The basis of Western Classical education has consisted of the trivium which was understood as the core foundation necessary for proper human thought. The trivium consists of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Grammar and vocabulary are necessary for forming and conveying complex ideas, logic is necessary for giving validity and cogency to reasoning, and rhetoric is necessary for the independent formation of complex opinions and the ability to convey ideas in powerful and influential ways. These faculties continue to be the foundation of the developed human mind. Mastery or lack thereof separates the thinking citizen from the “mass man”.
Over the course of the 20th century there has been a systematic debasement of education in many important areas. This topic is sufficient in-depth that it is a dedicated subject with many excellent books, lectures, and treatises on the subject.
So far in the 21st century, this debasement has significantly accelerated. Functionally, it represents a “no holds barred” approach by elites in their quest to create a more docile “sheep-like” citizen.
This new 21st strategy can be considered as an “anti-trivium” in that it inverts the Classical trivium into corrupted opposites. Grammar is replaced by limited vocabulary and primitive language use, logic is replaced with irrationality and “emotional pseudo-reasoning”, and rhetoric is replaced with the blind acceptance of sociopolitical ideology which is to be uniformly and uncritically believed.
Again, this subject is quite in-depth with the corruption of education by “Common Core” alone being a lengthy topic.
However, two aspects merit mentioning: propaganda ideologies are being increasingly incorporated into educational curricula and the ability of the newer generations to reason is actively being replaced by anti-reasoning paradigms.
Of these anti-reasoning paradigms, emotional pseudo-reasoning is the most egregious and prevalent. Emotional pseudo-reasoning replaces the developing reasoning capacity of children with a paradigm of “feeling” and incontinent emotions as “valid” “reasoning”.
The net effect of the attack on the mind of humanity is increasingly a tiered system of human cognition and a monopolization of the ability to think logically.
The elites retain the ability to think freely and in a sovereign manner while the “mass man” readily supports elite agendas and is barely able to form a coherent thought.
Functionally, this is the monopolization of logic and reason, making it increasingly the exclusive domain of the elites. The elites retain the “wildness” and liberty of free thought while the feudal serfs of the 21st century obey and believe as commanded.
This dangerous new paradigm is made worse by the contemporary standard of all-pervasive propaganda.
The psychological warfare directed at civilian populations is a scientific state-of-the-art form that is many orders of magnitude more effective than the primitive forms in the beginnings of the 20th century. And the abuse of mass media to generate an endless torrent of propaganda, indeed, to monopolize mass media to cram as much propaganda into the daily digital and media consumption of the citizenry as possible, renders most people unable to resist cognitive subjugation.
The answer to this monopolization of logic is quite simple: parents must include logic in their children’s education and society as a whole must exercise their logic on a regular basis.
Without the constant exercise of reasoning, this most basic faculty will be lost to the wider society and in time become an exclusive attribute held only by those who have received elite education.