. In wanting the easy out they can fuck up and badly so. People avoid effort and application and can find themselves up the proverbial creek in a barbed wire canoe.

This tendency could be easily exploited. I know this well.

Most people bodge, cut corners and have a hasty slapdash mentality. Patience is as rare as a full refreshing fresh water lagoon on the Nullarbor plain in dry season. People like band aid fixes, an Elastoplast quick answer. One that gets a “problem” off the desk at least for the time being. Better still if they can palm the “problem” off onto someone else, make it an SEP. The greasy buck never stops.

The problem is that shoddy and slapdash can create more problems than it solves.

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Today I have been cleaning out the sewerage drains to the cess pit. They have been problematic since we arrived. They are designed for old-school high cistern tsunami-flush systems not modern eco-cistern flushes. I tend to have to clean about twice a year and my plumber’s rods have paid for themselves in saved money many times over.

We could call it “Zen and the Art of Cleaning out the Shitter”.

The idea being that it is a job that needs done before my bionic hip.

Because my motion is increasingly spastic I could not perform one of the fiddly tasks to  get a rod around a partial U-bend. I tried and had to ask the wife to help. There was a choice to do a partial clean and maintenance or do a thorough job. She was able to do the fiddly bit and I was able to finish a thorough job. The rods, now washed, are drying on the drive.

I was less Zen today because of the awkwardness of my body and the pain in my hips.

Similarly the ceiling in the lounge could use another coat of paint at one end. We could leave it or I could do it tomorrow. The temptation to let standards drop is stronger because of my incapacity. We have already made a few compromises. They are realistic.  Time is running out a little.

I would like to have all the “heavy” tasks out of the way before they slice me up. I don’t know how incapacitated I will be nor for how long. There are some things that only I can do.

People can mistake being slapdash as being clever or cunning. Cleverness is not the same as wisdom which prefers a more thorough approach.

Wisdom can appear to take more time in the short term, but in the integral over all events, thoroughness is often a saver of time.

Slapdash people never get to see the experimental data which backs us this postulate {above}. They are hasty and prejudiced. They KNOW they are right.

Is Being Negative Clever?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This topic was raised in a dream last night.

Some imagine that being highly sceptical and picking holes in everything is the hallmark of intellect and perhaps cleverness. Please understand that when I use the word clever I do not do so in a positive sense. Clever for me is a derogatory term implying an arrogant perhaps smug self-satisfaction, a know-it-all misplaced glee. It is very easy to pick holes, much harder to mend them. I’ll suggest that it is a flaw of human sociopolitical mindset to be negative. To always find fault and thereby prove just how bad and terrible things are. It is a prejudice. A crowd, perhaps baying, will get behind a negative sentiment easily.

Back when I used to do personal and team development courses my favourite piece of personal feedback was, “Alan’s ability to constantly find positives in every situation was tiresome and irritating!” This was from young Ph.D. students at a Complexity doctoral training centre in UCL. Young people full of negativity are hard to motivate. Can’t is a self fulfilling prophecy. Eeyore is alive and tolerably well, not too bad, getting by, moping.

One of the things which has surprised me about France is just how negative people collectively are. They are inert, they complain and find fault. They are actually more negative than cynical Brits. They have shit loads of great technology which nobody outside of France buys. This is because they seem too shy and embarrassed, perhaps arrogant and lazy, to meanigfully address non Francophone markets. There is a cloud of negativity and little encouragement. The medical profession here lacks warmth and is process driven. It is very good but mostly soul less. Few understand my post hip operation career at the Bolshoi. Graveyard humour is lacking and as a result things can be dour and sullen.

In the dream last night I was talking with a British GP doctor. She was posh upper class and old school, roughly my age. She was tweedy and clearly had an intimate relationship with gin and tonic. You could imagine her on a pheasant shoot equipped with cognac filled hip flask. She was looking at all my extensive medical tests. On the basis of these she wanted to know why I had come to see her. I explained that I was concerned about getting a post cold chest infection. She said that I should not be such an idiot. All my tests showed that aside from my arthritis I am in a very good state of health for my age and considering my past consumption. She said that we was considering telling me to fuck off out of her office. I do not have COPD and my ticker works just find. I said that the constant pain puts a down lens on things. She said that in a half a year or so things would look more rosy. Cheer up!

