Tag: faux pas

Big Cheeses and Kudos

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll speculate that Herr Trump sees himself as a big cheese and wants people to kiss his ring. The orange don, Donald, has a big army, navy and air force. I doubt anyone looks forward with unbridled glee at the notion of a public meeting with him. These meetings are a necessary evil. He is not a pleasant man. In societal terms he is a high kudos being, though some may not wish to brag about their associations with him. He is not universally good PR. He can be bad for business. He has a lot of power.

Kudos is context specific. To a MAGA wannabe an endorsement from the “don” is manna from heaven.

We are watching recorded University Challenges on YouTube. Quite often there are questions on Nobel Prizes and Laureates. These prizes are high kudos and should you win one it will boost an academic salary and secure your job. Universities like the kudos of bragging about Nobel Laureates.

“Look at us we are special!”

Even though I was recently incarnated as a scientist I struggle to recall who won, with whom and for what. I have even met a few of these winners.

According to Professor Google there are / have been around one thousand Nobel Laureates. This means that England football captains are less common and world cup winning England football captains a positive rarity. In some {most} contexts football is more important and more significant than someone boffinacious. Aside from a few like Einstein, people know the faces of Beckham and Lineker better.

Lhamo Thondup the Tibetan tulku also known as Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso or H.H. Dalai Lama is one of only 14 reincarnations. To many in the world he is a high kudos being and his face is easily recognised. He has met Bush, Obama, Cameron and Merkel inter alia. It is good PR to be seen in his presence. He is a spiritual big cheese. He gets invites.

People can speak in awe of people like Friedrich Nietzsche. You must be brainy to read him. Strangely he played a big part in my interest in Buddhism

“Goodreads” attributes the following quotations to Nietzsche.

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“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

“Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”


― Friedrich Nietzsche

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In academic circles it is more accepted to quote him than Padmasambhava. The latter is a very high kudos figure in Tibetan Buddhism, a supposed Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

Many big cheese are also legends in their own lunchtimes, others are not, they are humbler than that. In the UK, research assessment exercises have sought to measure peer esteem or kudos. This is such a subjective thing and wholly non scientific yet those keen to get research grants played along with something close to a convenient heresy.

The ascribing of kudos is a very personal and hence subjective thing too. We have the phenomenon of fans who attach much kudos to their heroines or heroes. They may even pay for used clothing or bath water. Kudos is attached to corporeal relics of saints and Buddhas. The essence which may have once imbued the relic is long departed. Perhaps saints have way more than eight fingers and two thumbs so everyone can get a relic.

Despite the positional power which kudos affords in a socio-political sense it is not real. You cannot measure it with a laser and a detector. When you die you can’t take it with you.

People can make huge faux pas dancing upon the minefield of kudos. Kudos is another word for something we desire in a social-construct sense. We may seek recognition or affirmation from the herd, the shoal. Even if we are awarded with a measurable trinket, kudos is impermanent. One can fall from grace off one’s glittery platform shoes like Gary did. A fall from the lofty heights of kudos is difficult to bear.

We may hold things important which others do not. We may fail to attach importance to something revered by others. We may be arrogant in our notions of what is significant and to which we ascribe our personal kudos.

Trying saying kudos, kudos, over and over!! Very quickly is starts to sound silly.

Some people want to become important, significant big cheeses. Some imagine they already are. Many have a sense of grandiose entitlement.

Just as some want to be top dog others want to be a big cheese.

“If you thought $30 for a pound of blue cheese was expensive, wait till you hear how much this Spanish blue cheese just sold for.

Clocking in at $6,682 per pound, a wheel of Cabrales blue cheese from northern Spain earned the title of the world’s most expensive cheese after a 2.2 kg (4.85 lb) wheel was sold at auction for €30,000 ($32,408.10).

The auction took place at the 51st annual Cabrales Cheese Competition held in the Principality of Asturias. Bidding started at €3,000 and quickly rose as passionate turophiles battled for the right to own the first-place cheese.

In the end, restauranteur Iván Suárez won the prized wheel. Suárez told Spanish news outlet EFE that “the passion for the land” and “recognizing the work of all the cheesemakers” made him buy the cheese.”

New Record for World’s Most Expensive Cheese Josie Krogh | August 29, 2023

Faux Pas and Extracurricular Activities

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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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?

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…