THE WISDOM OF THE HARMONY OF

REASON
(AND THE PROBLEMS WITH CRITICAL INQUIRY)
TO FIND YOURSELF, THINK WITH THE WEB
R.I. ROSS
INTELLECT
REASON
IMAGINATION
SEMANTICS
SCIENCE
Physiological
Emotions
Cultural
Traditions
Self Image
Morality
New
Emotions
Geography
Religion
Personal
Relationships,
Jobs, Hobbies
Subjects
of
Science
History
Psychology Arts
2
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This book was published in July 2010 by Ross Publishers as
a sequel to The Independent Mind published in November
2008 and The Thinking Web published in 2006.
Ross Publishers
J F Hornby & Co, The Tower, Daltongate Business Centre,
Daltongate, Ulverston, Cumbria, LA12 7AS
Published July 2010
Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any or both.
www.theindependentmind.co.uk
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Socrates for his gift to
humanity of the skills of thinking involved in his
explanations of Creative Reasoned Thinking and
the Harmony of Reason.
What is Reason? It is the most important
question a man can ask himself.
The answer to that question will determine the
answers to all his problems, all his attitudes and
all his questions for the whole of the rest of his
life.
If a society fails to protect the individuals right to
access the answer to that question, that society
must be held responsible for all that individuals
actions.
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Even if you are the son or daughter
of the richest man on earth apart
from friends and family your own
Thinking Mind is the greatest asset
you have in life. If you care for it using the harmony of
reason you will have faith in yourself.
and faith in yourself is one of lifes most
important ideas. It is my moral.
The Intellectual Warrior
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REASON IS
FUNDAMENTAL TO THE IDEA OF THE INDEPENDENT
THINKING MIND.
OPINION IS
FUNDAMENTAL TO THE IDEA OF THE BLOTTING
PAPER
MIND.
YOU CAN CHOOSE EITHER
IF
YOU KNOW HOW
IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW
THE BLOTTING PAPER MIND WILL CHOOSE YOU.
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The Independent Reasoning Mind Declares Its
Independence
The unknown is reason and I am a reasoning mind.
Socrates 400 BC
The Independent Reasoning Mind Writes Its Own
Constitution
The Reasoned Premise Of Argument
If I am the wisest man in the whole of
Greece it is because I know I do not know.
Socrates 400 BC
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The Blotting Paper (Dependent) Mind Declares Its
Dependence
A virtue is something you know that another person needs
Aristotle 350 BC
The Blotting Paper (Dependent) Mind Has Its Constitution
Written
An Ultimate Truth is knowable by a really clever man.
Aristotle 350 BC
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PART 1
THE WISDOM
OF THE
HARMONY OF
REASON
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15
THE WISDOM OF THE HARMONY
OF REASON
Introduction And the Definition of a
Harmonic
Harmonic One The Harmony of Nature and
the Genie in the Bottle
Harmonic Two The Three Great Harmonics of
the Universe
Harmonic Three The Harmony of Subjects
(The Good Grocer)
Harmonic Four Reason the Harmoniser
(or Reason the Referee)
Harmonic Five Reason the Hitch Hiker and
Reason the Driver of the car
Harmonic Six Harmonising Words
(The problem of the Medieval
Knight and the way of the
Jackdaw)
Harmonic Seven Morality
(Your Own or Aristotles)
Harmonic Eight Eureka! New Emotions
Harmonic Nine The Independent Mind
Harmonic Ten Disclaimers of the Harmony of
Reason and the Truant
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Introduction
Two thousand four hundred years ago mankind looked
outwards from itself. What it saw was the awesome beauty
of life of earth and the harmony of the planets.
What mankind saw was the effect of countless millions of
years of the laws of nature as they jostled with one another.
Staying with arrangements that seemed to work, slipping
silently away from ones that didnt. What it saw was the end
result of all these packages of agreements. What it saw was
what worked. What it saw was The Harmony of Nature.
The Greeks called it Harmonia. The Greeks knew that
Harmonia was to be their Intellectual Mother and Nurse
because there was no other except the path of superstition
and the path of their history that led backwards to the mists
of their own legends.
These men, mostly artisan slaves, had found Aladdins
Cave. All they needed was the key to the door. And the key
to the door was Reason. Once in the cave all they needed
were the secret words that would let the Genie out of the
bottle. And the secret words were God (The Unknown) is
reason and I am a reasoning mind.
The most powerful entity in the known universe had been
created. The Independent Mind. The men who followed the
ways of the independent mind became the Socratics. The
followers of the harmony of Socrates and the harmony of
nature.
So powerful was this new thing under the sun it flourished
anywhere and everywhere it was cared for. It flourished in
environments free of money, land, status and power. So
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much so it scared the shit out of those with all the money,
land, status and power.
They determined to put the Genie back into the bottle. Plato
(The Aristocrat) and Aristotle (The Academic) became the
enemies of the genie. They and their fans became the
Disclaimers of the Harmony of Reason.
Today, Mankind falls into one of two intellectual groups or
lives the life of a cultural schizophrenic.
The Disclaimers of Harmony
(The Aristotelians):
This intellectual group of men see reason as a hitch hiker,
eagerly waiting at every slip road, trying to get in the car and
join the journey. To be picked up by the driver when he feels
like it and to be dropped off by the driver when their
directions part. The majority of mankind fall into this group.
They use the stairway theory of coming to knowledge called
critical inquiry instigated by Aristotle.
They develop a Blotting Paper Mind from the tribal mind of
our ancestors.
The Blotting Paper Mind feeds off unreasoned statements
and refuses to recognise a childs right to be taught how to
think before he/she is taught what to think.
Its very survival depends on these two FACTS.
These men wage a constant battle against the Harmony of
Reason and the tranquillity it brings. They are the
Disclaimers of the Harmony of Reason.
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The Harmonists
(The Socratics):
This intellectual group of men see reason as the driver and
the road as roadways of reason. A minority of mankind fit
into this intellectual group. These men use the stepping
stone theory of coming to knowledge called creative
reasoned thinking instigated by Socrates. They develop an
independent mind. They are the most creative men in our
society and have created the social structure we call
democracy based not on the Disclaimers idea of equality
but the Harmonists idea of individuality. And they have
created what we call science. Science the subjects and
science the way of thinking.
Mankinds Thinking Mind is the most powerful unit of any
sort in the known universe. When it uses creative reasoned
thinking it creates civilisations. It destroys civilisations when
it uses unreasoned thinking.
The history of the last 2000 years proves that beyond all
reasonable doubt. Yet it receives little, if any, attention as a
unit of thinking even though every child has one with the
potential to outthink every human being that has lived on this
planet!
Lions mentor their cubs and teach them how to hunt their
prey, as most other animals mentor their offspring, but man,
the so called thinking animal, leaves his mentoring duties
to the vagaries of life, or hands them over to some
intellectually incompetent man with hardly a second thought
or at best replaces it with an encyclopaedic notion of
intelligence.
How this came about can be explained by the remarkable
history of mankind and mans attitude to education, morality,
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religion and authority but more fundamentally by the
individuals own relationship to reason.
There is a line that separates reason from imagination that
runs through all men.
Who understands the line separates the wise from the
foolish.
Who challenges the line separates the intellectual warriors
from the intellectual wimps.
At the door of the nursery are many white line men, eager
to pen, paint, or otherwise etch
their line
on the new
arrival.
It always has been and it almost looks like it always will be
the largest sales force in the history of the world.
What is on sale is The Blotting Paper Mind.
The reasoned idea that you educate a child how to think
before you tell him what to think has not occurred to the
vast majority of mankind. They think as a collective, hanging
on for dear life to a harmonic of nature that gave them their
gods in the heaven and their kingships on earth.
There are very few intellectually honest men. There are
probably many reasons for this but for sure there are equally
few men who claim intellectual honesty to be a moral value.
Being intellectually honest doesnt just happen, it requires
intellectual effort and the wisdom to know how.
When we consider creative reasoned thinking is the driving
force of civilisation, and intellectual honesty is the driving
force of creative reasoned thinking, how is it that so many
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men choose not to embrace intellectual honesty as a moral
value?
They seem to prefer to go picking and poking about in their
neighbours affairs. Is it any wonder they are soap addicts?
This has not always been the case, 2400 years ago
Socrates taught the youth of Athens to care for their
thinking minds, using reason. They clamoured for his
attention in the way the youth of today clamour after football
stars and pop stars.
In the short space of a few hundred years he and his cultural
descendants moved civilisation forward from a time when
everything in their lives was described in terms of legends,
myths and superstitions, to a period when they had created
what we call today The Foundations of Western
Civilisation.
Socrates, the stone mason slave, was the midwife at the
birth of mankinds most precious possession, his
independent reasoning mind. It was the most remarkable
period of human history, yet how many children are taught
this in schools?
They have to learn instead the names of the wives of Henry
VIII! It just doesnt make sense. Even our history teachers
are turning our children into soap addicts!
But an even more remarkable fact, hardly, if ever mentioned,
is that there were so few Greeks that the chances of one of
them being what we would call today a genius would have
been highly improbable. Yet the pavements of Greece were
paved with geniuses.
They had discovered population genius! Education is a
flame declared Socrates and the streets buzzed with
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excitement as their individual minds joined the greatest
adventure of humanitys history. They were brothers in
reason united by the common ground of reason that lies
between all men who look for it.
They were intellectual warriors on their way to a future
harmonised by reason. The only path civilisation can take.
Nothing to excess was the order of the day. The man sitting
on one side may have been talking science one minute and
poetry the next. Everyone pooled their ideas and subjected
themselves to reasoned argument.
There were no schools, no satchels of heavy books, no
ideas of remote professors with access to even more remote
chapters of books that would solve the problem of the day.
This was the line where the light of reason met the murky
waters of unreasoned nonsense. And the line was on a
pavement in Athens.
Each man was with his own thinking mind: One that
understood the important contributions of all thinking minds.
When you stop a river from flowing it stagnates and all life
forms in the river that require oxygen die. Only the life forms
that survive best without oxygen thrive and clog the river.
When you deprive the thinking mind of reason and
observation it stagnates and all the ideas that depend on
reason and observation fail to happen. Only the ideas that
can survive best without reason can live and cause
intellectual constipation. These ideas are opinions and
beliefs.
The Greeks knew their civilisation was doomed by the
relentless persecution of their more numerous and ignorant
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neighbours. They knew their ideas could only survive in the
wider fabric of society if they were to survive at all.
By the end of their civilisation the Greeks were describing
themselves as universans (citizens of the world). All this
happened for the Greeks against a background of having
enormous pride in their state. Even the artisan slaves were
proud to be Greek.
Socrates himself was an artisan slave who could neither
read nor write, yet he was probably the greatest thinker the
world has seen.
In his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Karl Jung, a
Christian, writes psychotherapists treat neurosis as an inner
cleavage, everything that makes the cleavage worse makes
the patient worse, and everything that makes the cleavage
better makes the patient better. What drives people to war in
themselves is the intuition they are made of two persons
working in opposition to one another.
Karl Jung describes modern Western man as having a
cleavage in his inner self; his soul (mind) has been split into
two parts. This cleavage is easier to understand if we look
at our education system over the last 100 years. In our
schools and our society the young are taught their soul is
dependent on blind faith. He describes divine wisdom being
imparted by their earthy shepherds, as they grow up they
become educated in the secular sciences. They learn what
reason and common sense has to offer and they learn the
perils of blind faith. The child has not been educated as a
holistic being with his own soul, he has been instructed to
experience inner conflict and have two souls (minds).
Wherever we look at Western Society we can see an
abundance of evidence of the cultural cleavage which feeds
the inner conflict Karl Jung talks about.
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Children in Western Society know nothing of the spiritual
harmony that happens when a child develops his/her own
thinking agenda and becomes capable of connecting the
emotionality of his/her being to the intellectuality of his/her
own being or to put it another way to come to understand
the tranquillity of the harmony of reason.
When pop stars make the grade the first thing they do is go
off to the far flung corners of the world to look for a Guru. Do
they know something we dont know? They are looking for
their spiritual Guru. The man that will help them understand
the spiritual nature of their existence in some place far
removed from where they created their intellectual being. At
best this Gurus half a Guru one that understands the
emotionality of the pop star but not the intellectuality of his
being. How could he? He doesnt live on Penny Lane in
Liverpool, he lives on a mountain in Tibet. Penny Lane is in
my mind and in my heart again.
Theres only one Guru for the job at hand the one that can
connect the emotionality of that persons being to the
intellectuality of that persons being. And he doesnt live in
Tibet.
IF YOU WANT TO FIND YOURSELF, THINK
FOR YOURSELF
Socrates
Future generations will look back on these times and accuse
our generation of child abuse for neglecting to educate them
in how to care for their own thinking minds. With physical or
even sexual abuse at some future date you can come to
recognise what has happened. You can get up dust yourself
down and run away. Intellectual abuse is far more pervasive.
There is no one person there to blame. There is nowhere to
run, nowhere to hide when it is happening. There is no
escape and the consequences of any sort of attempt at
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avoidance is being socially ostracised. The worst form of
punishment that can be applied to a social being like man,
short of brutality.
You may have noticed from the contents page that the parts
of the book normally referred to as chapters are called
harmonics. The idea of chapters comes from the Arts. Its
fundamental ideas have a fixedness about them a period
group of cannons exact authority for action. These main
ideas that make up the idea of a chapter are an antithesis to
the main ideas of this book, so I refer to what you might
expect to be called chapters as Harmonics. Harmonics are
families of ideas or clusters of ideas related by reason. I
have chosen to deal with issues of the book in this family
way because this is the way the wisdom of harmony
happens as I hope the book will succeed in explaining to the
reader.
For example: Harmonic One is about our ideas of the
harmonic of nature. It asks and then tries to answer
questions that relate our idea of nature to our idea of reason.
And further.....! I was told a classicist refused to read my
book because I used bad grammar and started sentences
with And. Nobody has ever explained to me where the idea
of not starting a sentence with And came from. Neither has
anyone explained to me why, apart from the fact that it was
an excuse to use yet another probably more flowery
probably more exotic word.
I try to keep sentences as simple as possible because they
accord more easily with the harmony of reason by being
more precise in what they say and easier to show to be
wrong. They may sound more boring but I think it makes for
more interesting content. I see and for what it is, a joining
word, that brings ideas together in associations without
forming further complicated contracts that other words are
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certain to add. And sometimes it does help to be able to stop
and take a breath!
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The fifth Century B.C. was the most amazing period of the
civilisation of Ancient Greece and it was dominated by one
man the Oracle at Delphi claimed to be the wisest man in
the whole of Greece.
Socrates explained how creative reasoned thinking
happened. He explained how the subjects we call science
happened and how the way of thinking called science
happened. He explained how reason happened in all the
harmonics (different parts) of life. He educated Newton,
Darwin and Einstein. He taught some of our modern
psychologists how to refute their tired old theories and
create their new ones (Cognitive Therapy) He educated
them in the ways of emotional intelligence but they didnt
listen and still they get it all wrong as Daniel Goleman
demonstrates. He was within intellectual mms of explaining
Darwins theory of evolution 2,400 years before Darwin
himself. He explained democracy founded on individualism
with all its differences and not the bland version of
democracy founded on the equality (sameness) of the
masses we have today.
He explained how civilisations are founded on reason and
the creation of original reasoned ideas and not the idea of
spreading the intellectual nonsense of its leaders.
He explained creative reasoned thinking and guess what?
He got it all right 2,400 years ago. Highly refutable but not
refuted. No doubt.
But you wouldnt think so if you listened to your leaders, your
priests, vicars and classicist scholars in the Arts who you still
pay taxes for to keep in their ivory towers still getting wrong
century after century.
Socrates never quite made it they claim. He needed Plato
and Aristotle to establish Western Civilisation, they say. The
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truth is Aristotle and Plato messed Socrates ideas about so
much, they made them unrecognisable. They destroyed the
answer to the most important intellectual question any being
can ask itself What is reason?
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Harmonic One
The Harmony of Nature and the Genie in the
Bottle
(The Lucky Scientists)
A mere blink in time ago when we lived in the jungle we
were a harmonic, of nature. Part of a food chain and part of
a series of natures harmonised events. Fish lived in shoals,
birds in flocks, cattle in herds and men in tribes. All bonded
together and protected by harmonia to such a degree as to
seem to be inviolable to any man, idea or predator on earth.
Nature had made countless millions of mistakes and learned
from every one of them. She is our mentor. We embrace her
ways and we have a harvest of abundance. Disclaim her
harmonia and we tread the path of a Disclaimer of
Harmony: the path of a fool on his way to a fools paradise,
on his way to all the horrors of Imagined Hell.
Socrates said:
Respect everything done in the name of
Reason
Not only did he see the path of harmony: he saw the
imagined path of the Disclaimers of Harmony: He
understood the path of the fool on his way to a fools
paradise and he understood the dangers waiting at the side
of the road for humanity if it chose that road.
Hatred or dislike of reason is related to hatred or
dislike of humanity.
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He made it his mission in life to educate the youth of the
day:-
To care for their own thinking minds
And to do it using reason i.e. to harmonise their minds.
In doing so Socrates was changing the idea of the
fundamental nature of the human mind from that of a Tribal
Mind entwined in the harmony of nature to something new
in the history of the universe. Something that stood apart
and independent from nature. He had created a New Thing
under the Sun that could create its own laws and discover
its own meanings: the most powerful unit of any sort to
have ever existed. A mind designed from harmony and
capable of understanding harmony. The Independent Mind.
The human mind declared its independence from natures
tribalism 2,200 years before the American Declaration of
Independence.
The unknown is reason and I am a reasoning
mind
(Socrates)
We Homo Sapiens The Thinking Animal are natures
Chosen Tribe. We are the last tribe left standing after all
the other hominids have been eliminated in Natures
Survival of the Fittest Reason Program.
Behold Man. Where once the successful tribe defended
the best piece of paradise on earth from all other hominids
there are now no other hominids left and there havent been
for many thousands of years. We stand as masters of the
whole of paradise.
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After eons of being Tribal Animals we find it difficult to let go
of the harmonic nature prepared for us. Since we have
become supreme we have created more tribes amongst our
own kind than the world has ever seen. Combined with our
abilities to harmonise the material world, the alpha male (the
tribal leader) has the power of gods at his finger tips, a
power undreamt of by his ancestors. Tribes seem to come
from nowhere and from everywhere.
Children abandoned in the streets and in shanty towns form
gangs. They have to for their own protection and we look on
in surprise and ask why? Because we all live in gangs of
one sort or another and if you were honest with yourself and
asked yourself why? You would admit its for your own
protection in one of its many forms.
In a tribe people are tribal members first and individuals
second. Tribal members have to conform to the rituals of the
tribe and the authority of the tribal leader. Their individual
rights are suppressed or dont exist. Take the rituals and the
authority of the tribal leader away and the tribe ceases to
exist with all the benefits it brought, including protection. The
harmony of nature has created a fortress for men. The most
successful fortress in the history of the world. And men
arent about to throw one of the best harmonics of nature
into touch in a moment of rashness.
Around 400BC the Greeks had reached the Greatest
Crossroads in human history, where the road of tribalism
met the road of individualism. This wasnt to be one of
natures silent battles decided in the nocturnal councils of
tribal leaders proposed by Plato. This was to be a
Shakespearean battle. Full of Sound and Fury and
signifying everything.
This was to be the essence of the next 2,400 years of
history, till modern times and today we seem to be as far
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from resolving the conflict as those men in Athens were
2,400 years ago. Athenian Greeks had glimpsed a vision of
the future. They were as proud to be Athenian Greeks as
any supporter of a football club or any city of any state or
country. Even Artisan slaves like Socrates were proud to be
Greek. He had a calm aloofness that came from knowing
that they were not just marginally the best but that they were
the only players on the field. In comparison the Romans
were no competition They came, They saw, They
conquered but they never understood. They tried. They
employed Greek tutors for their children. They saw the
wisdom of the Greeks as the legitimate plunder of the
Victors but they never worked out why it just couldnt be put
on a cart and transported back to Rome. And they never
worked out why the minds of men created in the mould of
the anger of Aristotle could not infuse with the idea of
harmonia.
In spite of all this by the end of the civilisation the Greeks
were referring to themselves not as citizens of Athens, but
as universans. Citizens of the World: Not by goals
scored: Not by tribal rituals or authority: Not by boundaries
of geography: Neither by colour or race or other recent
minor amendments of nature but united in their ability to
understand harmonia.
They came to understand the Rational Unity of mankind that
lay beyond the boundaries of the tribe. They came to learn
how to think using the harmony of reason. A few thousand of
them outthinking countless millions of people that have lived
since their civilisation was deliberately destroyed by the
Green Eyed Disclaimers of Harmony.
Mankind is the lucky scientist. Our luck is reflected in the
amazing changes in our lives in the last 200 years. From
muddy cart tracks and damp cold dark houses to Ocean
Liners, trips to the planets, televisions, computers, cars,
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exotic holidays. You dont know youre born my
grandmother would have said, and for once I couldnt have
argued.
How, when it took us 20,000 years to build and launch the
coracle, could all this have happened so quickly? Are we so
different from our caveman ancestors? Have spacemen
landed on our planet? Have we been infused with the
wisdom of the Gods? Or has something else happened?
Perhaps weve been infused with stuff some of the Ancient
Greeks called Harmonia. Or have we been guided by those
Ancient Greeks (the Aristotelians) who disclaimed harmony
and claimed to guide us to paradise with their cleverness
that is a natural attribute of the wisdom of leaders. Those
men born to be the Tribal Leader or in modern parlance, the
alpha male.
When we look outwards into the universe and inwards
towards our own minds what we see is the end result of
millions of years of experiments carried out by nature. What
we see are the ones that have worked and survived
because they were better than all the others. We live in a
gigantic laboratory where the results of these experiments
are laid out before us. Our first task is to observe the
Harmony of Nature. We are the lucky Scientists.
The Socratic Greeks said, and there are many reasons that
prove them right, and none which prove them to be wrong. If
you study harmonia you will come to know the way of
Philosophy
1
and Embrace Reason.
The Aristotelian Greeks and their cultural descendents failed
the embrace.
1
Philosophy was what we call scientific thinking.
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Art imitates nature and improves on its
deficiencies.
(Aristotle)
And so arrogance was born, paradise lost, humility was
crushed and mankind who couldnt even make a maggot
was to create Gods by the dozen and a hell on earth of his
own making. Not only did they fail the embrace, they
disclaimed its ways:-
Take no notice of reason or evil effects will
follow
(Aristotle)
Fortunately for the Greeks and for humanity the Socratic
Greeks won the battle in the period of time that was Greek
Civilisation. Platos theory of forms was removed from the
Academy in Athens shortly after the death of Aristotle. The
ways of the Socratics reasserted themselves and Greek
Civilisation went on to create the most prolific periods of
civilisation. It seemed that in one of the worlds most
amazing battles between the harmonic of nature, the tribe,
and the New Kid on the Block, The New Kid, had won the
day. But the war wasnt over yet.
When we look at Nature we see the Harmony Socrates
describes.
Harmony is knowing everything is in its place.
We see something of his way of thinking. We catch a
glimpse of the Seat of Socrates, his intellect. The place
where he sits to create his harmonics.
Reasoned Design seems to have been created by Nature.
Does Nature think like a Grand Designer? Has a Grand
Designer created Nature? Or does Nature just appear to
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Reason? In the rumble and tumble of eons of ideas and
packages of agreements has Reason itself been the arbiter
of all these events? And if Reason itself is the arbiter of
these events is the way this reasoning of Nature works that
has become our idea of what Reason is?
In the manner of the greatest detective in history, Socrates
was on the case.
The Unknown is Reason and I am a reasoning
Mind.
i.e. a follower of Reason and not a Disclaimer of Reason.
What we see when we look at the Harmony of Nature is the
survival of the fittest reason. An idea reflected in Scientists
theory of Evolution.
The survival of the fittest.
Every species over reproduces. Creates more offspring than
are needed to maintain the population. (Nature has made
her own mistakes, i.e. the offspring least suitable to survive).
Human Reasoned thinking creates its own mistakes, i.e. by
asking many questions most of which will prove to be wrong.
If I ask 100 questions and 99 are wrong I have
been successful.
(Einstein)
(In nature the environment selects the fittest offspring).
(Human Reason uses refutability to eliminate the mistakes.)
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I know my theory is the best but I also know its
wrong. Only I dont know how.
(Einstein)
Sherlock Holmes also said:
If the most probable proves to be wrong the
most improbable becomes the most likely.
The fittest reason like the fittest offspring are the ones that
survive to progress the situation and form the next stepping
stones in life of the species and in the life of the idea.
For this and many more highly refutable but not refuted
reasons on how the reason of nature works we can with
humility and not arrogance glimpse the power of Natures
hold on reason. If we fail the humility test and resume the
program of improving on Natures Deficiencies when it
comes to reasoning we are doomed to a hell on earth of our
own making.
For the most part today society has turned its intellectual
gaze away from harmonia and our attempts to understand
her ways towards quick fix solutions from the cleverness of
men in the mould of Aristotle. Our precious alpha males
swarm like bees to university departments that favour their
heros and after their education in rhetoric and Disclaiming
Harmony, take over the highest offices in the land. They, or
most of them, become the Aristotelians, prepared as
Aristotle said they should be to use their opinions as tools
of governance, reason and education.
The only ones who escape the pestilence are the ones who
do what the Arts do best. To imagine and turn their gaze to
comedy, making films, literature, soaps, etc. In other words
most all the important things in life like learning how to
entertain one another, have fun, create banter and comedy.
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Imagine and create as many options as possible for the
intellect to choose from, to subject them to the rules of
reason and from there back to the intellect to exercise its
own special powers to make decisions.
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39
Harmonic Two
HARMONISING THE UNIVERSE
Before the time of human civilisation, the universe could be
divided into two fundamentally different parts, each self
contained with their own natural laws. With human
civilisation came another extra world.
World I: The Inorganic world with its own Natural Laws.
WORLD I
The Inorganic World
with its own Natural
Laws
WORLD II
The Organic World
with its own Natural
Laws
WORLD III
The World of New
Things Under the
Sun with its own
Man Made Laws
and Ideas.
THE TRIBE
40
World II: The Organic world with its own Natural Laws.
World III: The World of New Things Under the Sun. Our
world with its explanations of World I (e.g. Chemistry,
Physics, Astronomy). With its explanations of World II (i.e.
Organic Chemistry, the Biological Sciences, Evolution etc.)
and the ideas of our imagination (e.g. Literature, Art, Music
etc.).
*Karl Popper described the inorganic world, the organic world and the
world of New Things Under the Sun as Worlds I, II & III.
These worlds are characterised by their own self contained
nature and their own systems of order. They are harmonics
(self contained parts) of the universe, families of ideas or
clusters of ideas.
The Two Harmonics of World III
World III can be divided into two harmonics:
The Independent Mind:- is a self contained harmonic of
World III that maintains its independence by harmonising all
information by using reason. It has its own boundaries, its
The Blotting Paper Mind
The Independent Mind
41
own culture, its own vocabulary, its own spiritual nature, its
own idea of civilisation and its own structure. It is founded on
the individual.
The Blotting Paper Mind:- is derived from the Tribal Mind. It
is an extension of the Tribal Harmonic of Nature into World
III to create the Blotting Paper Mind. A mind which measures
its success on the basis of being able to soak up and spread
ideas throughout a population. Thats how it has always
worked. That is how it defines a civilisation and those are its
own measure of success. Its structure is the order of The
Tribal Leader and Tribal Members. It is founded on the
collective and the authority of its leaders.
In western society the individuals mind has, as the famous
Christian Psychotherapist Karl Jung describes, a cleavage.
It is split into two parts. He describes one part as being
based on the idea of blind faith (the Blotting Paper Mind)
and the other being founded on reason (the Independent
Mind).
Strangely enough Karl Jung, himself a Christian, blames the
education system of the last 100 years during which, as he
points out, children are introduced to ideas of blind faith in
their early years and in their later years are educated in the
ways of reason. He didnt explain his position as a Christian
in all this. Then after all he is the Psychotherapist and we
are his patients. But I think the problem goes much deeper
than religion. Religions may represent our modern tribal
nature but I think the problem goes back to the very
beginning of our Tribal Roots: to the great harmonic
prepared for us by nature, and the conflict of reason within
the tribe.
The Tribe:- The Tribe always has and still does many things
for us as individuals. It protects us. Insures us. Looks after
us on bad days and into our old age. It provides intrigue,
42
entertainment and great festive occasions. Its the fabric of
our history. It creates order and whispers in our ears the
secrets of the gods and the wisdom of the witch doctors.
It is Natures Greatest Harmonic.
It is the most comfortable armchair in the known universe.
We sit in it in the splendiferous magnificence of emperors,
bishops, generals and mini gods and gaze out over a
beauteous earth and tinker with the whispers of the gods
creating Ultimate Truths. None of which Mother Nature
recognises as her own. None of which harmonise with one
another.
Our problem is that in spite of all the discounts and sales
were running out of armchairs. There are too many chiefs
and not enough Indians. After the zillionth re-run of the
Wives of Henry VIII it seems to be, as the famous historian
Richard Starky says Were all mini Henries now! Well
thank God for that! Weve got there at last!! Perhaps now the
BBC will give us a program or two on how civilisations
develop? But dont hold your breath. In the meantime Ill
pass the good news on to my girlfriend.
Me Henry, You Jane! But I get the feeling shes going to
want the good old jungle days back! And so do I. Im still the
old lecherous beast nature intended me to be. A bit slower,
perhaps. A bit more fermented by intellectual honesty than
guile, perhaps. A bit more of a lover of comedy than serious
statements, perhaps. A bit more in to the idea that our
children can progress ideas as individuals and not tribal
members, most certainly. A bit more cognizant of the
essence of culture and good intellectual breeding, perhaps
that permits one to denounce many leaders and many
scholars from history as intellectual windbags peddling their
tribal wares.
43
THE HARMONICS OF THE MIND
Before the time of democracy in Greece and the time of
Socrates mankind had never thought to look inwards into his
own mind: What purpose could it possibly have served? In
the absence of Socratic reason the only measures they had
were the measures of the tribe. The myths, the legends, the
superstitions, the angry Gods, the divine wisdom of the tribal
leader, the rituals, the festivals, the parties, the security of
the group, the gossip of the group and those forever stolen
moments.
It was just like life at the Vic or at the Rovers Return, only
better!! It was a soup of ideas held together by emotions. It
was natures creation, the harmonic of the tribe.
The tribal leader made all the major decisions in the manner
of Aristotle even though the great Guru hadnt yet appeared
on earth to understand the mind of the tribal leader. How it
worked and how it could be used for the whole of humanity
for the rest of time.
Before the times of Socrates what mankind would have seen
if they had looked inwards towards their own minds was a
Blotting Paper Mind, designed by nature to soak up and
spread ideas through the harmonic of the tribe. To reinforce
its structure, to stitch the seams of its parts together. The
culture, the myths, the legends, the rituals, the authority of
the tribal leader and the wisdom of the witch doctor with his
unique connections to the spirit world.
Reason could never stitch such disparate and imagined
entities together to create the harmonic of the tribe. Reason
and its ability to jostle, tug, to be used sometimes to build
carefully or to be used quickly to sometimes remove a
mistake could only serve to unravel the stitches of the tribe.
And expose the soup like nature of its structure. Reason and
44
its location in the mind of the individual, could only be the
enemy of the tribe.
Ask the Romans:- The purpose of the brutality of Rome in
the angry mould of Aristotle and Plato wasnt just for
weekend pleasure, because they hadnt invented football. Its
purpose was to bare their souls to the world and show the
world what they were all about. Their amphitheatres were in
every city in the Roman Empire. When they had finished
their workday week, collecting taxes and having wars, what
they enjoyed most of all was demonstrating their power and
how much they enjoyed killing, to their wives, families and
the public.
In their workday world, the Romans warned a population
once. And if it repeated the mistake the population and
entire city would be destroyed. In 600 AD Rome destroyed
the university in Athens and all the centres of learning in
ancient Greece and burned all the books. It was an attempt
to destroy the whole of Greek civilisation which through the
harmony of reason was threatening the tribal nature of its
existence. It was the biggest act of cultural vandalism in the
history of the world. How can my local vicar have gone to
university for 3 years and know this fact of history?
You dont read these facts in history books or have them
taught in schools even today. Because Aristotelians, still in
power today, still see them as a threat to their status. For
they are the cultural descendents of the Romans, the
biggest, most powerful and most enduring tribe the world
has seen.
These men may have retreated to the inner sanctum of their
holy places and ivory castles, and to the inner keep of their
fortresses. The tribe may have suffered a blow or two here
and there but the Blotting Paper Mind is still safe and well
and here, it seems, to stay forever. Its one of those ultimate
truths again.
45
THE TWO GREAT HARMONICS OF OUR
NEW WORLD UNDER THE SUN
With the ideas:-
The unknown is reason and I am a reasoning
mind
And
If I am the wisest man in the whole of Greece it
is because I know I do not know
The harmonic, World III, was divided into two fundamentally
different parts.
(i) The harmonic of the Blotting Paper Mind.
(ii) The harmonic of the Independent Mind.
