Disorganization in Modern Scholarship Reflects, or is Reflected By, Disorganization and Chaos in Culture
Lately I have come to the realization that there is little 'scholarship' in Modern Scholarship. As for instance, the University of Columbia noted historian Eric Foner, whose recent book, a study of his idea that Reconstruction in the South following the Civil War was a great and good contribution. Or Project 1619, a journalistic essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones that received a Pulitzer Prize. These are only two from so many of the seriously flawed 'scholarship' items currently posing as learned theses in the U.S.
I could, and may later, present more examples. But I wanted input from members of the Gulch. Agree or disagree, please present arguments.
Yes, in recent times Pulitzer prizes have been cheapened by being awarded to "journalists" for pure fantasies like the "Trump/Russia" hoax. The Nobel prize was cheapened by being awarded to Barak Obama for doing virtually nothing. The propaganda spinning 24/7 in the so-called news cycle can make one dizzy.
Merge antagonists of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" and you have a road map of today's left and its impact on our society. Those works are supposed to be novels. not playbooks, but here we are.
Incidentally, that Nobel if you remember was given to Obamma just a few weeks or months after his first inauguration. Something stinks, for sure!
Actually though, censorship by the Left on various platforms is beginning to loosen up a bit.
A force field will even wreck an airplane should someone try to fly in there.
Pretty sure I saw San Francisco before it became San Fransicko for not seeing homeless anywhere.
I even spent a night outside beside the Rio Grande in the Big Bend Texas park.
I would not go anywhere near that river now.
At that time, Boulder was the only liberal area in the state. We called Boulder: Fifty square miles surrounded by Reality. Now it's all changed; Highlands Ranch in the southern part of Denver is referred to as Little California, because of all the Silicon Valley people who moved in, in the nineties.
The Southwest is beautiful too, though much is desert areas. My mom retired to Albuquerque, and I have lived there off and on during the last ten or twelve years. Right near to that Great River, too.
The Atomic Bomb Museum in Albuquerque is a great attraction too.
In The Gulch some were opining that a vote is wasted for voting being rigged.
I argued that I'll always vote because I'm not giving in to evil.
I believe that a landslide always has a chance of beating a rigged election.
Black and Hispanic citizens are turning against the Democrat Party due to inflationary Bidenomics.
Only idiots can't see what the Puppet-In-Chief's handlers have done to this country.
I'm not giving up. There's Irish in me from my other's side.
Swedish-Irish. Quite a mix. Well, what can a wop-okie say?
years of his story . Will Zoll and his team set te record straight . I recommend starting at the beginning https://substack.com/@prussiagate
My deceased father's ancestor research revealed I'm also related to French settlers that the British kicked out of a Canadian province.
Some of those Frenchies became Cajuns. My frog ancestors stayed up north, Rivet!
Sorry I bent your ear just now. It was very 'ego-centric' of me!!
I think probably everyone in America has a story similar to mine. In fact, and here's an interesting thing, my grandson married a woman who is a Dalton, and related to those particular Daltons, I believe!!
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c...
Thanks for the correction. But they were Huguenots, were they not?
"The last major outbreak of Objectivity called the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th Centuries which peaked with The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution began to ebb soon after the Constitution was presented to the world. America today (2023) is totally run by Subjectivists. "
A hundred-twenty years-ago, the standard in journalism consisted of five words: Who, What, Why, When and Where. Reporters kept their opinions to themselves. That's all gone now!
"When reason dies. emotions rise, and civilizations crumble."
Sad.
I am also an historian of math and science; nowhere today can I find anything even resembling Faraday's meticulous experiments in electrical phenomena nor Maxwell's quantification of those attempts, whereby we now have harnessed the power of electricity.
In fact, I can't even find mathematical research today to compare with the analysis of proportions that Bradwardine of England, and following him, Oresme of France, did in their attempts to quantify force and resistance, in the 14th century, prior to Newton's Laws of Mechanics.
Technology I admit has done much in computer hardware and software, but that has less to do with analysis than with applying 'rules'.
