Category: personal development

Seeing Things Differently

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Recently I was talking with someone who suggested that an in-patient group oriented intensive physiotherapy regime postoperative for hip arthroplasty was a good idea / French practice. He was, to understate, more extroverted than I. The idea of being around loads of people “helping” me to recuperate via conviviality just does not work for me. It would be close to torture, feeling unwell and having to interact in a foreign language on a regular basis, with others. No thanks.

This sounds like a showstopper to me. In my mentality I would delay or not proceed at all.

Maybe I am ungrateful or maybe I know myself well.

It is clear in this simple example how we see things differently.

“Jack Sprat he ate no fat; his wife she ate no lean.”

What works for one person does not work for others. According to all the common metrics I am socially isolated. Some might imagine that I need help. Poor Alan.

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They may even imagine that they know what is best for me. Because as every newspaper vendor knows it is always the antisocial loner, who is not well liked, that becomes the heinous murderer. Helping the socially excluded is an anti-murder prophylactic measure, which makes sound societal sense.

Unlike most people I don’t care what the ‘phone companies do with my data, because I don’t generate any. I am not in any target marketing demographic. Daytime TV however is full of adverts aimed at the likes of me. I’ll get my SAGA loyalty card soon, to use until my pre-paid cremation plan kicks in.

The problem with seeing things differently is that it is nigh on impossible to explain or otherwise convey that difference to others, specifically the scale thereof.

I look relatively normal. I can speak “normal” for a short while. But I know from experience that the way I assimilate the world differs radically from others. I am not prone to influencers, whatever they are. I do not swallow hook line and sinker what I might read in the news of whichever flavour / prejudice. As an outsider, I need help to rejoin the fold, the group lunacy. Bless…

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Most people suffer from worry and catastrophising. I can have brutal clarity without dramatic catastrophic thinking. I can envision futures and remain calm.

It is impossible to communicate the lack of ambition / goal to anyone who is beholden to theirs. I am happy to make unilateral decisions based on available information even when I know that information is incomplete.

Once you have attained impermanence, you change as does your orientation towards life.

“This too, shall pass”, is more than just a saying.

People in general have a need to “do” something. There is a need of immediacy. A desire, an urge, to get things “sorted”. I have learned that some things simply cannot be sorted. Some have to be endured. Some need let go of. Some need to calm in emotional temperature and thence to fade away.

It is economical not to intrude, to inflict oneself upon or otherwise interfere in the lives of others. This is a form of harmlessness.

A passive approach of response when needed tends to calm. Though it can also infuriate, humans being as they are.

It is impossible to please everyone.

I see apertures in the web of life, during which things may be possible. When I see them closing, I know that the possibility and probability of things happening drops. Until finally what once might have been possible, no longer is.

One of the aspects of impermanence is the notion of timeliness. Timeliness has a time limit. If things do not occur when they may or might, they do not and cannot. The moment has passed. The “permanent” possibility or opportunity is gone.

Impermanence teaches that complacency is unwise. It is a non-nihilistic implication which many fail to see. There is only a discrete aperture in spacetime for things to occur…

You have only my word for it, that I imagine that I see things differently from others…

I could be talking BS…

You decide…..

Messaging Assumption and Miscommunication

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Postulate.

The human ability to get entirely the wrong of the stick is close to infinite.

Herein lies the mystery of perception, bias and multiple failures in communication both as a purveyor and acceptor. People may not be aware that they are, whether consciously or not, sending messages which others are receiving and perceiving and assimilating.

I suspect that because I am largely silent and can be not expressive, people tend to imagine that I am judging and being critical. They may expect some verbal response / discussion / mutual bullshitting when talking and when none is forthcoming, they can get unnerved. The feedback mechanism is missing. They expect chit-chat. In the absence they can confer multiple meanings which simply are not there.

People can read all sorts of shit into things. They may imagine I am sending a message when I am not. People might read this blog and imagine that I am messaging them directly.