Two different parts that could never be put together or mixed
in any way, shape or form. They are the intellectual
equivalents of immiscible liquids. They are two separate
harmonics. Decreed by:
Natures Reason ---
Socratic Reason ---
Aristotelian Opinion ---
Scientists ---
Professors of the Classics ---
And last but most importantly:-
Harmonists ---
46
Its an idea nearer to being an Ultimate Truth than anything
Aristotle ever said or nearer to being an axiom of language
than any classicist ever imagined. Its nearer to being an a
priori or an Ultimate Truth than any philosopher ever argued
for. The irrefutable proof is all the above groups agree. The
problem is some of them just dont like it and lack the
intellectual honesty to confront it. So they disclaim it - they
are the Disclaimers of Harmony.
47
SUMMARY OF THE HARMONICS OF THE
UNIVERSE
Chemistry Physics Psychology
Scientific
interpretation of
human
behaviour
Biological
Sciences
History
as facts
Arts as the
imagination
and
plaything of
the Intellect
Botany
Zoolog
y
Periodic
Table
Organic
Chemistry
etc
etc
etc
Vertebrate
s
etc
Invertebrates
etc etc
Families of
The Elements
------ Harmonics just keep getting smaller ------
etc
etc
World I
Inorganic World
With its own
Natural laws
World II
Organic World
With its own
Natural laws
World III
Our New World
With its
manmade laws
and ideas
Independent
Mind
Blotting Paper
Mind
Arts
Classic
Knowledge
History as an
Art form
Science
Paltry
Inquisition
Inquisitive
-ness
Psychology
Aristotelian
human
behaviour
Divine Wisdom
The intuition of
a clever man or
the many
whispers of the
many gods
No Further Harmonics
48
49
Harmonic Three
The Harmony of Subjects
The Good Grocer
If you went in a Grocers Shop and found all the vegetables
just massed into a heap in the middle of the shop you
wouldnt be impressed. We can judge these situations easily
and confidently because they are a repetitive part of daily
lives. It is one of the many ways we resemble our friend on
earth, the Jackdaw. Its basic common sense that arises
from our understanding of the harmonic that is the grocery
shop.
Yet students pile in Universities all over the world in their
millions to study subjects overseen by poor Grocers who
refuse to harmonise their subjects and create the
boundaries that have to be created for harmony to exist. The
most striking example from history was when Religion tried
to completely take over Science and tortured Galileo for
daring to be a Scientist. While subjects in academia may not
be as extreme as that today, there are still those that refuse
to accept boundaries. That refuse to define and explain their
contribution to harmonia.
Subjects are defined by the people who use them: the
professors in Academia, the experts in all their different
places. And by the purposes for which they are used.
Harmonising subjects is about finding boundaries and like all
good grocers places to put the material youre dealing with.
Its always easier to explain something by describing how its
done when it is done well. Like the good grocer you know
hes good when you see his goods properly displayed. You
know what hes done and how hes achieved it without
having asked him.
50
Lets begin by examining the harmony of the easiest subject.
The one most men to-day would agree with. Even if most
men didnt not many years ago.
Science:- A statement is highly scientific if it is highly
refutable (i.e. exposes itself to being shown to be wrong) but
isnt refuted.
Thats job done. The harmony of science is explained.
Inside that boundary is science and outside is imagination
and all other subjects. Now we have a serviceable harmonic
in its own place. With its own structure and function we know
and understand. And more importantly we can use.
Although the Greeks learned how to harmonise science,
medieval men became Aristotelians when they disclaimed
the harmony of science and removed its boundaries.
Science returned to witchcraft. Even Newton was affected
by these boundaries. In addition to being a scientist with
boundaries he was an Alchemist without boundaries. He
was the last of the medieval wizards and the first of the
modern scientists.
Science isnt a subject with the footprint of harmonia
stamped on it. Science is the footprint of harmonia. ITS
NOT JUST A SUBJECT, ITS A WAY OF THINKING.
Geography:- Is at first sight a strange subject: neither an
arts subject or a science subject. Its difficult to explain its
harmony because its harmony depends on its function. And
its function is to harmonise.
Geography developed in the wake of the sciences. As
science became increasing successful its many branches
were spreading into all sorts of different places. It became
Geographys job to help science locate all its different
51
activities. It is a system of reference points that science uses
to locate itself.
Lines of longitude, latitude, land masses, seas, oceans,
cities, rivers, lakes, climatic regions etc etc. Its uses became
apparent in other areas apart from science. It became useful
to businesses, tourism etc and so became a subject.
Its all about harmonising. Its a harmonising subject helping
other subjects to locate the places of their activities. The
diagram on the front of the book is a geography lesson. It is
a map of the human thinking mind and will greatly assist us
in Part III of the book when we come to explain the structure
of the mind and how the structure relates to the function of
the mind, i.e. the harmony of the mind.
Psychology:- Seems to enjoy having one foot in the arts
camp and one in science camp and going from one to
another like a jumping bean. Sometimes making harmonised
statements (in the manner of Socrates) and sometimes
making disharmonised statements (in the manner of
Aristotle).
Psychologists have the habit of claiming psychology is a
young subject less than 100 years old (another un-
harmonised Aristotelian statement).
Psychology started with Socrates 2,400 years ago who used
it not only to treat patients problems but used it to educate
the youth of the day. Todays Psychologists havent quite
caught up with Socrates and the potential of their subject to
educate the youth of the day, but they have gone so far
along the road of harmonising the subject, so that it can now
be used to treat those people they regard as their patients.
Strange how its that they are the ones with the money!!
Socrates educated the youth of the day to harmonise their
own Thinking Minds (Free of charge). He educated them on
52
the streets with his Dialectic which was a one to one
discussion with the student in which Socrates allowed the
student to think, he was asking and then answering his own
questions (he was being led by Socrates). This went on till
the student reached a paradox which he had to solve.
Usually by having to withdraw some claim to know (because
the mind tends to have many of these paradoxes, I refer to it
as relieving intellectual constipation).
Many Psychologists come from the Arts and tend to have
the unreasoning habits of Aristotle. Many Psychologists in
the 60s to 80s described the whole of human behaviour in
terms of acquired habits of behaviour. This was their
premise (an unreasoned Aristotelian premise). Sounds
scientific but it isnt. If you harmonise it and expose it to
reason you can see it doesnt work, e.g. you cant explain
the creation of human civilisation by acquired habits of
behaviour even if you can explain the workings of a tribe or
colony of ants by using the idea.
Psychologists realised their mistake about the 1980s and
changed from using theories based on acquired habits of
behaviour to the idea of Cognitive Therapy.
Cognitive Therapy:- In cognitive therapy the psychologist
encourages the patient to do the talking (hes leading the
patient) until the patient reaches the belief that is causing
the problem (identifies a paradox). The patient is then
encouraged to solve the problem of his belief. Usually by
withdrawing some claim to know, in order to relieve his
intellectual constipation.
Hang on! Ive heard all this somewhere before! Its the
Dialectic of Socrates from 2,400 years ago! The
Psychologists now have a harmonic that works for them in
their multi-billion pounds industry. Thanks to Socrates and
harmonia.
53
There are still parts of psychology that refuse what should
be The Mantle of their Profession, The Mantle of
Harmonia, but for our purpose, at this place, psychology is
a subject that is slowly harmonising itself and unravelling
some of the disharmonies of its past and present problems.
The Arts:- Aristotles Footprint
C. P. Snow, a famous modern intellectual, who moves
around the world in the manner of a celebrity reports. Many
times I have found myself in a room of 50 or so men who
consider themselves and are considered by the public to be
some of the most educated on the planet and yet between
them dont have the knowledge of one law of science.
The lack of understanding of harmonia is apparent. This is
Aristotles Footprint: It affects people educated in the upper
echelons of the Arts more than any other group of people on
the planet and virtually all your leaders are chosen from this
group so there is considerable support for the footprint of
Aristotle.
The Boundaries of the Arts
The Seedbed of all ideas
The Collins English Dictionary defines everything non-
science as the Arts. This means History, Psychology,
Education, Politics, the Law, Religion. Its not a very helpful
definition. It doesnt tell you what the Arts are. It tells you
what they are not. Its hidden purpose is not to describe
subjects but to take them away from science so they dont
become contaminated with harmonia. It doesnt obey the
rules of language with a word as a unit of meaning. Its a unit
of non-meaning. Its a typical example of Aristotelian
disharmony.
54
The only way you can harmonise the Arts is by creating its
boundaries. A job the Professors and Experts in the Arts
themselves seemed to have failed to do and the writers of
dictionaries go along with it. Lets do a Socrates and
harmonise the Arts by creating its boundaries. The
boundaries they dont want to create for themselves. If we
remove the obviously independent parts of the Arts such as
History, Religion, Geography and Education we are still left
with a multifarious grouping of subjects that include the
following: Literature, Poetry, Drama, Films, Music etc. They
may inspire and entertain. They may sensitise or de-
sensitise the soul of men but they all have one thing in
common, they are all part of our imagination. Imagination
dreams, dreams and is the Plaything of the Intellect, but it
doesnt reason or make decisions. And those are the
boundaries of the Arts.
Perhaps first appreciated by Mary Shelley (1797 1851)
The wife of famous Percy Shelly, who wrote in the preface of
one of her books I have thus endeavoured to preserve the
truth of the elementary principles of human nature whilst I
have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The
Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, Shakespeare in The
Tempest and Midsummers Night Dream and most
especially Milton in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and
the most humble novelist who seeks to confer to receive
amusement from his labours may, without presumption,
apply to prose fiction a license or rather a rule, from the
adoption of which, so many exquisite combinations of
human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of
poetry.
55
The Importance of Imagination
Mary Shelley is the Socrates of the Arts. Circa the 1830s,
she created the boundaries of the Arts. She harmonised the
concept of imagination. She identified the idea of the Arts as
part of the harmonic of imagination existing separately from
reason. Using reason most certainly but unfettered from its
restrictions.
Spielberg is the Shakespeare of our times. A man of great
talent who knows how to entertain us with the medium of
celluloid film at his disposal. Shakespeare was a man of
great talent who knew how to entertain the folk of his time in
the theatre, with the magic of his words delivered in the way
described by Mary Shelly.
Neither claim an especial privilege to philosophy. They both
epitomise what it means to be in the Arts. They are
entertainers. Nothing more, nothing less. Peddlers in the use
of imagination. The plaything of their intellects. The seed
bed of all ideas.
History
There probably isnt an educated man on earth who
wouldnt agree that reason forms the boundaries of Science.
At the other end of the spectrum of subjects there probably
isnt an educated man on the surface of the earth who
wouldnt agree that History is a rag bag of lies and
propaganda written for the most part by politicians
determined to secure their positions as tribal leaders.
History is written by the Victors. I said this to my M.P. and
she retorted Well, what do you expect?
Now theres a Disclaimer of Harmony for you, an example at
the very seat of power and not even aware of The Footprint
of Aristotle, probably never even heard of him never mind
his footprint.
56
History is not an Arts subject. It should be an accurate
account of events, but it is written by Arts graduates who
dont understand harmonia: Its not an entertainment
medium. Its supposed to be a true record of our history: but
its written by people who understand hardly anything of the
Sciences and have been educated to look down on the
Sciences. History is not there to inspire, its there to inform,
but its written by men, who see their function in life to
inspire.
The time may come when history should be given a
respectable burial but this is not that time this is the time to
hold her close as we would one of our own and not to see
her as the dusty subject of dusty clerks and art students. I
think it is a terrible indictment of our equality based
Aristotelian democracy that even one of our 500 MPs think
like that but if I was a betting man I would bet shes one very
small tip of a large iceberg. History contains the essence of
our being in our New World of New Things Under the Sun.
As the Greeks looked out from themselves and saw
harmonia we look out from ourselves and we see our
history. Nature made harmonia and our history has made
our being. We are born into the many jostles of lifes events
that are our history.
A child cant harmonise the present until he knows the
places hes come from. And the places youve come from
are in your past, not in the footprint of another mans ideas
of the past.
My M.P. couldnt understand the idea. Even after a long
discussion, to her the Victors writing the history was as
acceptable as ever.
57
The Classics:- A creation of work considered to be definitive.
And definitive means:- final and unable to be questioned or
altered.
These definitions are from the Collins Dictionary. It could just
have easily read Ultimate Truths. This is Aristotles territory
and Platos heaven in our most respected universities. No
harmony of reason here. No boundaries to their subjects,
just endless certainties and perfect heavens, the breeding
grounds of arrogance and superstition.
These are the university departments our leaders graduate
from with double honours to become your leaders in
waiting. And theyve been doing it for hundreds of years. No
questions asked. No answers needed; its definitive; no
change needed!!! And as a footnote. Not one original
reasoned idea in the 2,000 years of their existence!
They are the men C.P. Snow keeps bumping into all over
the world. The men that consider themselves to be the most
educated on the planet and the men the public consider to
be the most educated. The men charged with educating
your children. The men who as C.P. Snow remarks havent
come to understand a law of science and have probably
never studied it. The men who become the directors of
education for the BBC and refer to science as that paltry
inquisitiveness they dain to call natural science. The men
who become the Head of Ofsted and declare education to
be his precious ideas being passed to the next generation.
58
The Harmonics of the Independent Mind
The Harmonics of Wisdom
Socrates, the good grocer, created the harmonics of
wisdom.

Reason is the harmonic of the mind where reason
and reason alone decides if a statement is
reasonable or unreasonable.

Imagination is the harmonic of the mind where
imagination and imagination alone dreams its
dreams, unfettered from the other harmonics.

Semantics decides the role of language and the
meaning of words.

The Intellect is the boss of the mind. The harmonic of
the mind that collects all the information together and
makes all the final decisions.
Armed with the five harmonics of wisdom and the dialectic
the Intellectual Warrior Socrates created the most powerful
entity in the known universe. The Independent Mind. He was
the worlds first Intellectual Warrior. The worlds first
Harmonist. A man designed to consign the gladiators and
rutting galleries of the Romans to the history books.
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Harmonic Four
Reason, the Harmoniser
(or Reason the Referee)
Socrates taught the youth of the day:-
To use reason to care for their minds.
A Referee applies the rules of the game to the game as it is
being played. He decides what can be allowed and what to
disallow.
Reason, the harmoniser of the mind, does the same thing as
a Referee. Reason decides which statements are
reasonable and which statements are unreasonable. It then
informs the intellect of its decision. If the harmony of reason
fails then disharmony of the intellect follows.
Unfortunately for football fans the rules of football are many
and more complicated than the rules of reason. There is the
offside rule, the no hands rule, the exception of the
goalkeeper rule, the throw in rules, the many foul rules etc
etc. Considering the added disadvantages of the speed of
the game and the difficulty of having to be in the right place
at the right time its a credit to the crowd and to the Referee
that for the most part the game goes off smoothly. It is one
of those occasions when everybody seems to understand
how reason (i.e. the rules of the game) is the common
ground that exists between all men, if they look for it :- If
they look for it they will learn to trust it and in trusting it learn
to trust one another. Its sometimes referred to as the
Rational Unity of Mankind. If they do not have their Referee
they do not have their football match. And thats as near to
60
World War III as it can get! Its not the winning or the loosing
anymore. It is:- there is No Game!! Now stick that in your
philosophers pipe and smoke it!!
The Rules of Reason on the other hand can be summarised
in one simple rule. One so simple even our bird brained
friend, the Jackdaw can understand it:
The Rule of Refutability
Refute:- to show by reason or example something to be
wrong.
A statement is highly scientific (highly reasonable) if it
exposes itself to being shown to be wrong but isnt shown to
be wrong.
E.g. Jack is sitting on the wall.
This is a very scientific (reasonable) statement because we
can all see him, touch him, hear him, smell him and if we
expose him to all the tests of science they will all say hes
there. And we havent found one reason or one piece of
evidence which says he isnt there.
But it did
expose itself to
being tested
This isnt
working, time
to move on
61
And the opposite:-
A statement is highly unscientific (highly unreasonable) if it
doesnt expose itself to being shown to be wrong or can be
refuted.
E.g. Jack is hiding behind the wall.
This is a highly unscientific (unreasonable) statement
because we cant see him, touch him, hear him, smell him
and cant expose him to any of the tests of science.
When we have learned how to decide if a statement is
reasonable or unreasonable, we have our PREMISE.
But for a REASONED PREMISE there is one more
condition. When Socrates was asked why the Oracle at
Delphi said he was the wisest man in the whole of Greece,
he answered:
If I am the wisest man in the whole of Greece, it
is because I know I do not know
REASONABLE
UNREASONABLE
62
Socrates had defined the reasoned premise of all arguments
and all ideas. The Reasoned Premise based on
1. Refutability
2. Uncertainty
Once you accept this premise you have allowed yourself to
change it or dismiss it, if you find something that refutes it.
IT WORKS LIKE A STEPPING STONE.
The Stepping Stone Theory of Coming to Knowledge
If we accept a premise as uncertain and highly refutable it
starts to work, like a stepping stone.
1. We can change our stepping stone for another
because it is not certain (knowledge).
2. We can choose the next one because it appears to
be a better option. When you move from one
stepping stone to another across a river you change
stepping stones because the one you go to appears
to be a better option (refutability). You permit yourself
to leave an old stepping stone because you were
never completely sure about it anyway.
Summary
The Harmonised Premise of Argument of Socrates claims:-
A statement is highly reasonable if it is highly refutable but
not refuted but is still accepted as uncertain.
It works like a stepping stone towards the truth. It is the way
scientific thinking works today. No other way for Science to
work has been found. It was endorsed by Einstein in the
1930s who said:
63
If I ask a 100 questions (refutability) and 99 are
wrong Ive been successful.
And:
I know my theory is the best but I also know it is
wrong. Only I dont know how.
Looking for the reasoned premises of argument is creative
reasoned thinking.
Try this for yourself. Put Creative Reasoned Thinking into
Google and note the response. Then put Critical Inquiry
into Google and note the response. When I did it there were
750,000 entries for creative reasoned thinking and
27,000,000 for critical inquiry. The difference is phenomenal.
And the reason for this is the Disclaimer of Harmony,
Aristotle and his enormous fan club in Academia today in the
subjects of the Arts. Particularly in what is known as the
classics and we will deal with that later but for the present it
is their definition of Reason we are interested in. And how its
main purpose seems not to be as a tool of Reason but a
device to disclaim the Harmony of Socrates Premise of
Argument.
Aristotles Premise of Argument
Aristotle is called the Father of the Arts because he
changed the reasoned definition of a premise of argument of
Socrates (the scientific premise of argument) to an
unreasoned definition of the premise of argument that suited
both leaders and academics who lacked the intellectual
ability or the will to understand the reasoned premise or
wanted to Disclaim the harmony of science.
All proof rests on premises
Aristotle
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How do you know what a premise is?
A premise is an Ultimate Truth
Aristotle
What is an Ultimate Truth?
A truth knowable by really clever men
Aristotle
Wow! The reasoned premise of argument has been
replaced by a clever mans opinion. Gone the humility and
potential to harmonise of Socrates, who said If I am wise it
is because I know I do not know and in its place the wrong
one of Aristotle, one of the really clever men. And Socrates
even predicted what would happen next.
Superstition follows arrogance as a father.
And it did through 2,300 years of history. And it still does
today.
THE UN-HARMONISED (UNREASONED) PREMISE OF
ARGUMENT OF ARISTOTLE
The un-harmonised Premise of Argument was defined by
Aristotle. When asked what a premise was Aristotle said it
was an Ultimate Truth. When asked what an Ultimate
Truth was he answered a truth knowable by a really clever
man. Thats not a reasoned premise. Its an unreasoned
premise. It is an opinion which doesnt expose itself to
refutation; It is, at its best, a clever mans opinion; It is, one
step down, the stupidity of a stupid Philosopher. At its worst,
it is the deliberate deceit of an intellectual wimp frightened to
leave his tribal harmonic and join the rest of humanity with
an Independent Mind.
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CRITICAL INQUIRY
The Stairway Theory of Knowledge
When you accept a premise as an ultimate truth you create
a step towards the truth which you accept as certain.
Your next task is to create another step towards the truth
and so on. Its like building a stairway towards the truth.
Unfortunately if the first step is wrong the whole stairway is
built on shaky foundations and is doomed to failure.
During the age of reason they used this premise all the time
to create great intellectual sand castles in the air,
culminating in discussions lasting for months on such things
as to how many angels could dance on the point of a
needle.
An unreasoned premise is an un-harmonised statement
one which has not been exposed to reason and observation.
The Disharmony of Reason in the Quotes of Aristotle
The quotes of Aristotle demonstrate his lack of
understanding or his intention to disclaim the harmony of
Socratic Reason. Any 16 year old, once theyve been shown
how to harmonise, can expose the disharmony in all
Aristotles quotes. Lets look at some examples:-
~~~~~~~~~~~~
All proof rests on premises
Yes, all reasoned proof rests on reasoned premises and all
unreasoned proof rests on unreasoned premises.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those that know do, those that understand
teach
How can you know and not understand. And how can you
understand and not know. Its mumbo jumbo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The greatest virtues are those which are most
useful to another person
Even if youre a really clever man, like Aristotle, how can
you possibly know whats useful to other people? Its
arrogance.
Socrates said:
The greatest virtue in life is finding out what you
didnt know
Socrates encourages people to harmonise by encouraging
people to find out for themselves. The other is an act of
disharmony aimed at telling people what they should know
(as in a tribe).
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Art not only imitates nature but completes its
deficiencies
The harmony of Socrates imitates nature but doesnt claim
to understand natures deficiencies and neither how to
improve on them. Every man will have a different version of
natures deficiencies and further a different version of how to
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improve on them. And further Im not so sure we should call
nature deficient.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Education is an ornament in times of prosperity
and a refuge in times of adversity
So we all send billions of pounds a year and work our socks
off to educate our children to change them into ornaments?!
The ex Chief Inspector of OFSTED, Chris Woodhead,
defines education as:-
A conversation between the generations about
what is worth preserving
Is he talking about preserving ornaments? Ideas? Harmony?
Jam? Aristotles ideas? Platos ideas? Chris Woodheads
opinions? Theres no harmony in any part of their ideas.
Does Chris Woodhead not understand that science is about
creating new ideas not preserving old ideas that dont
explain?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
All men by nature desire to know
Its not reasoned. How does he know? How many men has
he asked? And if it is true why did he claim:
Some men are by nature free and others slaves.
The slave is totally devoid of any faculty of
reason
Its mumbo jumbo at its best and deception and mumbo
jumbo at its worst. Its NOT harmony under any
circumstances.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fundamental to the idea of democracy is the
idea of equality
Again Aristotle hasnt harmonised his statement and has
either mistakenly or on purpose misquoted the fundamental
idea of democracy. He goes on to say:-
Democracy arises out of the notion that those
that are equal in one respect (i.e. one man one
vote) are equal in all respects
Someone forgot to tell Aristotle:
The fundamental idea of democracy is the
individual
The fundamental idea of the individual is an
individual mind
The fundamental idea of the individual mind is
the idea of reason
The fundamental idea of reason is the idea of
reasoned premise
The fundamental idea of reasoned premise is
the idea of intellectual honesty
Therefore the very existence of a democratic state rests on
the promotion and use of the reasoned premise of an
argument. Equality isnt fundamental to the idea of
democracy.
It is a condition that occurs as a result of the consequences
of Individual Rights (one man one vote).
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The Harmonised Quotes of Socrates v.
The Un-harmonised Quotes of Aristotle
The Harmoniser Socrates
The Disclaimer of Harmony
Aristotle
To find yourself think for
yourself
The greatest virtues are
those you know are useful to
another person
Education is a flame (the
Flame of Harmonising)
Education is an ornament
Harmony is knowing
everything is in its place
Art not only imitates nature
but completes its deficiencies
The premise of an argument
is uncertain
The premise of an argument
is certain (an Ultimate Truth)
The premise of a reasoned
argument is highly refutable
The premise of an argument
doesnt need to be refuted
Morals are ideas youve
found out for yourself
Morals are ideas you know
are useful to another person
Fundamental to the idea of
democracy is the idea of the
individual with all their
individual differences
Fundamental to the idea of
democracy is the idea of
equality with all its similarities
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Socrates taught the
individual to use reason to
care for their minds
Aristotle taught the common
man should not eat, wash or
even think of acting
independently
Respect everything done in
the name of reason
Take no notice of reason or
evil effects will follow.
Aristotles Quick Sands or Harmonics of Reason
When a country or state achieves independence what
characterises that independence is its governance is
transferred from outside itself to its own internally appointed
system based on a constitution of its own making. A fairly
obvious statement when we make it about countries and
states and easily understood because the vocabulary we
use to describe it forms on a regular part of our daily lives.
We know about governments, borders, voting, sovereignty
etc, where these things begin and where they end and how
they harmonise to create this self contained harmonic we
proudly call our country.
The rules for the Independence of an individual are the
same as for a country. If the individual is to be an entity then
it has to have the power to govern itself. A mind that cant
govern itself is like a country that cant govern itself. It cant
be independent. There are no if buts, yes buts.
The Necessary Conditions of the Independent Mind
1. The Independence of Morality
Morality is similar to the constitution of a country. As
the governance of a country establishes its own
constitution so the intellect of the mind creates its
own constitution called Morality. Where all the
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important ideas about life are stored. An independent
morality assures an independent emotionality. We
will discuss this later.
2. The Independence of Reason
In a parliamentary Democracy agreement is achieved
by consensus. The idea of one man one vote.
Its an equality born out of the need to recognise the
democratic rights of the individual. The success of
the system of democracy rests firmly on the basis
that the majority of the people on the majority of the
occasions will make the most reasonable decisions. If
the opposite was the case a democracy would
become dysfunctional.
It is one of the reasons Socrates said hatred or
dislike of reason is related to hatred or dislike of
humanity.
An individual who constantly makes unreasoned
decisions as opposed to reasoned decisions is going
to move further and further away from the harmony of
reason to become a Disclaimer of the Harmony of
reason.
Reason is fundamental to the independence of the
individual and to the existence of the democratic
state.
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73
Harmonic Five
Reason the Driver of the car and Reason the
Hitch Hiker
A Thesis of Harmony
Harmony is knowing everything is in its place
(Socrates)
This idea is one of the most powerful ideas of human
civilisation and goes a long way towards explaining
harmonics and emotional intelligence.
An Anti-Thesis of Harmony
Being angry, thats easy. Knowing when to be
angry, with whom, to what degree, thats not
easy.
(Aristotle)
This idea is one of the most destructive quotes of human
civilisation and goes a long way to destroying harmonics and
emotional intelligence. It is an Anti-Thesis of harmony.
When the leader of an orchestra knows all the different parts
of the orchestra and knows the music he has Intellectual
Harmony.
He knows everything is in its place. When he conducts the
orchestra and they play the music he has Intellectual and
Emotional Harmony.
HE HAS CONNECTED THE INTELLECTUALITY OF HIS
BEING TO THE EMOTIONALITY OF HIS BEING.
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He has been emotionally intelligent. The same things can be
said for the surgeon in the operating theatre, the mechanic
at the racing track, the captain of a ship, the football coach
etc etc. Such is the explanatory power of this idea; we can
just go on and on finding more examples of how it works.
And wherever we look we can find none that show it doesnt
work. Thats Harmony.
REASON DEMANDS HARMONY AND HARMONY
DEMANDS:-
1. MANY EXAMPLES THAT SHOW IT WORKS
2. NONE THAT SHOW IT DOESNT.
HARMONY OCCURS:-
WHEN WE CAN MEET BOTH CRITERIA.
DISHARMONY OCCURS:-
WHEN WE CANT MEET BOTH CRITERIA.
For Socrates and his few supporters Reason is always the
Driver of the car and the roadways are always roadways of
reason.
Socrates was the worlds first Harmonist.
Harmonist:-
A person who believes in introducing the harmony of reason
to the whole cultural fabric of life.
- Into his explanations of the material world (e.g. the
Sciences Physics, Chemistry, Biology).
- Into his Social life and politics (e.g. Democracy).
- Into his Spiritual Life (e.g. New Emotions).
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The Orchestra leader, the mechanic, the football coach
harmonise their jobs. They have to. They all understand that
and we all understand that and judge them on their
understanding.
Theyre what many of us are:-
They are part-time harmonisers, or more accurately part
place harmonisers.
In the home the rules of the work place dont apply. Here
the ideas of harmony are optional to others like those of
Aristotle. Leaders have spent thousands of years practising
the art of:- the when, to what degree, with whom and for
what reason. It is a way of thinking that suits the purposes
of leaders of tribal groups to perfection, as Plato described.
When you use anger to control human behaviour you are
using an emotion to create intellectual direction. And if you
list all the places anger can be created the list is almost
endless. And when you list all the places anger can take you
the list is also endless. You dont know where the emotions
come from or the places they can take you. Youre on a
journey of passion into dark places.
Reason must always come before emotion. Reason must
always be the arbiter of intellectual direction and not the
emotions ideas create. When emotions are allowed to
decide intellectual direction, reason becomes a hitchhiker
the driver picks up when he feels like it and drops off when
their directions part. This is Disharmony. The Anti-Thesis of
harmony. The world of Aristotle and Plato.
The Rubicon
There is a place in Central Canada where a few cms in
height make the difference between water flowing NW into
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the Arctic Circle or East into the Atlantic and the Gulf
Stream. Both very different journeys with very different
destinations. If you subject all your ideas to harmony you
develop, piece by piece, mm by mm, an Independent Mind
that understands how reason works, how democracies work
and how to control your own New Emotions and create
harmony. You develop emotional intelligence.
If you dont subject all your ideas to the harmony of reason
and pick up tit bits of ideas from here and there and
gratefully munch on the crumbs falling from the tables of the
Great and Glorious, youre no longer flowing like a fresh
mountain stream, youre picking bits and pieces of sediment
from here and there, your flowing like a stagnant river. No
particular piece might seem to be important but lots of them
muddy the river and in the mind cause intellectual
constipation. Your mind becomes a patchwork quilt of other
mens ideas. And with intellectual ownership of the mind
emotions swiftly follow to create emotional disharmony.
It was what Socrates meant when he said:-
Superstition follows arrogance as a father
Every quote of Aristotle uses reason as a hitchhiker or is an
opinion. Any 16 year old having been shown how to
harmonise can understand the disharmony in all Aristotles
quotes.
All Socrates quotes conform to the harmony of reason. You
can find many examples which show them to be right and
none which show them to be wrong. Reason is always the
driver of the car.
All Aristotles quotes are the Anti-Thesis of reason. They all
seem to be reasonable but their hidden message is
unreason or disharmony. Reason is a hitchhiker.
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Harmonic Six
Harmonising Words
The Problem of the Medieval Knight and the way of the
Jackdaw
Every problem word or idea starts on The Bosss Desk or
The Intellects Desk. The Intellect, the minds boss, then
does what all bosses do, it does what he wants.
Harmony dictates that all other thinking skills are restricted
in what they can do. Reason is restricted by the rules of
reason. Semantics is restricted by the rules of language and
imagination dreams, dreams and does what it wants free
from the fetters of reason and the rules of language until the
point of decision is reached. And then the boss, the intellect,
takes over. The process of the continuation of the act of
harmonising is then left completely under the control of the
intellect and its special powers to make decisions.
If the intellect fails to harmonise, harmonising comes to an
end and disharmony ensues.
There are good bosses who follow a harmonisable road (the
road of reason). Who perhaps make and sometimes lose a
lot of money. They are like the Jackdaw in your garden that
fails to crack its tea time nut. The Jackdaw abandons the nut
and moves on to one with a more delicate looking shell but it
doesnt abandon reason because it is their knowledge of
reason that tells the Jackdaw youre in the wrong place, its
time to move on. Failure is built into the system. He moves
on but with the added benefit of knowing the place he left
better than before.
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Then there are the bad bosses who make or lose a lot of
money. If he doesnt harmonise and accept failure is built
into the system he loses the benefits harmony can bring. He
behaves like a medieval knight in heavy armour.
Orchestra leaders, mechanics and football coaches have
learned how to harmonise their thinking skills. They look to
their established professions for advice and look to the
mistresses of their Thinking Skills, Reason, Imagination and
Semantics (word meanings).
Semantics is most often the first mistress to be consulted.
Shes the wrapping paper the problem arrived in on the desk
of the intellect.
Words are ideas. They are our own best attempt to
understand the complex of our experiences which surround
a word or idea, i.e. the harmony of the idea. All those things
together which combine to explain the place of the idea
the wisdom of the harmony of Socrates.
Not the opposite idea expressed by Plato, the idea of
perfect words. One of the most intellectually naive ideas in
the whole of what some people call philosophy. Platos ideas
belong in the harmonic of literature or religion, not the
harmonic of philosophy.
We have to describe the language first because our problem
is within language and its meanings. Word meanings are
reported on by: the Rule of Common Usage.
Common Usage:- what a word means is the way its used.
Words are units of meaning. More exactly they are
harmonics of meanings. A complex of reasoned ideas. That
varies from one person to the next.
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Hopefully one word and one simple unit of meaning and
maybe we have instant harmony and we can all relax a bit
and say language has done its job.
Some of the words of Science, are like this but we still have
the problem of The Big or Important words. Big words
are words which are often central to our culture and often
seem to have many overlapping meanings. The Jackdaw
doesnt have this problem, because although it has a
language, its highly unlikely it has become encumbered with
Big words. The meanings of Big words have been
ascribed not only by common usage, as in Jackdawland, but
often as in humanland by Scholars trying to get the most out
of an existing word or trying to gain control of a word, or the
site of a word for their own purposes.
The value of a word is not dissimilar to the value of a house.
It is made up of two main parts. The value of the site known
as location, location, location and the value of the house on
the site, e.g. a premise:- is a first statement. This is the site
of the word. The idea on the site is the meaning. Socrates
defined a premise as uncertain.
