Civilization and logic: more than a fortunate accident

by Jon Rappoport

September 20, 2016

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

I’ve mentioned many times that the disappearance of logic as a primary subject in US schools has accompanied a long, gradual erosion of individual freedom and independence.

There is specific link: It leads to Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.

THIS IS OF ENORMOUS IMPORTANCE.

Several years ago, I came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine. The letter was published in the January 1979 issue. It came from a Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell makes several key points. As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary. Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick. Indeed, Jefferson later remarked Professor Small went a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure. Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

Note: Another Founder, James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey. In fact, we have 122 pages of Madison’s own handwritten notes from the course. The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

I went back and read the Declaration of Independence, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power. Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises.

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments.

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government.

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the text:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the king has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here they are:

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”

Jefferson goes on to list many more abuses.

He then announces his conclusion, based on the original premises of his argument and the examples he has cited to confirm that the heart of these premises is true:

“We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

I point this out to show that the Founders were not only acquainted with the use of logic, they wanted to make their great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In their minds, freedom and logic were connected.

If in our schools, in 2016, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration?

How are they able to understand that living in freedom means more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

by Jon Rappoport

June 28, 2016

(To join our email list, click here.)

Since logic is no longer taught as a required subject in schools, the door is open to all sorts of bizarre reactions to the presence of information.

Here are three favorites:

One: grab the headline or the title of an article, make up your mind about how you “feel,” and ignore everything else.

Two: Actually read the article until you find a piece of information that appeals to you for any reason; latch on to it, and run with it in any direction. In all cases, the direction will have nothing to do with the intent of the article.

Three: From the moment you begin to read the headline of the article, be in a state of “free association.” Take any word or sentence and connect it to an arbitrary thought or feeling, associate that thought with yet another arbitrary thought…and keep going until you become tired or bored.

You might be surprised at how many people use these three “methods of analysis.”

The very idea that the author of the article is making a central point doesn’t really register. And certainly, the notion that the author is providing evidence for the central point and reasoning his way from A to B to C is alien.

A college liberal education? These days it could be imparted in a matter of weeks, simply by hammering a small set of values into students’ skulls—along with requisite guilt and fear at the prospect of wandering off the reservation.

Logic as a subject is viewed with grave suspicion, as if it might involuntarily take a person down the wrong track and dump him in a politically incorrect ditch—a fate to be avoided at all costs.

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

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

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

What does greatest good mean, specifically? How would it be achieved? Who would implement it? How would the implementation affect individual freedom?

Wrestling with these questions would open up whole new territories of insight.

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

The world may be sinking into deeper levels of know-nothing non-rationality, but that’s not a good excuse for trailing along down into the swamp. It should be a wake-up call to go the other way.

No matter what anyone says, it’s not a crime to be smarter than other people.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic and illogic in education

by Jon Rappoport

June 6, 2016

In two of my collections, The Matrix Revealed and Power Outside The Matrix, I include training in the art of logic and critical analysis.

The basic fact is: students in schools are rarely taught how to follow a line of reasoning from beginning to end. Nor do they practice analyzing half-formed, specious reasoning.

Who teaches young students, these days, how to distinguish between a polemic and a formal argument?

Teachers spend little or no time discussing hidden premises or assumptions, which color subsequent arguments.

Increasingly, people are “learning” from watching videos. Some videos are well done; many others intentionally omit vital data and make inferences based on “shocking images.”

A focused study of logic can illuminate a range of subjects and disciplines. It can suddenly bring perspective to fields of inquiry that were formerly mysterious and impenetrable.

Logic is the parent of knowledge. It contains the principles and methods common to all investigation.

Being able to spot and understand logical flaws and fallacies embedded in an article, essay, book immediately lifts the intelligence level.

Logic isn’t a prison; one isn’t forced to obey its rules. But the ability to deploy it, versus not understanding what it is, is like the difference between randomly hammering at a keyboard and typing coherent paragraphs. It’s the difference between, “I agree with what he’s writing,” and “I know exactly how he’s making his argument.”

In the West, the tradition of logic was codified by Aristotle. Before him, Plato, in the Socratic Dialogues, employed it to confound Socrates’ opponents.

Reading the Dialogues today, one can see, transparently, where Plato’s Socrates made questionable assumptions, which he then successfully foisted on those opponents. It’s quite instructive to go back and chart Socrates’ clever steps. You see logic and illogic at work.

