The Loony Quiz©

May 30, 2025 ~ 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.

	A	B
Do I get impatient often?	yes	no
Do I lose my rag in traffic jams?	yes	no
Do I feel offended quite often?	yes	no
Do I think “life is not fair?”	often	rarely
Am I prone to over reaction?	yes	no
If I don’t get my way do I sulk?	often	rarely
Do I bear grudges?	yes	no
Do I seek to get even?	yes	no
If someone does better than me, do I get upset?	yes	no
Do I try to pull others down to feel better about myself?	yes	no
Have I ever had a bout of cranio-rectal disease?	often	rarely
Am I special?	yes	no
Does nobody appreciate me?	yes	no
Must I always be busy?	yes	no
Does silence scare me?	yes	no
Must I always be the winner?	yes	no
Do I always know best?	yes	no
Am I always right?	yes	no
Do I enjoy opining upon things I don’t really know?	yes	no
Do I enjoy gossip and trust it?	yes	no
Am I impressed by the unproven opinions of others?	yes	no
Am I genuinely opened minded?	no	yes
Are people who don’t believe the same things as me?	crazy	sane
Is my belief system the only correct one?	yes	no
Is advancement better than happiness?	yes	no
Is kudos the be all and end all?	yes	no
If I win prizes / competitions does that make me feel better than?	yes	no
Am I a grand person or one of the little people?	grand	little
Do rules apply to me?	no	yes
Is material plane status important to me?	yes	no
Am I a bit of a tense motherfucker?	yes	no
Am I happy and at peace with the universe?	no	yes

Now count up the number of As and Bs.

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

1984 Quotes – George Orwell

May 29, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“Sanity is not statistical.”

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”

“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.”

La raison est ce qui effraie le plus chez un fou.

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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“What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.”

Anatole France

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People can be ultra-judgmental if you stray in any way from the norm, the rules, if you dare to be even a smidgeon different. Those who have lost hope and succumbed are quick to label others feckless dreamers. They can be punitive and unforgiving.

For many reasons and with many feelings, “The Dead Poets Society” is / was a film for me of awakening. Later because of various real world events it had a haunting and melancholic wounding personal resonance. It spoke volumes as to where society misplaced it values and then inflicted them on others. Young people had their entire self-worth invested in exam results, success, winning and achievement. Off piste expression was frowned upon, goals were the be all and end all. Compliance seen as the way, you must play the game to get ahead. Even if it means dying a little inside.

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As such so often the baby is thrown out with the bath water. There is no way to convince a narrow minded person with a blinkered view that this is true. A frog at the bottom of a well is an expert on the well bottom, but it has never seen a pacific sunset on a white coral beach in the tropics. The frog cannot begin to conceive of an ocean let alone a sunset.

There is no reliable way to be 100% confident either of my sanity or my insanity. This especially through a blog. I could be a season card bus ticket holder to Barking or park my 4×4 in the drive of my expensive Godalming home having studied PPE at Oxford. There is no need to decide or choose.

Only in a very weird situation would it matter if I was a crackpot fantasist or not. Sat where I am, I do not impinge on the world. I have the time to daydream and it impacts not, provided that I do the garden and cook dinner from time to time.

Nevertheless, how people decide, perceive and assimilate the world can have real world effects.

Thanks to recent events in the USA the world is becoming an ever more divisive, coarse and unpleasant place. Nuance is being executed by social media sound byte firing squads. The monosyllabic and the droning are draining the will to live. Hope is being replaced by pissing contest.

If you don’t comply you will be berated in public and written out of the script, sidelined with those who do not toe the line and suck up enough. Manna will not fall from the high table, the Fed. There will be no place at the banquet-orgy of US economy for you. War, trade war.

I see nothing inspiring, nothing uplifting, no succour for the poor and the needy. I see no harbinger of hope or joy nor for that matter of humanity. I see no Christian values.

The lights of the world are slowly going out…

You can judge for yourself who is more sane, you or I?

Losing Your Mind – Zen

October 30, 2024 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Some people might think that I am/was a complete nut job for getting out of a contract which would have paid 8000 euros a month tax free, over a decade ago. I must have been out of my mind. Others might think me whacko for a number of my beliefs and that I have lost my mind. Why would a trained scientist not strive for recognition and research funding. Why renounce his job at a world “top ten” university? He must be barking mad and batshit crazy to boot.

I have lost my mind but not in the way people might think.

In general, my mind / head is a very quiet place. There is no continuous chatter of internal dialog. I am not busy with should and ought, nor is comparison mind resident there. My mental default is silence. I can observe, I can experience and absorb. I can hear and see, but there is no mind making endless qualitative thinking. If I want to think I have to actively engage my mind. It does not run off like a horse when the stable door is opened.

I could say that my “mind” differs from most. I know that it has changed markedly over the last two decades. But there is no way that I can explain or illustrate in a meaningful way what my “mind” is like to anyone suffering from internal dialogue or very attached to the common socio-political assimilation of world and society. I once experienced that world first hand as an active participant. I no longer do/am.

I still look much the way I used to but the animating contents of the meaty body are now changed. People might struggle to understand that I am not as I was and interpret me in terms of an old look up table of behaviour and manner. I’ll speculate that many would not get it or me. My assimilation of world is different, I cannot prove this to you or anyone really. It would take sharing a considerable amount of time and circumstance to appreciate and I would have to extrovert my thoughts and thinking in order for people to see just how different. I can still interpret events from a “normal” perspective but I do not share the emotions many are beholden to. I can appear to fit in and comply with the common world views.

In the Zen literature there is a lot of mention of Buddha nature. If I understand Zen at all it is to live fully in the present and at the point before mind knowing that as observer you are also participant and not separate from the arising phenomena. Zen does not like definitions because that is a feature of comparison mind and a definition by definition invites comparison to said definition which is “mind”. People stress over definition and argue the toss. Buddha nature is offered as a way of being, a nebulous ideal which exists when mind is fully quiescent. Most of the Zen koans are devised to show just how much mind trips one up and self-entangles. They point at not using mind the way which it is customary so to do.

In order to be “Zen”, one has to lose one’s mind and yet remain sane.

However, what is considered sane in the common socio-political assimilation of world, is all “mind” and therefore insane. If people like their possessions and acquisitional materialism, to detach from these would be considered lunacy by many. A wide empty path is the road of the lunatic who disavows possession, grabbing and the socio-political accumulation of kudos and social power.

Kudos is illusion in Zen and Buddhism as a whole. Yet many seek it with a passion.

Although people use Zen as an adjective for calm, they are not interested in attaining it because it requires that they forego the common world view. As we all know you cannot have your cake and eat it.

How is my logic?

Do we live in a sane world?

Is there an increasing problem with mental health as measured to the normative socio-political construct?

I have lost my “mind” does that make more or less sane than you?

Are you saner than I?

Discuss….