If you drive on the Black Rock Turnpike around Redding/Easton in Connecticut, you see signs up these days in preparation for the upcoming midterms, one of which is a big sign in red that says "Educate Yes, Indoctrinate No, Vote Republican."  I think I know what is meant, in light of recent news stories of what is being taught in school and people on the right objecting - especially things pertaining to race, religion (or anti-religion), etc., which seem to be related to the rise of the BLM movement and other related recent events.  

And so I think we all know what is intended by this sign - i.e., the maker of the sign does not like what's going on at schools and what kids are being taught or not taught.  But the sign, and specifically the language and word choice in the sign seems based on a notion that there is a distinction between two things - education and indoctrination, the latter being a somewhat derogatory and inflammatory word in this country.  But really, is there any real distinction to be drawn?  Isn't ALL education, especially formal school education, exactly indoctrination?  What is education if not indoctrination?  The word indoctrination seems to suggest the putting in of doctrines into students' heads - and what are doctrines but teachings?  And what is education if not the feeding of teachings into the heads of students?  That's what teachers are supposed to be doing, no?  

I suppose the author of this sign would probably say, No, education is not the implanting of doctrines into childrens' heads. No, education is supposed to teach them "how to think." Oh really?  One certainly hears that phrase a lot in connection with education, this idea of education being associated with "learning how to think."  But then nobody explains what that means.  And nobody who uses this empty phrase, "learning how to think", seems to have given it any thought at all.  Though it surely sounds good, and also a noble thing for educators to teach, although it's not even clear why.  And if you look around, how many people do you see who have successfully "learned how to think", if thinking means anything other than reckoning and calculating the many ways and means to lie in order to make money?  Or calculating how to lie in order to "get ahead" in some other way.  Is "learning how to think" really anything other than that?  Because that is the only manner of "thinking" in evidence among those with "education".  

So no, education is exactly the same thing as indoctrination, the central doctrine being 'strive to be successful and avoid failure like the plague' (or maybe we should say covid now).  Whatever doctrines or teachings the maker of the sign doesn't like being taught in schools, his (or her) issue is with a few relatively tiny little (in the scope of things) matters recently being introduced, but it seems disingenuous to suggest that there is something called "education" that is different from "indoctrination", and even the maker of the sign probably agrees with the central doctrine that we are all indoctrinated with in school from early childhood - i.e., the doctrine of worshipping success above all else, and the doctrine of despising failure.  Every single thing that is taught in school is built around this central doctrine, and all of what is commonly understood by the word "education" aims at instilling this doctrine into people very deeply.  The word "indoctrination" carries connotations of brainwashing, but if education isn't that, what is it?  Learning how to think?  Hardly.

And how successful is this indoctrination in our schools? 100% successful, or so close that the number of failures is negligible.  Who in our society does not worship success and run from failure? Of course, success and failure can mean different things to different people when it comes to the particulars, but these differences, however big they may seem, are minor variations that don't matter because there is not a single soul who has escaped the central indoctrination. 

And so it warrants close examination.  And careful thought about this central doctrine, the truth and wisdom of which seems so self-evident.  The problem is, because of how stupendously successful the indoctrination into this doctrine has been, none of us has learned to think.  And so it's hard if not impossible for anyone to give this indoctrination careful thought.  Hmmm.  What to do.

I was sitting at the local Starbucks near the office and saw a sign across the street in a store that said "Life is too short to drink bad coffee or wear boring clothes."  I suppose the store must have been a women's clothing shop which also had a cafe, I've never been inside and have never explored the area directly across the street.  But I thought, didn't the store owner mean to say that 'Life is TOO LONG, rather than too short, to drink bad coffee or wear bad clothes?"  Wouldn't that be closer to the truth?  I wonder if I should go across the street and cross out the word "short" in the sign, and write over it, "LONG", because I think that's what she must have meant.  For how could life possibly be too short, when whatever length of time we have, we still have time to deal with?

Because if life were very short, say one day, then surely we could put up with bad coffee, boring clothes, or just about anything else - if we only had to put up with it for a day.  But for most of us, life is longer than a day, and so if we choose the wrong coffee, we have to put up with bad coffee for many days, perhaps years, and so many cups of bad coffee, or boring clothes, as the case may be.  It's not gonna be just one cup.  If it were, it would be ok.  But seeing as we have many, many cups of coffee in life to put up with, we may as well drink good coffee.  Isn't that what the author of the sign really meant?  It's not that life is too short to . . [insert whatever here], it's rather that life is TOO LONG to put up with the things we don't want to put up with on a daily basis, over and over again.  

So we might as well pace ourselves, given how many days we have to endure, and see to it that our coffee is acceptable FOR THE LONG HAUL, see to it that we are not wearing something we don't want to be wearing every day, since it will not be for just one day, and that we not put up with anything else we should not put up with day after day for many days.  If it were just one day, then maybe it would be ok.  But it's not, it goes on and on.  