High schools today don’t teach logic for two reasons. The teachers don’t understand the subject, and logic as a separate discipline has been deleted because students, armed with it, would become authentically independent. The goal of education rejects independent minds, despite assurances to the contrary.

Logic and critical analysis should be taught in phases, with each phase encompassing more complex passages of text offered for scrutiny.

Eventually, students would delve into thorny circumstantial arguments, which make up a great deal of modern investigation and research, and which need to be assessed on the basis of degrees of probable validity and truth.

It’s like a climbing a mountain. The lower paths are relatively easy, if the map is clear. At higher elevation, more elements come into play, and a greater degree of skill and experience is required.

My college logic teacher introduced his subject to the class this way: Once you’ve finished this semester, you’ll know when you know, and you’ll know when you don’t know.

The second part of his statement has great value. It enables real research beyond egotistical concerns, beyond self-serving presumptions, beyond secretly assuming what you’re pretending to prove.

We certainly don’t live in an age of reason; far from it. Therefore, the greater need to learn logic. Among other benefits, it centers the thinking process.

In a landscape of controversy, babble, bluster, public relations, covert propaganda, and outright lying, one has a dependable compass.

For instance, understanding the scientific method (hypothesis-prediction-verification) would go a long way toward untangling some of the outrageous claims of science, and separating them from the political agendas they serve.

Beginning in ancient Greece, coming up through the Middle Ages, and into the 19th century, logic was one aspect of education called the Trivium (“the three”): in sequence, a student learned grammar, then logic, then rhetoric.

Except in scattered places, where people have consciously instituted a revival of the Trivium, that integrated method of teaching is gone now.

Instead, in primary and middle schools, we have superficial coasting through many academic subjects, minus the necessary exercises and drills to ensure that students grasp material. In other words, we have imposed ADHD.

Logic isn’t the end-all and be-all of life. It doesn’t define what life is. It’s a tool. You either have it or you don’t. You can use it or you can’t. When you can, you have more power, and whole new vistas, previously unseen, open up to you.

Logic is a tool in your box. When you need to go in and remove it and use it, is it dull or is it sharp?

Finally, studying logic gives a student an appreciation of consequences. For example, a politician announces a high-flying generalization, as a plank of his platform. Two things ought to follow. The student does his best to translate that generality into specific terms which actually mean something. Then he traces what would happen if the plank were, in fact, put into effect; what would the consequences specifically entail? There are always consequences—it’s just that most people never see them or think about them, because they haven’t the foggiest idea about how to flesh them out and map their implications.

Logic: one of the great contributions to civilization, left to die on the vine.

It needs to be resurrected, in full flower.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic: how to introduce it and improve mush-minds

by Jon Rappoport

February 25, 2016

“One of the most successful forms of mind control is inducing confusion. In education, this means avoiding details and substituting generalities. It means never teaching logic.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Note: I include a very simple and basic logic-course starter in my collection, The Matrix Revealed. I present a long audio section, “Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation,” in my collection, Power Outside The Matrix.

Modern propaganda, PR, and advertising use non-logic to sell their ideas and products. They rely on nudging people into making associations between images and ideas and feelings. X=Y. A summer afternoon in a pasture equals a pill for arthritis. Three men in suits shaking hands in a boardroom equals making money in the stock market, if you use broker A. Citizen safety equals men-in-black policemen driving Pentagon armored vehicles down a city street. A brand of SUV packed with giggling kids equals a happy warm family forever.

Associations, equivalences. Join two ideas together that don’t belong together.

Non-logic. Anti-logic.

This gives rise to the notion: “Information is merely an opportunity to make any associations I want to. There’s no reason to analyze information.”

Read an entire article? Absurd. Much easier to look at the headline and play an aimless riff on it. Stimulate the flow of adrenaline. React. Feel better. Feel deprived. Feel entitled. Whatever floats your boat.

IQ plummets? Who cares?

Who would want to teach logic to students? What a waste of time. The purpose of education these days is injecting values and slogans and attitudes; associating those values with attractive images. For that, you don’t need a mind. You only need mush that can be shaped.

And after what passes for a high school education, the mush is there. It has no clues about processes of thought.

