Knowledge
What does it mean to know something?
Let us say you arrived at a modest hotel near downtown Philadelphia late last night. You checked in, went to your room, and slept. Now it is morning, and you want to venture out, but you have never been in Philadelphia. You have no knowledge of Philadelphia. You realize you can blunder forth and, by trial and error, discover a good deal by first-hand examination. With this in mind, you step outside. You look left and see nothing but row houses and small businesses. You look right and see the same thing for two blocks, but at the end of the second block, you see a traffic light and some traffic moving. Instead of wasting effort, you go back inside and ask the desk clerk where you might find a coffee shop and buy a newspaper. The desk clerk tells you to turn left on the sidewalk outside, turn left again at the first corner, and in the middle of the block is Marvin’s Deli, and that Marvin has a nook for coffee, and he sells newspapers too. You have extracted knowledge from the brain of the desk clerk. You have also extracted knowledge from your own trial and error experiment (outside on the curb, looking left and right).
You proceed to Marvin’s Deli per instructions of the clerk. While reading your newspaper in Marvin’s Deli, you spot a free tour guide with a map of the neighborhood. You don’t look at the map, but you put it in your pocket. By doing so, you have taken an archive of knowledge created by others (probably for commercial purposes) and stored it in a place where you can quickly consult it.
Knowledge is acquired only by trial and error. Once knowledge has been acquired, it should be stored as writings, symbols, photos, or bits in a computer or computer-storage. Lost knowledge has to be reacquired by trial and error; the same way it was acquired originally.
Preservation and transmission of knowledge is a task of major importance for individuals, families, communities, nations, and civilizations. Failure in this task is catastrophic, not only for ourselves, but for generations ahead. The huge destructions of knowledge at the library at Alexandria, and the codeces of the Aztec and the Maya probably affect us negatively today even though these storage places of knowledge were destroyed many centuries in the past, a fact of which most of us are ignorant.
[Knowledge] is the principal thing; Therefore, get [knowledge], and with all thy getting, get understanding. ----Proverbs 4, 7
What does this mean? Isn’t it repetitious, plastering understanding over the top of knowledge? Answer: Think of knowledge as a fact: Carl Petty came across the finish line first. Then think of understanding as a dissection of knowledge. For example: Carl Petty’s pit crew had the best turn around time, compared to all the other pit crews. A further dimension in understanding might be the fact that Petty’s pit crew had all-new, super powerful, and microprocessor controlled, self-adjusting pneumatic wrenches. Here’s a second example: Knowledge is knowing that, by turning the windup key on a toy car, you will be readying it to start off and run on its own. Any child knows this. Understanding results from removing the light sheet metal skin (the body) to reveal the inner workings. Once you can see that the windup key tightens a spiral steel spring, you will understand how the toy can propel itself. The book (Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty) presents a major fact: We lost our freedom in 1966(see Chapter 3, Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty). The other chapters serve to make this point clearer and, further, to explain what was lost and how it was lost. As with the windup toy and the road race, some “looking under the hood” is necessary to bring about the desired amount of understanding.
2. The Need to Understand — The need to detect lies
It is all too easy to shrug off warnings of serfdom. To understand the trend we are in, and have been in since 1966, today's youth, Jack and Jill schmoe, and Joe and Jo Sixpack have to understand how to detect a lie, how politics and economics stack up when compared side-by-side. How traditional morals are under attack. These are just a few of the things that need to be understood by Jack, Jill, Joe and Jo. It is impossible to stop a lie unless you, first of all, are able to notice it is a lie. To spot a lie, you must have sufficient knowledge and understanding within your command to see the lie is in conflict with factual information. It is often said, for example, that individualists are selfish by nature. To spot this as a lie, you must know several things: 1. Most conservatives are individualists, and conversely, most individualists are conservative. 2. Most liberals favor collections of individuals(e.g.,unions, neighborhood coalitions, political groups), and not individuals, Furthermore, liberals look upon individualists with disdain and distrust. That is: most liberals dislike individualists, and individualism. 3. Studies show that conservatives give more to charities, by far, than do liberals. By knowing these three things, we are able to spot the lie. Furthermore, by reading The Open Society and its Enemies, Part 1, The Spell of Plato. You will learn that one of the world’s greatest philosophers, Plato, was a liar, and it was he who first initiated the idea that individualists are selfish by nature. Plato’s lie from long ago continues causing harm, even to the present day.
1. Youth is destined for serfdom
Not knowing the plight they are in, Joe and Jo Sixpack were tricked into happily trecking into serfdom. We US citizens lost our freedom in the fall election of 1966, but most of us are blissfully unaware. What happened is presented in Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty, a book written for Mr. And Mrs. Sixpack. How to comprehend and appreciate the 1966 events, and current events, is presented. Historical events of a similar kind are shown. Plato’s writings, plus others who echoed Plato, are brought forth for examination. The ideas of Karl R. Popper and Petr Beckmann are brought forth to explain Plato’s and Aristotle’s faulty logic. Politics and economics are put under a microscope. The human thought process (epistemology) is examined, relying on simple definitions of truth and knowledge. Education and sociology are discussed. The two major collectivist movements of recent history, Nazism and communism, are shown to have the same source: Georges Sorel. The book is dedicated to the founders and promulgators of the Judeo-Christian traditions. Former slave, Frederick Douglass, understood perfectly well how ignorance is forced upon people to weaken them and bind them in slavery.
(Click the link to read more about Blacks in America: http://the-black-american.blogspot.com and for a full description of how Frederick Douglass was able learn the trick by which he was kept in slavery and then escape bondage by teaching himself to read and write.)