Aristotle came later and defined a premise as an ultimate
truth knowable by a really clever man.
Aristotle had very craftily taken over the site created by
Socrates and put another completely different idea on the
site. Its intellectual plagiarism that those in high office and
professors and students of the Classics pretend not to notice
or lack the intellect to understand.
The Socratic Premise, the basis of the stepping stone theory
of coming to knowledge has been turned into an Aristotelian
Premise, the basis of the stairway theory of coming to
knowledge called critical inquiry. And ambiguity has been
created. One word, one site, two meanings. The scientist is
80
like the Jackdaw whos tea was never certain. As the
Jackdaw moves on to his next nut, the Scientist moves to
his next hypothesis. Strange as it may seem they are
brothers in reason that understand the common ground of
reason that joins tea time nuts to theories of gravity. They
understand the harmony reason brings. Its fundamental to
what they both do. But it doesnt stop there because their
relationship is even closer than it seems at first sight. Not
only do they understand the harmony of reason, they
understand the anti-thesis of reason. They understand
disharmony and how it causes chaos.
As important as knowing which bridge to build is knowing
which bridge to burn.
The followers of Aristotles definition have been bewitched
by the certainty of the chosen idea. Their own chosen idea
or anybodys chosen idea. They are the chosen people.
We can choose from the options of all clever men, our own
options and throw in the options of reason as well or throw
them away. Were heavily armed like a medieval knight. The
knight has clothed himself in many layers of armour. The
heavier he gets the harder he is to kill but the heavier he
gets the harder he finds it to kill.
Harmony isnt working in the knights favour. Definitions of
words that cloth themselves in layers or meaning become
like the medieval knight. Hard to dismiss. The layers of
meaning keep them in several places and act as an antidote
to the harmony of reason. It becomes as Aristotle wanted.
Take no notice of reason or evil effects will
follow
(Aristotle)
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The Evil Effects he refers to are:-

The acceptance of harmony.

The dismissal of disharmony, i.e. The chosen ideas
of the chosen man have been saved from what
should have been their fate their execution or
dismissal from the playing field. They are the bridges
we should have learned to burn. They are the steps
on the stairway to sandcastles in the air. They are the
pieces of unreasoned sediment in the mind that
combine to create intellectual constipation.
The problem has been so intricately infused into the whole
system the public are left with not one idea of a premise but
two and unless in the hurly burly of life they make the effort
to harmonise the words they use, they will forever live in the
cleft between two words. They will never understand the
harmony of words. And they will do what water does: take
the path of least resistance. They blotch the idea of reason
and make it opinion. Never ever coming to understand
reason based on refutation. If you dont believe me ask the
next professor or student of the Classics you meet.
The Ambiguity of Language
All our Big Words are infected with the pestilence of
Ambiguity. Its not just an ambiguity of the shades of grey
variety. It is, if you look carefully at the problem, an
ambiguity of black and white, of complete contrasts of
meaning. Its a labyrinth of paradoxes. If a word has two
contrasting meanings, why not have two words to reflect the
two meanings? Because it involves site value. We can
change the meaning of a word but as with a house and
landmass you cant change the place of the site. The
landmass of a word is its place in harmonia. That cant be
changed so the plagiariser has to change the price of the
house, i.e. the meaning of the word.
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This has come about as a result of the Aristotelians and their
un-harmonised meanings of words and the Socratics with
their harmonised meanings of words.
As an example lets take a look at one of our Big Words.
One that is at the very centre of our culture and should be, if
harmony is our purpose: one we should make frequent
reference to, but we dont: it has become lost like a piece of
drift wood at the gate of Scholarly Medieval Knights. The
Jackdaws dont even use it for their morning poos anymore,
even they have been warned off. Its there for show days.
The flags, the trumpets and those important parades. Lets
take a look at the word Civilisation.
Civilisation:- is defined in two very different ways. The
hardest definition to find in the Dictionaries (just try it out,
see for yourself) is the harmonised definition. The one that
has been harmonised by introducing it to reason: the one
that suits Scientists and Harmonists.
The harmonised definition is:-
Civilisations occur when a group of people create original
reasoned ideas at a rate greatly in excess of their
neighbours, e.g. the ancient Greeks. A small number of
Greeks produced the foundation of Western Civilisation in
a short period of a few hundred years.
The un-harmonised definition is:-
Civilisations occur when a group or population of people
spread ideas throughout a large area, e.g. The Roman
Empire, or as Classics Scholars like to call it Roman
Civilisation.
These definitions are so different it doesnt make sense for
any writer or thinker to use the word without making it clear
which definition he is using. One idea creates new reasoned
ideas, in the manner of an Independent Mind. The other idea
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spreads or blotches ideas, in the manner of a blotting paper
mind. The Romans plagiarised the ideas of the Greeks (they
loved Aristotle, because he taught them the fine art of
plagiarism). Then they spread them through their Empire
calling it civilisation. Then charged for their services of
course.
It is similar to the idea of the man who invents a car to earn
a living and the salesperson who sells a car and makes a
fortune. Unfortunately it has been the way of the last 2,000
years. Men who know the value of something and the price
of nothing and men who know the price of everything and
the value of nothing.
The Romans came, they saw, they conquered but they
never understood.
Our educators today are the mirror image of the Romans,
when they say as the chief inspector of OFSTED said:
Education is a conversation between the generations about
what is worth preserving. I take this to mean that they
understand how to make jam! An important part of
civilisation in anybodys book! The idea of old men
conversing with young children about their precious ideas
sounds one sided. Not perhaps as one sided as the idea of
being the arbiter of the use of anger as in Pax Roma, but the
disharmony is omnipresent and obvious.
Lets take a look at another important word supposedly
central to our culture, one we have had wars over in Europe,
as in the Middle East one our youth fight for and lose their
lives for under the direction of our leaders. Lets see if we
can harmonise it and add some emotional intelligence to yet
another example of the pestilence of the ambiguity of words.
Lets look at the idea of democracy.
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Some Ambiguous Words
The words that are most susceptible are the big and
important words like these that follow:-
Word/Idea Harmonised
Definition
Un-harmonised
Definition
Civilisation A civilisation
occurs when a
population creates
new reasoned
ideas at a rate
greatly in excess of
their neighbours
e.g. Greek
civilisation.
A civilisation occurs
when a population
spreads new
reasoned ideas e.g.
Roman civilisation.
Education Teaching students
how to think for
themselves using
their own
reasoning minds.
A conversation
between the
generations about
what is worth
observing.
Soul A Mind. A mind that can live
outside the body.
Morality Individuals own
important ideas
about life. Created
using the reasoned
premise of
argument.
Important ideas
about life: from
scripture, priests,
divine wisdom, the
law, philosophers,
writers and teachers.
Mind Self contained
thinking unit.
Independent.
Not self contained.
Governed from
without the blotting
paper mind.
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Citizen Ideas on
citizenship extend
to the whole world:
citizens
united by reason:
universans.
Ideas on citizenship
extend as far as
religious and political
boundaries. Citizens
united by nation,
religion and tribe.
Secularist A person who
believes in
introducing reason
to the whole fabric
of culture and life.
A Christian lay
person who collects
the money in
Church.
Atheist A person who
believes he does
not believe in God.
A person who
denies the existence
of god. Who is
antagonistic to
religion. An ignorant
soulless person.
Coming to
knowledge
The Stepping
Stone Theory.
The Stairway
Theory.
Premise Refutable and
uncertain.
Difficult to refute and
certain. An Ultimate
Truth.
God The unknown. An omnipotent
being.
Re-naissance The re-introduction
of reason into the
fabric of society.
The re-birth of
learning.
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Science Using reason and
observation to
explain the material
world and life.
That paltry
inquisitiveness they
dain to call natural
science. Stobbard
professor of the
Classics.
Democracy The idea of the
individual is
fundamental.
The idea of equality
is fundamental.
Secular Reasoned. Not religious.
Western
Civilisation
Western European
Civilisation.
Greek Civilisation
and Western
European
Civilisation.
Middle Eastern
Civilisation
Greek and
Egyptian
Civilisation.
Egyptian Civilisation.
Social Harmony Harmony. Respect.
Emotional
Intelligence
Emotional Intellect. Emotional
Intelligence.
In all these words you can see the harmony of Socrates and
the footprint of Aristotle.
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The Power of Harmonising Words (or Ideas)
Its a popular idea today to have a list of things to do before
you die. One of the great things about this idea is, that it
takes you away from your life as a couch potato. You have
to get up and go: jump off bridges: climb mountains and
even jump out of planes. But if having done all that life on
the couch doesnt seem so bad. Try this one:
Try harmonising, at least once in your life, your own chosen
word or idea. When an inventor does it first he comes to
understand a harmonic of nature before anyone else. The
caretaker who harmonised the idea of a vacuum harnessed
an enormous economic power, as well as a harmonic of
physics, that scientists of the day had never thought of. But
then the caretaker is a scientist. A scientist who caretakes.
Newton harmonised the idea of up and down to create his
Theory of Gravity. Both these men have one thing in
common, they both harmonised their chosen ideas. The
caretaker his idea on suction. Newton his idea of up and
down. Theyre both harmonisers. One became very rich on
the back of his harmonised idea of suction. But remained for
ever a caretaker. The other became very famous with his
harmonised idea of up and down and became lauded as
one of the worlds greatest scientists and was rewarded with
a job on the council on a par with a caretaker!! thats
karma, the harmony of reason manifesting itself at the social
level of peoples existence.
Lets illustrate what harmony is and the power of
harmonising words by considering how Newton harmonised
his idea of up and down.
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Newtons Idea of Gravity
When you harmonise words or ideas by introducing them to
reason and observation their explanatory power increases
enormously. Science is much more than just a subject, it is
the act of harmonising words and ideas by introducing them
to reason and observation.
Lets illustrate how this works by explaining how Newton
used his imagination to create new ideas and then exposed
them to observations to create new reasoned ideas in the
form of his Harmonic of Gravity.
How Newton Harmonised the Idea of Up and
Down to Create The Idea of Gravity.
Before Newton the nearest idea to gravity was the idea of
up and down from the flat earth theory.
One day walking through his orchard Newton was hit by a
falling apple ouch! It hurt.
The idea of a FORCE was created next to the idea of up and
down.
Further reasoning and observation suggested (the next
premise) the force was not just from up to down but was
from up to the centre of earth. The apple acted in the
same way all over the round earth.
The idea of a CENTRE was created (and not a horizontal
line) next to the idea of up and down.
The larger mass of the earth was pulling the smaller mass of
the apple towards itself, (the force of gravity); the effect of
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the pull of the earth on the smaller mass of the moon pulled
it towards the earth.
The idea of masses attracting other masses was created
next to the idea of up and down.
The pull of the sun although much further away pulled the
moon and stopped it falling into the earth. It stayed in orbit
around the earth.
The moon also pulled the earth. The tides on earth were
caused by this pull.
The evidence of sun and moon is the evidence for attracting
masses.
Newton went on using the same process of harmonising to
explain planetary movements. The seasons, eclipses,
hundreds of years into the future! AND ALL BY
INTRODUCING REASON AND OBSERVATION TO THE
WORDS UP AND DOWN.
How the Harmonic of Gravity is Created.
The Ideas Are:- The idea of the mass of the earth, the moon,
the sun and other planets; The idea of mass and forces; The
idea of a force; Idea of distance; Idea of tides; Idea of orbits.
Idea of centre. The relationship between all these ideas give
us our harmonic gravity.
Newton asked and then answered all the questions that
related these ideas. Found a place for all of them. Its that
simple but strangely enough, it probably appears to be
simpler for the jackdaw because his mind hasnt been
polluted with the idea of the possibilities of doing things in
another way.
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Whenever a word is harmonised its EXPLANATORY
POWER INCREASES ENORMOUSLY. IT DOES NOT
JUST MIRACULOUSLY HAPPEN TO WORDS OF
SCIENCE, IT HAPPENS TO ALL WORDS THAT ARE
ATTEMPTS TO DESCRIBE THE UNKNOWN, even if they
belong to an arts subject.
THE BIG PROBLEM WITH WORDS IS THAT CERTAIN
SUBJECTS ACT AS IF THEY OWN WORDS THAT MAKE
UP THEIR SUBJECT MATERIAL.
They have no intention of harmonising them because they
prefer the common man with a blotting paper mind: they
prefer the Stairway Theory of coming to knowledge. And
they still have an academic romance going with Aristotle and
Plato.
If the unknown is reason then we can assume it is many
words/ideas with reasoned connections. When we search
for the truth we are looking for the reasoned connections
that connect the parts of life or the parts of the web to
one another.
Nuggets of Wisdom
These reasoned connections are the Nuggets of Wisdom
that join two words or ideas together. These are the
reasoned premises of argument we are looking for.
The more we find, the more connections we make in the
web of the unknown or in The Thinking Web (see Part III).
Single reasoned ideas become connected to yet more single
reasoned ideas and gather into clusters (harmonics) and the
harmonics have places amongst other harmonics. Like a
snow crystal they come to form the harmony of reality.
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Below is a diagram of the questions that the idea of up and
down creates. I refer to this type of diagram with the
problem in the intellect at the centre as The Seat of
Socrates and I will return to the idea of the Seat in Part II.
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CREATING THE HARMONIC OF GRAVITY
Our Problem of Up and Down is connected in the intellect
to the different harmonics of the mind by questions, e.g.
Up Down

Apple
How does the idea of up and down relate to an apple?
In the above diagram all the arrows represent a form of
shorthand for a question.
e.g. Mass

Up and Down. Is the question.
How does mass relate to the idea of up and down? And so
on all the way around the seat, e.g. how does the idea of the
tides relate to the idea of up and down?
Up and
Down
The Earth
The Moon
The Tides
Distance
The Sun
Orbits
Apple Force Mass
Eclipses The Planets
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In summary: its questions, questions, questions. Its
brainstorming. Using harmony to locate the questions with
the greatest likelihood of success.
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Harmonic Seven
Morality
Morality is the Jewel Box of the Mind where we keep our
own Special Ideas.
The dictionary defines a moral as concerned or relating to
the distinction between good or bad and right or wrong
behaviour. Its a definition based on common usage with
strong Aristotelian roots. It suits the Priest, the moralist
concerned with the distinction between good and bad
behaviour.
It suits the Lawyer, the moralist concerned with the
distinction between right and wrong behaviour. And it suits
Aristotles Philosophy and its control over the Priest and the
lawyer.
It doesnt suit the Educator for many reasons. And few of his
students are going to priests or lawyers. It doesnt suit the
Scientist concerned with understanding the universe, life
and creating civilisation. And last but not least it doesnt suit
the young student the Educator is charged to educate.
Its one more example of Aristotelian disharmony.
Is it possible to give the definition a Socratic make-over,
harmonise it and introduce it to the most important people in
our society. The educators, the scientists and our children
not just the members of two minor middle class professions
who consider their role in life to be that of a moralist?
Lets harmonise and re-define it:
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How we harmonised morality is explained in Part III,
Harmonic Four, p. 251.
A MORAL IS AN IMPORTANT IDEA ABOUT LIFE.
It can be the priests important idea. The lawyers important
idea. But now we can include the scientists important ideas.
Also your parents, Aunt Mabels, Uncle Joes and all your
friends. All important people and Im sure all of them have
important ideas about life as well as the priest and the
lawyer. But most importantly your own important ideas.
Weve harmonised the word by opening it to reason and it
has become the property of everyone including the most
important people of all our children.
A child needs his/her important ideas about life. Not the
priests, not the lawyers, not even their mums and dads or
their educators.
You wouldnt put a mechanic in a garage without a toolbox,
a surgeon in an operating theatre without his scalpel, an
orchestra leader in a concert without his music. Well why put
a child on the road of life without the knowledge he needs to
think about his own important ideas about life?!
When it comes to our Ferraris, our football teams, our music
there is no limit to our devotion. We worship, heep honours
on, pay homage to and pay out huge wages to the men who
do these things. Yet when it comes to our childrens minds
and their morality and education we treat the idea like left
over Christmas paper.
We put our children on the road of life without hardly a
second thought for his/her morality. It could be called child
abuse. If a child is physically or even sexually abused
he/she can at some future date recognise whats going on,
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dust himself/herself down and run away. But with this form
of intellectual abuse there is no one person to blame. Its
hard to identify and even if they did theres nowhere to run
and nowhere to hide.
Socrates harmonised the situation. He taught the youth of
the day how to harmonise their own minds and use them for
the purpose of thinking.
Morality is finding out what you didnt know.
Socrates
Not just a receptacle for other mens ideas as Aristotle
described.
A moral is an idea you know that is useful to
another person.
Aristotle
The priest is the spiritual moralist. He thinks he knows what
you need to know to be spiritually complete. Hes claimed
the moral high ground of your spirituality.
The lawyer is the legal moralist. He thinks what you need to
know to be good or bad. Hes claimed the moral high ground
of your behaviour and at the same time hes taken your
wallet.
It seems our children are going to be given, in the way
Aristotle described, their ideas on good, bad, right, wrong
behaviour from the un-harmonised philosophy of Aristotle
and its control over the priest and the lawyer.
With a Socratic definition of morality the word becomes
everybodys property but most important the young student
for whom it is not just a piece of property but an important
tool of thinking. The young student had never quite worked
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out why it should have been in the sole ownership of the
priests and lawyers in the first place. But then you, the
parents, didnt know either?
Morality is a kind of library of the mind where we store our
important ideas about life. The thinking weve done on them;
the experiences weve had that support or refute them. If
they are in one place then we know where they are and in
the hurly burly of life we can go to them easily and not have
to hunt through all the boxes in the mind to find them.
You cant put them in the other places of the mind anyway.
To do so would be to cause disharmony. If you put morals in
the part of the mind called reason it would disharmonise
reason. It would be like putting the engine of a car to do the
job of the wheels or vice versa. Its not harmony. It doesnt
work. It doesnt just not work some of the time it doesnt
work any of the time. Like all of Aristotles ideas.
How Morality Functions to Harmonise the
Mind
Morality is the jewel box of the mind that contains the
precious ideas that cause The Flame of Education.
The Thesis
Education is a Flame.
Socrates
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The Anti-Thesis
Education is an ornament in times of prosperity
and a refuge in times of unrest.
Aristotle
Every time you put a quote of Aristotle alongside an
equivalent quote of Socrates you find the anti-thesis. You
find words that disclaim the harmony of Socrates.
Lets take an example of a moral and show how it functions
to create harmony. But lets not take a moral of the priests or
the lawyers lets leave them to do, as they always have, to
explain their own morals. Lets chose a moral of the
scientists, a man not normally associated with morals and
generally ignored. But now weve harmonised our definition
of a moral he is now included in the definition. So lets do
something no one has hardly thought about doing: Lets ask
the scientist.
Scientists claim that Intellectual Honesty is one of the most
important ideas about life and one of many reasons for this
is, without it, science wouldnt work and without science
civilisation couldnt be created.
That on its own seems to be a very important reason to have
Intellectual Honesty as a moral value. But when you have a
harmonised idea it doesnt just connect to one other idea, it
connects to many. As we have said before you get harmony
when you can find many examples that show an idea works.
So lets look at just some of the many other ways the idea of
Intellectual Honesty works.

It involves the educator who has to educate children
how to create civilisation and not destroy it. An
educator cant teach any of the sciences without
applying the idea of Intellectual Honesty.
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It involves the parents who have to earn lots of
money to educate their children.

It involves the priest who would be still living in a
cave without science.

It involves the lawyer who earns vast amounts of
money off the back of scientists.

It created the idea of democracy as a social structure
to replace tribalism.

It created the idea of the individual mind being
independent from the tribal mind.

It creates trust between men.

It involves your parents and friends. Do you want
friends or parents who lie?

It involves the economists who like scientists with
intellectual honesty learn trust one another and
become the wealthy economists.
The list can just go on and on.
A harmonised idea will always do just that. And nowhere
have we found an example of something that shows
Intellectual Honesty is not a good idea. If all this is the case
why has it never been considered a moral by any other
people other than scientists? Why isnt it considered an
important moral by all groups? And why is it that Christian
Societies dont even allow secular children or children of
harmonists to learn about their own morality in their own
schools?
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A challenge for the reader
If the child of a harmonist goes to a school in a Christian or a
Muslim Society and goes on to commit a crime, they
certainly have the right to claim in court that unlike the
Christians and Muslims, they were denied an education in
their own morality by the state. Do they further have the right
to claim that society was responsible for denying them their
rights and that society should bear the responsibility for their
crime? Do you have any reasoned answers? Or just bags
full of opinions?
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Harmonic Eight
Eureka New Emotions!!
I am going to describe New Emotions in the way I did when I
prepared the course work for the Independent Mind.
If we look at the map of the mind on the front cover of the
book, New Emotions and Morality have a special place of
their own in the outer sphere of the map that lists those
things special to the Individual.
The Harmonic, New Emotions:- is a list of your own New
Emotions some of which you may have already identified
e.g. the eureka emotion. But there are many more waiting to
be identified as you extend your understanding of them and
their place as harmonics in harmonia.
The Harmonic Morality:- is your special list of your own
important ideas about life (the Jewel Box of the Mind).
In Part II of the book, the Web or the map of the mind will
help young students create their own morality after we have
finished describing it's structure and how it functions. But
first lets sort out what we mean by New Emotions.
NEW EMOTIONS
"NEW THINGS UNDER THE SUN"
Wherever we look there is no evidence that all the ideas we
use to describe the universe and all the ideas we have about
life and all the inventions that go to make up civilisation are
anything other than creations of men's minds. They have
never existed before they are "New Things Under The Sun".
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Ideas created by men's minds are:
"NEW THINGS UNDER THE SUN"
These new ideas cause us to feel emotions that go with
those ideas. "As the ideas are new things under the sun" so
the emotions are also new things under the sun" (They
can't have existed before either). The emotion comes after
the mind thinks its new idea.
NEW IDEAS UNDER THE SUN CREATE NEW EMOTIONS
UNDER THE SUN:
E.g. The Eureka Emotion
Let's consider "the Eureka emotion". The story goes
Archimedes was in his bath and noticed his body displaced
an amount of water equivalent to the volume of his body. At
the same time his body seemed to lose weight. Having
realised the answer to his problem of displacement he was
so filled with joyous elation he ran down the street with no
clothes on shouting "Eureka".
He had not only discovered his displacement theory he had
discovered a new emotion too - "The Eureka emotion".
The idea had created the New Emotion - The Eureka
Emotion. The New Emotion hadn't created the idea.
Now let's consider Physiological Emotions.
Question: - How might Physiological emotions such as
anger, fear, hunger or sex affect reason or ideas?
Conclude: - Physiological changes in our bodies cause the
feelings of sex, fear, and hunger. These feelings then
produce the idea of sex, hunger or fear in the mind.
Emotions are producing ideas. Nature has designed these
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changes to help us on our way as a biological species. We
have to learn to look after these emotions but unlike New
Emotions they are not part of our "new world" of "new
feelings under the sun". They are feelings we share with
many other species of animals. They are old emotions. Part
of the harmonic of World II.
THE NEW EMOTION HATRED
Human beings are naturally sociable creatures and are not
born with hatred in their hearts. Hatred happens when for
one reason or another they come to hate other people's
ideas. Hatred is a new emotion.
"Hatred or dislike of reason is related to hatred or
dislike of humanity."
Socrates
Socrates understood the idea of a new emotion some 2,400
years ago. Humanities life and well being are so entwined in
reason there is no way out. A person who hates or dislikes
reason hates or dislikes humanity.
Aristotle on the other hand did not understand the idea of a
new emotion. "Using anger - that's easy, knowing with
whom, at what time to what degree, that is not easy". And
neither did he understand the idea of the road of reason.
Aristotle's a stairway thinker; after all he started the idea. His
unreasoned premise is that it is alright to use anger. When
does he change the idea of anger to hatred? And what is the
difference between anger and hatred? And how does he
justify the use of an unreasoned emotion in the first place?
Well that is easy; he just says he is a clever man who knows
an "ultimate truth". He is refusing to obey the rule of
harmony.
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INTELLECTUAL DIRECTION MUST ALWAYS BE
CONTROLLED BY REASON AND NOT THE EMOTION
REASON CREATES.
Socrates' statement about "hatred of reason" is highly
refutable, but not refuted. Socrates not only understood the
idea of New Emotions and New Things under the Sun, he
understood the idea of refutability, which is fundamental to a
reasoned premise.
Aristotle did not understand New Emotions and the idea of
New Things under the Sun and neither did he understand
refutability. His statement about anger seems to contain
some reason but it is very easy to refute (our whole history
refutes his idea on anger).
The Emotion of a faith in Reason and intellectual courage
The tides of cultural forces in our society pull and push us all
in different directions all the time. At the door of the nursery
are many white line men eager and waiting to pen, paint or
indoctrinate a line through a child's mind that separates the
child's reason from the child's imagination. Or more exactly
that separates what they see as reason and imagination.
They are not intellectually honest men. If they were they
would not bother trying to draw their line but educate the
child to draw his own line. Being able to think independently
under these circumstances requires the skills of creative
reasoned thinking promoted by the web. Having faith in our
own ability to think, demands an act of intellectual courage.
A man may have the physical courage to fight a lion but lack
the intellectual courage to face the dogma of his own beliefs.
Our films, our culture, our history, our families prepare us for
acts of physical courage. There is nothing in our culture that
prepares us for acts of intellectual courage. In fact you could
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be forgiven for thinking it is taboo and you could be right.
It takes courage to relinquish the security that we think goes
with the idea of "knowing" and to replace it with the idea "we
do not know". Our emotional commitment then is not to
feeling secure about something "we know" but an emotional
commitment or "faith" in reason to progress our situation.
The intellectual warrior says:-
"It takes intellectual courage to face unreasoned
dogma of one's own beliefs and ideas. To
replace them with the idea "I do not know" and a
faith in our own reason to progress the situation."
"The Intellectual Warrior"
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES
(and how it creates harmonics of reason)
Emotional Intelligence
It always seems to happen: I struggle to explain something
and seem to always end back where I started with an idea
from Socrates. And the idea Emotional Intelligence seems to
be no different:
Below are two ideas of Socrates for the reader's sock
drawer:-
"Harmony is knowing everything is in its place".
"Tranquillity is knowing everything is in its place".
Harmony is an idea. Tranquillity is an emotion. An emotion
of peace and calmness. The idea comes first, the tranquillity
follows. Socrates had harmonised the relationship between
the idea of everything in it place and the emotion of
tranquillity resulting from everything in its place.
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The intellect is the part of the mind that creates emotion. It is
in the intellect that ideas are - synthesised - created -
happen. WHEN THE INTELLECT HAS CREATED ITS
IDEA, THEN FEELINGS THAT GO WITH THAT IDEA ARE
THEN CREATED BY THE REST OF THE MIND OR BODY,
(we do not really need to know the rest of the process). And
if we did wed find it difficult because it belongs in the
harmonic of bio-chemistry and not the harmonic of the mind.
THE INTELLECT IS THE SEAT OF SOCRATES. The
harmonic that creates New Emotions.
SUMMARY
THE INTELLECT IS EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE IS EMOTIONLESS
So why don't we call it emotional intellect?
Because many psychologists are Aristotelian by nature,
when one of their first ideas do not fit, they refuse to change
it, modify it, whatever, they do what Aristotle did, they do an
Aristotelian clip on job. They add another word to the one
that is not quite working and hope that the added power of
joining words (even if they cannot be joined by reason) will
solve the problem. They add another step to the stairway.
They fail reason at the stage of the premise.
The Aristotelian Clip-on job.
An unreasoned premise has got into the argument - i.e. that
intelligence is somehow connected to emotion, and they
stubbornly refuse to change it. They stay stubbornly with
their Stairway Theory of knowledge and keep on adding
steps to the failed 1st step, the first step stays and
INTELLECTUAL CONSTIPATION sets in.
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The first time when you use the Thinking Web you become a
Socratic. You learn to use the Stepping Stone Theory of
coming to knowledge. You take the first failed premise out, -
out goes the idea of intelligence - you look for another
premise, - another stepping stone. In comes the
replacement premise - the intellect.
We have treated the intellectual constipation and things
have started to move again. We have an INTELLECT RICH
IN EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES, FAR RICHER THAN WE
COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED. WE ARE IN CONTROL
OF THEM, IF WE LEARN HOW TO CONTROL AND
UNDERSTAND THEM USING REASON.
A PERSON WHO HAS LEARNED HOW TO USE REASON
IS NOT AN EMOTIONLESS SPOCK CHARACTER, THE
REASONING PART OF HIS MIND IS, IT HAS TO BE.
The mind cannot experience an idea UNTIL IT HAS BEEN
CREATED by the intellect, with the help of reason. And
reason has to do its job before the intellect does its job.
A PERSON WHO REASONS HAS A FAR RICHER
EMOTIONAL LIFE THAN A PERSON WHO DOES NOT
REASON. The richness of his emotional life is in direct
proportion to how much he reasons and experiences his
own new ideas under the sun within his own harmonic of
his own intellect.
E.g. (1) The feral child that has been brought up by a dog. It
behaves like a dog, thinks like a dog and thinks of himself as
a dog. He lacks the emotional life of a human because he
has never developed the ideas that would make him human.
He has experienced only the ideas of a dog and feels the
feelings of a dog.
E.g. (2) A child brought up by a bigot understands only the
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ideas of a bigot and feels only the feelings of a bigoted
ideas, which all too often involve hatred of other men's
ideas.
What happens when we put our faith in unreasoned ideas?
Reasoned ideas are always about the truth or the search for
the truth. They are based on what reason demands and not
what belief demands. It's hard work to find reasoned truth.
Unreasoned belief is easy to find, it's everywhere, we trip
over it every day in the street.
"An unreasoned idea can be about
anything and everything except the
truth. There is no common ground
men can share. They can only share the
island or step. They hope there are
further connections yet to be seen.
But when they are not there they
remain forever, stranded on the step,
they have refused to question
and refuse to change".
"The Intellectual Warrior"
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Harmonic Nine
The Harmonic of the Independent Mind
The Independent Thinking Mind is

The most powerful entity in the known universe.
- More powerful that the worlds most powerful
computer.
- More powerful that the worlds largest
machine.
- More powerful than the largest bomb.
- Each mind with the potential to outthink the
minds of all men that have existed to date.
The Human Mind Declares its Independence
The most powerful ideas of Socrates and probably the most
powerful ideas in the whole of history involve Socrates
description of the reasoning mind made over 2000 years
before the American Declaration of Independence.
400 BC:- The Reasoning Mind Declares its Independence
The unknown is reason and I am a reasoning
mind.
400 BC Socrates (the midwife at the birth of mankinds reasoning mind)
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Socrates was describing mankinds thinking mind as an
individual thinking entity with the right to govern itself using
reason.
The Reasoning Mind Writes its Own Constitution
THE REASONED PREMISE OF ARGUMENT
If I am the wisest man in the whole of Greece it
is because I know I do not know
Socrates
Socrates defined The Reasoned Premise of Argument and
explained that it is the only premise that can be used for
creative reasoned thinking to happen.

It is always uncertain.

It can be questioned, replaced, modified,
whatever.

It forms the basis of The Stepping Stone
Theory of coming to knowledge. And the more
detailed thinking with webs of the Thinking
Web.

It explains how The Reasoning Mind
FUNCTIONS AND HOW IT INTENDS TO
GOVERN ITSELF.
When pop stars make the grade the first thing they do is go
off to the far flung corners of the world to look for a Guru. Do
they know something we dont know? They are looking for
their spiritual Guru. The man that will help them understand
the spiritual nature of their existence in some place far
removed from where they created their intellectual being. At
best this Guru is half a Guru one that understands the
emotionality of the pop star but not the intellectuality of his
being. How could he? He doesnt live in Liverpool, he lives
on a mountain in Tibet. And Penny Lane is in my mind and
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in my heart again. You can take the pop star out of the
street. You can give him to Gurus for an emotional make
over but you cant give the Guru the street he needs to do
the job.
Theres only one Guru for the job at hand the one that can
connect the emotionality of that persons being to the
intellectuality of that persons being. And he doesnt live in
Tibet.
IF YOU WANT TO FIND YOURSELF, THINK
FOR YOURSELF
Socrates
The Constitution of the Reasoning Mind
1. Fundamental to the idea of a democratic state is the
idea of the individual. Not the idea of equality.
2. Fundamental to the idea of a democratic state is the
idea of an independent thinking mind. Not the idea of
a blotting paper mind.
3. Fundamental to the idea of the independent thinking
mind is the idea of reason. Not the idea of an opinion.
4. Fundamental to the idea of reason is the idea of a
reasoned premise of argument. Not the idea of an
ultimate truth defined by a clever man.
5. Fundamental to the idea of a reasoned premise of
argument is the idea of intellectual honesty. Not the
virtue of knowing what another man needs to know.
Therefore, the very existence of a Democratic State rests on
the promotion and the use of the reasoned premise of
argument. Not the promotion of unreasoned ideas.
The Independent Thinking Mind is a necessary precursor to
the idea of a democratic state. Without the Independent
Thinking Mind the democratic state has no purpose for
existing.
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The Education of the Thinking Mind
Socrates saw it as his mission in life to educate the youth of
Athens.
To care for their own thinking minds using reason.
Harmonising: - is the act of introducing words, ideas or
problems to reason and observation.
Socrates was the worlds first harmonist.
