A Decade Of Horrors: 2008-2018

The decade 2008-2018 it’s safe to say has been a hard one both for myself and for the world as a whole. I’ll tell you about the difficulties in my life during these years.

Forums

2008

I was into a boardgame called Diplomacy at the time until I realised a number of years later how much of it is stupid but anyway at the time I would like to post on forums of it but people were calling my posts inane repeatedly (I just wanted to post in a verbose way as I was a Kant fanboy at the time) and getting aggressive with me and would split hairs. Eventually I left these forums and it furthered my hatred of humanity as if offline experience and the incessant petty partisan politics on the internet and floods of new atheist blasphemy and polemics weren’t enough. Alas without the internet there isn’t much for me to do so I got stuck essentially living on the internet.

At some point I was on a hikikomori forum and spent time on the IRC channel linked to it but I left after one night in the chat a few of them were saying that God was sexy and I told them to stop, a nice woman from Belgium asked them to change the subject but they didn’t and so I quit. This was the year I left school (the first time, I think) in 2009 or so.

2015

From 2013 to 2015 I was on the Sailor Moon wiki and was close with 4 users there but got fed up of the bad temper and jealousy of one user and how much a new user kept repeating himself so eventually I left on the 3rd of February 2015. Now we were making a game together and I hadn’t quit from that but only 2 of us were really doing any work so on the 9th November 2015 I quit that too and decided to just contact them on Tumblr. One of them, the one I was closest with, I got the feeling didn’t want to talk to me any more but didn’t tell me straight out. Another one I sometimes contacted on Skype text chat but we ended up contacting less and less not because of a fight or anything it just sort of happened. I got fed up of Tumblr being full of moonbats so I left Tumblr too.

Family Trouble

I had quit school due to bad health and social anxiety (though I didn’t realise at the time that I had coeliac disease or what social anxiety was) but then in 2008 or 9 someone had the idea of me typing on a laptop instead of writing because of I having asperger’s and after a few practice tries at typing in the computer room I was back in school but bad health eventually meant I had to quit in my 2nd try at 5th year (I had missed school here and there due to sickness over the years) but my father wasn’t happy as he was obsessed with how well I’d do in school and got his friend the principal over. I argued with him, him constantly saying he wanted me back in school but not giving me any good reason to come back and eventually I had enough and got angry and he said he wanted me back in school and didn’t want any tantrum (I wasn’t throwing a tantrum, I was legitimately angry at him not getting the message) and I don’t remember what happened next but a minute later he went. During the argument he said something about ruling the roost and in 2018, I think, Mom told me that Dad had said to him that I was ruling the roost. A good one out of him since as Mom told me in an earlier year he never did any housework even though Mom was always struggling to do it having coeliac disease.

My parents were their usual selves in these times. I should have picked up that there was something wrong in the marriage when Dad was not sleeping in the same room as Mom but had his own room (what used to be the garage but had been done up). One morning in 2010 or so Mom brought us 3 brothers down to the hallway and standing outside Dad’s room told us that he would be moving out. I asked for how long and she said forever. I felt on the one hand that this would be a disaster as I had often heard of family breakdowns being hard and I felt on the other that having to only live with one of them (we would live with Mom but every 2nd weekend go with Dad) would be better than living with both of them as I couldn’t stand either of them. Unfortunately it was the former that was right. Mom became even more bad tempered than usual (which didn’t help my nervous disposition and in the early 2010’s she would even get mad for 3 days straight at the same thing) and would spend ages in the toilet (nothing new) but she had said that the downstairs toilet would be hers and we would use the upstairs one but then she went using both of them and so oftentimes I’d need to use the toilet but she’d be on what was supposed to be the boys’ toilet so I couldn’t go. She would also wipe her vagina a lot for some reason and that would leave a horrible smell and on her period would leave a lot of bloodied paper on the floor which one time even went into my bed as at the time I went around in socks. I decided then that when I went in I’d sweep the bloodpaper into the corner from now on. One year she got around to fixing her ensuite and then didn’t use our toilet (apart from a few times) after that.

There was also legal pressure with Mom being paranoid of me walking to the shop when nobody else was in the house (I had taken to walking to the shop one time when there wasn’t any rubbish food so I felt I had to go myself even though having social anxiety I assumed people would insult me as they had done in primary school but actually they didn’t and so it’s something I’m still doing today though not as much) in case Dad would steal important documents (even though he didn’t live near enough to do that, in broad daylight too, I might add. We also had financial worries but she didn’t tell me this until 2017 or so (?) It’s an awful habit of people to not tell me something but then have me act as if I did know it.

One day in 2011 perhaps Mom brought me chips form a local chipper that we sometimes went to (myself and Dad went there when he started taking me to the cinema Wednesday nights too) but as I was in my room talking to her I then turned around and saw my key was all of a sudden gone. It had been there before I turned around and so I knew she had taken it, I told her to give it back but she wouldn’t and I told her (truthfully) that I’d go on hunger strike unless she gave it back. She said if I ate the food she’d give it back. I did eat the food but she didn’t give it back (also during that first trip to the hospital for ingrown toes I made some deal with the people there but they didn’t follow through on their end though I had on mine and caught one about to put a needle in me without my consent). I had had enough of her what with now I not being able to even turn around for a minute without something happening and the next day packed DVDs into what was my school sack which had become a bag for taking to Dad’s mother’s house. I told Mom I was leaving and she was saying something like couldn’t I change my mind and I said no and she said she’d miss me. I rang Dad to live with him, he didn’t give a straight answer (typical him) and knowing his passive aggressive self I got the feeling that the answer was no and so I unpacked my DVDs. We agreed that Mom wouldn’t take my stuff any more and I would continue living with her but with no key. For a year after that though  I still got worried when I heard her go upstairs near my room and would often check but nothing happened. She said to me at some point that the principal of the school I’d left was behind her taking the key.

Dad would do stuff like not take us when he should (and his mother’s house was damp and dull even for a house with no game console) and eventually I got fed up of it. One day I was in the kitchen grilling burgers and Mom went to get them which I didn’t want as she often would go out of the toilet when the phone would ring (eventually I realised to take it off the hook but just one time I thought it would be OK but it did ring and she went to get it) or someone would be at the door so I didn’t want bacteria going where my hand would be. She made some sort of hand gesture like throwing something and I had enough so rang up my father to tell him I wanted nothing more to do with him (this was 2011 or 2012) as that night we had been told of something like he was supposed to take us but didn’t.

