In Pursuit of Knowledge and Wisdom

In the past, one often found the Latin phrase, Sapientia vis vera (wisdom is true power), as the motto of some educational institutions. In the sixties, the world started turning its back on knowledge and embraced emotion as the solution to everything, as the popular Beatles song, All you need is love, proclaimed.

As the end of the twentieth century approached, and the Reverse Flynn Effect ate away at the average intelligence of those born after the mid-seventies, the world became hostile to knowledge and embraced ignorance and celebrated stupidity. Carl Sagan is supposed to have said, One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media are reassuring people it’s all right to know nothing, that in a way it’s cool. Carl Sagan’s nightmare is our present reality.

Knowledge and Wisdom

What is knowledge? What is wisdom? How can they help us?

Knowledge

Knowledge is simply knowing things. Of course, at different times, different pieces of knowledge are far more critical than others. For instance, if your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, knowing how to fix it can be a lifesaver.

Wisdom

Wisdom is simply the ability to apply your knowledge in such a way that it solves a certain problem. Without knowledge, there can be no wisdom. Applying knowledge correctly is reasoning correctly. To do that, you need to apply the rules of logic. To apply them, you need to know them. A word or two about logic.

Logic

There are two kinds of logic:

• Deductive logic. Using known truths to arrive at unknown truths. This is mostly done in the mind and does not require much research. But it needs to be done correctly or the conclusion will be wrong.
• Inductive logic. Making many observations (research), looking for a pattern in the observations, arriving at a conclusion (hypothesis) based on the discovered pattern, rigorously testing your hypothesis with more research to see if it always holds true.

Logic is a topic on its own, and I won’t go deeper into it in this post.

Examples of applying the above

In Australia, politicians are the considered the least trustworthy people. How did those in the survey arrive at this decision? Over 90% of people base their beliefs and decisions on emotions and personal preferences. So, what these people believe may not be fact. How can we test their belief?

One will need to do research on every profession in the list, assign each a score and see if politicians come last. That's more work than I’m willing to do. Let’s just see if they’re, by and large, a bunch of corrupt rotters, as the survey holds them to be. I’ll use something I already know (knowledge).

Alcohol (also tobacco smoke, diesel exhaust fumes, processed meat, etc.) is a Group 1 Human Carcinogen. That means it certainly causes cancer in humans, among others, breast cancer. It also kills people in other ways; one of the most common being liver cirrhosis. Alcohol kills about 5,500 people per year in Australia. That’s just over 15/day. Yet, alcohol is sold with no warning, unlike tobacco. The WHO says there’s no safe limit one can drink, and even the Australian Government says, It’s never completely safe. So, how come alcohol is sold with no warning labels? Everything in this paragraph is factually true, therefore knowledge.

Do the booze barons maybe reward the politicians to look the other way? Let’s see. Do you really think there’s no connection, as the politicians will claim? Does this smack of corruption?

The above strips politicians of any trustworthiness. Maybe one can trust them to look the other way if one lines their hands with silver. Based on known facts and applying sound logic to these facts, one can conclude those in the survey were right to hold the trustworthiness of politicians in low regard.

Another example

When I was at university in the seventies, we (males studying the sciences) regarded the arts and humanities as jokes. It was OK for a girl to do a BA, which even they called a BA Husband Hunting. After all, we males believed—you might disagree—that true happiness for a girl was finding a husband. But a man doing a BA? If he was not intelligent enough to do something worthwhile (studying the sciences), he should dig ditches or drive a truck. Were we right in holding males doing the arts and humanities in such low esteem? Let’s see.

We know by far the majority with university qualifications in any government will be from the arts and humanities. So, if we were right, they would often do really, really stupid things. There are so many governments and they do so many things, one can't examine them all. So, I'll deal with one government and one thing.

Australia gets 70% of its electricity from burning coal. Coal-fired power plants have by orders of magnitude the highest mortality rate per unit of electricity produced compared to the only other viable form of 24/7/365 electricity production on a city, state, and country level—nuclear power. About seven times more people die in Australia yearly from coal-fired power station pollution than the total direct and cancer deaths of Chernobyl and Fukushima combined.

Yet coal power production is legal in Australia and nuclear power production is illegal. If that is not stupid, what is?