Nevertheless, just suppose a teacher wanted to go where no one has gone for a hundred years or so. How would he start? Where would he start?

At the bottom.

Take a newspaper article about politics. Have the students read it. Then ask them: what does the first paragraph state? What is it saying?

You may be surprised at the variety of opinion.

“It says Martians will be here soon.”

“It says President Obama was born in Hawaii.”

“It says cooking rice is easy.”

“It says I’m triggered and vulnerable.”

Carry on a discussion for as long as it takes, until most of the students know what the first paragraph actually states. This may be a half-hour, a week, a month. Who knows?

Repeat the process with each paragraph of the article. If that takes a year, so be it, because you can’t move further until students understand the text. I know that is a mystical and esoteric notion, but accept it on an experimental basis.

Next step: ask the students whether the author of the article is trying to make an overall point. Ask them what that point is.

“His point is he doesn’t like working-class people.”

“He loves cats.”

“He wants everybody to move to Mars.”

“He’s political.”

“He’s asking us to give money to Marco Rubio.”

Your work is cut out for you. Keep going until the fog clears. Have the students read the article over and over until most of them see the actual point the author is trying to make.

Then—how did the author try to convince you his point was correct?

Then—did you see a hole in his attempt to convince you? A gap? A wrong move?

This is the general sequence of steps. Basically, you’re sticking the students’ noses in the text. Again and again. You’re focusing them on specifics. You’re showing them the difference between their own opinions and random associations and what the author is saying.

You’re doing the one thing they’ve avoided doing. You’re standing in for every incompetent teacher they’ve ever had. You’re reversing years of desultory derangement in classrooms.

You’re making students more intelligent. That’s a very tall order. It takes commitment. If you don’t have it, get out of the business.

Consider a subject I’ve been writing about lately: the Zika virus.

Here is a progression which, if followed, leads you to interesting places:

Researchers are saying: “the Zika virus causes a birth defect.” What does that statement mean?

How must causation be established? What are the rules?

Have the rules been followed?

That simple group of questions takes you to the conclusion that there is no evidence for Zika as the cause of the birth defect—if you proceed in a straight line, allowing no distractions, such as pronouncements from public-health agencies and governments.

I could teach a four-year logic course using Zika.

During that time, I would introduce a few dozen false and vague generalities, opinions, and diversions that have been deployed to keep people from walking that straight line. These logical flaws are often utilized in arguments, in order to cook the books.

Mainstream news is a wonderful source for non-logic.

And it also leads you to propaganda, when you realize that all nonsense can’t be an accident.

It also leads you to a course on journalism: how it’s usually done; how it can be done. Investigative reporting is an opportunity to be relentless. Following down a major story to its roots is an illuminating experience. You end up building an alternative structure that parallels and supersedes the official structure. Your archeological mission unearths a city that no one knew was there.

In order to accomplish this, you have to be willing to deal with details, one by one. Examine them, see where they came from, determine whether they’re relevant, whether they’re obfuscating the main event, whether they’re false, whether they were placed there to lead you away from the truth.

Logic is one system you can count on. It helps you tell the difference between what you know and what you don’t know.

Logic topples authority when authority is wrong.

It mitigates aimless and random personal attacks and accusations. It offers a perspective through which dubious sources of information can be viewed.

Logic isn’t the ultimate ground of existence. It’s a tool that can be used to assess the validity and probability of a formal argument.

It isn’t an answer. It’s a way of arriving at answer.

It shows you the difference between an assumption based on belief and a purported fact, which is either true or false.

Logic allows you to move inside an overly complex argument that has been promoted to hide the truth. Once inside, you can give the argument a haircut and see its essence.

In a world flooded with information and disinformation, logic isn’t the be-all and end-all. But without it, you’re floundering in the ocean. You’re swimming inside holes and gaps, instead of being able to see the holes and gaps.

The interesting thing is: once people actually know what an author is saying; once they know what conclusion he’s reaching; once they know how he’s getting there; they can see the flaws and the omissions and the insupportable inferences.

They can see the line of reasoning, from beginning to end.

The lights go on.

A heretofore mysterious territory comes into focus.

The differences between fact, lie, assumption, argument, polemic, and propaganda emerge and the mind begins to breathe.

Perhaps for the first time.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Mind control and logic

by Jon Rappoport

February 11, 2016

Note: In my collection, Power Outside The Matrix, I include a long audio section, “Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation.”

