Subjective – Dreamyoga

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.

———————————

“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

—————————————

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

If one watches US news, Al Jazeera, BBC and France 24 it would he hard to conclude no. Because the narration of reality and its significance to the participants presented therein differ widely. This is a mark of subjectivity as opposed to an objective reality. France 24 today had a debate about Trump’s off the cuff remark about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. One man’s conquest is another’s brutal ethnic cleansing. One man’s real estate project is another’s exile and abject misery. These realities are not co-realities. A business deal to Trump is less significant than an irreversible life change for another and what is left of their family. Significance is in the context and the eye of the beholder and is not absolute.

The reality of a 9 to 5 job safe and secure in the city where one has kudos and power changes abruptly with a plane crash in the jungle. The hungry leopard does not defer to the fat cat boss over the manual worker. It sees dinner. The boss is easier to eat than the serf. In terms of economy, it selects the most calorific and facile.

Our normal realities are not as secure as we imagine, a mammogram or a prostate exam can flip our worlds in well under an hour. Yet we imagine in our complacency that our “reality” applies and continues to do so.

I am fond of multiple universes or put less dramatically, differing assimilations of “reality”.

My reality today is markedly different than it was 20 years ago. I do not walk in those circles and am not obsessed about the reality-metrics which apply therein for the measurement of success. I do not give a shit about research assessment exercises or student satisfaction feedback surveys. My main concerns are health and the bloody Coypu. My reality is wholly different and significance for me has changed vastly. Which suggests that reality and significance are in a way, time dependent. They are certainly spatially dependent. I no longer occupy that physical plane space; my reality has changed.

A socially acceptable narrative for me is that I was doing OK, then had burn out, and chucked my toys out of the cot. I dabbled a bit with science tutoring and then retired to France. I am now socially isolated and quasi-hermitic. This is largely lacking any wider significance, there are few implications. My impact on the world was short-lived and very local.

Based solely on dream “evidence” and subjective vision alongside this version of reality is that I have partial recall of prior lives inter alia a few as a Buddhist priest/monk. This in itself is not overly significant. It is the sort of thing one might say after a spliff or two.

“Hey man I can remember my life as a Thai Buddhist practising something like Muay Thai.”

“Far out Bro! I always thought you were spiritual.”

Of course this could all be made up hippy-trippy stuff.

People tend to choose the contextual framing of any “reality” to suit that which is most convenient for them to assimilate the world with.

I have been reading Anatole Le Braz today. He has compiled folk stories from the immediate area and they have been fun to read. In one such story a young woman of “friendly” morals had seven children. She dies as does her brood. She is doomed to spend purgatory near her erstwhile home as a sow with seven black piglets. After several interactions that went badly, the locals decided that if they encounter said sow and brood, they should cross the road.

Likewise, the souls of the dead can spend earth bound purgatory as crows.

If you and I were out and about on a misty Breton night and I mentioned the latter “fact”, and even if you were a rational omniscient scientist, a surprise meeting with a pair of crows might unsettle you. If I started to talk with those crows even though you could not hear their reply, you might brick it, a little. You might suspect that I was taking the piss, but you would not be sure despite all your omniscience. I could wind you up or simply laugh at your predicament with the crows. When they laughed back a shiver would go down your spine.

Out of context at your work desk in daylight your encounter with souls trapped in earth corvid purgatory would no longer seem an optional reality. They were just crows.

The assimilated reality is often highly subjective…

Two crows on a misty crossroad at dead of night are more significant than a deskbound recollection whilst dining al-desko.

What you deem significant might only be significant in your little world. This is not a thought which many entertain as they are often self-obsessed and fail to empathise with the wider world. As a consequence, people might miss something with much wider significance after all the fluff in the navel is tantamount.

Just because you don’t understand it or are unfamiliar with it does not mean that other realities are less real than yours. They may be separate but you would be a bigot to deny them if you have not as yet experienced them.

Are Reality and Significance Subjective?

A big fat yes from me…

Tag: Subjective

Big Cheeses and Kudos

Are Reality and Significance Subjective?