This last example does not establish governments, and by extension arts and humanities monkeys, as really, really dumb. We will need many more examples and much more research. But it’s one step along the way. One can also mention trying to build a submarine locally, which ended as a debacle, and then trying it again, which again was a debacle. Will they never learn?

A rare example of government wisdom

In 1969, they discovered oil in the North Sea. In 1990 the Norwegian Government established the Government Pension Fund and in 1996 transferred the first money into it. In 2019, the fund was worth US$950 billion. This fund made Norway fabulously wealthy. They avoided splurging the money and instead opted to delay gratification. The world over, this is used as an example of wise government money management. Most other countries spend money earned through raw materials as soon as they have it. And raw materials don’t last indefinitely.

In conclusion

It’s long been known that knowledge and wisdom are of great value. 3,000 years ago, Solomon said: 1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding. (Proverbs 2) Knowledge and wisdom will help you discover how the world really is and guide you to the right decisions and beliefs.

The LGBTQ Agenda

In 1989, two gay activists, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, set out the LGBTQ agenda in the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ‘90s.

You can download a 16-page synopsis of this book free. The numbers in parentheses in this document refer to the page numbers in the original book.

You can download a full-text, PDF scanned copy here., and you read or listen to the book online here. It’s the blue Download button with the headphones image left high on the page.

If you want to, buy the paperback book for US$345 from Amazon.

They made no bones about the fact that theirs is a propaganda campaign; a “Campaign of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising. (xxviii)”

This is how they define propaganda: “Three characteristics distinguish propaganda from other modes of communication and contribute to its sinister reputation:

1. Relies on emotional manipulation–through desensitisation, jamming and conversion;
2. Use lies, and is
3. Subjective and one-sided. “Tell our side of the story as movingly as possible. In the battle for hearts and minds, effective propaganda knows enough to put its best foot forward. This is what our own media campaign must do. (162-163)”

About people, they say: “90% of people have low intelligence. 10% fairly/highly intelligent. Can never alter the 90% through beliefs or arguments, only through emotions.”

I agree with them about this. I used to guesstimate the stupid percentage at 85%, but I‘m happy with 90%. Like democracy, they aim at the 90% and disregard the 10%.

About any religion opposed to their agenda, they say: ‘Accuse religious people: “Gays can use talk to muddy the moral waters, that is, to undercut the rationalisations that ‘justify’ religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards. “Portray such institutions as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.”’(179)

Their campaign rests on three main pillars:

1. Desensitisation; stop people from cringing when they hear about homosexuality or see its expressions.
2. Jamming; neutralise those opposed to their campaign.
3. Conversion; turn people into supporters of their campaign and admirers of the LGBTQ lifestyle.

They’ve had success, especially in pillars 1 and 3, amongst their target audience; the 90% basing their beliefs on emotion rather than reason. It’s not only with the LGBTQ issue that these people base their beliefs on emotion, but with everything. Doing research and learning logic require work and effort while emotions come freely and without effort. It’s no surprise that the 90% whom the LGBTQ lobby describes as having a “low intelligence” is intellectually lazy.

One unintended side-effect of their campaign was that its brazen nature solidified opposition to it among those rationally opposed to it. Just as reason won’t work to sway emotions, so emotion won’t work to change rational viewpoints.

The fact that nearly all media monkeys are driven by emotion rather than reason is strongly in favour of the LGBTQ lobby. And the media monkeys have free access to the hearts of the feeling 90%. The thinking 10% is closed to them.

Education has much to do with one’s preference for either feeling or fact. The arts and humanities are not based on the hard, unforgiving laws of nature, but on words and unconstrained ideas; mistakes have no or only late consequences and can’t be traced back to the one responsible. Sweden opened its doors to free immigration and now has the second-highest gun-crime rate in Europe. The perpetrators are immigrants. Sweden had a very low gun-crime rate. Can one point a finger at whoever was responsible for this? No.

On the other hand, small mistakes by those working in the applied sciences often have early, disastrous consequences. This happened when something as small as system resonance was ignored. Nowadays, it’s always taken into account.