A Harmonist: - is a person who believes in introducing
reason and observation into the whole cultural fabric of life,
into all his thinking skills e.g. science, into his politics e.g.
democracy, into his spiritual life e.g. new emotions. Most
importantly into his program of education for children.
Comparing Harmonising to the Oxygenation of Water
Water, oxygenated by running down the side of a mountain,
creates an environment that enables all life forms that
depend on oxygen to flourish. If water is allowed to stagnate
the oxygen depletes and only the life forms that can exist
without oxygen survive and grow and clog the river.
When the mind is deprived of reason and observation only
those ideas that can survive without reason and observation
- i.e. BELIEFS - survive and grow.
THEY COME TO OCCUPY THE MIND AND FURTHER
BLOCK ACCESS TO REASON AND OBSERVATION
CAUSING INTELLECTUAL CONSTIPATION.
Every 4
th
July, 200 million Americans celebrate their
Independence Day. It is one of those sorts of days that
many countries put aside to celebrate events and times
important to themselves. But Americas Independence Day
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is more than just a special occasion for Americans and
America. It is a special occasion for all countries. It was the
period in time when human civilisation had the opportunity to
break away from the tired old ways of Medieval Europe with
its decaying feudal system and start afresh on a new soil, to
grow the seeds of democracy.
The American Declaration of Independence could not have
happened if it hadnt been preceded by the Declaration of
Independence of the Individual Thinking Mind.
The Declaration of Independence of the Human Thinking
Mind goes unnoticed in history, in schools, in universities
and in the social fabric of our culture. Its not that it just goes
unnoticed, it is actively disclaimed by almost every facet of
our lives excepting the workday lives of scientists who are
the only ones who keep the canopy of our civilisation from
sinking in to the quick sands of Aristotelian Ultimate Truths.
In Part III we describe the structure of the human mind and
explain the geography of the map on the front cover. We do
a Socrates and explain the places of the different parts of
the mind. And how they harmonise to brainstorm a problem
and create new harmonics.
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Harmonic Ten
Disclaimers of the Harmony of Reason and
the Truant
I have been involved in education all my life and find it a
fascinating idea for many reasons but would do so even if it
were only for one of its many harmonics: the idea of the
power it gives the older generation over the younger
generation.
Do no harm seemed at one time a popular idea of some
educationalists. Implying that education is probably as
equally capable of causing harm as it probably is of doing
good: so how are we to know?
One of the biggest culture shocks in my life was the day my
math teacher stood up to take assembly: He grasped the
wooden pulpit in front of him and retorted How can anyone
believe this is a mass of whirling atoms and not believe in a
God?
A truant by nature despair ravaged my soul. Id been coming
to school for 3 years when on many occasions I had much
more rewarding things to do. But Id towed the line: Id come
and Id listened to those many hundreds, nay many
thousands of reasons and had learnt about the many
harmonics of nature that led me to believe that the wooden
stand, he was trying to ravage like a dog with a bone, was in
fact a whirling mass of atoms.
Id been duped, I could have signed the Aristotelian pledge,
nicked off had good time away from the rigor mortise of 45
minute bell ringing as I went from one Aristotelian Ultimate
Truth to another.
118
Had someone forgotten to tell him Id been coming to school
for 3 years to learn about those whirling atoms? Had
someone forgotten to tell him he was the teacher at some of
those lessons? Had someone forgotten to tell him I had
better things to do? It seems they had, but they werent
there. The only one there who could tell him was myself.
Still in short pants, cow shit splattered on the backs of my
leg from milking and looking after the cows before school
time. I didnt look like a formidable opponent for an oxford
graduate mathematician who had rubbed shoulders with
descendents of 2,000 years of Aristotelianism in the
corridors of our most respected universities.
I didnt and I wasnt. But neither was I impressed. Something
was missing and I hadnt quite latched on to it, but I knew it
wasnt there because my life on the farm had educated me
in some of the ways of harmonia.
I couldnt see the chasm in his argument on that morning but
I felt it. I felt the chill of being in the presence of a Disclaimer
of Harmony in a powerful place, shaking it like my dog shook
the necks of the rats in the cow shed, in order to end it all.
The math teacher was using his knowledge of math, the
subject itself, his high position in society as a teacher and
soon to be headmaster: to underwrite the belief he wanted
for himself and the belief he wanted other people to have.
A virtue is knowing what is useful to another
person.
Aristotle
Yes, he was a good Aristotelian hook, line and sinker. He
had shown a whole school full of children how to turn their
backs on the harmony of reason, sign the pledge of Aristotle
119
and basically just do what you felt like doing. From that day
on I became a truant without mercy.
I dont wish to deny the man his beliefs he has every right to
them but I passionately disagree with his modus operandi
of denying the way of the harmony of reason to support
them. Thats not education. Thats indoctrination or to be
more exact the indoctrination of Aristotle, the Disclaimer of
Harmony.
Surely if the man wanted his god and wanted the children in
the school to know his god he could have had the wit to do it
without sabotaging reason: without taking away from
children the only tool they have to make sense of life:
without taking away from them the opportunity to understand
harmonia. I can only describe it as a crime. A crime against
humanity. Not only has he sabotaged reason but hes
sabotaged what he obviously wants more: his own religion.
A religion that has to sabotage reason in order to exist
needs to take a serious look at itself and the children it
abuses.
And that was the math teacher!!
Not numbered amongst the Arts Graduates in the school.
That wasnt a 1,000 years ago. It was yesterday.
Harmony?
Now what did Chris Woodhead mean when he said?
Education is a conversation between the generations about
whats worth preserving.
(Ex Chief Inspector of OFSTED)
Nothing to do with the harmony of reason obviously. And
goes on to say:
120
Genius cannot be created and neither can it be destroyed.
Obviously youve either got it or you havent. and whose
going to judge if you have or you havent. Chris Woodhead
of course who else? Hes an Aristotelian by nature and
nurture. How else do you think he got the most powerful job
in education?
Just imagine the most miserable looking football team ever
and then imagine them employing a coach who said they
could never score goals!! Is it going to happen?? No, never!
So why should our children have to put up with coaches who
tell them theyll never score goals? Its Aristotelian
windbaggery!! And Im trying to be polite or as Aristotlians
love to say respectful.
My Math teacher sabotaged reason to an assembly hall full
of children from the ages of 11 18 years of age on that
dark autumn morning. But it wasnt just happening in my
town I have no doubt similar performances were being given
over the whole country. What my Math teacher was doing
was obeying an order from the Chief Inspector of OFSTED
and talking about preserving ideas from one generation to
the next and disclaiming the harmony of reason in the
process. And where had the Chief Inspector got his ideas
from?
From a Professor of the Classics of Oxford University who
was also Director of Education for the BBC and who
described science as that paltry inquisitiveness they dain to
call natural science. No chance of the precious ideas of
science being passed from one generation to the next.
None of these men could have done more to Disclaim the
Harmony of Reason.
Is one man shaking a pulpit; almost in anger, in front of 300
children their idea of a conversation? Well yes it is. Its how
121
minds that are and minds that are to become Blotting Paper
Minds do converse. Or approach as near as they can to
conversation.
Its not my idea of a conversation and neither a Socratics
idea of a conversation. Socrates idea of a conversation was
of a one to one conversation where the student and the
educator were listening to one another.
Can we discern another kind of discourse a
legitimate brother to the written word? Can we
say how it comes about and how much better
and more culpable it naturally is? It is a discourse
that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul
of the listener. It can defend itself, and it knows to
whom it should speak and with whom it should
remain silent.
Socrates
122
123
PART 2
THE SEAT OF
SOCRATES
(the creator of Harmonics of
Reason)
AND
THE FOOTPRINT
OF ARISTOTLE
(the Disclaimer of Harmonics
of Reason)
124
125
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES (the
creator of harmonics) AND
THE FOOTPRINT OF ARISTOTLE
(the disclaimer of harmonics)
Introduction The New Kid on the Block
Harmonic One Aristotles Harmonic
(The Blotting Paper Mind)
Harmonic Two Education
(The Four Generals and the Artisan
Slave)
Harmonic Three Socratic Democracy and
Aristotelian Democracy
(Equality or the Individual)
Harmonic Four Respect v Harmony
(Respect your master no matter how
harsh or grow up)
Harmonic Five Positive Thinking
(The Blind Man Leads)
Harmonic Six Neighbours
(Socrates or Aristotle?
Your choice)
Harmonic Seven A Comparison of the Harmonics of
the Blotting Paper Mind and the
Harmonics of the Independent
Mind
Harmonic Eight High Noon
(The Death of an Idea)
Harmonic Nine Einstein and Socrates
Harmonic Ten The False Dawns
126
127
INTRODUCTION
The New Kid on the Block
If you looked into the mind of a man before 350 BC all you
would have seen was a mind that functioned like a piece of
Blotting Paper, soaking up the ideas that happened to be
around at the dry time, at the beginning of its life: A Tribal
Mind: A Blotting Paper Mind, designed by nature to be a part
of the most successful harmonic in the living world the
tribe. A mind governed from without by the opinions of tribal
leaders and their special connections to the whispers of the
Gods together with their earthly understanding that within
nature, with unity lay strength. These were the principles of
governance of the Blotting Paper Mind and still are. Even
today if leaders said their piss was pop most of tribe would
drink it!
There was no harmonic of reason, no harmonic of language,
no harmonic of intellect or imagination. It was a bag full of
the tribal leaders opinions, tribal rituals, myths and legends
made into an emotional glue.
Within the harmonic of the tribe reason was to be seen a
hitch hiker to be picked up when it suited the tribe and
dropped off when it didnt.
Around 350 BC came a New Kid on the Block. One clever
enough to know that reason was the driver of the car. One
clever enough to know that original reasoned ideas come
from the minds of individuals and not the mind of the tribe.
One clever enough and reckless enough to understand
2,000 years before the American Declaration of
Independence, the need to transfer the governance of the
mind from outside itself to its own internally appointed
128
constitution to create a New Thing Under the Sun. The
Independent Mind. One clever enough to create its own
constitution. One clever enough to know how to do all that in
the only way possible: By harnessing the wisdom of the
harmony of reason.
129
The Seat of Socrates
The Intellect is the Seat of Socrates when:-

It agrees that the skills of thinking:
i.e. reason, imagination, semantics, and intellect have
their own places in the mind.
i.e. it agrees to the harmony of the mind.

It behaves like a boss. Gives instructions to all the
other parts of the mind. Leaves them alone to do their
jobs and waits for their advice.

It causes refutation to happen by brainstorming its
problems (raising as many questions as it can from
all through the cultural fabric of World III). And
restricts this activity of that part of the mind trained to
do just that reason the referee.

It instructs reason, imagination, semantics in the
ways they should work. In particular it instructs
reason never to join with imagination because
together they destroy the harmony of each other.

It instructs reason to always look for the reasoned
premise of argument. The one that exposes itself to
refutation but isnt refuted.

It instructs reason that even if it appears a premise is
highly reasoned it must always be treated as
uncertain. Otherwise it can never function as
Socrates stepping stone but becomes one of the
steps of one of Aristotles stairs.
We know the conditions that apply to the Seat of Socrates
because Socrates himself described them and used them in
his system of creative reasoned thinking. A system the
following intellectual harmonic disclaims.
130
The Footprint of Aristotle
The Intellect is the Footprint of Aristotle when:-

It disclaims the idea of the Dialectic by making out it
was an incomplete system that didnt work and that
had to be made into something that worked by Plato
and Aristotle. That something we know today as
Critical Inquiry.

It uses opinions as the start point of all arguments
describing them as ultimate truths knowable by
really clever men.

It thinks in the manner of a tribal leader or a follower.
As a tribal leader he answers the questions he
chooses to answer that give him the answers he
wants. The answers that reassure him of his place as
tribal leader with the tribal members as followers. And
the tribal members listen to the ones that protect and
reassure them. They see no point whatsoever in
listening to ideas that say differently. Because its not
they arent there because they most surely are. It is
because there is no point. They do as their leaders
have done to justify their position as tribal leader
they Disclaim the Harmony of Reason to justify their
tribal membership.

It behaves like an intellectual wimp. Doesnt raise
questions that frighten him or threaten his position as
leader. Refuses to accept that you cant find wisdom
without asking questions. By doing this it disclaims all
the important questions and their answers that
surround a problem i.e. it disclaims the harmony of
reason mostly by not confronting it.

It doesnt agree to the harmony of the mind and
continues in the old tribal ways to mix reason and
131
imagination so destroying the skills and tranquillity of
both.

It behaves like a bully forcing its ideas to the next
generation.

It creates intellectually constipated Blotting Paper
Minds.
132
THE GREAT MISTAKES OF CRITICAL
INQUIRY AND ARISTOTELIAN THINKING
Mam, the Plumbers here but hes only got a
hammer.
A premise is a truth knowable by a really clever
man
These are Aristotelian premises of argument. In other words
opinions of:-
A critic within the Arts
A tribal leader
A really clever man
A man with divine wisdom
A man educated in the art of Rhetoric
A salesman
Any student or professor of the Classics
A plumber with a hammer
It is the starting off point for all the above men on their
journey to where ever it is they may be going. But it is not
the starting point for any man who seeks the truth and
neither for a bird brained jackdaw who seeks to continue to
find his tea time nuts. Its rooted in imagination, is
intellectually childish and seems to serve no useful purpose
other than those mentioned above, to disclaim the harmony
of reason, promote the harmonic of the tribe, a career in
modern politics, education, the law or sales or cowboy
plumbers.
133
It is the creation used by the Arts, that multi-farious group of
subjects we have harmonised earlier in the book by
relegating them to their own harmonic describable, not by
many but by the best of their own kind, as entertainment
and the plaything of the intellect.
When we see the Arts as entertainment and the plaything of
the intellect they become as Mary Shelly described them.
They have their own licence to do what they want within
their own boundaries, but not outside.
Using unreasoned opinion and attempting to be critical by
using your own opinions ideas, as when you are an art critic
comparing the content of plays, music, literature, poetry of
course youve got to be the clever opinionated expert to
further prompt the imagination of the public. Values are
relative values and youre not trying or shouldnt be trying to
introduce rational argument. Youve freed yourself from the
fetters.
This can be the only valid use for Critical Inquiry. But now
its not just used as a tool of the Arts within the Arts but an
all round handy mans tool of thinking.
If a plumber knocked on your door and the only tool in his
tool bag was a hammer would you let him in to fix your
boiler? Of course not; then why let the Arts Graduate in your
childs mind when the only tool in his bag is a tool of
destruction, which is what critical inquiry becomes when it is
regarded as the only tool required to fix your childs mind. It
is the tool of thinking of our tribal ancestors designed to
keep the harmonic of the tribe in one piece and its still there
today. Keeping the Arts in control of everything just as
Aristotle said it should be.
Every form of professionalism leads to a loss of
caste.
134
Hes the salesman again saying not what something is. But
saying what it isnt, warning you of something (Reason the
Hitch Hiker) that is irrelevant. Aristotle was never a
philosopher because he didnt understand the wisdom of
harmony. He was in the times of the Greeks a laboratory
technician. Aristotle couldnt do and didnt like science so
became a politician and the greatest salesman in history.
If you know, do (be a politician), if you
understand, teach
To history, he became the man who knew and his teacher
Socrates just taught. He had done what all pupils aspire, to
succeed beyond the aspirations of his teacher. Its an idea
that works well in the Martial Arts and in gladiatorial combats
in the amphitheatres of Rome.
But in the history of humanity the idea of Aristotles ideas
supplanting those of Socrates has been an unmitigated
disaster. Between them Aristotle and Plato managed to
reverse the idea of the harmony of reason and create the
cruel and culturally barren feudal times.
135
Harmonic One
ARISTOTLES HARMONIC
(The Blotting Paper Mind)
Our bird brained friend, the Jackdaw, has not
succumbed to the idea that the opinion of the
flock is superior to the harmony of reason.
The Intellectual Warrior
When you use opinion as the starting point (the premise) in
the unknown, you are starting your idea from a place that
has no known reasoned connections to any ideas. You are
stranded on Assumption Island in an unknown sea.
Having destroyed the idea of lines of latitude and longitude
and thrown your compass overboard: With a constitution
which says No change.
You have disclaimed the harmony of reason and replaced it
with an opinion. The food of the Blotting Paper Mind, Mr.
Aristotles Harmonic. You have a harmonic founded on
opinion that will connect you to all the opinions of the tribe
and of course Mr Aristotles other opinions.
You have taken the tribal harmonic of nature to your world of
New Things under the Sun. You have taken natures
harmonic from a place where it has pride of place as natures
most powerful harmonic to a place in World III where it can
only be a harmonic divorced from reason, to create a hell on
earth. A place where it can only continue to exist if it
continues to do what it has always done in order to survive
to disclaim the harmony of reason and its creator the
independent mind and nature herself. Your mind has been
split into two parts you have become an intellectual and
cultural schizophrenic.
136
Our bird brained friends, the Jackdaws, understand the
benefits of a tribal existence (the flock) but unlike ourselves
seem to have succeeded, where we have failed, and not
succumbed to the crazy idea that the opinion of the flock is
superior to the harmony of reason.
The two entities, when they are together in World III, are the
antithesis of each others existence which we shall
demonstrates in Part II using some of todays most popular
intellectual issues. Each issue will be treated as a separate
harmonic and each harmonic will be shown in a highly
refutable but not refuted way to belong to two separate
harmonics. One that is the tribal footprint of Aristotle and
one that is the seat of Socrates derived from the wisdom of
harmony.
137
Harmonic Two
Education
The Four Generals and the Artisan Slave
The most important thing a generation does during Its
Watch is to educate the next generation to do Their Watch
without indoctrinating them with all the intellectual baggage
of their forefathers. Do no harm whispers the still of the
universe between the furious outrages of its many Gods.
The only way you can do that is to teach two harmonised
ideas in tandem.
To know yourself: think for yourself and to use the
harmony of reason for that purpose.
Its time for a new generation of intellectual adventurers to
appear on earth and learn the scientific ways of the
Intellectual Warrior Socrates and his abilities to understand
and use the harmony of nature. Its time to take on board
one further piece of advice from the Old Sage To deny
Frank Comment in Education is to deny the sun its place in
the sky. Its time to relegate Aristotle and Plato to the
dustbin of history along with their fan club of Intellectual
parrots.
Aristotle and Plato were both plagiarisers of the ideas of
Socrates. Incapable of creative reasoned thought:
intellectual wimps frightened to leave the security of the
Tribal Harmonic nature prepared for them. Frightened to
leave their power, their money, their land behind to join in
humanities greatest adventure.
Ive done my best to make it a fair battle. Four important
Generals from the top of society in the Disclaimer of
138
Harmony Camp against one artisan slave, bare footed,
dressed in rags, a bit smelly, unable to read or write and
suffering from the symptoms of starvation, in the Harmony of
Reason Camp.
Lets take a look at their Big Guns before battle commences.
139
The Big Guns
THE HARMONISTS THE DISCLAIMERS OF
HARMONY
Education is a
flame
Socrates
Education is an ornament
Aristotle
To know
yourself: think for
yourself
Socrates
The common man should
teach his mind by long habit
never to dream of acting
independently
Plato
The most
delightful thing in
life is education,
virtue, finding out
what one doesnt
know
Socrates
Every form of
professionalism leads to a
loss of caste. The upper elite
must never take too much
interest in any occupation or
science. There are some
liberal arts they may acquire
but only to a certain degree.
Otherwise evil effects will
follow
Aristotle
I dont know
anything. I only
know how to
teach people how
to think
Socrates
Education is a conversation
between the generations
about what is worth
preserving
Chris Woodhead, Ex-Chief Inspector
of OFSTED
140
Teach children
how to care for
their minds
Socrates
Genius cannot be created
neither can it be destroyed
Chris Woodhead, Ex-Chief Inspector
of OFSTED
Respect
everything done
in the name of
science
Socrates
That paltry inquisitiveness
they dain to call natural
science
A.C. Stobbard, Professor of the
Classics and Head of BBC education
programs
141
The Seat of Socrates and the creation of the harmonic
of education
16
15
14
13
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
17
1
2
3
Education
The Tribe
(replaced by
the Individual)
Individual
(to think for
themselves)
Morality
(Intellectual
Honesty and
own ideas)
The Arts
(a tool of the
intellect called
imagination)
Premise of
argument
(to be used is
reasoned)
Trust
(Based on the
common ground of
reason)
Indoctrination
(not
permitted)
Precious Ideas
(Create your
own)
Science
(Respect
Science)
Social Harmony
(based on the
Harmony of
Reason)
Civilisation
(created by original
reasoned thinking)
History
(written as it
happened)
Childrens
Minds
(to be cared for)
Harmony
(essential to all ideas
in the Seat)
Independent
Mind
(The
Purpose)
Blotting Paper
Mind (must
go)
Psychology
(harmony of
reason
essential)
4
142
How the Seat works:- When we have say, Individual
Education, in the diagram this is shorthand for the question:
How does the idea of the individual relate to the idea of
education? A brief answer is given in the brackets.
143
Analysis of the Questions of Socrates
1. The Individual thinks for himself/herself
2. Social Harmony based on the harmony of reason
3. Science respected
4. Precious ideas created by the individual
5. Indoctrination not permitted
6. Blotting Paper Mind replaced by Independent Mind
7. Independent Mind The purpose of it all
8. Trust based on the common ground of reason
between all men
9. Harmony - essential to all ideas in the Seat
10. Civilisation - the creation of original reasoned ideas
11. Childrens minds to be cared for using reason
12. History to be written truthfully
13. In Psychology harmony of reason essential
14. Reasoned premise of argument
15. Arts has no place making decisions it is the
imagination of the mind
16. Morality - created by the individual
17. Tribal thinking to be replaced by individual thinking
All the answers in the Seat of Socrates are positive answers
that describe the education of the individual in society using
144
the harmony of reason. It all fits with Socrates idea of
education as a flame and his idea of a moral i.e. finding out
what one doesnt know and teaching children how to care
for their minds. So much for the artisan slave and his ideas
on the Independent Mind and the education of children. Lets
now look at the 4 Generals from the uppermost echelons of
society.
145
Education and the Footprint of Aristotle
Education
16
15
14
13
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
17
1
2
3
The Tribe
(all important)
Individual
(to be told
what to think)
Morality
(The opinion
of leaders)
The Arts
(the arbiter of
intellectual
direction)
Premise of
argument
(unreasoned
one to be used)
Trust
(no mention)
Indoctrination
(of precious
ideas permitted)
Precious Ideas
(to be told to the
youth of the
day)
Science
(evil, paltry,
insignificant)
Social Harmony
(not mentioned)
Civilisation
(is the spread of ideas
Creation of ideas.
Creation of ideas no
mention)
History
(written as
propaganda)
Childrens Minds
(to be controlled)
Harmony
(no mention)
Independent
Mind
(not mentioned)
Blotting Paper
Mind
(essential)
Psychology
(Ultimate Truths
still used)
4
146
Analysis of the Questions of the 4 Generals
1. Negative
2. No mention
3. Negative (science ridiculed)
4. Ideas of Educator precious
5. Indoctrination positive
6. Blotting Paper Mind essential
7. No mention
8. No mention
9. No mention
10. Ideas spread not created
11. Negative - childrens ideas to be moulded
12. Negative
13. Unreasoned ideas still used
14. Unreasoned idea Ultimate Truth
15. Arts (imagination) to make decisions on intellectual
direction
16. Morality given by authority
17. Tribe - The Purpose
The Lack of Harmony in the Footprint of Aristotle
147
12 Questions:- arent addressed or have negative answers
or are unreasoned.
The Positive Answers are as follows:-
Morality given by Authority
Ideas are spread not created
The Educators ideas are precious
Blotting Paper Mind essential
Tribe the Purpose
Premises of argument used are always unreasoned
The Footprint of Aristotle and the Four Generals is that ideas
are given to the student by the teacher and the students
mind has to be a Blotting Paper Mind.
In short:-
1. No Harmony of Reason.
2. Ideas and morality given by those in authority.
3. A Blotting Paper Mind is created. Independence
disclaimed.
4. Tribal structure remains intact.
5. Opinion put before reason.
Summary
The Generals dont want to say they dont agree with the
idea of the Independent Mind so they just dont mention it.
They Disclaim it.
The Generals dont want to say they dont agree with the
idea of intellectual honesty so they just dont mention it.
They Disclaim it.
The Generals dont want to say you should have a Blotting
Paper Mind so they dont mention it. They Disclaim it.
148
The Generals dont want to blatantly say its their ideas that
will be used to mould. They call it a conversation about
whats worth preserving.
The Generals dont want the harmony of science so they
ridicule it. Call it evil and claim to know a better way of
thinking.
The Generals dont want your morality to be your ideas on
morality. They want their own. So they Disclaim them.
The Generals havent really got a lot to say about almost
everything to do with education. Their main purpose is to
silence the intellect of harmony because they have no
intellect of any value of their own. They Disclaim what they
cant have. They keep what their hearts desire which is a
Tribal Society with themselves at the top of the pile.
149
A challenge to the Reader
Imagine your child is about to leave Primary School for his
first day in Secondary School. It is a big event in anyones
life but this is special for you as well. It is probably the first
time you have been a parent knowing something of what is
going on in your childs mind and the truth is youre
apprehensive as well.
Neither of you know what is around the corner but the child
is depending on you for leadership and support but most of
all, for some explanation of what it is all about:- What do you
expect of them? What will the school expect of them? And
equally importantly what should they be expecting from the
school and what should they be expecting of this thing,
which it is all about, called his/her education?
Let us use the harmonized definitions of the words in the
table on page 139. To do one of the most important jobs
language has to do. And the most important job you have to
do. To explain to your children what their education is going
to be about.
When you go to school you are going to be treated as a
person who has his/her own thinking mind, and you will be
taught how to care for it using reason. You will be taught
how to think using reason, not what to think. That is the
mandate demanded of us as educators, by reason. Even if
you are the son or daughter of the richest or most famous
man in the world, apart from friends and family the greatest
asset you have in life is your own thinking mind. If you care
for it using reason you will have faith in yourself and faith in
yourself is one of lifes most important ideas. It is a moral
based on the idea of intellectual honesty. Not only will
thinking creatively, using reason, create your own thinking
mind it will go a long way to explain how science works, not
only to produce ideas like gravity and relativity, cars and
150
televisions, but how civilizations develop and grow and
subjects like psychology develop and how you can do a job
when you grow up and leave school.
You will come to understand how you can take your place as
a citizen of the world and not just the citizen of a country or
religious group, but a group that includes the whole of
mankind, and this has got to be the greatest hope for world
peace and harmony mankind has ever had.
Now explain to your child what his/her education is going to
be about using the un-harmonised definitions of education
on page 139.
When you go to school you are going to have a
conversation with the teacher about important ideas and
which ones are worth preserving.
And how am I supposed to know which ones to preserve
mum?
I think youll be told son, but I really dont know.
What were you told at school mum?
I was told to behave myself and do as I was told.
Thats just like being at home mum, so is that what
education is?
Well yes, its an ornament.
They want to make me into an ornament?
Sort of. And youll have to remember youll never be a
genius.
151
Its depressing. Its mind blowing nonsense. If we were
football coaches wed be shot. But were not: we are mind
coaches. All adults are mind coaches, either good ones or
bad ones. And all good ones are harmonists. And all bad
ones are disclaimers of harmony.
152
153
Harmonic Three
Socratic Democracy and Aristotelian
Democracy
Most all our leaders are educated in the Arts and most all
the jobs in politics, in schools and education and many other
authoritarian jobs are filled by Arts graduates. Its not
uncommon for a leader to speak 5 languages but not
understand one law of science. They have the tools they
need to spread the message of Ultimate Truths but lack
the tools they need to understand the harmony of reason
and create civilisation.
It should come as no surprise then that we live under an
Aristotelian System of Democracy and have so far failed to
achieve a Socratic System of Democracy based on
harmony.
The fundamental differences between the two systems have
been defined by their creators.
Fundamental to the idea of democracy is the
idea of equality
Aristotle
And the Socratic idea
Fundamental to the idea of democracy is the
idea of the Individual
Two completely different ideas to describe what we all
assume to be ONE idea. Were back to the idea of one site
and two ideas on the site. Were back to Aristotle the word
mechanic and the disclaimer of the harmony of reason.
154
The Aristotelian idea, equality, laced as always with
emotion. The emotion that appeals to tribal members of the
feeling of being equals, togetherness, sharing, (not
dissimilar to the feelings of communism). And further in the
manner of Aristotle unreasoned in most every way except
perhaps one (Reason the Hitch Hiker) so much so there is
no significant connections with any other ideas, i.e. it
effectively disclaims the harmony of reason that surrounds
the idea of democracy.
The other idea, the Socratic idea of the Individual, is reason
based, i.e. it harmonises with many of the harmonics that
form the structure of our society.
Lets do as we have done with other topics in this part of the
book and create the diagrams that illustrate what I mean.
155
The Seat of Socrates and the creation of the
harmonic of democracy
Fundamental to the idea of democracy is the idea of the
individual.
To the Reader:- above are 10 questions in the Seat of
Socrates, e.g. 1. How does the idea of democracy relate to
the idea of equality? The reader should ask them, answer all
10 questions for himself and then compare them to the
same 10 questions from the Footprint of Aristotle.
Democracy
(based on the
Individual)
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
Individual
Rights
(Protected)
Differences
(Encouraged
)
Morality
(created by the
individual)
Children
(Every adult
responsible
for every
child)
The Individual
(The Individual
is important)
The Tribe
(The Tribal
System is
replaced by the
individual)
Equality
(one man one
vote)
Education
(Based on caring
for the Individual
Mind)
Reason
(Based on the
reasoned
premise of
argument,
intellectual
honesty
essential.)
Trust
(Based on the
common
ground of
reason)
4
156
The Footprint of Aristotle, Based on Equality,
Disclaiming the Harmony of Reasoned
Democracy
Fundamental to the idea of democracy is the idea of
equality.
To the Reader:- Above are 10 questions from the diagram
representing the Footprint of Aristotle, e.g. How does the
idea of equality relate to the idea of the Tribe? Answer all 10
questions then the 10 out of the Seat of Socrates.
Democracy
(based on
Equality)
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
Individual Rights
(Equally within
tribal
memberships)
Differences
(Discouraged)
Morality
(Given by the
moralists, the priest,
the lawyer)
Children
To be told
Chris
Woodheads
precious ideas.
The Individual
(Has equal
shared
membership of
the collective)
The Tribe or
Collective
(Most
important)
Equality
(Fundamental)
Education
Based on the
needs of the tribe
Reason
(Is the tribal leaders or
the leader of the
collectives opinion. No
mention of intellectual
honesty)
Trust
(No mention)
4
157
The diagram representing the Seat of Socrates raises 10
questions which I will attempt to answer hopefully after the
reader has tried it for himself/herself.
1 Individual Equality
How does the idea of the individual relate to the idea of
equality?
One man one vote is where equality happens in a
Democratic System. A vote is one of the individuals
rights to have a say in governance. Its not the whole of
what Democracy is about.
2 Individual Tribe
The rights of the individual in a tribe are suppressed or
made subservient to the rights of the tribe. They cannot
coexist in an equal way.
3 + 4 Individual Reason
Individual rights are based on the harmony of reason.
5 Individual Education
Fundamental to the idea of the Individual is the idea of
the independent mind. And fundamental to the idea of
the independent mind is the idea of educating the mind
to use reason and away from the idea of using
unreasoned ideas or disclaiming the harmony of
reason.
To know yourself think for yourself using reason
6 Individual Trust
158
Trust is established between individuals when they
come to understand the common ground of reason that
exists between all men and all ideas if they look for it.
7 Individual Children
Every adult on the planet has a responsibility to every
child on the planet. And every child on the planet has
the right to access the roadways of reason protected
from the disclaimers of the harmony of reason and their
many barricades.
8 Individual Morality
If an individual wants an independent mind then the
morals of that individual have to be independent: i.e.
the individual has to create his own morals NOT beg,
borrow, steal or be given by a nice man the morals of
any other person.
Fundamental to the idea of reason is the reasoned
premise of argument.
Fundamental to the idea of a reasoned premise of
argument is the moral of intellectual honesty.
9 Individual
Individual Rights
The individual has to be protected by individual rights
based on reason. And those rights must be protected
from the disclaimers of the harmony of reason.
10 Individual Differences
Success in nature and success in human thinking
based on reason depends on the creation of
differences.
159
In World II evolution would never happen without the
creation of differences. In World III civilisations would
never be created without the creation of differences.
Lets ask then answer the same 10 questions using
Aristotles idea of equality.
1 + 2 Equality The Tribe
The idea of equality amongst a tribal community or a
communist-style community is fundamental to the way
it works. It fosters togetherness, camaraderie,
everything involved in the idea of a social collective
even the idea of a colony of worker ants.
3 Equality Individual
Its difficult for individuals to be equal by definition.
Further it is most desirable that individuals represent
differences.
4 Equality Reason
When people use reason they create new ideas. New
ideas represent differences not equalities.
5 Equality
Education
An education system that promotes equality spreads
the same equal ideas and creates a blotting paper
mind. A mind intellectually constipated by unreasoned
ideas.
6 Equality
Trust
For trust to happen in a system based on equality
everyone has to be equal in every way.
160
7 Equality Children
Are children going to be brought up to be equally good
at everything? Equally good free spirits? Equally good
followers of the ways of Aristotle?