So it's not that LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO . . . as we often hear said, as a preface to some complaint or other about daily inconvenience.  It seems to me that rather, LIFE IS TOO LONG TO . . . whatever we are griping about.  To the extent that life consists of a series of pains and boredoms, as I believe Schopenhauer cheerfully pointed out (for it's the depressive writers that actually cheer us up), the difficulty is the longness of life, not its oft-cited brevity.  Because however short our lives are, we still have to contend on a daily basis with time, our foe.  To say that 'life is too short' overlooks this fact, or hides behind the fear of death, which is really what motivates the thought that life is too short - because we're afraid of what comes next.  But if we put that aside for a moment in time, isn't life more often too long rather than too short?  

Or do most people's lives consist of an uninterrupted sequence of one thrill immediately followed by another, with no boring passages in between, no times of waiting, no need for patience, no old age to look towards, nothing but happiness and gratification at every moment?  If that's how it is for you, then perhaps life is too short in your case, or perhaps you are shortening your life by running away from, hiding from and avoiding, the fight against time (perhaps a beneficial activity in the end), by cramming your days with thoughtless busyness.  But if you are like most other people, then there will be some downtime here and there, some uncertainty about when exactly life will end, and plenty of tasks to do until then - in which case we better settle in for the long haul and pace ourselves with respect to how much bad coffee we are willing to put up with, because life is too long to be drinking bad coffee every day.  So let's take the time to brew a decent cup and drink it slowly, mindful that we'll have to do it again tomorrow, and again after that, and again, and again . . .

As living creatures, it is unavoidable that we learn over the course of our experience.  Even cats and dogs and insects learn from experience.  We are all programmed and can be conditioned about food, for example, when it's meal time and where to find it.  And the same goes for other things - we necessarily learn, all animals do.  But what is it we learn?  What works, what doesn't, the importance of insurance, many prudential things, things we need to learn, but also perhaps more bad than good in many respects.  

It's nothing special to learn from experience, it's hard-wired in us as animals.  But what about the value of NOT learning from experience, intentionally and consciously?  After all, isn't that how we maintain any kind of idealism?  By consciously refusing to learn what everybody else learns over time?  An essential element of learning is changing one's behavior, not just cognitively registering some fact or observation about the world, but allowing that observation to change our behavior in response - that shows we've really learned.  But the idealist has to perhaps more effortfully hold himself back from letting his behavior get changed in response to experiential data - he must stay his course, in spite of experience that bids him to learn and change.  He must stay true to an idea, rather than data from experience, and must therefore NOT learn.  There is the saying that the definition, or sign, of a madman is that he continues to do what doesn't work, or in other words, he REFUSES to learn, and he tries the same thing even after it has failed, repeatedly perhaps.  But there is also the saying, 'Dance like nobody is watching, love like you've never been hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth."  Have you heard this saying?  I saw it on a plaque on the wall of somebody's house, and it made me think.  What is this really saying, but DO NOT LEARN!!  Because what does life teach us?  Just the opposite.  Life teaches one to be cautious and prudent, because more often than not, and in more places in the world than not, for more people than not, life on earth is not heaven, somebody IS watching or listening when you happen to be doing something private, and I've heard it said that there are people in the world who have been hurt in love, supposedly.  But the saying I've quote from the plaque on the wall urges us to NOT learn some very obvious facts, which facts gets hammered into nearly everybody almost every day, and which facts are therefore very hard NOT to learn, by necessity.  But this saying is telling us to NOT learn these basic facts of existence.   How hard is that to do? - to NOT learn from experience?  Harder than learning, I think.  

So perhaps the bigger challenge is NOT to learn, rather than to learn from experience.  Even if we are lazy, we will learn by necessity, by conditioning, because there is the carrot and the stick, and if the carrot doesn't work, then the stick will, and we will learn from the stick of experience sooner or later, however lazy we are.  But can we NOT learn despite the stick - can we REFUSE to learn, and hold on to an ideal, despite repeated smacks from that stick?  Perhaps we should strive to do just that, to NOT learn, rather than to learn - because maybe the important things are rather NOT learned than learned.

Earlier I posted about how it seemed that the media was well on its way to overtaking the judiciary as the real judicial power in America.  We saw this in our latest presidential election, with the media ruling on Trump's election fraud claims before the courts did, and then pronouncing his opponent Biden the winner before the legal dispute was decided by the courts.  And the people accepted the media's ruling without any real interest in what the courts might have to say.  Ultimately the courts did rule on Trump's claims and rejected them, but it seemed like people had already decided based on the media.  Now Trump's legal team is under attack from the bar itself, and maybe they should be, if they lied on purpose.  But you could see how the media could do this in lots of other legal cases, framing the dispute how they chose and pushing people to lean one way or the other, and in that way they could put some pressure on judges to decide cases the way they (the media) wanted, since even judges can be peer pressured.  Maybe this is an issue that's been around for a long time and it's just me that's noticed it now, I don't know.  But in any case, it did cause me to take notice, how powerful and ambitious the media could be, if they wanted to take over a branch of government de facto.  Did they really?  I wondered if that was an actual thought out agenda that media had.