John Dewey's My Pedigogic Creed 1897 killed that idea in its first sentence:" I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize it; or differentiate it in some particular direction."
His ideas rule the educational establishment in America. Perhaps this is why so few are doing meticulous experiments.
Currently I'm reading Jean Piaget, his first book, published 1923, "The Language and Thought of Children" is fascinating. As a mother with a young child, I had read some of Piaget. Now I'm seeing a deeper interchange and dialogue. I'm in chapter two, and I say that because so far everything he has posited bears up the Aristotelian notion that the age of reason is seven.
I believe, j_IR, seriously, that children are deliberately taught how NOT to think, but to rely on the Federal Government for truth. I read something by I think his name was James Q. Wilson, wherein he said "government shapes character". How dangerous. One would think Hitler Youth would still be in living memory.
https://worldviewtube.com/worldviewpe...
I agree the schools are aggressively inflicting an anti-Reason agenda on our children and grandchildren. OTOH, my daughter and her husband have their 11-year old son in a Montessori school and the results are inspiring. So there is some hope.
Have you read Maria Montessori's The Secret of Childhood?
My daughters were influenced and I hate to say it, by mostly 'progressive' thought of the sort that goes your parents were all wrong, etc. And it is easy to get it across to your children, after they learn about World War II, etc., and Civil Rights activism and Vietnam War protests. And illegal abortion is like, well, a WITCH HUNT, and what adolescent wouldn't go for unrestrained sexual activity? But I believe they can be 're-educated', so to speak. Both went into my own field of endeavor, mathematics. And my eldest daughter made sure her own children stayed cool and collected during high school. So there's hope.
Well, you can see a very direct relationship between chaos in culture and disorganization in thought.
An interesting occurrence in the early 19th century, of a mathematician urging his son to give up trying to disprove Euclid's Fifth, Parallel, Postulate, comparing that quest to a young man's desire for romance!
I could never have home-schooled my kids, neither of them thought I had any sense whatsoever!
Dewey? Hegelian dialectic. Use the same vocabulary with a twist in meaning. This is the entirety of the progressive movement.
One can be a competent or cunning linguist. Is it backed up by objective philosophy and reason?
Poem 27 from Tao te' ching (American prose interpretation; 1944; Witter Bynner: (The Way of Life According To Lao Tzu)
One may move so well that a foot-print never shows,
Speak so well that the tongue never slips,
Reckon so well that no counter is needed,
Seal an entrance so tight, though using no lock,
That it cannot be opened,
Bind a hold so firm, though using no cord,
That it cannot be untied.
And these are traits not only of a sound man
But of many a man thought to be unsound.
A sound man is good at salvage,
At seeing that nothing is lost.
Having what is called insight,
A good man, before he can help a bad man,
Finds in himself the matter with the bad man.
And whichever teacher
Discounts the lesson
Is as far off the road as the other,
Whatever else he may know.
That is the heart of it.
The French Revolution, Hegel and his return to dialectics, Kant and the non-thinking of Marx has been the bane of the progress that has stimulated the advance of mankind in the past 3,000 years. I fully intend to wipe any sort of Marxist, Leftist thought from the mind of man. It is malignant and malevolent.
So as you can see, politics and government to a certain extent, except insofar as government relates to human involvement and interaction and intra-action, is not that much of interest.
Just thought you would like to know where my priorities lie.
Oh, and steam locomotives are among my most favorite things in the world.
The only work of Rand's I will uptake is The Objectivist's Ethics. It is clean and concise. This is the simplicity beyond the complex of all her thinking, and the underpinning for all her work. Without one comprehending, understanding and applying the concepts, that they take on literal mortal meaning of human interactions, and the interactions of any sentient in the universe, there is no need to proceed into the subjectivity of all other philosophy. I spent 10 years trying to tear it apart, comparing it and integrating it with Tao. They mate well. Both these works caused me to face my bias and any potential of narcissistic or sociopathic behavior. This is not a journey for the timid. It is not over .....
