In the Pacific Northwest there is a developing situation where thousands of people are finding themselves floating ten feet off the ground. New cases of flying humans are being reported by the hour. More on this situation as it develops.
This, of course, is pure fiction and no one would ever believe it is truly happening, or at least no rational human being could believe it to be true. What is the key rationalization in this story? It's easy to see that it defies the laws of physics. Therefore rational thought based in these laws and norms dictates that the situation is irrational and untrue.
This is a simple example of how rational thought works. The trivium is a more in depth method for rationalization. The three parts of the trivium dictate the path of rational thought. You must know the language or grammar, and this is the first step in the trivium. The second step is interpretation of that language or the symbols of language. Imagine interpreting sign language and how it is used to communicate. This is the rhetoric. The final step in the trivium is "logic" and the knowledge of the language and the interpretation, or rhetoric, of communication. The key in all three steps of the trivium is to have knowledge. Friedrick Douglass, an American slave, learned this lesson from the wife of his owner. Douglass pursued his desire to read and write. The mistress of the household was willing to aide him in his pursuit of higher education, but the master of the household scolded her for this act. It is from Douglass' story that we get the mantra; "Knowledge is Power". To expand this line of thought we need to look at art, music and geometry, as these being added to the trivium become the quadrivium which is a higher level of thought that leads to enlightenment. An example is a painting that depicts an entire thought. We've all heard the phrase; "A picture is worth a thousand words" and this is part of the quadrivium and can be thought of as symbology or symbolism. The freemasons are well known for their symbolism that are intended to be interpreted by the members of their society. This is esoteric communication. Most non-masons know that the "square and compass" symbol is the sign of the Freemasons, but that's about as far as their knowledge of masonic symbology goes. In this respect, non-masons are oppressed in knowing the way of the mason, just as Douglass was oppressed in the way of white society through illiteracy. The difference being, we don't feel it necessary to know more about the masons and if we do feel it necessary we can become a mason. This is the reason they are known as a secret society. So let's link this right now to the term "rational thinking" because it is rationed by your level of knowledge. Not everyone can, or will be, a mason and its esoteric language is therefore rationed.
Going back to the fictional story of floating people, knowledge of physics tells us that this story is fictional. People could be led to believe this is true, because they have no rational thought, they haven't the knowledge in physics required to make a rational decision. Other's may even think they have rational thought and try to contemplate why people would be floating. This group is where I'd like to concentrate the rest of this essay.
Some people believe what they are told and believe they are knowledgeable and rational enough to believe what they are told. They would believe the "floating people" story and use their limited knowledge to rationalize the story. Perhaps they know something about gas/blood diseases such as the bends or nitrogen in the blood and try to rationalize helium in the blood. Or they may know something about geomagnetic physics and rationalize too much metabolized iron acting upon a quirky magnetosphere. There is a great term that I'd like everyone to keep in mind; "He/She has just enough knowledge to be dangerous".
The idea of helium or even excessive amounts of iron in the blood are completely ridiculous, but what about a less ridiculous situation, one that is not fiction. A man with no atmospheric chemistry and physics (ACP) background who manipulates the entire population of the planet through ACP. This man had grown up on a tobacco and cattle farm, went off to school to major in government and had a penchant for science and math although he did very poorly in those subjects during his education. Where this man's rational thought became corrupted is when he felt, through his passion for science theory and math theory, that he had become knowledgeable in science and math when in reality he had a passion for theory and not fact. Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" shouldn't be taken as a truth, but a theory. When the theory is put into the scientific method of rationalizing its possibilities, there are far more scientists that disagree that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. It sounds possible, but is not probable, because the earth is warming, but there is no way miniscule amounts of carbon dioxide attributed to the human race are causing it. When scientists, believing humans were to blame, failed to actually place global warming on human activity, they changed the nomenclature to "climate change". It is easier to prove that we affect changes in the atmosphere, just as it is easy to say that a volcanic eruption can change the weather. However, they are still trying to rationalize that we are causing adverse effects in our weather. This is irrational, because it still gravitates around carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is less than 1% of its heterogeneous mixture of gases. In chemistry there are stable elements and unstable elements, depending on the number of electrons in orbit around the nucleus of atoms or weak bonds and strong bonds. The reason for such low levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is attributed to weak bonds or an unstable molecule. This is why plants exist and why we, as a result of plant propagation, exist. Plants can easily strip the oxygen from the carbon for us in their metabolic processes. I could go on about ice core data from the Cretaceous period that suggests that extremely high levels of CO2 led to vast amounts of vegetation and the largest animals to ever walk the earth, but people would get bored with the rationalization that human activities have no real affect upon the earth's climate, but a tobacco farmer with a degree in government and a passion for scientific theory would like you to believe otherwise. As a skeptic, it is easy to rationalize the known, but difficult to overcome the unknown and leads to questions like "Why would Al Gore want to promote that anthropogenic CO2 is detrimental to life on earth?" This is where speculation or theories come in to corrupt rational thinking and limited knowledge makes the skeptic dangerous. We can look at Carbon Taxes and rationalize that this is just a money-making scheme. We can also look at increased regulation of energy, which everyone needs, and see this theory as a form of human-control. Somewhere in there, we can almost find the answers, but they are still irrational due to the esoteric language of those involved who are not rationing knowledge to us and therefore remain secretive. By nature of the trivium, skeptics are dangerous, but they are not irrational. It is a paradox that cannot be broken. A skeptic will tell you that people were not floating above the ground in the Northwest, but they cannot prove themselves against the words of others who say that people were floating because one can not prove a negative. The pursuit to prove a negative is how people become dangerous.
