Category: questions

The Proud Disconnect

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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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Granny Was a Gwrach…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Gwrach y Rhibyn

The legend of the cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn or Hag of the Mist, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman – a Welsh saying, to describe a woman without good looks, goes, “Y mae mor salw â Gwrach y Rhibyn” (she is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn) – with a harpy-like appearance: unkempt hair and wizened, withered arms with leathery wings, long black teeth and pale corpse-like features. She approaches the window of the person about to die by night and calls their name, or travels invisibly beside them and utters her cry when they approach a stream or crossroads, and is sometimes depicted as washing her hands there. Most often the Gwrach y Rhibyn will wail and shriek “Fy ngŵr, fy ngŵr!” (My husband! My husband!) or “Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach!” (My child! My little child!), though sometimes she will assume a male’s voice and cry “Fy ngwraig! Fy ngwraig!” (My wife! My wife!).

If it is death that is coming, the name of the one doomed to die is supposed to be heard in her “shrill tenor”. Often invisible, she can sometimes be seen at a crossroad or a stream when the mist rises.

Some speculation has been asserted that this apparition may have once been a water deity, or an aspect of the Welsh goddess Dôn. She is the wife of Afagddu, the despised son of Ceridwen and Tegid Foel, in some retellings of the Taliesin myth.

From Wikipedia

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If I were to show you the autocorrelation traces of two femtosecond laser pulses on an expensive oscilloscope in a dark laser lab it us unlikely that you would be thinking of the witch, the hag of the mist, Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. The two things do not correlate for most.

A part of my maternal family hails from Snowdonia, the foot of Snowdon,  in North Wales and the family legend has it that at least one of my maternal relatives, a granny of sorts, was a Gwrach, a witch, perhaps a seeress. In that context then there is a chance that I inherited the bloodline and hence the “gift” so to speak. As such it was entirely natural {and perhaps inevitable} that I would be interested in shamanism and shamanic ritual.

Of course in terms of someone able to write Fortan programs to calculate Franck Condon factors for anharmonic oscillator molecular vibronic photon excitations that seems far-fetched.

Contextually the vice versa might apply. Why would a shaman piss about with fancy lasers and science?

In Brittany there remains an interest in {and perhaps practice of} witchcraft. This is no way freaks me out. It is possible the practises here were sourced in the Welsh diaspora arriving. They are of similar roots.

I’ll speculate that a blog post like this would not enhance my promotion prospects were I still institutionalised in science academia.

I have always loved the mist and the fog. I nearly died on The Old Man of Coniston once. I was alone and following crows up a trail in the snow deep into the fog, alone on the mountain. It was exciting. Luckily before I got completely lost in the otherworld, I turned back. I have had much similar fun on Kinder Scout in dense fog. There is something womb-like and enveloping.

Of a still and misty night, when the full moon is partially veiled and you heard a voice at your window calling your name, what would you do.

Could you take secure refuge in the omniscience of your infallible reason?

Or would your blood run cold?

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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Stalking Referees and Provenance

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In this day and age it is common to Google someone, almost by instinct. Type their name in and see what the font of all wisdom returns. This is not generally considered stalking though it might be a gateway drug. My name is common and unless you use other key words you won’t find me. I don’t have a LinkedIn, nor any institutionalized affiliation. There is information on ResearchGate, Google Scholar and various Patent listings. It could be said that I have low or spare online presence. My CV is not there. Yet here is a blog of ~350,000 words which might speak more. It is however unverified. Nobody can vouch for it.

There might be a desire to check up on me. What might you do? Well you could contact people at my last proper employer, near two decades ago, to see if there was anyone left alive there who might. have heard of me or vaguely remember me. You could ask me for a referee who might vouch for me and the provenance of whatever knowledge I might have. To which lineage does it belong? Who were / are my teachers?

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My inability to satisfactorily comply would probably downgrade any perception that you might have of me and what I write. The likelihood of me being ignored would be enhanced because nobody can vouch for me, as I am now. There is nobody aside from the wife who could realistically and accurately comment on how I am now. There would be no comforting “blah” from another human to make you feel more secure in / with me. There would be no trail no curriculum.

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This means that because the way the world is now, I am unemployable. There is nobody who could give me a reference. I have zero recent track record. My last “A” level student science tutees were 2017.