I study similar to you. I have worked for my self-interest or professionally in what I call the foundational five of human trade: Foraging, forestry, fisheries, farming and foundries. The physical sciences and social aspects of equitable trade govern these relationships. I deal with domestic and foreign companies, agencies, policy, monetary systems, etc. Self employed for 35 years and having no more than 5 employees at any time .... I have to wear all the "hats". I solve "Can't" when 90% of the time it is "Won't" for my customers, historically. Then I shrugged.
Now I am involved with a loose consortium of about 100 folk, with some 1000 acres between us. We grow/raise 90% of our food, all heritage seed. I specialize in fruit tree pruning and general repairables, I work, maybe, 3 months a year to produce the same income prior ..... completely different work involving tangible repairables. My happiness is ten-fold increase. Just finished a fuel control, injectors and a clutch assemly on a 1972 Massey tractor today. My new work horse. Garlic needs planting before the snow flies, completing the annual farm cycle. This has allowed me to study, what I call the human dymanic, very closely for the past 4 years.
Steam Locomotives being rare, I, at least, have annual steam tractor days in Edgar WI every summer. Next year project is to acquire a 20 to 25 HP steam engine ..... for the fun-ction of it!
Yes but many know this but it seems more are seduced by incomprehensible flows of long distorted words- similar to the word salads of a current aspiring politician.
I agree with your comment that it is not just government at fault.
My only suggestion for reducing that stuff in to reduce, cut, stop, government spending on culture and education - except possibly for young children. .
Two examples stick in my mind:
1. The Black Swan of Trespass
Devised in 1943 (!) in Australia, "the greatest literary hoax of the 20th century."
The creators opened books at random. chose haphazardly. nonsensical sentences. misquoted. bad verse. ..
https://au.news.yahoo.com/greatest-po...
2. Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
by Alan Sokal
He set out to bury postmodernism, not to praise it.
But the journal editors fell heavily. The academic absurdities that Sokal punctured with surgical precision no longer strike one as particularly outré. If anything, they are now commonplace.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996...
by Steven Weinberg
I have an AIBot search engine that I can't seem to get rid of, and it often refers me to 'modern scholarship', which absolutely gags me. I argue with Bing/Copilot about this often, along with its insistence that something might be 'complex, multi-faceted, and nuanced'. I have told him if something is controversial, say so, but saying certain phenomena is complex, multi-faceted, and nuanced is putting a limit on your intelligence and ability to solve problems.
in the USSA today, why should woke generations "scholarship" be more rational?
(Note that customers are, in the case of government, the People who are supposed
to also be the employer and the boss of all government.)
It appears more every day that the society here is so damaged by the actions of
government and those who have corrupted government that they can't even do
the basic services that our society did so well in the recent past.
In my recent experience, there are far fewer people who care to do jobs well
compared to the late 20th century.
It's hardly surprising that the failure includes "scholarship".
It's likely intentional to prevent the extent of corruption from being
exposed and properly punished.
Because of their ability, right or wrong, to use their influence to sway others, more attention needs to be put on them and those who run them. For instance, the Pulitzer Prize as I have noted above, was given to a young black woman. The Pulitzers are administered by Columbia University, and a black woman is in charge of their distribution. This is the sort of influencing I am concerned about. Censorship by government is out of the question. In most historical periods speech can be returned for speech. But when speech is concealed by these very institutions, then that is no longer an option.
You last observation that it may be intentional I am in total agreement with.
Because of Galileo's fight with the Church, the motto of the newly established Royal Society of London became "In Nullius Verba", or 'On no one's authority but my own'. Government, like the Church, was not the ultimate purveyor of reality. Nor was there the same quantity and quality of propaganda five hundred years ago that we have to day, which propaganda came about for various reasons I won't go into now.
I have said on another platform that the intentional concealment of truth for the personal gain of an individual or a group IS the abomination of desolation, especially in regard to historical 'truth'.