Bigotry is the reason I've written this essay, or more precisely the act of labeling people as "racists" in political discourse. It is an irrational thought to label someone a bigot in any debate, because it forces the person being labeled to attempt to prove a negative. Any attack upon a person's character always leads to this irrational situation. The normal response that is often used is one that attempts to only qualify them as not being a bigot such as "I'm a minority. How can I be racist?" which can never be objective when you feel you are a minority. This is the paradox; if you are still thinking of the human race in terms of minority and majority, you still see sexes, races, creeds and so forth. When you see the human race in those terms, you see superior and inferior aspects ("minority" and "majority" are analogous to "superior" and "inferior") and therefore are, by definition, bigoted.
The case in point is the governmental office that is dominated by caucasian presidents. The majority of U.S. presidents are white. When there are no other criteria, when examining our past presidents, to categorize them as majority or minority,,,,there is no majority nor minority. An African-American now sits in the office of the President. Now there are two categories for U.S. Presidents, in the eyes of those that still see individual races, hence a majority and a minority. Our nation's populace is basing these presidents on the color of their skin and Barack Obama is now a minority. Think for a moment that, in biological terms, there are nearly as many men as there are women in this world. If there are 4 billion women and 4 billion and one men, women would be labeled a minority. One man neither makes a minority nor a majority, yet this is how we view the office of the president. John F. Kennedy must have been a minority in his time for he was the first Catholic president to ever be elected in this country. But was he a minority? Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush must have been minorities, for they were both pariahs of the office of president when most others were venerated and are honored. The more criteria to base our thoughts of these men on, the more we can see their individuality, but this does not make them superior or inferior to other presidents for the power of the presidency is finite and regulated by the congress and the People. When the People become upset with how the president acts on their behalf, the People express their grievances and tend to move into debate with those who agree with the actions of the president. The highest form of rational debate would be the use of our customs and our constitutional form of government. The lowest form of debate would be the use of ethnicity as a foundation for thought and is irrational. Yet, this is what we see in this country in the debate for electing our president. The level of irrational thought has forced rational people to try and prove the negative and this has completely wrecked the process of election.
I have witnessed this phenomena over and over again. I have a passion for studying the zeitgeist, not to be trendy, but to get a better view of this nation and where it may be heading. Currently, racial division is tearing the country apart. Political division; Left versus Right, is tearing this country apart. A battle between supposed inferior and superior ideologies is tearing this country apart. The lack of rational thinking and debate on all of these fronts is killing this nation. An example that has me completely confounded is a simple debate I had with a person on Twitter. I find Twitter to be an amazing resource when studying the zeitgeist, or the "spirit" of the culture, and its dynamic flow. I follow many people whom I don't even know, to see how they view things and how their views all contrast one another. I even see how all of these individuals also align themselves too. One Tweeter in particular left me completely aghast at the level of irrational thought in this country.
Known to the Twitterverse only as LiberalJaxx, this person seemed to show some rational thought and is quite knowledgeable in history. LiberalJaxx also has many followers, so following her led to a wealth of information. One day she started tweeting that all conservatives are racists and that everyone should support Obama. There are many staunch supporters for Obama, but this one tweet of her's rubbed me the wrong way, so I entered the fray of Twitter Debate:
Jaxx: Pat Buchanan calls Obama "a drug dealer of welfare." I guess that would make Pat a crystal meth lab of racism."
