The Appalling Silence – and you did nothing…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few years humanity has faced a number of challenges and on the whole has been found badly wanting.

If anyone imagines that the American financed mass killing of people and near complete obliteration of Gaza is just and proportional they are deluded and their moral compass is well and truly fucked. What do you do when a so-called ally oversteps the mark? It is easy to collude and remain silent, to kowtow for scraps from the dinner table of the debt ridden US economy. The West’s inaction and response to the events in Gaza has not been its finest hour. The precedent has been set by the extensive US vengeance for having been caught napping at 9/11 just like the Japanese got nuked for Pearl Harbour.

The world we live in has changed for the worse in the last two decades. As climate change kicks in and disasters proliferate the me-first approach to global problems will not cut it. Maybe when Mar-a-Lago starts to swim people might listen.

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At the moment humanity is very short-term. The attention span of a fruit fly with ADHD prevails. There is reaction, knee-jerk and people are fearful of opinion. People are shit scared to say boo to a goose. They will do just about anything to get “likes”.

What results is a mind numbing mediocrity of compliance and conformity with “they” in which ever flavour. Humanity is very risk averse and lacks moral fibre. Its backbone is dissolved into jelly.

The damming verdict of the generations to come might be,

“You suspected all along, your predictions were valid AND you did nothing, fuck all, sweet fanny Adams. Really?”

This then will be known as the age of human chinless petty self-centred indifference.

Inaction today, avoidance, stores problems for tomorrow. The ruling “elites” have made it very clear to the millions of Muslims in their country where they, the entitled elite, stand. The evidence is incontrovertible and will be long remembered. They know upon which side the bread appears to be buttered on.

From time to time when we watch the news a sad tear comes to eye. Humanity, an oxymoron, is only very selectively humane.

Did not the apartheid and genocide of the last century teach us anything? Apparently not…

Ever since the British invented concentration camps they have been rolled out again and again. If we are very cynical, we might call them a “safe zone” rather than a “killing field”. It sounds more humane; cleaner, we could even use fabric softener to take away the stench.

There are none so blind as those who do not want to see, who refuse to see.

I am not sure what it might take for people to wake up and actually do something. After all we can Netflix and Uber Eats ourselves into type 2 diabetes, which is less risky than sticking our necks out.

I am genuinely sad at the pathetic Western response to events in Gaza. But it is a sign of the times, the prevailing me-first don’t rock the boat mentality.

Opression always has in its hateful enactment the seeds of its own ultimate downfall.

That is a fundamental law of the universe. The universe has a longer attention span.

Martin Luther King Quotes

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“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

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“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

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“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

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“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

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“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

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“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

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“We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”

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

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“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

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“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

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Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd

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A market opportunity exists for a clothing company serving the vertically challenged non-svelte section of the middle mature male population. It should approach this market in a no frills, no fuss, no bullshit fashion. The trousers should offer short legs and elasticated waists. No internet fuckwittery in terms of paid for advertising is needed, nor are any vouchers or special bonus code “deals”. There in no need for a corporate heroin-loyalty-card simply a WYSWYG service that is reliable and timely. No need for any geezer whom you do not know the name of nor recognise in the adverts. There is no need to shell out vast sums of money for advertisements featuring a black-ginger-freckled-disabled-gay-anthropomorphic famous person with a large Tok-Tik following with ultra-woke or for that matter MAGA credentials.

There has got to be a vast horde of people like me, forgotten, grey, invisible middle aged men in need of some strides, some trousers. Strides that are simple, unfussy and you don’t need an extra £20 for a banal logo thereupon. The sort of people who get cancelled left right and centre for not being entirely PC. This market has money which it does not spend on manicures, tattoos nor crack, back and sack waxing. A market that is not unfamiliar with prostate exams and endless ticking offs by GPs about diet and alcohol consumption.

I shall apply forthwith to the Trademark office to try to trademark “Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd”. I will purchase the domain name “ye-olde-git-clothing-company.com”.

Next, I will go on Dragon’s Den and pitch to Türker Süleyman for start-up funds….

The Somnambulant – Purple Wolf and Crocodiles Dream – 08-08-2025

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Here is last night’s dream. I have taken recently to using a knee pillow to ease my nocturnal back pain. It means that I do not start the day with lumbar spine pain however I am now more aware of the hip pain. I am slightly easier to get going of a morning.

