Logic in the Matrix: the Declaration of Independence

 

By Jon Rappoport

Logic, these days, has been replaced in schools with a mind-control apparatus that involves the following:
Every point of view is equal.
Everybody has to contribute to the whole.
True critical thinking, which is the exclusive territory of the individual, leaves people out of the group and is therefore prejudicial.

If you favor this new formulation and think it’s useful, I have condos on Jupiter for sale.

The point of modern education, more and more, is the GROUP.
“Good people belong to the group.”
“The Group is everything.”
“If you don’t belong to the Group, you have a mental disorder.”

Why is all this emphasis put on the Group?
The answer to that question also gives you the reason logic isn’t taught in schools anymore:
The independent self-sufficient individual is being phased out.
The independent individual who knows how to think and make lucid judgments on his own is a threat to the emerging religion of globalism.
The emerging religion of Globalism is a fuzzy image of THE GROUP. The hive. The colony. The nest. The planet.

Some people think education has been hijacked for the purpose of training children to become robotic workers for the State. That’s partly true, but education is also the proving ground for the religion of the Group.
This religion doesn’t need or want logic. Logic would be disruptive. It would differentiate one student from another. It would reveal there are ways to analyze information that actually come to valid conclusions. Logic isn’t fuzzy. It doesn’t promote the all-inclusive hive.

Two years ago, I spoke to a teacher who was introducing his class to logic. He told me, “These are very bright kids. They’re all going to college. They said they couldn’t learn logic. They couldn’t do it. They had some kind of mental block.”
As we talked further, it became obvious that the mental block was an idea of THE GROUP. These kids had already been indoctrinated into “cooperative thought.”

They instinctively realized that, if they studied logic, the Group would break apart. Each student would have to stand on his own, and that prospect was frightening.
In the religion of the Group, one of the key concepts is “the sustainability of the planet,” a catchphrase which is the leading edge of a vast movement to decide how the individual, as a UNIT, an energy-consuming UNIT, will be regulated in the overall scheme of things.

The individual’s life will be ruled by decisions of the “wise ones,” who understand how to distribute all the available resources of the planet. I’ve actually had students tell me, in their fumbling way, that they have an obligation to think like everyone else. Or if they’re rebels, they have a duty to rebel like other rebels. Logic is a sword that cuts through all that. It wakes up the sleeping mind. It doesn’t paint vague pictures. It has nothing to do with what the Group thinks or has been taught to think.
Logic isn’t a cooperative enterprise. That’s why it was exiled from school systems a long time ago.

I’ve talked to many teachers (I used to teach school) who tell me they lead their students on this basis: “we’re all in this together.” It sounds nice, but it has nothing to do with education. It’s a con. It’s a way of avoiding teaching. Once a teacher walks down that road, he’s finished. He’s regressing back to being a child. He’s forfeiting his position. He’s involved in socializing. It can work for a picnic but not for school.

The cooperative spirit in the classroom is the prelude to the religion of the Group. “We’re all in this together” is the initial sales pitch. I remember, 40 years ago, I had an argument with a teacher who was very annoyed that I was attacking the “spirit of the group” concept. He was absolutely convinced that the atmosphere he promoted in his classroom was instrumental in making education work. He was deeply offended that I was questioning it. For him, it was inconceivable that I couldn’t see the value of “sharing and caring” in the classroom. Hadn’t I ever played sports? Didn’t I know what a team was? Hadn’t I ever experienced the joy of friendship in a group?
I told him many of his kids were scoring quite badly in exams.
Apparently, this was beside the point. He was a good guy, he was a cheerleader for friendship and tolerance, he was concerned about feelings and self-esteem, he was doing his best to make good human beings out of his kids.
I knew all his moves. I had seen them before.

They didn’t make a dent, because in my college days the most compassionate professor I’d had taught me logic. He was also the most exacting professor. He put his students through the mill, and it was exciting. And when, years later, I started working as a reporter, I was already ahead of the game.

