30.05.2013

The 7 Liberal Arts - Trivium and Quadrivium

In my free book (which I am currently also translating into English) I describe the history of the western educational system, which has been intentionally degraded over the centuries and has today reached almost rock bottom in terms of enabling children to use their own brains. You can easily pull school tests from the 1800´s from the net and you will find that for instance the math that is being taught in “high level performance classes” to “gifted” 18-year olds in western (e.g. German) schools today hardly matches what used to be taught to the average 12-year old elementary school kid in 1880! Both teachers and students have been degraded to an almost unthinkable intellectual level, from the point of view of just 150 years ago.

Especially over the past 60 years citizens of western industrialized countries have been literally assaulted through an education-driven, psychological warfare program. Along with the increasing concentration of mass media, the increasing influence of behavioural science on educational practices (research Pavlov experiments, Dewey/Wundt system), the indoctrination of leading research institutions combined with the ever more sophisticated government censorship, deliberate disinformation and scientifically developed propaganda (research Tavistock Institute), our public educational systems have incrementally adopted more and more elements of scientific mind control techniques, hypnosis and behavioural science.

Wundt system carried to the USA by Dewey

According to John Gatto (read John Taylor Gatto: ’Dumbing Us Down. The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling’) today’s school system achieves the following (some thoughts added by myself): 
  • Confusing children through presentation of incoherent information (unconnected topics are taught in different class rooms by different teachers without any apparent logical order)
  • Training of mindless memorization: information is learned to pass tests and obtain grades, information is learned to forget
  • Accepting (low) class affiliation
  • Indifference towards contents, a lack of benefit in scrutinizing information conditions children to not question such information
  • Emotional dependence of children on persons of authority through the grading system
  • Self-confidence depends on endorsement by ‘experts’
  • Customizing children to surveillance and government obedience

In a soft way the combination of these effects enable the effectiveness of PR, advertisement and propaganda, in the most dangerous way an increased predisposition to the influence of a demagogue or a potential dictator. Our ‘modern’ school system debilitates the power of intellectual supply and demand, and this is true not only for goods and services, but also for ideas and creativity. 
one of the most important books written in the 20th century
by the nephew of Sigmund Freud

Through scientific propaganda techniques, politicians today are able to evade criticism of the populace by engineering public opinion (e.g. through manipulated polls). It is possible to create societal demand for useless products, such as grossly overpriced branded sneakers, that provide no additional benefit over regular sneakers. Industry and politics can solicit the population with overpriced merchandise and shallow ideas and psycho-scientifically create consumer demand. The trailblazer for such a society is the Prussian educational system – a rather unknown German export success.

this flag salute was later slightly altered

So if today´s educational system is literally a dis-ease to society, infecting the minds of the young ones, then what is the remedy? Here is the good news: we don’t need to re-invent the wheel! All we need to do is go back in time and look at what used to be taught. We then need to internalize this ourselves as parents and then teach it to our children ourselves. As an automatic effect, the children will gradually transform the school system with their inquisitiveness. So lets look at the goodies: 


The 7 liberal arts

By far the most important thing under the sun is the ability to think for ourselves. You already know how to do this, you say? Careful what you think.... our generation (myself included) have been systematically trained, how not to think by ourselves. We have not learned how to think so we first need to learn again how this is properly done. The most recent system to do this in a proper way was called “the 7 liberal arts” and it was taught in schools from the middle ages until it disappeared about 100-200 years ago. Today it has almost completely vanished, only a useless torso remains, which no longer enlightens our children, but rather dumbs them down for life.

The 7 liberal arts consist of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, they are based on ideas of Plato and Aristoteles and the main intent is to enable people to separate for themselves between fact and fiction. It teaches how to think, rather than what to think.

The Trivium consist of:

  1. Grammar (= knowledge): how to systematically gather raw data and arrange it in a way that allows a solid basis of knowledge.
  2. Logic (= understanding): The method of how to systematically eliminate all conflicts from the available knowledge basis, in order to purify the knowledge and to reach a conclusive understanding of contexts and interdependencies
  3. Rhetoric (=wisdom): how to communicate the knowledge and understanding to others in a productive way, which means that others are able to use such information in their daily lives (this is what I am trying to do in my blog here, even though I am only an apprentice in this field, so excuse my mediocre rhetorics, also, English is not my native language)

The Quadrivium consist of:

  1. Arithmetic (= numbers): numbers are an abstract reflection of the physical, outside of time and space. Arithmetic teaches the nature of being itself.
  2. Geometry (= numbers in space): geometrical shapes convey a deeper meaning, this is the basis of symbology, the key to architecture and also to understanding our modern world.
  3. Music (= numbers in time): music teaches the brain natural harmony, the “involution” of the universe, i.e. how it has been shaped into form.
  4. Astronomy (= numbers in time and space): yes, people, this is the highest form of learning and must be the basis of all science. Time and space meet the abstract world of numbers, the movement of planets in our solar system will teach you the harmony and “music” of creation itself. And make no mistake here… Astrology is part of this teaching! Astrology teaches the animal (lower) nature of man (kind). It is a perfect science, based on photonic influence of sunlight, reflected by the spheres. Sunlight is pure intelligence.
The 3-D version of the Star of David (misnomer)