So, certain people are forced to take reality into account, while others can ignore it. The first group was often against the LGBTQ agenda from the start, and, in many cases, are now hostile to it due to the incessant, strident propaganda. The last group is where you’ll find most of the ardent supporters of the LGBTQ agenda. I know there are outliers.

As the second pillar, jamming, didn’t have the hoped-for success (you’re reading this, aren’t you?), it’s now more energetically pursued and the LGBTQ group and their fellow travellers now propose harsher action against those not on board. Luckily, it seems there’s a wider backlash against the aggressive LGBTQ propaganda. One case is Facebook’s continuing problems. But apparently their wokeness was only one cause of their problems.

The cost of pursuing wind and solar.

In the early to mid eighties, the world started pursuing solar and wind electricity generation to get away from the very polluting coal power generation which is still the most prominent form of power generation.

Right from the start, they knew that humans don't control the sun and the wind, and that peak energy demands were when the sun didn't shine and the wind wasn't at its strongest. As temperature gradients decrease at night, the wind usually subsides. They also knew that there was no way to store significant amounts of electricity—batteries have a puny energy density. Even now, petrol (gasoline) is 100 times more energy dense than lithium ion batteries.

To make matters worse, there had been a safe, clean form of electricity generation available since the early sixties. What's more, it generated electricity 24/7/365 in massive amounts. To make matters even worse, it's been calculated that nuclear derived electricity saved about 1.84 million lives and prevented the release of 64 gigatonnes of CO₂.

Had the world pursued nuclear electricity generation for these almost 40 years (it's now July, 2022) as they have been pursuing wind and solar, most developed countries could have generated the overwhelming majority of their electricity needs from nuclear power. I'm talking 80% plus. Millions of people would not have died unnecessary early deaths and global warming would have been much less.

After relentlessly pursuing wind and solar electricity for 40 years, there's not one town on Earth with a population of 5,000 or more relying solely on them. That qualifies as a dismal failure.

The German case

By 2010, Germany had decided to go green in their electricity generation. This program is called Energiewende. Following Fukushima in 2011, Germany closed 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors. That made them more reliant on coal and increased not only CO₂ production, but also deaths from coal power station pollution. They have approximately 1,100 excess deaths yearly due to shutting down their nuclear power plants. That means Germany's Energiewende costs more lives yearly than the combined death toll of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Despite the many claims that renewable energy is cheap, Germany and Denmark, two of the most rabid followers of green power, have of the most expensive electricity in Europe. Here is more. If renewable energy is so cheap, why the high prices in places where it is most used?

The following is from Wikipedia: In 2014 Sigmar Gabriel, German minister of economic affairs and energy, lobbied Swedish company Vattenfall to continue investments in brown coal mines in Germany, explaining that "we cannot simultaneously quit nuclear energy and coal-based power generation". And then they wonder why hothouse gas production rose again and over a thousand extra people die each year.

The following is also from the Wikipedia Energiewende entry: In 2019, Germany's Federal Court of Auditors determined the program had cost €160 billion over the last 5 years and criticised the expenses for being "in extreme disproportion to the results". Despite widespread initial support, the program is perceived as "expensive, chaotic and unfair", and a "massive failure" as of 2019.

Following Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, many European countries face natural gas shortages, among them Germany. That made them fall back on coal again for electricity production. If they had nuclear energy, this would not have been the case. Here's what happened to electricity prices in Germany since Putin's invasion of the Ukraine. Thank Energiewende for these prices. Had they copious amounts of nuclear power...

Despite nuclear power stations closing, more electricity is generated from nuclear power than ever before. Read this interesting page on nuclear energy. Individual nuclear power stations now generate more power than ever before, which brings the total electricity generated by nuclear power to the highest levels ever. And many countries have made u-turns on their plans to shut down their nuclear power stations, and others are getting their first: Belarus, Bangladesh and Turkey are all constructing their first nuclear power plants.

Why the madness?

In two words: political correctness. Nuclear power generation is anathema to the libtard. It doesn't matter how many people die or if the Gulf Stream stops flowing and north-western Europe becomes bitterly cold—as cold as Canada at the same latitudes—as long as the principles of political correctness triumph.