I think the first time my eyes were opened to propaganda overriding truth was when I was a child
and my grandfather shared some of the hidden truth about D.C.'s (FDR's) foreknowledge of the
attack on Pearl Harbor. The propaganda cover-up was complete about that event in public school "history."
But you are right about one thing: I have never seen truth concealed in any historical period to the extent it has been concealed today. As the painter Jerome showed, Truth is emerging from her well with her whip to chastise mankind...
The causes for war, are well, (and contrary to the devil master, Karl Marx), numerous. Economy has very little to do with the onset of 'war'.
Please explain the major reason(s) for specific wars that are not economic.
"War and Decision" by Douglas Feith, published 4/8/2008
I checked this book out of the library a couple of months ago, but could read only a few passages, as it sickened me horribly. These are the main two reasons I find both the book an abomination, and Feith a psychopath:
1. The title of Chapter Three---I didn't read the chapter; the title was bad enough---"Change The Way We Live, or Change The Way They Live". A product of an unstable personality.
2. When he mentions Abu Ghraib, he mentions how sick he was when the photos were made public. He was not concerned with what was happening in that hell-hole, he was concerned only that now the world had proof that it was happening.
Feith is considered the architect of the second Iraq War.
for genocidal actions taken to expand or assure continued power for the fedgov
and continued USD dominance as the world's currency.
With very few exceptions, war is about controlling assets or repudiation of debt.
No, I just now understood! But the cause for the second Iraq War is not entirely relevant to its effect. No matter why the U.S. warred against Iraq, the circumstances and situation at Abu Grabi have been humiliating enough to bring about one of the most organized terrorist organization ever. That was my sole point.
My paranoia was showing a bit there for a few minutes.
(The actual details may not be known for years.)
I sometimes post something that is clear only to me. Takes some 'splainin' later.
And by the way, what you hear about the cause of this war, that comes out through MSM and other low-rent information sources, is most likely inaccurate.
Just as there's an uninvited 3rd party meddling in Ukraine-Russia affairs since 2014 (well, before that, but in 2014, the Deep State, under Obama/Victoria Nuland, got deadly serious).
Most of these meddling parties ignore the Human Right of Self-Determination.
Man has known this for three thousand years or more, starting even with Homer and the Odyssey. Except it was called passion in those days.
Greed, no. Rarely are wars fought over money. Trading replaced raiding early on in the growth of civilization; if raiding continued anywhere, which it did among the tribes of North America as well as among the Bedouins, it was more to show power than to gain wealth.
I can't overestimate this point. And it is the most ardent evidence against any Marxist thought that has ever erupted. The fantasy of a utopia where all people because all have the same stuff remain happy without conflict is only that, a fantasy. Wars are not fought for wealth. Or rarely fought for wealth.
In fact, competition among corporate bodies is not about greed, but about power and influence. You may not see that, because it is hidden. And it is hidden because the small people---'the little guy' won't buy any other reason. Marx appeals to the liberals because they think it is about greed.
My translation: Control of assets (and debt)
Examples:
bankers in every war since banking started (loaning money to both sides of every conflict)
the MIC (providing arms is very profitable when its not in your neighborhood)
Japan in WW2
Germany in WW2
USA in every military action since WW2
USA in Ukraine coup (which arguably caused Ukraine War)
Nearly every victor benefits economically which results in power
The Prussian Origins of Marxism
https://substack.com/home/post/p-4583...
WILL ZOLL
DEC 21, 2021
Internet Archive is down today, but these books and others can be found on their platform.
(A good book, a primary source, probably concealed by many main stream 'academics' but now available, is "The Prostrate State, South Carolina under Negro Government" by James Shepherd Pike, published 1874. Pike was originally a northern abolitionist, but changed his thinking, as many northerners did when viewing the South fairly. Other books and articles can be found on Jstor, some regarding Kentucky during Reconstruction. Kentucky was hard hit, even though it had tried to remain neutral during the Civil War.)
“Infiltration instead of invasion.”
But then, when we become 'unburdened by the past', anything is possible!!