And then I saw a couple articles in the NY Times, entitled "Down with Judicial Supremacy!" and "The Supreme Court Needs To Be Cut Down To Size" which seemed to confirm the ambitions of the media. These two articles (and maybe there are others like them out there) address this question directly, because in these articles, a member of media is directly arguing that the Supreme Court should not be the final arbiter on constitutional law.  The author says that the Supreme Court can be undemocratic, in that it has sometimes come out with unpopular decisions that worked against the progress of things like racial equality, and therefore, they should not have the final say.  But then who should?  The author seems to think the people, the legislature, or maybe the media.  He is basically saying the Court and its proponents are basically old white men, who are not in tune with things like BLM (not the author's words per se, but that's what I read between the lines). 

This is all getting over my little head, having to do with the structure of government, politics, and all that.  But all I remember from 7th Grade Civics class (the last time I studied Civics), is that we have a government of checks and balances, and that we have three equal (?) branches of government for this purpose, so that each can check the others.  I think this is considered to be one of the more clever ideas the founders had - this checks and balances thing - or at least, if not clever, one of the distinctive things about our government.  Our founders were sagacious and practical, and knew that one branch of government, if left unchecked, could run amok.  And therefore we have three of them, to slow down the one that's running amok.  But this author seems to want America to be able to run amok unchecked, and does not like that the judiciary has the effect of slowing things down.  Nobody says the Supreme Court gets every decision right, and there are famous (or infamous) decisions over the years that look terrible today, decisions that say that blacks were not meant to be "citizens" within the meaning of the constitution, things like that.  But if we think of the Supreme Court as filled with old graybeards who are trying to interpret the law, then maybe it is legally accurate to say some of these unpopular things, like the constitution did not mean to include blacks as citizens.  Because maybe it didn't, and that's a defect with the original constitution and our founders, some of whom were slaveholders, all of whom were probably white supremacists (remember, everybody was basically a white supremacist in America until recently, in the sense that it was taken for granted that whites ruled the world because they should, which they did, and sort of still do).  But the NY Times author who wants "Down with Judicial Supremacy" does not seem concerned with correct interpretation of law.  He wants to be able to get on with the current movement towards racial equality progress (assuming that's what it really is), which currently is BLM.  

But can we be so sure that everything with BLM or any other powerful movement is all good?  How about other values that we have, and which we have valued for a long time - things like the rights of the accused, a presumption of innocence, due process rights for everybody (including perhaps white people too).  Some of these rights seem to be on their way out, with things like the "MeToo" movement, which says we're supposed to believe the accuser right away just because she said so, never mind if the accused person is guilty or maybe not entirely.  So maybe it's not so bad to have a judiciary, one filled with old, learned slowpokes who will poke some holes into our fast moving social movements with their legal objections, and maybe remind us that there are other important values we have, values other than what the movement of the day is pressing hard, and that these old values are in our laws, and so we should remember them too.  And there should be a body like the judiciary that is willing to be unpopular and be a stick in the mud.  

So should we really agree with this NY Times author and say "down with the judiciary"?  One of the old lawyers I once worked for said to me once that one good thing about WASPS was that they make good judges.  He maybe was a WASP himself, but I kinda know what he means.  There is something brutally fair and harshly even-handed about a good judge, at least when it comes to procedure, and I sort of agree that it's a characteristic of some WASP judges, maybe because our common law system comes from a WASP background - England, Angles and Saxons going back to  the dark ages.  Our system of laws and the way our court system works, or is supposed to, is pretty cool.  There is an obsession with fairness to both sides and especially to the rights of the accused, which is kind of counter-intuitive, but which is admirable and generous-minded.  It is based on intuitions like it is better to let 10 guilty people go than to let 1 innocent person be sent to prison or hanged.  What does something like that say about the mindset of a people who believe it?  I don't know, but I like it.  But it seems to be going out the door in some quarters.  But then if you read the comments people write to some of these current type media articles, you see that there are still old-fashioned people who still strongly believe in our old rights handed down over many generations from the original WASPS.  So what if they were WASPs, if they gave us a great legal tradition.

This past winter was the winter of Covid.  And here in Connecticut, that meant I faced the prospect of being stuck at home all winter, because there was nowhere else to go.  The office had become a weird place to go, either annoyingly unpleasant because you had to wear a mask all the time, or possibly uncomfortable if nobody wore a mask, since we were being told how important it was to wear a mask, especially in an indoor environment with poor to no air circulation, and no way to know whether your neighbor had the virus and was asymptomatic.  And Connecticut being an advanced and "educated" Northeast city, Covid was a big deal.  Public libraries were closed, Starbucks was not allowing indoor seating, jiu jitsu training was out (at least for me), most restaurants were either take-out only or awkward places to eat, etc.  And so it looked to be a bleak winter in one's home pretty much 24-7 all winter long.

