"Thinking" and Thinking, "Education" and Education

We are on the subject of freedom and truth, which are of course necessary conditions of one another, which must mean they converge on a single reality (and are prolongations of it herebelow).

For human purposes, it doesn't get more important than these two.  And if we trace our civil war down to the fundamentals, we indeed see very different perspectives on them.

I've been listening to Dennis Prager for some 25 years, and one of his central points -- and he cites relevant examples every day, so it's not just an unsupported insult -- is that truth is simply not a value for the left.  Rather, the left is primarily motivated by feelings -- not necessarily wholly bad ones.  For example, they talk a lot about compassion; but unfortunately they are also consumed with envy, resentment, and a compulsion to control others.

This is why you can never expect a leftist to be consistent in his thought.  Because he is motivated by feelings and not logic -- well, one could think of dozens of examples, but he'll scream about how Black Lives Matter while enthusiastically supporting the abortion of millions of black babies, or attack law enforcement, which results in thousands more blacks being murdered on the streets of Baltimore or Chicago.

The point is, a leftist -- even if he happens to be speaking the truth -- never says something because it is true, but because it is expedient.  If truth and ideology clash, then the truth has got to go.  You already know this, and a leftist will never understand it, so I won't waste time pressing the issue. More obvious is the left's devaluation of freedom in favor of equality.   We won't even argue that point, because it is self-evident.

For Hayek, freedom is "a state in which each can use his knowledge for his own purposes."  In contrast, note how so much of the "pretended altruism" of the left "manifests itself in a desire to make others serve the ends which the 'altruist' regards as important."

Do you see what he -- the altruistic leftist -- did there?  He co-opted both your freedom and your truth in a single operation, because he knows better what's good for you.   But whatever it is, it isn't better than freedom, nor is it likely that the leftist knows more about you than you do.

I was explaining this to my son yesterday -- that our natural rights such as freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and self-defense do not obligate anyone else to do anything.  But if you have a right to medical care, or to a house, then someone must be compelled to treat you or build it.  Over the weekend I heard something about Miss Occluded Cortex suggesting how we should adopt  the blueprint of World War II  to combat "global warming."

Let's see. Back then, 50 million men between the ages of 18 and 45 had to register for the draft, and you may have noticed that the civil rights of military members vary quite significantly from regular citizens.  In short, you are forced to do and say a lot of things irrespective of whether or not you want to do or say them.   No wonder she's attracted to this model!

But as Hayek explains, it is "not in our power to build a desirable society by simply putting together the particular elements that by themselves appear desirable."

You might say that if freedom gets us into a ticklish spot, then only freedom can get us out of it.  The solution is not to eliminate our freedom.  For example, the solution to horse pollution was not to ban horses or tax hay, but to develop the automobile -- which, of course, no one planned.  Rather, it emerged from free people freely dabbling with their particular know-how.  Likewise, no one forced the Wright Brothers at gunpoint to fly.

Yes, "the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseen and unpredictable actions."  As such, we can never know what we are losing when we restrict someone's freedom.  But because it is never seen, it is quite easy to dismiss.  Again, this is not a bug but a feature of the left:  ignorance of ignorance.

I'm tempted to veer into The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books they Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy for some pure insultainment, but the book actually has its serious side.  For every one of these left-wing tyrants was a f*ck-up in his own life, but knew how to bring about utopia by ignoring your knowledge and eliminating your freedom.

Just like our socialist numbskull from the Bronx.  How does she justify eliminating your freedom and devaluing your knowledge?  Of course, she does so with the usual veneer of "compassion," but think of what must be underneath that!  A kind of grandiosity, omniscience, moral rectitude, and entitlement to rule that would match any dictator anywhere.

"I was struck by the fact that many dictators begin their careers as writers, which probably goes a long way toward explaining their megalomaniac conviction in the awesome significance of their own thoughts."

I mean, I can't say that I think my own thoughts are insignificant.  However, it would never occur to me to force them on anyone else.  Nor would it ever occur to me to devalue or ignore the millions of people who know things I don't.

This highlights a Great Irony -- that formal education is by no means an unqualified good.  For education means abstraction, and abstraction may or may not be a reflection of concrete reality.  For example, the collected works of Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao amount to hundreds of volumes.  But does any of it touch reality?

Yes, it is quite true that In the beginning is the Word.  But that refers to God's Word, not ours.  To the extent that our words detach from that Word, then trouble begins.  In the back I have a note to myself:  "High IQ or extensive education means being more skilled at being wrong, often catastrophically wrong."  See the frightening state of our elite universities for details.

Truly, we need to distinguish between "thought" and "leftist thought."  Indeed, we probably shouldn't even call the latter "thought," since it operates along such markedly different lines.  And I don't mean that merely as an insult.  Any ideologue uses his mind in a way the normal person doesn't.  Rather, he thinks upside-down, inside-out, and backward.

Which I mean literally, because the pseudo-thinking of such a person is characterized by deductions from the a priori system (upside-down), by psychological projection (inside-out), and by a confusion of cause and effect (backward).

Education most certainly kills, and not in trivial numbers!  Rather, the most horrific catastrophes in human history have resulted from them:

"Many people regard books and reading as innately positive, as if compilations of bound paper with ink on them in and of themselves represent a uniquely powerful 'medicine for the soul.'"

No!  In another note to myself, it says that "Education without virtue -- without soul formation -- is always wrong."  That may sound a little polemical, but think about it:  we love, for example, nuclear physics.  But what if Nazi Germany had come up with the atom bomb before we had?  Likewise, we love aviation, but for jihadis?

So, "a moment's reflection reveals that this is not even slightly true:  books and reading can cause immense harm. To take just one example: had Stalin's mother never sent him to the seminary then he never would have learned to read and never would have discovered the works of Marx or Lenin. Instead, he would have been a drunken cobbler like his father, or perhaps a small-time gangster in Tbilisi.  He would still have spread misery, but on a much smaller scale..."

Now, perhaps you think this is a remote or unlikely scenario. To the contrary!  Think of the thousands of leftists with PhDs in Grievance Studies of various kinds, from feminisim to critical race theory to queer studies.  To say that these people are "educated" and that they "think" is to condemn education and thinking.

Which we don't want to do.  We just want to distinguish them from their perversions and inversions.

To be continued....