Me: the ignorance of crying racism is sad.
Jaxx: I am an Obamanoid sick of you klansmen, and?
Me: Let me ask you, Jaxx, are U defending Obama's race when you attack those who criticize him?
Right here is where I wanted to see some rational thought in the response. I wanted to know what she was defending. After all, this was a debate about welfare programs and not race. Here's where she threw rationality out the window:
Jaxx: if you must know. In your ignorance of blowing off Obama's plight, I am of mixed race just as he is and am offended daily by (tweet ended due to character-count restrictions. Continues in next tweet)
Jaxx: bigoted small minded fucks like yourself. Diff between POTUS and myself is he handles the hate with more grace than I do.
At this point, I failed to steer the debate because there is no steering ignorance. I was simply going to end with an aphorism.
Me: Racism: The shield behind which liberals cower from honest debate.
Oh, but it doesn't end, but sheds a rather interesting light on her thought process. (very probable that it is a continuation of posts due to character-count restrictions)
Jaxx: and I have taught my children all about ppl like you just like every other minority parent. In 50 yrs or so, YOUR kind=minority
Jaxx: and I block racist bigots like yourself. Can't have trash polluting and pissing in my twitter stream.
This person has a huge following on Twitter (4717 currently) and she weeds out people who don't view things the way she does. She injected so much "race" into a political issue that she simply does not realize that she was the racist in the whole thing. She even so much as predicts that my "kind" will be a minority in 50 years. What esoteric knowledge does she possess that led her to such a conclusion? She is, after all, still thinking of the human race in terms of minority and majority. That is expected in a culture where that paradigm is so heavily strengthened by history, but should a rational person use it to win a debate, to become superior in an argument over bigotry? Of course not, for that is bigotry in and of itself. This is the paradox. Shall we call it the paradox of irrational thought due to dogmatic knowledge? Irrational thought has become a religion unto itself. Do as Jaxx does and shut out anything that may tear down your beliefs and surround yourself with like-minded believers while avoiding honest debate with ignoratio elenchi. Logical fallacy is the order of the day in this country, it is the new religion where hope hinges on ignorance and the fallacy of superiority or majority. But this leads to the other paradox in rational thought, we know what is, but we don't know why. We don't have enough information to rationally think "Why?", because there is no longer any honest debate to gather that knowledge. She is of "mixed race". She taught her children all about people like me. There's a fallacy right there, she doesn't know me. She is offended, daily, by bigots. Could it be that her beliefs are what makes others offensive? She is seeking commonality in those she associates with and that number seems to be 4717 people that are like-minded.
With all of the information, a picture is formed. That esoteric symbolism of plight, of struggle. An introvert would surely think they are worthy of equality no matter what their character is. I often wish she hadn't blocked me before I could tell her that I, too, am of mixed race, Metis, but would that have made any difference? Of course not, because I would have fallen into the paradox of irrational thought. That is not enlightening. To be truly enlightened is to break away from that completely and realize that we are both of the human race where there are no minorities.
This is the current zeitgeist in this country; everything is boiled down to ethnic groups. Division springs from these groups. Unity is but a dream, derision is the order of the day. To further analyze this, is to go down a much deeper rabbit hole where the esoteric meets rational thought. A place where the derision has formed blockades to knowledge.
There is little or no argument that Jaxx has just enough knowledge to be dangerous. She feels rational, yet she is subjective and has little use for the trivium. Her struggle is indicative of a divide between her beliefs and the beliefs of others. There are many divides in this country, but her struggle is rooted in race. Over one hundred years ago there was a war in this country over secession; another derision. There was a struggle to maintain slavery in one half of the country while the other half was struggling to end it. It doesn't take a history major to KNOW how that turned out, but it does take some deeper knowledge to realize that not all slaves were black. In fact many indentured servants were white. Immigrants, regardless of race, were obligated, or indebted, to servitude in order to become citizens. Again, the struggle was universal back then and still is today. All of the middle and lower class in this country struggle everyday for a better life. The privileged few are the only ones struggling to maintain their better life against the rest of the population. The best tactic for them is to maintain the divide of the populace. That divide is based on race, creed, wealth and so on.
Racial division works so well in this country, for the privileged, that it has become a perpetual struggle with no end, ever. I should also mention that it is the most irrational of struggles as well. As Jaxx alludes to, being a parent is difficult. She also alludes that being "POTUS" is difficult too. However, race has nothing to do with that difficulty, unless you believe there is a grand conspiracy to prevent someone of a different race to become president or a parent. Obama proves that an African-American can become president and Jaxx proves that someone of "mixed race" can become a parent. It is irrational to think that our culture conspires for the opposite.