And so the only thing I could think to do to preserve my own sanity was to get on my motorcycle and travel south for the winter, so that I could be outside riding my motorcycle all winter long rather than indoors going crazy.  At first, my plan was to go only as far as South Carolina, thinking that was "South" enough and would therefore be warm enough.  As it turns out, South Carolina is not like Florida.  There is still some rain and cooler temperatures in South Carolina in December and January, although it is still much warmer than in Connecticut.  Plus having come to South Carolina, I wanted to go further South.  So I went to Georgia.  And quickly got bored, as well as cold from the temperatures which seemed even cooler than in South Carolina.  I went to Florida.  And it was spectacular.  I went all the way down to the Keys, saw a couple alligators, rode back up through the middle of Florida, which was beautiful farmland all the way, and got a nice sunburn.

But by then, I was enjoying riding my 1980 Goldwing through America, and especially through the genuine "South", and so I kept going, through Dothan, Alabama, through New Orleans (really run down in my opinion and highly overrated), and rode on to Texas.  I stopped by San Antonio, which felt like a sprawling huge city, and ultimately ended up staying in my favorite city in Texas, which is El Paso, all the way to the west.  I ended up staying there for a month, exploring neighboring southern New Mexico as well, especially La Mesilla.  During my stay in El Paso, I had great Mexican food and discovered I loved cats, because my host had cats and I really liked one of them.

But El Paso is high up and has lots of wind and dust storms in the winter, and so I went on to Tucson Arizona.  By now it was February, but Tucson in February is pretty good.  Mostly 70s during the day, and a little chillier at night, but not very chilly.  Great weather to ride a bike.  But the roads in Tucson suck!  Lots of potholes and other roughnesses in the roads, which they do a lousy job paving over.  I should mention by the way, that attitudes in the South and parts of the West about Covid were quite different than they were in Connecticut.  I saw more guns out there as well.  People are different out there, and in some parts of the South and the West, it was as if Covid never existed.  

Well I wandered around out there in Arizona and Texas through April and into May, and sometime in the second week of May, I headed back east.  I thought I'd ride the Natchez Traceway through Mississippi and then the Blue Ridge Parkway up the east, but they turned out to be as boring as going on a bicycle trail, and for the same reason.  Beautiful scenery just gets boring after about an hour.  What I like to see on either a motorcycle or a bicycle is signs of life, human life.  I like to see stores, public buildings, human activity on the streets, other riders, etc.  Seeing vista after vista, no matter how scenic it may be, gets boring.  And then you feel trapped on those scenic roads, because some of them you can't just get off them whenever you want.  Once you start, you have to stay on until the next exit, which might not be for a while.

Well eventually I got back to Connecticut in one piece in early May, and the weather was nice again, having left in December for this trip.  And for all those winter months, I was out riding a bike every day, mostly in warm weather, and I got to see the deep South and Arizona.  And being on a bike all by yourself all day long turns out to be a great way to spend a pandemic.  People everywhere were extremely friendly and kind, including the deep South, which is a part of the country that I believe has been unfairly maligned by the rest of the country, based on old prejudices the rest of America harbors, mostly based on crude depictions of southerners on TV shows, just because they used to own slaves down there a hundred years ago.  Nevermind that there are many forms of slavery that still exist, including in the Northeast.  Well I liked the South, places like Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, and even Mississippi, which is in a class of its own as far as having a reputation for racism and a history for lynching, etc.  That history is true and awful, but it's also true that there are many kind and friendly people down there today.  It's weird but these qualities can co-exist.  And why not?  What is "racism" really but just one form of xenophobia, which is an ancient and venerable tradition which will probably remain with us till the end of the human race, or until it is replaced by xenophilia, the love of foreigners, which may already be happening because of Youtube and all the wonderful exposure many people are getting through the internet which they could not get in previous generations.  I wonder which is more natural to man, xenophobia or xenophilia?  Or are they really the same thing - just two sides of the same coin? I don't know, but I do know this - the word "xenophilia" is far too little used in comparison to "xenophobia", and far too little taught to kids in school.  And yet it is a very real thing, and so we should be pointing it out more, talking about it and celebrating its existence.

One thing that's emerged from this election is that the media is threatening to replace our courts as the tribunal that decides disputes in America.  I was watching the media coverage of the count this past week, and the bias against Trump was obvious, but for a while at least, the media seemed to be just reporting the numbers, which is fine.  But then Trump gave his defiant speech declaring himself the winner, and also the victim of fraud and election interference on the part of the media.  The media pushed back, calling Trump  a fraud and a sore loser. All of this was business as usual, no big deal as far as I could see.

But then this Saturday I went for a long bike ride, and then found out when I got back that Biden had been declared the winner.  I asked my neighbors how this came about, and I found out that basically the media had made the decision.  And then I saw that people in big cities were out celebrating.  

Ok, the problem with this is that even if you think Trump's claims of fraud are bogus, the fact is that he has made this a contested election now.  He has taken upon himself the burden to prove his allegations.  These are serious allegations and we're talking about a big election for a big office, so even if the Plaintiff has major credibility and motivation issues, it still has to be addressed, especially since he does have a fan base.  So somebody with AUTHORITY has to issue some rulings on these allegations, after examining whatever evidence there is, according to a lawful procedure - i.e., the courts.