The dream starts in a metropolitan area part Kurfürstendamm Berlin and part The City London. It is pan European and upmarket, upbeat, expensive. Despite being smart it has a whiff of decadence and loose sexual mores. If feels a little dated though contemporary, as if things need to change.

I am with two others of my kind. We go into a night club past bouncers with a red rope barrier. We are among many entering the night club even though it is still light. People are leaving their jackets at the coat check. The clients age ~20-40 and are of mixed sex and nationality. They are somehow a part of the “in” crowd. This place is difficult to get into and has an air of privilege. I know that some are “content” creators.

We wander through the many levels of the night club, which is big, vast even. We see people dressed expensively made up with false eyelashes, there is evidence of tattoos and cosmetic surgery. All the punters have dilated pupils consistent with hallucinogen use. The look to be awake because of the pupils. But in fact they are more like walking dead, sleepwalkers, somnambulant. They are all there because it is the “it” place to be. There are floor after floor of them. There is however no music, no sound, no talking. They are zombified. The look animated but are not. The lack of music in the nightclub is very eerie and joyless as are the clientele. This is modern life. We are very surprised.

Now in a dark basement of the club. I am told that I have met the velvet, the purple wolf and that this is the mood. There is anger. I do not see him yet the feeling intensely subjective is strong. Purple is not a good colour. I know that in part this refers to Théun and that he is a bringer and symbol of all that refuses to change, stuck hard and fast in the old ways. There is a lush insistence on indulgence characteristic of the outgoing sixth ray which presents a major barrier to evolution. People are stuck in their ways and vehemently adamant that they are right, they will growl, fight and try to destroy any agent for change. There is a longing for times gone by which no longer are. I have met the purple wolf and that is an emblem of all that refuses to change. It shows that clinging on to old ways and out-of-date cultures, preserving, is not moving forward. There is more meaning to this meeting which will become apparent over time and indeed layers are coming as I type.

The night club has now changed into an underground theme park water ride. People are in “hollowed out logs” which are like little boats and are being driven around the “amusement” park by the flowing water. There are simulacrum rapids and now people are vocalising, shrieking. In some of the logs are people I know from the past in London.  I am on the side by a sluice in which is an adolescent hippopotamus. It is trying to get out into the wider theme park and succeeds. The hippopotamus is friendly towards me. I know that it wants to turn over the log-boats for fun. At the side of the water course there is a pool which is filled with mid length crocodiles, not full Nile size but a couple of metres long, lithe active and hungry. They are the crocodiles belonging to the people in the log-boats. I know that these crocodiles are the dreaming symbols for cumulative shortcomings of the people in the boats. There are many of them. One of the crocodiles is exiting the pond and starting to make to attack me. It is snapping at me. I pick up a slightly smaller crocodile and place it horizontally into the opening mouth of the attack crocodile. I know in the dream that the attack by the crocodiles of the people in the club / log boats will be ongoing and unlikely to stop anytime soon.

The dream ends.

Waking Dream – Mystical Vision

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If one was to imagine someone having a waking dream or a mystical vision it is unlikely that you would picture an unshaven white man in his sixties dressed in a white t-shirt and army surplus combat trousers who had been around the block a few time. That person would not be technically obese nor skilled in the art of high resolution laser spectroscopy. He would not be a grey. There may be a tint of eroticism to your imagination of a visionary. The person having the vision would either be young and “attractive” like Joan of Arc or Joseph with his groovy coat. There would be some kind of glow or aura perhaps. There could be some CGI graphics and perhaps some pointy elven ears. They could be a Russian mystic blinded at birth. They could be misshapen. They would have some cool sounding foreign name. They would not be called John Smith.

Either that or they could be in a secure psychiatric ward having avoided taking their medication by hoodwinking the staff.

People are likely to have prejudice about how they might imagine a visionary / whacko.

Last night whilst watching a fly on the wall crime drama about crystal meth in Norfolk I had a tremendously strong vision of the Dalai Lama and one other senior figure in Tibetan / Bhutanese Buddhism. That subjective observation has persisted on and off since then. It interfered with one of my normal nocturnal, pre-sleep meditations. This morning I have that subjective experience conflated with people at Stanford university. {They may be inquiring about Phowa practice – my guess.}

There is no logical reason why out of the blue I get a strong visual image of the Dalai Lama to mind and in mind. There is no effort for/by me to have it there. In fact it would be more convenient for it to fade. I can type, do the shopping and in a few moments, I will make a sandwich with these “visions” at the periphery of consciousness.

