Gene, welcome to Gnostic Media Research and Publishing's podcast. How are you doing tonight? Doing well, Jan. It's good to be here. And I really appreciate you coming on the show for this most important topic. And it's something that I've had quite an interest in for some time, but I really didn't know how to approach it. Oh, basically to how to get at it, in other words. And you had sent me a couple of emails that you had written, and one of them actually broke everything down in a way that was exactly what I was looking for, which is why I immediately contacted you when I saw your email. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say that most people don't get it in that very condensed form. And the reason I contacted you, in fact, is because on this show, you've been covering essentially the topics that are most important to us right now. I mean, you go all the way from entheogens to theology, astro-theology. Lately, you've been concerned with the economy or money, in fact. And now you're looking into education. I think that pretty much covers the waterfront of what our concerns are right now. Well, I guess I would agree with you on that. I thought you might. Well, do you want to start out by talking a little bit about your personal background and education? Well, I was raised mostly in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the 1950s and 60s. The geography and the topology of this place will come into play as our discussion progresses. It has to do with one of the areas that I just mentioned that's one of your areas of study, and that would be astro-theology. I attended New Mexico State University there in the same town for five years. I was originally enrolled in a pre-dental science program. But after two years, I switched to a humanities curriculum, which I studied for an additional three years. I never took a bachelor's because of that switch in majors. But my real, my genuine education, the education of not only how to develop a way to make a material living, but more important of how to live, that is, how to live in a state of abundance, both materially and spiritually, was given to me over a period of about seven years from the time I was 13 to age 20. This education was given to me by a professional man. He was a family dentist who had a strong background in philosophy as well. As my mentor, he was able to guide me into some of those philosophical ways of thought. After school hours, I was actually in Dr. Ingman's office in the capacity of a preceptor. Now, a preceptorship was a program by which potential health care professionals, that's aspiring physicians, nurses, and dentists, were trained in a clinical or office setting by practicing professionals. On a one-to-one basis in methods and techniques. This was a system of training, an apprenticeship really, before medical and dental schools were formed. So by teaching me the laboratory procedures of dentistry over the years, that's the actual construction of dentures, crowns, bridges, and cosmetic veneers, the doctor provided the material means for me to make a living. I subsequently made a career in dental laboratory technology rather than becoming a practicing clinical dentist. But it was in his tutoring in the more general subjects, the more universal subjects encountered in life, that over the decades I've learned the true treasure Dr. Ingman handed to me as my mentor. He did this by thoroughly and, I must add, patiently teaching the first steps in thinking correctly. That is, to methodically thinking correctly and creatively through what makes up the subjects of the trivium, which is one of the major topics of today's talk. Virtually all of us have these abilities of thought, but I was lucky enough to have Dr. Ingman present these methods explicitly to me at an impressionable age. And they've served me well throughout my life. The doctor also helped me to categorize the various basic arts men have developed over time, those being the liberal arts, the servile arts, and the fine arts, which led me earlier to distinguish between the art of making a living and the art of living. Does that have anything to do with the triangular diagram you sent for the purpose of posting to the introduction of this podcast episode? To a degree, yes. That's a Pythagorean right-angled triangle. The numbers 3, 4, and 5 embedded in each of the three lines indicate the units of measure of the right-angled sides and the hypotenuse. Those units indicate the smallest unit measure for putting a Pythagorean triangle together. In ancient times, when standard-type tools were unavailable, architects and builders took a length of rope, tied 12 knots spaced equally apart, then looked at closed with the intervals counting out 3, 4, and 5 to get an exact 90-degree corner. Or they could use the entire triangle as one half of a rectangle to lay out a window or door opening with an aesthetically pleasing proportion, a layout which roughly approximated what's called the golden proportion. A number of other practical applications for methods of navigation to techniques of measuring and mapping the heavens, as well as other applications in the building trades, emanate from this particular triangle. As to building and architecture, many window openings and other design features like the proportions of our credit cards and cigarette packages to the general sectioning of mountain bikes, of all things, are set out to this supremely balanced proportion, even today. The point is the ancients had a propensity for using one entity or a single symbol for multiple uses. That's where the symbolism that puzzles many of us today was originated. The ancients essentially practiced thrift wherever they could. So in keeping with the spirit of thrift, the triangle represented what it actually was, as well as many diverse applications for which it could be used, and as an abstract symbol by which men could come to know reality, the reality they inhabited. The five-unit long hypotenuse represents the instruments of knowledge with which we come to know our surroundings. Those instruments are called our five senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. We could come to comprehend what is outside of us, what surrounds our bodies, in other words. We could observe the world and the universe. The five senses are the only means of contact with those outside realms. The three-unit side symbolizes how we can take those observations into our being and come to know, and then to understand, and finally to share and communicate to other men what we had come to know and understand. The three-unit side represents the trivium and the three subjects of which it's made. Now, the four-unit side symbolizes the quadrivium, which is the group of four subjects which complete the seven liberal arts and sciences. The symbol of the five, three, four, Pythagorean glyph represents man's way of knowing. That's knowing with a capital K. First, you make an observation with the five senses. Secondly, you use your mind in a three-step fashion to, number one, decide what you know for making that observation. Number two, how thoroughly or to what degree you understand that piece of knowledge. And number three, how can you explain what you know to yourself more succinctly and to others? And thirdly, how can you store a number of these integrated observations, which have been made over time, into a coherent, methodical way so as to build upon this knowledge? In other words, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time you make an observation and build the context for it. The Pythagoreans are said to have devised a set of four topics to cover all general observations about reality. So as to have the ability for humanity to build upon them with ever higher levels of knowledge and understanding. Those four subjects make up the quadrivium. That's what the number four represents on the triangle glyph. So the total of human cognition consists of making observations, consolidating those observations with the trivium, and compiling a database of a