But what happened on Saturday is that the media made the call and people accepted it all over the world, before the courts could get to it.  Obviously, the media can move much faster than the courts, because the media has few procedural or evidentiary rules to follow, whereas courts have lots of built-in rules designed to safeguard the truth, and fairness to both sides.  Media does not.  Media can blurt out anything it wants whenever it wants.  

Now the media had been saying that Trump's claims of fraud are bogus.  They may well be.  But how would the media know?  The evidence has not yet been brought forth.  The media assumed that was because none existed.  That may be true, but it also may be not true.  If you put enough lawyers on a trail to dig up irregularities, I would bet they'll find some, on both sides, given there were 150 million votes.  So there is likely to be at least some evidence.  It may end up being not enough to make a difference.  But we don't know that until we see it.

But the media assumed it was just Trump being a sore loser and making stuff up, and then telling his lawyers to go find it.  Probably correct.  But even so, even Trump is entitled to his day in court.  And if he fails to produce, his fall will be even more spectacular.  But under our laws, he is entitled to have a shot at it.

But by calling the race, the media effectively issued a ruling before the courts got to it.  AND THE PUBLIC ACCEPTED IT AS AUTHORITATIVE!  That's the real news.  Those people dancing in the streets have handed judicial authority to the media.  The media is on its way to actually replacing our courts as the judicial authority in this country.  Because by issuing a ruling, and having it accepted by a large portion of the country, the media has put enormous pressure on the courts to follow suit.  A judge looking at an election case is now likely to factor in the public's pre-acceptance of the media's ruling.  So if that judge sees evidence of voter fraud, he will have a huge incentive to disregard it, because what if he rules against the winner announced by the media?  That judge will know that all those people celebrating in the streets will now want to kill him.  That judge will know that by ruling against the media's call, he will cause civil unrest and will personally be the target of death threats.  That judge's life and his family's life will be in danger, and he will be held responsible for causing a civil war.  Therefore, he may want to overlook any evidence of voter fraud and pretend it doesn't exist, for the sake of peace.  This means the media has effectively issued the ruling in this case, not the judge, not the courts.  In this way, the media is replacing the judiciary as the tribunal where disputes are decided.  

There may or may not be enough evidence for Trump's cases to make a difference.  But the fact that the media can issue rulings that the public accepts, and that by doing so can pressure judges to follow suit at the risk of their own personal lives, means that even without legal authority, the media is becoming a judicial power that competes with the actual judiciary, and may soon supersede it in terms of actual power, if it hasn't already.  

Chief Justice Roberts said that the sole basis for authority in the Supreme Court rests in the respect that the public held for its 9 justices - their quality of reasoning, their wisdom, and intangibles like that, because the Court has no army or physical power to enforce anything.  Once they lose that respect, they lose their authority, and therefore Justice Roberts was super concerned about maintaining the prestige of the Court and its reputation for fairness.  However, maybe the Court has already lost it.  Maybe the Supreme Court is already becoming moot, when the media can take its place and issues its own rulings that carry more weight with the public.  In this election, I think this has already taken place.  A lot of people don't care what the Supreme Court would say about the Trump election case.  The media's ruling has already carried the day.  The world is not waiting for the Supreme Court's word on the election.  The world already knows from Bush v. Gore that the Supreme Court are partisan hacks, and so carry no real credibility.  The media has already decided, and the media's decision has been given AUTHORITY by the people.  The Supreme Court is moot already.  If the Supreme Court ends up ruling for Trump, they will have no credibility, both because of Bush v. Gore and because it is filled with Trump appointees.  It will look like Trump packed the Court so he could take the presidency without the votes, and the Supreme Court knows it.  So they will have to side with Biden, in order to maintain their own reputations.  So the Court cannot make a ruling based purely on evidence and the law.  This means their reputation has been severely compromised already.  Maybe this is why they are moot, and there is a vacuum of judicial authority, which has been filled by the media.  But it's clear that the media is edging out the judiciary in terms of actual power to decide legal disputes, and have the public accept its decisions as authoritative.

I saw this on a bumper sticker on a car when I went to Starbucks and I thought it was pretty clever, but it may be even better than I thought, if the author had a second meaning in mind as well, so that the bumper sticker has a double meaning.

The first meaning, the intended meaning, is probably this:  People complain that education costs are skyrocketing, with private colleges charging now like $50k a year or so, and professional schools even more.  I think medical school now costs like $100k a year.  Education costs have been going up much faster than inflation.  Students have to take on larger and larger loans because more and more parents are unable to pay.  So education is very expensive, this is obviously true.  But the alternative, which I guess is supposedly "ignorance", is even more expensive in that if you forego formal schooling and lack a degree, you will give up even more in lost income.  Because "education" is so important today in terms of lifetime earnings, more so than before, as we can see from the growing income gap between those with lots of education credentials versus those without.  So lack of education, or "ignorance", is very costly, or "expensive", in terms of lost income opportunity.  I think that must be the intended meaning of this bumper sticker.  Or just that stupidity and ignorance can end up costing in mistakes made that could have been avoided with proper knowledge.  Something along those lines.  And it's pretty clever!  Because we don't often think of Ignorance as something expensive to acquire, but rather as FREE!  Just do nothing and don't go to school, and you will attain Ignorance.  Easy and free.  Yet as this bumper sticker points out, it's really not free in terms of the consequences of ignorance.