If you checked up on me you might not find much overt of use. Of course the security services could view my banking  details, ‘phone and internet use. Because of the sparsity that might even look suspicious in this day and age. Any agent would have a concocted narrative, a plausible cover story, which might bear scrutiny.  But sweet Fanny Adams? Nah, that would stick out too much.

The safest logical conclusion is that I am irrelevant and unimportant. I am a socially disconnected loner who is not “well liked” in the community. Before long I am likely to appear in the news for some unspecified heinous act, to confirm the confirmation biases about people like me held by the socially “well” adjusted.

I do have medical records. Some of which I technically wrote myself by providing the French GP with a list of stuff that has happened. There are medical records in the UK. Now I have dental X-rays so if I went missing and wound up dead, I could be identified by my dental records as the plot line goes.

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When you check up on someone, what is the motive for that?

If you struggle to contain the desire to stalk someone, are you prepared for what you might find?

Why might it be important to have the opinion of some other being, knowing full well that all humans are biased, prejudiced and have agendas to pursue?

Does everything in the world have to have a traceable provenance?

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The Cubic Centimetre of Chance

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.”

― Carlos Castaneda

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With this quote who has the chance / opportunity can be down to perspective. Some feel that they may be holding and offering the chance to others unaware that it is they who are in fact missing out. The perception as to who has power may have more than one interpretation. It is not always obvious.

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I have noted elsewhere in this blog that in general I observe that people feel the need to “teach” me. They tend to extrovert and I do not often argue because my assessment is that there is little or no point. Rarely, very rarely, do people inquire.

When we have the chance to profess or the chance to learn, many choose to profess, often from their soap boxes. People like to be heard and sometimes admired. They like to be seen as knowing, expert even. There is kudos therein.

In the common view of the world opportunity is seen for advancement and material success. Applying for and getting a job at a top university, although difficult to achieve, could be seen as seizing the cubic centimetre of chance. Quitting the highfalutin could be seen as the opposite, though it could be the chance to get off the endless hamster wheel of the slippery pole rat race.

It terms of perspective chance differs. What is on offer, what is the opportunity, what is in it for me? Is philosophically opposite to emptiness and not striving. In the respective frameworks one offers material success and social kudos, the other a kind of pared back freedom. Many would struggle to seize such a gap to freedom were it to materialize. They would not like a life so lacking in accoutrement.

Inherent in the cubic centimetre of chance is the 99% rule. The rule states that 99% of people think only of themselves 99% of the time. People caught under the umbrella of this rule are nearly always unaware of the cubic centimetre of chance when it appears fleetingly before them.

Castaneda stresses the need for speed, for quick and decisive action, carpe diem on steroids. Afraid of looking foolish and worried by risk, many throw away cubic centimetre after cubic centimetre. In trying to control every aspect of life they fail to grasp that which might be of most  benefit to them in the long run. The problem is that effort and hard work are often unattractive though nearly always the most fruitful at harvest. Short termism wins out frequently. The gift horse is examined and found dentally wanting, it is wastefully jettisoned. Convenience is often detrimental to evolution. That which is familiar and convenient cannot bring change. This 7/11 choice is the most commonly made, stay the same.

The blinkers of expectation and desired outcome can often hide these cubic centimetres. They do not look like they should or ought according to rigid preconceived ideas. They may not have the fancy clothes of institutional affiliation; their track record or CV may be non-standard. That is why exactly they may be the cubic centimetre of chance. The wrapping is however unacceptable. The potential gift remains unopened.

People are often not very alert and as the saying goes, “Britain needs lerts”.

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Have you ever failed to seize a cubic centimetre of chance offered kindly to you by the universe?

Did you only notice in hindsight?

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What is Safe to Ignore?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The ongoing foray into medical things has thrown up a few things which may or may not be safe to ignore. As a part of the ongoing saga I am going to have a full cardiovascular MOT or road worthiness test. The presence of excess iron has many knock on implications and I have already been prescribed one medication which is no longer recommended.

You can call me rusty.

It is a long old haul and the garden is suffering a bit from lack of attention.

It seems so far that the Jury has decided that I don’t have five of the genetic mutations which I have tested for. I am going to discuss these further, a little. My status as a mutant has not yet been confirmed.

Traditional western medicine is based upon symptoms. By the time symptoms are apparent disease has arrived. More recently tests are done with a mind to early prophylaxis where possible. What may be, is clear in some case and less so in others. The UK mass newspapers are full of misdiagnosis horror stories.

