	id AA28416; Thu, 17 Nov 94 07:17:51 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 85


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 85
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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DAVE EMORY -- JULY 5, 1992
Observations on America's 216th Birthday
 
[...continued...]
 
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [continues]:
 
  Now what is a crammer? A crammer is a person whose business 
  in life is to study all the old examination papers and find 
  out what are the questions that are actually asked and what 
  are the answers expected by the examiner. You must be very 
  careful not to suppose that these answers are always the true 
  ones. Your examiners will be elderly gentlemen, and their 
  knowledge is sure to be more or less out-of-date. Therefore, 
  begin by telling yourself this story:
 
  Imagine yourself a young student, early in the 15th century, 
  and being examined as to your knowledge of the movement of 
  the sun and moon, planets and stars, and so on. Imagine also 
  that your father happens to know Copernicus. And that you 
  have learned from his conversation that the planets go round, 
  not in circles, but in ellipses. Imagine too that you have 
  met the painter, Leonardo DaVinci and been allowed to peep at 
  his funny notebook. And by holding it up to a mirror, to read 
  the words, "The earth is a moon of the sun." Imagine that, on 
  being examined, you gave the answers of Copernicus and 
  Leonardo, believing them to be the true answers.
 
  Instead of passing, at the head of the "successful" list, you 
  would have been burnt alive, for heresy. Therefore, you would 
  have taken good care to say that the stars and the sun move 
  in perfect circles, because the circle is a perfect figure 
  and therefore answers to the perfection of the Creator. You 
  would say that the motion of the sun round the earth is 
  proved by the fact that Joshua saw it move in Gideon, and 
  stopped it.
 
  All your answers would be wrong! But you would pass, and be 
  patted on the head as a young marvel of Aristotelian science.
 
  Now passing examinations today is just what it was in the 
  days of Copernicus. If you, at 20 years of age, go up to be 
  examined by an elderly gentleman of 50, you *must* find out 
  what people were taught 30 years ago. And stuff it with that, 
  and not with what you are taught today.
 
  "But," you will say, "how are you possibly to find out what 
  questions are to be asked? And what answers are expected?" 
  Well you can't. But a good crammer can. He can't get a peep 
  at the papers beforehand, but he can study the old 
  examination papers until he knows all the questions that the 
  examiners have to keep asking over and over again. After all, 
  their number is not infinite.
 
  If only you will spot hard enough to learn them all, you'll 
  pass with flying colors. Of course, you'll not be able to 
  learn them all, but your chances will be good in proportion 
  to the number you learn.
 
  The danger of being flunked for giving up-to-date answers to 
  elderly examiners is greatest in the technical profession. If 
  you want to get into the Navy, or practice medicine, you must 
  get specially trained for some months in practices that are 
  now quite out-of-date. If you don't, you'll be turned down by 
  admirals dreaming of the "Nelson touch," or by surgical 
  barons brought up on the infallibility of Jedda(?) and Lister 
  and Pasteur.
 
  But this does not apply to *all* examinations. Take the 
  classics, for instance. Homer's Greek and Virgil's Latin, 
  being dead languages, they don't change in the way that naval 
  and medical practice changes.
 
  Suppose you want to be a clergyman. Well the Greek of the New 
  Testament doesn't change. The creeds do not change. The 39 
  articles do not change -- though they ought to, for some of 
  them are terribly out-of-date. You can cram yourself with 
  these subjects for yourself, and save your money for lessons 
  in elocution.
 
  In any case, you may take it as a safe rule that if you 
  happen to have any original ideas about examination subjects, 
  you mustn't air them in your examination papers. You may very 
  possibly know, better than your examiner. *But* *do* *not* 
  *let* *them* *find* *out* *that* *you* *think* *so*.
 