One type of mind control involves defeating logic.

Modern formulations of basic logic begin with the statement: You can’t have A and not-A. Which is a way of saying contradictions are unacceptable.

So it’s no surprise that mind control attempts to introduce contradictions into rational processes.

You see this in propaganda.

For example: People who are vaccinated are in danger from those who are unvaccinated. (“Keep your unvaccinated child away from my vaccinated child.”)

There is a contradiction here. You can see it by merely defining (according to conventional terms) the meaning of “vaccinated.”

It means “immune,” “protected from contracting the disease targeted by the vaccine.”

But if the vaccinated person is protected and immune, then coming into contact with an unvaccinated person will bring no danger.

Therefore, the notion that vaccinated people are A) protected but B) not protected, is absurd, a contradiction.

The easiest way to defeat logic is through deficient education. Never teach logic. Ignore it. Instead, teach specific values. Teach anything except logic. Don’t teach children how to spot contradictions.

A deficient education plus tons of ceaseless propaganda=mind control.

Logic is a significant problem for people who want a closed and unfree society. Teaching logic tends to produce sharp and independent minds.

Logic produces personal power.

Here is another example of non-logic: “The ballot initiative passed last November by the voters of Maui County is illegal, because it set up a new law regarding commercial agriculture. Commercial agriculture is regulated by state and federal laws, which trump county laws.”

There are several ways of attacking this proposition, but the most basic way is:

The ballot initiative was not aimed at commercial agriculture. It called for a moratorium on all Monsanto/Dow experiments using non-commercial GMOs.

In what has become a federal court case, the judge and the lawyers for Dow/Monsanto are proceeding from a false basic premise.

Of course, the failure in this case is a willful assertion of the false premise.

There are a number of arguments afloat these days which proceed this way:

“The science concerning ABC is settled.”

“’Settled’ means ‘true.’”

“Therefore the science concerning ABC is true.”

However, on closer inspection, “settled” means “there is a consensus among officially favored scientists.”

Actual science doesn’t operate according to what officially favored scientists claim. It doesn’t operate according to consensus at all. It operates according to what is true and valid—and the best way to ascertain that is through the broadest possible analysis accomplished by a wide variety of independent researchers, who attempt to replicate prior experimental results.

Even then, there is always room for reasoned dissent.

There is much, much more I could write about logic. The issues I raise in this article are basic and should be addressed in every high school, in great detail, with many illustrations.

For instance: what are the full tacit implications of the statement found at the end of every television drug ad—“ask your doctor if X is right for you.”

For instance, when the press reports a new outbreak of disease, claiming it is caused by a particular virus…how was that assertion determined? On what grounds do scientists say they have found the virus that causes the disease?

I ran headlong into that one while writing my first book, AIDS INC., and the further I investigated HIV as “the cause of AIDS,” the more I was stunned by the lack of logic present in the argument.

Logic is a sword.

Learning its many uses, while still young, creates formidable students and citizens.

Propaganda is the art of overwhelming logic.

It works, when the mind is unprepared.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The loud world of ad hominem attacks

The content of an argument vs. the person making the argument

by Jon Rappoport

December 8, 2015

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

“One of the main purposes of propaganda is making people feel stupid. How do you do that? Send them obvious lies and contradictions from cathedrals of power. Watch them shake their heads and retreat into their shells. The battle is over.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

During my 30 years as a reporter on scientific issues, my most serious journalistic work has focused on large subjects that need to be explored down to their core. A few examples: Does HIV cause AIDS? Are vaccines safe and effective? Is psychiatry a true science? What are the negative effects of pharmaceutical drugs?

I’ve carried out this work independently, and the validity of my investigations hasn’t hinged on the character or personality of the people who oppose my positions.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed parodying and satirizing those people, but not as a substitute for analysis.

These days, we see the escalation of the ad hominem argument: “Oh, he’s just saying that because he’s a Democrat (Republican).” “He’s just saying that because the oil companies are paying him off.” “He’s defending that position because he’s a racist.” “If he doesn’t agree with me, he must be a CIA agent.” “He’s a nut. He’s been discredited.”

Ad hominem=“toward/against the man,” rather than “against the argument the man is making.”