The likelihood of miscommunication in the context of different cultures and frames of refence is enhanced. People may imagine that their customs are transferable. The French attitude of laissez-faire can be interpreted as complete indifference, fence sitting and not giving a shit, disinterest. It can be read, “that person can’t be arsed, sod ’em, they are not serious. Let’s move on to someone who has a point of view or opinion.”

In trying not to impinge a different message can be received. “Waste of time.”

I’ll assume with a high confidence integral that many people have made hugely erroneous assumptions over the years as to my motivations, what I am thinking and where I am coming from. This {my} assumption is based upon my interpretations of their behaviours and could be invalid. There may be transference of their ways of thinking and prejudices onto me.

There are certain types of people who like to argue the toss and “win” arguments / debates. They like to “score” points.

If someone like this expresses a point of view and one does not counter it, remaining silent even. They can assume agreement and/or victory. The lucky recipient of opinion may disagree totally but cannot be arsed to verbalise. Agreement can be assumed and the illusion of being right /accurate taken from the non-intervention.

Many introverts cannot be bothered to do the thinking for gobby extroverts. It is not important to them nor is share of air time or limelight kudos. The introverts can be disinterested in interaction.

I am reasonably confident that I have by accident, thrown a spanner into the works, with my interactions with the French medical profession. I have not behaved in the manner to which they are accustomed and they have not had the skill or experience to handle it. There has a result been extensive miscommunication and they have made assumptions about what might transpire, what I understand and how I perceive them. It can be very hierarchical. Most medics have not interacted as I have. My need to chat and discuss is vanishingly small when viewed from the angle of French customs. If I want to find out my first port of call is research which I will do thoroughly.

Once miscommunication has gone beyond a certain point the situation becomes very difficult if not impossible to salvage. This is because face and pride have now come into play and dominate, often unilaterally, subsequent interpersonal dynamics.

Postulate

The human notion of face and implicit loss of face is one of the most expensive bits of human folly in terms of relationships and loss of human life.

Face in this context is illusion, a socio-political construct which sells gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers and underpins the scripts of television soap operas.

“Face” lies aback assumption and miscommunication. People get offended, an emotional overaction, if things do not comply with assumption and social expectation. People can assume that the {their} worldview is common and that everyone holds similar prejudices to them.

Once people have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick the tendency is to grasp this ever more tightly. Mis-perceptions and mis-assimilations of reality are more concrete and fixed than one might imagine.

There is no better demonstration of miscommunication than the game of “Chinese whispers”. Yet surprisingly, given this knowledge, the faceless and ubiquitous “they” are somehow the font of all truth and knowledge….

There is not a lot you can do or say which is contrary to the omniscience of “they”. No matter how well you communicate it, it cannot be perceived accurately because “they” dogmatically forbid it.

The wrong end of the stick beckons with the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole…

Context and Scale

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

People can be more than a little blinkered when it comes to looking outside of their own context, their own world. At the moment we have an American president viewing everything through the idealised spectacles of what America once was and not giving a shit how the rest of the world views them. If he is trying to sell us the American dream he is failing, all that once was good about Americana is getting tarnished. That old man is doing harm to the image of US of A, he is bad marketing PR for USA plc. He is teaching everyone else to avoid relying on them and depending on them, to make relationships elsewhere. He is reducing their importance.

Maybe he is a visionary. I think he is stuck in some faux-sepia image of a Great America. Times have changed. He is trying to raise it from the dead. Without tariffs “capitalist” America is no longer competitive commercially.

Let’s remake “The Bird Man of Alcatraz”.

Hindsight is often 20:20 but people can be {willingly} blinded if there is something in it for them. With a modern context this image differs from when it was taken.

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People seeking kudos and fame associate with those who might purvey that for them. The single minded can neglect hazard warning lights.

People can get very caught up in their own world unaware that there is a much wider context and a scale which they are completely oblivious of. Their own little world, the relationships and socio-political pecking order are tantamount; the border and boundaries of universe are defined. Like a particle in a box only certain behaviour wavefunctions are allowed. They are confined. It rarely occurs that to an outside eye they might look a bit odd.