At the primary school the youngest brother was at Mom struggled to get a special needs assistant for him (like me he has asperger’s) and apparently he was being bullied by snas or something so eventually Mom switched his school and that was a major help.

Eventually in 2013 things got stable but some year later our housekeeper that worked out well left (we badly needed one as the house was a mess and Mom was as ever in bad health, we had 2 before her back in the pre-2013 years but Mom didn’t think too highly of them even though we needed any help we could get, I don’t remember what year the one Mom was happy with started) but we were able to manage. I don’t know how we made it through those years without I literally going insane or just dying but I thank God or what/whomever got us through it that we did. Also we’ve got a lot of cleaning done over the years though the kitchen seems to be messed no matter how hard we work on it but the playroom went from disgrace to very neat due to I tidying it a lot one Summer by shifting the stuff into what was Dad’s bedroom but then we cleaned that as well. In June 2018 we got rid of the couch in the playroom as there hadn’t been multiple people on it since the 00’s and that gave even more space there. (Once while extending the house to give Dad an office for his wedding video business, which I hated as when he’d go off to it at weekends Mom would be even more cross than usual, the playroom was changed a bit with the door being too near the computer table and so that got fixed after a week or two).

In the last few years Mom has been less annoying and so we get on better. I wouldn’t say well just yet but maybe some day we’ll get along well again like we did in the 90’s.

Entertainment 2012-2018

Some year (2010 maybe) before I had cut ties with Dad one day I was in my room with the Matrix DVDs which I had got one Christmas in the late 00’s. Mom came in and seeing one of them had a baby on it was concerned (Mom has this tendency to think the worst possible outcome is the most likely one). When I came back to my room later on it was gone and then later in the day I came back again and all of my Matrix DVDs were gone. I had a look in one of Mom’s drawers and there they were and I realised that all these years DVDs and games that I thought had gone missing were actually taken by her on the quiet (though back in the 00’s when my Medal Of Honor Allied Assault games went missing she did admit to that after a few weeks and I add that I was old enough to play those games). I gave out to her about this and then she didn’t so it again. I get that people want to protect other people but I hadn’t actually been playing any games or DVDs that would be bad for one’s morals.

From 2012-2017 or so (2015-2107 were the most boring years of my life) I looked at a lot of anime, tv programs, songs, books and movies that I hadn’t seen before plus some retro games on sites. The only ones I ended up liking were Drinking in LA, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Levels by Avicii (RIP), the first season of Haganai and that’s about it while the vast majority (over 95%) of entertainment that I did like already I ended up not liking. I did see huge amounts of ones that were either OK or poor quality as well as coming across a lot with bad morals (in particular American sitcoms). As of the 18th June 2018 my ratings are as follows:

Anime Planet:

5: 3

4.5: 6

4: 20

3.5: 7

3: 348

2.5: 51

2: 22

1.5: 4

1: 4

0.5: 35

In 2013 I stopped calling myself an anime fan.

Goodreads

5: 2% (6)

4: 6% (19)

3: 71% (205)

2: 10% (29)

1: 10% (29)

In 2016 and 2017 I played a lot of free to play games on Google Play and none of these worked out in the end.

There were times when I wanted to quit youtube entirely what with its toxic community, especially the new atheists (who led me to quit icanhascheeseburger and later quickmeme) in the late 00’s and the alt right in the late 2010’s (who led me to quit memecenter and imgflip in 2018) but I never left youtube for longer than a day.

Health

After leaving school (2009 or 10) then I didn’t get colds as often, getting colds a lot had been a problem all my life (possibly from my father’s mother’s house, which we often visited on Sunday, being damp though I didn’t realise it was damp until my Mom told me some year during the 2010’s.

One Winter the youngest brother got insulin dependant diabetes (apparently Dad not visiting him in hospital was the final straw in the relationship) and so Mom would give him injections. Twice or three times she stabbed herself with the needle by accident and so went for blood tests but she didn’t catch anything but from bending down to give him the injections for a few years before switching to giving him injections on her bed it hurt her knees and we ended up not walking together which is still the case.

In the year after I left school due to poor health (2009 or 2010) I woke up in a strange state; hungry, needing the toilet and tired. I had said this to my Mom and she said maybe I have coeliac disease (a number of years later she realised that she also had it and apologised to me for being so grumpy the past number of years and that it was an explanation and not an excuse and I forgave her). I then tried not eating bread and sure enough the daily stomachpains and lack of energy went away though for a year I didn’t bother checking my rubbish food so that still gave me gluten reaction but then I did check it and stopped eating rubbish with gluten in it except for a little bit a few times and that went fine. Unfortunately I’ve been comfort eating and drinking fizzy drinks since Mom and Dad split up and so that led to me feeling the need to exercise (since I got my punchingbag for my 21st birthday in 2013) to not get diabetes and so a lot of the time I’ve been weak but also been active with finding entertainment and clicktivism (I started clicktivism in 2008 having discovered social activism having coming across Debito Arudou during my 00’s japanophile phase). In 2018 I decided to take things more easy and head to bed if I need to.

In the Summer of 2017 I realised that what I thought were colds that I got during the Summer were actually hay fever and now thankfully I can just take antihistamine to keep these away.

During the hard early 00’s I would wear my underpants for 3 weeks at a time rather than one day at a time so Mom would have less work but this turned out to be a false economy as it gave Mom work cleaning the stains. In 2017 I tried going back to wearing them for a day at a time and I felt physically better and Mom was happy to not have to clean the stains before putting them in the washing machine.

The depression that I had since 2001 (but it wasn’t officially diagnosed until a few years ago when I had said ”Screw everything” and I was indeed in an even worse way than usual, Mom brought the doctor around and then after I saw a note saying ”(My real name) has clinical depression” when I turned around again the note was gone but I had seen it the first time.

