East Meets West Logic...

[Lloyd Gillespie]

A few quotes from The Bell Curve...

“Discrimination, once a useful word with a praiseworthy meaning, is now almost always used in a pejorative sense.”

“Our solutions assume that the average American is an asset, not part of the problem.”

“Our thesis is that it used to be easier for people who are low in ability to find a valued place than it is now.”

“More than half of the population prior to World War II was in poverty by today’s definition.”

“But frightening too. When people live in encapsulated worlds, it becomes difficult for them, even with the best of intentions, to grasp the realities of worlds with which they have little experience but over which they also have great influence, both public and private. Many of those promising undergraduates are never going to live in a community where they will be disabused of their misperceptions, for after eduation comes another sorting mechanism, occupations, and many of the holes that are still left in the the cognitive partitions begin to get sealed.”

"What if the cognitive elite were to become not only richer than everyone else, increasingly segregated, and more genetically distinct as time goes on but were also to acquire common political interests? What might those interests be, and how congruent might they be with a free society?"

“Low intelligence is a stronger precursor of poverty than low socioeconomic background. Whites with IQs in the bottom 5 perecent of the distribution of cognitive ability are fifteen times more likely to be poor than those with IQs in the top 5 percent."

“People who can complete a bachelor’s degree seldom end up poor, no matter what…College has economic value independent of cognitive ability, whether as a credential, for the skills that are acquired, or as an indicator of personal qualities besides IQ (diligence, persistence) that make for economic success in life.”

“The very concept of school failure is a modern invention. In the era of the one-room schoolhouse, students advanced at their own pace. There were no formal grade levels, no promotions to the next grade, hence no way to fail.”

“Dropping out” is an even more recent concept, created by the assumption that it is normal to remain in school through age 17…In 1900, the high school diploma was the preserve of a tiny minority of American youth…”

“A free society demands a citizenry that willingly participates in the civic enterprise, in matters as grand as national elections and as commonplace as neighborliness. Lacking this quality-civility, in its core meaning-a society must replace freedom with coercion if it is to maintain order.”

“The available research offers ample evidence that the key element for predicting political involvement is educational level…The fragmentary studies available indicate that education predicts political involvement in America because it is primarily a proxy for cognitive ability.”

“America’s political system relies on the civility of its citizens-“civility” not in the contemporary sense of mere politeness but according to an older meaning which a dictionary close at hand defines as “deference or allegiance to the social order befitting a citizen”…Civility is not obedience but rather “allegiance” and “deference” – words with old and honorable meanings that are now largely lost…Taken together, the elements of civility imply behavior that is both considered and considerate-precisely the kind of behavior that the Founders relied upon to sustain their creation, though they would have been more likely to use the word virtue than civility.”

“Civil-zed” people do not need to be tightly constrained by laws or closely monitoried by the organs of state. Lacking such civility, they do, and society must over time become much less free.”

“Brighter children from even the poorest households and with uneducated parents learned rapidly about politics, about how the government works, and about the possibilities for change.”

“A college education raised a person’s probability of voting almost 40 percentage points over what it would be if the person had less than five years of education, independent of income or occupational status; postgraduate education raised it even more.”

“Educational attainment correlates not just with voting itself but with political knowledge, interest, and attitudes-in short, with political sophistication.”

“The real danger is that the elite wisdom on ethnic differences-that such differences cannot exist-will shift to opposite and equally unjustified extremes. Open and informed discussion is the one certain way to protect society from the dangers of one extreme view or the other.”

“Mounting evidence indicates that demographic trends are exerting downward pressure on the distribution of cognitive ability in the United States and that the pressures are strong enough to have social consequences."

“People with lower intelligence would presumably be outreproducing people with higher intelligence and thereby producing a dysgenic effect.”
(continued...)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

(continued...)
"In education, Cattell predicted that academic standards would fall and the curriculum would shift toward less abstract subjects. He foresaw an increase in “delinquency against society”-crime and willful dependency (for example, having a child without being able to care for it) would be in this category. He was not sure whether this would lead to a slackening of moral codes or attempts at tighter government control over individual behavior. The response could go either way, he wrote."