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They can be surprised if you even suggest that there is something outside of their “world”.

For quite a while I was closeted in UK science academia and unaware of how the outside world thought and did. Aside from the jibes of my father, “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach!”, I had a fairly naïve view of business.

I’ll suggest that my worlds now extend way beyond that microclimate and that I am appreciative of a much wider set of contexts than I once was. I have a sense of scale which surpasses my mundane existence as a “poor” arthritic retired person.

I know that the previous post in this blog if taken seriously, by those whose world to which it pertains, is a very big deal if true. If I am just a nut job and a dreamer then it is of no import. In one context big, in another irrelevant. Context matters.

There is no way you can advise, warn or help an “omniscient” being to learn, to see a wider perspective. By definition those who think they know a lot are the least willing to accept any new stuff outside of their world, their assimilation of reality. Caught in mundane socio-political advancement games they do not know what harm they are doing to themselves. What karma they are making.

And nobody can help them see. This is because they do not want to see, they already know best.

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If for example you were to find yourself interacting with a Bodhisattva of a certain degree. You could have no idea of the context in which you are interacting nor of the scale of implication of your actions. Chances are you would try to shoe-horn your interaction into your customary context or set of contexts.

I might be able to still have a conversation for a while within the confines of an academic context world-view. I can borrow a trailer from the farm store and bring my sit on tractor-mower to them for repair, highlighting the problem areas on an engineering diagram. I have learned {partially} a new context. The scale of a two acre garden was way bigger than I had first anticipated. I know now.

We all of us learn {hopefully}. A good starting point is to imagine that there are very many things outside of our preferred and well used, dog-eared contexts.

Someone not so long ago told me that the Guardians of the Race did not exist, that there was no such thing as the spiritual hierarchy. He was adamant and insistent.

Clearly it was I, as is so often the case, who is/was in need of education…

Being Cunning Is Not Wise

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Many people like the idea of “getting one over” on someone else, of shortcuts and quick fixes. People like to win, prove themselves better and score points. The notion of a cunning plan can be found widely in media and to outsmart someone is to be aspired to. Some would get a boner or go all damp about being cunning. It has a certain air salacious to it.

Being cunning may be clever but it is not wise.

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If you think about it a little cunning has a short time scale, it is a thing of immediacy and rarely are long term wider implications taken into consideration. Cunning is about now, the current situation / problem, and little else. It has an urge for some kind of victory whether petty or otherwise.

Wisdom has longevity, duration and wider application.

Many have found that being cunning launches the karmic boomerang and can come back to bite very sharply on the arse. In the heat of the moment those enamoured with being clever and cunning never see wider implications, cunning is almost always self-centred. It can have a theme of avoidance, passing the buck and cunning rarely if ever genuinely accepts responsibility. Cunning likes to “get away with it” in a socio-political sense and does not countenance notions of karma or for that matter sin. Cunning likes to pull a fast one.

Cunning is dark and not light.

I’ll speculate that it is impossible to outsmart the universe. Those who like to be clever and enact cunning might see such a statement as naïve. They would perhaps like to outsmart me and take advantage of me, in the short term. “He is so gullible!”

Cunning seeks something for nothing, the mythological free lunch. But there is always some kind of price even it is as little as compromise or erosion of one’s moral compass, a lowering of standards.

Cunning is the thin end of a wedge.

People who like to be clever and cunning fail to see or appreciate this. One act of cunning often requires another, just as one lie is nearly always propped up by more. One can look in the ACME grimoire to learn new tricks.

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Do you think being cunning is clever?

Is cunning a notion which appeals to you?

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Group Control and Decision Making

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

It is not unusual for groups of people to gather together and try to control what an individual outside of that group is doing. They may even have the illusion that said individual is keen or desperate to join their group as per the famous Garry Glitter song about gangs. Groups by their nature have real difficulty seeing and assimilating perspectives outside of the rarefied air of their Olympian group. We Gods know. The group may even believe that they know what is best for the “lucky” individual. Being quasi-corporate they can only see a quasi-corporate “answer” to whatever the imagined problem may be.