1619 was the plan of the Global Delete going forward even though it failed miserably.
Mankind's liberty and prosperity has been attacked since our days ending in Babylon.
Hannah-Jones has engaged in what Piaget so clearly calls interpretational mania or imaginary reasoning. I won't even read it. I heard Dennis Prager---used to listen to him six or seven years ago before I more or less 'left the cesspool'---not Prager, I rather like him, and he talked about it, along with information about the "Jewish Left" and how they have accused Anglo-Saxons of being genocidal maniacs. Nothing gets my dander up more than ingratitude. It is a trait I despise, and I ask them, who will save your sorry souls the next time you find yourselves in the dock?!!
Columbia University you know is the school of choice for wealthy New York Jews to send their progeny to for indoctrination.
There, got that off my chest. All you gotta do for one of my rants is mention the distortion of historical truth the Left has done.
Always Remember: "We are the Elite on the Street" ruled by the great unwashed.
also:
Yes, our curiosity got us in trouble, learning things we were not ready for but note: In physical life, if achieving the best we were meant to be was to be so damn easy, there would have been No reason for a dramatic physical demonstration of Forgiveness . . .
. . . CTJ The Fight for Conscious Human Life©
But I will tell you that man is imperfect; he cannot with 100% surety know what is going to happen in the future, as does the Creator. This unawareness of the future causes fear and anxiety. Hence, he 'sins' or does what may be harmful, to him or others. But like I said, I don't like to talk about religion on political forums.
But more seriously, when did you teach? Or that is, have you retired recently?
Mostly DoD stuff. Radar, Lidar, Optics, Sat-Comms, Encryption, a lot of digital signal processing (DSP),.
But also civilian doppler weather radar, and IFF (identification friend or foe)
We did partner with Zenith on the first fully digital HDTV prototype.
And yes, I did retire early.
When I was about 13 or 14, my dad was in radar school at Ft. Sill, this was about 1957. I studied his army textbooks and friends of mine in Academia now, at the present, believe that is where I really got interested in electricity and electrical phenomena and wave equations. I wanted to do what my Dad did. I mean I couldn't go with him and brother when they did boy scout stuff, but I could learn electronics.
As any institution goes, they tend to be (small "l") liberal, but as time went on, they got more and more woke.
The Institutes premier magazine: "MIT Technology Review" became less and less about technology and more leftist political, spewing all manner of lies and dubious "facts", be it elections, climate, transgenderism, basic income, bugs for food, DEI, how much more perfect the EU is than us.... fill in the marxist/communist/NWO blank.
Loved the Lab. Hated the management, to the point where I retired early.
Had to. My mouth was getting me in hot water.
I couldn't listen to the BS and stay silent any longer.
My husband worked for EPA, from its origin in 1971 until he retired in 1995, and felt the same way. (By the way, EPA started out as a legitimate agency I believe, but of course as all Federal agencies and some state agencies, were turned malevolently and unreasonably to liberal/socialist methods of control). My husband loved the work---he was one who would not close down a factory or some such for idiotic reasons---but couldn't take the desk jockey supervision. When he retired he was head of the criminal investigation unit of EPA, I can't remember his exact title, but there were both civil and criminal instances of environmental destruction, and most men alternated between the two. I think his title had to do with "National Enforcement and Investigations Center"; he was also often called as an expert witness.
In the 1960's MIT students were protesting MITER's involvement the certain three-letter agencies.
They demanded MITER be dissolved or divorce themselves from campus.
They made such stink, MITER chose the latter.
Good thing they didn't look too closely at what Draper Labs or White Hall was up to.
John Gatto (Dumbing Us Down) points out the last hold-out to the compulsory schooling of the Prussian modeled Volkschule/Realschule was in 1888 in Massachusetts. This begins the formal undermining of scholarly endeavor.
If you'd care, a very good series of essays regarding Hegelian dialectic, amongst other historical "pushes" on cultural behavioralism can be found in Substack.
