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Faux Pas: a significant or embarrassing error or mistake: blunder

especially a socially awkward or improper act or remark

: an embarrassing social mistake

A faux pas literally means “wrong step” in French.

You could just use the term “fuck things up” instead, but if you wanna look classy, use “faux pas”.

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There is in human thinking the notion of social hierarchy where status and kudos are important. It is easy to misread these often unwritten pecking orders and clues. One can get things wrong. Some cultures are more sensitive than others to such mistakes. When pecking orders abut things can be indeterminate and the possibility for miscalculations high. To prevent error some societies, start with the concept of humility and perhaps “lower” themselves until the minefield is better understood and thereby negotiated.

A big cheese in one system is small fry in another. I found that in “business” and “industry”, for example, academics are not held in very high regard. A VC said to me that from time to time they do invest in a “prof in his garage” but that such things were very risky, early stage. A young Ph.D. student might see Prof. X, in his garage, as being near deity perhaps having aspiration to emulate and to join the Gods. Working across hierarchies and socially invented pecking orders can be tricky. Some prefer Stilton others Emmenthal. It takes all sorts.

Apparent power can be gained by association. A long time ago when on business selling some science ideas in Tokyo, I was on a mission from my then Sensei to hunt down any video / film footage of various “obscure” old-school Iaidō masters. I was given some text in Japanese and the addresses of various martial arts shops dotted around Tokyo. Sensei was an advanced practitioner of various Ryu and Japanese trained. These shops were well off the beaten track and some had a dōjō associated. On a number of occasions on furnishing the Japanese text the shopkeeper called into the back and an older Japanese man came out to help me. They took the task very seriously and furnished me with more “leads”. It was obvious that I had kudos / respect by association even though I was a low grade student. It was the Ryu and his mastery that conferred. I was ultra polite and very careful so as not to bring disrespect and dishonour. They were very keen to help and found it interesting that Sensei was teaching in a small classical dōjō in London. I knew that disrespect might, if gotten out of hand, prove fatal. It was all very good natured and fun. No faux pas was made and allowance was made for my gaijin degrees of gauche.

At the time I was a lecturer in physical chemistry and soon to be start-up co-founder. Nobody where I worked could possibly have understood all the subtleties of what my major extracurricular activity was. This was more important to me, in some senses, than my job!!

We really do not know what is going on for others. There is a back story for most about which we are very largely ignorant and unaware. It is easy to barge around like a bull, on amphetamines, in a China shop and make huge fuck ups. The more arrogant and know-it-all we are the more likely it is.

Like a frog in the bottom of a well people can be a big-Gouda in their silo unaware that there are oceans out there. People are blind and blinkered in their silos. You can try to tell a well dweller about life outside the well but they may not accept that such a thing exists. In the absence of six-sigma proof they will deem extra-well existence impossible and mere conjecture, pseudoscience even. Because they have not seen an ocean, they will not accept your stories about them. Their adamant insistence means that they will probably never have the experience. They will go to their “graves” saying “I told you so. I am right. Oceans are figments of imagination!”

If someone unaccustomed to an ocean goes swimming therein, it is easy for them to get out of their depth. They may not have had this experience before and the notion of being out of their depth is alien to their omniscience. If you say, “careful you are out of your depth”, they are likely to pooh-pooh and disregard. When they get tired and can no longer swim, panic can set in. Being out of their depth they do not know how to proceed.

In general, I have found that trying to warn people that they are stepping into something they do not understand is fruitless. You warn, are assumed weird and a numpty. They disregard the warning and proceed full steam ahead into clusterfuck territory. There is nothing you can do, if an arrogant person needs that experience, who am I to rob them of it? By definition it is impossible to teach a self-diagnosed omniscient or know-it-all, anything.

People in silos or wells are ignorant of life outside the well but they don’t know it nor will they accept it.

If for example you were a skilled physical chemist accustomed to using synchrotron radiation to elucidate the properties of lipid membranes and you were thrust into the midst of a Vajrayana demon banishing ritual it is unlikely that you would take it seriously and believe. You might think it quaint and an indigenous ritual. You would not feel nor note the exorcism. After all synchrotrons are more real and more important than Vajrayana magic.

Maybe one day you might on a whim play with a Ouija board. Because you know best there would be no danger of you opening a portal and allowing a demon in, to feed off your aura and possess you.

People do not understand that “expertise” does not travel well between contexts and worlds. And if you are sufficiently ignorant to make the faux pas of pissing off a demon, there could be hell to pay, literally.

But of course, outside of your well, demons do not and cannot exist, you are adamantly correct about this, are you not?