"He predicted that a complex modern society with a falling IQ would have to compensate people at the low end of IQ by a “systematized relaxation of moral standards, permitting more direct instinctive satisfactions.” In particular, he saw an expanding role for what he called “fantasy compensations.” He saw the novel and the cinema as the contemporary means for satisfying it, but he added that “we have probably not seen the end of its development or begun to appreciate its damaging effects on ‘reality thinking’ habits concerned in other spheres of life…”

“Any program is going to fail unless it is designed for a target population half of which has IQs below 80…Do we aspire to a “world class” educational system for America? Before deciding what is wrong with the current system, we had better think hard about how cognitive ability and education are linked.”

“The American educational experience of the past few decades…has been more successful with the average and below average student than many people think, we conclude, but has neglected the gifted minority who will greatly affect how well America does in the twenty-first century.”

“Aside from the issue of school quality is the question of whether simply going to school makes any differenced to one’s intelligence. The answer is self-evidently yes.”

“American education was dumbed down: Textbooks were made easier, and requirements for courses, homework, and graduation were relaxed. These measures may have worked as intended for the average and below-average students, but they let the gifted get away without ever developing their potential.”

“Until the latter half of this century, it was taken for granted that one of the chief purposes of education was to educate the gifted-not because they deserved it through their own merit but because, for better or worse, the future of society was so dependent on them. It was further understood that this education must aim for more than technical facility. It must be an education that fosters wisdom and virtue through the ideal of the “educated man.” Little will change until educators once again embrace this aspect of their vocation.”

“It needs to be said openly: The people who run the United States-create its jobs, expand its technologies, cure its sick, teach in its universities, administer its cultural and political and legal institutions-are drawn mainly from a think layer of cognitive ability at the top. (Remember –just the top 1 percent of the American population consists of 2.5 million people.) It matters enormously not just that the people in the top few centiles of ability get to college…or even that many of them go to elite colleges but that they are educated well…since the 1960s, while a cognitive elite has become increasingly segregated from the rest of the country, the quality of the education they receive has been degraded. They continue to win positions, money, prestige, and success in competition with their less gifted fellow citizens, but they are less well educated in the ways that make smart children into wise adults.”

“One of the chief effects of the educational reforms of the 1960s was to dumb down elementary and secondary education as a whole…”

“The dumbing down of textbooks permeated the textbook market, as publishers and authors strove to satisfy school boards which routinely applied “readability” formulas to the books they were considering. Thomas Sowell has described a typical example of this process, in which the words spectacle and admired were deleted from a textbook because they were deemed too difficult for high school students.”

“Dumbing down also occurred in the high school’s college track. More electives were permitted, and the requirements for credits in science, mathematics, and literature were relaxed.”

“since the late 1960s, such straightforward ways of looking at standards in the humanities, social sciences, and even the physical sciences were corrupted, in the sense that the standards of each discipline were subordinated to other considerations. Chief among these other considerations were multiculturalism in the curriculum, the need to minimize racial differences in performance measures, and enthusiasm for fostering self-esteem independent from performance. We assume that a politically compromised curriculum is less likely to sharpen the verbal skills of students than one that hews to standards of intellectual rigor and quality…The agendas that have had the most influence on curricula are generally antagonistic to traditional criteria of rigor and excellence.”

“Most American parents do not want drastic increases in the academic work load.”

“The average American student has little incentive to work harder than he already does in high school…a demanding high school curriculum is not necessary for admission to most colleges.”

“If parents, students, and employers do not broadly support a significantly more demanding educational system, it’s not going to happen.”

“Washington is the wrong place to look for either energy or wisdom on educational reform…improvement will be best nourished by letting the internal forces-the motivations of parents for their children and teachers for a satisfying career-have their head.”

“Ideally we would like to see the most gifted children receive a demanding education and attend school side by side with a wide range of children, learning firsthand how the rest of the world lives.”

“They run risks of pickets…if a textbook offends one of the many interest groups that scrutinize possible choices. Publishers know the market and take steps to make sure that their products will sell.”

“Offered this diluted curriculum, talented students do not necessarily take the initiative to stretch themselves…Few of even the most brilliant youngsters tackle the Aeneid on their own.”

