Logic: the student's edge, the investigator's gold
by Jon Rappoport
Note: This article stems from my Logic and Analysis course,
which is part of my collection, The Matrix Revealed; and also from a
long audio presentation, Analyzing Information in the Age of
Disinformation, which is part of my collection, Power Outside the
Matrix.
Part One
Twenty-four-hundred years ago, in ancient Greece, 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."
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 haphazardly 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.
Part Two
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
propaganda, in order to persuade audiences.
Never mind high schools; rarely will you find a good course
of study on propaganda 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 audio section called Analyzing Information in the Age of
Disinformation. It is based on my experience as a reporter over the last
30 years.
It all started with my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the
Century. 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 standing in 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. I didn't see 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 I realized there was no such thing as AIDS.
The very real suffering, pain, and death that was being
called AIDS was not one thing, not one syndrome, not one disease, not
one condition. There were a number of causes, not one.
That was the first and foremost error (piece of disinformation) in the official scenario.
Now I could finish the book.
I learned a key lesson, which has stood me in good stead ever
since. Go to the most basic of all the basic assumptions in the
official scenario.
Check THAT assumption. Very carefully.
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