number of those consolidations into the four general categories of the quadrivium. We'll make some sense of this as we go along, but it's really the trivium we have to concentrate on initially. You want to discuss any of those, give an example? Well, for example, ocean navigation. This is where we set up the helm at the stern of the boat, and the mast came up right in the middle. Well, usually that mast in ancient times was set at that golden proportion, and there was a marking on the top at the length of the mast that marked off the mast was three units high. The distance from the mast to the helm was four units high, and that marking on the mast back to the helm again was the five units. So what he could do from that was triangulate off of stars. He had known angles off of the ocean. So at whatever particular time of night, of course, they didn't have nighttime ways of keeping time like they could during the day when the sun was passing overhead. But they had data. They had indications. At first they were just using their digits, their five fingers, and I'm sorry, unless he was an amputee, the ten fingers and the ten toes on his feet to decipher these various angles. But at any particular time of year, he knew where a particular star was. They may have had something like an abacus or something as well, probably. Well, if they were Chinese, I'm sure they did. Yeah, those people were really advanced in this. Well, even like in Peru and places like that, they had little strings. And in fact, the natives that speak Quechua, they still use these things, and they've got little beads on them that they use for counting and things. Yeah, yeah. But that was that was one method of using for navigation for for oceanic navigation and another for for celestial marking again was using the Pythagorean right angle triangle. And they would use those angles to measure celestial bodies, planets and stars rising over the eastern horizon. And they would have artificial artificial horizons that were marked at various angles from the observer to set up that three, four, five triangle. And they kept records over the years because when that particular star rose at that particular point, they wrote it down. And then they would subsequently check themselves as the years went by with that with that same calculation. And that angle is really where we get our term angel from. Those are the angels, the angles speaking to us. So you can see how this ties in from one subject to the other. Interesting. You know, and that same root word, Aang, A-N-G is also Aung or as an angler like herd. And it's also A-G as in vessel. So there is, you know, as you mentioned earlier, each thing can have several meanings. And well, that was that was by that was by design. Well, why don't you define exactly what is the trivium and what is its importance? Well, in a very disintegrated form, the three subjects which make up the trivium are part of what's called a classical education today, which very few of us get in this country. So it'd be like what people get at the Ivy League schools. Yeah. And the the prep schools are about eight private prep schools where people get the the the trivium. And those are like Andover and those types of things. It's for the old guards and their kids. And then, of course, they get into the upper echelon in the Ivy League schools. But up until 100 years ago, the trivium comprised the the the basis and part of the premier study in a general education. Of course, the premier study was all seven of them. But even before that, two or three hundred years ago, possibly going back a little bit further in into the into the medieval times when we were made to understand that theology was the premier study, it was really the seven liberal arts and sciences. So what's happened over this period of time is that before the word liberal was demonized and whatever it means today, which is pretty ambiguous or dependent on which way the political winds happen to be blowing that year. Right. And I've I've you've written on that. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know that traditionally the word liberal meant to free to free the individual mind from ignorance through coming to know and understand reality. That's that's essentially what its meaning has been through millennia. But getting back to the word trivium itself, it's Latin for the intersection of three words, three roads. So it's a metaphor for the three subjects of the Caribbean, which are specifically general grammar, formal or Aristotelian logic and classical rhetoric. Now, we've all heard of these subjects, but other than grammar, most of us really are unfamiliar with what these terms mean in the deep sense unless you went to one of the prep schools that we just spoke about. But many sacred texts refer to these ideas simply as knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Now, even that makes a lot more sense than general grammar, formal Aristotelian logic and classical rhetoric. But that's at its core what it means. Right. So, grammar, logic and rhetoric are really just made up of sets of rules. They are well traveled sets of rules which have been gathered and refined over thousands of years. So, back to the point, general grammar is the systematic method. Now, pay attention to that, the systematic method of gathering raw data of a similar nature into a body of knowledge. When the internet is complete, we call it a subject or a study. And now, formal logic is the method of bringing full and intimate understanding to that body of knowledge by systematically, there's that word again, by systematically eliminating all stated contradictions within it. So, at this point, we have coherent, meaningful knowledge of a set of data due to the applications of the rules of grammar. And we have an understanding brought about by making that knowledge consistent by applying the rules of logic. To communicate this comprehensive knowledge and understanding to ourselves and to others or to utilize the insights in the real world in the form of instructions or protocols, we apply another set of rules, the rules of rhetoric, which display wisdom. Now, the word wisdom, like liberal, has fallen on slightly hard times also. But let's give it a definition. Wisdom is simply the communication to others of the use of knowledge and understanding in the real world. Now, I'm going to start referring to the trivium as the trivium method of thought. The trivium method is really the reflection of the elementary pattern in which the human brain operates while consciously thinking. That operation is mirrored in the way we design our artificial computers, for example. The data input devices are the keyboard, the mouse and the scanner. This comprises the grammar or knowledge portion of the computer. The central and peripheral processors provide the computer logic to bring meaning and understanding to that data. And the output devices, the screen and printer, communicate the knowledge and understanding in terms we can simulate. Likewise, all formal subjects which humanity has developed mirror this threefold structure. Now, let me read a passage from a famous essay written in 1947 by Dorothy Sayre, who is an English writer of mystery novels. And she was a contemporary of Agatha Christie. OK. The title of this essay is called The Lost Tools of Learning. And it'll give you a feel for these common structures and also lead us into the advantages and importance of pursuing the study of the trivium method. She writes, and you can tell that this is an English person speaking and writing. I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning, that is the trivium, are the same in any and every subject. And the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. To learn six subjects without remembering or understanding how they were learned does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh. To have learned and remembered the art of learning, make the approach to every subject an open door. So one very important advantage. That's that's that's