So if you start applying this kind of thinking, you might - sooner or later - stumble across the following controversial opinions (which I personally consider as facts):

-  The Titanic didn’t sink (which ship sunk? Who owned the shipping company? Who died on board?)
-  Columbus didn’t discover America (who did? Who was Cristobal Colon?)
-  George Washington wasn’t the first U.S. president and Obama certainly not the first black one (who was? Where was Obama born?)
- All western nations are broke since almost 100 years and have been substituted by corporations (then what is this thing they call “financial crisis” today?)
- Paper money is created by private families (who owns the Fed, the ECB, IMF and the BIS in Switzerland?)
- The planets don’t move “around” the sun (what is the movement of the sun?)
- The Apollo mission didn’t reach the moon (who directed Odysee 2001, when and in which studios, which technology was invented? Why does the boy in the movie "The shining" wear an Apollo sweater?)
- All religions have one common source (how was "Egypt" called before it was invaded? Who were the Ptolemy family? Who wrote the New Testament?)
- Carbon can`t be a problem for the earth atmosphere (what do you exhale? What do plants use in photosynthesis? What does nature do, when something is out of balance?)

Looks like a DNA model, doesnt it...?

These are just some (intentionally) provocative examples, they are fairly easy to investigate using the Trivium techniques. And remember – your truth may be different than mine, that is perfectly natural. Truth is subjective, not objective. I hope my rhetoric was good enough to make this blog entry of value to you! 

Have fun rediscovering the 7 liberal arts! This planet belongs to you and it is up to you to teach your children, not to some government, priests or "experts"!

“Govern” (to rule over, to control)
“ment” (mind)
 Government = mind control

Let´s take back the schools over the next 20 years. If our children ask the right questions, teachers will be forced to re-think. If the teachers think again, they will question the curriculum.


Change must come from the youth, empowered and guided by the adults.


5 Kommentare:

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  2. Excellent presentation.
    We need to teach our kids how to think. It is so important right now.

    Many thanks for sharing you knowledge.

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  3. "And remember – your truth may be different than mine, that is perfectly natural. Truth is subjective, not objective." While I agree with a lot of your post, this is an area where it falls short and actually is not correct. Truth is not subjective. It may simply be how you're defining truth that interferes with the harmony of all of that which you wrote before these statements. If it has something to do with perception, then yes, but perception is not reality, hence the need for the Trivium and Quadrivium. If truth is defined as what is happening and what has happened, then there is very little room for subjectivity. We hear this all the time with glass half full/half empty arguments, but if we can agree on a standard unit of measurement, then we are able to see that the same amount of liquid exists in the glass regardless of whether we prefer to see it with half full or half empty ideologies. If truth as I've defined it in this comment were subjective than there would be no use for a system like the Trivium because there could be no universal organon we could apply to each individual unit of consciousness's perceptual input so that it didn't end up being reduced to a matter of differences of opinion at the end of any exchange. The system of the Seven Liberal Arts is simply a description of how reality works and how our consciousnesses work and the real question is whether we've refined those components to be able to use them in real time. Ultimately grammar isn't just an amalgamation of rules for symbols floating around without connexion to reality. They're symbols that signify reality and represent it so that we can communicate our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and volitions with one another. That is why general grammar as opposed to specific grammar is based in Aristotle's Praedicamentae and there is such a sharp distinction between categorematic words and syncategorematic words as well as an emphasis on imposition and intention. Yes, we all have different levels of perception, but those percepts are formed from something that our five senses operate on and while they and what they operate on are fixed at the time we perceive them, they are not eternally fixed because we can work on fine tuning these external senses and develop our internal and rational senses by learning the seven liberal arts and sciences so as to refine our subjective unit and raise our perceptions to come into contact with reality for how it actually is more often than when we arrived here. An example would be perfect or relative pitch. They can be developed and so the person having developed those very subtle organs will be much more readily in tune with the sounds of reality not just comparatively to others, but to how one used to interpret those same sounds. I believe it's why the Freemasons in the their winding staircase to enlightenment symbol used both the seven liberal arts and the five senses as stairs to reach that place. Best wishes,

    Thomas Peter Mirowski

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    1. Thanks for the great comment! I define truth according to the original denotation of the word, which is "faith". Truth = faith. Thus, truth has to be 100% subjective. Remember, English is a Germanic language, and the German word "wahrheit" corresponds to veritas/ verity. Truth is nothing but faith, and it is NOT the opposite of a lie. This is a perfect example for language decay. What you write above mixes the ancient concepts of epistemology (how de we know?), which are very much subjective and empirical (and somewhat boring to me), and the truly important fields of ontology, cosmology and metaphysics (what is real?). I also wish to add that the 7 liberal arts, as mentioned in my text, is just one, fairly young, system of philosophy....there are older and better ones!! Platonic monism and reductionism are a much sharper knife...but I wrote the above article without going into too much depth, because the average reader would not understand it. If you wish to continue the discussion, I suggest we do this by email. all the best, Thomas.

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