In the Summer of 2014 since I had been wearing my socks all day including in bed and it was a very hot Summer I was rubbing my feet together to sort out the discomfort from sweating in them. I ended up getting a blister in one of my feet which was very painful and Mom got a doctor around and he told me not to look down. I didn’t know what was about to happen but I did’t and he went popping the blister which was also very painful and  I wanted to stop right away. It did give some relief though. On the day when we went to the hospital first I was too nervous as it would involve anaesthesia (I had refused an operation on ingrown toenails a number of years previous since I’m very afraid of needles before accepting one the next time as it would be gas anaesthesia instead. I ended up vomiting out of the car window on the way home and my toes didn’t recover for about a week during which time I played Knights of the Old Republic II which my Dad got me that day of the operation in hospital. It seemed a good idea at the time since I’m a Star Wars fan and reading the manual in the hospital while waiting to be discharged it sounded good but it turned out to be a terrible game.) and so I decided not to have it. At one point Mom went out of the room with the nurses and I reckoned this would be to think of a plan to get me to comply (Mom can be very sneaky) though of course they denied it when I put it to them. Eventually they decided I’d have the operation but done differently and in the soft tissue clinic. I went to that also very nervous (and a second blister had developed on my other foot) but I got myself as comfortable as could be and in a position with a firm grip on the armrests to cling tightly to so I could hold still. The operation was very painful, especially during the parts where the disinfectant was poured on my open wounds, the worst physical pain I’ve ever been in, but I got through it. Since then I stopped wearing socks and wear sandals instead of shoes. Stepping on the floor barefoot felt cold for a few weeks and I took a few weeks to learn to walk properly again and not in the way I had been walking while one foot was blistered.

Unfortunately during these years my addictions to porn and masturbation which I had since I was 11 or 12 continued albeit decreased. Good news came though in the form of I deciding instead of having a bath whenever I’d have one once a month and then changed to once a week though I don’t remember what years I made these changes. Late 2010’s anyway.

Suicides and Deaths

It was in the 2010’s that an uncle on my mother’s side died a day after having a heart attack. He had struggles with gambling and eating and of course this caused my mother a lot of pain over the years but I hadn’t known of his problems until he died.

The 28th February 2016 meant the death of Frank Kelly, Fr. Jack Hackett from Father Ted, my favourite comedy.

On the 27th December 2016 Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia from Star Wars films died and being a big fan of episodes IV, V and VI I was sad.

On the 20th July 2017 Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park who were a band I liked killed himself and during the same week an aunt on my father’s side died of cancer and as you can imagine this was devastating and made worse by the fact that I didn’t know that Chester was having issues or that my aunt was going to die so soon; I thought she was going to be alive a few more weeks.

When Avicii died or killed himself on the 20th April 2018 I was in shock for about 8 hours; I only liked his song Levels but I hadn’t known that he was having problems.

Religion

In the 00’s I had read of first mortal and then the eternal sin, both of which traumatised me (I have been masturbating since around 2004 and watching porn since first year) and came with intrusive thoughts but I dealt with each, through getting used to the ideas and in the latter case forfeiting my free will to sin but I hadn’t known that it doesn’t work that way; taking away free will makes someone a robot. In the Summer of 2014 I had been reading about how other religions viewed the end times and was troubled by a verse in the Qur’an saying that non-Muslims would not be saved but another verse said we would. As for going to hell for choosing the wrong religion well we don’t have the knowledge of God/gods but He/they do so I hope that if people have through no fault of their own chosen the wrong religion that they/we be shown mercy if they/we’re good people even if objectively that isn’t enough to save someone. I decide that was as good an answer as I could give and got on with my life.

Something (some winter) got me thinking about the eternal sin again and eventually realising that it’s simply dying not feeling sorry for your sins and not actually blaspheming against the Holy Spirit in thought (which constant intrusive thoughts would make me do, I also had intrusive thoughts during the time of discovering mortal sins and my first grapple with eternal sin) or in speech is why the first time I discovered it I tried not to breathe. Shortly after this one night I was lying in bed and breathing freely and noticed this was making me feel better so I continued breathing heavily and felt very good and had clearer thoughts. I then realised that I had a lack of oxygen and had just restored it and since then my thoughts have been clearer though I still have a tendency to dwell on things and get intrusive thoughts a little.

Reading about my faith cheered me up and strengthened my faith as did reading about philosophy on Wikipedia in the late 00’s and then thinking thoughts and asking ”Is this compatible with Church teaching”? and being certain that I was right in what I was thinking and that it was indeed compatible with Church teaching I would get more and more convinced that Catholicism is logical.

During a recent year I looked up hatred, hatred of humanity being one of the deepest and longest running things in my life, since some point in primary school. Until then I thought that ”I don’t know if it’s wrong or not but in any case  I can’t help it.” Turns out that hatred of other people is a mortal sin and right away I decided I would give it up then and there which is what happened and since then not hating anyone has made me feel less bad.

Mass was always hard due to I having social anxiety and since one doesn’t have to go to mass if ill and a mental illness is as real and valid as a physical one I’ve mostly stopped going to Church (since 2010 maybe) but would like to go weekly again or even daily. I pray daily, not at any fixed time, for help for me or humanity in general or for people in my family or people who have hurt me. I also forgive people since I too would like to be forgiven of bad things that I have done. Hopefully I’ll do religious events in future. I went to confession a few times during the struggle with the idea of mortal sin period and then stopped after the confessor seemed pretty angry the 5th or so time (I went once every Saturday during that period) then during the second eternal sin trouble time I went once to a new priest’s house for confession there and got a lot out which was a relief, at the office or something in the church a few days later during which he ended with asking the Lord to grant me pardon and peace, with peace stressed and I confessed to him at his house one more time, I don’t remember when (either before or after that I went to confess to him before a mass but he had to go so I confessed to a different priest). It was true that I was in big need of peace, after all as he said that time in the church a person only needs to go to confession once a week. Alas I didn’t go to confession after that (apart from going into a confession box to get my sins forgiven at some year, 2017 maybe, it was Christmas so people’s sins were being forgiven without them having to confess) as it makes me nervous (bad excuse perhaps and if so I apologise) and of course I get more nervous than most people. If only I had made weekly confession a habit at some point.

In the Summer of 2017 I was reading the wisdom books in the Bible (I don’t often read the Bible but I should) and read Ecclesiastes. I have never read a better book filled with more wisdom in all my life. The best experience of my life I would say, most useful anyway.

Politics, Authority and Institutions

People in Ireland don’t think too highly of authority and I used to write this off as mindless populism but in 2018 having seen so much incompetence and even malice from people we’re supposed to trust I also mistrust authority (but not the Church as I’m convinced that they do value each person’s life equally and genuinely do care about the people under their care, certain scandals aside and priests have been the nicest people I’ve met) as much as I mistrust the average person.