quite a quote there, to say the least. Isn't it, though? And that gives us, as I say, our first important advantage. And that is that we can learn on our own, virtually any formal subject with almost no guidance from a teacher or facilitator, because as just mentioned, the trivium reflects the structure of all fields of study. It reflects the structure of the way that we think. So we have a resonance going on right there. We also tend to become dedicated lifelong students because learning becomes second nature to us. It's very much like learning to read. You know, at first we we have difficulty. We have to learn our our alphabet and then we have difficulty putting it together. We really don't know where we're going with that alphabet. And then we see it put together in the form of words. And at first it's very hard for us to get the code put together. But then one day, almost without realizing it, we understand what those words are saying on a page. And it's from developing that skill of reading from the memorization of the ABCs to putting it together. If we're lucky, we have the key to language, which is phonics. And if we're taught phonics, we're all that much better off. But as I say, one day we just it just simply becomes second nature. It's just like breathing. Well, the Trivium at a certain point, and it's a point at which you don't even have to become expert. All you need to do is become conversant with the with the three sets of rules in the Trivium. And creative thought just blossoms within you. It becomes almost automatic. And I'll go into the other part of that equation, which is I think I mentioned creative thought. What I meant to say was was critical thought. But the other part of that equation is creative. And from these attributes, from this ability to converse with the Trivium, we're taken to higher levels of good judgment, in fact, in both intellectual judgment, which finds meaning in an argument or something that you're reading, and value judgment, which defines a hierarchy of value to discern the proper worth of goods and ideas, in other words. Additionally, it builds, of all things, self-esteem. Once we begin to appreciate our own abilities in this competency to think and act effectively for ourselves. Very interesting, to say the least. And, you know, I was going to add when you were talking about reading, even even once you learned the letters and learn how to read the words, that's still not where learning to read should end. Exactly. What I took several years ago, and I mentioned him on a show, I think two shows ago, was Steve Snyder. And I took his speed reading class. And basically what he shows how to do is shut off your internal dialogue when you're reading and get yourself in an alpha state of consciousness. And instead of sounding off each word when you read and when you sound it off, your eyes stop at each word as you as you sound it off. And so your eyes have to stop nine times on average per line. But by turning off the internal dialogue and then what he teaches you is how to do left, center, right, left, center, right. So then what you're doing is you're only looking three times at each line. So then your speed automatically goes up threefold. From there you go left, right, left, right, and then you go one line at a time. And so this is how these guys get to this level of speed reading where they are capturing and downloading photograph memory like all of this information. And Steve Snyder is the number two speed reader in the world. He can capture a half a page at each glance. So he reads both sides of a book in four glances and then turns the page. Four glances turns the page. So he reads a whole book in 20 or 30 minutes. And then you can pick a quote. You can tell him, quote me the third paragraph on page 187 and he'll start quoting it verbatim from the top. Well, there we go with the skill level. Now, you're probably more advanced than I am having taken the course. But for me, for example, I'm conversant with the skill of reading. And as you were saying, you can continue to build on your skill level in reading. And the trivium is the same way. And the quadrivium as we get there will be the same way. It can be utilized just like reading can as soon as you become conversant. And then, of course, you can read more advanced material as you become more proficient. Right. And you learn more and everything snowballs. And you know, until I took this class, I hated reading. It was such a chore. I always would postpone it. And it's like, oh, man, you know, to read a book, it would usually take me three to five days. And now I can read a 300 page book in an afternoon if I push myself. Well, there you are. I'm just going to go on a little bit more to explain in more detail what grammar logic and rhetoric is. So, well, you know, we're often reminded to do all of these great sounding things, to learn on your own, to think critically, to develop our creativity, or to work on our self-confidence. But, you know, how do you go about it? Where do you start? And you make it sound as though the Trivium Method is sort of like the secret or something. You know, it's the course of Tony Robbins, course of self-improvement or something like that. You know, but how do these things click together for the attainment of all of these values? Well, I'm glad you mentioned Tony Robbins because we're talking about self-improvement courses here. And in a way, maybe the Trivium is history's first self-improvement course. If you take apart some of Tony Robbins' explanations as to what he's going to teach you, he's essentially putting the Trivium Method into a four-part map of living. We have four interests personally in life, and they are personal health, personal livelihood, personal relationships, and the fourth one just escapes me right now. I mentioned health, relationships. Hmm. Well, there we go. I haven't taken Tony Robbins' course. Well, you have to take the Mega Memory course, I think, was for that one. Probably so. But at any rate, when he goes through that, you can even get it off of his television commercials, that he's telling you to gather a store of knowledge, then as often we do, and you just mentioned it, we'll read something, but we really don't understand it. So we've got to go back through and take out all the contradictions, and that's logic. And then finally, we become proficient speakers and communicators, and that's what lays in his television commercials. But really what we're trying to do, believe it or not, is come to a goal, a very simple goal, and that's to distinguish reality from unreality. It's a simple statement, but it's not easy to grasp. So early on my mentor, Dr. Engman, gave me this poem to help me in comprehending this idea. It goes, So even to this day, I put my observations to the test with that poem. If I see that something's given to me in a newspaper, for example, I know that it needs to be interpreted. I don't take it at face value. However, if I see a sunrise, there is no interpretation needed. That's just a feature of reality. So this is where these ideas that come from the Trivium to critically think come into play. You're not critical of what God creates. I mean, that's just what is. But you do have to become critical. You have to add discernment to anything that comes from man. So anything that's artificial, and art, for example, art comes from being made by the arm of man. That's what art means. So nature is not artful. Man is artful because he's the one with the arm. So artificial, artistic, all those come from the arm of man. So it's any time that you see that, something coming from the arm of man, that you have to be critical, that you have to apply critical thinking. Well, let me interject and ask you a question there. The first thing that pops into my mind is the question between art, the art, which would be a typical book like The Da Vinci Code, versus, say, another book called The Bible that people classify as religion that God brought forth. Well, those are still works of man. Well, somebody would say