“I went to see multiple GPs. They sent me home with a box of Rennie’s. Later in A&E after I tripped up on the way home from the pub, they found a basketball size alien tumour of extraplanetary origin growing in my kidney. I have two and half weeks to live!”

These cases are rare and anomalous. The tendency is to discount and not pay sufficient attention to things which do not fit your story, your view of how things might be.

“It is impossible to have extra planetary tumours growing in the kidneys. They are usually found in the spleen!! Everyone knows this! DOH.”

People can be very dismissive about things which later turn out to be highly important. They ignore things which are not safe to ignore.

I like to offer people options. The easiest option is that I am an eccentric borderline nut-job burn out. I suspect that as an explanation this would find purchase in the minds of many. It is a pigeonhole into which I can be fitted easily. I can then be ignored. I may be briefly entertained but never taken seriously. To develop this a little further. If one is enamoured with intrigue, one could say that whacko-nut-job-eccentric is my cover.

With a high degree of certainty one can predict answers to certain questions. This is because denial is a Pavlovian response in some. I have asked a number of people if they feel they have unresolved karma with me. To date no-body has answered that question. Nobody has tried. They have ignored it and let it drop. It is easy to discard and discount. On my part it has been a genuine and well-intended question very largely for their benefit. But of course people know best and are unwilling to do the work needed to answer a question of moderate depth and wide implication. People want to preserve face above all else. FOLOF, fear of loss of face.

Is such a question safe to ignore?

In the “normal” world and within its confines and rules, yes. But this is a world and philosophy bridging question and the limited “normal” context loses its imagined wide applicability. Ignoring such a question ignores and devalues a way of being held by hundreds of millions of people.

A lot of people think small details can be ignored. A prime minister preaching about lock down may deem it his God-given right to party. Ignoring, conveniently, the detail which he said that we didn’t ought. A small detail ignored can come back to bite you on the bum with rabid and perhaps gangrenous teeth.

“The law was not broken in its strictest and most convenient {for us} interpretation.”

Obsessing about detail can be very tiring. So knowing what is and is not important makes life easier. We all make choices and assign priorities whether consciously or by default.

People may argue the toss when it is very unwise so to do. The toss once argued for cannot be u-turned always. You may have won the toss but you can be up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle. The toss will not keep you warm in a nuclear winter.

My own opinion is that it is not safe to ignore your dreams. Experimental evidence has suggested this to me. This morning’s dream had someone I once knew trying to manipulate a situation, to find some kind of pretext. It was suggested that some kind of trap is in preparation. It revolves around the number of conspiracy three, three people. In every conspiracy there has to be at least three. Without being paranoid I am opening myself up to the dream both at night and during the day to see what, if anything, the dreaming has to add to this morning’s dream.

It is very easy to imagine important and significant the wrong things entirely.

We can ignore the things we did not ought to. We may need to pay strict attention and focus to things which we might otherwise flippantly ignore.

What is safe to ignore?

The Loony Quiz©

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

To find out if you are a loony or not tick one box in either column A or column B, for each question.

 AB
Do I get impatient often?yesno
Do I lose my rag in traffic jams?yesno
Do I feel offended quite often?yesno
Do I think “life is not fair?”oftenrarely
Am I prone to over reaction?yesno
If I don’t get my way do I sulk?oftenrarely
Do I bear grudges?yesno
Do I seek to get even?yesno
If someone does better than me, do I get upset?yesno
Do I try to pull others down to feel better about myself?yesno
Have I ever had a bout of cranio-rectal disease?oftenrarely
Am I special?yesno
Does nobody appreciate me?yesno
Must I always be busy?yesno
Does silence scare me?yesno
Must I always be the winner?yesno
Do I always know best?yesno
Am I always right?yesno
Do I enjoy opining upon things I don’t really know?yesno
Do I enjoy gossip and trust it?yesno
Am I impressed by the unproven opinions of others?yesno
Am I genuinely opened minded?noyes
Are people who don’t believe the same things as me?crazysane
Is my belief system the only correct one?yesno
Is advancement better than happiness?yesno
Is kudos the be all and end all?yesno
If I win prizes / competitions does that make me feel better than?yesno
Am I a grand person or one of the little people?grandlittle
Do rules apply to me?noyes
Is material plane status important to me?yesno
Am I a bit of a tense motherfucker?yesno
Am I happy and at peace with the universe?noyes

Now count up the number of As and Bs.

In your best judgement are you a loony or not, what do you think?

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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