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They can get quite complacent if something approaching within-group consensus is found.

The problem is that they can be very mistaken and totally unaware. There is very little one can do when a group has made up its mind. Nietzsche is attributed this quotation.

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“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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You can decide for yourself regarding some of the “sanity” currently coming out of the USA.

Groups may consider it sound to offer the lucky person a fait accompli. Having discussed only amidst themselves they may not consider how it might wash with an individual outside. Such a thing happened with the so-called peace efforts expecting Ukraine to suck it up and be grateful. The individual is then blamed and scapegoated for not accepting the divine arrogance of group omniscience.

“That pesky pleb should count his lucky stars!! He should be very grateful!!”

This phenomenon can be found on all sides in academia, industry, business, politics and amongst the righteous “they” down the pub.

Groups do not always make the best and most inclusive decisions because they cannot see outside their own Venn diagram walls. A collection of frogs at the bottom of a well, even though it may agree amongst itself, has not seen a pacific sunset nor has it gone on a silent retreat in the mountains for three years. It might imagine itself more knowledgeable and experienced than it actually is.

Groups with corporate mind always want to deal with other groups in which the socio-political hierarchy is known. They are obsessed with hierarchy and group positions. They struggle with even the notion of a non-affiliated individual. Group to group interaction can be even less inclusive. There are often power struggles and a great deal of negotiation. It is so often about power and preservation of status quo. It is about control.

The object of negotiation can be totally unaware of the blessings, he/she is about to receive.

People are people and the tendency is to do the same shit over and over.

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Is It Me? – Introversion

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I have been interacting with the medical profession. It has raised a not uncommon question for me. One which had me investigating an Autism diagnosis a decade ago. The question is:

Is it me? Am I too unfiltered, direct and accurate or are people insecure, precious, pompous and defensive? Am I not full enough with bullshit and braggadocio? Do I fail to play the itchy back dog sniffing arses game well enough? Must I always wear a mask in order not to freak people out?

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It seems to me that I unnerve people. I dial back several orders of magnitude already when I interact. It seems the only answer to not causing angst and a feeling of being unsettled is not to interact at all.  To keep my gob shut and wherever possible keep out of public circulation. In general, I have a worse reaction from “men” than from women.

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Am I simply not socially viable in the common socio-political illusion / context. Am I just too weird and feral.

Is it me? Am I the problem?

Blundering About – Backstory and Context

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In the academic year 2014-15 I did some science tutorials in Chemistry and Physics. Most of these were 1:1 AS and A2 tutorials. Given that I had a colectomy for a T3N0M0 tumour on 2nd July 2015 I was going through the two week referral processes together with sigmoidoscopies, biopsy and two colonoscopies during the exam run-in and exam period. The biopsy came back negative but on the basis of imagery they went for the knife.

In order to manage this, I was mega-organised and prepared for each tutorial. I had to cut some work pieces out and be more selective in choice. Hopefully nobody noticed I was ill / stressed and my efforts were of their usual impeccable standard. I had a backstory and a context which no one knew. I did not want to have hand wringing, victim minded, people around me and was perhaps terse with them. I may have been short with others. My main focus was to ensure that the operation happened as fast as possible. I applied some pressure.

In academic year 2015-16 I once again did tutorials. In two family houses the atmosphere was palpably tense. The mother in one said that she was being treated for breast cancer. I said snap, me too. The ice was broken, everyone relaxed. In the other it was kept secret until the chemo made it more obvious. The lad was tense and when he finally spilled the beans, I was able to assist him on other levels than science.

 In some cases, bringing the backstory to the fore makes things a whole lot easier.

Human beings tend to blunder about like bulls on amphetamines in china shops. Even the so-called intelligent can be very blinkered and myopic. The self-diagnosed omniscient have perhaps the greatest lack of sensitivity and situational awareness.