that, well, that's a work of God. What are you saying, Gene? How can you say that that's a work of man? It's the work of God. I know what my priest told me. Well, see, you've either never obtained or you've just thrown out critical thinking. OK, so that's part of the trivia. That's part of the trivia. You've got it. As I say, when you become conversant with the trivia, you can go back and look at the Bible. I was raised a Catholic, so I didn't have to read the Bible. I'm sorry. Yeah. But when I started trading the markets, many years later, believe it or not, I started to get all my information about how the markets work from the Bible. And all the concepts that were in there are artificial concepts. And what we did is we started out. Hey, well, I thought that those were literal history. What do you mean those are? Well, there you go. You're scaring me, Gene. Yeah, right. I scare a lot of people. You know, I've heard you saying that you can't do anything. You know, I've heard you saying that you can't talk to your family and friends about your insights from entheogens, that they just don't want to listen. Well, mostly family. You know, most friends, especially as I get on in life, the friends that you keep over your lifetime seem to be the ones that you've even had those experiences together with or that have at least had them if you haven't had them at the same place at the same time. Well, let's go to a little story about Plato's cave, which maybe you've heard before. Have you? It's not ringing a bell. OK. Well, this is in one of his dialogues, his most famous. It's called The Republic. But he speaks of a speaks. I actually I was just going to say I actually read that recently, but I don't even recall the cave thing. Well, the cave analogy is that there are a group of people who were who were born and live deep inside the bowels of the cave that they never see sunlight. All they see, they're chained to their positions on the floor of the cave. And all they see are shadows against one of the cave walls. OK. Yeah, they don't even know what emanates those shadows. All they know is that they have a similar structure to what they see in three dimensions sitting next to other other men. But it's all a mystery to them. This is reality for them. They're sitting on the floor of the cave, watching these shadows go by. One day, one of them gets loose and he starts to follow the trail that leads someplace. He doesn't know where he turns the corner. He turns the corner and there he sees a fire burning. Now, he's never seen fire before. But as he turns around and looks in another direction, there's another wall of the cave and he sees that the fire projects shadows on the wall. So now he knows that there's something in nature. There's there's something that that causes these things. So he continues out the cave. And finally, he reaches the surface. And of course, he's never seen the sun. He's never seen the outside. He's he's never seen a vista or a horizon or a tree, an animal. And these are wonders to his eyes. So he takes in as much as he can and then he goes back to help his fellow prisoners. He wants to tell them about the wonders of nature, of what he sees other than what he's been seeing, the small amount of what he's been seeing up to this time. So he goes back down there and he tries to explain to these people what's going on. And they kill him. They're so comfortable in their reality that they don't want to hear any of these things that are true. All they want to hear about are the shadows. So this is what happens when you're not on the same page. The first step to getting on the same page is to become conscious of the way your mind works, that you put together raw data through your five senses into a body of consistent knowledge through grammar. Then you come to a full understanding of that by eliminating contradictions within it. Now we can go out and communicate to one another because we've we've used this filter of deciding what is artificial and what is manmade. One of the things that saved me more time, energy and effort is simply to have Dr. Ingman tell me that in nature there are no contradictions. The only contradictions that we see are in things manmade. So whenever you take a Bible and you start to have an argument about it, you're arguing all abstractions, all mental abstractions. You're not on the same page. You can't get to the point where you start off with nature, where there are no contradictions. Nature is just what is. Now we'll run into our observations and we'll misinterpret those observations at times. And they'll seem like contradictions, but that's where the word... Oh, I'm reaching for it now. It's paradox. Paradox. So, well, you know, OK, so these guys are they're arguing over the Bible. And, you know, when you look at in the real world, you see what is is. And they're arguing over contentions in the Bible because there are these contentions or these contradictions that don't allow an obvious settlement or agreement as to what is specifically said. It's like when when Bill Clinton was sitting up there at the trial with over Monica Lewinsky and the whole blowjob thing, you know, is the word it is or is it isn't? And, you know, doing this whole sort of dance over these little finite points like that. And, you know, instead of being able to come to an agreement as to the natural meaning of it, as you're saying of what's outside, is that correct? Yeah, to a degree. What we have to do is all get on the same page. And that's really what the Trivium does by reflecting the way our mind works, which is to gather data into a body of knowledge and then to come to a complete understanding of it by eliminating all contradictions. Now, that word contradiction is very important, and I'll get to it in just a moment. But of course, the third thing is once we have our knowledge and understanding of that knowledge together, we want to we want to clarify it within our own minds and pass it on to other people. And when we've done a good job of that, we passed on wisdom. So that's where wisdom comes into play with with rhetoric. But getting to that word contradiction, this will save most people a lot of time and effort to understand that what is is, as you put it, what God creates has no contradictions. There are no contradictions in nature. The only place you'll run into a contradiction is something that's been made by man, something that's artificial. Now, in nature, there are times when we look out there and there are apparent contradictions. That simply means that we don't have enough knowledge of what nature is. So what the word that can be used for that is paradox. Now, paradox is a seeming contradiction. So when we look at nature, something that hasn't been touched by the arm of man, we're looking at a paradox. And that's one of the reasons we want to build knowledge so that we can come to know nature. Now, we can also look at a paradox in man. There are some times when it looks like a contradiction that's coming from the mouth of a man or from the pages of a book like the Bible, for example. And there may be an apparent contradiction in there. But in fact, it's a paradox. And one of the basic paradoxes of so-called sacred texts like the Bible is that it could be read metaphorically rather than literally. So it's both a paradox and a contradiction. A contradiction is man-made. Now, if we don't understand where the other person is getting his interpretation of that work from, then it's a paradox. Once we understand what their view is, it's no longer a contradiction to us. We understand that that person's reading it literally. Right. It's on par. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So it would be basically the opposite of a paradox is par. They're together. They're meeting. They're in line. Right? Well, that's when you come to an understanding. Or not. And we'll be covering that in the section on logic in just a little bit. Have I made my point about there being no contradictions in reality? Because that's, as I say, that saved me a lot of time and heartache. Yes. You know, obviously some people would find contradictions. You know, I know some people that would say, well, you know, that's not the sun. You can argue that that's light. Or they would try and break it down into some, you know, infinite number of arguments from there. Uh-huh. But when you keep it simple, when you apply Occam's razor, you can see through these things a lot. Now, one of the things we have to do, as I say, is we have to get to a place where we're on the same page. And the subjects of the Trivium, the methods of the Trivium, have been time tested, you know, for thousands of years. And it's been distilled and refined. And it was refined, as I say, thousands of years ago. The place that we're taught these things is the time of ancient Greece. Those are the people that are given credit for having come up with these formulations. But it preceded them by millennia. So they decided, they understood how the mind worked. And then they expressed it. And that's essentially what's come out of it. How we take in observations, how we put together knowledge, how we put together an understanding of that knowledge, and then pass it on to ourselves and others. But this is the distillation. This is the simplest way for all of us to get on the same page. Now, we'll have disagreements. But once we realize that there are no contradictions in reality, in nature, but there are contradictions with man-made, manufactured things like books and the words that are in them, then we can proceed on a reasonable level. Because really this is part of reasoning. It's part of man's rationality. And when we get to one of the sections in logic, and in fact the essence of logic is to define man-made word concepts. So definition is the essence of logic, how to identify things in nature and things that are man-made. So definition acts as that bridge between one and the other. I mean, you start with language, but you have to come to the same definition of words and of phrases and of paragraphs and finally of whole texts. And as I mentioned in the allegory of the cave there when the man came back to help his fellows and was killed, they were acting on emotion, not on rationality. Whenever you take a rational argument and try to speak to an emotional person, the emotional aspect is going to overtake the rationality every time. So that's why you have to come to this judgment that the Trivium promotes, so that you can judge when you're discussing something with someone on the same page or having the judgment to know if you're going to make your views become important and considered by that person. If they're not going to consider a situation, you're both wasting your breaths. What Aristotle, who essentially put the Trivium together, at least he did in his time, what he said constituted an educated man was that an educated man could consider literally anything, any topic thoroughly without necessarily embracing it. So when you get to that type of person, when you become fortunate enough to get around that type of person, you can have a rational discussion. Without embracing it or without dismissing it either way. Well, that's it, yeah. Usually by the time you get to the point where you don't embrace it, you've already decided that you're not going to dismiss it or that you are going to dismiss it. You either embrace or dismiss. But the point is, the important part of that is that you thoroughly investigate it, and you thoroughly investigate it rationally, which means methodically, systematically. Here we go back to the Trivium. You apply the rules that are contained within the Trivium to act as a filter. But until you're finished with your filtering process, you're either going to embrace it or essentially reject it. Now, if you do reject it, if this has been passed on by another person, especially from an emotional standpoint, if the other person is emotionally involved, and this again goes to one of the points in the study of logic. If this person is emotionally involved, that's the first part of your filter right there. Are you going to get into an emotional discussion with this person? Or are you going to leave him to Jesus, as they say? Which often is the wisest thing. You're coming in from out of the sunlight. You don't really know what's out there. I mean, it's all new to you. All you know is that you see a vista that you've never seen. So let's go back and get these people, take them out there, and we'll work on it together. The possibilities out there are far greater than what they are here. I can't do it all alone, so come with me. And you're killed for coming up with that proposition by these emotional people who are afraid of opening their eyes and seeing. Now, my point is that if we're given the trivia, these things have been hidden from us here in America, probably Europe for the last hundred years. They've been taken away. The founding fathers, for example, the United States had this. And of course, they were the elite members of the community at that time. And the elites today in our country, those that attend the eight prep schools, are given the trivia. But we're not. And it's available to us. And it can be studied if it's studied in the proper sequence. Now, when you speak to people about grammar, logic and rhetoric, it's just way to abstract. In fact, most of the time when people speak of the Trivium, and it's not in a lot of places. It's mostly in academic surroundings that the Trivium even comes up or the seven liberal arts. I mean, that's why liberal was demonized. Because if you if you actually knew what the definition of liberal was, that's the first stop you're going to make. I want to be able to use my own mind freely. Well, and that was, in fact, that was the big contradiction that I kept coming across. In fact, I began working on that liberal article back when I worked at the Los Angeles Times back in the mid to late 90s. And I was just always coming across people that would say, oh, that liberal rag. And they dismiss it. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And it was just funny because they would say they would confuse liberal with communist and fascist and everything else. And they couldn't get the ideas never meshed up. So that was it just it was just so maddening to me to hear that on an almost daily basis for five years. So that was when I finally started working on that article. Yeah. Well, it's been intentional. It's been taken away from us one piece at a time. This is what was taught in the one room schoolhouse. This is why one teacher could go into a one room schoolhouse. And the strength of the one teacher, the one room schoolhouse was that you mix the entire age group of children from from primary on through secondary school, from the age of six to the age of 17. And it was really an upperclassman. You see, that's another word that really doesn't have a lot of meaning to us anymore. But that was really the backbone of the one room schoolhouse. She had the youngest students. She would drill them. She would drill them in their alphabet. In their numbers. In fact, she even taught them before they could do the first calculation with numbers. She would teach them what numbers meant, that one meant unity, that two meant the first division, that three was the first number. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. That four was the first place you could you could encompass numerically something. And and the the encompassment that that's occurred in the last, as I say, 100, 150 years has been to put our mind into a four sided box. Now, when you're taught that the number four is the first place you can put somebody, that they only have one place to to think on this one side, which has two aspects to it. And then the opposite, which has two aspects to it. You can keep them running around in that box forever. And I know you're familiar with it. It's called a Hegelian dialectic. Right. That's that's what four is. It's not necessarily the quadrivium. It's the it's the way to improve a mind. Don't they usually base the Hegelian dialectic as well on the problem reaction solution thesis, antithesis and what was the other one I forget? Synthesis. Synthesis. Sure. But it's within that. Let me let me explain a little story about Hitler. Now, before he came to power, the Nazi Party had already been established and he became a member of the Nazi Party. And they decided that they were going to use him as their figurehead to take over the reins of power in Germany. So he was in on this plan, which was to burn the German parliament building down the Reichstag. Right. So so he was already out there being an orator and the Reichstag was burnt down. Well, of course, it was the Nazi Party that burned it down. So then he waited for the emotional reaction to occur. And then he went in there and feigned disgust along with all the other people as to how could this possibly happen? Who was the perpetrator? And then he came out as the hero by saying, if you just put me in power, I'll stop all this nonsense. All you have to do, of course, he didn't say this, but he said all you have to do is give us some of your personal liberties and traded in for this guarantee of security and you'll be fine. So there was the she that sounds a lot like the Patriot. Yeah, it sounds sounds very familiar to them. Now, there was the action, the burning of the building, the reaction, the emotional reaction of the crowd and the synthesis. But you see, he was on both sides. So you can't leave the the the being in control of both sides out of the equation, the Higalian dialectic. Because that's what's occurring. You have to be on both sides. There used to be an old an old saying when we still had rural communities and small towns here in America. They say if if one lawyer moved into town into a small town and he's the only lawyer, he'd starve. But if a second lawyer moved in, they both get rich. Why? Because they're using the Higalian dialectic. It's even used today in a very overt way, which most of us can't see, and in the euphemistically named family law. Well, it's in it's in the area of family law that we have divorce. So what happens when daddy goes to one lawyer and mama goes to the other? Well, the lawyer that's as mommy as clients telling mama just how much she's deserving of everything. And daddy's lawyer is telling him, you know, what a what a scumbag mama is. And he deserves the divorce and everything that goes with it. And of course, this is pre set up there on both sides. Now, the ones that are meeting in the middle are the attorneys. They they just drive a wedge of wedge that was already in there. They drive it in further to the point where it can't come back together. That's the Higalian dialectic. That's law. That's family law. So there you have it. That's that's a practical application on a mini scale of how the dialectic works. There are action. Reaction. Action is divorce proceedings. Reaction is having your people in there, getting even even more upset with one another than they had been. And the synthesis, of course, is the divorce. But, you know, nobody wins in that situation except the lawyers. Right. Yeah, of course. So it's important to keep in mind that we're working within a box when the Higalian dialectic is brought up. You always have two sides, you know, two sides of a coin, two parties, Republican and Democrat, liberals, conservatives. But they're just two sides of the same coin working the Higalian dialectic. I mean, you could you could I don't even want to get into it because of the emotional charge that it has. But but our Reichstag, of course, was the three buildings in at 9 11. And now we're seeing all the fallout, as you mentioned, the the Patriot Act, that 600 page document that just happened to be sitting on the shelf. Ready to go. Oh, hey, you know, let's just dust that thing off. It strips all of our rights away so that we can go invade Iraq. Wait. Oh, Iraq didn't have anything to do with that. I forgot Afghanistan. Wait. Neither did the country of Afghanistan either. It's like going to war with the United States because some terrorist happens to be driving through San Diego. You know, well, you just you just mentioned the magic word terrorist. That's what the Patriot Act is all about, because prior to the Patriot Patriot Act, we had citizens who were nominally entitled to due process of law. Because these terrorists popped out of the woodwork. Now, everybody is a potential terrorist. The Patriot Act buried the Constitution. If you're a terrorist, you can be held under the conditions of the Patriot Act, which is without trial, without being charged and so on and so forth. So everybody, I mean, everybody is a potential terrorist. And this, again, isn't something new. The scam in the past, which was eradicated by the Constitution for a period of time, 150, 200 years. The way that you could get to essentially anybody for a period before that time was to call you a traitor, an enemy of the state. So you were brought up on charges of treason. Treason. Exactly. So treason morphed into terrorist. Treasonous person just morphed into terrorist. And before that, before you were treasonous, you were a witch. And there was actually a set of documents that the church used to decide that you were a witch. And, of course, one of the things was that there was a green substance somewhere in your house. A green ointment. And so it was very important for them because they were going after women. And it was very important for them to go after these women who had lost their husbands either to a natural death or they were off in their armies someplace. But the husband essentially left the property to the woman. Now, if you look at the ledger of the people that were persecuted as witches, almost all of them were property owners. So if you're accused by the church of being a witch, a group of inquisitors comes over to the house. And if you don't have any green substance there, it's conveniently smeared on your door or windowsill. And you can point to it. And then you take the witch into custody. Well, she's not following the edicts of our government, which was the church government at the time. And you're tried. You're tried as a witch. And one way to decide if you're guilty or innocent was to throw you back into the womb, which is a body of water. We all come from water. And we can be tested by water. So the water test was if you were thrown into the deep body of water and you came back up, you're a witch and you were burned at the stake. However, if you sunk, you were proven innocent and you'll get your reward in the afterlife. But in either case, the church got title to the property. Right. And in either way, you were dead. Yeah, that's kind of obvious. But it's just morphed over time from witches to treason, people, traders. And now we're all potential terrorists. Yeah, we kind of shed light on this whole idea in my first book with Andrew Taji, Astro Theology and Shamanism. I wanted to ask you, some people out there have got to say, well, this sounds like a shortcut. Is that the truth? Well, yeah, it is a shortcut to a degree. But where people really run into this into trouble is when you start to study logic. But see, we're kind of we're kind of skipping ahead here. We're going into understanding something before we put the data together. So let's back up a little bit because you'll see where the shortcut is. But we'll go back to to grammar because we still have to determine what's what's real and what's unreal. And the grammar that we're going to look at is not the special grammar that we're all familiar with, which is is the the words of a particular language. A general grammar is actually, again, trying to get words that that agree with reality, with objective reality, or which agree with subjective fantasy. And, of course, fantasy can only be in the minds of men. So one of the ways of of determining if if the subject that you're studying or if you're putting together a subject is to decide how you're you're going to test whether these concepts that words are really