Irish Politics

(I won’t go into foreign politics as that would make this article even longer).

When the crash hit in September 2008 the Fianna Fail-Green coalition supported by some independents (the PDs had collapsed by this time) decided on austerity; for the working and middle class but not the rich.  The country went from having too many houses (ghost estates) to having too few. Debt, emigration and unemployment were high (at one point unemployment fell just because emigration was so high). All the while Anglo Irish Bank was bailed out. Whether or not refusing to do so would have made things even worse; in a free market economy if you’re too big to fail you’re too big. After the 2011 election there was a change of government but there was still austerity and bailing out of Anglo.

I hardly need to mention the perennially poor state of the health service or the education system.

In 2015 the government, supported by all political parties that had seats in the Dail and most organisations that took a position, pushed for gay marriage and this was approved by the voters 62.07-37.93 and then for 2 years you didn’t hear the end of it. A country over 75% Catholic went against Church teaching on a non-negotiable issue; marriage is for the benefit of the children and not the parents and since same-sex couples can’t naturally conceive children they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

In 2018 it was the same but with abortion the issue this time. The yes side said that supporting the referendum meant choosing the future; ironically this is a future that less people will be around to see because of what they’ve done. What cold comofrts can be gone from it are these; less people will have gay marriages now (though it would have been far better if they would be allowed to be born in the first place) and no matter what horror happens to any of us in our personal lives, no matter what bad bill this or any future government passes it won’t be as bad as a people voting just under 2-1 to kill its unborn children.

Until 2013 or so I was a patriot. Nowadays I realise that in this country some lives are worth more than others.

I could elaborate more on some points and there were other problems but this post is very long as it is.

Lessons Learned

• ”Hatred is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”.
• Worldly things are fleeting and lacking substance. At the end of the day all we have are our talents, values, relationships with people, our beliefs and God.
• ”If you’re going through hell keep going.” – Winston Churchill
• ”You’re stronger than you think.” – Jordan Peterson
• Forgive everybody everything. Other people will hurt you a lot but not forgiving will mean what they did will hurt you even more.
• Not much can be done by oneself even as an adult. Never forget that there’s so wide a world out there beyond your front door.
• Earthly authorities may be deserving of your obedience but only supernatural authorities are worthy of your trust.

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A Defense of Classical Theology (Part 1): The New Atheism and the Cosmological Arguments

Mathoma

This is the script for this video.

On our journey toward classical theism, we’re going to have to make a stop and discuss the New Atheism, which was a resurgence of irreligious sentiment that shortly followed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I would date this wave of irreligion as beginning in approximately 2004 with Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith and I would say its major demise occurred in 2012 with the passing of Christopher Hitchens, who died in late 2011. I don’t think the New Atheism has delivered much by way of serious philosophical or theological criticism or a rational defense of atheism. The New Atheism is best understood as a cultural phenomenon in the Anglosphere provoked by 9/11 and a growing sentiment that the complexities of both domestic and international politics could be ameliorated by reducing the influence of religion in both political and personal…

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If Scientists Discover a Gay Gene How Many Gay Children Will Be Aborted?

Irish Abortion Referendum 2018 Info

Here’s something that you should give careful consideration to. If scientists tomorrow discovered a ‘gay gene’ — that is, a gene that can determine whether a child is gay or not — and they then created a test to establish whether the child in the womb carried this gay gene, would a percentage of would-be parents terminate their gay children in the womb?

Have abortion activists given this question any thought whatsoever? We know for a fact that 90% of those discovered with Downs Syndrome in the womb are terminated. Are we really so sure that the same will not occur with some percentage of gay children? And if so, are we, as a society willing to tolerate this.

Let us consider some simple facts. While it is true that coming out as gay today is easier than it was in the past, it is not controversial that many…

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The Miseducation Machine

There is no education system in Ireland. The English have established the simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate.

• The Murder Machine by Patrick Pearse

In this essay I’ll criticise the factory school model that most of us were (mis)educated by. You may thinking that if learning is great (which I wholeheartedly agree with) and if state school is a place of learning then why would anybody object to it on more substantive grounds than it being boring and taking up a lot of time which brings me to my first contention.

1. Forced Education Is A False Economy

Too often people go down the route one approach or “the kick down the front door approach” as I call it; after all it’s the most direct and theoretically easiest way. Unfortunately it fails all too often; in the case of price controls they end up causing shortages and so hurt people when they were supposed to help them. King Frederick William I of Prussia wanted to save money so only fed his family unwholesome cabbages and when this made his family sick the cost of the medical care was multiple times higher than the money he had saved with this cheap diet.

The point is that although forcing people to learn means they will the fact that they’re forced will put them off and so in the long run they’ll learn less than they would have learned if learning were voluntary only. If education becomes synonymous with doing boring, repetitive tasks for people, some of whom you can’t stand, and learning what to think but not how to think and memorising facts but not how to make practical use of them then that will put people off and they will spend their time on other things. Think of the things people like best; music, sport, films, videogames, sex and alcohol; all of these things are (usually) voluntary; the state doesn’t force someone to do them and doesn’t force their parents to pay for it and punish them if they don’t. The companies involved in these things take into account what the receiver wants whereas with school the person getting it isn’t the one paying for it so there’s no incentive for the school to improve and in any case even nowadays the west looks down on its children and makes the stupid and arrogant assumption that because an average adult knows more than the average child then every adult knows better than every child about everything all of the time. Here’s a dilemma to ponder; can the youth be trusted to learn or not? If they can then they don’t have to be forced and if they don’t then it’s a waste of time anyway since the knowledge will go in one ear and out the other once they’re out of school. Professor Jonathan Haidt in his research has found that if people want to believe something they ask “Can I believe it?” and inevitably the answer is yes where as if someone doesn’t want to believe something they ask “Must I believe it?” and inevitably the answer is no; this would imply that in the human mind can carries more weight than must.

Since this miseducation machine forces people to learn it puts them off of learning and so they spend their time on things that they do voluntarily and are more fun but less useful and rather than knowledge people prioritise instant gratification, charisma and being tough and so smooth talkers and bullies get their way and screw over people who are less charismatic and are weaker; we end up with a shallow, hedonistic society where who says something or makes a decision rather than whether something making sense or not influencing whether a decision is made or not. In a democracy, like with advertising, you sell the sizzle and not the sausage and so we keep ending up with politicians that communicate well but run a country poorly and the people blame them even though it was the people who put so much importance on charisma and not competence or sound ideas; the politicians were simply responding to incentive. Having gone through a system where learning was forced people don’t value knowledge highly and sometimes end up labelling even a politician an egghead who lacks the common touch.

