The Origin of Thought

A nose by any other name is still a nose

One pleasure in life is revealing internal conflicts in other people’s logic. It is also a way to limit your invitation to dinner parties.

It always starts with a Definition

So, this month one side wanted to Save Democracy and when it got Democracy it was not happy. Am I missing something here? As usual, this is a matter of definition. For some, apparently Democracy means getting your way all the time. But when a bare, but clear, majority of the country votes to NOT give you your way, perhaps you should pay attention. Maybe you only really wanted to save Democracy if it was your parochial version of it.

The “Will of the People”, presumably a majority in both a popular vote and a majority in the checksum function the Electoral College provides, seems like the broadest form of democracy. Another possible definition might be “The most good for the most people.” Pick one. To the fair minded, either may qualify.

The Thing - whatever it is - that has ruled us for the last half a century has delivered a precipitous decline in the quality of education. I know from personal experience. I returned to school 20 years after graduating with my bachelors. I found the Academy teaching the same material for the Masters I had learned two decades earlier. Later, when teaching undergraduates at two different universities, I found found out why. My task at that time was teaching things to college students I had learned in High School, by then three decades earlier in my life. The High School system I had benefited from no longer existed. Today, now another two decades later, the college system I attended as a youngster is gone.

Are we seeing a trend here?

So here are our definitions:

Academia - the PURE, unadulterated, “Good-bye Mr. Chips,” pursuit of reason and knowledge as an end unto itself.

Politics - the corruption of any system through power strategies, unions, alibi-mongering, venality, slothfulness, dishonesty, petty games, tenure and entitlement via conflicting artificial rules (misnamed “laws”) designed only to perpetuate the system regardless of its original purpose or quality of its present output.

Education - What you get when you add Politics to Academia

The equation

So, we have

You might guess from the definition, P is always a negative number. Thus E is always less than A. For this reason, today Johnny can’t read, Suzie can’t write and neither can calculate. The education system made possible the two most recent presidential candidates. When I was in High School an election of the kind we just saw would never have happened. If by some fluke it did, the outcome would not have been close.

Memo to Elon: Start with the Department of Education. Send me the bill for renting the wrecking ball…