Will Zoll, for starts: https://prussiagate.substack.com/p/wh...
I'm busy in the meantime reading Piaget, his first work on "Language and Thought of Children", published 1923, shortly after the Great War.
Brits were intolerant of any religion that was not the Church of England.
I reckon that's why they fled France and got kicked out of Canada by the Brits.
During the Fifties in Dothan, Alabama, I and other little Catholic kids had to Summertime attend two weeks of classes run by three visiting nuns.
I'll never forget one nun telling my class that Martin Luther burns in hell and shall burn in hell forever and ever.
Also recall Father Jones entering that classroom and saying that he lost is wallet and was about to search for it right there in a building that was beside the church. Our nun teacher had us pray for God to help Father Jones to find his wallet. Then Father Jones stepped on to two classrooms instructed by the other two nuns.
A short time later a smiling Father Jones returned with the wallet he said he had found.
A couple of years later Father Jones began to show signs of having mental problems, especially when it came to blessing communion wafers during a mass.
He would be shaking all over as he knelt stuttering his Latin. Last I ever heard of him is that he had checked into some funny farm.
That's about when I grew old enough to realize that wallet I had been made to pray for him to find just had to be a scam.
But getting to college I attended Junior Newman club, and I was beginning to question religion---not God---as all adolescents do and should do. I got into an argument with a visiting Jesuit priest about free will and pre destination; after about twenty minutes he finally told me it was something I had to accept on faith. Well, I never accept anything on faith, and kept looking for an answer until finally I realized it isn't free will and pre destination, but PRE-will and FREE destination, which really makes more sense.
After that, I have belonged to no religion, but have studied many.
Dad's only sibling married a Lutheran preacher. Visiting my family, he saw watching Captain Kirk on his bridge hand-to-hand fighting some human or humanoid trying to destroy the Enterprise. Uncle Roland thought it best to lecture me that fighting was the wrong way to resolve differences. I found that very amusing while politely keeping a straight face.
My mother's name was Menchion, which is French. That does not mean she was not descended from the Acadian Protestants. All kinds of intermarriages had to take place since way back then. I would not be surprised to learn I had some American Indian genes buy I'm not paying anyone to find out.
But of course if solutions to problems can be found without open and brutal conflict, so much the better.
I have heard it said though, that war is the ultimate tribunal.
If the uninvited third party in Ukraine you're referring to is the U.S., I'll tell you right now unequivocally that Obamma under the direction of his string pullers was responsible for the Maidan color revolution in the fall of 2013, as well as the coup that replaced Yanukovich with Poroshenko. I actually know this for a fact.
As for the "Human Right of Self-Determination" and here I believe you're referring to the Wilson Doctrine as put forward in his 14 points, I always refer to it as the 'Wilson Fallacy'. Many people, if not most, peoples of the world are not all that capable of understanding either freedom or responsibility in government.
Iran and the US of course, deny any responsibility, and China is also covert with their actions vis-a-vis Taiwan,
Let the residents of Taiwan determine their own future.
One of the reasons Crimeans voted 98% to rejoin Russia was the 4x increase in their pensions. LOL!
But Ukraine, when I was in Donbass, doing business is impossible, if you want to keep your ethics in. You have to make regular payoffs to everybody from local security to the Mayor's son (a brave local newspaper was doing on expose on corruption when I was in Lugansk in 2012). .
What you may not know is that all of the Youtube videos documenting war crimes by the Ukrainians bombing Donbass civilians, strafing sidewalks with women and children at the market shopping, they even bombed an Orphanage, for God's sake, were censored and deleted by Google in 2015.
Anybody read it? Yeah it's boring. Mostly it's a "study" of why her Alma Mater, the university she was attending at the time, is a great place to go to school. Supporting documentation - "evidence" - consists of interviews with her dormmates! LOL!
But anyway, that tells us much about how colleges and universities determine grades, etc.