Yet there may be another meaning to the bumper sticker as well, which is this:  Education is indeed expensive, requiring several years of expensive tuition and expenditure of one's youthly time and energy.  But at some point, formal schooling does come to an end - 4 years college, 4 years medical school or 3 years law school, or whatever post-graduate education you choose - it involves several years and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This is expensive.  But how about Ignorance?  It's even more expensive.  Why?  Remember that Socrates was the wisest man in all of Athens in his day, during the Golden Age of civilization, the height of high culture and wisdom, Periclean Athens, and therefore the wisest among the wisest of all time.  And remember what he said at the end of his life, that after a LIFETIME of nothing but thinking, study and inquiry, a LIFETIME (not just a few years in his youth), the end of wisdom consisted in nothing more than becoming aware of his IGNORANCE.   So it took the wisest man of all time the complete devotion of his entire life, which is WAY more expensive than just a few years and a few hundred thousand bucks, to obtain what everybody else has free from birth - Ignorance.  The only difference, he said, was that where as others were ignorant but didn't know it, he was aware of his ignorance.  Yet nevertheless, he must indeed have been ignorant, otherwise his awareness of his ignorance would have been false (i.e., if he thought he was ignorant but was not).  So Socrates did acquire Ignorance, at the cost of his entire life (and it was this "Ignorance", and him repeatedly shoving it in other people's faces his whole life long (i.e., other people's ignorance that they had been unaware of and did not appreciate becoming aware of via Socratic questioning) that ended up costing him his life literally, and being put to death).  A few years of school is cheap in comparison.

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There is that phrase, or idea, speaking truth to power.  This is a VERY interesting characterization.  Because it sets the two in opposition, as though Truth and Power were against each other.  Is it true?  The phrase supposes that it is true, or else, why should truth have to be spoken against and in opposition to power?  It supposes that there is a need to speak the truth to those in power, and why?  Because they have covered it up, or disregarded it, and if truth is not asserted, it will remain hidden.

One notices that there are people who value truth, and there are people who value power.  There seem to be more of the latter than the former in the world.  That is because people want THINGS in the world, both PROPERTY and ACCOMPLISHMENTS.  Money in particular confers power in this world, and people want that.  People want WHAT WORKS, what is EFFICACIOUS, what brings success.  This is Power, not Truth.  This is generally what we worship - power, not truth.  How do you get Power?  You get it however you get it.  Brains and hard work, determination, discipline, focus, and also things like luck, inheritance, nepotism, corruption, greed, ambition, and also lying.  You get it however you get it, honestly or dishonestly.  Therefore you will notice that people who desire power, and if they have any regard for truth, it is very little, or only to the extent it does not interfere with power.  When there is a conflict between truth and power, they will choose power (what works), and will bury the truth (i.e., with lies).  Because truth has no independent value if you are focused on what works.  Whatever works works, whether honest or dishonest.  Sometimes lies work very well in ACCOMPLISHING a goal, i.e., getting what you want.  Telling the truth may prevent you from GETTING SOMETHING YOU WANT, in other words, it may not be "efficacious".  There may be some people who have Power conferred on them without them seeking it, I don't know.  If there are such people, then they may value truth over power.  But most people who have power have acquired it on purpose, have sought success and have directed considerable energy to accomplishing something, have set POWER as a goal.  Because power and success do not usually just come by accident in this world.  In the ordinary course, power is hard to come by and must be wrested from the world by force.  And so if you look at most people who have it, you can be sure that such people are focused on WHAT WORKS, that they care about what is EFFICACIOUS, not what is true.  Business leaders, political leaders, anything with considerable status will have these people.

On the other hand, there are some people who value truth.  Where might such people be found?  Maybe one area is basic science research.  NOT the kind of scientists seeking to use scientific knowledge to build something, like a dot-com or a drug that can be patented, etc.  Those people want power, even if it is to "help" others.  But consider the basic science researcher, simply trying to learn something about the world.  His only criteria is the truth, WHEREVER IT MAY LEAD.  This is not the case with "scientists" who want power.  They are interested in a line of research, not wherever it may lead, but only if it leads to something productive, profitable in some way, beneficial for mankind or for themselves.  There must be some benefit involved, beyond the truth alone.  But for a basic science researcher, learning the truth is enough, even if there is no other benefit.  These people will tend to have a very high level of ethical integrity, because they are so devoted to the truth.   The test for such people might be, what if one day their line of research happens to bear on an issue of public interest, but in an unpopular direction.  For example, suppose a neuroscientist or psychologist happens upon a discovery, that their research produces hard evidence that genetically, biologically, or otherwise, something even more conclusive than IQ tests, that blacks were inferior to whites in cognitive ability?  Or men over women?  Suppose a scientist came upon incontrovertible evidence proving this, if that were possible?  Does he publish the unvarnished Truth, as he sees it?  That would be quite a test of character!  But I suppose a scientist devoted to truth would, whereas one devoted to power would not (unless certain conservative demagogues had the political power in this country, and publishing this might win their favor).