It kind of highlights how the medical profession may send one off to be a lab rat and then forget to give you perspective. If you have 70 medical appointments in a year you will assume yourself to be severely ill, when you may not be. It shows how the big grey heavy mental cloud of negativity can drag you down suck out your spirit like a Potteresque dementor.  On Monday I stood in the “happy” queue at the pharmacy in the local village. Shiny happy people it was not.

“Sitting here eating my heart out baby, I need some hot stuff baby…” It was a shame that the radio was not on…

The world right now lacks direction, positive direction. It is a heavy and very negative space. Hope is a very rare thing just now. Division and negativity are the prevalent toxins.

Being overly negative is a very big downer…man…

Atonement – Ruining Lives

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The other night we watched a quintessentially English film called “Atonement”. It was very well acted and full of luvvies. The costumes and setting were excellent. It was full of repression and class tension. The gist of it was that a posh teenage girl lied about events, a possible sexual assault. As a consequence a lower class man previously sponsored through Cambridge by the family was arrested and gaoled for the assault. The young woman of the house {the sister of the informant} and he were finally opening up about their strong feelings for each other just before the event. He, the outsider, was sent to prison in disgrace and their relationship was severed. The young woman of the house left the family. All because of the younger sister’s lies, the stretching of “truth” by the teenage girl who was too embarrassed to change her story. Before she got to atone for her sins, her older sister died in a Nazi bombing of London and he died during the BEF retreat to Dunkirk. The young informant wrote a whole novel imagining the lovers together and her atonement. It was all made up in her head, something she imagined doing but never could. It was too late. She did not atone. She imagined making up a “happiness” for them atoned for her actions. In reality it did not nor could not.

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It shows that those fond of attention with a talkative tongue can invent shit and ruin the lives of others. Talk can literally derail lives. A few words in haste can have a devastatingly destructive impact. I am fairly sure that the basic gist of the story is played out time and again. The versions and circumstance vary, but lying for attention may be a very common theme. The film suggested that the protagonist who wrote a novel about the betrayal struggled with appreciating the impact and scale of what she did. Not everyone will struggle, the more sociopathic may feel justified and never think of it again. But if we are human we all kind of know when we have betrayed, let down and not been impeccable. Our conscience may vary. We may have a few nights on the pillow before sleep when the ghosts of deeds past parade before our mind. It may be more impactful and of a greater longevity.

It is often the outsider, the person who is not present, who has their lives ruined.

If we are so lucky as to be offered a chance to atone in some way for our deeds then the universe is kind to us. Should we fail to seize such a thing then our guilt may grow and metastasise. In reality we can never change nor undo the damage we have done. Any “sorry” if heartfelt is to assuage our own feelings of misdemeanour. Karmically it is at least an acknowledgement of responsibility and perhaps of learning. If we learn from misdemeanour then it has at least served some purpose. If we are a serial offender then pain and ruin has been wasted. It is wanton destruction.

It is logical that one lie almost invariably leads to others. Unless the truth is out, the lies propagate. The karma of lies can often be the perceived need for more lying, more falsehood. The causal impact of lies and exaggerations can be manifold.

A simple act can bifurcate through space-time.

Fate and Façade

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

A while back I wrote and entire blog around the notion of façade. It was called “Spiegelfassade”. The idea being is that people portray a façade, a persona, an ersatz, to others and then hide behind that. Rarely are human beings WYSWYG. They live in manner inconsistent with their authentic essence, life is a show-and-tell affair and they are not true. The public-relations-faux-façade is more present and giga-pixel ready these days. Insta-ready is not reality. One could make up a whole new identity with the help of AI and photoshop. This having a cover story is not new, it has been around for ever. There is tacit acceptance that some will need a cover in order to ply their trade. Others can take a face from the ancient gallery in a sociopathic manner. Others are knobheads.