I have taken university classes off and on for over forty years, just for the pleasure of learning things I had to learn. Each time I went back, (first was in the early sixties) the early 1970's, then from 1980 to late eighties, then late 1990's and early 2000's, I found the classes more adapted to simpler minds, tests were easier, and homework was sometimes not required at all.
Finally in around 2013 to the present, when I am actually 'tutoring' instead of 'learning', I used a revamped text in physics that I had used in the '80's. This book had been so dumbed down that problems were solved by using rules, not reason. When I asked why this was so, I was told that black students had complained the texts were too difficult.
(The text in question is Halliday and Resnick's Physics, but I can't remember who edited the book. I was, and am, pretty angry about it.)
The summer before I was a freshman at the uiniversity, we were mandated to read "The Territorial Imperative" by Robert Ardrey. This book put a gloomy outlook on life, convinced me human beings are just animals and will always group and struggle. This ennui & despair was then buttressed by what I "learned" in psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. Yes, now I was another gatekeeper of the "Insider Knowledge" - man is but a spiritless animal.
Such ennui and nihilism guided me down the well-beaten wrong path for 15 years.
One day I met my lead singer from a NY rock band (I am a keyboardist) while gassing up in Tampa, Florida (how weird is that, to meet a good friend while both of you are 1000 miles away from home?). He enthusiastically told me to visit the Scientology Mission there in Tampa, and the next day I found a gold necklace on the sidewalk (yes, really!), which I converted for the $25 to take their Communication course. I had tried every religion, but nothing worked, nothing made sense, until this. They helped me overcome my self-doubts and, years later, now I am "free" from the dismal Social Sciences to succeed and be happy. Like MLK said, judge me by my character (as an individual, not as a member of a group). Human Beings are unique and sacred individuals. Categorizing people into groups and rejecting everything religion has taught us since the dawn of recorded history has negated and corroded the religious-moral-ethical foundations of our civilization.
But most black folk will, even if you judge them by character, accuse you of being racist if you state that it is their character you don't like. To them, you are still a racist. I firmly believe, and have proof, that the mind of a Negro is similar to that of a child.
You are correct, all humans are unique individuals, and all humans share traits in common. However, the DNA structure in humans allow for classification on that basis. Not completely, but mostly. Have you had your own DNA analyzed?
And two, oh yeah, Aristotle was sooooo wrong with his categorization and differentiation techniques in his Organon.
MLK "implied" that people should be treated as individuals ("character" refers to a person's individual moral and ethical qualities), not as groups (by their common skin color (or any other physical/social characteristic)).
Just as we don't treat all Russians as the same, all women as the same, all young people as the same, all football players as the same, all dogs as the same, etc.
One can either believe in the social sciences or believe in the spiritual nature of a human being. It depends on how one defines what a "human being" is.
The Social Sciences define a human being as a body plus a mind. Religion defines a person as a
boy plus a mind plus a spirit. These two positions are self-contradictory.
A priest will attempt to improve a human being by addressing the spirit. Spiritual counseling. A social scientist will likewise attempt human rehabilitation, by going through the body (psychotropic drugs).
These two positions are incompatible. There is a basic difference here - the fundamental definition of what is a human being. He's either a spiritual being or a material organism.
However, most Westerners think they can combine what they have learned from the social sciences with what they have learned from Religion.
Unfortunately, one can not pound a square peg into a round hole, without breaking the whole apparatus.
I'm not saying what we have learned from the Social Sciences is useless. I am saying that Religion is the basis of our civilization. Toss that into the dumpster, and we have social problems.
I'm sure I could find a thousand "reconciliations" of Hubbard and Rand, and that might help me be more cogent in a book I want to write, but still looking for a co-author to present the Social Sciences POV..
With that said, can I jump off subject for a moment to ask a question? I see you say you are a keyboardist. I took my first piano lesson at nearly age 69 and I'm 72 now and still toughing it out. I'm not good but refuse to give up (I can play a good Star Spangled Banner on a Hammond M3 at lodge, though). One of my biggest problems is achieving left-hand right-hand separation where the left is trying to do a rhythm, rather than a chord, and the right is trying to do a melody. No problem doing one or the other alone, but crash and burn when doing them together. For example, the Mission Impossible theme has that cool rhythm on the left and seemingly simple melody on the right. I have no problem doing either, but combined -poof-. Are you willing to share any tips or ideas?