What is the point of all this?  I think that Truth and Power are two separate and opposed values.  There is a continuum, and people fall somewhere on this continuum.  The farther along towards Power a person is, the less he values Truth.  And vice versa - the farther in the direction of Truth a person falls, the less he values Power.  Because being devoted to Truth involves a sacrifice of Power.  And vice versa as well - being devoted to Power involves a sacrifice of Truth.  That's how it seems to work, at least in my observation.  It is noticeable that people who have deliberately accrued a great amount of power are noticeably willing to lie.  Lying, distorting the truth, framing and creating narratives in a false light is in fact a great way to accrue power, maybe the chief way.  There seems to be some kind of propoganda behind any big and powerful success.  And when you look at people who have valued truth to an extreme extent have fared very poorly  in this world.  In fact those who really do speak truth to power usually end up dead, having been killed by those in power, who do not want the truth to come out.  Think of Socrates, Jesus, many other historical examples.  

So I think it is the case that Truth and Power are opposed.  Most people, even devoted basic science researchers, are not devoted to truth to the extent that a Socrates was, do not have that level of courage to speak truth to power at all costs, and so I suppose most scientists would not publish the truth about race and intelligence in my hypothetical example, because at some point, most people are not willing to die for the truth.  And on the other side, few people are at the extremes of power where they are willing to lie and enter into criminality to achieve power to the extreme degree that some have in history, like certain historical political leaders, business leaders, including perhaps people living and acting right now.  Most people are somewhere in between on the spectrum, more or less devoted to one or the other and inimical to one or the other.

But I think it is a useful framework when trying to figure out any particular individual you might be dealing with in a given case where the question is, are they lying or not?  Is this person telling the truth?  Does this person even care about the truth?  Would this person be willing to lie, if he thought it would be "efficacious"?  I submit that the answers are related to the degree to which the person cares about power - where he falls on the continuum between Truth and Power.  The further towards Power he is directed, the more he would be willing to make sacrifices in Truth (i.e., lie), and conversely, the further a person is directed towards Truth, the more he would be willing to make sacrifices in Power (i.e., loss of personal status).  You can see where a person lies on the continuum by the decisions they have made through the course of their life, what their goals are, what they have aimed their efforts at.  You can discern where they fall also by their speech, what they say, how they talk.  

This is also related to Process versus Results.  A process is usually more Truth oriented, designed to ensure a fair procedure to get the truth, whatever the specific result may be.  This is why justice is pictured with a blind fold.  For example, the election system in the United States is supposed to be designed to ferret out who gets the most votes, i.e., the will of the people, in an accurate and fair way.  It is supposed to have no regard whatsoever to the particular result - i.e., Trump or Biden.  A Process designed to bring about a specific result (either a Trump win or a Biden win), would be a result-oriented process, and that is where corruption enters in, when Process is made with a view towards a particular Result.  That is Justice peeking through the blind-fold, and that is what Power wants - to peek through the blind-fold.  Hence we see those in Power, like presidents appointing Justices to achieve a specific desired result on a specific legislation or political issue, and we see legislators seeking to block a nomination based on the same - both sides being firmly on the side of Power over Truth.  

But it is very hard to be on the side of Process without regards to Result for long, or to be a Truth person, wherever it may lead.  Because it may lead to a very uncomfortable situation, and most of us are just people, and people have needs in this world.  To remain devoted to Truth or Process one's whole life long, to have that level of integrity and keep it "wherever it may lead", seems heroic, but also inhuman.  To succumb to temptation is human and most of us can identify with that and sympathize.  To resist and maintain one's integrity at all costs is totally inhuman, and who can really identify with such a person?  If there were a person with the discipline to make a to do list every day of all the things he should do from morning to night, and stick to it day after day his whole life long, what would we think of such a person?  I think it would be inhuman.

I noticed a nail in my front right tire a couple days ago.  I was out smoking a cigarette by my car and was staring blankly at nothing, and I spotted something shiny on my tire.  Thinking it was a little stone wedged into the tread, I went to pull it out and saw it was the head of a nail.  It appeared to be in all the way.  I could have taken a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and pulled it out, but the tire appeared to have remained fully inflated, so I chose not to take the nail out, for fear that the tire would deflate.  

So I left the nail in and let the car sit for two days and rode my motorcycles around instead.  The tire did not deflate, but I thought probably I should get around to getting this repaired cause eventually I would need to use the car.  Normally I would have gone on Youtube and looked up how to plug a tire, which is actually pretty easy.  But I wanted them to take the tire off and put in a patch.  Plugs are supposed to work pretty good, but I don't like the idea of driving around with all the air in a tire held in by a plug that you push into the tire.  