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The trouble with cover stories is that people can struggle to know what is cover, what is real. There were cases in the UK of undercover cops fathering children whilst in deep cover. Who knows how wide the psychological damage from that propagated? I doubt national security warranted such cynical imposition.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I kept “getting” the number 37. Today I learned that 37 is a prime number, which I kind of knew anyway by sight. Apparently, that makes it useful for cryptography. If you ask human beings to pick a number at random between 1 and 100 it is the second most popular number after 7. Human random number generators are skewed. It is also a number used in a magician’s or mind reader’s force. They can, by prompting, guide you to this number. Ta-dah…magic!! 73 is also a prime number which makes 37 an unusual reversible prime. People choose numbers that are “lucky”. The odds for picking 37 are not 1 in 100. Humans have biases where they imagine there may be none.

The problem comes when façade interacts with façade and there is an illusion of reality on one or both sides. To an extent this is the basis of all 1:1 human interactions. We have a professional façade, a home one and perhaps are real only when we are alone. But if we have over egged the façade, it is impossible to understand or know our true authentic essence. People do not know themselves well and may deny a whole bunch of stuff. They may only know their shell, their façade, which they mistake for reality.

One of the answers in the University Challenge quiz last night was that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. People can quote philosophers in an erudite manner as a groovy tag to conversation. Rarely do they enact fully. Even those enamoured with the classics may quote more than do. We are selective. In this context fate is an interesting idea, that has on occasion a hackle tingling effect. We might like to believe it but only to an extent. We think we determine our life direction rationally, we choose. But a simple leaky condom can alter trajectory dramatically. We can be fated to meet someone who changes our life forever. We may miss a meeting that might be transformational by a hair’s breadth. We were not yet fated for that transformation; we came within a whisker.

If we live within the confines of our façade we may never know. If we are meant to find out, that façade might crack and perhaps violently so, revealing an unprotected nascent embryo beneath. It may evolve or develop another calcified shell quickly, lest the world sees an emperor unclad.

In all of us the authentic essence might leak through a crack. We might think, “what the fuck was that?” as we glue the porcelain mask quickly back together.

If like a Matryoshka doll there is façade after façade, identity after identity, it may take a long while to find that authentic essence. If we are fated to approach said essence then we will, no matter how much upheaval and struggle it entails. Layer after layer needs peeled back and like with onions we may cry along the way. If we are fated to stay in façade-land that is where we eke out our days.

Fate may engineer or come close, in one of these cases we will never know. Along the way we will have lent fate a hand by our choices, our decisions. It was fated thus.

The ancient adepts of the Tao….

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and comprehensive.

Their minds were too deep to be fathomed.

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Because they are unfathomable,

One can only describe them vaguely by their appearance.

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Hesitant like one wading a stream in winter;

Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;

Cautious and courteous like a guest;

Yielding like ice on the point of melting;

Simple like an uncarved block;

Hollow like a cave;

Confused like a muddy pool;

And yet who could quietly and gradually evolve from the muddy to the clear?

Who else could slowly but steadily move from the inert to the living?

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He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full.

But precisely because he is never full,

He can always remain like a hidden sprout,

And does not rush to early ripening.

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Excerpted from “Tao Teh Ching” by Lao Tzu

Shambhhala Dragin Editions Trans. John C .H. Wu

ISBN 0-87773-388-0

The Proud Disconnect

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I have long noted that I do not seem to have the same “stars in my eyes” that others might do about fame, kudos and positions of sociopolitical power. Because I have not shown the deference deemed owed by some, I have put noses out of joint and have experienced payback. I am unskilled in the art of sycophancy and brown nosing. Luckily my lack of said interpersonal skill is not tested these days. I can see that there is often a social-disconnect in which people are expecting some kind of different behaviour from me. I do not play the mutual itchy-back game well. As a young man and researcher I was academically precocious and unfiltered towards my “older and betters”. It was not a friend winner nor was it politically astute. To this day I am unlikely to doff my cap correctly were such behaviour deemed warranted. I don’t seek kudos nor do I deem it important. It is impermanent and thereby illusory.

