Tag: compliance

Messaging

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

When we attempt to communicate the message we actually send may be much different from what we think we meant.  How people receive and perceive what we say may differ markedly.

There is a tendency to try to force others to comply with our view of the world. If they do not we can ostracise them, shame them and “punish” them for not behaving as we think they ought to. Excommunication and shunning are methods employed. There can be a perception that the shunned person wishes back into the fold and will do anything to make amends. This can be a miscalculation.

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Once we have shunned someone it can be impossible to re-build a relationship. A bridge burned is not easily reconstructed. The punished may no longer want anything to do with the emotive “punishers”.

We might imagine a temporary message when it is perceived as permanent. If you put someone on the naughty step they may be very happy to be out of the maelstrom where they can meditate and gain perspective.

They can boogie in peace.

It can be difficult to understand that if you bomb someone they are very unlikely to be bosom buddies again in the near future.

Ill will has long longevity, good will can evaporate in a flash and is very difficult to rebuild.

We may not think about what messages we are actually sending especially when we are in the heat of the moment or ranting and raving. We can deliver and receive entirely the wrong message…

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“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

― George Bernard Shaw

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Chemistry Degree Course – Knowledge & Compliance Dream 14-03-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream

The dream opens in a Chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratory. Myself and a dozen or so others are getting back our Chemistry degree first year examination papers. The faculty, all younger than me by decades, are wearing white lab coats. The exam results are generally poor, the idea being to shock us into study. I get my paper back and look at the marking and comments. I can see a couple of proofs which I sketched out but did not finish because I knew the answer from that point. I get to the end and see that my mark is fifty one out of a hundred. Appended is the comment “one of the top marks for this exam”. Various of my peer group have done less well in the exam. I know that reason I have done better is because of my stint teaching “A” level Chemistry. I know that to get marks answers must correlate to the marks scheme provided only. There is no scope for even correct deviance. The people who have answered at “degree” level as it was two decades ago have been marked down and wrong. I understand that this is because the knowledge has changed a bit and that the acceptable answers have become more rigidly defined.

I go to the library and thumb through a modern edition of Atkins  “Physical Chemistry”. I note that it has changed with bizarre “knowledge” boxes and artificially highlighted “take homes”. I am then back in the teaching lab. I ask one of the faculty what text books we need. He hands me a PDF which is entitled “how to pass courses”. It is a guide on how best to give the expected answers to exam questions. He says that the details of how to get the text are on the course materials.

I ask him if the course might accept that it is not right in all cases, that it is a simplification. I explain that I once bought an achromatic lens which was marketed as truly achromatic. I explain that using Nd: YAG wavelengths of 1064 and 532 nm the focal points differed at even moderate laser intensity. The lens was achromatic only at very low laser fields. The manufacturer would not listen to my findings. The faculty member says that this is irrelevant. There are only the accepted answers to the course. He is mildly threatening. “If you don’t answer the questions as we set them and provide the accepted answers, you will not pass the course.” There is an element of coercion and exercise of power over. “If you do not comply you will not pass. You will fail. You will not get the accepted qualification”. He is unaware of my level of knowledge and adamant that he is right. I must comply with him (them) and what they deem right and complete.

In the dream I know that there is a problem. Because of course metrics courses and answers are designed in such a way that they can be measured. The guidebooks on how to pass are there to ensure that students get good grades and thence the course providers and examiners get good teaching feedback. I note that there is a circular delusion about improving standards and qualities. I note also that compliance is a problem when it comes to what knowledge is accepted and acceptable. In the dream I think they are kidding themselves about what they know and about knowledge. I suspect that they are wholly unwilling to accept this.

The dream ends…

The Problems of Should

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Many problems arise not because things are but because people think they should be different. This enforcement of conditional opinion about how things should be is directly causal of conflict and of angst. There is another level to this where problems arise out of people thinking that things should meet expectations. Expectations are a mental-emotional construct of largely human origin.

To give a trite example.

Data collection suggests that for the western European male population an average life expectancy is a tad over 80 years. Nevertheless many die in their sixties. People kind of think they should live to 80. There is even planning to that target. I am largely convinced, in my opinion, that it is very unlikely that I will live to that age. I should not have that opinion and it can make people uncomfortable that I do. Many people like the idea of a long life and the expression that X left us too early is not uncommon. You should not die that young. It is a tragedy.

If you say such a death is natural and therefore not a tragedy you are speaking heinous. You should not be so cruel heartless and frank. Because of opinion like that you are a problem. You do not comply with the social should. Should makes you a problem and a right bastard to boot.

Wanting things to be different, access to the green grass on the other side of the fence is a human notion of change according to how things should be. The notion of “rights” in a democratic society is currently being widely eroded. This is because people think that others should not have opinions which differ from theirs. There is suppression and on occasion violence because people should agree, have the same colour skin and follow the same notion of deity as the noble and omniscient US.

“If you convert to our religion, we will not slay your ass painfully! You should follow our God, the only true God!”

This should causes death and bloodshed.

I live as I do, it does not really impinge on the outer world over much. Theoretically there may be opinions that it should not be thus. I should not live like this. The holders of those opinions have created a problem by the notion of should. It does not gel with the reality.

There is a disconnect between should and is/are. Which can be viewed as problematic. If you drop the imposition of should-based opinion any notion of problem evaporates.

I am now prepared for no hip operation in the rest of this foreseeable calendar year {As a starter for ten}. There is no problem outside the compound with this. It will limit some of my gardening and I will be taking pain medication. As a thought experiment others might imagine that this should not be the case. Yet despite the should, it is. A problem in this kind of gedankenexperiment arises solely out of a contrast between notions of should, an aspiration to the contrary and some idea about what is right for me to bear.

“In this day and age…”

In the UK news people harp on about waiting lists for appointments and operations as if these were some God-given right. They are not. I am not owed, due nor do I particularly deserve an operation. Were it not for modern medicine neither the wife nor I would be alive.

Viewed from one angle a bit of end of life pain is no big deal. It is only a problem if people deem that it could be and therefore should be different.

Problems often arise out of attempts to alter reality and the unfoldment of life. People try to steer things towards how they think they should be, how they ought to be, of how they want them to be.

The infliction of people’s opinion of should is one of the A number one causes of strife.

Israel thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons so they coerce Trump into using big bombs. It is OK for US to have nuclear bombs but THEY should not.

There is a part for me which thinks that if Israel had been a lot more friendly and cooperative helping local economies to develop a comfortable middle class over the last few decades, all the simmering anger and bile might have faded. However that is not the case. A different suppressive ideology has held sway. Oppression has no sell by date; it must be continued until revolution. The mind set of they should be taught a bloody vengeful and punitive lesson has endured.

It has not brought peace, it has not brought love, it has not brought harmony.

A little thought shows that should is a key component in many problems, local, relational and in terms of geo-politics.

Arguably should is more dangerous and destructive than nuclear weapons.