“Most gifted students are going to grow up segregated from the rest of society no matter what. They will then go to the elite colleges no matter what, move into successful careers no matter what, and eventually lead the institutions of this country no matter what. Therefore, the nation had better do its damnedest to make them as wise as it can. If they cannot grow up knowing how the rest of the world lives, they can at least grow up with a proper humility about their capacity to reinvent the world de novo and thoughfully aware of their intellectual, cultural, and ethical heritage. They should be taught their responsibilities as citizens of a broader society."
(continued...)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

(continued...)
"The educational deficit that worries us is symbolized by the drop in verbal skills on the SAT. What we call verbal skills encompass, among other things, the ability to think about difficult problems: to analyze, pick apart, disaggregate, synthesize, and ultimately to understand. It has seldom been more apparent how important it is that the people who count in business, law politics, and our universities know how to think about their problems in complex , rigorous modes and how important it is that they bring to their thinking depth of judgment and, in the language of Aristotle, the habit of virtue. This kind of wisdom-for wisdom is what we need more of-does not come naturally with a high IQ. It has to be added through education, and education of a particular kind."

"We are not talking about generalized higher standards. Rather, we are thinking of the classical idea of the “educated man” – which we will amend to “educated person”-in which to be educated meant first of all to master a core body of material and skills…For example, to be an educated person meant [in greek times or 19th century] being able to write competently and argue logically. Therefore, children were taught the inner logic of grammar and syntax because that kind of attention to detail was believed to carry over to greater precision of thinking. They were expected to learn Aristotle’s catalog of fallacies, because educators understood that the ability to assess an argument in everyday life was honed by mastering the formal elements of logic. Ethics and theology were part of the curriculum, to teach and refine virtue…To be an educated person must mean to have mastered a core of history, literature, arts, ethics, and the sciences and, in the process of learning those disciplines, to have been trained to weight, analyze, and evaluate according to exacting standards. This process must begin in elementary school and must continue through the university."
"Our proposal will sound, and is, elitist, but only in the sense that, after exposing students to the best the world’s intellectual heritage has to offer and challenging them to achieve whatever level of excellence they are capable of, just a minority of students has the potential to become “an educated person” as we are using the term.”

“Because academic credentials are so overvalued, America shies away from accepting that many people have academic limitations…”

“Too few educators are comfortable with the idea of the educated person. A century ago the notion of an educated person was an expression of a shared understanding, not of legal requirements. That understanding arose because people were at ease with intellectual standards, with rigor, with a recognition that people differ in their capacities.”

"The way we are headed:
● An increasingly isolated cognitive elite.
● A merging of the cognitive elite with the affluent.
● A deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution.”
“ Unchecked, these trends will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top, restructuring the rules of society so that it becomes harder and harder for them to lose.”

At the beginning of the century “People from the top of the cognitive ability distribution lived next door to people who were not so smart, with whose children their own children went to school. They socialized with, went to church with, and married people less bright than themselves as a matter of course. This was not an egalitarian utopia that we are trying to recall. On the contrary, communities were stratified by wealth, religion, class, ethnic background, and race.”

“The cognitive elite…will come to run much of the country’s business. In the private sector, the cognitive elite dominates the ranks of CEOs and the top echelon of corporate executives.”

“When the members of the cognitive elite (of whatever political convictions) hand out with each other, often exclusively with each other, they find it hard to understand what ordinary people think.”

“The trends we have described would not constitute a threat to the republic if the government still played the same role in civic life that it played through the Eisenhower administration. As recently as 1960, it did not make a lot of political difference what the cognitive elite thought, because its power to impose these values on the rest of America was limited. In most of the matters that counted-the way the schools were run, keeping order in the public square, opening a business or running it-the nation remained decentralized. The still inchoate cognitive elite in 1960 may have had ideas about how it wanted to move the world but, like Archimedes, it lacked a place to stand."

"We need not become embroiled here in a debate about whether the centralization of authority since 1960 (or 1933, for those who take a longer view) was right or wrong we may all agree as a statement of fact that such centralization occurred, through legislation, Supreme Court decisions, and accretions of executive authority in every domain of daily life. With it came something that did not exist before: a place for the cognitive elite to stand. With the end of the historic limits on the federal reach, everything was up for grabs. If one political group could get enough votes on the Supreme Court, it could move the Constitution toward its goals. If it could get enough votes in Congress, it could do similarly with legislation.”

“Through the 1960s, 1970, 1980s, the battle veered back and forth, with groups identifiably “liberal” and “conservative” bloodying each other’s noses in accustomed ways. But in the Bush and Clinton administrations, the old lines began to blur.”