8 Equality Morality
To have equality of morality the same morals have to
be given to everyone. Its the blotting paper mind
again.
9 Equality Individual Rights
Individual rights allow individuals to use their assets i.e.
their time, their money, their skills whatever way they
want.
10 Equality Differences
It speaks for itself.
The above are my answers to the questions that have
been raised with the help of the Thinking Web as
described in Part III of the book. I havent spent a great
deal of time on the answers because theyre my
answers and as such theyre not that important. The
important answers to the above questions are your
answers. It is your answers to the above questions that
are your yard stick as to whether or not my
explanations of the Seat of Socrates and the Footprint
of Aristotle are working for you.
161
The Constitution of the
Independent Reasoning
Mind
And its reflection in the
Dependent Mind
1. Fundamental to the
idea of a democratic
state is the idea of the
individual.
1. Fundamental to the
idea of the
democratic state is
the idea of equality.
2. Fundamental to the
idea of the individual
is the idea of an
independent thinking
mind.
2. Fundamental to the
idea of equality is the
idea of the
Dependent Mind.
3. Fundamental to the
idea of the
independent thinking
mind is the idea of
reason.
3. Fundamental to the
idea of the
Dependent Mind is
the idea of opinion.
4. Fundamental to the
idea of reason is the
idea of the reasoned
premise of argument.
4. Fundamental to the
idea of opinion is the
idea of the
unreasoned premise
of argument.
5. Fundamental to the
idea of reasoned
premise of argument
is the idea of
intellectual honesty.
5. Fundamental to the
idea of the
unreasoned premise
of argument is the
idea of intellectual
dishonesty or the
disclaiming of reason.
162
CONCLUSIONS
The Socratic Definition
Therefore, the very existence of a Democratic State rests on
the promotion and the use of the reasoned premise of
argument and the moral of Intellectual Honesty.
The Aristotelian Definition
Is the definition and constitution of a tribal harmonic that has
come to understand the need for equality amongst tribal
members and the need to disclaim the importance of the
individual and the harmony of reason that surrounds the
individual.
163
Harmonic Four
Respect v Harmony
Respect your master no matter how harsh or ask your
fellow men to seek harmony with you.
The Blind Order
Respect is the blind order that goes out today not only to
children but to adults.
Lets look at the idea and its Aristotelian pedigree. It is a
word from Religion and the Arts or to be more exact, from
the moralists within the Arts. Those, who like Aristotle,
assume a god given right to know what other people need to
do in order to be called moral. It exemplifies the
characteristics of Aristotelian thinking almost to perfection.
Its emphasis on emotion. Its determination to promote the
harmonic of the tribe. And its determination to disclaim the
harmony of our New World Order and the harmonic we have
created for ourselves The Independent Mind.
When a person is being told to respect they are being
given an order. And according to the Collins Dictionary the
order is:- To wish to emulate and pay attention, to honour, to
have an attitude of esteem.
For what purpose or purposes are we all supposed to be
going around the place respecting every one we meet? Is it
desirable we wish to emulate everyone we meet? A Socratic
would say everyone you meet is so different that if you tried
to emulate every single one of them youd go bonkers. Apart
from the fact its a logically impossible thing to do.
164
A Socratic would also say that the idea of holding every man
in high esteem is a prescription for the suicide of a child at
worst and total confusion and disharmony at best. Only a
disclaimer of harmony or a mad man would educate a child
to respect a paedophile, or a murderer or a liar or a cheat or
a bully. And whether we like it or not people like that do
make up a large proportion of our society. And further as a
Socratic Im not happy about any child being instructed to
respect a person who is determined to disclaim the harmony
of reason that is that childs only lifeline to his/her own life.
The Aristotelian moralists havent told us what the problem
is that they are trying to solve with their moral instruction to
respect. Strange, dont you think, we have a solution to a
problem but no problem?
Its the problem of the hidden passenger in the car all over
again. And the hidden passenger is the problem of the tribe.
Respect works fantastically well in a tribal situation.
You respect your tribal leader. You hold him in high esteem
and honour him, you copy his ways and you obey his orders.
In particular the one that tells you to respect him.
Of course the moral instruction wasnt intended for the tribal
leader or those persons in positions of authority, it was only
meant as an order for those at the bottom of the pile. But
that hasnt been mentioned either. How else do you think
our modern political leaders justify standing in front of
millions of people tell lies and refuse to answer questions.
Lets ask the child about respect. He/she isnt a politician,
yet, and has the nasty habit of telling the truth.
The child:- You might want to honour me or hold me in high
esteem in the same way you want to be honoured and held
in high esteem but I dont really want that and neither does
my dad, even though he is the best joiner in the street and
165
has built not only our house, but a house for the priest and
the lawyer who would still be living in caves if he hadnt
helped them. You might want to emulate me but thats not
such a good idea either. You see Im still a child and I do
childish things. I think you would be a bit stupid if you tried to
copy me. And I dont want to emulate you because I think
youre arrogant. I respect the law but I dont respect you. I
look towards you for wisdom, for protection from evil people
and people who want to return my way of life to its old tribal
ways and I dont see that happening. I want to be valued as
an individual with a lot to offer everybody during my life. You
dont even respect my dad. You sit in comfort in the house
he built for you and do nothing but insult him by demanding
he respects you.
If Aristotelians say they are not demanding respect for a
social contract based on the idea of the tribe then what are
they asking?
They dont say. Not saying is another way how their thinking
fails. They dont refute like a Socratic. They dont say what
they are about, like Aristotelians, they hide their souls
behind a pretence to reason. If you pull them from their laird
and confront them with reason its like trying to tango with a
wet fart. They quickly take offence, feel fear and run off.
Since the Aristotelians are not going to come out with it and
admit what the real problem is were going to have to work
out what the problem is theyre trying to give us the answer
to (if its not the problem of the tribe).
What we all want is to get on together. Aristotelians arent
going to disappear of the face of the earth neither are
Socratics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, vagabonds, thieves,
delinquents, control freaks, murderers, paedophiles and last
but not least children.
166
Theyre all here, all part of society and they are, every one of
them, either part of the problem or part of the solution. What
we need is something that includes everyone, not just what
those in authority want, but those not in authority, who dont
want respect, but would still like their still voice to be heard
above the sound and fury of the wind bags. Something that
might serve as a guide to those lost souls who cant see
their way out from being murderers, paedophiles, thieves,
bullies, perhaps something that resembles an olive branch
of meaningful understanding.
But even more importantly something that educates, offers
protection, a way of life and the wisdom of coming to
understanding the nature of the problem.
What we all want and what our children must have in order
to lead good lives is social harmony. We should be bringing
them up to want the wisdom of harmony that is required to
have an independent mind and live in a harmonious society.
By the end of their civilisation the Greeks were regarding
themselves not a citizen of Athens but as Universans,
citizens of the world. All unified by the common ground of
the harmony of reason that unites all men if they look for it.
If its social harmony we all want. So why dont we remind
each other we can live better lives if we look for harmony.
When we ask for harmony we have done what democracy
demands, if youre a Socratic. Weve allowed all individuals
their rights as individuals to be a part of what is going on,
there isnt the pecking order of the tribe or the Feudal
System or the many other systems that Aristotelians have
become masters at creating be they Perfect Heavens like
Plato created or Presidents of Cabbage growing groups in
English country villages. We become part of a world order
167
where harmony between individuals take precedence over
imposed authoritarian structure.
The Aristotelians in our society arent going to let this
happen because they dont like it when their opinions are
challenged and they are asked to change their tired old
ways. Respect will stay as the moral order yet
disenfranchised children will still feel the injustice of it and
still be separated from any hope of harmony and the
tranquillity it creates.
Personally I find it incredible after all the brutality different
religions have heaped on one another and on harmonists
that they should even think of asking one another for
respect. Apart from their history of brutality, its a completely
illogical request theyre making of one another. How can you
possibly claim to have the one and only omnipotent God one
minute and then respect another guys one and only
omnipotent God the next minute. Its illogical and silly. Its
hypocrisy. Ah but theyre all the same, God says, the smart
guy in the group. Oh really? Well someone seems to have
forgotten to tell my math teacher, the priests, the bishops,
the Ayatollahs, and most importantly Chris Woodhead.
But then theyve disclaimed harmony so they dont know
what it means and it seems never did.
168
The Seat of Socrates and the creation of the
harmonic of Social Harmony
Social Harmony
16
15
14
13
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
1
2
3
4
Personal
Experiences
Psychology
(studied using
reason)
Religion
(Try to make
religion a
spiritual mindful
experience and
not a tribal
experience)
Education
(Educate for
individuality,
not tribalism)
Semantics
(weve paid
attention to
semantics.
Change respect

social
Harmony)
Intellectual
Honesty
(A moral
necessity)
Citizenship
(Were all citizens
of the world.
Universans)
The Tribe
(No part in social
harmony)
Respect Authority
(Respect the law
not the judge)
Help
(It often
doesnt cost
much)
Morality
(Your own)
Culture
(Your own)
Idea of Neighbour
(Help him when he
needs it: let him have
his privacy and be
honest with him)
Trade
Reason
(reasons
reference
points are the
only ones we
can all share)
The Individual
(With his/her
own mind)
169
In the Seat of Socrates are sixteen questions. And every
one of them provides important reasoned answers to the
problem of Social Harmony.
e.g. Social Harmony Respect
How does Social Harmony relate to Respect?
We respect the laws we have created to protect society.
170
Respect and the Footprint of Aristotle
Ask the sixteen questions we asked from the Seat of
Socrates but this time with the Idea of Respect. And then try
and answer them. Youll have to try this for yourself and if
you do youll find that you get very little by way of
information back. The answers with the most information are
under the footprint.
Respect
16
15
14
13
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
1
2
3
4
Personal
Experiences Psychology
(Based on
unreasoned
premises)
Religion
(Tribally
based)
Semantics
(Reason
disclaimed)
Intellectual
Honesty
(No mention)
Citizenship
(Tribalism)
The Tribe
(Respect is all
about the tribal
structure)
Respect
(All Authority)
Help
Morality
(Of the
collective)
Culture
(Of the
collective)
Idea of Neighbour
(Go picking and poking
in his personal life)
Trade
Reason
(Disclaimed)
Individual
(Disclaimed)
Education
(As a
collective of
worker ants)
171
The Seat of Socrates:
There is a difference between an order and advice. An order
pushes and advice beckons and leads towards it purpose.
Which in this case is the harmony of reason of all the
reasons that surround the idea of social harmony.
Respect is an order an army sergeant gives to a corporal.
An order a King, blessed with divine wisdom, gives to his
Lords. An order a Lord, blessed with worldly authority, gives
to his surfs. Fundamental to the Feudal System is the order
of respect. Once the chain of order is broken. Once we
remove the respect that holds the chains together, the
Feudal System does, hopefully what has happened many
millions of times in the life of the universe. It disintegrates to
create the ashes out of which a New World Order might
grow. Something new, something away from what has
become a cruel and barren system of failure. Something
which doesnt demand respect, but something which needs
care.
We have created the idea of something which when we
harmonise it we can see it has many reasoned connections
to many of our other ideas about life that seem to matter.
Something which when we harmonise it, we find the unit that
is part of the New World Order that is the most powerful unit
of any sort to exist in the whole universe. The Independent
Mind. A unit of harmony, that is a unit of harmony the way a
car, an aeroplane, an orchestra, a football team is a unit of
harmony. Units made up of even smaller harmonics that
harmonise. Like the wheels of a car, the coach of the
football team, the leader of the orchestra, the intellect of the
mind. All necessary parts of the whole but all with
independent functions within the whole.
172
The only information you get by way of value when you ask
how does respect relate to the idea of the tribe is that the
whole idea of the tribe rests on the idea of respect. In short
the problem that relates to the idea of respect is the problem
of the tribe.
And once again it is the idea of the tribe that Aristotle and
his fans are trying to preserve. And the idea of the
Independent Mind they are trying to disclaim.
173
Harmonic Five
Positive Thinking
The Blind Man Leads
As those in authority in our society ask children and adults to
blindly submit to respect in order to create social harmony,
so our Aristotelian psychologists ask them to blindly submit
to the idea of positive thinking towards every event in their
lives. Both these ideas are Aristotelian ideas. Both blind to
reason (i.e. they disclaim reason). Both rely on emotion
leading the way.
Sure it is sometimes a good idea to wake up and say I need
to be positive today. And some days it pays dividends to
wake up and respect the law and things about other people
but every day in every way?
Mistakes are important. We learn from them. They are
fundamental to the way we reason. What happens if I make
a mistake: and I often do. And chose to live with the
mistake? (i.e. continue to be positive). My mistake lives long
after its sell by date and causes intellectual constipation.
I am no longer on Socrates stepping stones, I am on
Aristotles stairway to the heavens.
A person who positively commits to every idea he/she has in
life is never going to understand harmony and is never going
to understand the reality of life. Is never going to have the
time to do anything other than commit to mistakes!! And
worst of all with the Blotting Paper Mind theyre not even
going to be his own mistakes. His life is going to be spent
committing to the mistakes of other men. I think that idea
would give a jackdaw an intellectual seizure!
174
A person who positively respects every person and idea he
meets is designed for life as a sheep or a worker ant. These
two ideas can only work when everyone is positively equal,
positively respectful all of the time and the individual who
has the nasty habit of being positively unequal and positively
disrespectful doesnt happen. We are not the creatures
Aristotle, Plato and our leaders have wanted us to become.
Well not all of us!
When you see the ideas of Plato and Aristotle written by
Plato and Aristotle themselves and not interpreted by some
high flying scholar in the classics with a double honours its
not difficult to see how morose and unreasonable their
thinking was. Not only that but if they have no claim to be
great reasoning thinkers they must be laying claim to being
great imaginative thinkers. To give credit to Aristotle and
Plato if they deserve any credit at all, it is as imaginative
thinkers we must mark their score card. But even as far as
imagination goes it is as mundane, boring, arrogant and
bullying as you can get.
Lets look at some of their material by looking at what we
know they said and not at what our not our so great scholars
have re-interpreted.
Surely the only purpose today in studying Aristotle and Plato
is not to understand how their thinking has failed humanity
by trying to return it to its tribal existence. That part of their
philosophy is so obvious how can anyone not see it? The
purpose must be to understand its enormous influence on
thinking in the Western World. Remembering as Socrates
said of unreasoned ideas:
Superstition follows arrogance as a father
And Aristotle is the champion of fatherhoods.
175
He is still spawning fatherhoods today, e.g. David Goleman
in his book Emotional Intelligence kick starts his book with
the quote from Aristotle on Emotional Intelligence:
Being angry thats easy. Knowing when to be
angry, with whom, to what degree etc. thats
not so easy.
Aristotle is now the Father of Emotional Intelligence and
David Goleman has Disclaimed the Harmony of Reason
within the idea of Emotional Intelligence. The quotes and
ideas of Socrates no longer apply. Aristotle has a new
Fatherhood. David Goleman has made millions by getting
it all wrong and I am still struggling as I was when Goleman
published his book to tell the public how Socrates
understood Emotional Intelligence and Aristotle didnt.
Platos Theory of Forms
His central doctrine was the Theory of Forms, the theory that
was later to form the central doctrines of the Christian faith.
He claimed that:
In Heaven there are perfect unchanging forms of
everything that exists on Earth. There are perfect
ideas, perfect cats, chairs, mountains etc. These
perfect forms have their counterparts on Earth
that are imperfect and subject to change and
decay. As they change and decay on Earth they
lose their essence and perfection. God in Heaven
is perfection. Man on Earth is God in the process
of decay and woman is a man in decay. As a
woman decays she becomes an animal.
Plato
176
Plato of Athens (c.427 347BC)
The greatest principle of all, that nobody,
whether male or female, should not be without a
leader, nor should the mind of anybody be
habituated to letting him do anything at all on his
own initiative; neither out of zeal nor even
playfully. But in war and in the midst of peace to
his leader he shall direct his eyes and follow him
faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he
should stand under leadership e.g. he should not
get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals
only when he has been told to do so. In a word,
he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to
dream of acting independently and become
utterly incapable of it.
Plato
The purpose of many perhaps.
Platos Naturalistic Theory of Slavery, endorsed by Aristotle
Some men are by nature free, and others
slaves. For the latter slavery is fitting as well as
just a man by nature who is not his own but
anothers, is by nature a slave. Hellenes (Greeks)
do not like to call themselves slaves but confine
this term to barbarians. The slave is totally
devoid of any faculty of reason, while free women
have just a little of it. The working class must not
rule and the ruling class must not work, but they
must keep the money and own the land. Feudal
leaders should only go to war and have other
such hobbies; they must not involve themselves
in any occupation or in any science. A gentleman
may also acquire some liberal arts but only to a
certain degree. If he takes too much interest in
177
them, evil effects will follow and he will become
proficient, like a professional, and lose caste.
Plato
Yes :- I would like a slave
The Nocturnal Council
In his writings on the ideal state, Plato proposes that,
Leaders should meet in secret in the dead of
night to judge any man whose religious opinions
deviate from their own. The hearing was to go
unheard by the public, their souls were to be
judged by the nocturnal council of inquisitors and
if they did not recant or if they repeated the
offence the charge of impiety meant death.
Plato
Socrates was victim of the same charge and if Plato had got
his way Socrates would not even have had a public trial
before he was put to death. He didnt even turn up at
Socrates trial to vote to save Socrates life. Then spent the
rest of his life plagiarising his ideas.
It is the origin of The Office of the inquisition of the Christian
Church. The office that met and decided the fate of men
and women all over Europe and on into the new world. It is
the office that ordered mens guts to be spilled over burning
fires as they burned at the stake for the most trivial of
reasons, on the whim of dim-witted medieval church leaders.
It is the office that tortured Galileo till he recanted and
agreed that the world was as flat as his persecutors
imagined it to be. It is the office that Archbishop Carey refers
to today when he says that he and he alone has access to
the letters at Lambeth Palace in London that kings and
archbishops have sent to each other over centuries of
history.
178
How can he claim such a right? How can he so easily
expose his intellectual inadequacies (his readiness to
disclaim the harmony of reason by so unashamedly boasting
about his access to those letters and our no right of
access).
Aristotle The Father of Cultural Flippery
Every form of professionalism leads to a loss of
caste. The upper elite must never take too much
interest in any occupation or science but they
must own all the land and keep all the money.
There are some liberal arts they may acquire but
always to a certain degree. For if they take too
much interest evil effects will follow.
I am not even going to start and comment on the above
other than say its imagination at its best and not reason. Yet
Stalin, Idi Amin, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, to list but a few
have all taken their cue in life from the above quotes of Plato
and Aristotle. The Classicists in our Universities have wind
bagged their way to these men being the great intellectual
pillars of our Western Society. Its cultural schizophrenia. A
schizophrenic culture brought about by the inability of the
tribal members of humanity to be able to distinguish
between reason and imagination.
A lack of ability brought about by their lack of care in
subjecting their own imagined ideas to harmony. Nothing to
do with IQ. Nothing to do with status. Nothing to do with
biology. Nothing to do with politics. Nothing to do with
religion. But all to do with taking the care to find out where
each idea belongs and to which other ideas it is related. All
to do with care and to asking questions. All to do with what
Socrates said 2,300 years ago.
Harmony is knowing everything is in its place.
179
Harmonic Six
Neighbours
Choose your Neighbour, Socrates or
Aristotle?
The prime moral of 1/3 of the worlds population is a moral of
Aristotles, who lived 350 years before Christianity was a
twinkle in the eye of a Christian God.
Aristotle said:-
A virtue is something you know that is valuable to someone
else (or so you think).
It is still in its Greek format and shares reason and emotion
in a sort of balanced way. For all that Aristotle was a poor
Greek Philosopher, he was still Greek. And a poor Greek
Philosopher adapted for laboratory work is still a more
potent philosopher than most philosophers. Thats why all
the religions, chose him as their intellectual mentor. Dont
ask me. Ask them.
Writers have tweeked the quote of Aristotle. The emotional
content has been increased to maximum strength its love.
And we all know thats as strong as it gets.
As the emotional content is ratcheted up so the reasoned
content diminishes. You no longer have to know something
your neighbour needs to know but doesnt. You just have to
love him and sod the reason. Love is the premise, the only
premise and anyone who refuses your love has got to be a
born idiot (or out of love!!)
180
If we take to love to mean making another person happy
(and Im stuck for another description of this emotion): in
close personal relationships such as family the idea might
work because one or both or all the people involved have
got to know about one another. Without understanding
another persons needs and aspirations how can you make
them happy?
Loving them, without knowing what makes them happy is
the best foot in the door any salesman ever had. Knock
knock. Hi I love you. Oh by the way I happen to have a
good idea from Mr. Aristotle that I know will make you
happy. Its to do with your insurance, your investments, your
Double Glazing, your Gods, your Emotional Intelligence,
your education, whatever. But dont forget we love you. Our
tribe loves you and wants you.
Businesses, the world over have now taken on Aristotle as
their mentor. Aristotle should be given credit where credit is
due. These are the parts he and his fans will enjoy. The
parts they wont enjoy is the criticism where criticism is due.
the harmonising bit in the middle that word that Aristotle
never thought of: refutation. Or being shown to be wrong.
181
The Seat of Socrates and the creation of the
harmonic of your neighbour
Above is a diagram representing the Seat of Socrates. The
Map of the Thinking Mind has been used the way we
describe in Part III of the book. Above are some of the many
important questions you would need to ask and then answer
in order to resolve the problem of how to treat or behave
towards your neighbour.
e.g.:
How does the idea of Privacy relate to my neighbour?
Privacy

Neighbour
Neighbour
History
Psychology
Morality
Personal
experiences
Humor +
Party time
Childre
n
Trust
Care
Love
Cultur
e
Reaso
n
Help
Community Activities
School
New Emotions
Citizenship
Religion
Money
Friendship
Educatio
n
Harmonist or a
Disclaimer of
Harmony
Privac
y
182
How does the idea of my culture relate to my neighbour?
My Culture

Neighbour
Also
My Neighbours Culture

My Culture
How does the idea of trust relate to my neighbour?
Trust

Neighbour
Etc etc. To be able to understand our neighbour and to be
able to go from understanding them to making them happy
(i.e. loving them) we have to have answered at least all of
these questions, i.e. we have had to have HARMONISED
OUR PROBLEM.
In a family situation we have the chance of asking and
answering quite a few of these questions (but even then
often we cant answer all of them). We at best may know
something needed to make the members of our family
happy i.e. to love them. With a neighbour theres no chance.
And nobody would want to put in the enormous amount of
effort needed to understand one neighbour never mind six, a
1,000 or 1,000000? It cant be.
If we accept this situation, and theres no reasonable reason
why we shouldnt, and then take out the whole of the
harmonised idea those things we can never hope to deal
with. Like the silly idea of trying to love him/her. Like being
responsible for his money. Like telling him how to behave.
Like telling him youre going to invade his privacy. Like
telling him youre happy morality that will remove his
unhappy morality and make him happy like you. Like telling
him how Aristotle uses reason and disclaim how Socrates
183
uses reason. Like telling him which ideas to preserve for his
children.
If we take out everything that doesnt harmonise, i.e. has no
reason to be a reasoned part of your relationship with your
neighbour. You are left, hopefully, with what works (you
refute what doesnt work and what you are left with is your
reasoned answer).
i.e. Help your neighbour when he/she needs help.
Let him have his privacy, free from your Aristotelian
prosperity to go picking and poking.
Strive to be intellectually honest so you can probably at
some future date join your neighbour on the common ground
of reason that unites all men if they look for it.
You might think you can know, like Aristotle, but you cant.
Christian ideas make Christians happy or I assume they do.
But a happy Christian pushing his ideas on to a happy
Muslim or happy Jew or whatever is just a failed idea of
communication which is the prime cause of war, genocide,
and ignorance.
Further most people havent even learned how to care for
themselves. How can they assume to know how to care for
another person if they dont even know how to care for
themselves?
184
Aristotles Footprint and your Neighbour
Theres only one question been asked and answered above.
And the question is: How do I treat my neighbour? And the
answer is you love him. Its not even advice. Its a command
like the idea of Respect.
Its a command to treat them as you would a child. By doing
for them what you think they need in order to make them
happy. Its arrogant to treat your neighbour as a child.
Love
THE FOOTPRINT
Neighbour
ALL THESE REASONED
CONNECTIONS THAT EXIST
IN THE SEAT OF SOCRATES
BELOW HAVE GONE
MISSING. THEYVE BEEN
DISCLAIMED.
185
Harmonic Seven
A Comparison of some Harmonics of the
Blotting Paper Mind and of the Independent
Mind.
The Blotting Paper Mind The Independent Mind
Civilisation is about
spreading ideas throughout a
population, e.g. the Romans.
No it isnt. Its about creating
original reasoned ideas e.g.
the Greeks.
Education is about passing
precious ideas and traditions
from one generation to the
next. As Plato, Aristotle and
Chris Woodhead the Chief
Inspector of OFSTED
explain.
No it isnt. Its all about
educating children how to
care for their minds using
reason to enable them to
think for themselves. As
Socrates explained.
Morality is about being
instructed in morals by your
spiritual moralist (the Priest)
and right and wrong ideas by
your legal moralist (the
Lawyer). Who have been
instructed by Aristotle and
Plato
No it isnt. Its about finding
out for yourself what your
own morals are. What our
own important ideas about
life are. As Socrates
explained.
186
Democracy is about being
equal and thinking and
feeling all the same things
that equality brings. Including
the feeling of harmony which
comes from respect within
the collective. As Aristotle
explained.
No it isnt. Its about being
individual and thinking and
feeling in your own way: not
like a colony of worker ants.
Learning together how to
trust the common ground of
reason between all men. As
Socrates explained.
Reason is based on opinion.
It is decided by voting or by
our leaders. Its part of the
harmonic of the tribe. As
Aristotle explained.
No it isnt. Reason is when
something is highly refutable
but not refuted. It is outside
the harmonic of the tribe. As
Socrates explained.
Science is that paltry
inquisitiveness they dain to
call natural science.
A.C. Stobbard, Professor of the
Classics. Head of BBC Education
Programs.
No it isnt.
Respect everything done in
the name of science.
Socrates
Its using reason to
understand the harmony of
the universe and life.
187
Positive Thinking is about
taking an emotionally
positive approach to
everything you think. As
modern Aristotelian
Psychologists advise.
Thats not a good idea.
Good Thinking is about
understanding the way it is
and negative feelings
sometimes happen because
not all ideas can have a
positive emotional effect. To
understand reality negative
emotions have to be
accepted and dealt with not
hidden under a pretence that
theyve got to be made
positive.
Emotional Intelligence is
about using your cognitive
skills to manipulate and
understand your emotions
and the emotions of others.
As Aristotle and modern
Aristotelian Psychologists
explain.
No it isnt. Its another
example of failed Aristotelian
Psychology. Its very little to
do with emotional
intelligence. Its our intellects
that create New Ideas
which create New
Emotions that we need to
understand not emotional
intelligence. We should call it
emotional intellect. As
Socrates explained.
Critical Inquiry is about how
we progress thinking using
Aristotles methods based on
clever opinions. As Aristotle
explained and Classicists
endorse.
Creative Reasoned Thinking
rejects all attempts to reason
critically based on opinion.
All creative reasoned
thinking has to start with a
reasoned premise of
argument. As Socrates
explained.
188
Respect is the secret of an
ordered law abiding society.
As Aristotle explained.
No it isnt. Respect only
works within the harmonic
that demands it, e.g. the
harmonic of the tribe. Its a
blind order.
If you want universal order
you have to ask for, not
demand, harmony. You cant
demand harmony because it
requires individuals to think.
Whereas you can demand
respect. As Socrates
explained.
The Arts and in particular the
Classics are the source of all
our important ideas on
civilisation. As Aristotle
explained.
No they arent. Theyre the
points of origin of all our
confusion on civilisation.
They make claims to know
that are totally out of order.
As Socrates explained.
Love Your Neighbour
As religious fans of Aristotle
explained it is the Ultimate
Truth i.e. The Ultimate
Moral.
No, dont be a hypocrite. You
can only love a few people.
Help your neighbour when
needs help. Stop picking and
poking by pretending to love
him. Respect his privacy and
be intellectually honest with
him and he will learn to trust
you.
A Secularist is a lay person
who collects the money in a
church.
No he isnt. Hes a person
who believes in introducing
reason into the whole
cultural fabric of life.
189
An Atheist is an ignorant
soulless person who doesnt
believe in God.
No he isnt an Atheist is an
ignorant mindless choice of
words which disregards all
the rules of language by
pretending to try and
describe a person by saying
what he isnt!! It is a word
chosen by Christian
Aristotelians to describe
people they want to insult
because they dont believe in
their God.
God is an omnipotent being
who knows all The Ultimate
Truths. Some of which he
tells Aristotle, Plato and
Chris Woodhead.
No it isnt. God is the
unknown: thats what the
ancients understood God to
be. And the unknown is
reason like Socrates said.
And further he said If I am
wise it is because I know I do
not know.
A Mind is the property of the
harmonic of the tribe. It is a
Blotting Paper Mind.
No it isnt. Its the property of
the individual it is an
independent mind.
The Renaissance is the
rebirth of learning.
No it isnt. Its the start of
reintroducing reason into the
cultural fabric of society, i.e.
harmonising by being
harmonists or secularists
(not collecting money in
church).
190
Spiritual Harmony is
achieved by understanding
what the Gods and their
Ultimate Truths are about.
No it isnt. Tranquillity is
knowing everything is in its
place by joining the
intellectuality of your being to
the emotionality of your
being and understanding the
idea of New Emotions.
Teachers
Teach our children.
Yes they do and they can
teach anything they want
and still be teachers. Ideas
like Chris Woodheads
Genius cannot be created
neither can it be destroyed.
Ideas like A.C. Stobbards
Science is that paltry
inquisitiveness they dain to
call natural science. Ideas
like Aristotles take no notice
of reason. Teachers can
teach methods of torture.
Teachers indoctrinate
millions of children millions of
times a day with their
precious ideas and Chris
Woodheads precious ideas.
Our education system
encourages this act of
indoctrination. Teachers
should seize the mantle of
their profession and use
reason and reason alone as
educators (not teachers) to
educate children to care for
their minds using reason.
AND forget the bullshit.
191
Harmonist
Never heard of them.
Surprise! Its a person who
believes in harmonising the
cultural fabric of life.
Intellect
Special men are called
Intellectuals we must go
out and look for them
especially the ones that
belong to our own tribe.
No we shouldnt, we should
tell them to sod off and
educate our children to the
idea they all have an intellect
potentially far more powerful
than any of these mistakes
(i.e. intellectuals) from our
past history.
Chapter
A division of a book: A
period: A sequence of
events: cannons of exact
authority.
No they arent cannons of
authority. They are:
harmonics of reason. Most of
the time. And further not just
a sequence of events but a
complex of reasoned ideas.
And
A word you shouldnt use too
often because it occupies a
valuable site where you
could put another exotic
sounding word that is part of
your Blotting Paper
Vocabulary.
And is a joining word only
that joins ideas in groups
and helps construct the
complexes of ideas without
risking adding further
complicating ideas to the
association you havent
thought out, i.e. creating
wind baggery.
Theory
A cluster of opinions.
A cluster of ideas based on
empirical evidence and
careful reasoning which
offers an explanation on how
something happens or works
or what it is.
192
Words
The smallest single
meaningful unit of meaning.
And single means only one.
(An Ultimate Truth once
again.)
No words are complexes of
your own reasoned and
observed experiences. And
your neighbours idea of
words are his complexes of
his own reasoned and
observed experiences. There
is nothing singular about
them. They are complexes or
harmonics (i.e. clusters of
meanings even at the level
of words).
Philistine
A person who is hostile
towards culture and the Arts:
boorishly uncultured.
Yet another designer insult.
Designed to do as St.
Thomas Aquinas said it
should be if they cant be
seen to agree with you
change their definition to one
thats hostile to you.
Im not hostile to the Arts and
culture, quite the opposite.
The Arts are the seedbed of
my ideas of culture. But I am
hostile to people I think
abuse the Arts that lie and
cheat and demean the
reputation of the Arts by
making it into an
intellectually childish tool that
suits a low level of intellect.
And then appoints its own
biased kind to write the
nonsense into dictionaries.
193
Reason
A cause or motive for a belief
or action.
No it isnt you are just
cheating again and trying to
steal the harmonists ideas.
Reason is an idea that has
been subjected to reason.
Causes of belief are still
beliefs. The jackdaw in my
garden understands that.
History
We write the history and
history is written by the
victors.
Yes and for the first time
youve got something right.
The above differences arent just minor differences that
require a bit of tweaking here and there. That require a
really clever man to sort out. That require a three year
graduate course to understand. They are fundamental
differences in a schizophrenic culture that has been created
by the really clever men that have hidden their contempt
for the harmony of reason by devious means but mostly by
disclaiming it. Its time to list the few simple facts that need
to be listed and present them to our children and let them
decide for themselves if they want to continue with The
Blotting Paper Mind of their ancestors or go forwards with a
mind of their own.
194
195
Harmonic Eight
High Noon
Socrates used the Dialectic. The Dialectic was a one to one
where the mentor, Socrates, encouraged the student to
brainstorm his problem by raising his own questions on the
problem. This went on until the student reached a paradox
that he had to solve usually by having to withdraw some
claim to know (what we usually call an opinion or a belief). In
simple language he was asking the student to refute all his
unreasoned ideas that seemed to be part of the problem.