Understand this: In many cases, it is instructive to know why a person is making an argument. It’s instructive to know whether he is part of a group that has a particular political agenda. It’s instructive to know whether he is concealing his true reasons for making an argument. It’s instructive to know whether he is a propagandist.

But none of these factors is a substitute for investigating the substance of the argument itself, as well as the overall subject to which the argument is referring. If you don’t do that work, all the ad hominem attacks in the world won’t help you. You can go after this person and that person…but the truth remains unknown.

Unfortunately, the media landscape and the educational system being what they are now, most people aren’t equipped to analyze a major subject and separate truth from fiction. All they can do is accuse their opponents of base and ulterior motives. That’s the only card they can play. They latch on to Subject X, they favor Position A, and from that moment on anyone who favors Position B is a liar, a charlatan, a hired hand of Evil Forces. That’s the beginning and the end of their “investigation.”

The notion of ad hominem was understood at least as far back as ancient Rome. The Latin phrase, argumentum ad hominem (argument toward the man), indicated a flaw in reasoning, a piece of misdirection, a distraction from a thorough analysis of the argument itself.

But how can modern students really grasp the full impact of ad hominem, unless they carry out logical research of their own, and contrast that experience with simply making flip accusations against people they don’t agree with.

In an atmosphere where ad hominem prevails, things don’t improve. They get worse. Eventually, the dominant groups adopt a few stock attacks against everyone who doesn’t adore them. Rolled out with enough volume and ferocity, they can prevent a person with a different point of view from being heard at all in their controlled “safe space.”

So in support of “universal caring and the redress of injustice,” such dominant groups become totalitarian commissars.

Ad hominem is often deployed with another logical fallacy, the vague generality. In a political debate, for example, you’ll hear something like this: “So-and-so is campaigning on the basis of exclusion. He says he wants to lift up Americans, but he represents corporate interests.” Within that remark, “exclusion” and “corporate interests” are vague generalities. These ad hominem accusations are rarely spelled out and specified.

Many people, to one degree or another, engage in polemic and ad hominem. But when it comes to vital issues, the acid test is, do they also analyze the subject at hand and discover the truth, falsity, validity, and invalidity embedded in it? Can they separate the wheat from the chaff?

Just because other people can’t do it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to—unless the condition of your mind is a matter of indifference to you.

I’m talking about self-sufficiency of intellect here. Obviously, no one is going to able to dive down into every major issue of the day and discover what sits at the bottom of it. But if you can achieve this form of logical depth with several such issues, you know you can do it. And that confidence builds character and courage.

Some years ago I made notes for a piece called, If Socrates Could Speak Now. Here is a quote:

“Friends, in the marketplace, you find a shorthand give and take. Rough and tumble. Half-ideas are thrown back and forth. Opinions are cheaply bought and sold. Accusations are hurled. It would be a sign of poor character not to be able to withstand such chaos. And why not possess the ability to gossip with the best of them? But at the same time, you must know how to take apart the strands of conversation and see them in an impartial light. You must be able to follow a line of reasoning from first ideas to conclusions and identify where the logic breaks down and withers. These are the capabilities of the thoughtful human. You may despair at what goes on in the marketplace, but you must not give in to it. Simply because you do not know when and where reason will triumph, or how, it would be foolish of you to employ this doubt as an excuse to surrender and abdicate your own throne-of-mind. It would amount to creating a wound in yourself…”

Of course, one can take logic too far. What to do when key facts are omitted or buried, names of persons are obscured, men stay behind the curtain and control events through layers of manipulation? In some situations, demanding absolute logic before making any argument at all leaves you out in the cold. At those times, you need to know how to assemble a circumstantial case, and you need to know how to assess probabilities. These subtleties need to be deployed.

Part of “circumstantial/probability” intelligence derives from common-sense judgments. For instance, years ago, when I was wrapping up an investigation into the overall damage medical drugs were causing in the US population, and I had settled on rather conservative estimates (100,000 deaths per year, a million deaths per decade), it occurred to me that if I could discover these numbers, so would the FDA. The FDA is the sole American agency tasked with certifying the drugs as safe and effective before releasing them for public use. And if the FDA knew those numbers and was doing nothing about them, the FDA was complicit in the deaths.