I have for example been having a “discussion” with someone. They have been professing and proclaiming from their soap box, letting fall their precious pearls of wisdom for my benefit. Whilst I have been looking at the bridge of their nose and debating quietly to my self if I should headbutt them to make them shut up. My assessment is/was that they were unaware of how close they were to peril. Enamoured by the sound of their own voice they were blundering about.

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People can assume shared context when none exists. Without participating in self-percussion, it is likely that my background context and experience here differs markedly from the locals. There is no way that I can make them aware of the implications of that context. Yet from time to time is does manifest, often to their surprise. I doubt anyone I have met here has been offered a job at the European Space Agency or negotiated at ASML headquarters. That kind of thing changes you a bit.

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Context is important it changes how we perceive things markedly.

I now have a working hypothesis. Everyone who is a British expatriate here has a backstory of some kind which differs from the UK white picket fence and 2.2 children norm. How it differs I don’t know. There is a need for resourcefulness in a place where the willingness to speak English is low. People find ways.

There is no easy way to make people aware of some aspects of backstory or context. Contact can be too fleeting to warrant it. But this lack of awareness that such a thing might exist can cause problems. Being self-centred like a medieval pope, people imagine that the world revolves around them, to say otherwise if heresy and heresy has high often flammable stakes.

The problem with blundering about on a mission, lacking sensitivity is that you can make some truly whoppers of faux pas. It can be very difficult to extract from the socio-political embarrassment. Losing face is not an option so the awkwardness must pervade and maybe fade. People find it really hard to admit that they fucked up. This lack of social adroitness is another form of blundering about.

“I don’t have to apologise for the BYOB parties at Downing Street…”

Is an example of someone unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions.

If you have a backstory then it stands to reason others do too. Perhaps we need to be a little more sensitive about context and implications.

On the other hand, you could slash overseas aid to appease a domestic audience and allow hundreds of thousands {foreigners} to die because you have pulled the carpet out from under their feet. They do not matter after all.

People blundering about can have marked long terms impacts on and in the lives of others…

Evil and Exorcism – Quantum Exorcism

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night we watched the film “The Rite” starring Anthony Hopkins {even though he was not the main character}. In the film a young man, reluctantly training to be a priest, encounters the phenomenon of exorcism via the seasoned exorcist Hopkins, and the trainee ultimately performs his first full blown exorcism of a demon which identifies as Baal which had possessed Hopkins. There was not much in the way of special effects and it was not a CGI tour de force. I suspect with Hopkins it could be done as a radio play, like Under Milkwood. The human mind could conjure some scary stuff, in the wee small hours. His voice is evocative.

Needless to say, there were a few noises in the {our} house here during and after the film. These could have been demons but were most probably the stray cats. Notably stray cats also featured in the film.

The crux of the film, in the denouement, is that the trainee exorcist priest accepts the reality of the devil the demon which by “quantum entanglement” proves the reality of God. One implies the other. Once the protagonist has acknowledged both he can call, now in full faith, on God to evict the demonic tenant.

Developing this tenuous theme further, good and evil exist as a quantum superposition state in each of us. It is by our actions that we resolve the superposition state and are then either mostly evil in orientation or mostly good. Schrödinger’s cat is either a bad feline or a good one. We look, we test, we observe and the good/evil wavefunction is resolved.

A residue of good exists {perhaps} in an evil person and vice versa. Nobody exists as a 100% pure good eigenstate; nobody is 100% impure evil. The coefficients can very over time.

If we do not believe in good or evil the wavefunction {and the cat} do not and cannot exist.

I’ll postulate that the best trick evil has ever managed is to render the entire subject or evil largely taboo in modern society. Few say that some of the alleged content of “Only Fans” is wicked or evil. We could say humanity has been hoodwinked to lower our standards.

Evil has done a “good job”, a phrase that certain American political figures are keen on.