  Once you are safely through your examinations, you will begin 
  life in earnest. You will then discover that your education 
  has been very defective. You will find yourself uninstructed 
  as to the best ways of eating and drinking and dressing and 
  sleeping and breathing. Your notions of keeping yourself fit 
  will consist mostly of physical exercises which will shorten 
  your life by 20 years or so.
 
  You may accept *me* as an educated man, because I have earned 
  my living for 60 years by work which *only* an educated man, 
  and even a highly-educated man, could do. Yet the subjects 
  that educated me were never taught in my school. 
  Consequently, school was to me a sentence of penal servitude. 
  You see, I was born with what people call an "artistic 
  temperament." I could read... well I could read all the 
  masterpieces: the English poets, the playwrights, historians, 
  and scientific pioneers. *But* *I* *could* *not* *read* 
  *schoolbooks*!! Because they're written by people who don't 
  know how to write.
 
  To me, a person who knew nothing of all the great musicians, 
  from Palestrina to Edward Elgar, nor of the great painters, 
  from Giotto to Bern-Jones(?), was a savage and an ignoramus 
  -- even if he were hung all over with gold medals for school 
  classes. As to mathematics: to be imprisoned in an ugly room 
  and set to do sums in algebra, without ever having had the 
  meaning of mathematics explained to me, or its relation to 
  science, was enough to make me hate mathematics all the rest 
  of my life! As so many literary men do.
 
  So don't expect too much from your school achievement. You 
  may win the Ireland Scholarship, and then find that none of 
  the great business houses will employ a university don on any 
  terms.
 
  As to your general conduct and prospects, all I have time to 
  say is, that if you do as everyone does and think as everyone 
  thinks, you will get on very well with your neighbor. But you 
  will suffer from all their illnesses and stupidity. If you 
  think and act differently, you must suffer their dislike and 
  persecution.
 
  I was taught when I was young that if people would only love 
  one another, all would be well with the world. Now this 
  seemed simple and very nice! But I found, when I tried to put 
  it in practice, not only that other people were seldom 
  loveable, but that *I* was not very loveable myself! I also 
  found that to love anyone is to take a liberty with them 
  which is quite unbearable, unless they happen to return your 
  affection. Which you have no right to expect.
 
  What you have to learn, if you are to be a good citizen of 
  the world is, that though you certainly dislike many of your 
  neighbors, and differ from some of them so strongly that you 
  could not possibly live in the same house with them, that 
  does not give you the smallest right to injure them or even 
  to be personally uncivil to them. You must not attempt to do 
  good to those who hate you, for they don't *need* your 
  officious services and would refuse to be under any 
  obligation to you. Your difficulty will be, how to behave to 
  those whom you dislike, and cannot help disliking, for no 
  reason whatever, simply because you were born with an 
  antipathy to that sort of person. Well, you must just keep 
  out of their way, as much as you can. And when you cannot, 
  deal as honestly and civilly with them as with your best 
  friend. Just think what the world would be like if everyone 
  who disliked you were to punch your head!
 
  The oddest thing about it is that you will find yourself 
  making friends with people whose opinions are the very 
  opposite to your own, whilst you cannot *bear* the sight of 
  others who share all your beliefs! You may love your dog, and 
  find your nearest relatives detestable.
 
  So don't waste your time arguing whether you *ought* to love 
  all your neighbors -- you can't help yourself! And neither 
  can they. You may find yourself completely dissatisfied with 
  all your fellow creatures, as they exist at present, and with 
  all their laws and institutions. Then there's nothing to be 
  done but set to work to find out exactly what is wrong with 
  them, and how to set it right. That's perhaps the best fun of 
  all. But perhaps I think so only because I'm a little in that 
  line myself.
 
 
DAVE EMORY:
Well, that basically concludes the talk by George Bernard Shaw. 
And again, I think there is much to be evaluated and emulated in 
that particular talk. That's as close to Dave Emory's credo as 
you're ever gonna hear. I think that many of the things he said 
are absolutely essential for our understanding if we are going to 
extricate ourselves from the present situation.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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