Much has occurred since my last post, and I have much to discuss. I was just reviewing my last post, and I continued to be amazed at the rhetorical talent and philosophical insight of John Stuart Mill, that he does not hold a more revered place in American academia is a disservice to us all. Mill even said as much when he wrote, "[Genius] in its true sense, though no one says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, believe they can do very well without it." I am not sure if I have mentioned this yet or not, but I have a very conservative history teacher this semester who has drawn my distinct ire. The issue is not that she takes a conservative slant, the issue is that she posits conservatively biased opinion as fact, which I find patently hypocritical considering how much time she spends lecturing about slants in sources. For instance, when I jumped to the defense of Planned Parenthood recently she came out of left field with a statistic I had never heard before, that 90% of their funding is for abortions, and it rightly seemed a victory for her to the rest of the class. Imagine, then, my frustration when I came home and saw on the internet that not only do abortions make up for only 3% of Planner Parenthood's budget, but that John Kyl (who I am sure was her source, perhaps indirectly through Fux News) had issued a statement that his previous statement about Planned Parenthood was not intended to be factual.
For the moment, I will ignore the disgust I have at a U.S. Senator for making statements like that on the Senate floor knowing full well they are not factual. The point of this story is to demonstrate my teacher's methods of argumentation, of course she looked like the victor using fabricated facts. This is just the beginning, though. Straw man arguments, poisoning the well, and begging the question are par for the course with her. I honestly have half a mind to hire a judge to supervise her classes and admonish her when she begins to lead the witness (class). What this has to do with Mill is simple, as I said in my previous post I enjoy political dichotomy, so why was I so angry at my teacher? Mill easily provided the answer in arguing, in the Ciceronian tradition, that the best representative of any given opinion is the one who understands the best logic of their opponent. What I dislike the most about my teacher are not her opinions, but that she presents arguments that are far from the best, in addition to deriving legitimacy for these arguments not on the basis of the arguments themselves but on the authority of her position. Much can be gained by contesting a sophisticated argument, yet nothing is gained by listening to an argument built on fallacy.
Thus we return to the process of change. Mill is such a great figure because of his skill as a logician and rhetorician. It was not simply his adeptness at debate, however, that made him great, but rather his understanding of the principles of debate. It is in this spirit that the first Soviet Commissar for War, Nikolai Krylenko, instituted a national initiative to bring the game of chess to the masses, and subsequently established Soviet dominance in international competition that lasted until the fall of the USSR. An eternal lament of modern American society is our fallen status in international academic rankings, and yet what solutions do we have? Vouchers to send children to private school, mostly religious. These are schools like the one I attended, schools that contest evolution and arrange syllabi based not on what will best transfer to other institutions of learning, but on their own subjective opinions and biases. China has soared recently in education, and what are they teaching? Western philosophers, men like Mill, Hegel, Marx, Descartes, and Hume. It is not the end conclusions of these men that are providing the greatest benefit, but rather their methodology. Anyone even remotely familiar with my philosophical outlook knows I have a very low opinion of Descartes' conclusions, one derived from the charlatan Aquinas. However, Descartes is an essential figure in philosophy in his aspiration of setting out a logical basis for knowledge. It is, therefore, prudent to study and teach Descartes, regardless of how his conclusions are perceived.
And yet we continue to teach religion and dogma in schools. As Mill argues, the fault of teaching dogma is not so much that the end conclusions are wrong but that it stifles intellectual growth. Schools that continue to teach doctrines that contradict accepted science, ones derived from dogma and religious texts, stifle the intellectual growth of their students. No wonder our scores in math and science are dropping, we are teaching children to question or disregard any conclusion they dislike. This is patently unscientific, it provides a weak foundation for education; it is, as the Bible says, like building a house on a foundation of sand.
The goal, therefore, should be in the spirit of Krylenko's programs, to establish logic as a basis of education, politics, and society. This does not necessitate an acceptance of Soviet doctrine, nor does it amount to forcing the religious into atheism. Religion can still exist, just not as an agent of indoctrination, teaching students that the occurrence of the flood is as historically valid as that of World War Two. This will be to the benefit of all creeds, in that as Mill said, the best arguments will be made and the opponents of a given argument will have to dispute the best-formed opinions of their opponents. This is the beginning of a holistic school of secularism.
This word has taken on a negative slant as of late, the Pope just recently said it was contributing to the downfall of society. However, as I argued previously, the goal of secularism is not to erode religion. The goal of secularism is to establish a common foundation. Descartes' approach to debate was exactly this, refuse affirmation of anything that could possibly be false and create a foundation which could not be disputed. From there, concurrent levels of the argument could be made, each gaining the support of the last as in a pyramid. This is the goal of secularism, to establish a foundation which only takes as true that which cannot be false. On this society is built and, though subsequent structures built on the foundation may themselves be not as sound, they are still built on the unshakable. This is holistic secularism, the unshakable foundation. In it, government is devoid of religious influence. Furthermore, the pedagogy is built on logic. This is not to say that logic is always supreme, but it is what is universally affirmed. In addition, though a foundation of logic does not necessarily negate emotion, the tendency of the foundation of emotion is to negate logic. Thus as we move forward, the process of change and society itself must be founded on logic so as to be inclusive as possible to all creeds, so as to provide the maximum benefit to the advocates of any given creed, and so as to build the most reliable foundation on which to proceed.
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