(To disclaim opinion and belief and to connect with and
HARMONISE with reason), i.e. to harmonise using reason.
To come to know everything is in its place. The further test
of a reasoned idea is that once you found it by refutation is
that it will have a place in a harmonic. Like a piece of a
jigsaw.
The establishment then and the classicists today claimed he
was spreading doubt and cynicism of other mens ideas (in
particular those of religious leaders, academics and the
establishment, i.e. their own).
When they claim this and they still do today, as they did at
the trial of Socrates. They fail to understand what they are
being told. Or they were then and are now just simply
ignoring what they have had explained to them in
reasonably simple language, that they claim to be the
masters of. They seem to have failed to understand the
difference between the idea of refute and the idea of doubt,
or they just ignore the difference and in doing so disclaim
the harmony of reason yet again.
Whenever I meet a classicist today I ask them the same
question and always they dont know. Double honours or
196
not. Theyve been explained the difference between refute
and doubt but they still have their own old tired ideas on
Ultimate Truths. Theyve given the older banger a lick of
paint, kicked the tyres and created a new designer name.
These are some of the reasons businesses today often
instruct their sales staff in the ways of Aristotle. This ability
to change the label to suit the nature of their client.
The Aristotelian philosophers of today call An Ultimate
Truth an A priori. Its in Latin of course, it sounds more
exotic and scholarly and of course breeding will out and the
intended confusion amongst the common flock will happen.
The simple truth is the a priori is the same old idea as an
Ultimate Truth. The same idea as the Divine Wisdom of
the priest, bishop and king. The same idea as the Axioms of
language of the professors of the Classics.
No self respecting leader of any institution appears in public
without his own special Ultimate Truth with their own
designer label. In short it is the nature of the tribal harmonic
and the tool of the modern salesman.
Socrates understood the nature of language. He knew it was
a tool to describe the unknown. If I am wise it is because I
know I do not know. He knew language started from an
uncertain position in a complex of unknown reasons. He
knew the unknown was only open to the ways of reason
the harmony of reason, that I have tried to explain in this
book
2
. He knew his ancestors had tried all the other routes.
The routes of the Gods, the routes of superstition, the routes
of men like Aristotle.
2
Notice:- Socrates was prepared to say the unknown was reason but
it doesnt mean he was saying he knew or understood the unknown.
His critics often point this out.
197
He would have laughed his socks off at Aristotles and
Platos idea of words as Perfect Forms unchangeable and
unchanging. If they had only listened to him they would have
realised how their childish and simplistic notions of words
were the ones that humanity had in abundance in their
Blotting Paper Minds and that the only way forwards was the
way of nature. The way of reason, the way of harmony and
the elimination of the mistakes. by refutation.
They didnt listen then and they dont listen now they are
determined their subject(s) the Arts will triumph over the
sciences. They still see it as a childish competition between
the Arts and Sciences. They still havent realised science is
a way of thinking not just a subject. They havent worked out
that scientists think about words and ideas a lot more
effectively than they do. They havent worked out that the
Arts in addition to entertainment are an early important part
of a process of thinking that culminates in the rational way of
coming to knowledge called science. They havent worked
out that the sciences and the Arts are separate harmonics,
that function brilliantly together as in tandem. Not together
as in a soup.
Civilisations and the way they develop illustrate this point:
with most activity in the early phases of a civilisation
beginning within the Arts and later the rational times happen.
A period of consolidation of the imagined ideas. This
process can take several centuries. And as always happens
in human history once it starts to do well and the green eyed
disclaimers of harmony start to see whats going on they
knock it all to pieces again as they did in the sixth century
AD. And we go back to the dark ages and start again. We
seem to be behaving as a colony of worker ants who has
just discovered the idea of circle.
198
199
Harmonic Nine
Einstein and Socrates
The False Dawns
The wisdom of the harmony of Socrates came to some in
Psychology in the 1980s when they realised the false dawn
of one of their a prioris (or Ultimate Truths or Axioms of
language or divine wisdom). Their a priori had been the
idea that all human behaviour could be explained by
acquired habits of behaviour. They had forgotten to
harmonise their idea. To connect it to all the other harmonics
they knew about. By failing to do the obvious. By failing to
ask the questions of harmony, e.g. How does the idea of
acquired habits of behaviour explain civilisation and the
creation of new reasoned ideas? The answer is it doesnt
and it cant and so out of the window goes another a priori.
Strangely enough to be replaced by Socrates own dialectic
this time called Cognitive Thinking. More subtle plagiarism
going on even after 2,400 years! More changing words and
sites about.
Renaissance scientists like Newton had begun to
understand the nature of language and science as explained
by Socrates but it took till the 1920s for the intellectual
suspension bridge to be built that would connect Socrates to
our own modern times across 2,400 years of mostly hotch
potch thinking.
As Newton had started his idea of gravity with the a priori
up and down which he proved to be fallible. Einstein began
his theory of relativity with his problem of the day with the a
priori, speed. All the scientists of the day were trying to
200
measure the speed of light to the greatest degree of
accuracy possible. They had with pride and ingenuity
measured it at 183,000 miles per second. This was their
Ultimate Truth. Their A priori. Their False Dawn.
Einstein did as Newton had done and as Socrates had done.
He harmonised the problem and made the connections he
could further make to other reasoned ideas. He took the a
priori (Aristotles Ultimate Truth) off its tribal pedestal and
smashed it to the ground.
The idea of the scientists idea of speed, their a priori, was
relative to surface of the earth. The time it took to go
between two fixed points on the surface of the earth. But the
earth was rotating at the equator at a further speed of
25,000 miles a day. It was also in orbit around the sun at a
speed which was the distance of the orbit/year. Also the
universe was expanding out from the centre of the big bang
at an unknown speed!! Already something as seemingly
definite as the idea of speed was, when harmonised,
beginning to look like one very sick a priori or ultimate
truth. Its fallibility within language was becoming obvious. It
was another False Dawn. They had reached the gap
between the boundary of their harmonic of Newtonian
physics and the boundary of the harmonic of nuclear
physics.
When he was acclaimed a genius he nearly, but not quite,
achieved the celebrity status of Socrates in Ancient Greece.
In ancient Greece Socrates didnt only have the status of a
film star, a clever man, a football player, a pop singer. His
status was as the combined status of all these men. All
rolled into one smelly boozing swearing, pot bellied, bow
legged, bald bulging eyed unit of humanity. All sides of
humanity that had essences that connected to the harmony
of nature. He knew where he was, he had his place. He
even looked like Homer Simpson. Or who looked like who
and why?
201
When Einstein achieved the accolade awarded to Socrates
he surprised everyone, including the scientific community,
by declaring I know my theory is the best theory to date but
also I know its wrong. Only I dont know how. He had done
a Socrates. When asked why are you the cleverest man in
the world he effectively had said If I am wise it is because I
know I do not know.
The biggest intellectual suspension bridge in the history of
humanity had been created using the wisdom of the
harmony of reason. Further as Einstein explains he
understood the idea of the dialectic and what refutation was
all about.
If I ask a 100 questions and ninety-nine are
wrong I have had a successful day.
Einstein
Both Einstein and Socrates agree that the idea of asking
questions is not about doubt. Its about refutation. A simple
concept but one that seems to have been misunderstood.
As always seems to be the case. Its not the answering of
the questions. It is the problem of asking the right questions.
And you cant know youve asked the right question till
youve answered it!
In his book The Meaning of Relativity Einstein writes: (My
words are in the brackets).
The only justification for our concepts (words/ideas) and
systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the
complex of our experiences; (the harmony of
reason/harmonics) beyond this they have no legitimacy. (i.e.
there is no such thing as perfect words or perfect heavens) I
am convinced that the philosophers have had a harmful
effect up on the process of scientific thinking in removing
certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism
202
(observation), where they are under our control, (e.g. can be
refuted) to the intangible heights of the a priori (cannot be
refuted).
These are Einsteins words. You can change the word a
priori for Ultimate Truths without changing the meaning.
The essence of what he says about words is they represent
the complex of our experience. They are not owned by
Aristotle or Plato, or the dictionary or the leader or the
scholar. They are like our own morals, our own mind, our
own complex of experiences. As Americans discovered
becoming independent is about transferring governance
from without (from England) to within (to the USA). In the
case of the Independent Mind, it includes not only the most
obvious things such as reason, imagination, morals etc, i.e.
all the skills of thinking but those things which we seem to
inherit. The less obvious things we call words, and what we
personally envisage them to be. Words are the particles of
Aristotelian quicksand or the molecules of water around
Assumption Island.
The particles that Aristotle couldnt fix except with the wild
guesses of opinions. The particles which reason slowly but
surely crystallise into a fabric of reason by harmonising in
the only possible way by coming to observe and
understand all the connections of an idea, a piece at a time.
Similarly with the transference of governance and the
establishment of a new constitution it doesnt end there. Old
King George, going quietly insane, didnt like it either. He
liked things the way they were with himself as the tribal
leader. Hed outlived his sell by date, he wasnt going to be
informed he was going to disclaim independence. He wasnt
going to relinquish power, it had to be taken away from him.
Just as power will have to be taken away from the Blotting
Paper Mind, scholars in the Classics, politicians and Blotting
203
Paper Minds that write the history books and dictionaries. I
dont mean a war of Independence I mean a war of
intellectual attrition which will only happen when we start
telling our children the truth about words and the harmony of
reason. And smash Ultimate Truths and opinions to the
ground.
204
205
Harmonic Ten
Socrates the Scientist and Midwife at the birth
of Mankinds Independent Mind. And
Aristotle the Laboratory Technician and
Father of the Blotting Paper Mind.
I know many of my readers will be Aristotelians by nature
and by nurture. And how do I know that? Its the easiest
question in the whole book. Im just a really clever guy
Ive got lots of opinions. Just like Aristotle. And they fall all
over the place and at all times just like autumn leaves.
Opinions on education. Opinions on slavery. Opinions on
democracy. Opinions on natures deficits. Opinions on the
common man. Opinions on the Aristocracy and what they
have a natural right to and what they dont have a natural
right to. Opinions on morality and who should own it: but I
have something even more capable of uniting Aristotle and
myself. We both claim to be botanists.
Aristotle is famous, in addition, for the idea of critical inquiry,
which he is reputed to have carried out in the Olive Groves
in surrounding the Academic in Athens. But his main
purpose in the Academy was working as a botanist. Or to be
more exact as a plant taxonomist. A person who classifies
plants. Or to be even more exact a person who classifies
plants, not in all the ways a plant can be classified today, but
according to visual characteristics. Aristotle didnt like
science. Didnt agree with science and considering the
emphasis he put on both these ideas, it is highly unlikely that
he was a Botanical Scientist like I am today.
He was what a Botanical Scientist, like myself today, would
describe as a laboratory technician. He performed what we
scientists today would regard as the donkey work of science.
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He made seemingly endless lists of plant characteristics and
classified them under different headings. Strange as it may
seem these headings reflected the harmonics of different
species. Aristotle had no excuse for not understanding the
harmonic of a species. And its repetition through the fabric
of nature. The work he did was mind numbingly boring
donkey work which he refers to in one of his quotes:
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
But a job eminently suited to a man who doesnt like science
and who doesnt understand it.
If I ran my own biology lab today and Aristotle applied for the
job of a Technician I would jump at the opportunity to
employ him because according to his C.V. he would work
his socks off doing the most monotonous of jobs and every
lab needs a work horse.
If he applied for the job as a Botanical Scientist he wouldnt
get through the door. Because he never understood the
harmony of nature and could never understand the harmony
of botany or any other science for that matter. And I am
today, by modern standards, a 10
th
rate Botanist, but I do
know my place in the here and now and in the gone before
times of Aristotle. And I know Aristotles place is as a
Laboratory Technician who failed to make the grade as a
scientist because he failed to understand harmonia.
He was in the very early stage of his apprenticeship as a
Scientist and struggling to cope.
The slave Artisans, like Socrates, had finished their
apprenticeships doing the donkey work of science a couple
of hundred years before the life of Aristotle. They had dealt
with the low grade intellectual stuff (they knew the place of
the Lab Technician). They had learned how to sort basic
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harmonics into piles or basic categories. And they left the
jobs for the young apprentices. Their visions were, as
Scientists, above the level of the pavement. Apprentices
then as now learned by repetition how to organise their work
load into harmonics which is what Aristotle was suppose to
be doing in botany.
Socrates, for all that he was born to the culture of slavery
would have made a poor Lab Technician. In fact he would
have refused the job which he was never offered and just
gone on doing what he did anyway. Gone on educating the
youth of Athens to care for their minds and to have done it
for no pay.
Socrates not only understood the idea of Cognitive
Therapy better than our Psychologists today but he
understood what all good scientists must come to
understand. That it is the fittest reason survives the tests
harmonia. If he had gone into a laboratory devoted to
Biology in 400 BC on entering the doors of that laboratory he
would have been within intellectual mms of propounding the
Theory of Evolution which is In nature the fittest animals
survive to reproduce.
The idea of the survival of the fittest idea may not be
identical to the idea of the survival of the fittest animal but
with one minor jolt the two ideas harmonise. A minor blip in
the mind of a Scientist like Socrates who understood
harmonising. A major chasm in the mind of a Laboratory
Technician like Aristotle.
It may have been that Socrates had harmonised the
connection between the fittest idea to survive the test of
refutation and the fittest animal to survive the tests of
harmonia. But if he did, he knew that it was more than his
life was worth to publicly announce the idea. He wouldnt
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have lasted more than ten minutes even in the freedom
loving times of ancient Greece.
If Socrates had announced the idea of evolution in his times
not only would the gods in heaven have loosened a mighty
roar but the mini god Plato, on earth would have unleashed
all the terrors of hell on earth. As it was he was murdered by
the Disclaimers of Harmony for impiety to the gods and for
usurping the youths of Athens.
As it was, his aristocratic student Plato failed to turn up at
his trial and vote to save his mentors life. And then spent the
next 20 years achieving fame by writing down every
conversation he could find and about that Socrates had with
people. What sort of man would do that?
And this was in freedom loving Greece. Just imagine if his
time machine had faltered and his package holiday ended
with him in the dock with his harmonist cousin Galileo
explaining to medieval clerics not only was the earth round
but that they were the descendents of ape like ancestors!
Holy Molly! As my old grandma would have said.
Scientists have always had to fight to claim their territory
back from the Disclaimers of Harmony. It is a war of attrition
that never seems to end.
We can see the conflict in subjects where the battle has
been fought and won. In the sciences, in maths, in
geography. We can see the conflict as it is being waged in a
subject like Psychology where some battles have been won
and some are ongoing. We know enough to know the
pattern. We now know enough to be able to explain whats
going on.
We can see the conflict in the ambiguity of words and the
different ideas we have of them either as perfect units of
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meanings or complexes (harmonics) of our own
experiences.
We can see the conflict in the question who should be the
moralist? If it was ever asked which it never seems to be.
We can see the conflict in whos emotions we should
experience. We can see the conflict in our confused ideas of
a democracy based on equality and individualism.
Where we dont see it so openly is in the places where the
harmonist fears to tread. In politics, in religion, in education
but most importantly in our own descriptions of our own
minds. Do you have a description of your own mind? Do you
understand what makes a mind? Do you think the mind is a
unit of harmony? Do you understand harmony? Do you
understand the Blotting Paper Mind? do you understand the
Independent Mind?
If so, which mind would you choose for yourself? Or which
mind would you choose for children?
Has it ever occurred to you to care for your own mind?
How is it that it would be so easy to change you with the
criminal act of abusing your childrens mind by neglecting to
care for them? Or have you found another way. One neither
Socrates or Aristotle understood?
You cant know you have the right answer till youve asked
the right question. And you cant know youve asked the
right question till youve answered it. This isnt a problem for
a Lab Technician this is a problem for a harmonist. This is a
problem for Part III and using the Thinking Web to create
your own harmonics.
210
211
PART 3
Using the
Thinking Web to
create your own
Harmonics of
Reason
212
213
USING THE THINKING WEB TO
CREATE YOUR OWN HARMONICS
OF REASON
Introduction A Rail Ticket to the Universe
Harmonic One Harmonising the Thinking
Web
Harmonic Two The Structure of the Mind
Harmonic Three The Important Nature of the
Question How
Harmonic Four Harmonising the Idea of
Morality
214
215
Introduction
Do a Socrates
(A Rail Ticket to the Universe. The Thinking
Web and the Seat of Socrates.)
In Part I of the book I describe what harmonics are, where
our ideas of them come from, how they affect our ideas of
the universe, subjects, morality, words, emotional
intelligence, our education and even our political system, in
fact everything we think about.
I describe how and why Our New World of New Things
Under the Sun has been divided into two great harmonics
that cant exist together. They are the equivalents of liquids
that cant mix. The Blotting Paper Mind (The Dependent
Mind) which functions using opinions is moulded on the
tribal mind of nature and the Independent Mind which thinks
for itself using reason and the harmony of reason.
It is the New Kid on the Block. Created by Socrates 2,400
years ago founded on the same principles as Independent
Countries with their Independence Days. And functions in
the same way these independent entities are supposed to
function: using reason and reason alone, as the Driver of the
Car.
Part II of the book demonstrated how the Independent Mind
creates harmonics of reason for some of the more popular
issues of our times, e.g. Education, Neighbours, Emotional
Intelligence, Democracy, Respect and Positive Thinking.
And at the same time demonstrates how Aristotle and the
Dependent Mind fail these issues by failing to create Seats
of Socratic Wisdom or harmonics of reason but by creating
216
The Footprints of Opinion, i.e. Clusters of Opinions which
contain a minor acknowledgement to the existence of
reason. Reason is no longer the Driver of the Car. Reason is
the Hitch Hiker.
Part III of the book is the do it for yourself time. Do a
Socrates and learn how to create your own harmonics on
your own problems of the day or better still teach your
children how to do it for themselves and not to be the
intellectual piss pots of other men. Do a Socrates and use
the web to create your own harmonics. It is not an
explanation for your children of what a part of education is
about. It is an explanation for your children about what the
whole of their education should be about. It is the greatest
tool of thinking ever created, it is the Thinking Web,
designed to promote Socrates idea of creative reasoned
thinking.
We are all familiar with the idea of thinking if for no other
reason that when we are awake we seem to do it all the time
no matter what else we happen to be doing. In fact it is so
omnipresent we have to make great efforts to even come
somewhere close to turning off the tap of our mind.
Under these circumstances its not unnatural to think that
thinking is natural and the way we think, like the way we
walk is natural and doesnt require much in the way of
practice once weve got the hang of it. Its like riding a bike.
You dont forget how its natural, its part of a harmonic
that nature set up. Fish swim, the lion hunts etc., like them it
doesnt pay dividends to think about it too much. The best
advice seems to be just to get on with it. But these events
belong to Harmonic World II the organic world.
Shoaling, hunting, Tribing, flocking and walking are
harmonics of World II. Harmonics of nature. They are
natural.
217
Thinking new ideas under the sun is different: they are part
of The New World of our own creation. Some of them have
their own harmony created by forming harmonics of
reasoned ideas. And some of them dont form harmonics
and cause disharmony.
Either there is a basis for the harmony described by
Socrates that I have tried to describe in this book or there
isnt. If there is no basis for the harmony of Socrates then its
back to being the patient passenger in the railway station of
life and to just sit patiently in the waiting room, in the hope
there will be a genius like Aristotle, the self declared genius,
on the next train, with all the tickets of Ultimate Truths
necessary to carry us all on to the next stations of life.
What a dreary, colourless railway station it is. And what a
dreary, colourless, Ex-Chief Inspector of OFSTED we have,
who collects the tickets and who says: Genius cannot be
destroyed neither can it be created. All I can think to say is,
he deserves to spend eternity sitting in his railway station
waiting for his Aristotles and Platos.
Unfortunately for him the only genius to pass through his
station was Socrates but he didnt recognise genius when he
saw it. It didnt quite come with the image he expected. He
was dressed in rags, couldnt read nor write, swore like a
trooper and liked a drink. The genius had passed through
the station and the Inspector hadnt even noticed him never
mind check his ticket. This genius knew what he needed to
know but never found out. This genius had in his pocket the
ticket to the universe.
The Dialectic, the Thinking Web and the Seat of Socrates
(the Creator of Harmonics).
The Thinking Web is my attempt to re-create the Dialectic of
Socrates in a classroom or in the home. The mentor and
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The Thinking Web take the place of Socrates. The web can
do it on its own but its like everything in life and especially
something like learning to think creatively, it works better
with an experienced mentor who understands what we are
about and can see the problems first hand that the student
might be experiencing. And can help the student connect the
subtle nature of reason and emotion, and take it away from
the brutal nature of intellectual disharmony and the turmoil of
un-harmonised emotions.
You may remember Socrates insisted on a one to one with
his students. Three became a crowd. In this way Socrates
could come to understand the student and come to know not
only what he/she did right but what he/she did wrong.
Socrates was trying to get the student to refute his own
refutable ideas and keep his/her irrefutable ideas.
He allowed the student to think he was asking and then
answering his own questions (he was being led by
Socrates). When the student uses the web, the problem or
idea is put into the very centre of the web: into the Intellect.
The Intellect then raises questions by connecting the
problem to all the other parts of the web. It is a surprisingly
mechanical procedure at this stage. Its the 90% perspiration
and 10% inspiration idea that entrepreneurs and creative
thinkers often refer to.
This creates in the first place 16 questions (in a structured
way) that connect all the parts of our culture. All these are
connected by questions to the students problem. The
questions are all of a similar nature. They all look for the
reasoned connections.
e.g. How does the idea relate to reason?
How does the idea relate to Psychology?
219
i.e. the student brain storms the problem in an organised
and harmonised way.
The web searches for the reasoned connections between
the idea/problem and all aspects of culture and life
experiences, i.e. all the harmonics of the web. And it really is
that simple.
The student and/or mentor should concentrate on the idea of
raising the 16 questions described above for a while with all
his problems and/or ideas. See Diagram A below.
220
Diagram A
In this diagram the problem, now in the Intellect; has been
connected to every other harmonic in the web and has
asked how does the problem in the intellect relate to this
harmonic? This gives the user 16 intellectual questions
requesting reasoned information on his problem of the day
from all the harmonics of the web.
INTELLECT
REASON
IMAGINATION
SEMANTICS
SCIENCE
Physiological
Emotions
Cultural
Traditions
Self
Image
Morality
New
Emotions
Geography
Religion
Personal
Relationships,
Jobs, Hobbies
Subjects
of
Science
History
Psychology Arts
221
Diagram B
Later by connecting all the harmonics this supplies about
another 256 questions raised in the manner shown in
Diagram B. But dont do this till youre sure youve got the
first part working well and it has received your blessing,
because otherwise it will only cause confusion and waste
time. Also many of the problems of life dont require that
many questions.
Before we harmonise Morality using the web we are going to
include 2 further lessons out of the course on the
Independent Mind. Both of which are self explanatory and
will give the reader an idea about how the course on the
Independent Mind works. (1) on harmonising the Thinking
INTELLECT
REASON
IMAGINATION
SEMANTICS SCIENCE
Subjects of
Science
History
Psychology Arts
Physiological
Emotions
Cultural Traditions
Self Image
Morality
New
Emotions
Geography
Religion
Personal
Relationships,
Jobs, Hobbies
222
Web and (2) on the nature of the question How and then we
shall do lesson (3) on Morality. Ive retained the lesson
format because the format itself serves as part of the
explanation.
223
Harmonic One
HARMONISING THE THINKING WEB
In the preceding 10 lessons we have learned about the
structure and function of the different parts of the thinking
mind.
We have also gone some way to personalising it by starting
a list of our own new emotions which we have experienced
doing the lessons.
When we have learned how the web works as a tool of
thinking we will further personalise it by using it to make our
own list of important ideas about life (morals), as our first
practice exercise. But first lets see how the web works.
HOW THE THINKING WEB FUNCTIONS AS A TOOL OF
THINKING TO CREATE HARMONICS
Brainstorming using the Thinking Web as a Tool of
Thinking
We use the web to BRAINSTORM a problem, word or idea
by putting it into the web and raising questions on the
problem from all around the web, which we then attempt to
answer.
But before we use it on a problem, word or idea as with any
unit it needs tuning.
Question: - Would you put a racing car on the track without
tuning it first?
224
----- Discuss ----
Question: - Would you give a public performance with your
orchestra without practice?
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Why do managers of famous football teams get
paid amazing amounts of money?
---- Discuss ----
Harmony is knowing everything is in its place
Socrates
Conclude: - Everything we can think of that is in some way,
shape or form a unit of anything before we use it, for any
event, we TUNE IT or as Scorcrates would have said
We HARMONISE it.
Question: - Why should the Thinking Web or the Thinking
Mind be any different?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - It isnt. Men are meticulous when it comes to
tuning their Ferraris, their orchestras, their football teams. It
is in no small way how man earned the reputation as the
thinking animal. When it comes to his cars, his football
teams and orchestras there is no limit to mens tenacity
when it comes down to the act of harmonising.
When it comes to their own thinking mind or their
childrens thinking mind they are negligent to the point of
abuse. The most powerful unit of any sort in the universe
and they treat it like left over Christmas paper. They leave it
to revert to the blotting paper mind of our tribal ancestors.
225
Question: - Have men in general and our education system
in particular regarded the Thinking Mind as an ENTITY?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - No: the idea of it as an entity has been attacked
and destroyed or it has never been understood by mankind
as a whole and by those men in charge of our education.
Even if you are the son or daughter
of the richest or most famous man
On earth apart from friends
and family the greatest asset
you have in life is your:
- Own independent thinking mind -
If you care for it using reason
You will have:
- Faith in yourself -
And faith in yourself is lifes
Greatest assets it is my moral.
The Intellectual Warrior
Advanced Students only
The criteria you need to accept in order to regard your own
thinking mind as an entity are :-
1. The reasoned premise is decided by the Rule of
Refutability.
2. The reasoned premise of an argument is always
uncertain.
3. Reasoned premises of argument are the arbiters of
all intellectual direction.
4. Your morals are of your own making.
226
5. The idea of the harmonic New Things under the
Sun.
6. Your own new emotions are a direct consequence of
your own new ideas, i.e. you are your own spiritual
Guru.
If you accept unreasoned ideas into your intellect you
become the intellectual property of the man or men who
created the idea and you start to suffer from intellectual
constipation.
Tuning the Web
1
st
Stage of Tuning the Web
Tuning the web involves the intellect asking every other 15
harmonics of the web what they are responsible for and
what they can do for the intellect when asked.
Your intellect is asking the questions.
1
st
Circle Intellect

Science
How does my intellect relate to science?
Intellect

Reason (Science)
Intellect

Semantics
Intellect

Imagination
2
nd
Circle Intellect

Arts
Intellect

Psychology
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Intellect

Science (the
subjects)
Intellect

History
3
rd
Circle Intellect

Religion
Intellect

Self image
Intellect

Cultural Traditions
Intellect

New Emotions
Intellect

Morality
Intellect

Physiological
Emotions
Intellect

Jobs, Hobbies and
Relationships
Intellect

Geography
Congratulations you have tuned your own Thinking Web.
And your intellect has been made aware of all the different
places it can go to for advice. And those places have
advised the intellect what is on offer. Over time you will build
your knowledge of each of these harmonics. But you do
need to know the boundaries of each harmonic to start with.
In order to be like the good grocer and know where to put
your knowledge once youve found it.
228
Question Time.
Question: - Are some of these harmonics trying to tell your
intellect how to think?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - Make your own list of those harmonics of the
web that may try to tell your intellect how and what to think.
Question: - Can your intellect justify being told what to do by
the Arts? By moralists or anyone or anything else?
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Explain the idea of The Seat of Socrates.
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Explain the part played by imagination. Then
explain the relationship between (i) imagination and intellect
(ii) reason and imagination (iii) reason and intellect.
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Explain your idea of reason and explain how it
might be the most important idea you have in life.
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Explain what a harmonic is.
---- Discuss ----
Question: - Explain what the Greek motto Nothing to
excess may have been about.
---- Discuss ----
229
Harmonising the web is an important part of the coursework
and depending on the level of the student should be treated
as one or two lessons. Remember the time between lessons
say one week is the time for the student to practice the
contents of the lesson and to do his own thinking, in his own
time, in his own places and with his own people. With his/her
own mind. Evolve your own sets of questions and answers
that involve local knowledge and ideas of local harmonics.
230
How the Reasoning Mind Functions
(Advanced students only)
The most powerful ideas of Socrates and probably the most
powerful ideas in the whole of history involve Socrates
description of the reasoning mind made over 2000 years
before the American Declaration of Independence.
400 BC:- The Reasoning Mind Declares its
Independence
The unknown is reason and I am a reasoning mind
400 BC Socrates (the midwife at the birth of mankinds reasoning mind)
Socrates was describing mankinds thinking mind as an
individual thinking entity with the right to govern itself using
reason.
The Reasoning Mind Writes its Own
Constitution
THE REASONED PREMISE OF ARGUMENT.
If I am the wisest man in the whole of Greece it
is because I know I do not know
Socrates
Socrates defined The Reasoned Premise of Argument and
explained that it is the only premise that can be used for
creative reasoned thinking to happen.
231

It is always uncertain.

It can be questioned, replaced, modified, whatever.

It forms the basis of The Stepping Stone Theory of
coming to knowledge. And the more detailed thinking
with webs of The Thinking Web.

It explains how The Reasoning Mind FUNCTIONS
AND HOW IT INTENDS TO GOVERN ITSELF.
The Constitution of the Reasoning Mind

Fundamental to the idea of a democratic state is the
idea of the individual

Fundamental to the idea of the individual is the idea
of an independent thinking mind.

Fundamental to the idea of the independent thinking
mind is the idea of reason.

Fundamental to the idea of reason is the idea of the
reasoned premise of argument.

Fundamental to the idea of reasoned premise is the
idea of the intellectual honesty.
Therefore, the very existence of a Democratic State rests on
the promotion and the use of the reasoned premise of
232
argument and our most important moral, intellectual
honesty.
Democracy and the reasoned premise of argument came
into existence about the same time around 400 BC.
Question: - Discuss how the idea of a state or country needs
to understand how an individual needs to know how to be
independent before a state can be independent.
The Education of the Thinking Mind
Socrates saw it as his mission in life to educate the youth of
Athens,
To care for their own thinking minds using reason.
Harmonising:- Is the act of introducing words, ideas,
problems to reason and observation.
Socrates was the worlds first harmonist.
A Harmonist:- Is a person who believes in introducing
reason and observation into the whole
cultural fabric of life, e.g. into his thinking
skills e.g. science, into his politics e.g.
democracy, into his spiritual life e.g. new
emotions and into his morality e.g.
intellectual honesty.
233
Comparing the Harmony of Reason to making
a Jigsaw Puzzle and taking the slow boat to
China
The Unknown is Reason is represented by all the mixed up
pieces (reasons) of the jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is a
reason with its own special shape that fits to the next
nearest reason.
Harmony (or Harmonia) is the picture on the box of the
jigsaw. We start doing the jigsaw by looking for harmonics in
of the whole jigsaw i.e. parts which have many or several
reasons for being together in the same place, e.g. large
harmonics might be the sky. So we look for the sky pieces.
Smaller harmonics are then parts of the sky e.g. clouds. And
even smaller harmonics become dark clouds or light clouds
till we have groups of pieces which we can start to fit
together according to the specific nature of their shape
(harmonic).
This is harmonising the making of a jigsaw puzzle. It is also
harmonising the thinking that goes with making the jigsaw
puzzle. It is also the way Newton looked for the harmonics
that eventually came together to explain his Harmonic of
Gravity.
If you dont harmonise by looking for harmonics your only
resort is to laboriously try to fit each piece together.
Eventually it might happen but by disclaiming harmony
youve taken the slow boat to China.
234
Comparing Harmonising to the
Oxygenation of Water
Water, oxygenated by running down the side of a mountain,
creates an environment that enables all life forms that
depend on oxygen to flourish. If water is allowed to stagnate
the oxygen depletes and only the life forms that can exist
without oxygen survive and grow and clog the river.
When the mind is deprived of reason and observation only
those ideas that can survive without reason and observation
i.e. BELIEFS survive and grow.
THEY COME TO OCCUPY THE MIND AND FURTHER
BLOCK ACCESS TO REASON AND OBSERVATION
CAUSING INTELLECTUAL CONSTIPATION.
The Dialectic of Socrates
The function of the dialectic was to relieve intellectual
constipation. As is always the case in life, everybodys
constipation has different causes which explains why
Socrates did not like crowds!
To himself three was a crowd.
The dialectic was a one to one discussion in which Socrates
allowed the student to think (he was being led by Socrates)
that he was asking then answering his own questions. This
went on until the student arrived at a paradox (the cause of
the constipation) that he had to solve, usually by having to
withdraw some claim to know. i.e. by refuting an idea he had
held to be a good idea. He had found his mistake.
235
Harmonic Two
The Thinking Web
(the Map of the Mind)
The Structure of the Mind.
(Harmony is knowing everything is in its place)
The above is a diagram or map of the human thinking mind
called The Thinking Web.
INTELLECT
REASON
IMAGINATION
SEMANTICS
SCIENCE
Physiological
Emotions
Cultural
Traditions
Self Image
Morality
New
Emotions
Geography
Religion
Personal
Relationships,
Jobs, Hobbies
Subjects
of
Science
History
Psychology Arts
236
It contains all the different parts of the mind in what seems
to be the best possible relationship between these parts.