In the context of my normal CV and life experience it does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational. I have not exactly hung around with Tibetan Buddhists on a regular basis. Nor have I been brooding on either Tibetan or Buddhist themes of late.

After lunch I will start to sugar soap wash the wall by the log burner, then begin the chore of sizing the wood in the garage so that it is ready for use post operation in autumn-winter. We have about ¼ of the mass needed in the garage.  Once tided up, we will order a couple more cubic metres this month before the price goes up.

It is a bit odd but for me not unusual as Mr Jones might sing.

A Fly in the Ointment  – ECG ST Segment Depression

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Earlier this week we learned that the specialist machine doing CT angiograms is very busy at the big hospital in Saint Brieuc. They are backed up and will not be able to do the study before the date upon which my hip operation is scheduled. This means that the risk is less quantified. They are possibly worried a little about how I might respond to being hacked open and losing a few wine glasses of blood while someone saws off the head of my femur and whacks in a Titanium implant.

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The added concern comes from my recent resting electrocardiogram (ECG) in which the ST level was depressed below the isoelectric point.

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The ST segement is seen as potentially diagnostic for a number of conditions, lowering is correlated with these things.

Causes of ST segment depression:

Myocardial ischemia

Hypokalemia

Digoxin

Cocaine

Left ventricular hypertrophy (with concurrent T wave changes)

Bundle branch blocks (with concurrent T wave changes)

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I can exclude the three middle suggestions unequivocaly.

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The depressed ECG ST wave form is characterised as above into three basic types. My ECG has a lowering of  about 1 mm and is most like the horizontal depiction above

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Bearing in mind that I have spent decades looking at spectroscopy traces on chart paper, oscillosocpes and computer screens it is easy for me to spot “anomalies”.

Whenever I see ECG traces the first thing which comes to mind is, “why is the data so shite?”

Is the test human not grounded, is there a floating earth?

Can’t they do better, develop better machines, improve protocol?

Verbally the cardiologist wanted to check for myocardial ischemia or ventricular hypertrophy. The latter can come from being overly athletic in which case it is ok or it is simply that the heart if gettting old. Back in the last century I had strong athletic tendencies.

He has propsed a so-called cardio stress test. They asked me if I could pedal. Maybe enough to raise the demand on the heart…we shall see.

Going left to right the power output by the human hamster wheel rider increases by 50 watt quanta B-C. This data shows the depression of an ST ECG trace as incresing demand is placed upon the heart.

“Reversible ST-segment depression is the characteristic finding associated with exercise-induced, demand-driven ischemia in patients with significant coronary obstruction but no flow limitation at rest.”

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The jury suggests that this methodology could tend the “diagnosis” either towards or away from ischemia or blood supply insufficiency. The guess was that my aging heart was just as bit too big and aged. The holy trinity of fat, fags and booze have given me their sacred blessing.

If I am losing blood during the operation the heart will pump that little bit harder.

All the articles suggest that when a stress test is done there is a medic present who is cardio-trained in case the stress test causes a heart attack…

It was mooted that an appointment for this stress test may also not be easy to come by. The pre-op anaesthesia meeting is scheduled about 1 month out before the operation.

If the ST depression is unexplained, will they go ahead or will they insist upon more data?

There is a potential fly in the ointment.

We have found that in general the French are more keen on lastminute.com than we are…I foresee a mad clustering of yet more medical appointments early autumn…

Can a Jaguar Changes Its Spots?

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People can have very fixated images and perceptions of others. They may shoe-horn others into well out of date perceptions. How they remember them can be stuck in a time warp.

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We are watching a TV programme with Eddy Redmayne acting as The Jackal. Even though he is not the same actor, I keep wondering where Wellard or Well Hard the dog is. At the moment in the series  highly armed MI6 agents have just been engaged in a  massive shoot out near Budapest. The sort of thing that is likely to be an international incident but which serves for dramatic purpose.

Not everything makes sense.

It is very easy to get typecast in the eyes of others. There could be a wildly inaccurate narrative circulating which sticks like glue. Once a visiting Japanese postdoc. famous for his drinking prowess back home decided that he wanted to out-drink me competitively because he had heard my legend. We started drinking after I had already had six pints of Stella unbeknownst and unrevealed to him. I stopped drinking a bit before him and he claimed victory. So there may be a story back in Japan of how he beat a champion drinker in the UK. Not all stories are true but it does not stop their circulation.

People can have their perception locked, very locked.