A person either wants to think for himself – and knows how to – or he prefers the hazy hive-like existence of belonging to something that is less than he is. It’s that simple. Logic gives you the option of making the first choice and avoiding the second. I finished my formal education just before the really big group-wave hit. The educrats and the elite planners were putting the finishing touches on their blueprint for “participatory education”.

Under that system, the students would be encouraged to believe their random ideas and feelings were just as important as their teachers’. By extension, the students were really in class to make their feelings known and help lead the way to a more just world.

Learning would be done through osmosis, the result of the students and teachers rubbing off on each other. “It’s a process.”
Slice that baloney any way you want to, it’s still baloney. And when the meal is over, the students have no knowledge of logic, which is the foundation for rational thought. They’re cut loose on a river with no paddle. They have an inflated sense of self-worth, and no understanding to back it up.

Out in the world, after school is behind them, what do you think these graduates are going to be attracted to? Anything and anyone who sounds like he’s talking about the GROUP, who praises and elevates the GROUP, who promotes the Collective, who emphasizes how we’re all in this together for a better world.

Only it isn’t a better world. It isn’t, because these half-educated young adults never became truly independent individuals. And because “better world” is the flag behind which sits the actual scenario: self-appointed elite priests directing the distribution of all resources from Central Planning.

Eventually, these ex-students complain, “We didn’t think we were signing up for this!”

Small correction: you didn’t really think at all, because you never learned how.
Since logic is no longer taught as a required subject in schools, the door is open to all sorts of bizarre reactions to the presence of information. Here are three favorites:

One: grab the title of an article, make up your mind about how you “feel,” and ignore everything else.
Two: Actually read the article until you find a piece of information that appeals to you for any reason; latch on to it, and run with it in any direction. In all cases, the direction will have nothing to do with the intent of the article.
Three: From the moment you begin to read the headline of the article, be in a state of “free association.” Take any word or sentence and connect it to an arbitrary thought or feeling, associate that thought with yet another arbitrary thought… and keep going until you become tired or bored.

You might be surprised at how many people use these three “methods of analysis.”
The very idea that the author of the article is making a central point doesn’t register. And certainly, the notion that the author is providing evidence for the central point is alien.

A college liberal education? These days it could be imparted in a matter of weeks, simply by hammering a small set of values into students’ skulls – along with requisite guilt and fear at the prospect of wandering off the reservation. Logic as a subject is viewed with grave suspicion, as if it might involuntarily take a person down the wrong track and dump him in a politically incorrect ditch – a fate to be avoided at all costs.

Therefore, the practice of rational debate is out. Too risky. Besides, the preferred method of dealing with opponents is screaming at them, shoving them off stage, and whining about “being triggered.”

If you think obtaining what’s called a liberal college education is vastly overrated (and absurdly expensive), you’re right. Learning logic, instead, would be a good start down a different road.

And an analysis of the principle of “greatest good for the greatest number” would be very, very useful – since it underpins so much of values-centered education these days.

What does greatest good mean, specifically? How would it be achieved? Who would implement it? How would the implementation affect individual freedom? Wrestling with these questions would open up whole new territories of insight.

When I taught a few basics of logic to middle-school students, the clutter in their minds receded. They found the ability to follow a line of thought. For the first time, they recognized there was such a thing as a connected flow of reasoning from A to B to C to D. The lights went on.

The world may be sinking into deeper levels of know-nothing non-rationality, but that’s not a good excuse for trailing along down into the swamp. It should be a wake-up call to go the other way.
No matter what anyone says, it’s not a crime to be smarter than other people.

Logic is a set of tools. The more a student uses and sharpens them, the more alert, acute, and independent he becomes. The less he relies on any group. And eventually he doesn’t mind not relying on the group. He enjoys his independence. He feels comfortable and confident in it. As he should.

 

yogaesoteric
December 7, 2018