The Intellect, the boss, of the mind is the where the boss
should be, at the centre of everything going on and with a
direct line of connection to all the other different parts of the
web. The Thinking Skills, reason, semantics and imagination
are located in the area just around the intellect because
theyre the parts of the mind the intellect uses most often
and involve the skills of thinking.
Subjects (or harmonics of information) are located in the
sphere just outside the Thinking Skills which makes them
accessible for the Thinking Skills to locate and use. The
personal harmonics of the mind, culture, personal
experiences, jobs, ideas of self, morality, new emotions are
in the outer sphere of the web. These are the parts of the
mind personal to the owner of the mind.
The fact that when I made all these necessary connections,
the map of the mind looked like a spiders web wasnt
intended to happen that way. It was a symmetry that
appeared after I had made the connections I wanted to
make. And strangely enough, or perhaps not so strangely,
the way the mind functions also has similarities to the way a
spiders web works.
When a fly gets caught in the centre of a web and starts to
struggle if it tugs to the left side of the web all the
connections on the right side of the web go with the tug and
when the tug is over they start to pull back. The web is using
the flys own energy to keep it trapped.
When a fly gets caught in the outer part of the web its a
greater chance of escape because when it pulls away from
the outer part there are not so many strands to pull the fly
back.
237
Lets compare the fly to an idea in The Thinking Web. When
we put an idea in the centre of the web there are more
connections we can use to describe it. The intellect has 16
connections to all the other harmonics of the web. They may
not all have something to say about the idea but some of
them are bound to because in total all these harmonics are
the sum total of our civilisation (or culture). The reasoned
answers were looking for have to be in one of those
harmonics.
The idea is in the best possible place (like the fly) to be
caught, held and examined. All connections lead to the idea.
And all the connections add something to that idea we never
had before if we take the time to ask and then answer the
questions that will connect them.
You are at the best possible place in the universe with your
idea. It is well and truly trapped just like the fly. It wont
escape so long as you do what you have to do. Behave like
the spiders web and exercise the elasticity of your mind.
Refutability and uncertainty. Let your thinking web pull and
tug the idea just like with the fly. It will with time reveal her
secrets. But you have to make the connections and to make
the connections you have to ask the questions. You cant
get the right answer to a question till youve asked the right
question. And you cant know youve asked the right
question till youve answered it. The questions are your
minds equivalent to the strands of the web, which scientists
tell us weight for weight are many times stronger than steel!
In short you have to use the elasticity of your mind.
Refutability and uncertainty. And combine it with the
structure of the web to brainstorm your problem or idea.
The internet also goes some way to demonstrating how the
mind works. As always seems to be the case we are more
familiar with our play things like our computers, Ferraris,
football teams than our minds or our childrens minds! When
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computers were first created our idea of the way they
worked was on the level of one to one, like the telephone.
And lines were either open or closed. As computers were
added to the system of connections it became apparent that
it was more than a one to one connection, but all were
connected together and never closed down to create the
internet.
All the computers and all the information they contain are
supporting one another in such a way they never close
down. We call it the internet. Its based on interaction. It is
what happens in the mind when all the connections are
firing. It is what Socrates called The Flame of Education. It
is his ideas that are still fundamental today for our ideas of
computers.
The Harmonics of the Mind are divided into three categories.
1. THE HARMONICS CONTAINING THE SKILLS OF
THINKING
These harmonics are the most used because they
contain the skills of thinking.
The Intellect (The Boss) is at the centre of
the web. It is the most
important harmonic. It is the
only one to be connected
directly to every other
harmonic of the web.
Semantics Word Meanings.
Imagination Is The Dreamer of the web.
Science Is The Detective of the web.
Reason Is The Referee of the web.
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These harmonics form the inner circle of the web.
2. THE HARMONICS CONTAINING BANKS OF
INFORMATION
These are the banks of information which most often we call
subjects.
The Arts
History
Psychology
Geography
Science
The harmonics form the middle circle of the web.
3. THE HARMONICS OF A PERSONAL NATURE
In the outer circle of the web.
Religion
Cultural traditions
Self image
Jobs/hobbies/relationships
Morality
New emotions
Old emotions
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Most of these harmonics are self explanatory and contain
information of a personal nature.
These harmonics from the outer circle of the web.
SUMMARY
ALL THE ABOVE HARMONICS CONTAIN EVERYTHING
WE WOULD USE TO THINK IN A REASONED WAY.
IT IS A MAP OR DIAGRAM OF THE THINKING MIND and
when you have put your own personal information into the
map it becomes
A MAP OF YOUR OWN THINKING MIND
Map or diagram it doesnt matter either or both can be used
to describe the structure of the thinking mind.
LATER: - When we add FUNCTION to STRUCTURE and
use it with an idea it becomes:-
A TOOL OF THINKING
AND WHEN YOU PERSONALISE IT, IT BECOMES:-
YOUR OWN TOOL OF THINKING
BUT: - For the moment we have to do the hard work, boring
and not such fun part of what it is we are about. We have to
learn about THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE
DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WEB AND THE MEANINGS
OF THE WORDS WE USE TO DESCRIBE THE WEB.
COMMON SENSE
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All the harmonics of the web are connected to the intellect
and to each other by the part of the intellect we call common
sense.
You can think of common sense as the arms or the tentacles
of the intellect or the matrix of the mind binding all the
harmonics of the web together and forming a pathway to the
centre of the intellect.
It contains the distillate of thinking tried and tested and in
daily use. It is the automatic part of the intellect. It takes the
pressure off the central part of the intellect by making the
relatively small decisions the intellect is involved in on a
daily basis.
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243
Harmonic Three
The Important Nature of the Question How
In the book The Independent Mind, which is set out in the
format of course work for the students, I do the following
lesson which I will repeat here in lesson form to give the
reader some idea of the way a mentor can raise questions
and mentor a young student who hasnt been introduced to
the power of the question How.
LESSON 5
THE IMPORTANT NATURE OF THE QUESTION HOW
Do not announce the topic of the lesson to the students.
At the start of the lesson outline the following situation to the
class which involves their imagination the dreamer of the
web which they have studied in a previous lesson. So start
the lesson by asking them:-
Question: - How is imagination put to use in thinking?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: Imagination is the dreamer of the web. It
imagines all sorts of situations and then leaves it to reason
and science to deal with what theyve imagined or
visualised.
The following is an imagined situation and the questions at
the end are questions involving reason and observation that
might give us some important information about words.
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IMAGINED PROBLEM
They and a few of their friends are going to be transferred to
another planet identical to earth in every respect except
civilisation hasnt happened and no other people live on the
planet. All they can take with them is a few basic tools
spades-hammers-forks etc. and one more condition before
they go. ALL language will be erased from their minds
except ONE WORD. Which word would they choose to take
with them and why?
Get them to explain their answers.
---- Discuss ----
This discussion could go anywhere and everywhere. It is a
hard one to pre-judge but it is a good opportunity for
everyone to come up with ideas. There is no particular right
or wrong answer but we are looking for a word that draws on
each individuals contributions to the enormous task ahead
of him or her which is recreating some of the many facets of
civilisation that are going to make their lives safer, more
comfortable, happier, interesting, harmonious, interactive,
progressive, exciting, create trust, create a sense of humour.
Dont be too worried if they dont come up with the answer
we want'. The word we are looking for is:
The Question HOW
IT IS THE MOST PENETRATING QUESTION IT IS
POSSIBLE TO ASK.
IT IS THE QUESTION THAT IS THE WINKLE PICKER OF
WINKLE PICKERS.
One question and you have a never-ending series of
questions and answers.
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They say it is a question of science and it most certainly is
but as a society we have learned to turn our backs on this
'troublesome' question. Our society seems to prefer the
question why? The question why seems to ask questions
with answers in the singular and questions with singular
answers are easier to answer.
CLASS EXERCISE
Ask the students to write down three questions involving
why and three questions involving how.
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: Questions involving why can often be answered
using one answer. The question how often involves several
and even many answers.
e.g.
1. Why did you study Physics?
2. Why did you become educated?
3. Why did you start the car?
Discuss these questions involving why.
Now change why for how and discuss the questions.
1. How did you study Physics?
2. How did you become educated?
3. How did you start the car?
---- Discuss ----
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Conclude: - How demands more in the way of answers.
THE PILOTS SEAT
If questions are never asked creative thinking never
happens.
NEW IDEAS CAN ONLY BE PRODUCED BY ASKING
NEW QUESTIONS.
THE QUESTION HOW IS THE KEY OF THE MIND.
In many ways society discourages the asking of questions.
Religious and political leaders dont like them because they
challenge their authority. You can drive almost any expert
mad by the repeated application of the question how!
Your political leaders order you to respect. Put yourself in
the Pilots and put their head on the chopper. Do what
Socrates said about education:
"To deny frank comment its place in education is to deny the
sun its place in the sky.
Ask them:-
How do you respect my right to be called harmonist and not
a pagan?
How do you respect an adult who is not worthy of respect?
How do you respect an adult who tells you what to think
before you have been taught how to think?
How do you respect an adult who has no regard for
intellectual honesty as a moral value?
247
Theres many question you can ask using how. Try it for
yourself not just with the idea of respect but any subject you
like, using this space and time on the course to feel the
feeling of being in the Pilots seat that asking questions
creates.
Exercise
1. Use the question how at least three times a day
between now and next lesson. Get the nasty habit!
2. Ask parents and teachers what they think about the
questions how and why.
3. Younger Students
Explain the following questions.
1. When?
2. Where?
3. What?
4. Comment on the following quote A writer using
reasoned premises of argument will focus on the
question how. A writer using unreasoned premises of
argument will focus on the question why or not ask
any questions.
5. For Advanced Students
Read several Philosophy books and take note of the
frequency of the question how in the texts. Comment
on the philosophy in the texts. Obviously you cant
read masses of books to answer this question but
you could dip into texts of several books. But perhaps
more importantly keep the question in mind on future
occasions when reading philosophy.
248
6. How important is it to yourself to feel the feeling of
being in The Pilots Seat.
7. Explain how the question how gives you the feeling
of being in the Pilots Seat.
8. The greatest thing in life is to know how to belong to
oneself
(Montaigne)
Discuss and explain what Montaigne meant.
Change how for why and explain the change in
meaning.
Create a Seat of Socrates with all the following
questions.
9. Salesmen and Politicians spend a lot of energy
working out how to own your mind. Explain why.
10. Why does the collective called the tribe want to own
your mind? (Create a Seat of Socrates).
11. How does the collective of the tribe achieve
ownership of your mind? (Create a Seat of Socrates).
12. What is a collective? (put your own ideas of a
collective in the Seat of Socrates and see what
happens).
13. Where did we get our ideas of a collective from?
(Create a Seat of Socrates).
14. Explain how the Blotting Paper Mind developed.
15. Explain why the Blotting Paper Mind is the most
popular mind.
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16. Explain why Professors of the Classics claim
Socrates went around asking the question why, when
being a scientist his favoured question would have
been how?
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251
Harmonic Four
Harmonising the idea of Morality using the
Web
In Part I, Harmonic Seven, we looked at the idea of morality
by starting with the harmonised definition of the word. I.e.
morality is an important idea about life. What we didnt
explain is how we got from the priests and lawyers
definitions of morality i.e. that morals are important ideas
about good and bad and/or right or wrong behaviour, to a
definition of our own. I did this in the first place using the
web to raise reasoned questions on morality which I then
attempted to answer with reasoned answers.
Lets follow the idea through from start to finish by going
through Lesson 12 from The Independent Mind on Morality.
LESSON 12
MORALITY
Your Own or Aristotles?
(Dont throw a spanner in the works)
Explain to the Students
At this point in time morality is an empty harmonic.
Question: - Why is morality an empty harmonic?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - Because they have not decided what to put in
the harmonic.
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MORALITY IS THEIR HARMONIC OF THEIR OWN
THINKING WEB AND IT IS THEIR MORALS THAT GO
INTO IT, not the politicians, not the priests, not the teachers,
not even their parents.
---- It is their own ----
Your own thinking mind is a self contained unit of thinking
(and a powerful unit) and when you have finished this
course it will be a harmonised powerful unit of creative
reasoned thinking, capable of creating its own thinking
agenda and raising questions on any topic, but not if you
destroy its self contained nature by introducing some other
persons important ideas about life that do not harmonise
with your own. Do not throw a spanner in the works.
Question: - Where do your parents morals belong?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - In the harmonic called personal relationships.
Question: - Where do a writers morals belong?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - In the harmonic called arts.
Question: - Where do the priests morals belong?
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - In the harmonic called religion.
THE WEB DOES NOT WORK IF YOU SCRAMBLE ALL
THE PARTS TOGETHER. IT IS NOT AN OMLETTE. IT IS A
TOOL OF THINKING.
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That does not mean you do not think about your parents
morals. It does not make sense to ignore them, they are an
important source of information you may use to create your
own morals.
Morals Compared to Company Policy
Every company formulates its own Company Policy which it
writes down and shows to employees. It creates harmony by
letting everyone know what the common purpose is and how
they can achieve it.
Morals are the Minds Company Policy.
THEY HELP HARMONISE THE MIND BY REMINDING IT
WHAT ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTS HAVE TO DO AND
HOW THEY CAN DO IT.
What is important in their lives. What their hopes and
aspirations are about. What they would like to give to
people. What they expect from people. Its setting out your
stall. Its being a good grocer. But it still has to be
remembered that some moralists dont like you having your
own stall.
People determined to inflict their morals on you are
determined to turn you into a Blotting Paper Mind like their
own.
The greatest virtues in life are those which are
most useful to another person.
Aristotle
NO
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The greatest virtues in life are the ones
you have found for yourself.
Socrates
YES
Using The Thinking Web To Create Your Own Thinking
Agenda And Brainstorm The Problem Of Morality
Give them a piece of paper and a pen ask them to create
their own thinking agenda on their own problem, morality.
---- Discuss ----
Conclude: - they are going to use the web to source
questions and develop structure. THE INTELLECT GIVES
THE PROBLEM OF THE DAY, MORALITY, TO EACH
HARMONIC OF THE WEB AND SO RAISES 15
INTELLECTUAL QUESTIONS IN A STRUCTURED WAY.
Remind them of the short hand way of asking questions, e.g.
Morality

Semantics
The above is the short hand way of asking the question,
how does morality relate to semantics?
This course is mainly based on the spoken word but
sometimes pen and paper is best used and this is probably
one such occasion.
The questions should be as follows:-
1
st
Circle Morality

Intellect
How does morality relate to intellect?
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Morality

Semantics
How does morality relate to semantics?
Morality

Imagination
Morality

Science
Morality

Reason
2
nd
Circle Morality

Arts
Morality

Psychology
Morality

History
Morality

Religion
Morality

Geography
3
rd
Circle Morality

Self image
Morality

Cultural traditions
Morality

New emotions
Morality

Physiological emotions
Morality

Personal relationships,
jobs, hobbies
Your students using your help as mentor, and the web
have raised 15 intellectual questions on their problem
morality.
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That is no mean feat. It is a powerful position to be in. They
are powerful questions because 1) they demand reasoned
answers 2) they cover all the harmonics of culture 3) they
are your own answers. Your harmonising them for yourself.
And as you do so your position is increasing in power.
Socrates pondered the idea of where do the questions come
from? Einstein said if I ask masses of questions I know Ill
succeed. Edward De Bono with his thinking hats described
his ideas of the essences of thinking and signed off by
explain the importance of questions and the possibility of a
question asking format.
This is THAT format.
Once again remind them to feel the feeling of being in the
pilots seat. They have done really well, and they can do it
from now on with any topic or problem they want, and if they
wanted they could go on to raise even more questions. And
that is some stack of questions.
Having asked the questions is a sort of half way house.
Having asked, even without having answered, is a powerful
position to be in. When Newton asked how did the falling
apple relate to his head he was a long way down the road of
this theory without the answer. It was a force. When Einstein
asked what is the speed of light of a beam from a torch held
by a person travelling on a beam of light at the speed of light
he was well on the way to his theory of relativity. Most all
scientists of the day could have answered both questions;
most able bodied 4
th
formers today could have answered
both questions, if they had been alive at the time.
Strange as it may seem answering the questions is often the
easiest part.
THE HARDEST PART IS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION.
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FUNDAMENTAL TO THE IDEA OF ASKING THE RIGHT
QUESTION IS THE IDEA YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT
THE RIGHT QUESTION IS UNTIL YOU HAVE ANSWERED
IT.
So asking questions is a trial and error situation within
harmonics. It is stepping stones. It is what Einstein meant
when he said If I ask a 100 questions and 99 are wrong I
have been successful!
I challenge the reader to think of a way of raising more
relevant questions, more efficient questions, more structured
questions than the way of the Thinking Web. It is the
greatest Tool of Thinking ever created.
258
259
Part Four
Concluding
Harmonics
260
261
CONCLUDING HARMONICS
Harmonic One Refute or Doubt? No Doubt.
(the professors of the classics
and the jackdaw)
Harmonic Two Summary about our culture
(Siamese twins)
Harmonic Three How we ascribe meanings to
words and how we create
harmonics of meaning
Harmonic Four A summary of the differences
between critical inquiry and
creative reasoned thinking
Harmonic Five Comparing opinions
(ultimate truths to harmonics of
reason)
Harmonic Six The Key to the Door of the
Independent Mind
262
263
Harmonic One
Refute or Doubt? No Doubt.
(the professors of the classics and the
jackdaw)
The Jackdaws in my garden operate at the intellectual level
of a seven year old when it comes to solving problems of
reason. Or so say the scientists. They understand the
difference between the idea of doubt and the idea of refute.
They have to, their life depends on it. They wouldnt even be
here now if their ancestors and themselves had never
understood the difference.
We have something to thank the Jackdaw for if we are
harmonists. They demonstrate how we share the common
ground of reason with them if we look for it. How we fail to
share the common ground of reason with anybody or
anything if we dont look it or if we disclaim it. They
demonstrate how they wouldnt be here if theyd confused
the ideas of refute and doubt.
When Jackdaws find their teatime nuts they have to break
them open before teatime. They have to or take them off the
teatime menu (i.e. refute them). They have to move on to
find the next nut (or reason). The one they will try again to
break open (using the experiences of their past mistakes as
guide posts) in time for tea.
The idea of DOUBT has never been part of the Jackdaws
PROBLEM. He never doubted he wasnt going to have his
tea. He is CONFIDENT he is going to have his tea because
he is CONFIDENT in his faith in reason and his OWN
ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND REASON AND HOW IT
WORKS. Those of his kind that DOUBTED AND DIDNT
264
REFUTE HAVE BECOME EXTINCT. They may be so
numerous in the afterlife that they have become the
whispers of the Gods that Aristotle, Plato, OFSTED and the
Professors of the Classics all listen to on their privileged
wavebands that connect them to the heavens. But we will
never know what they think because they never explain
their system. They criticise the Socratic System and say
Plato made it into a system. Where is it? When are they
going to explain how their precious unreasoned ideas
happen and where they came from? All they can do is
disclaim the harmony of reason and expose the weakness of
their intellect to fail to understand the difference between the
idea of refute and the idea of doubt.
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Harmonic Two
Summary of our Culture
(The Siamese Twins)
The most important question a man can ask himself is
What is reason?
Because without an answer to that question he has no
reason to go anywhere and no reason to do anything. How
could he if hes never asked the question?
However, he could go everywhere and could do everything
for any non-reason. In fact he could do everything and
nothing for as many non-reasons as it is possible to imagine.
The above statements are based on the harmonised
definition of reason. The definition the Independent Mind has
discovered (not ascribed), i.e. reason is what works. Non
reason is what doesnt work or cant be shown to work.
If a man asks the question what is reason? And the answer
that comes back is:- reason is what works, then that man
can go all places and do all the things that he has come to
understand that work and create harmony by creating
relationships between ideas and places. He can come to
feel the new emotion of the tranquillity of the harmony of
reason. He can go places and find reasons that connect his
intellectual being to the emotional nature of his being. It is
what Socrates meant when he said:
Harmony is knowing everything is in its place.
and
266
Tranquillity is knowing everything is in its place.
It is a complex of happenings founded on reason that the
individual can only experience for himself.
If a man goes to a place not knowing what a reason is:- only
knowing non reason he can only feel the feeling that comes
from non reason, but not the feeling of the harmony of
reason. He can never feel the feeling of the harmony of
reason till he takes it to places and uses it for himself.
On one side we have a vision of the harmony of ideas and
the feeling of tranquillity the harmony of ideas creates. On
the other side we have a vision of disconnectedness,
disorder and chaos created by non-reason and the feelings
that go with those ideas of disconnectedness and disorder.
Why go to places with non-reasoned ideas looking for yet
more non-reasoned ideas when you can go to a place with
reasoned ideas? It doesnt make sense.
Ah! but its all worth it says Mr Aristotle and the Classists
Professors. You must go to those places of non-reason with
our opinions on what to do when you get there!? It happens
as Socrates said it would
Superstition follows arrogance as a father.
Our culture exists in the form of two separate cultures fused
together at so many points, the points of words; its hard to
distinguish them as separate entities. But separate entities
they most certainly are each with its own separate mind.
Each separate mind with its own idea of all the intellectual
words in our language but most importantly each mind with
its own separate idea of reason. The starting point of all
intellectual ideas.
267
The Blotting Paper Mind came first. It developed from the
harmonic of nature, the tribal mind the most successful
and powerful of all of natures harmonics. Within the
harmonic of the tribal mind reason had not been eliminated.
It had been tempered and moulded: to be used when the
occasion seemed to demand e.g. when hunting and fishing.
To be buried and forgotten when not required e.g. when they
needed to obey their tribal leaders and appease their gods
with the sacrifices of their virgins and children.
Reason wasnt the driver of the car. Reason was a hitch
hiker to be picked up when it seemed to be a good idea and
dropped off when it didnt seem to be a good idea. It is part
of the glue of the tribe part of the formula, part of the
complex that is the harmonic of the tribe. Natures most
successful harmonic. In its own time and in its own place.
Then in 400 BC came the New Kid on the Block. The
Independent Mind discovered by Socrates using his new
and powerful harmonic of reason. Even more powerful than
the authority of the tribal leader and its control over the tribe.
It could explain things with the harmony of its wisdom
beyond the reach of the tribal leader even with all his power.
It could explain things the witch doctor could never even
dream about. It took no notice of the authority of the leader.
It took no notice of the dreams of the witch doctor or men
like Plato. It went its own way and described the gods as
the unknown. Reason was no longer a hitch hiker in the
car. Reason was the driver of the car.
And the car went further and faster and more surely than it
ever had done before. The success of 20,000 years to build
and launch the coracle turned to a few hundred years to go
from muddy cart tracks and cold dark houses to ocean liners
and trips to the moon: so good was the car with reason as
the driver.
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Socrates had started all this when he declared The
unknown is reason and I am a reasoning mind. He
explained what reason was and how it worked to explain the
material world and to create the independent human mind.
Founded on reason: independent from nature and
independent from the tribal mind.
The Blotting Paper Mind developed from the tribal mind or to
be more exact the glue that held the tribal mind together. It
liked the idea of the glue it should own all the land, keep
all the money and do whatever it liked. It didnt like the idea
of reason and harmonics, the solvent that dissolved the glue
of the tribal mind. The New Kid on the Block and the tribal
harmonic could never lie in the same bed. They could never
be together. Reason and tribal authority could never be
reconciled. And all things being even the New Kid on the
Block was bound to win the war. But all things werent even
and the Blotting Paper Mind that lacked the wisdom of the
harmony of reason still held the power of the authority of the
tribe and considered the power of the harmony of reason to
be its enemy. The war had started with a line on the
pavements of Athens destined to end at some place as yet
unknown.
Every time the clever new Kid on the Block created a new
idea e.g. when Socrates explained reason, i.e. reason is
what works and is decided by refutation. The Blotting Paper
Mind says No it isnt. Reason is a clever mans opinion.
(The clever man happening to be the tribal leader). The
Blotting Paper Mind cant think for itself, all it can do is exist
to be another mans intellectual piss pot and disclaim the
wisdom of the harmony of reason.
To illustrate this lets take a closer look at what the Blotting
Paper Mind has done with the Independent Minds idea of
reason (a similar pattern of cultural abuse can be found in
every intellectual word in our language).
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The Independent Mind defines reason as:- an idea that
exposes itself to refutation bit isnt refuted, i.e. a reason is
what works and non-reason is what doesnt work or cant be
shown to work. Its the most useful, most explanatory way
you can describe any and every idea that exists. Why not
chose to walk with an idea that can be shown to work
instead of an idea that you know doesnt work or cant be
shown to work? If you find that intellectual problem too hard
then ask the Jackdaw in your garden. But dont ask Mr
Aristotle or a professor or student of the Classics well ask
them if you want but the answer will be to take no notice of
reason and to walk through life and the unknown with their
opinions. And to get the Classicists to write your dictionaries
and blotch the meaning of all important words. And then pull
the flanker kid you its common usage and:- must be the
meaning to be ascribed to words. Its intellectual plagiarism
and deception that makes the seediest second hand car
salesman look like an angel.
The Blotting Paper Minds blotched definition of reason is:-
a cause or effect which causes events to happen. Thats the
Disclaimers of Harmonys definition. We all use it every day
in the way the Disclaimers of Harmony expect us to. It is
now accepted as common usage. How could it have ever
been anything else with Classicists & Arts in charge of
everything to do with education and writing the dictionaries?
The answer is it couldnt.
But that doesnt mean the word hasnt been abused and
disharmonised. This abuse and disharmonising of words is
one of the great problems with the idea of common usage.
Aristotle understood the idea. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the
12
th
Century, was completely immersed in the philosophy of
Aristotle and understood the idea of Aristotle when he
advised the Pope to change the meanings of all words which
didnt support Christianity to words which were antagonistic
to Christianity.
270
The word reason is probably the most important word in our
culture. Or more exactly was probably once the most
important word in our culture. The English language has
something like 10,000 words many of them of no special
importance yet they have precise definitions. Quite small
numbers of words which form important parts of harmonics
of meanings have become wrecks of meaning. Whats the
point of using the word civilisation or the word reason when
they have two opposite meanings.
Since Classicists and their fans within the Arts write the
dictionaries and spend their lives disclaiming the harmony of
reason and failing in reasoned endeavours, lets do their job
for them (unpaid of course) and take the word theyve
wrecked, stay with it the way they want to use it, but just be
a little bit fairer to our children by making the definition their
hearts long to blotch, a bit clearer.
But first lets remind them they should have left reason alone
in the first place. They should have left it with the
explanation of reason that Socrates had discovered (not
ascribed). They should have left it alone and not gone
picking and poking and plagiarising because they were
jealous of the explanatory power of the independent mind.
Accepting they will pick and poke and will be there forever
writing the dictionaries because their hero Aristotle told
them:
A virtue is an idea useful to someone else
And that nothing will change because their subjects
definitive. Because Aristotle told them about their Ultimate
Truths.
And told them that reason is evil and leads to a loss of caste
and they might have to get a real job.
271
Theyre not going to move from their ivory castles because
they know what Socrates said was right again.
Superstition follows arrogance as a father.
But lets at least have the satisfaction of doing their job
better than themselves and give a clearer and more exact
definition of their own blotched definition.
Reason:- a cause, an effect, an opinion, a belief or a
reasoned reason that causes something to happen.
At least now we have a acknowledgement to reason which
started the whole idea. I dont need paying I am like
Socrates just happy to know that our children might have a
better chance against the mind pirates.
What was once a clear, clever and precise idea that you
could pass on to your children and grandchildren (that would
support and help them make their way through life by
pointing out that some ways are good ways of working) has
now become a wreck of an idea. It is now an idea without
hardly any meaning. It has been disconnected from reason
and come to mean anything or everything the user wants it
to mean. It isnt founded on reason anymore its founded on
opinion and beliefs as well. The word has been
disharmonised and lost its explanatory power as a
harmonised word. Not only has it lost its explanatory power
it is being used in a way which causes confusion, because in
our souls we all know and feel there should be a word in our
language that represents reason and reason alone and not
just a word thats a blotched heap of crap.
Every intellectual word in our language has been subjected
to the same sort of intellectual abuse and the only way you
can learn to understand it is by treating every word not as a
single unit of meaning but as a harmonic of meaning. If you
272
do it for yourself and stop running off to professors of the
Classics for their non-wisdom or their dictionaries. You will
see it for yourself.
273
Harmonic Three
How we ascribe meanings to words and how
we create harmonics of meaning.
In ancient times the scribes gave meanings to the laws in
the same way God gave Moses the Ten Commandments
written in Tablets of Stone.
Ascribing laws, ascribing morals and ideas were how all
words came to have meaning in the harmonic of the tribal
mind. They had not worked out how words could come to
have meaning other than the idea of the meaning being
given. They had not worked out how reason could uncover
the harmony of ideas.
In the same way we ascribe meanings to laws today and to
the rules of a game etc. And mathematicians ascribe
meanings to their formulae and then use them as tools of
reason.
Under these circumstances it isnt difficult and seems natural
to think that ascribing meanings to words is the way
language works and that is its purpose.
And for all those who are Disclaimers of the Harmony of
Reason that still is the purpose of language and how it
works. Many arts students have no concept of the idea of
words having meaning other than the idea of meaning being
ascribed. This is the disastrous consequence of the way of
thinking we call Critical Inquiry.
Socrates was the first harmonist to describe how creative
reasoned thinking works to uncover the harmonics of reason
and discover the meanings of ideas. If Socrates hadnt
explained to Newton and Einstein how creative reasoned
274
thinking worked they could have never created their theories
of gravity and relativity.
Reason is what works. Non-reason is what doesnt work or
doesnt expose itself to refutation. For the first time in history
it was explained how ideas and their meanings are
discovered and not ascribed.
Plato and Aristotle both used their Blotting Paper Minds to
ascribe meaning. With his highly imaginative idea of perfect
forms Plato wasnt even using reason to help ascribe
meaning to reality. He was ascribing meaning solely on the
basis of imagination. (A highly refutable statement and
impossible to refute).
Aristotle allowed his imagination to use reason but only as a
Hitch Hiker. Both men put imagination before reason. Both
men were dreamers not thinkers. If they had come before
Socrates, they could have been described as men in the
early stages of intellectual development who hadnt quite
grasped the idea of reason and harmonics. But unfortunately
for their reputation as thinkers they came after Socrates and
Socrates is reputed to have been a personal tutor of Plato.
Plato had no excuse for not understanding Socrates other
than (1) he was intellectually very weak or that he was
deliberately set against the ideas of Socrates for reasons
other than intellectual reasons, i.e. a Disclaimer of the
Harmony of Reason.
Using the ways of Socrates I can take a class of sixteen
year old students (if they listen) in about 20 lessons over
about 20 weeks to their own agenda of creative reasoned
thinking. I can have them all picking the ideas of Aristotle
and Plato to pieces in minutes.
Those guys were never players on the field of thinking. They
were a salesman and a lout on the touchline trying to
275
destroy the game. And who succeed in creating the mould
that was to become Medieval times.
When a medieval cleric said up was up and down was down
and the earth was flat you didnt argue with their Ultimate
Truths. Not unless you fancied a week or two stretching out
on a rack or bathing on the warmth of a charcoal spit. Or the
even better offer of a red hot poker up your bum!
They ruled supreme with their ultimate truths, their
guardianship of the learning institutions (just like Aristotle),
the authorships of their books. Their control over the political
institutions. And the sad truth is that although the brutality
may have been tempered amongst some groups of
humanities leaders the fundamentals that keep the system
in place are still there. The tribal harmonic seems to be as
firmly established today as in the time of Newton.
The most fundamental of those harmonics that they still
control are the harmonics of words.
In the minds of the medieval cleric there was no harmonic of
science or anything else for that matter. The harmonic that
was their Blotting Paper Mind was a seamless harmonic
they couldnt see or envisage in separate parts. It stretched
from their cradles to the edges of a flat earth and beyond to
the pearly gates and their robust knocks.
The only reason medieval clerics can be forgiven for the
brutality they inflicted on the people of Europe particularly
the women and the natives of South America is the excuse
of the extent of their ignorance of harmonics. Not just an
ignorance of reason which was obvious but an ignorance of
harmonics which was absolute.
Newton was the first of the scientists and the last of the
wizards in that period of time in history that became a
harbinger for a new age away from the Rule of the Tyrants
276
of the middle ages. It began with ordinary words not
Ultimate Truths which would have got you killed. Not New
Systems which could only have happened with wars no one
understood. But with words themselves that no one seemed
to understand either. Ordinary words that werent considered
to be Ultimate Truths but contained some amazingly
explanatory ideas once their harmonics became understood.
Words that could creep under the portcullis of the medieval
fortresses inhabited by Aristotelian parrots. Words that could
seep like damp past the portals of clerics churches. Words
that should always have been the property of the common
man if we are to take seriously the Rule of Common Usage.
Which of course we dont. Words pregnant with meaning as
many words are. Harmonics of reason once understood
never forgotten. Ask 200,000,000 Americans about the
harmonic that is their independence and their previous
harmonic as colony of England.
Newton himself lived uncomfortably between the harmonic
of Socrates he had re-created and the harmonic he came
from. The harmonic of the Blotting Paper Mind.
Newton re-created the harmonic of Science by
demonstrating how to take a word and harmonise it
(introduce it to reason) and create a new harmonic (cluster
of related ideas).