“For most of the century, intellectuals and the affluent have been antagonists. Intellectuals have been identified with the economic left and the cultural avant-garde, while the affluent have been identified with big business and cultural conservatism. These comfortable categories have become muddled in recent years, as faculty at the top universities put together salaries, consulting fees, speeches, and royalties that garner them six-figure incomes while the New York Review of Books shows up in the mailbox of young corporate lawyers. The very bright have become much more uniformly affluent than they used to be while, at the same time, the universe of affluent people has become more densely populated by the very bright…Not surprisingly the interests of the affluence and the cognitive elite have begun to blend.”

“Our own analysis is hardly novel; it is taken straight from a book of essays written more than two centuries ago, The Federalist. People are not naturally angelic but self-interested-else, as Publius pointed out, governments would not be necessary in the first place.”
(continued...)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

(continued...)
“The affluent class is no longer a thin layer of rich people but a political bloc to be reckoned with.”

“We fear that a new kind of conservatism is becoming the dominant ideology of the affluent-not in the social tradition of an Edmund Burke or in the economic tradition of an Adam Smith but “conservatism” along Latin American lines, where to be conservative is often meant doing whatever is necessary to preserve the mansions on the hills from the menace of the slums below.”

“When a society reaches a certain overall level of affluence, the haves begin to feel sympathy toward, if not guilt about, the condition of the have-nots. Thus dawns the welfare state…The most likely consequence in our view is that the cognitive elite, with its commanding position, will implement an expanded welfare state for the underclass that also keeps it out from underfoot. Our label for this outcome is the custodial state. Should it come to pass, here is a scenario:
Over the next decades, it will become broadly accepted by the cognitive elite that the people we now refer to as the underclass are in that condition through no fault of their own but because of inherent shortcomings about which little can be done. Politicians and intellectuals alike will become much more open about the role of dysfunctional behavior in the underclass, accepting that addiction, violence, unavailability for work, child abuse, and family disorganization will keep most members of the underclass fending for themselves. It will be agreed that the underclass cannot be trusted to use cash wisely. Therefore, policy will consists of greater benefits, but these will be primarily in the form of services rather than cash…
Child care in the inner city will become primarily the responsibility of the state.
Strict policing and custodial responses to crime will become more acceptable and widespread.
The underclass will become even more concentrated spatially than it is today.
The underclass will grow.
Social budgets and measures for social control will become still more centralized. Racism will reemerge in a new and more virulent form. 524-525 curve
Ultimately – more totalitarian"

“Society was to be ruled by the virtuous and wise few…Neither the Greek democrats nor the Roman republicans believed that “all men are created equal”…The ancients accepted the basic premise that people differ fundamentally and importantly and searched for ways in which people could contentedly serve the community…rather than themselves, despite their differences.”

“In our historical era, political philosophers have argued instead about rights. They do so because they are trying to solve a different problem. The great transformation from a search for duties and obligations to a search for rights may be dates with Thomas Hobbes, writing in the 1600s about a principle whereby all people, not just the rich and well born, might have equal rights to liberty…In the modern view that Hobbes helped shape, individuals freely accept constraints on their own behavior in exchange for ridding themselves of the dangers of living in perfect freedom, hence perfect anarchy. The constraints constitute lawful government.”

“We are asking that you consider the alternative: that the Founders were fully aware of how unequal people are, that they did not try to explain away natural inequalities, and that they nonetheless thought the best way for people to live together was under a system of equal rights.”

“The Founders wrote frankly about the inequality of men. For Thomas Jefferson, it was obvious that they were especially unequal in virtue and intelligence. He was thankful for a “natural aristocracy” that could counterbalance the deficiencies of the others, an “aristocracy of virtue and talent, which Nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interest of society.” It was, he once wrote, “the most precious gift of nature,” and he thought that the best government was one that most efficiently brought natural aristocracy to high positions."

"Jefferson saw the consequences of inequalities of ability radiating throughout the institutions of society. The main purpose of education, be believed, was to prepare the natural aristocracy to govern, and he did not mince words. The “best geniuses” should be “raked from the rubbish annually” by competitive grading and examinations, sent on to the next educational stage, and finally called to public life."