Keep in mind that most people in all democratically elected governments, and nearly all in the media, are arts and humanities monkeys. They understand nothing except feelings and slogans. Reality and numbers are not on their radar. What is strange is that Angela Merkel, she has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, knowingly sold her country down the drain.

Political correctness has a price, a very high price, not only in monetary terms, but also in human lives. Self-government (such a politically-correct concept) in Africa has so far cost millions of lives, but who cares? Not your libtard. Earth can spiral into the sun, as long as political correctness is maintaned to the very end.

So, you want to be a politician

To become a politician you need only two things:

• A constituency in which to stand
• Enough votes to be elected

To deal with the first, find a strong political party and join them. From your point of view, they must optimise your chances of making it into parliament. Don't choose a small political party, except if it's up and coming and clearly going places fast.

Now you must make your way up in your party so you're given a seat to represent. You'll hear about hard, dedicated work for years, but that's nonsense. Brown-nosing and backstabbing will work better and are the two most popular ways of getting somewhere in politics, but there's something even better—building a huge popular support. No party can resist a candidate who brings waves of votes with him. You'll leapfrog the old party stalwarts with years of dedication into a seat.

Building your following

This has nothing to do with honesty, putting people first, dedication, or any of what's commonly trumpeted. It has everything to do with playing the great unwashed. Don't concern yourself with the few of higher intelligence—they don't swing constituencies. Work the masses.

So, how do you do this? The two abilities that will serve you best are acting and speech-making. Study them. Hitler went to beer halls and delivered speeches, closely watching the reaction of the crowd to what he was saying and his mannerisms. What eventually made him untouchable was his huge public support. No party could afford to ditch him or even speak in less than glowing terms about him. He was democratically elected. He told the hoi-polloi what they wanted to hear; they were better than other people and together they would make Germany great again. You can't beat telling people what they want to hear to make them like you. Let that be a lesson to you.

Some people have a face and a voice one just likes. Ronald Reagan was such a one and most likely the most popular President America ever had. He often had a trace of a smile on his face and loved telling jokes. Hitler was threatening and promised to rain hell and damnation on everybody in Germany's way. You must know your audience and your times and adapt to them—they won't adapt to you. Mingle with the masses and find out what they think and what they want and tell them you heartily agree with them and will give them what they want. You want to be an elected politician, right?

You can't beat Count Victor Lustig as someone to learn from. Pay attention to his Ten Commandments. Politicians and confidence tricksters are both in the people business, and both must know how to sway them. You really have only one commandment, the eleventh—don't get caught.

Follow this advice and you'll soon be on easy street from where you can rake it in. You don't have to know anything about anything, except how to hoodwink people and get the masses on your side.

Why do bad things happen?

The misery so often visible on Earth is a major cause of people deciding there’s no loving God behind everything.

But the complexity of creation, both physical and biological, demands a higher intelligence. Nobody can point to anything complex, like encoded information, arising without an intelligent source. So, how does this work?

Viewpoint

We see things as humans from an Earthly viewpoint, which is understandable; we’ve only ever been humans living on Earth. For us, the highest value is human life, especially our own. But see things from the standpoint of some creatures we’re familiar with, say a sheep. Nobody can say a sheep does not value his life as much as we do. Prey animals flee from predators and often show terror when facing death. We slaughter tens or hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep daily without blinking an eye. If we don't value the life of lower animals as much as they do, who’s to say the creator of the Universe values human lives as much as we do? This leads to the next point.

Knowledge

We know humans have lives on Earth—we see that every day. We’re intrigued by what happens after death and speculate about it, but let’s be honest—no one’s ever come back from death with a report of how it is. There are near-death experiences, but they’re not widely accepted and too varied to convince. And they cover at best a few minutes. But how would we see death if we knew what lay beyond? Would Earthly death still be such a big deal? Even total annihilation is a painless nothingness.

The creator of the Universe can reconstruct us from our genetic code and engrams to the same state we were on Earth. A few improvements in our genetic codes, and we never die. Would such a creator not value our short lives on Earth less than we do?

Accountability and choice

Mankind wants to row its own boat and not be accountable to a Cosmic Creator.How can mankind now expect this creator to step in and save them from their own choices? Will we then ever get the message that while humans can manage many things, there are many we cannot manage? Will we be willing to hand over government of Earth to the creator if we don’t come face to face with the full consequences of human government?