I have always had the notion that I am a little alien to this planet. Others differ in outlook, I think.

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My first celeb crush was on Delenn…

The biggest disconnect which I seem to have with society at large comes with this weird word “proud”.

Contestants on Masterchef Australia want to make their family proud and are proud of their creations. Coaches are proud of what their teams do in Rugby and Soccer. Parents are proud of their offspring and their achievements. People are proud if little Johhny gets into Oxford or Marie-Claire the Sorbonne. People can be proud they went to a Cambridge College or to Imperial. They can be proud that they finished a marathon or that they quit crack cocaine. They can be proud that they helped an old lady cross the road. People on SAS Celebrities can be proud of the effort they put in. Everybody wants to be proud of something, its seems. A lot of gay people are proud and have pride.

I just don’t get it…it is not a word that I would use.

In the past I got a degree and a Ph.D. Going into the viva for the latter, I was very well prepared. My thesis was a good journeyman effort with published results. Nothing earth shattering. My assessment was that I would pass. This proved true. It was as I had assessed. No biggie. Job done, next thing. I wasn’t proud of it. Though to keep the peace I had to sit for hours in the Royal Albert Hall for the purposes of ritual magic. I was not proud, my realtives might have been. I thought the Ph.D. simply consistent with effort. I did not believe I deserved it. I believed I had satisfied the criteria. It was normal.

One of the things I have is the question, “is it possible”. This question when answered in either sense is usually enough for me. I asked myself recently, “is it possible to get a quantum optics patent granted without the use of a patent attorney and having done no university level science for well over a decade?” The answer was yes. My curiosity is satisfied. I am not bothered about winning.

Were I to go on Masterchef {UK if they allow men of my age and size } I would probably prepare very meticulously. The question would be, “could I make some food that experts thought was tidy?” If the answer was yes, I would probably lose interest. To take it to conclusion and make myself “proud” would not occur.

I do not recall anyone other than my nan saying she was proud of me. If you say it over and over, proud is such a weird word.

I have in general been happy. If I have done my impeccable best at anything that is enough irrespective of level of success measured or otherwise. Why would anyone be proud about putting a good effort in? It makes no sense to me. Isn’t a good effort the default?  

I have not got a trophy cabinet…I don’t need affirmation.

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As a little exercise listen carefully and note how many times the word proud is said in your earshot over the next few weeks or so…

Will you be proud of how many time you note the use of the word proud?

How long before you give up?

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Beck and Call

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

People can be complacent, imagining that others will always be around even at their beck and call. People do not imagine that another might disappear into thin air, either with or without a puff of smoke. If you are institutionalised in say academia there is an assumption that you will remain therein and readily contactable, on tap. No-one foresees that you will go off into the wilderness to live as a yogi. They can’t treat you just how they see fit and you must suck it up. You can be the “dependable”. One click of the fingers and you are always there.

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We are accustomed to watching “24 hours in A&E” and the interviews with relatives bang on about how important family is and that it is unwise to take time and people for granted. They are clearly prompted by the interviewers with scripted questions. The answers are formulaic, fairly repetitive and preachy. When I hear people say that they must not take things or people for granted it does not ring true to me. What they mean is, “Phew, when  this crisis is over, we will endeavour to go back to pretty much how we were.”

You can work out if I am being cynical or simply accurate. What is your take on human nature?

So many people do take others for granted perhaps to be picked up and used as and when. I know from my own experience that many people have used me and, in my desire to help, I have actually done them a massive dis-service. I have disempowered them and robbed them of the lesson of using their own efforts.

If I have any regrets in this life, this is one of them, disempowering people by trying to help and make their lives easier, doing things for them. This leads in many cases to being taken for granted.

Grants however can be withdrawn…the complacent and entitled rarely expect this.

There is a type of person who imagines everything, everyone is at their beck and call…They can get upset and have a tizzy when this proves not to be the case.