“The egalitarian ideal of contemporary political theory underestimates the importance of the differences that separate human beings. It fails to come to grips with human variation. It overestimates the ability of political interventions to shape human character and capacities. The systems of government that are necessary to carry out the egalitarian agenda ignore the forces that the Fouders described in The Federalist, which lead inherently and inevitably to tyranny, throughout history and across cultures. These defects in the egalitarian tradition are reflected in political experience, where the failure of the communist bloc to construct happy societies is palpably apparent and the ultimate fate of even the more benign egalitarian model in Scandinavia is coming into question."
(continued...)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

(continued...)
"The perversions of the egalitarian ideal that began with the French Revolution and have been so plentiful in the twentieth century are not accidents of history or produced by technical errors in implementation. Something more inevitable is at work. People who are free to behave differently from one another in the important affairs of daily life inevitably generate the social and economic inequalities that egalitarianism seeks to suppress. That, we believe, is as close to an immutable law as the uncertainties of sociology permit. To reduce inequality of condition, the state must impose greater and greater uniformity. Perhaps that is as close to an immutable law as political science permits. In T.H. White’s version of the Arthurian legend, The Once and Future King, Merlyn transforms young Arthur into an ant as part of his education in governance. In this guise, Arthur approaches the entrance to the ant colony, where over the entrance are written the words, EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY. Such, in our view, is where the logic of the egalitarian ideal ultimately leads. It is appropriate in the ant colony or the beehive but not for human beings. Egalitarian tyrannies, whether of the Jacobite or the Leninist variety, are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman."

"The same atmosphere prevails on a smaller scale wherever “equality” comes to serve as the basis for a diffuse moral outlook. Consider the many small tyrannies in America’s contemporary universities, where it has become objectionable to say that some people are superior to other people in any way that is relevant to life in society. Nor is this outlook confined to judgments about people. In art, literature, ethics, and cultural norms, differences are not to be judged. Such relativism has become the moral high ground for many modern commentators on life and culture.”

“In everyday life, the ideology of equality censors and straitjackets everything from pedagogy to humor. The ideology of equality has stunted the range of dialogue to triviality…the moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and-above all-truth.”

"Within the realm of government, small versions of the “everything not forbidden is compulsory” mentality may be seen everywhere. The informal old American principle governing personal behavior was that you could do whatever you wanted as long you didn’t force anyone else to go along with you and as long as you let the other fellow go about his affairs with equal freedom. The stopping point was defined by the useful adage, “Your freedom to swing your arm stops where my nose begins.” In laws great and small, this principle has been perverted beyond recognition, as the notions of what constitutes “where my nose begins” stretch far out into space. The practice of affirmative action has been a classic example of the “everything not forbidden is compulsory” mentality, as the idea of forbidding people to discriminate by race mutated into the idea of compelling everyone to help produce equal outcomes by race. In tort law, the destruction of the concept of negligence grew out of an explicitly egalitarian view of the purpose of liability-not to redress individual victims for acts of irresponsibility but to redistribute goods more equitably.”

“We think that rights are embedded in our freedom to act, not in the obligations we may impose on others to act; that equality of rights is crucial while equality of outcome is not; that concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty, and truth should be reintroduced into moral discourse…We are enthusiastic about diversity-the rich, unending diversity that free human beings generate as a matter of course, not the imposed diversity of group quotas.”

“The broadest goal is a society in which people throughout the functional range of intelligence can find, and feel they have found, a valued place for themselves. For “valued place,” we offer a pragmatic definition: You occupy a valued place if other people would miss you if you were gone. The fact that you would be missed means that you were valued…To have many different people who would miss you, in many different parts of your life and at many levels of intensity, is a hallmark of a person whose place is well and thoroughly valued. One way to thinking about policy options is to ask whether they aid or obstruct this goal of creating valued places.”

“From their high point in 1973, the median earnings of full-time workers in general nonfarm labor had fallen by 36 percent by 1990…”

“Congress and presidents have deemed it necessary to remove more and more functions from the neighborhood. The entire social welfare system, services and cash payments alike, may be viewed in this light. Certain tasks-such as caring for the poor, for example-were deemed to be too difficult or too poorly performed by the spontaneous efforts of neighborhoods and voluntary organizations, and hence were transferred. The states have joined in this process. Whether federal and state policymakers were right to think that neighborhoods had failed and that the centralized government has done better is still a subject of debate, as is the net effect of the transfers, but the transfers did indeed occur and they stripped neighborhoods of traditional functions."