This is common sense. It is also a piece of logical inference. So when I wrote articles from that point on, I included a direct accusation against the FDA. I fully believed it was justified. Then, lo and behold, one day, someone sent me a link to an FDA web page. On the page was an FDA admission that medical drugs were creating 100,000 deaths in the US every year. And, for the capper, the FDA was taking zero responsibility.

When trying to assign culpability and guilt, assemble relevant facts and ask, “What would a reasonable person who is a leader do about these facts? What action would he take? Did he take that action?” In my previous article about an approach to gun violence, I did exactly that. If gangs across America are an important and chronic contributor to gun violence, what would a reasonable President do about it? Would he pay attention? Would he ignore gangs? Would he highlight, in his speeches, the problem of gangs? Would he make them a priority?

And then: what has the President actually done about gangs?

In many ways, the present civilization is at a crossroad. The disappearance of rationality is not a small problem. It gives birth to multiple consequences, all of which are deeply corrosive.

Our so-called leaders are aware that many people still expect them to possess the quality of logical thought. That’s why these leaders, in their speeches and comments, try to present a credible imitation of that quality. For them, it’s a show. For us, it’s more than that. Pointing out the difference between a knock-off and the real thing is necessary. Those of us who can perform that work should do it.

My old logic professor used to say, “Know what you don’t know. Then find answers in that area of mystery.”

Frequently, the mystery is “guarded” by assertions which make no sense or are contradictory. Instead of deciding the assertions must be true and you’re the one who can’t understand them, try the opposite approach. Analyze the statements, show how they make no sense, show how they contradict each other. Take the bull by the horns. Wrestle it to the ground. Confirm your own intelligence. Become confident in it.

Don’t lose your intellect because others are losing theirs.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic: the student’s edge, the investigator’s gold

by Jon Rappoport

November 25, 2015

NoMoreFakeNews.com

“The discovery of logic was enormous. It changed civilization. It also equipped professional deceivers with a new level of understanding about their own mind-bending work. Today, the investigator needs a knowledge of logic as never before. He also needs to engage in a process of analysis that incorporates more than the stark rules Aristotle once laid down. He needs to know logic’s first cousins…” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

This article has two parts. To fully understand what I’m discussing, both parts are essential.

Part One:

Twenty-four-hundred years ago, in the ancient city of Athens, something unprecedented happened.

Three men changed the course of the world by introducing the discipline of logic: Socrates, Plato, and finally, Arisotle, who codified the principles of reasoning in The Organon.

Since then, all the way up the present day, mathematicians and philosophers have added to that store of knowledge, through intensive research.

In many countries, logic used to be an integral part of secondary education. It was often presented as a series of fallacies or errors one needed to avoid while thinking through a problem or assessing an argument.

Now, however, like the dinosaur, it has disappeared.

Why has it vanished from secondary-school curricula? Perhaps for the same reason fewer and fewer students study Latin or Greek. Logic is deemed irrelevant. It’s “old-fashioned.” It can be replaced by minor attempts to teach young people how to “think critically.”

That is simply not true.

We used to understand the formal meaning of the word “argument.” It was a presentation in which the speaker or writer aimed to move from a first set of ideas, along a specific, path, to a conclusion. In order to understand and evaluate an argument, one had to be able to spot departures from the rules of logic. More basically, one had to be able to follow the course of reasoning, like a stream, and not lose the way.

Today’s students are generally lacking in that tracking ability. They often don’t even realize an argument is being made. Rather, they read a chapter in a book and pick and choose what they feel are the most interesting bits of information. They drift; they founder.

They see themselves as consumers in a marketplace of ideas and words, and they buy the most attractive pieces.

This strategy breaks down the farther the student moves along the road of education.

As a former teacher, I have seen students who were, in fact, equipped with a background in logic. In every course they took, they possessed an edge that was enviable.

Logic underlies academic subjects. It is the rock on which those subjects are built. Physics, math, biology, history, languages are taught on the basis that a rational approach to the material is essential. And logic is the essence of rationality.

At best, students pick up logic piecemeal, haphazardly. The obvious step is to teach it as its own subject. If this is done, students suddenly are ahead of the game. They have an indispensable tool for thinking lucidly in any situation, in any classroom, using any text, taking any exam, writing any essay.

It is, so to speak, the difference between mapping a large area by laboriously walking the land, and filming it from the air with high-resolution cameras.