2. Poor Group Dynamic

At times in school multiple students would be punished for what one student would have done if he (from the age of 8 on I only went to all boys’s schools) didn’t own up to it and yet if a boy did well on a test it didn’t bring a reward to anybody. Good behaviour of any one student didn’t bring rewards to the whole class either; in fact good behaviour was rarely if ever rewarded. At my secondary school misbehaviour could result in a logging and in 2nd year or so something called a positive logging was introduced for good behaviour but a year or so after wondering why nobody got any a teacher informed us that they were only for bad students who had done a good thing. It’s clear to me then that this idea was a waste of time; the only students who were eligible were the people least likely to get them and the fact that a positive logging would balance out a negative logging didn’t matter since being bad kids then obviously they would usually misbehave so there was no hope of the positive loggings balancing out the negative loggings in total. Not the first stupid system my secondary school had come up with unfortunately. To constantly punish misbehaviour and rarely if ever reward good behaviour was a good example of how negative and demoralising the miseducation system is.

In stringing together a bunch of people based on age and/or gender and not the content of their character (which only seems to matter much when someone misbehaves) into a system where everyone has to learn the same things at the same time in the same place then naturally difference will be demonised; even if it’s difference that can’t be helped. Mindless conformity is what the system wants based as it is on the Prussian factory school system and this combined with humanity’s tribalistic nature means if a child is different in some way there’s a good chance that child will be bullied and if one child lies about not misbehaving then a child wrongfully accused of misbehaving who protests that he wasn’t can also be accused of lying; in a place where everyone is the same it’s understandable that people would think they have the same level of honesty. Ironically schools say they don’t tolerate bullying but apparently they only mean if it’s done by students if my secondary school is anything to go by and they should know full well that in a system that encourages mindless conformity then of course the different kids are in for a rough time even if it’s over differences they can’t help like hair colour. In primary school the other boys would call me names to my face about my hair colour and so I was always worried in secondary school about being bullied but was also relieved that this, so I thought, wasn’t happening. I noticed after a certain amount of time though that I kept thinking I had packed the relevant books for the day but then they wouldn’t be there and I wondered what was up. I said this to the middle brother in my family, a graduate of the same secondary school, and he said that stealing boys’ books while they weren’t looking was common. Along with the stupidity and one track minds of the boys I went to school with as well as having coeliac disease (though I didn’t know it at the time) and having social anxiety (but I didn’t know the term at the time) you can see why I wanted to be homeschooled or sent to a special school (I have asperger’s syndrome as you may recall) but both of these were rejected by my Mom.

3. A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep And As Thick As A Plank

Under this rotten system a student is forced to study a wide range of subjects but also is expected to be good at all of them and this has various stupid and hypocritical results.

For one thing the subjects someone doesn’t like anyway won’t be the ones they’ll take a job in so they don’t need much knowledge of those and they’ll be even less willing to learn about those subjects outside of school than the other subjects they were forced to learn.

The system also doesn’t bother paying attention to the diminishing rate of marginal returns; primary school maths is useful indeed but algebra and the like that we learned in secondary school would only be of use to a mathematician if they’re of any use to anybody at all.

To force students even to learn the subjects they’re poor at means unnecessary pressure on them to learn something they won’t use and will be keen to forget anyway. The teachers at my secondary school would assume that if a boy got a bad result then he wasn’t trying; never could it be that it was a subject he just wasn’t good at since everyone has faults. Of course a bunch of people who are paid to specialise in teenager knowledge in a subject they like will think it’s easy but for someone who is themselves a teenager forced to learn it for free then of course it’s not an easy task; it’s a colossal pain in the backside. Both to the school and that blasted father of mine my weakness in maths mattered more than all of my strengths put together; another example of the schools in this wretched system focusing on the negatives of the student (and to think that an Irish teacher of mine complained a lot about the boys in the pass Irish class I was in being negative, well if it was an age of such rampant cynicism, pessimism and paranoia and with us in such a demoralising system of course we were going to be negative).

It’s not only regarding subjects that someone is bad at where the jack of all trades approach fails; it’s also with subjects that someone is good at. Knowing more than the book won’t matter since it won’t be on the test and so a student learning about a subject he/she likes outside of school is a waste of time as far as the school is concerned and not one rat’s backside do they give about your home life; not even when your parents’ marriage is quickly collapsing as I’ve seen firsthand. Essentially then if a student knows more than what’s in the book he/she knows too much but surely in a place of learning there can’t be such a thing as knowing too much about anything! It’s one good reason among many to recognise that knowledge isn’t actually what forced state school is about.

Another flaw of the model of course is distribution of time. Forced state school being a hierarchy the parents and teachers will be under pressure from the heartless Department of Education (sic) and so they’ll put pressure on the student; the poor schmuck at the very bottom of the pile who has nobody to pass blame onto; even if it is true that the teacher is incompetent it won’t matter anyway because any given teacher thinks their own subject is easy so it’s always the student’s fault and in my experience teachers don’t get removed for incompetence. Most reforms that could be made to forced state school would benefit the student but here’s one that would benefit everyone; have the student do only the subjects that he/she is good or at least OK at meaning that the student not only will be more willing to study since it’s only subjects he/she at least doesn’t hate but also can give more time to each individual subject and thereby get higher marks and so in theory nobody would have to put up with being under pressure due to a student not doing well on a subject they didn’t want to do in the first place.

Another solution would be make the tests easier so students get higher marks and so are under less pressure from parents and teachers and the teachers under less pressure too even if it’s a subject the student is bad at but I think that would mean they wouldn’t learn as much and would be a sort of printing money solution causing grade inflation and making Leaving Cert points even more meaningless and it would be unfair to people who got theirs during previous, harder years to have a lower score because their test was harder; with the vast majority of people having a Leaving Cert its absolute value is virtually 0 so as with most things it’s the relative value of one compared to another that makes the difference.

People in Ireland like to complain about our constantly scandal ridden institutions but the people in them spent more time being miseducated for as much as 13 years in the jack of all trades manner rather than training for the specific jobs they ended up doing so not much can be expected anyway since the people in our institutions went through the same bad system that the average person went through.