The film suggests that modern psychological intervention may help those “possessed”. It does not mention some of the barbaric horrors which the psyche-profession has enacted over the decades and centuries upon the so-called insane. Bad things have been done in the name of “science” as well as in the name of “religion”.

This crux of accepting, acknowledging without drama perhaps, the notion and influence of evil is a game changer. Whilst one imagines that evil does not exist, one is free to indulge in self-centred and gratuitous pass times. The norm is never questioned and the evil “demon-adviser” on the shoulder says “go on, everyone is doing it. You would not want to miss out, would you?”

A little more clarity, where one sniffs the sulphur in the air and notes, if only as a hypothesis, evil; can change orientation. This, if only for as long as it takes to succumb to temptation. Noting might be seen as a first step in acknowledging the influence of evil.

The film suggests that the “demon” “evil” had been stalking the trainee from his young days as a child, subsequent to the death of his mother in the Adams Family profession of undertaker.

Temptation need not be entirely salacious. It can be as simple as taking a short cut, cutting corners, being economical with the truth, bullshitting. The notion of getting something for free or at a reduced price is a cornerstone of temptation. Talking bad of, belittling, slagging off; are not exactly luminous beacons.

I’ll wager that no human being alive has never succumbed to some temptation or other.

One could say that some, in lust for power, turn to the dark side. The coefficient of the evil wavefunction is higher. The superposition is skewed to darkness and not light.

If one has largely succumbed to evil then there is little hope of redemption by self. The habit has become entrenched. One needs external assistance to exorcise the evil or re-balance the quantum superposition.

Hence one needs a Hermit-like quantum operator {exorcist} to act upon the evil-good superposition state to change it from one state to another. To lift it up from the low point and to address the uncertainty as to whether good and evil are actually real world things. To rebalance.

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What is your g/e probability?

Are you largely Good or largely Evil?

Are these two variables coupled?

If we are certain in one what limit does that put on the other?

Are you sure?

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Something Which You Later Rely On

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Postulate: There is a growing tendency for a whole bunch of people to have a profound sense of entitlement and to take very many things and people for granted. They somehow deserve this inexhaustible bounty, it is their due to which they are entitled, owed even.

In the UK the police have powers of arrest and search subsequent to cursory inquiry. These powers for stop and search were misused historically. As a white now 60 year old male with a “posh” voice and good manners, it is unlikely that I will have any run ins with UK police, were I there in that country. I would not hear the following.

“You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

I have, when younger, had interactions with the police, several of which might have resulted in at least a night in the cells maybe more. Because I was civil, even when well off my face, I was not detained nor beaten up. I could say that I was lucky. My mother used to say that I can be charming. I am white, not brown, I wear no religious trappings, and my face is not covered in tattoos. Although I did not rely on it, my relative privilege helped me out. Here in France, I could not rely upon the command of English and UK based savoir faire.

The gendarmerie make checks here from time to time on cars. On one such occasion we were flagged over in our right hand drive Peugeot which the wife was driving. The officer came to my window, the normal one for a driver here. I showed him my carte de Sejour and French driver’s license and we were on our way. Odd.

I am more wary of the police here, because they are armed and there is a communication barrier. They do shoot “criminals” or “terrorists” here promptly and there is little public outcry. I have found that the French do not respond well to being challenged or disagreed with. They tend to react, then think. So, I would be ultra-cautious.

I am conscious as an immigrant that my right to remain is conditional and could be easily revoked. Consequently, we are very comprehensive in meeting our legal and tax obligations. We keep “kilograms” of justificatory paperwork, a marathon paper trail. Our right to stay card expires a year today. We have heard nothing about how to renew our “right” which was granted under the “Brexit” withdrawal “agreement”. A shift to the political right here could change everything. We could get booted out.

So, we have booked a short trip to Jersey to feel how we might feel to be surrounded by English speakers for the first time in six years. I am not relying on a renewal. We have a loose contingency which involves a move to a cheap part of the UK. Given our health challenges neither of us take health for granted because we do not have good health.