Academic achievement, as the degree of difficulty grows, is all about mastering larger and larger quantities of information. This is the primary challenge. Armed with logic, a student can win this challenge, because he sees and follows the underlying architecture around which all information is organized.

A youngster can take apart an old clock. He can examine the pieces and figure out what each piece does. But then, if he comprehends the structure, the logic of the clock, he can go further. He can understand, more deeply, how all the parts combine to produce the clock that tells time. At that point, his knowledge is unshakable.

This is what the study of logic accomplishes.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed — which includes Jon’s Logic And Analysis course, click here.)

Part Two:

With everything that the study of logic produces, there are limits.

We not only live in an age of information, we live in an age of disinformation.

When concealment and deception are official goals, an outside person who is examining facts, arguments, premises, and lines of reasoning needs to spot patterns of propaganda, cover stories, intentionally placed distractions, and purposeful omissions of vital data.

In other words, these days we are routinely dealing with spokespeople and experts who are deploying all manner of anti-logic methods, in order to persuade audiences.

This used to be called polemic. That term has dropped out of use.

We need to understand polemic as never before.

Never mind high schools; you can’t find a good course of study on propaganda and polemic at any college or university in the world. I make that statement, because colleges are compromised from the get-go. They receive monies for research involving, for example, vaccines, medical drugs, mind control, climate change, advanced weapons systems, human genetics, pesticides, GMO crops. Propaganda and polemic on these subjects are everywhere. A real course on propaganda would expose the very colleges that teach it.

A professor who went full-bore on propaganda would be cut off at the knees by his administration. He would be attacked, defamed, smeared, hounded, and exiled by his bosses and his own colleagues.

Therefore, the study of disinformation falls outside the academic spectrum.

In my third Matrix collection, Power Outside The Matrix, I include a long section called Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation. It is based on my experience as a reporter over the last 30 years.

I build it on the foundation of: fleshing out and examining, in great detail, the official scenario on any subject. This is an approach that pays handsome dividends.

When you can lay out, like a map or a blueprint, the complete official scenario, you can then take it apart. You can attack its parts, one by one.

I learned how to do just that, on the fly, six years into my career as a reporter, with my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century. I came to this approach as a matter of necessity, because I was inundated with a flood of information on all sides. As soon as people became aware I was writing the book, they gave me their “best opinions” on the subject.

Those opinions ranged all the way from “virus produced in a lab” to “cosmic debris landing on Earth”—and everything in between.

At the same time, I was assembling my own discoveries re the illogical arguments government and university researchers were presenting about “the AIDS virus.”

I was also detailing, in my notes, the biases of independent journalists, who were organizing data to fit their pet causes and agendas.

And beyond any of this, I was standing in the middle of a vast muddle, because I had not yet identified the most basic premises inherent in the official scenario about HIV and AIDS. That was the real kicker. That was keeping me up at nights. I didn’t know I was missing the most basic assumptions.

In other words, I was still unconsciously buying certain official ideas about HIV and AIDS. And given that, I couldn’t move beyond a certain point. I couldn’t take the thousands of pieces of data I had and see them from the correct viewpoint. I had part of the puzzle, but not enough.

Then one day, a man who was supporting my work introduced me at a small gathering where I was delivering a speech. He made an offhand remark. It set off a string of firecrackers in my head. One explosion led to the next—and then I realized what I’d been missing.

It became clear to me—why so many people had so many ideas about AIDS.

I realize that, for many readers, my next statement will fall on deaf ears, because they don’t have all the necessary background. Nevertheless…

I realized there was no such thing as AIDS.

The suffering, pain, and death that was being called AIDS was not one thing, not one syndrome, not one disease, not one condition.

That was the first and foremost error (piece of disinformation) in the official scenario.

Now I could finish the book, and quickly. I had the deception in my hands.

I learned my lesson, which has stood me in good stead ever since. Flesh out the complete official scenario. Find all its parts. Investigate each part. Go to the most basic of all the basic assumptions in the scenario.

There is much more to say about all this, but I wanted to give you at least the flavor of analyzing disinformation about a large, large issue and a large, large false reality.

Logic helps; it is essential; but in practice, it doesn’t carry all the freight. Pushing through multiple webs of lies and half-truths and false trails is a process, and you have to engage in it, up close and personal, in order to arrive at the true foundation of the covert op.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.