Why Switzerland and Singapore became economic powerhouses in spite of being tiny was because they specialised and another economic factor that works wonders is the division of labour; people specialising and spending their work hours on one particular job as opposed to being a jack of all trades and the King of none. Battles throughout history have tended to be won by outnumbering part of the enemy line, breaking it and then coming for the rest. When the atrocious model of schooling which I’m criticising was introduced war was fought by huge numbers of men packed into a small area all doing the same thing (because the weaponry was so inaccurate they had to go around in big groups so if you missed the man next to or behind you might hit something) and the economy was an industrial one focused on mass production. A standardised populace was all very well for Prussia in the late 1700’s which is when and where this cloning facility model began but for a 21st century service focused economy in a peaceful country it’s worse than useless. The world has long ago moved on; it’s time for schooling to do the same.

4. Adults Wouldn’t Endure Such A Thing

That this system has remained long past its usefulness can only mean that

1. it has byproducts that the people who actually benefit from it (the grownups) find useful; namely that it makes children into obedient clones that are familiar with boring work that starts at 9 and ends in the afternoon (and it’s clear that while most schools produce followers some are designed to produce leaders; compare the number of American presidents and British Prime Ministers that did go to elite schools to those who didn’t). Adults get obedient children, bosses get obedient workers used to putting up with boring, repetitive tasks day in, day out and not having the time to ask why (what time isn’t spent working is filled with family life and, at advertising’s constant urging, on enjoying oneself all of which leaves little time to philosophise) and the upper class get their children into the better positions in society and they can expect to stay there with the average school having thought the middle and working class children (what is perceived as) their place.

and 2 that it’s kept there by arrogant ageism. The fact that adults generally know better than children gets corrupted into all adults know more than every child about everything all of the time, that being an adult is some sort of get out of ever being wrong card when dealing with children and that paranoid, self serving or naively cynical assumptions made by adults are somehow worth more than what children know for a fact through experience  (and when an adult disagrees with another one well that other adult is wrong anyway, being an evil moron and all!) and so the fact that the children know that factory model schooling doesn’t teach people well (in terms of knowing things and making use of them in a practical way rather than teaching people to act as their social class demands rather than how to rise above it) and is too demoralising to be worth it doesn’t make any difference to the adults. In every age the adults think the young are worse than they were when they were young but in reality they’re just different since times are different. Worse yet adults are trapped in the intellectual mire of thinking that power and money rather than reason or kindness are what matters in decision making. Since the children aren’t getting paid they can’t go on strike, since they’re not the ones who pay they can’t make use of market forces to improve schools. Sending a bunch of people who without fail think the young people are degenerate hedonist yahoos to be in charge of young people is a bad combination.

Nowadays western society values freedom yet schooling is forced.

Western society values individualism yet puts its children through a factory school model where each child is little more than a clone.

In the west democracy is valued yet its children spend half the day, 5 days a week, in an oligarchy. We did have a student council in secondary school but like an appendix you knew it was there but wondered what on earth it did, if it did anything at all.

Our society says dissent is OK if laws are unjust but in its schools expects the children to put up with any stupid or unfair rule or decision* the school comes up with as well as any incompetent or bullying teacher the school inflicts on the students even though bullying and incompetence isn’t tolerated when the students do it. To make rules based on the who and not the what sets a bad example and leads to a generation of children growing up thinking it’s OK since their elders and alleged betters did it and so you get the sort of petty partisan polemical politics where really people aren’t trying to make things better for everyone; they’re just out to help their own group.

When the teachers feel things have gotten unfair they can strike but children are supposed to put up with everything without complaint and by the time somebody has the vote he/she is either already out of school or will be out within a year and so by the time someone has the vote it’s too late for them to influence how things go in primary and secondary schools. A system of control and obedience populated mainly by people who can’t vote means the system will keep going since the people who can change it won’t and most people who want to can’t. A generation of students then become adults and have other things on their minds and will think to themselves “Well I went through that and I turned out OK” (a mistaken assumption) and so the system continues and will continue unless people really examine it and realise what a waste of taxpayers’ money, students and parents’ time as well as students’ and teachers’ psychological wellbeing the monstrous miseducation machine really is.

5. The Alternatives

Since forced education is a false economy voluntary education is the way to go. You may thinking that people won’t learn unless they’re forced and maybe that’s true of people in their late teens who were forced to learn for 10 years or more but it’s not too late for the next generation, the ones who currently are toddlers who were never forced. Not only would making education voluntary mean that students will be more motivated and will behave better and learn more but there would be a valuable life lesson too; you reap what you sow. The ones who won’t learn whether in a group setting in town or by themselves at home will have only themselves to blame for the difficulties caused by a lack of knowledge. In the factory model school the student and not the teacher is always held responsible for failures anyway and so if a student will be blamed that often anyway than better it be for failing at subjects they like and did voluntarily rather than ones they hate and were forced to do. After all at university, the peak of education, people choose what subjects to do and go there voluntarily. If that’s how things work at the best educational facilities then why not others too? I see no good reason to dump an inferior system onto the under 18s while the over 18s get the best system (when it isn’t corrupting the youth with communism and postmodernism, but I repeat myself).

One of the problems I noticed at schools I went to was that a few people would cause almost all of the trouble but only one boy was ever expelled (not me; I quit at 17). To on the one hand go for quantity but on the other expect every student to behave is asking for failure, a disrupted class and being behind schedule. The solution then is to have a system where if a student was responsible for three times as many loggings or whatever than is his/her % of the students then that boy/girl will have to go to some other school. For example if there are 20 students in class 4A and one of the boys (5% of the students) got 15% of that classes’ loggings then he gets expelled.

In order to avoid being jacks of all trades and to get people the skills for the jobs they do intend to work at a good system would be one where people only study the subjects they want. Learning only the subjects a person wants would mean they will intend to do well as opposed to just doing the bare minimum because they were forced. It will also mean people who are better qualified at the job they take and that would be a huge boon to society; incompetence is dangerously common nowadays.