There is racial division in the U.S. and there are people actually promoting it. Here is where "knowledge" sheds light on the "why?".
To begin, we need to look at the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of this continent, long before European explorers. Of particular interest are The Seven Caves of Chicomoztoc in Aztlan. It is the legend of a paradise for Aztecs. Today, we see native Americans from Mexico claiming that Aztlan is in the area of the U.S. and struggle to have it returned to them. The legend of the Azteca who left in search of Aztlan is nearly lost in the archaeological record and some are even suggesting that the Anasazi of the Southwest were descendants of the Azteca, who had changed their name to Mexica. The importance of this is the struggle to regain that "paradise" of legend and lore without any real knowledge of its existence. La Raza and the Brown Berets are two well-known movements attempting to retake most of the U.S. Southwest for Mexico. Aztlan is used as the reason why, but is this really why? Here is the paradox within skepticism; it can be rationally thought out that they are not seeking Aztlan, as there is no religious organization in Mexico that believes in Aztlan as it is merely a legend that is not well known, but there are groups wishing to retake this land.
Mexico, is struggling against drug cartels and a complicit and corrupt government. It is a horrible place to live. The "paradise" is north of the border, as they see it. It is logical to see that they want a better life, but why reabsorb it into their country? It isn't for the resources, because Mexico has as many, if not more, resources than the U.S. Taking back land does not bring our government with it. We conclude that they just want the land, but when one listens to the Brown Berets protesting in the U.S. Southwest you can hear them telling all Europeans to return to Europe. They want all of North America back for their people. The motto of La Raza is "For Family; Everything. For Everyone Else; Nothing." La Raza, of course, translated means The Race. Our situation is not near dire as theirs, but because we do struggle, we sympathize and support their plight. The key is the commonality of struggle. Just recently the Lakota Sioux seceded from this nation as an answer to their struggle. Native Americans are also struggling in Canada where it has recently come to light that there are eugenics programs geared to eradicate native bloodlines. This was uncovered during the investigations into thousands of missing indigenous women in Canada. What is happening in Canada is true racism. Two borders and three governments, all contentious elements in the struggle.
What we can rationally come up with is that we are all struggling on different levels and blaming each other for our struggle, when all we have to do is look at our governments as the source of our struggle. Once we find solidarity as humans and not as races, we will truly find our Aztlan.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s masked a more nefarious movement into communism. Solidarity between the communists of the SDS or Weathermen and groups such as the Black Panthers was shaky to say the least, but it was a desire of Bill Ayers to consolidate their struggles. Many leaders of the Panthers attended conferences in Moscow under the advisement of the Weathermen. The collusion stems from SDS' manifesto which sought to use the plight of minorities as a springboard for communism. This was not a new idea and goes as far back as 1929 when Jozsef Pogany penned a book titled "American Negro Problem" under the name John Pepper which spoke of the struggles of the "black colony" and communism in the U.S. This was followed by a book written by Black Panther member, James W. Ford, titled "The Negroes in Soviet America" where he also made heavy use of the term "black colony". The SDS Manifesto, "You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows", also makes use of this term. Aside from the race struggle and communism, there is a new movement called "Occupy Wall Street" which now connects the class struggle to communism. Here, again, I remind you of Friedrick Douglass and the phrase "Knowledge is Power"; knowledge for rational thought. Is the rise of race division in this country the symbolism of the rise or struggle of communism?
Ever since Barack Obama took office, we've been living under the banner of socialism when Newsweek announced, with their cover story, "We Are All Socialists Now". The "why?" becomes easier to answer when we look at how grievances and ensuing debates are handled, as evident in LiberalJaxx's tweets. She is far from the only one doing this, but she provided a great example of this. It takes a big government willing to support communism. It takes time to build a big communist government when all of the elements are finally in place to build it.
It takes the derision of racism to distract from, and quash all debate from, the rise of Communism.
For anyone who might actually read this, have I laid out enough evidence and knowledge for rational thought on this subject? I would like to think that I've built a strong enough case so as that last line doesn't become an aphorism, but rather an objective and sound statement of truth. I could write a book that puts all of my knowledge on this subject into a nice concise presentation with a huge bibliography, but I'd like to be able to condense that properly as I have attempted here.
