Tag: wrong end of the stick

Blimey guv’nor its Pete Tong

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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From time to time one can get the feeling that a miscommunication has taken place and guess that this is because of the host of assumptions made by others. As a consequence Pete Tong will soon be at the decks.

Imagine a conversation between two people.

If only one of them thinks miscommunication has taken place can they both be correct?

It is quite common for people to get the wrong end of the stick but be convinced otherwise.

I have had a recent instance where someone stated something and then put a chain of action in place without checking if it is what I want to do. They have assumed that I want such a thing, that I will be compliant. They did not ask me nor check. They just went ahead.

There have been a number of disconnects in communication between me and French people. There is an anticipation of a kind of response from me which when it does not arrive is difficult for them to assimilate {it seems to me}. If someone makes a statement I do not feel the urge to correct them. I am not in the habit of discussing things with which I do not agree. I do not need to be right. I tend to note the statement and my interaction can stop there.

This kind of miscommunication thing is quite common when group-think imagines an individual aligned to group-think because everybody else is. It also a common happenstance for the type of people one can recognise as “clever Trevor”. Because they self-perceive as wise they imagine others to be fully on board. Rarely do they check. They imagine that one is one of the ducks in a row when in fact one is a mongoose. Because they like ducks and are accustomed to them, they imagine that everyone is a duck.

I am not known for quacking though I might be crackers, a crackpot and otherwise a lunatic…

I hear Pete Tong making his way to the stage…

Water Spirit – Misogi – Clean Water Venture Dream 22-02-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night dreaming which is in two related parts.

The first part opens on the shores of an alpine lake high up in the Japanese mountains. The lake is shaped like a glacial corrie or cwm and is of a pristine light turquoise blue colour. The water is hyper transparent and crystal cold. The air is crisp. To the rear of the lake is a snow covered peak. The scenery is magnificent with Japanese acers and maples. The water from the lake leaves by a small stream over a waterfall cascade which drops twenty-thirty metres over rock to a small plunge pool. The sound of the small waterfall is melody. The ambience of the environment is close to perfection. The view down from the mountains is far reaching out to the sea.

It is ago something like a thousand years ago. I am on the shore dressed as a Buddhist priest. It is definitely me and I am Japanese. In the dream I know this to be my prior life. The smell is also characteristic of Japan. With me on the shore is a spirit warlord and a small retinue of spirit warriors. There is a Japanese woman who is of high noble family and she has her retinue of ladies in waiting and an armed guard. They are dressed in great finery. The Japanese woman is part water spirit, the nature spirit of the high lake and part woman. Because of this and her relationship with the Imperial family in Shintō she is considered the goddess of the pure waters and an embodiment of misogi or purification. The water is already pure but must also always be blessed. The spirit warlord is angry and the woman must choose to either join him back in the spirit world entirely or relinquish her spirit part and remain human. In a sense I am adjudicating.

The woman does not take kindly to the angry demands of the spirit warlord. She walks over to me and places my hand firmly on her genitals on top of her clothes. She then slips it though her clothes and I can feel her flesh. Forcefully holding my hand there she rubs herself against it until she orgasms. At which point she shudders and relinquishes her water spirit aspect. She has become human.

The warlord watching says, “so you have chosen!!” He heads off into the pristine forest with his retinue of warriors. I reclaim my hand and the woman is surrounded by her ladies in waiting who comfort her. After she recovers she asks me to do a ritual of purification, of misogi, using the waters of the lake. Although it is Shintō I know the ritual well. I have a bamboo bucket and a small bamboo ladle. Which I prepare for the ritual with water from the stream.

I wake up for a visit and a 3 AM ibuprofen.

I am now in a busy city {London} office building. It is just East of The Strand and I am due to meet some financiers / venture capitalists. They have been funding a high end water business. The idea is to create ultra niche very expensive bottled water which is ritually purified and attracts a premium price. I have been asked to look into their investment. I am with a woman in a business suit who is in a rush. She is a bit “doff your cap” to the investors and anxious. She ushers me into a room in which there a number of “suits” sat around a boardroom style expensive table. They tell me that there is a prototype purification set up and pilot line that they want me to inspect. It takes impure near sewage water and makes it top end. They know I am a chemist-scientist-technologist with an entrepreneurial background.