Conclusion

Seen this way, what’s happening on Earth makes sense. Compared to what comes after, our time on Earth is short and not that important. The creator of the Universe will doubtlessly know far more than we know and it’s arrogant of us to question him. In the book of Job, Job questioned God about his misfortunes, and God’s only reply was, how can you question me? It’s like a cat or a dog questioning our decisions.

Delta Strain Mortality Rate in Australia

This is at least the third peak in daily case numbers and by far the largest. But the death rate is only 20-25% that of the second peak, despite the more cases now. The site to which the link leads is updated daily. Go to the Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases graph at the top and then scroll down to the Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths graph and compare.

The governments and the media are quiet about this. A bit of perspective; go to Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths. From 1 March 2020 to 23 August 2021, there were 984 deaths. That's almost 17 months, say 16.5. Air pollution from coal-fired power stations kill about 795 in Australia annually. That's 1093 in 16.5 months—more than COVID. Gladys said nothing about that. Alcohol kills about 4,000 annually in Australia. That's 5,500 in the time COVID has been going. Total silence.

The grog shop near where I live is open in this lockdown. That's the BWS in Lavington. It's a drive-through, but they get out and go into the shop. Just checked, the one in town is open from 09H00 to 19H00.

The authorities are loath to give up the power COVID handed them and the media would like the easy news (find TV or radio news or a newspaper without COVID in it) to continue.

I've had my second shot on 1 July, and I'm still treated as if I have leprosy—a very lowly contagious disease, btw. I have to wear a mask and sign in everywhere I go. What's next? Should I ring a bell and shout, unclean, unclean?

How to easily stop and reverse global warming

The technology to do this has existed for many decades. The problem is people.

The human factor

Two overlapping groups are the problem.

• the libtards—those who can’t distinguish between reality and the ideals of political correctness, and side with the latter
• the teeming masses—they keep politicians in power and politicians will never upset them

As I ennumerate what should be done, starting with the most important, you’ll see how these two groups are the problem.

What should be done

• replace all fossil fuel power stations with nuclear ones and ignore the libtards
• stop all animal farming and go vegan—that’s right, redneck, from now on you’re a vegan

The above are the two remedies which will have by far the most effect on global warming. There are too many smaller ones to mention. I’ll name a few.

• let private vehicle licence fees rise exponentially with fuel consumption—more below
• stamp out all inefficient energy use—more below
• replace all huge ships with nuclear‑driven ones
• stop wasting money trying to create city, state, and country scale wind and solar electricity—it’s pie in the sky; build nuclear power stations

Vehicle licensing fees

Set a fuel‑consumption reference, say 7.5L/100Km. Have a certain test, say a long distance trip involving some cities on the way, and get the figures for the vehicles. Let a vehicle using 8.5L/100Km pay ten times more (10¹ times), one using 9.5L/100Km 100 times more (10² times), etc. One can use decimals for the power if the excess use is a fraction of a litre. Yes, bogan/redneck, you’ll have to sell your 4WD/SUV and get a small car.

Of course, everyone will claim they must use a big, fuel‑hungry vehicle. Each case should be individually evaluated and inapproprate vehicle use (no load, only a driver in a fuel‑hungry vehcle) heavily fined.

Inefficient energy use

There is so much of that. Below only a few.

• cretins love to let their vehicles idle for minutes on end—starting and about seven seconds of idling use the same amount of fuel—there are billions of cretins in the world
• running empy or near‑empty buses all over the planet
• open, cooled shelves in supermarkets—not just here and there, all over the world
• stupid people setting their air‑conditioners to the maximum heat (often 30°C) in winter and on the minimum in summer;in summer, the AC should only be able to start cooling at 28°C and not cool below 24° and in winter it should start at 18°C and not heat above 22°C
• open doors and windows in rooms with AC and AC left on for hours when people leave

Doing all this will work, but it will upset most people. Tough titties, I say. Do we want to beat global warming, or don’t we? Of course, the politicians would not want to upset voters and so lose their cushy, well‑paid jobs. So, global warming is with us and may yet wreak havoc with the planet.