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Many are not a lot like they once were. Some people change. It is said that the warrior’s path is one of transmutation,  transformation and transfiguration. This suggests that the change may be more radical than a cosmetic tinkering.

I’ll wager were I to meet people I was acquainted with two decades ago they would initially interact with me using that out of date context, if they even remembered me at all. There is and was a whole side of me of which most were completely unaware. One student thanked me for my 9 AM winter morning lectures because they gave them a chance to catch up on their sleep in a nice warm lecture theatre. Others have told me that they doubted that boring dead-pan me could be any use to them when they were unwell. After half an hour of quiet chat they were off to see the GP for a mental health consultation and had provisionally booked a session with the on campus councillor.

Few would imagine that I have had dreams of shaman and Jaguars.

Jaguar Dream Link

People struggle to a) notice and b) fully accept change in others, particularly those who they think they know well. Radical change is considered impossible. After all a leopard cannot change its spots.

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Fate or Self-Determination?

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Many imagine that they have partial control over their lives, their circumstances and the trajectory of those lives. I have used the plural lives here which might be a moot choice for those who do not believe in reincarnation. Already people might want to debate singular or plural. Their own minds may not be certain, “do I cark it and that is it, or am I reborn?” This is quite fundamental in terms of outlook. They don’t imagine that the entire trajectory of life can pivot on a few tiny things.

If those marking my undergraduate exams in 1985 had given me one more mark and Sue one less. We would have tied for the last remaining SERC Ph.D. quota studentship. The organic section already had a lot of applicants, the inorganic chemistry section less. The decision would have been to grant the supervisor of my third year research project the studentship and I would have done a Ph.D. in the synthesis of Pt and Pd mixed valence compounds with X-ray, FTIR and Raman. I would have become an inorganic chemist of sorts at UCL and not gone to the Royal Institution nor helped moved the group to Imperial College. At some stage down the line the UCL trajectory could have led me to doing coherent Raman spectroscopy of GaAs growth at UMIST. Here the two possible trajectories could have remerged. This could have led me to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electronic Materials and to Imperial.

But my life would have been markedly different in the meantime. I would not have formed the same “relationships”.

When Sue transferred to UCL part through her degree I helped her catch up on the course. In effect sealing my own fate by an act of kindness. Without my intervention I would have “beaten” her. Of course I could also have smoked fewer spliffs and not gotten so pissed on a regular basis too.

Seemingly innocuous happenstance can nudge life trajectory more than you imagine. Is it down to fate or is it down to the integral over all the decisions we make? I prefer the notion that fate has a considerable hand. Others do not like the idea that some external force has influence and control of their lives.

BUT.

If you choose your incarnation then you have in a way self-determined your fate by the choice of vehicle into which you incarnate. There may be a fate but it was caused by your choice.

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At the moment the residual fate in this life looks pretty simple. No big deal, no big external dramas and marginal significance to the world at large. I am very unlikely to have much ongoing wider significance. If it is fated there is no intervention required of me. If it is fated otherwise something might happened outside the compound to change things. I don’t have to be in any way proactive in this respect. If it is fated, it will happen.

Tomorrow, I have a urology appointment to follow up on my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. I don’t have cancer yet according to the guidelines of how these things are assessed. But the way the PSA numbers are going it will not be long before I fall into the right numerical regime to mean that I have cancer or at least warrant another hour long session in the high resolution MRI machine or an invasive biopsy. I may get a prostate exam. The trajectory of our lives might take another turn, if it is so fated.

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There are many who really don’t like this notion of relying on fate. It is core belief and orientation for me. My dreams help me evolve my fate in accordance with what I, the indwelling dreamer, planned at birth. I have made huge life changing decisions based on dream interpretation. Some of which were very hard with difficult consequences. I was fated to dream and fated to use those dreams to guide this life.

Of course I may seem like a complete nut-job to some. But if so, it was always fated thus.

I am open to the fact that there is not much left fated for me to do in this life. Why would one not accept one’s fate? Even were my life entirely governed by self-determination there is precious little that I can do to alter life circumstance as it stands. It looks like fate has me “cornered” so to speak…

Shit happens… you may as well relax into it…take a deep breath… this will only take a few seconds…

Discuss or Claim – Shoot Down in Flames

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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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Destined to Occur

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The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock in language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That’s not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing “destined to occur”. But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. The wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through it yourself.

– The Stolen Journals [1]

Frank Herbert “God Emperor of Dune” Gollancz, Orion Publishing, London. Page 297 ISBN 0 575 07506 6