So I drove it over to a local mechanic who has a good reputation for honesty in the area, and who helped me out on something else for free once before.  Driving over and waiting for my tire to be fixed, I thought about the value of reputation, its economic value and importance to this mechanic's livelihood.  We all fear being ripped off by the mechanic, the doctor, dentist, lawyers, anybody who has an expertise we do not have, because it would be so easy for them to rip us off and we would never know.  And they all have the same fears, because they themselves have to use experts as well - i.e., doctors need to take their cars to mechanics, and mechanics have to go to doctors.  And so the importance of reputation for these people is huge.  A lifetime could be spent by a mechanic foregoing profitable lies in order to ensure a good reputation, and one false review on Google could cause some real damage.  I thought it would be a worthy task for a lawyer to represent such a mechanic, if he were the victim of such a lie.

So I was thinking about these things, but not for long because he came to me within 10 minutes and told me, The nail didn't make it through!  Apparently it was much shorter than I thought, having only seen the head, and assuming it went all the way through and was plugging its own hole.  In fact, it was either a thumbtack, or else a broken nail, and it only went in as far as the tread of the tire, and did not puncture.  So they pulled it out of the tread and there was no need for either a plug or a patch.  

And then he said to me, You made the right decision NOT TO TAKE THE NAIL OUT.  Because he said, usually people take the nail out and then drive over to the shop, and by that time, the tires are no good from the rim digging into a flat tire, and therefore they need to replace the tire, which can be expensive.  So he said that I did the right thing by leaving the nail in and letting them take it out, driving it over with the nail in while the tire still held air.

Well at the moment he said it, I was just pleased to hear it I didn't have to pay anything and so I didn't pay much attention, but on the way home, I thought - wait a minute.  Why did I do the right thing?  Since the nail didn't actually puncture the tire, if I had taken it out myself at home, I would have discovered that as well, and then I wouldn't have had to even drive over to the repair shop and back again, the whole visit having taken at least a half hour (not that my time is so valuable, but there was anxiety involved for two days while my car was sitting with a nail in the tire).  I could have solved the problem myself just by taking out the nail, and I wouldn't have had to repair anything. 

But he said, You did the right thing by leaving the nail in.  See the problem?  As it turns out, I did NOT do the right thing, knowing after the fact that the nail was only in the tread.  But ex ante, without that knowledge, he was saying that I did the right thing, by leaving it in, so I wouldn't have had to drive it flat, because by all appearances, the nail had punctured the tire, and I couldn't have known that it was as short as a thumbtack, from its appearance on the tire.

Keeping in mind that this mechanic is a professional in his field, it's worth thinking about why from his point of view, I did the right thing by leaving the nail in, despite the result.  And that's because a professional, in whatever field, judges the rightness or wrongness of an action in his field of expertise according to the process, or procedure employed, and not the result.  As a human being, he may be distracted by results in other areas of his life, but in his domain, i.e., auto repair, this mechanic operates according to rules of procedure, according to standards that he knows as a professional who knows his business.  And he knows what is the right decision and what is not, when it comes to car maintenance.  And he ALSO KNOWS, that the result is a separate matter, which does not always follow.  In other words, there is a separation between process and result, in that following the correct process may sometimes lead to an undesirable result, and also the other way around, where one might make the wrong decision, but get "lucky", and get a good result.  Hopefully, more times than not, one should get a good result if one follows the correct procedure.  But it is not always so.  And in my case, I followed the right procedure, he was saying, but in a sense, I was "unlucky", in that the result turned out to be wrong - i.e., I had a false positive - i.e., I thought the nail had punctured and that the tire was in need of repair, but it had not, and therefore I had made an unnecessary trip to the repair shop, which is in a sense, "unlucky."  But my thinking process was correct in this instance, NOTWITHSTANDING the result.

And so he rewarded me for my correct action by not charging me, even though he did have to expend about 10 minutes of his time to examine and diagnose the problem - i.e., he had to put my car up on a lift, find the nail, pull it out, and test and examine to make sure it had really not caused a puncture.  He could have charged me a few bucks for this, but he didn't. 

I thanked him for his generosity, but what I was really thankful for was a piece of his mind, a peek into the thinking of a professional on a subject within his craft.  I believe all professionals look at matters in their craft the same way - judging by process rather than result.  

And yet, the world tends to judge success by result, not process.  People want RESULTS! RESULTS! RESULTS!  Well professionals do not view things that way, at least not in their areas of expertise.  They look at decision making process.  And let the results be damned.  If the results do not follow as they should from the process, it's the results that are wrong, not the person making the decision.  So long as you make the correct decision, WHICH IS TO BE JUDGED BY THE PROCESS EMPLOYED ALONE, then the results are what they are, good or bad, lucky or unlucky.  All professionals know this, from medical doctors, to professional gamblers at the card table - i.e., what comes up on the river card is a matter of luck - what matters is, did you play your hand right leading up to it.  In the long term, if you make the right decisions, we hope that the results will conform.  But even if that doesn't turn out to be the case, so what?  Let the results be damned.  Let's be like the professionals and focus our attention on PROCESS, even in areas outside our expertise.