Whereas with the miseducation machine each year only matters in as far as getting through means you’re another step closer to the Leaving Cert; where 13 years of learning hangs on 2 weeks of testing, a far more meaningful system is one where each year matters in of itself. Instead of there being 600 points (a seemingly arbitrary number if you think about it) in 2 weeks I propose that to better sort the wheat from the chaff there be 1,000 points but spread out over the 13 years and staggered; that there be a sort of mini cert at the end of each year adding up to a total of 1,000 possible points at the end of 6th Year; the cert at the end of Senior Infants accounting for more points than the one at the end of Junior Infants, the one at the end of 1st Class accounting for more than the one at the end of Senior Infants etc.

There are competing ideas about what education should be about; preparing the next generation for jobs or good citizenship. This leads to a Buridan’s Ass situation in the factory model schools where social and political subjects are taught but not tested in the Leaving Cert so ultimately they don’t matter as far as the school is concerned and they take up time that could have been spent on the tested subjects, worsening the mile wide and inch deep problem, and since they’re forced they put people off which defeats the purpose of making them good citizens. Rather than having both in the one school I propose there be small schools of occupation in each area; a school for future firefighters, one for future business(wo)men etc. while there also be one school in an area that is the school of citizenship where being a citizen of the country is gone into detail, the constitution and election results read and understood.

I think it only stands to reason that willing students specialising in what they intend to do when they grow up in schools designed specifically for that would make a happier, more skilled populace and therefore a far better society and Lord knows we could do with that.

*A few examples; the one way system at my secondary school; instead of the teachers going to us we would go to them while walking clockwise only and one teacher said this was supposed to reduce traffic in the corridor. Hundreds of bodies rather than a dozen in the corridor at one time would reduce traffic; Irish logic at its finest. They could have just made a wider corridor but that would mean properly funding education which apparently is anathema to Irish governments. Another bad decision was giving me a special needs assistant in secondary school without my knowledge or consent (even though that was why I wanted out of primary school and my parents were allowed to homeschool me but then they knew full well that this was going on in secondary school, can nobody be trusted?) and I only figured this out after noticing the same teacher would always be near where I was at big break whether I was with a big group of boys or by myself. Apparently sneakiness is wrong if a child does it but OK if an adult does it. Another being that supposedly transition (4th) year is voluntary but at my school you had to do it even though in Senior Cycle we didn’t learn anything we didn’t learn in Junior Cycle so hardly needed another year to go over the same stuff. Some people including the aforementioned teacher that followed me around at big break said it would be a doss. I don’t call 2 classes a week less out of 42 a week a doss.

 

Pondering The Menhir

Not far from here                                                                                                                                    Is a large stone object known as a menhir                                                                                      We don’t know who put it there or why                                                                                        Was it to assist the living or to remember those who had died?

Whoever put them there is long gone and only these stones remain                                        All that is physical will end up nothing and this fact causes me pain                                        Putting too much concern into earthly matters is therefore futile insanity                              Vanity of vanities, all worldly things are vanity

Note: For better or worse it was I who came up with this.

Bertie Ahern’s Most Memorable Quotes

Source: Bertie Ahern’s Most Memorable Quotes

The Irrational Contradictions Of Postmodernism

Time and time again for a decade have I seen the postmodernists put words like right, wrong, real, good, bad and true in quotation marks even if they themselves were using these words to describe something. Not only has it been annoying me hugely for years but it’s also very stupid that they wouldn’t believe in these things anyway and it’s  especially stupid that they would refuse to do so because of postmodernism.

1. Argument Against Subjectivism Regarding Truth

Truth is either objective (true whether people believe it or not) or subjective (a matter of opinion). According to postmodernism objective truth does not exist.

First Prong: Postmodernism’s Stance On Truth Violates The Principle Of Non-contradiction And Therefore Should Be Rejected

• The principle of non-contradiction states that something cannot be both x and not x at the same time (for example the word dog can’t both have a d and not have a d in it) and if this principle is violated then nonsensical thoughts follow as you’ll see
• If objective truth does not exist then postmodernism is not objectively true
• Therefore if postmodernism is true it’s only a matter of opinion whether or not postmodernism is true or false
• Therefore the postmodernist stance on truth, which is an inherent part of postmodernism, is contradictory
• Therefore it is false
• Therefore postmodernism is false

Second Prong: According To Postmodernism Even Postmodernism Itself Isn’t Objectively True And Therefore Postmodernism Is A Failed Ideology

• The whole point of an ideology is that you ought to believe what it asserts and postmodernism is an ideology that asserts that all truth is a matter of opinion
• If postmodernism is true then the idea that all truth is a matter of opinion is also a matter of opinion
• If something is a matter of opinion then no opinion is more true than any of the others in reality (as opposed to just in your mind; for example the idea of a square circle exists in our minds but squaring the circle is impossible and therefore a square circle doesn’t exist in reality) and so there’s no point in picking one opinion over another
• Therefore if postmodernism is true then there’s no point in being of the opinion that all truth is a matter of opinion rather than objective
• Therefore by postmodernism’s own standards (such as they are) there’s no point to being a postmodernist
• Therefore according to postmodernism you don’t have to believe what postmodernism says and therefore postmodernism fails its own test
• Therefore postmodernism is a failed ideology
• A failed ideology should be rejected in favour of one that has not failed, this is obvious
• Therefore by its own standards postmodernism should be rejected

2. Argument From Objective Reality

Reality is either objective or subjective. According to postmodernism objective reality doesn’t exist.

First Prong: Objective Reality Proves Its Own Existence

• Obviously, something must be itself (the law of identity)
• Therefore objective reality is an objective reality; it exists whether you believe in it or not
• Since postmodernism asserts that objective reality doesn’t exist postmodernism is therefore false

Second Prong: If Postmodernism Is True Then Even Postmodernism Itself Doesn’t Necessarily Exist

• If objective reality doesn’t exist, which postmodernism asserts, then it’s only a matter of opinion whether anything exists in reality as opposed to just in our minds
• If postmodernism is true then it’s only a matter of opinion whether or not postmodernism even exists in reality
• To be a postmodernist then obviously you would have to believe that postmodernism exists in reality but according to postmodernism it’s only a matter of opinion whether or not postmodernism exists in reality
• That’s a contradiction
• Therefore it is false and therefore postmodernism is false

3. Argument From The Absurdity Of Moral Relativism

• If morality is relative then no action is better than any other since all have an equal absence of both moral goodness and moral badness
• Therefore if moral relativism is true there’s no point in picking one action over another
• If there’s no point in picking one action over another there’s no point in doing anything since nothing will be achieved anyway but if you do nothing you also achieve nothing; something cannot come from nothing
• Therefore if moral relativism is true then doing nothing is pointless and doing something is also pointless but either you do something or you do nothing; it’s unavoidable that you have to choose between the two and so even the action of deciding to be a moral relativist is pointless by its own standards and therefore on intellectual grounds should be rejected
• Therefore moral relativism is absurd and any ideology that asserts moral relativism is wrong about morality
• Postmodernism asserts moral relativism
• Therefore postmodernism is wrong about morality

4. Argument Against Postmodernism’s Views On Logic And Reason

According to postmodernism reason and logic aren’t universally valid; they are only constructs that are valid within the traditions in which they’re used.