“The rise of licensing is both a symptom and a cause of diminishing personal ties, along with the mutual trust that goes with those ties. The licensing may have some small capacity to filter out the least competent, but the benefits are often outweighed by the costs of the increase bureaucratization.”

“We start with the supposition that almost everyone is capable of being a morally autonomous human being most of the time and given suitable circumstances. Political scientist James Q. Wilson has put this case eloquently in The Moral Sense…: Human beings in general are capable of deciding between right and wrong. This does not mean, however, that everyone is capable of deciding between right and wrong with the same sophistication and nuances.”

“Inequality of endowments, including intelligence, is a reality. Trying to pretend that inequality does not really exist has led to disaster.”

[labelwench]

Every species that I have observed demonstrates extremes in it's fitness and survivability. Why would humans be any different?

As you mention above, it is most important that a society provide equal opportunity at an early point, which shall diverge as individuals make their choices as to which direction and how much effort they choose to invest in their own education, self-betterment, and how they elect to integrate with the broader community.

Providing a level starting point and some decent avenues of education and general rules of application is all the intervention that government should need provide.

After that, it is up to the individual to assume responsibility for the selections they make and the outcomes they derive.

In Canada, we have a broad range of opportunities and safety nets. In many cases, if an individual is not succeeding, it is the result of their own actions and inactions. I have far too much knowledge of several such circumstances, and it pains me to watch people that I care about making illogical decisions that shall mire them economically and socially for the rest of their life, yet that is the privilege of choice that each of us has, to exercise as we choose.

It would pain me less if I could divest myself of caring......as there is nothing that I can do.....
.....except to learn to accept things as they are, and just do what I can, where and as when it comes to my attention.

Easier said than done, sometimes....

[melanie]

Every species that I have observed demonstrates extremes in it's fitness and survivability. Why would humans be any different?

As you mention above, it is most important that a society provide equal opportunity at an early point, which shall diverge as individuals make their choices as to which direction and how much effort they choose to invest in their own education, self-betterment, and how they elect to integrate with the broader community.

Providing a level starting point and some decent avenues of education and general rules of application is all the intervention that government should need provide.

After that, it is up to the individual to assume responsibility for the selections they make and the outcomes they derive.

In Canada, we have a broad range of opportunities and safety nets. In many cases, if an individual is not succeeding, it is the result of their own actions and inactions. I have far too much knowledge of several such circumstances, and it pains me to watch people that I care about making illogical decisions that shall mire them economically and socially for the rest of their life, yet that is the privilege of choice that each of us has, to exercise as we choose.

It would pain me less if I could divest myself of caring......as there is nothing that I can do.....
.....except to learn to accept things as they are, and just do what I can, where and as when it comes to my attention.

Easier said than done, sometimes....

Parting is bittersweet, yet there is no leaving this.

Is that logical enough for you Lloyd.

Logic can't understand that THIS immediate moment, is all there is, and that nothing else exists.

Logic rather attempts to move past it's own rules, funny old thing logic ? ......ROTFLMAO





'' Green mountains rise to the north;
white water rolls past the eastern city.

Once it has been uprooted,
the tumbleweed travels forever.

Drifting clouds like a wanderer's mind;
sunset, like the heart of your old friend.

We turn, pause, look back and wave,
Even our ponies look back and whine. ''

Li Po: an expression from the 1600's era

Goodbye for ever Lloyd.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Logic can't understand that THIS immediate moment, is all there is, and that nothing else exists.

Those who understand, know. Those who don't, wish they did...

"The pre-suppositions hold all truths in their prison of lies..." me

[greenbug]

I look at logic as something that moves along straight lines. Like trying to square a circle we come up with infinite pie. For some people logic takes on small steps where as others it’s a long stride. Logic understands its own rules any thing else is philosophy.

[melanie]

Those who understand, know. Those who don't, wish they did...

Although the one who understands is the one that knows, the one with the knowing.

There cannot be one wishing to know, for that one is already the known.

"The pre-suppositions hold all truths in their prison of lies..." me

Correct... for there is no 'me'