At the moment Trump is alienating people around the globe, feeling entitled so to do and perhaps taking for granted that others will continue to suck up. He is not a purveyor of goodwill. There may be irreparable damage to relationships ongoing. I am not sure he has thought things through fully, if he has, he does not care. I think it likely he is being reactionary and still resentful of anything Biden related. He may estimate that his “allies” in terms of nations, will always be there.

He is exhibiting a sense of entitlement. He perhaps thinks that the USA is entitled to Panama, Greenland and Gaza sur mer. The USA is entitled to preferential trade terms even though their livestock are riddled with anti-biotics.

In this he is mirroring much for humanity at large. He mirrors a ME-first orientation, expressed as US or USA first.

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In the past I know that I have helped people and been of use to them. I did this in a non-transactional manner, for free if you like. There was no game of itchy backs. I’ll speculate that I have been taken for granted on numerous occasions. I don’t feel upset by this but I have noted a marked surprise when I have disappeared and could no longer be relied upon. The grant, if you like, has been withdrawn. People can be complacent that the things or people they take for granted will always be there.

The universe is impermanent and people can fail to appreciate the loan of gift which it temporarily confers.

I am aware of a supposition here in that the medics are working to a French life expectancy of ~83-4 for me, whereas my gut feel is that I will in no way last that long. If I say this out loud it might get a strange “reassuring” response / reaction. This life expectancy is to an extent taken for granted and people even plan to it.

People can think that they are owed a long life, that they have all the time in the world. However, the sands in the egg timer do run out. When someone dies “young” the newspapers report it as a “tragedy” that they were “taken from us” prematurely. They wail and wring hands. Death is an entirely natural process. There is no tragedy. Many die with regrets about things which they could or might have done but failed to do, perhaps because they lacked courage. They might live in the land of “if only”.

People above all take alloted time for granted and as a consequence they squander and waste it. One day tomorrow never comes. It is then too late.

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Do you think that the universe owes you?

Are you getting all that you are entitled to and deserve?

Are you hard-done by?

Is life not fair?

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Atlantis and Kneejerk Adamant Assertion

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll wager that if I raised the notion of an advanced civilisation on Atlantis many tens of thousands of years ago in certain circles, I would get the kneejerk adamant assertion that this is made up, fictional, delusional and that no evidence has ever been found. With an implicit nor is there likely to be any found, ever. Just like you can’t find evidence for unicorns, there is no evidence for Atlantis. Yet in the media, tales and recreations of Atlantis exist.

People who are fond of opining like their soap boxes and to hold court thereupon to an {admiring} crowd. The tendency to assert without due consideration is recently pandemic and can be found everywhere and all over the font of wisdom a.k.a. the internet.

The following quotation is there to be found attributed to Kelvin.

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There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

Lord Kelvin

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This sentiment was proven inaccurate. Those keen to uphold the hagiography of science can be found stating that there is no evidence he ever said this. {There is no evidence that he did not.} A founding prophet of a religion must not be tarred with the brush of quotable dogmatism. The faithful are defending the prophet who helped to inscribe the laws of thermodynamics upon the tablet given from the mountain top.

Knowing humans and scientists like I do, I think it is entirely possible that someone would opine thus, particularly if they were enjoying themselves holding court or relaxed after a few ports in the club.

In 2023 an additional chamber was found under the great pyramid.

“Precise characterization of a corridor-shaped structure in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons.”

Nature Communications 14, 1144, (2023)

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Using a very esoteric scientific technique something thought not to exist was “proven” to be there. Speculation as to purpose follows. Maybe it was the Aliens or Patrick Duffy a.k.a. the Man from Atlantis who built it?

Truth is nobody knows for sure how it was made nor what it was made for.

Kneejerk adamant assertion is at best lazy. It is all about face and being aligned to the current status quo unwilling to risk heresy or apostasy as measured by the omnipotent “they”.

Socio-political conformity encourages adamant assertion.

It is not very open-minded.

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Are you prone to kneejerk adamant assertion?

If so, why, what do you get out of it?

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