First Prong: To Become A Postmodernist In The First Place You Would Have To Violate One Of Its Own Principles

• If reason and logic aren’t universally valid then postmodernist logic and reason (such as they are) are themselves only valid within postmodernism
• Therefore if you aren’t already a postmodernist then by postmodernism’s own standards there isn’t any point in becoming one
• Therefore to become a postmodernist you would have to violate one of the tenets of postmodernism
• Any ideology that necessitates that you break one of its rules to become a supporter of it in the first place is a self-defeating ideology
• Postmodernism is a self-defeating ideology (as if you hadn’t got the message multiple times already in this blog post)
• Therefore it should be rejected

Second Prong: If Postmodernism Is Applied Consistently Then It’s Doomed

• If postmodernism is applied consistently then it cannot get any new members since if the logic and reason of an ideology are only valid within that ideology then postmodernism’s logic and reason is only valid within postmodernism and invalid for people of any other ideology
• If postmodernism is applied consistently then when the current postmodernists all die off then postmodernism will be left without any supporters
• Therefore either postmodernism will die off from lack of membership or it necessitates that people not apply it consistently
• If an ideology cannot be applied consistently by its own standards then it’s a failed ideology
• Therefore postmodernism either disproves itself in which case it should be killed off or it will die off of its own accord from lack of supporters
• Therefore postmodernism either dooms itself to refutation or annihilation
• Therefore one way or the other postmodernism dooms itself and should be rejected

5. By Postmodernism’s Own Standards Being A Postmodernist Is Pointless

A. If Morality Is Relative You Might As Well Not Be A Postmodernist

• Postmodernism asserts that objective morality doesn’t exist
• If objective morality doesn’t exist then there are no such things as should and should not
• Therefore if postmodernism is true then the idea that you should be a postmodernist is false and the idea that you should not be against postmodernism is also false
• Therefore according to postmodernism you might as well not be a postmodernist
• Therefore by postmodernism’s own standards being a postmodernist is pointless
• Therefore on intellectual grounds postmodernism should be rejected

B.

• According to postmodernism objective reality and objective truth don’t exist
• If objective truth doesn’t exist then the idea that objective reality doesn’t exist is not objectively true and therefore just a matter of opinion
• If the idea that objective reality doesn’t exist is simply a matter of opinion then there’s no point in asserting that objective reality doesn’t exist since it’s no more true then the idea that objective reality does exist
• Therefore by postmodernism’s own standards there’s no point in being a postmodernist

C.

• According to postmodernism objective morality and objective truth don’t exist
• If objective truth doesn’t exist then the idea that objective morality doesn’t exist is no more true than the idea that objective morality does exist
• Therefore there’s no point in picking the idea of morality being subjective rather than objective
• Therefore by postmodernism’s own standards there’s no point in being a postmodernist

D.

• According to postmodernism objective truth does not exist so all truth is subjective
• According to postmodernism objective reality does not exist
• If objective reality does not exist then subjective truth is no more real than objective truth
• Therefore being a postmodernist is pointless

6. Postmodernism’s Ideas Refute Each Other

A.

• According to postmodernism reason and logic are only valid within the traditions in which they’re used
• According to postmodernism objective truth doesn’t exist
• Therefore the idea that reason and logic are only valid within the traditions in which they’re used is no more true than the idea that reason and logic are universally valid
• If they are only valid within the traditions in which they’re used then postmodernist reason and logic is only true within postmodernism and postmodernism is doomed and therefore should be rejected (see the Second Prong of Argument 4)
• If logic and reason are universally valid then postmodernism is false since it falls afoul of the principle of non-contradiction (see the First Prong of Argument 1) and the law of identity (see the First Prong of Argument 2)
• Therefore one way or the other postmodernism is a doomed ideology that should be rejected

B.

• According to postmodernism objective reality does not exist and therefore reality is subjective
• According to postmodernism objective morality does not exist
• If objective morality does not exist then there are no such things as should and should not
• Therefore the idea that you should believe that reality is subjective is false and the idea that you should not believe in objective reality is also false
• Therefore postmodernism is false

C.

• According to postmodernism logic and reason are only valid within the traditions in which they’re used
• According to postmodernism objective reality doesn’t exist
• If objective reality doesn’t exist then it’s only a matter of opinion whether logic, traditions and reason even exist
• Therefore if postmodernism is true then the postmodernist statement “Logic and reason are only valid within the traditions in which they’re used” has no inherent meaning
• Therefore there’s no point in taking it seriously
• Therefore there’s no point in taking postmodernism’s view of logic and reason seriously

D.

• According to postmodernism objective truth does not exist and truth is therefore subjective
• According to postmodernism objective morality does not exist and therefore there is no such thing as should and should not
• Therefore the idea that you should think that truth is subjective is false and the idea that you should not think that truth is objective is also false
• Therefore postmodernism is false

E.

• According to postmodernism objective reality does not exist and reality is therefore subjective
• According to postmodernism objective morality does not exist and therefore there is no such thing as should and should not
• Therefore the idea that you should think that reality is subjective is false and the idea that you should not think that reality is objective is also false
• Therefore postmodernism is false

F.

• According to postmodernism logic and reason are only valid within the traditions that use them
• According to postmodernism objective morality does not exist and therefore there is no such thing as should and should not
• Therefore the idea that you should think that logic and reason are only valid within the traditions that use them is false and the idea that you should not think that logic and reason are universally valid is false
• Therefore postmodernism is false

Postmodernism then is a self-refuting ideology that cannot be applied consistently and makes coherent thought about 4 of the most important things in life; truth, reality, morality and the universal validity of logic and reason, impossible. It is an irrational and impractical way of thinking and any good that may come from it only happens by chance whereas any negative results that come from it are part of the inherent faults in its design.