He started with the medieval clerics idea of up and down
and a flat earth. He harmonised the idea by connecting it to
all the other ideas he had, that seemed to surround his
problem. An apple hit him on the head. Ouch!! And the idea
of a force was born that began the ideas period (in other
words the period of harmonising).
277
Harmonising the Idea of up and down to
create the Harmonic of Gravity
The above are the questions Newton asked and then
answered to create his new harmonic of gravity.
Is shorthand for the question, e.g. How does force
relate to up and down.
Is shorthand for the answers.
Seasons
Up & Down Moon
Eclipses
Force
Planets &
Orbits
Apple
Mass Tides
The Questions that
harmonise up and
down.
The harmonic of
Gravity. The
clusters of
answers that
explain up and
down and
create a new
harmonic
Newtons
answers
Seasons
Gravity
Moon
Eclipses
Force
Planets &
Orbits
Apple
Mass Tides
278
It was unbelievable to medieval man how far Newtons idea
went to explain the universe so enormous was its
explanatory value as a harmonic. All the scientists of the
time thought Newton had done everything physics had to do.
The explanation of all things about the universe was
complete. Newton thought so as well and retired from
science and took a job with the council!! Unlike the medieval
clerics he got his reward on earth and not on the other side
of the pearly gates! And three years later he went insane. A
rational man working for the council doesnt perhaps make
for harmony.
Socrates lesson on harmony had reached Newton across
1500 years of human history during which the destruction of
the harmony of reason had been rampant.
He had nudged open the door to the harmonic of science
created by Socrates. He had harmonised one word and
created one new harmonic but the remaining harmonics still
werent sea worthy. The harmonic of imagination was awash
with unreasoned tit bits. And Aristotles harmonic was still
the pirate harbour for the most dangerous pirates in history.
The intellectual pirates whose prime purpose wasnt to steal
your earthly goods but to steal your minds and the minds of
your children.
When scientists first created the idea of atoms they were
considered to be the smallest part of a substance. It took
400 years for science to progress from an atomistic idea of
chemistry and a mechanical idea of the way the universe
worked, the way Newton had described, to our present idea
of atoms and the nuclear nature of matter.
These new harmonics started to happen when observations
started to suggest that Newtons theory was in fact refutable.
Evidence was found that contradicted the mechanical view.
Einstein in the early 1900s created a new harmonic from the
279
idea of speed. All scientists at the beginning of the 20
th
Century had an absolute idea of speed (An Ultimate Truth).
Einstein didnt accept the definitive nature of this harmonic
and created his own harmonic on speed that was to create
his new harmonic of relativity.
And the point of the story is:- That what was once an
Ultimate Truth is now a new harmonic made up of even
smaller harmonics. The atom is made up of even smaller
harmonics, the electron, the proton, the neutrons and a vast
amount of empty space.
The Collins Dictionary defines words as the smallest
meaningful unit of speech or language. Scientists used to
define an atom as the smallest part of a substance and the
Arts still take this view of words.
Words to a scientist now are as both Socrates and Einstein
agree are harmonics of meaning. Clusters of ideas that
associate together to do the job that language is supposed
to do to create a serviceable tool of language.
Speed of rotation of the
earth
Speed
Speed of revolution
around the sun
Speed the
universe is
expanding
outwards
Relativity
280
Likewise the clusters of ideas that surround independent
countries are separate from the countries within whose
harmonic they may have begun their journey. And if you
dont believe me try telling 200,000,000 Americans they are
still a colony of England and see what happens. They may
not understand the idea of clusters, developing in both an
inward and outward direction but they can understand the
harmonic of their own independent country coming from the
harmonic that was a colony of England. All the old ties have
been broken and replaced with a new internally organised
constitution. That is what the USA presents to history. The
idea of independence; the independent country; and the
independent individual.
281
Harmonic Four
A Summary of the Differences between
Critical Inquiry and Creative Reasoned
Thinking
Mary Shelly is The Mother of the Arts because she seems
to have been the first to recognise the Arts as a harmonic
part of the harmonic of imagination. The play thing of the
Intellect
The Classicists claim that Aristotle was The Father of the
Arts is a failed claim because Aristotle and themselves
failed to understand not only the harmonic of imagination but
they failed to understand the nature of all.
However their attempts to disclaim the harmony of reason
have been a huge success. Most of the population of
Western Civilisation think as Aristotelians. But their attempts
to disclaim the harmony of reason are a complete
intellectual failure.
Apart from trying to ridicule science they steer clear of it
because the essence of the subjects of science and of
scientific thinking is creative reasoned thinking. They
disclaim it. They disclaim them and replace them with their
Definitive Ultimate Truths, i.e. their opinions which they
declare to be certain.
They espouse Critical Inquiry founded on opinion as the way
thinking should work as a critic within the Arts it may be
the way thinking should work there is no time in the
harmonic of imagination to subject ideas to reason. And the
harmonic of imagination exists in order to be free of the
fetters of reason. This is the main idea of its claim to be an
independent harmonic.
282
But as an all-round tool of thinking it is a non starter. It is a
dreamers tool of thinking.
In a similar way Aristotle and the Classicists dispose with the
harmonic of semantics. To themselves it doesnt exist. There
isnt a chance they say that semantics, the harmonic, might
contain some useful ideas on how words and ideas come to
have meanings. How can it be? It contradicts their idea they
have of themselves, having definitive knowledge! Which
means all word meanings will be ascribed by themselves of
course. You ask any Arts graduates where word meanings
come from and in most all cases they will reply theyre
ascribed. And yes they are by the Classicists and
themselves but it is a failed idea rooted in tribalism and the
university departments of the Classicists. And between the
countless millions of them that have existed they havent
created one original reasoned idea!!
Creative reasoned thinking (that paltry inquisitiveness they
dain to call natural science) is the only way creative thinking
can happen. (Its a highly refutable statement and hasnt
been refuted). It deals with harmonics. It uncovers reasons
which as their numbers increase come to reveal harmonics
of reason (clusters of reasoned ideas) They appear like an
x-ray appears, revealing the underling shape of reality.
Meaning is not being ascribed, meaning is being discovered
or uncovered because the unknown isnt chaos and disorder
like the intellectual drama queens of culture would have you
believe. The unknown has order and has structure. And it is
the order and structure that is reason that we are seeking to
understand in order to discover meaning.
283
Harmonic Five
Comparing Opinions (Ultimate Truths) to
Harmonics of Reason
A Reasoned idea:- is an idea that exposes itself to being
shown to be wrong but isnt show to be wrong.
A Harmonic:- is a cluster of reasoned ideas that can be
shown to have one or more reasoned connections to one
another.
An Opinion (or Ultimate Truth):- are both unreasoned ideas
that dont expose themselves to being shown to be wrong. In
short they are a belief or an intuition.
Clusters of Opinions:- occur when groups of men (hopefully
clever men, but usually not) share the same opinion or
opinions (or beliefs), e.g. all leaders of tribal harmonics
share the belief of a tribal harmonic. With the authority of the
leader and the suppression of the individual rights in order to
exercise that authority.
The Conflict between the Harmonics
Aristotle argued that clever men together could think their
way to Ultimate Truths. Theres two unreasoned ideas
contained in this statement but this isnt unusual for such a
woolly thinker.
1) The premise that Ultimate Truths exist;
2) The premise that groups can out think individuals.
Both premises have no evidence to support them. And both
premises can be refuted not just once or twice but on a
grand scale, e.g. (1) Men with Blotting Paper Minds e.g. The
284
Classicists, and religious leaders cant be credited with one
original reasoned idea. (2) All original reasoned ideas have
been created by individuals who respect reason.
It is to individuals and individualism that we owe our
progress as a civilisation. The Ancient Greeks understood
this, that is why they created the political system of
democracy that recognised the harmonic of the individual as
being distinct from the harmonic of the tribe. That is the
reason the idea of the individual was seen as fundamental to
the idea of democracy. Aristotle didnt want individualism, he
wanted tribalism and the idea of equality of tribal members
was to be made its the fundamental idea of democracy. And
it still is today.
We are still a tribal society allowed to elect our tribal leaders
(60 million people in the UK have now got the choice
between one of probably 3 contenders (tribal leaders). Its a
long way from the democracy of Ancient Greece).
3
Aristotle further inferred leaders were clever men not
because of any special reasoned characteristic but for the
most part because of what they werent. They werent
naturally slaves. Aristotle said that any man who didnt
belong to himself became the property of another man, i.e. a
slave. In some ways history has proved him right (reason
the Hitch Hiker). But in other ways harmony explains he is
wrong and laying too much emphasis on one small part of
the issue (the footprint). In the harmonic of the tribe you are
born and live under authority. You cant defy it otherwise the
whole tribe will probably turn on you and probably kill you.
They usually do. Dead men cant change much seems to be
yet another Ultimate Truth.
3
(Parliamentary Democracy) has allowed the tribal harmonic to regain control
of democracy and prevent the flow of the harmony of reason into our
democratic institutions.
285
The purpose of genocide and the industrial extermination of
six and a half million Jews was to get rid of disliked opinions.
You cant intellectually deny anything because clusters of
opinions shared amongst men who share a common
purpose e.g. a tribe are the ways things are going to be
done. And if the clusters of their opinions are the truth, is
reason there is no way out. Theyre not going to relinquish
their status and power within the tribal harmonic because of
a minor detail with the definition of a word!?
Even Socrates couldnt out argue the cluster of Aristocratic
opinion at his trial. So the reasoned justice Socrates
reminded them of was ignored disclaimed and they
murdered him and tried to call it suicide. And they still do
today.
Its similar to the idea of Pagans. I am a pagan not because
of what I am. I am a pagan because of what I am not. I am
an ignorant mindless heathen because Im not a Christian.
And further the idea of Atheists: I am an atheist not because
of what I am (a noun is supposed to describe a person,
place or thing) but because of what I am not. I dont believe
like they believe. The reasoned idea of the atheist i.e. the
noun that describes me has gone missing!! Its a trick of
language. The idea he might be like Socrates, a harmonist
who believes in introducing the harmony of reason into the
whole cultural fabric of his life has gone missing and its
gone missing for my children and my childrens children.
They will never even be permitted the dignity of being able
to call themselves a harmonist like their cultural hero. They
will belong to the harmonic of the tribe or they will belong
nowhere.
It is the greatest injustice of our times and of the last 2,000
years. As the boy from Scotland in my school demonstrated.
286
Hes not going to get an education his parents paid for him
to have. Hes going to be denied the education thats been
paid for and that is his birth right, by the government.
The government with their clusters of opinions have
answered. You accept what we tell you is reason or you get
no reason. Real reason has been disclaimed. His question
What about Intellectual Honesty falls on deaf ears. The
curtain of silence of Aristotelians descends to choke, kill,
suffocate, poison, to do whatever it wants without having to
reason. Its purpose is not reason and the rights of the
individual. Its purpose is the protection of the tribe. The tribal
harmonic of nature as it has been moulded into a Blotting
Paper Mind. Something which these not quite so clever men
prefer. Its their problems we become confronted with. Its
their personality and intellectual problems that muddy the
waters of the rivers. That create Blotting Paper Minds where
Independent Minds should be. That create the arrogance
superstition and hatred that creates the dark side of human
life on earth.
287
The structure of clusters of opinions of
Aristotle and Plato
My Math teacher was using the idea of Clusters of
Opinions to promote clusters of belief in an omnipotent
God. The clusters of opinions were those of all the staff who
sat above us all on the stage, with their flowing gowns and
flat hats with toggles: looking down on 300 11-18 year old
children in silent rage just in case a murmur of dissent came
from some harmonic of reason within the hall. And to further
endorse the rage if the molecules of wood in the pulpit
werent whirling before he began to shake it they most
certainly were when hed finished.
(the omnipotent being)
(imagination or the unknown)
God
Aristotle and Plato (slightly less perfect than God in Heaven).
Classicists
The scholars on
earth who
understand
certain knowledge
The Religious Leaders
The Pope, the Archbishops
Aristotle must be taught as
the only right Philosopher
An edict 1843
The Kings
Have Divine
Wisdom.
Aristotle
The
Commander in
Chief of
Parrots
Political Leaders Headmasters of Schools Judges
Parrot
Generals
Parrot
Captains
288
It was a shock to see such a normally quiet and polite man
effuse such anger. Then of course there were the opinions
of the man who organised the party. The man who would
have been in the image Chris Woodhead, The Minister of
Education. The man who defined education as A
conversation between the generations about whats worth
preserving.
The man who further goes on to say and I make no
excuses for it: it just wasnt a discussion. It was a Math
teacher who should have understood the idea of harmonics
and reason. A Math teacher who knew his endorsement of
clusters of opinion would lead to his next promotion, to a
headship. It was a sermon. An emotionally charged,
opinionated sermon only intellectual mms removed from
those of medieval clerics. This is Mr Woodheads idea of a
conversation?
This is what happened every morning in every school in the
land. This is education the Chris Woodhead way. This is
indoctrination into the idea that clusters of opinions are the
way education works and:- must be the way reason works.
Of course children were allowed not to attend if they chose
not to but then they had to come into the hall in front of the
whole school after the sermon to listen to the daily
announcements. And every morning in my school one boy
from Scotland did just that. He strolled in like Yul Brymner
going to a gunfight: he hadnt heard the fantastic sermon on
how atoms whirling related to a belief in a God.
Hed missed out. He hadnt been given what Mr Woodhead
describes as an education. So why should his parents have
had to pay taxes to fund his education when he wasnt
getting one? And how come when he asked the question:-
Why isnt intellectual honesty considered a moral value, did
he never get an answer?
289
Harmonic Six
The Key to the Door of the Independent Mind
The key to the door of the Independent Reasoning Mind is
reason itself. Without the key you cant open the door to the
harmonic of reason and if you cant open the door you will
live for eternity with a Blotting Paper Mind and suffer the
horrors of chronic intellectual constipation.
The Greatest Eureka moment it is possible to
experience is the moment you discover how to
belong to yourself.
The Intellectual Warrior
When you start your intellectual life using reason and not the
opinions of other men the first question you have to get a
reasoned answer to is:-
What is my idea of reason?
If you come up with the reasoned answer, the answer will
be: - reason is what works and what works has to be shown
to work, i.e. it has to be refutable. In short, reason is
refutable but not refuted.
Then you will have found your first reasoned premise of
argument. You will have found the key to the door of the
harmonic of reason. It has to be that one, because there is
no other (a highly refutable statement not refuted). You have
started your journey with your first reasoned premise to the
idea of harmonics, clusters of ideas that begin to appear
almost like an x-ray in the mind revealing the underlying
structure of the unknown that is reason.
290
The next stage of the journey is the progression to the idea
of clusters of reasons that make up the harmonics of your
own mind. Those parts of the mind that exist as independent
harmonics of the mind doing their own special job in their
own special way using reason, intellect, semantics and
imagination. When you discover these and how they
function together you will have discovered for yourself the
most powerful entity in the known universe: The
Independent Thinking Mind.
You will have discovered your own independent mind and
experienced the greatest Eureka moment it is possible to
experience, the moment you discover how to belong to
yourself.
You will have learned how to connect the intellectual nature
of your being to the emotional nature of your being. And you
will have learned how to use your harmonised mind to its
greatest effect to create harmonics out of the whole of the
rest of the unknown. Thanks to Socrates and his gift to
humanity of creative reasoned thinking.
291
Glossary
292
293
Glossary
The Thinking Web A map of the human thinking
mind created by joining all
the harmonics of the mind
together.
Reason
(Scientific Thinking)
A statement which is easy to
refute but is not refuted, i.e.
reason is what works and
can be shown to work.
Non Reason
(Beliefs, Ultimate Truths)
A statement which is difficult
to refute or can be refuted,
i.e. non reason is what cant
be shown to work.
Harmonics Clusters (or families) of
reasoned ideas.
The Three Great Harmonics of the Universe
World I The Inorganic World of
Nature.
World II The Organic World of
Nature.
World III Mankinds New World of
New Things Under the Sun
including his explanations
of:-
294
World I inorganic
chemistry,
physics.
World II organic
chemistry and
plant and
animal life.
The Two Harmonics of World III
The Blotting Paper Mind
(Dependent Mind)
(World III)
A mind founded on the tribal
mind of mankind prepared
to use Non reason as the
starting point of arguments.
The Independent Mind
(World III)
A mind founded on the idea
of the individual that governs
itself using reason and the
harmony reason creates.
The Tribal Mind
(World III)
The mind of mankind that
existed before 350 BC. A
mind created in the harmonic
of a tribe with the authority of
the tribal leader and the
traditions of the tribe
governing the mind.
Old Emotions Emotions created by
biological changes, e.g. sex,
hunger, fear.
295
New Emotions Emotions created when the
intellect creates New Ideas.
Intellectual Constipation A cluttering of the mind
caused by too many
unreasoned ideas acting as
the starting points of
arguments. The main
characteristic of the Blotting
Paper Mind.
The Harmonics of the Mind
The Intellect The Boss of the mind that
considers and makes all the
final decisions.
Reason The place in the mind that
acts as a referee and
decides what is reasonable
and what is unreasonable.
Imagination The place in the mind which
creates new visions and
ideas free from the fetters of
reason and all the other
harmonics of the mind.
296
Semantics The place in the mind that
sorts out the meaning of
words and the purpose of
language, by ascribing
meaning in the case of
descriptive words and
harmonising or discovering
meaning, by creating
harmonics of meaning (i.e.
words).
Morality The place in the mind where
the individual mind stores his
own important ideas about
life.
Creative Reasoned Thinking
(The Dialectic)
The method of thinking that
uses reason to create
reasoned premises of
argument.
Stepping Stones Clusters of reasoned ideas
that seem to represent the
best explanation of an event.
But at the same time is an
explanation youre prepared
to change, hence stepping
stone.
297
Words Harmonics of meaning and
ascribed meaning.
Ascribe Meaning To give meaning to words
e.g. the law, rules of the
game and description of
objects e.g. chairs.
Harmonise Meaning To discover or uncover the
meanings of words by
harmonising them.
Harmonise To find the reasoned place
of all ideas.
Refute To show to be wrong.
Aristotelianism Using the ways of Aristotle.
Socratic A supporter of the ways of
Socrates.
298
The Stepping Stone Theory
of coming to knowledge
The reasoned premise of
argument forms the basis of
the Stepping Stones Theory
in which premises are used
as stepping stones on the
way to the truth.
299
Appendix
300
301
Appendix
A list of Paradoxes for the Reader
A Paradox relating to the Mind
Do you choose the independence of mind that a Jackdaw
allows himself/herself or chose a Dependent, Blotting Paper
Mind that the human tribe has permitted to have been
chosen for themselves.
A Paradox relating to Morality
Do you continue to allow moralists to be appointed to decide
what your important morals will be. Or do you start to create
your own important ideas about life?
A Paradox relating to Democracy
Is equality with all its sameness and lack of ability to create
new original reasoned ideas fundamental to democracy or is
the individual with all his differences and abilities to create
original reasoned ideas fundamental to the idea of
democracy?
The Paradox of the Teacher
Do we continue to appoint teachers who still have the
mandate to indoctrinate or do we call them educators and
charge them with the mandate to educate using only
reasoned ideas?
302
The Paradox of your Neighbour
Do you pretend to love him as an excuse to impose your
values on him. Or do you leave him with his privacy. Help
him when he needs it and offer to meet him on the common
ground of reason that unites all men, if they find it, together?
The Paradox of Reason
Is it a reasoned idea or an unreasoned opinion?
The Paradox of Science
Is science a way of thinking or is it just a subject based on
paltry inquisitiveness?
The Paradox of the Premise
Do we start our thinking with a reasoned premise or an
unreasoned one?
The Paradox of Social Harmony
Is social harmony going to be achieved by demanding
respect or by asking one another for Harmony?
The Paradox of Positive Thinking
Do you want positive thinking where everything including
dying is jolly hockey sticks or do you want to have a realistic
idea of what life is really about?
The Paradox for the Education of Harmonists
Do we continue to allow Christians, Jews, Muslims their own
right to educate their own children in their own schools and
continue to call those that dont want a religion with silly
303
words that dont say what they are but describes what they
arent?
E.g. an Atheist is a person who believes he does not believe
in an omnipotent God. It is a name created by Christian
scholars on the advice of St. Thomas Aquinas (Aristotles
greatest fan) in the 13
th
Century who advised the Pope to
change the meaning of all words which couldnt be seen to
be supportive of Christianity to words which could be seen to
be antagonistic to Christianity.
A Jackdaw harmonises and is: - a harmonist. It is still a
harmonist because the flock he belongs to hasnt thought of
one of the most stupid ideas in history. Of Disclaiming the
Harmony of Reason in order to serve the purpose of the
flock. The Jackdaw regards the flock as serving the
purposes of the individuals in the flock.
Why cant these children be labelled harmonists? Why do
they have to be told by Christians theyre atheists or pagans
(which means amoral mindless heathen. Look it up for
yourself)?
And why cant they have an education in their own morality?
They are turned out on the streets without an education in
any morality and nobody seems to care less. Why cant they
be at least be called harmonists on a par with Jackdaws.
Why do they have to be further insulted?
What happens when they commit crimes, which is to be
expected, and they land up in court and blame the judge?
You are responsible for my crime, your honour, you and
your kind are the ones that denied me an education in my
morality when I was young and needed guidance. It is you
who must go to jail and now I must be educated properly.
Thats harmony, the harmony of reason. Thats karma.
304
The Paradox relating to Emotional Intelligence
Do you go with Daniel Golemans and other Aristotelians
ideas of emotional intelligence being the idea of using the
cognitive skills we call intelligence to describe emotional
aspects of life. Or do you accept that David Goleman has
got it wrong and started his argument with an unreasoned
premise. Intelligence has no direct connection to emotions
that can be found. It should be called Emotional Intellect
because its the intellect that does what has to be done to
create New Emotions, i.e. emotions that havent existed
before, that are the emotions that make up what emotional
intellect is all about.
The Paradox of Aristotle the why man. An Ultimate Truth is
a truth knowable by a very clever man. The next question is
not How does he know? (the scientist question). It is Why
does he know?
- Because hes clever. (The laboratory technicians answer).
He has answered the question why but avoided the question
of science, How?, and all the questions that go with How.
And thats why he is a why man.
How did he become a clever man?
Answer: - Because he disclaimed the harmony of wisdom.
Aristotelian Question: - Why do some men make natural
slaves?
Aristotle: - Because its natures way.
Socratic Question: - How do some men make natural
slaves?
305
Answer: - They dont. Slavery only seems natural in a tribal
system. Neither Classicists or Aristotle like the question
How. To them it doesnt seem to exist. Yet it is as you can
easily see. (It is highly refutable but not refuted) the main
question of science. Why is a very minor question that only
Classicist Aristotelians would rely on.
Lifes Most Important Intellectual Questions
First Question:
What is Reason?
Second Question:
What are Harmonics?
Third Question:
What are the Harmonics of my mind?
Fourth Question:
How do I use my mind to create Harmonics?
306
Notes on Culture
High Culture (i.e. creative thinking) is not a function of a
democratic vote. Low Culture (using cultural traditions,
popular culture) is. High Culture cannot be the product of a
democratic vote. Low culture can.
Once again weve abused a word by making it do two very
different things. The idea of High Culture is only useful to the
Socratics who are the only ones who can reason originally.
Popular Culture and Cultural Tradition are the sides of
culture that the Blotting Paper Mind use. Once again the
word has been disharmonised.
307
Contents
THE WISDOM OF THE HARMONY OF REASON ......................................... 15
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................17
HARMONIC ONE...................................................................................... 29
THE HARMONY OF NATURE AND THE GENIE IN THE BOTTLE..................................29
(THE LUCKY SCIENTISTS)................................................................................29
HARMONIC TWO..................................................................................... 39
HARMONISING THE UNIVERSE................................................................39
THE TWO HARMONICS OF WORLD III ..............................................................40
THE HARMONICS OF THE MIND..............................................................43
THE TWO GREAT HARMONICS OF OUR NEW WORLD UNDER THE SUN
................................................................................................................45
SUMMARY OF THE HARMONICS OF THE UNIVERSE ...............................47
HARMONIC THREE................................................................................... 49
THE HARMONY OF SUBJECTS..........................................................................49
THE GOOD GROCER .....................................................................................49
THE HARMONICS OF THE INDEPENDENT MIND...................................................58
HARMONIC FOUR.................................................................................... 59
REASON, THE HARMONISER...........................................................................59
(OR REASON THE REFEREE) ............................................................................59
ARISTOTLES PREMISE OF ARGUMENT ..............................................................63
THE DISHARMONY OF REASON IN THE QUOTES OF ARISTOTLE...............................65
THE HARMONISED QUOTES OF SOCRATES V. THE UN-HARMONISED QUOTES OF
ARISTOTLE..................................................................................................69
HARMONIC FIVE ...................................................................................... 73
REASON THE DRIVER OF THE CAR AND REASON THE HITCH HIKER ..........................73
HARMONIC SIX........................................................................................ 77
HARMONISING WORDS.................................................................................77
THE AMBIGUITY OF LANGUAGE.......................................................................81
SOME AMBIGUOUS WORDS...........................................................................84
THE POWER OF HARMONISING WORDS (OR IDEAS) ............................................87
NEWTONS IDEA OF GRAVITY .........................................................................88
308
HOWNEWTON HARMONISED THE IDEA OF UP AND DOWN TO CREATE THE IDEA OF
GRAVITY. ................................................................................................. 88
HARMONIC SEVEN................................................................................... 95
MORALITY ................................................................................................. 95
HOWMORALITY FUNCTIONS TO HARMONISE THE MIND..................................... 98
HARMONIC EIGHT.................................................................................. 103
EUREKA NEWEMOTIONS!! ......................................................................... 103
HARMONIC NINE ................................................................................... 111
THE HARMONIC OF THE INDEPENDENT MIND.................................................. 111
HARMONIC TEN..................................................................................... 117
DISCLAIMERS OF THE HARMONY OF REASON AND THE TRUANT .......................... 117
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES (THE CREATOR OF HARMONICS) AND.............. 125
THE FOOTPRINT OF ARISTOTLE (THE DISCLAIMER OF HARMONICS) ...... 125
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 127
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES .............................................................................. 129
THE FOOTPRINT OF ARISTOTLE..................................................................... 130
THE GREAT MISTAKES OF CRITICAL INQUIRY AND ARISTOTELIAN
THINKING.............................................................................................. 132
HARMONIC ONE .................................................................................... 135
ARISTOTLES HARMONIC...................................................................... 135
(THE BLOTTING PAPER MIND) ..................................................................... 135
HARMONIC TWO ................................................................................... 137
EDUCATION.............................................................................................. 137
THE FOUR GENERALS AND THE ARTISAN SLAVE ............................................... 137
THE BIG GUNS.......................................................................................... 139
A CHALLENGE TO THE READER...................................................................... 149
HARMONIC THREE ................................................................................. 153
SOCRATIC DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOTELIAN DEMOCRACY .................................. 153
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES AND THE CREATION OF THE HARMONIC OF DEMOCRACY .... 155
THE FOOTPRINT OF ARISTOTLE, BASED ON EQUALITY, DISCLAIMING THE HARMONY OF
REASONED DEMOCRACY ............................................................................. 156
309
HARMONIC FOUR.................................................................................. 163
RESPECT V HARMONY .................................................................................163
RESPECT YOUR MASTER NO MATTER HOW HARSH OR ASK YOUR FELLOW MEN TO SEEK
HARMONY WITH YOU. .................................................................................163
THE BLIND ORDER......................................................................................163
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES AND THE CREATION OF THE HARMONIC OF SOCIAL HARMONY
..............................................................................................................168
RESPECT AND THE FOOTPRINT OF ARISTOTLE...................................................170
HARMONIC FIVE .................................................................................... 173
POSITIVE THINKING ....................................................................................173
THE BLIND MAN LEADS...............................................................................173
HARMONIC SIX...................................................................................... 179
NEIGHBOURS ............................................................................................179
Choose your Neighbour, Socrates or Aristotle?
.......................179
THE SEAT OF SOCRATES AND THE CREATION OF THE HARMONIC OF YOUR NEIGHBOUR
..............................................................................................................181
HARMONIC SEVEN................................................................................. 185
A COMPARISON OF SOME HARMONICS OF THE BLOTTING PAPER MIND AND OF THE
INDEPENDENT MIND...................................................................................185
HARMONIC EIGHT ................................................................................. 195
HIGH NOON..............................................................................................195
HARMONIC NINE ................................................................................... 199
EINSTEIN AND SOCRATES .............................................................................199
THE FALSE DAWNS.....................................................................................199
HARMONIC TEN..................................................................................... 205
SOCRATES THE SCIENTIST AND MIDWIFE AT THE BIRTH OF MANKINDS INDEPENDENT
MIND. AND ..........................................................................................205
ARISTOTLE THE LABORATORY TECHNICIAN AND FATHER OF THE BLOTTING PAPER
MIND. .....................................................................................................205
USING THE THINKING WEB TO CREATE YOUR OWN HARMONICS OF
REASON................................................................................................. 213
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................... 215
310
DO A SOCRATES ........................................................................................ 215
(A RAIL TICKET TO THE UNIVERSE. THE THINKING WEB AND THE SEAT OF SOCRATES.)
.............................................................................................................. 215
HARMONIC ONE .................................................................................... 223
HARMONISING THE THINKING WEB..................................................... 223
HOW THE REASONING MIND FUNCTIONS....................................................... 230
COMPARING THE HARMONY OF REASON TO MAKING A JIGSAWPUZZLE AND TAKING
THE SLOW BOAT TO CHINA .......................................................................... 233
COMPARING HARMONISING TO THE OXYGENATION OF WATER .......................... 234
HARMONIC TWO ................................................................................... 235
THE THINKING WEB................................................................................... 235
(THE MAP OF THE MIND)............................................................................ 235
HARMONIC THREE ................................................................................. 243
THE IMPORTANT NATURE OF THE QUESTION HOW.......................................... 243
LESSON 5 .............................................................................................. 243
HARMONIC FOUR .................................................................................. 251
HARMONISING THE IDEA OF MORALITY USING THE WEB ................................... 251
LESSON 12 ............................................................................................ 251
CONCLUDING HARMONICS.................................................................... 261
HARMONIC ONE .................................................................................... 263
REFUTE OR DOUBT? NO DOUBT. ................................................................. 263
(THE PROFESSORS OF THE CLASSICS AND THE JACKDAW) .................................... 263
HARMONIC TWO ................................................................................... 265
SUMMARY OF OUR CULTURE ....................................................................... 265
(THE SIAMESE TWINS)................................................................................ 265
HARMONIC THREE ................................................................................. 273
HOW WE ASCRIBE MEANINGS TO WORDS AND HOW WE CREATE HARMONICS OF
MEANING................................................................................................. 273
HARMONISING THE IDEA OF UP AND DOWN TO CREATE THE HARMONIC OF GRAVITY
.............................................................................................................. 277
HARMONIC FOUR .................................................................................. 281
311
A SUMMARY OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRITICAL INQUIRY AND CREATIVE
REASONED THINKING..................................................................................281
HARMONIC FIVE .................................................................................... 283
COMPARING OPINIONS (ULTIMATE TRUTHS) TO HARMONICS OF REASON ............283
The structure of clusters of opinions of Aristotle and Plato
....287
HARMONIC SIX...................................................................................... 289
THE KEY TO THE DOOR OF THE INDEPENDENT MIND.........................................289
GLOSSARY ............................................................................................. 293
THE THREE GREAT HARMONICS OF THE UNIVERSE............................................293
THE TWO HARMONICS OF WORLD III ............................................................294
THE HARMONICS OF THE MIND ....................................................................295
APPENDIX.............................................................................................. 301
A LIST OF PARADOXES FOR THE READER..........................................................301
LIFES MOST IMPORTANT INTELLECTUAL QUESTIONS ........................................305
NOTES ON CULTURE ...................................................................................306
312
313
314
The New Kid on the Block
If you looked into the mind of a man before 350 BC all you would have seen
was a mind that functioned like a piece of Blotting Paper, soaking up the
ideas that happened to be around at the dry time, at the beginning of its life:
A Tribal Mind: A Blotting Paper Mind, designed by nature to be a part of the
most successful harmonic in the living world the tribe. A mind governed
from without by the opinions of tribal leaders and their special connections to
the whispers of the Gods together with their earthly understanding that within
nature, with unity lay strength. These were the principles of governance of
the Blotting Paper Mind and still are. Even today if leaders said their piss was
pop most of tribe would drink it!
There was no harmonic of reason, no harmonic of language, no harmonic of
intellect or imagination. It was a bag full of the tribal leaders opinions, and
tribal rituals made into an emotional soup.
Within the harmonic of the tribe reason was to be seen a hitch hiker to be
picked up when it suited the tribe and dropped off when it didnt.
Around 350 BC came a New Kid on the Block. One clever enough to know
that reason was the driver of the car. One clever enough to know that original
reasoned ideas come from the minds of individuals and not the mind of the
tribe. One clever enough and reckless enough to understand 2,000 years
before the American Declaration of Independence, the need to transfer the
governance of the mind from outside itself to its own internally appointed
constitution to create a New Thing Under the Sun. The Independent Mind.
One clever enough to create its own constitution. One clever enough to know
how to do all that in the only way possible: By harnessing the wisdom of the
harmony of reason.
And in Part III learn to think for yourself by using the greatest tool of
thinking ever created, The Thinking Web.
www.theindependentmind.co.uk