concepts. Aristotle again said that the way the mind works is it, for example, it sees something. It forms that image in the brain, which is called the concept. And only humans can conceive of thoughts. And then it comes out as a word. So that's process. See conceptualize speak. Now, when we speak, we speak of either things in reality or things that are in the mind of men. So one idea that that combines the two, for example, is the sentence. The map is not the territory. And you may have heard of that before. And that's so that we don't confuse. It's it's an important concept so that we don't confuse the manmade map, the manmade concept with the actual territory. Now, if you're going on a camping trip, you can set up camp. On a site in the territory, you cannot set up camp. On the on the similar site on the map. So this is this is setting the two apart. The map is not the territory. Now, a sentence that that relates only to reality is let's define existence. Existence is every entity. Attribute action and relationship that is, was or ever will be. Now, there's nothing in there that comes other than the concept itself. There's there's nothing that that refers to that comes from man. Other than man is part of existence, he's an entity with attributes. Who acts in a particular way and has specific relationships. But that entire sentence can be laid out grammatically that can also read existence is every noun, adjective, verb and prepositional phrase that is, was or ever will be. Now, to get to a sentence that is completely subjective, that's completely out of the mind of man is the blue unicorn took her to the depths of the astral realm. Now, there's absolutely that makes sense. It's complete thought, but its subject matter is completely manmade. It's artful. It's artistic. So these are the the ways that that grammar helps us in in understanding. How we're putting together raw data. If some of that raw data is mixed up, then that's the subject matter that you're dealing with. You're dealing with if it's understood, you're dealing with, say, a science tract in book form. So you're dealing essentially with nature. If it's a complete fiction, you know it. I mean, it's it's even called that you can read a book that's complete fiction. Now, where you start to get confused is when you're passed off fiction as fact. Right. Yeah. So, see, we're still in the realm of data. Right. We're just trying to put data together of a similar nature to build a body of knowledge. So you're trying to build a body of knowledge about about the the biology of a of a particular bear. And you come across a piece of data about the orbit of Venus around the sun. Well, they don't jive. I mean, those are not similar pieces of data. And if you try to put those those words into one sentence, they're going to clash. You're going to have a contradiction. Now, you may not know particularly what the contradiction is yet. So that's when you go on to the next to the next state, the next stage, which is logic. And here's what really goes to critical thinking. Logic is made up itself of of three subjects and really four, I guess. I I'll I'll get to it as I'll explain it as we get to it. But here is what systematic critical thinking is. Most logic courses start out with with this list of of what they what are called the common logical fallacies. And there's about 20 or 22 of these 20 to 30. Maybe there's no one set number in a list. These are essentially a number of pointers. But this way of using concepts and logic is is so commonly used. That's why they're called the common logical fallacies. But this is a this is where we might be talking about a shortcut, because once you hear these, you'll see how useful they are. I mean, it's self evidence to how useful they are. So I'm just going to start with with one of the fallacies. Now, this list was made up, as I say, because they're used so much in our everyday lives that if you can identify one of these fallacies in a communication And if it's important to you, it's a shortcut to tell you that you can just dismiss this or you can pay less attention to this than you otherwise would. So the scholastics in the medieval times gave these these fallacies Latin names. And the first the first one of these is an argument. These are all arguments. And it's the most it's the most common of all these common fallacies. And its Latin name is argumentum ad veracundium, which means argument from authority. That's to say, arguments by one who is called an authority should carry little weight, if not independently independently verified. Examples of this are 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong. We've heard that. Well, they could. All of them could be wrong. Or monkey see monkey do. And of course, the most common is that we follow edicts from on high, which are accepted without critical reflection. Now, this doesn't mean you should never accept what is presented by authority. It means you shouldn't blindly accept an argument is true from anyone, especially if it's a topic, as I said, it's important to you. Right. Now, the following and I've heard you mention this person before might give you an idea. This this was said by an by the Egyptologist, Gerald Mason, who was who was self-taught. And the basis of his self-teaching was the trivial. But he said, they must find it difficult. Those who have taken authority is the truth rather than truth as the authority. You're familiar with that. Oh, yeah. That is argument from authority argument ad veracundium. Now, the next argument is argumentum ad hominem, which means an argument against the man or attacking the arguer and not the argument. Right. This is the exact opposite of argument from authority. Right. This is what they did to Allegra was attack him. Yes, yes. But you can go in the other way in the other direction. And you can say, in other words, just because a scoundrel said it rather than a so-called authority doesn't mean that it isn't true. There's another there's another fallacy that I didn't include in my list, but it's also called a straw man. Now, that's the first part of attacking Allegra. They set him up as as being a less than stable individual. And and once they you accept that, they set up a straw man. They set up a fictitious person over here that really doesn't reflect the doesn't reflect the reality of the man. Right. And the common technique is also to that they use in straw man arguments is to. Oh, well, you see it all the time. And oh, nine one one arguments or arguments against Allegra's work and things like that is what they'll do is they'll not look at the research that he's presenting specifically. And they won't look at the you know, like the iconography of the primary text that are available outside of his work. And they'll set up an argument with unrelated data and then refute that data that had nothing to do with what was actually presented. And only other people who haven't taken the time to look at it themselves fall into that trap, which is why I'm so adamant on my show and on my forum that, you know, that before you attack someone's research, you have to either talk to them and find out from them directly and or read their work. Well, you see how this this can work in concert. There's a whole concert of of fallacies regarding what you just mentioned about Allegra. Number one, they set up the straw man. The straw man was set up in the Hegelian dialectic. They they they took they made two false sides and then they attacked it. And then thirdly, they went after they set up the straw man. They set up the ad hominem. Just because this cook said it, it can't be wrong. So it's not worth your looking into the in into the body of knowledge itself. Right. And not only that, but, you know, Watson, who was the one who launched most of these attacks against Allegro, was vice president of PR, Public Relations Spin. And it looks from my research that he was even trained by none other than Edward Bernays, who is the father of PR and the nephew of Sigmund Freud. Yeah, no, Sigmund Freud. I'm familiar with Bernays and his background. He's the one that took the word propaganda because at the time that that he came into prominence, the word propaganda was starting to become looked at with disfavor. So he came up with the term, which means exactly the same thing and called it public relations. So he demonized that that that word. Right. Or actually canonized it became a sainteful word to be called public relations when in fact it was see, here's where definition comes in. It's like human resources. Yeah. Oh, that one kills human resources. Now, how can you be insulted? And people are insulted by that every day of the week. How can you call children kids? A kid is a goat's offspring. You know, it's a dehumanizing situation that's that's purposely perpetrated. But that was a good example as to how there are more than one of these fallacies. And as I say, once you start to get get proficient with it, I, for example, I carry a small card in my pocket. With about 25 fallacies on it with with the many of them with the Latin name, because I find the Latin name apps as a as a mnemonic. It helps me remember what the what the argument actually is. And sometimes I'll get in there like we were just discussing with with Allegro and I'll find, well, I recognize one fallacy. And then I see, oh, well, here's another one. And, you know, there's three, four, five fallacies in there. Right. And then then I just I either shut off the TV or the radio or close the paper, you know, throw away the book. Right. So right. And sometimes they'll get away with doing only one of them. And, you know, I wrote a book. You know, I wrote a book. You know, and then that's where the argument comes into line by omission. Well, half truths. We'll get to that in just a minute. Yeah. The next one I've got on my list here is argumentum ad vaculum. And this is argument from adverse consequences, as as they put it. It's putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an unfavorable decision. Now, vacuum literally means that or I'll hit you with a bat if you don't accept the argument. So this is the this is the argument from force. You accept something is true, not because it is true, but because you get with a bat if you don't. So there's the argument from force. Now, here's a good one. I like this one. It's called argument ad ignorantium and its appeal to ignorance. And the definition listed for it is absence of evidence is not proof of truth. Now, it actually refers to your ignorance. If you're ignorant about just one particular fact, the fact that a negative cannot be proven. Now, I've got to interject that this also goes to another principle in logic, and this is called the onus of proof principle. But only a positive can be proven. A negative cannot be directly proven. If something is not or did not happen, how could it be proven? Therefore, the negative holds the field in logic or systematic understanding. In other words, if it's not your best course of action is not to make a decision yet, but lean in the direction of the negative. Now, here's an example. An alibi is a positive. It can be proven. So, properly, an accused person must be held by the law in the negative. That is, as innocent until proven guilty of committing the crime. The onus of proof is on him who asserts that he is guilty. The accused in this example. Now, Jan, I remember one of your previous guests being acutely aware of this principle. I believe I'd asked you this earlier, but he's now living in Spain and his talk was on narcissism. Right. John Lamb Lash? Yeah. Okay. Now, he made the point that the onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive. John Lamb Lash? Yeah. Okay. Now, he made the point, and he was emphatic when he said this, I remember, because I was pleased to know that he was aware of some of these facts. But he said, he made the point that it was not his job to prove the falsehood of his opponent's claim. It was the job of his opponent to prove the truth of his own claim. I mean, that was a classic reputation right there. He just dismissed it, in other words. So, if somebody claims that there's a... Well, if somebody claims that Jesus existed and was a historical character that rose up and had all of these attributes, they should be able to substantiate that other than with one single book. Well, yeah. That's getting pretty far away. That's a very advanced way of looking at it. But let's get a little bit closer and we'll stick with Jesus. All right. Sorry. No, no. I mean, somebody says that he sees Jesus appearing over in the corner. And you look over in the corner and you say, I don't see him. And he says, I tell you he's there. You know, you've got to believe my argument for Jesus. I see him over in the corner. And you continue to insist that you don't see him. And so he says, well, I say he's there. You prove that he isn't. Well, that's what I'm saying. A negative cannot be proven. If it's not there or if it didn't happen, you cannot prove it. You see? I can win that argument. That's a simple one. You just say, well, you're just not being spiritual enough. Well, see, here's where you save yourself a lot of trouble. You don't bother to argue. You turn around. I tell you, Jan, this has saved me more heartache, just like the idea of there being no contradictions within nature. This idea of when you get to that point, when you use this fallacy here, you simply do not continue the conversation. Now, it's that type of conversation can most effectively take place in a book. Now, if someone has an open mind and the tribune helps a person to have an open mind, they'll study it. Right. And if not, these are not good verbal arguments to get into. For one thing, that person is being emotional, which is another one of these fallacies here. But you're getting into an emotional argument, and you're never going to win an emotional argument with a rational argument. It just isn't going to happen. It can happen over a period of time if you can get on the same page, if you can get them to start knowing their own mind. But the whole idea of religion is to keep people from knowing their own mind. That's why all these things have been hidden from us or are being hidden from us. And they're very simple and they're very available. Exactly. Now, there's a book that I recommend when I informally teach these subjects. But I teach, for example, general grammar from a book that's called The Tribune, and it was written by a nun in the 1920s. She was teaching the Tribune in an all-girls Catholic school, and her name was Sister Miriam Joseph. And the way she presents the Tribune on the front page and on the first page, she says the Tribune is made up of logic, grammar, and she calls it argumentation, but it's really rhetoric. Now, how can you present that? How can you present a system, which the Tribune is a system? How can you present it as understanding, knowledge, and wisdom? How can you start with understanding? You don't have anything to understand. You've got to start with a body of knowledge. So right there, she's already, and I don't think she did this purposely. I just think she was ignorant of the fact that this is a system. She's teaching the three subjects as subjects unto themselves, which they can be. But if you don't put them in order like that, you wind up like she is. You can teach her the Tribune, but she's never going to make the connection between the three, and she'll remain a devout Catholic. Of course, that's only one reason. There are many others. But her treatise on general grammar, her treatise on general grammar is the best I've ever seen. So that's why I recommend her book. And actually, her treatise on logic is very good. It's just that she doesn't treat the whole thing as a system. She just treats them, as I say, as subjects unto themselves. And that's what, it's that simple to hide it. It's that simple to hide your own mind, your own mind's working from yourself. It's just these things out of order. Tell you that they're subjects unto themselves, and there you go, you know, with nothing.