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What happens when you snap your fingers, metaphorically or otherwise?

Do you get?

Do doors open?

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Who Do You Take Seriously?

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I’ll start this off with two omissions.

Of late we have heard a lot of the orange-drone-voice-man and his quest for Swedish Krona. The body language of his interaction with Vlad the Impaler has been dissected, no doubt for a fee, in various outlets. Not one of them has thought to mention that Putin is a dan grade judoka. Probably none of these body-language experts have been on the mat. If like Putin you are a lifelong judoka you cannot but help assessing where the centre of gravity of people is. This includes during handshakes. Instinctively one adjusts position and weight to see how another responds. A player of with-caddy-cart 18 hole golf has a different mentality to a judoka. Always there is an inkling of what throw one might attempt. A golfer might not anticipate this. Putin might one day step in for an Ipponseionage and bam…Putin will always be a judoka to the core.

Unless I am mistaken the history of the tribes of Israel as per the old-testament speaks of the wrath and retribution of God. There is Divine intervention on a biblical scale. Right now Israel is going biblical on Gaza. Maybe they have checked this out with God and he is on board, maybe not. If he is unhappy with this bellicose vengeance he might have to intervene. I have not heard this aspect discussed. But large scale divine intervention is a part of their religious hagiography. Maybe God is no longer as important as Netanyahu.

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As an old fart in rural Brittany there is no reason why anyone might take me seriously, even were my observations apt and applicable. This is because I am not famous nor am I a big cheese. I do not have thousands of followers on this internet thingy. If you are a nobody, nobody takes you seriously. You have to have a gang, a club, a peer group or be properly institutionalised. It is possible that people who have been in the same institution for several decades might imagine me the lunatic!! Life has a few quirks.

I don’t think that golfer boy is noting a shift in the way the world is. He is a bit too stuck in the past. He does not have a wide encompassing view of humanity as a whole.

As a rule of thumb people give the most credence to people who are relatively close to them physically, their colleagues, who think in a similar manner. They like what they hear back so they take it seriously. Anyone outside can be seen as misguided, an enemy even. Their views and opinions are not taken seriously, they are discounted. Even people who know intellectually about this prejudice cannot resist it. It is a fundamental flaw of group-think and group-mind. Peer “pressure” is way more powerful than we care to acknowledge. The desire to not rock the boat and to comply is endemic.

“Which idiot would dare to put their head above the parapet?”

If anyone did, they would only be taken seriously posthumously and in retrospect. Genius is most often ascribed posthumously and with hindsight. Rarely is it proclaimed in vivo. Everyone knows this and yet repeats history by non-acceptance and in some cases derision.

Things must not be too different in order to be taken seriously!

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The obvious question here is why do unicorns always point to the right?

Some people do not like those who have a different perspective from them, they resist hearing it and in any way assimilating. They just can’t or won’t take divergent views seriously.

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Do people have to see the world in a similar way to you in order for you to take them seriously?

Must everyone think just like you?

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Coincidence is Logical – Except When it Isn’t

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There is a certain type of person who prefers to ascribe coincidence, or random happenstance to events rather than accept any unproven {hypothetical} causal links. It would take a multiplicity of “coincidental” occurrence before they would deem significant corelation of happenstance sufficient to justify either causal linkage or even causality itself.

If the statistics to the contrary started to build up, they would resist dropping the logical conclusion of coincidence for quite a while.

Because of this they would never believe in karma. Even were it to slap them around the chops with a large wet pollack.

Say for discursive example you were covertly reading this blog and perhaps making some cunning plans which in some way pertained to me. You then noted that I posted “We’re only making plans for Nigel” here. The first port of call would be that this was entirely coincidental. You might start a tad, nevertheless. It is logically impossible for someone in another country to know that you were discussing or chatting about them. The occult ability of “seeing” belongs only to fictional characters like “Wednesday Addams”. At a stretch you might go so far as to think I had made some lucky intuitional guess which by fluke of timing matched circumstance. No way would you, as a rational scientist, accept that seeing is possible and that I am capable thereof.