The scene changes and I am in a laboratory. There is a huge blown glass apparatus with many coils of glass tubing. There are two sand-clay filtration stages and a long flow tube with an ultraviolet laser photolyzing chemicals and killing residual bacteria. The throughput is small and this is what is worrying the finance people. I look at the rig and it seems fine to me. It is obvious however that if they start with such impure water the throughput must be very slow. Purification is a process that takes time and effort. If they want top-end water they must start with a source which is already very good, premium and which only needs a bacteriological cleanse.

I am due to present my findings to the committee. As I walk through the building I am told that it is shutting up for the weekend. That I need to close off the lab and give my keys to the people on the third floor. The financiers have pretty much decided that they are going to pull the plug on the investment. I know that they have totally missed the point. All they can see is high throughput. They cannot see the value of purified water blessed by the likes of me. That brand which we might call misogi can attract premium price.

I go through the emptying building and I cannot find the office where I am supposed to deposit the keys. The occupants have rushed off for their hedonistic weekend jollies of excess. I walk past the front security desk and leave the keys with the uniformed man on the desk. I exit via the revolving door onto a busy central London street.

The dreaming ends.

Messaging Assumption and Miscommunication

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Postulate.

The human ability to get entirely the wrong of the stick is close to infinite.

Herein lies the mystery of perception, bias and multiple failures in communication both as a purveyor and acceptor. People may not be aware that they are, whether consciously or not, sending messages which others are receiving and perceiving and assimilating.

I suspect that because I am largely silent and can be not expressive, people tend to imagine that I am judging and being critical. They may expect some verbal response / discussion / mutual bullshitting when talking and when none is forthcoming, they can get unnerved. The feedback mechanism is missing. They expect chit-chat. In the absence they can confer multiple meanings which simply are not there.

People can read all sorts of shit into things. They may imagine I am sending a message when I am not. People might read this blog and imagine that I am messaging them directly.

The likelihood of miscommunication in the context of different cultures and frames of refence is enhanced. People may imagine that their customs are transferable. The French attitude of laissez-faire can be interpreted as complete indifference, fence sitting and not giving a shit, disinterest. It can be read, “that person can’t be arsed, sod ’em, they are not serious. Let’s move on to someone who has a point of view or opinion.”

In trying not to impinge a different message can be received. “Waste of time.”

I’ll assume with a high confidence integral that many people have made hugely erroneous assumptions over the years as to my motivations, what I am thinking and where I am coming from. This {my} assumption is based upon my interpretations of their behaviours and could be invalid. There may be transference of their ways of thinking and prejudices onto me.

There are certain types of people who like to argue the toss and “win” arguments / debates. They like to “score” points.

If someone like this expresses a point of view and one does not counter it, remaining silent even. They can assume agreement and/or victory. The lucky recipient of opinion may disagree totally but cannot be arsed to verbalise. Agreement can be assumed and the illusion of being right /accurate taken from the non-intervention.

Many introverts cannot be bothered to do the thinking for gobby extroverts. It is not important to them nor is share of air time or limelight kudos. The introverts can be disinterested in interaction.

I am reasonably confident that I have by accident, thrown a spanner into the works, with my interactions with the French medical profession. I have not behaved in the manner to which they are accustomed and they have not had the skill or experience to handle it. There has a result been extensive miscommunication and they have made assumptions about what might transpire, what I understand and how I perceive them. It can be very hierarchical. Most medics have not interacted as I have. My need to chat and discuss is vanishingly small when viewed from the angle of French customs. If I want to find out my first port of call is research which I will do thoroughly.

Once miscommunication has gone beyond a certain point the situation becomes very difficult if not impossible to salvage. This is because face and pride have now come into play and dominate, often unilaterally, subsequent interpersonal dynamics.

Postulate

The human notion of face and implicit loss of face is one of the most expensive bits of human folly in terms of relationships and loss of human life.

Face in this context is illusion, a socio-political construct which sells gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers and underpins the scripts of television soap operas.

“Face” lies aback assumption and miscommunication. People get offended, an emotional overaction, if things do not comply with assumption and social expectation. People can assume that the {their} worldview is common and that everyone holds similar prejudices to them.

Once people have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick the tendency is to grasp this ever more tightly. Mis-perceptions and mis-assimilations of reality are more concrete and fixed than one might imagine.

There is no better demonstration of miscommunication than the game of “Chinese whispers”. Yet surprisingly, given this knowledge, the faceless and ubiquitous “they” are somehow the font of all truth and knowledge….

There is not a lot you can do or say which is contrary to the omniscience of “they”. No matter how well you communicate it, it cannot be perceived accurately because “they” dogmatically forbid it.

The wrong end of the stick beckons with the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole…