status – Dreamyoga

During the night I came up with this term “social blurring” to try to verbalize something which has seemed difficult to / with me in my social interactions. That is behaviour within the common social-conditioned view of the world. It is surprisingly difficult to put into words.

One could say that I do not have the “proper” respect for social position and authority. Nevertheless, I am law abiding, these days. I am pretty sure that I have put noses out of joint among those who consider themselves higher, better, more powerful than me. I am not prone to arse licking or sycophancy. I do not play the itchy back game in a transactional sense. I do not curry favour nor do I butter up. It is possible that this has been noted. People have gotten hoity-toity with me when I have not shown enough respect “due” to their position in society. In some cases, this has caused a punitive response, particularly when I was a precocious graduate student. I have reason to believe that this detrimentally affected my career. To me it is no big deal if someone is a famous Prof, a CEO or a King. I see the person and not the status.

Clearly there are social “problems” inherent in this attitude. A mere pleb did not ought to think like this and perhaps needs reminded of their position on the ladder of life. I do not appreciate my position in “the” pecking order as a serf.

Various people have said things to me which made little or no sense to me but seemed to make sense to them.

My mother, from the Rhondda valley, said that I behaved “to the manor born”. Which meant that I was a bit posh and at ease in posh places like expensive hotels and restaurants. Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines paid for four years at an English private preparatory school. I had an itinerant childhood and thus became an adept chameleon. I never had a sense of not belonging in a posh place. I can walk into the Ritz and feel at ease. I have been on stage at The Royal Albert Hall. I can walk into expensive private homes and not feel at awe.

Twenty odd years ago Théun Mares said that I was an alpha male. I thought to myself what the fuck is he on about. He kept banging on about this and some wolf pack interpretation of status. It had never occurred to me that I am in any way alpha nor dominant. I have no desire to assert position nor have underlings. I do not need nor want to snarl to keep a pack in line. In this weird world view I am a lone wolf not a pack animal. I clearly do not exert or exude the boundaries others anticipate. I am not interested in being top dog nor will I be overly submissive either. I don’t get excited by the intrigue of power struggles, nor can I be arsed with them. As a consequence of not snarling people can take the piss. The boundaries are blurred. Some, so I am told, like clear boundaries and definition of position in pecking order.

When I was a lecturer, it never occurred to me that I had status and position, in that context. I saw myself as no better than the students and definitely not a font of all wisdom. I interacted in a manner similar to a third year graduate student with a first year graduate student. It was more working together than professing. When I left my job, it became abundantly obvious that there were elements of social positional power associated with that role and the institution in which I had been institutionalised. It was a big deal for some, whereas for me it was bog standard. The lines between staff and student were accidentally blurred. I saw them more as equals than underlings.

In a weird sense I am used to being listened to irrespective of social position, there may even be some residual expectation of that. This expectation is rarely met. I have mostly gotten used to it, though on occasion it can flare up particularly if the other person concerned is ignorant and yet adamant in their ignorance. Sometimes I fail to hold my tongue and I do not care what their social standing may be.

In general, I am not awed by social positions but may be socially awkward when in numbers. I just find the ritual sniffing or normal social interaction boring and pointless. This means that I do not satisfy apparent needs / requirements of others. I can seem like an odd fish. I have no need to brag and claim social ladder rung in consversation..

When I have had “power” I have not wielded it. Nor have I taken advantage of that power when I might have. Being a young man with a paper share value of £ 2 million has an impact on knicker elastic. I feel pretty sure in my self that I have been tempted by power and come out the other side relatively unscathed. I did not turn into a power crazed arsehole.

I keep coming back to a perception that somehow, I do not fit what others expect.

I do not see others as better than, higher than me. Nor do I see others as beneath me. I am no better. I may be more experienced and intelligent, but I am not above. It is a kind of egalitarianism which can make people uncomfortable. There are some who have deferred to me and others who are perennially spoiling for a fight as if to assert position in pecking order. A fight I have no interest in partaking in. It has been my perception that people who have thus engaged have failed to learn whatever it is that I might have taught them. The immediacy of perceived status and competition for it has blinded them. Some people want to bring me down, teach me a lesson.

Perhaps the overarching weirdness in this life has been the number of people who want to tell me something, argue the toss, try to convince me they are right and otherwise teach me.

“That’ll learn ‘im!”

It remains an unsolved mystery as to how and why others feel the burning pressing need to educate me.

Because I do not have strong demands or wants, I have been pliable and subject to manipulation. I rarely have an agenda in contrast to many.

On occasion people have looked to me to provide a lead, only later to undermine me when that lead has not been to their liking. I have come around to the idea that I like planning and envisioning way more than execution. I am certain that I am not cut out to provide any ongoing leadership role in a socio-political sense because I cannot be bothered with the social “niceties” and tedious transactional negotiations. I am not a sycophant nor am I prone to sycophancy. In terms of leadership, I can sustain that for very short terms only. Sooner or later its will go pear shaped because I am unwilling to play the “normal” games.

Quite how and why I was born with this set of self-perceptions may be due to prior incarnations, prior learned inclinations. The more I have meditated the less impressed with socio-political status and imagined kudos I become. The whole notion of “advancement” “position” and social rank escapes me. Even though for others I once had a little.

As far as I can tell my beingness and how I am interpreted by others do not match. There is nothing I can do about that. I have to reel myself in because if I let it go, fully, people might struggle.

I am socially a bit of an oddball. At first pass I seem OK, normal-ish. There is some blurring where social perception and shoe-horn expectation does not fit. My behaviour has been “status” inappropriate not in a criminal way, rather something which is mildly unsettling for others.

I don’t fit the social conditioned mould as well as a I might.

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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?