People therefore write off many things because their confirmation bias says that they cannot or should not be possible. Anecdotal evidence of not boarding a plane because of  bad vibe and it subsequently crashing and burning, remains anecdotal and conversational perhaps to be found on “The Daily Mail”. The life of those prone to ascribing things near always to coincidence is a bit boring and chances are that they miss a great deal. They should steer well clear of roulette, statistics says so.

There are however many things for which coincidence and random happenstance are poor explanations. But logic is very limited and as it is currently formulated fails to encompass many things without far-fetched hypotheses like dark energy and dark matter.

“Show me a can of dark matter!!”

There is a part of society which believes in karma and synchronicity. Were you forever looking for these things then chances are you will find them. You could argue that belief in synchronicity is a self-fulfilling prophecy because of confirmation bias. Similarly if you were fond of the notion of seeing, ANY thing, any event, no matter how small could provide you with proof of efficacy. You could comb the opus of Nostradamus or the Revelation of Saint John and find clear {and incontrovertible} evidence of fulfilment of prophecy. It might not occur to you that you are kidding yourself.

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So where is reality?

Is it that coincidence is logical except when it isn’t?

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The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse or the Apocalypse of John, is the final book of the New Testament, and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible. Written in Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text, apocalypse (Koine Greek: ἀποκάλυψις, romanized: apokálypsis), which means “revelation” or “unveiling”. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon and occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

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Discuss or Claim – Shoot Down in Flames

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll start into this with some statements, see if you agree with them.

  • It is easier to discount than to prove.
  • There is a section of humanity that has a very negative mindset and is personally insecure. It is sceptical and seeks approval by negating everything and disproving it, thereby showing just how very clever it is while claiming kudos from other negative peers for its I-told-you-so cleverness. There is an element of look-at-me to these behaviours. Strangely people seek to be both smug and clever, which at first pass seems contradictory.
  • It is easier to disprove than it is to prove.
  • People derive a great deal of seeming pleasure from shooting others down in flames and arguing the toss so as to apparently “win”.
  • They are stuck in their ways, primitive, possibly bigoted and old-fashioned.

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In writing this blog I have chosen a largely discursive approach and have been fairly careful to not make any claims, profess said claims or adamantly proclaim accuracy. I have been careful in my use of language to avoid dogmatic assertion.

This dogmatic assertion habit is perhaps a bane of our times.

Were I to make claims there is a danger that people would prime their Gatling guns and take aim. Many like an assertion to aim at, particularly ones with numbers in so that the petty can nit-pick.

“You said you would limit immigration to 200,000 in fact we had 215,000 last year, you did not do what you said you were going to do. You lying bastard!!”

This pseudo-journalistic mentality is pervasive and makes arguments out of petty trivial stuff. Comparison mind never strays too far from the adolescent urinal pissing contest.

In approaching this blog I had one question, “What is the best way to approach closed concretised mind insistent on proof where none may exist?”

The answer I came up with was to adopt a discursive approach in the vain hope that these might at least stimulate some thinking. I am aware that the human mind is bullet-point and sound-byte, click-bait oriented these days. It is easy to gain wide publicity by making outrageous claims.

“Tariffs are already bringing trillions of dollars into the US treasury!!”

{US GDP ~ 30 trillion dollars, Federal tax revenue ~ 5 trillion }

Tariffs then {according to Trump} must already account  for more than 20% of the annual Federal income by use of the plural “trillions”. This statement cannot yet be factual.

It is the easiest thing in the world to make wild assertions, to gob-off and to make outrageous claims. Even were these factual it would be straightforward to find some way of discounting, casting doubt upon and otherwise undermining any claim. People love to find fault and pick holes in things.

Most people are already finding fault before they have reached the end of a sentence or heard what someone is trying to communicate. They can place so much stock in arguing the toss and dissing others. It can make them feel big.

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Do you like to shoot people down in flames?

Does it give you a boner or make you go damp?

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