"walking bass" or the "foundation", with the right I am free to improvise but can not always syncopate/synchronize..
Start with the left hand, get that down COLD, it's the Foundation. Play it by itself, until you can play it with your eyes closed or looking and smiling at nearby people.
Then add the Right Hand, a little at a time, just a couple of measures at first. Small steps. Play it at half-speed maybe, until you get comfortable, until you are confident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y_YM...
at 4:20, she kinds of briefly describes how she puts it together. She is sort of looking at the keys, but you want to get to where you only need to look at the melody part, the Left hand going autonomously.
Remember your hands should be positioned as if you are gripping a baseball, don't flatten your fingers.
Following the suggested fingering? If it says 12312, don't play the easier way and go 12345. Might work for a while but will get you in trouble later on, when you trying to render Beethoven!
I prefer piano for boogie woogie, the fingers respond to the weight of the keys, but of course one can not get the majestic sounds of the Hammond B-3 out of a piano. We use to cut off the top of the Leslie cabinet and paint the spinning (tweeter) speakers in Day-Glo paints
as part of the show.
I am older than you, but once you learn something on the keyboard it stays with you forever! Good Luck!
What I don't understand is how a drummer can have two hands and two feet doing 4 things....
The lodge organ is a 1957 Hammond M3 (not B3, but very similar) with a great sound. Our organist passed away and nobody could play it so it sat in the corner for a couple of years and I figured why don't I learn to play it? Off I went - The Star Spangled Banner is the first song I learned. When I could play that I rewarded myself with an 88-key Nord Stage 3 to play at home. I added a MIDI keyboard on top of that to simulate the dual manuals of the Hammond. The setup certainly outclasses me, but I figured I'd grow into it. Lots of growing to do but I get discouraged with the left/right separation thing. More practice I guess and I plan to stay with it.
Oh, my music instructor is a great drummer and all around percussionist so I know what you mean about drummers. He's got the patience of a saint working with me, LOL.
Again, thanks for the reply!
It appears visible on my computer screen.
(Are you reading from a cell phone or something with a small screen?)
And also, by that time, it was mostly admitted that zeal for knowledge could replace zeal for battle, but that's an entirely different issue!
Wasn't that the Magna Charta of 1215 as amended? https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magn...
Montesquieu much admired the English system of constitutional government, and that was about the mid 18th century. If you've ever read his "Spirit of the Laws", you can see how fastidious he was in categorizing forms of government that he observed around the world. It took about 2,000 years and many different types of inputs to form that document we call the U.S. Constitution. It wasn't something that happened overnight.
In the high Middle Ages, a charter was the precursor to a constitution.
The Native Americans 'counted coup', taking scalps from the enemy in battle. Taking it from one still living was considerably more honorable than one who was dead. And their incessant raiding was for the same intention: to show what Europeans early on referred to in themselves as 'prowess'; the honor in achieving what others could not and this resulted in power over them. (If you want to go back about 3,000 years, the Trojan War was fought over who won the greatest prize: who was to get the 'best girl'---now watch the feminists start up!)
And during Renaissance Europe, if you see many paintings, a man's wealth was prominently displayed either on him or around him. (And this included prelates as well.)
Power is an addiction, I should say wielding power is the addiction, and the demonstration of power is also a necessary adjunct to the selection of those who are to wield it.
Never overlook the gaining of power, and its use, in the affairs of men. And that is as much an addiction as alcohol. Not all men, however, will have that addiction. It is said of Washington that he could be trusted with power because he knew when to relinquish it.
And something else, in Communist USSR, when all, even the Kulaks, had the same as any other, supposedly, those in power had more. The bureaucrats had power, and demonstrated it.
This has been a good conversation, freedom. But I must take a break now.