Why X

By John Weyland

This book contains ninety-eight pieces. They are all meant to say something new and to be useful things for understanding the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524649586

John Weyland

(Author did not want to provide. All his other books for this series did not have ATA)

Book preview

Chapter 1

The purpose of logic was to extend the truth. It did not do that in philosophy.

Logic turned up in the Greek city-states in the 6th century B.C.

Greeks were asking themselves questions about life and the world. By this time the human race had accumulate a lot of knowledge. But it had not answered the basic questions. Where did we come from? What are we doing here? How should we live? Do we survive death?

The Greeks thought if they could establish some truths they could use logic to arrive at further truths. And so would get to the answers to the basic questions.

Unfortunately for them, they made the mistake all peoples made. Because of their imagination they thought things that did not exist—things that they could imagine—did exist.

They thought with logic they could go on and deduce other things and finally get the answers they wanted.

But this did not work because they started wrong. Thinking that things existed that did not exist. Thinking like that, logic could not get them anywhere.

So why didn’t they use science instead?

First. Science requires a sharing of knowledge. Which was impossible at the time of the Greek city-states. (It did not become possible until the invention of printing.)

You think your self has an existence independent of the existence of your body.

You even think you can survive the death of your body.

You don’t only think that. You are absolutely convinced of that. Because you have what you think it proof. You have seen selves that have survived the death of their bodies. You call them whatever word your language has for ghost.

Because of imagination you can have hallucinations.

There is nothing about imagination to tell you what you are imaginating is real or not. You can think it is real when it is not.

So you believe in ghosts. You believe in all kinds of things that don’t exist.

This is not something that happened just sometimes to some people. It happened all the time to all peoples.

What we have done finally—it took tens of thousands of years—is discover that our ancestors were mistaken.

Just because we have a self that can act independently of of the body does not mean that all creatures and things have a self like that. And it does not mean the self can exist separately from the body and survive the body.

Those beliefs have become stupid. Anybody who still believes that has no excuse. But many people still do.

Chapter 2

Our ancestors had an excuse for their stupid beliefs. We do not.

Put yourself in the place of an early man.

What would you have believed?

All those things are out there. All those activities are taking place.

You do not have an explanation for any of it.

All you know is yourself.

Naturally, you think everything is like you.

What else would you think?

This causes you to make a great mistake.

A mistake with very serious consequences.

You have a self. That’s you.

This self is aware of what is happening in your body.

Only some of your body. But you don’t know that.

How could you know what you do not know?

Your self is also aware of what is going on around you.

But then there is the part of your self that causes trouble.

That is your imagination.

Which has the power to experience things your body is not experiencing.

This really misleads you.

Second. Science requires things that exist.

The basic questions being asked about in Greek philosophy implied that what they asked about could exist. Otherwise the questions would be pointless.

These things could not exist. God could not exist. Immortality could not exist. Ethics could not exist. Etc. The Greek philosophers thought they could exist because of their imagination. Which misled them. And everybody else as well.

Chapter 3

The decline of culture tells you there was an articial element in its onetime popularity.

Class societies single out certain activities as proper for the members of the higher classes. This causes people to participate in those activities whether they like them or not.

Contemporary society is supposedly classless.

In truth, it does have classes, as everybody knows.

But the higher classes do not see themselves as the higher classes once did.

The higher classes saw themselves as superior.

They did this to justify their privileged position.

They did nothing in their daily lives to demonstrate this alleged superiority. They led idle, non-productive lives.

So they had to show superiority in their leisure.

They did this through promoting activities that had little or no appeal to the lower classes.

Those are the activities that had suffered sharp declines in recent years.

Opera is an example.

Opera used to be very popular with the upper classes.

Today opera has practically disappeared. It would not exist at all if it were not for government subsidies and a few gifts from the wealthy.

Classical music is another examples.

The higher classes made classical music popular. They were not the only ones who attended concerts. The popularity seemed genuine. But classical music in the last 50 years has been losing its audience. The decline is not as bad as that of opera, but it is bad.

There are many other examples with which we are all familiar. Culture as it was known is having difficulty surviving without the support it once got from the class system.

Why don’t today’s rich bring culture back?

The difference is that today’s rich are rich because of their contribution to economic life. They do not feel they have to justify themselves.

So today’s rich are not in the same position as their predecessors. They give to charities, which has its social value for them. But they do very little for traditional culture, and that only because of hangover attitudes that are getting weaker and weaker.

Chapter 4

Once again the poor economic performance is being blamed on the wrong thing.

The same argument is being used as was used during the Great Depression: no big new industries to increase production like railroads, electricity, etc.

Capitalist countries have been increasing their GNP at very low rates. Two per cent has come to look good.

Workers have been making less instead of more as they are supposed to do in a recovery.

Back in the 30s the cause of the slow recovery was the condition of the banks after the stock market crash. Which they brought on by loaning money recklessly in the stock market.

The present poor economy has a similar cause. That was banks loaning money recklessly—this time on housing.

Considerable time has passed. Economies are supposed to recover. They are not doing that.

The real explanation for this is a new explanation. It is welfare, which hardly existed in the first years of the Great Depression.

Welfare has caused unemployment on a scale that has never been seen before.

More than a third of the workers in the United States are unemployed. It is because of their unemployment that the GNP is growing so slowly. People have to be working for GNP to grow. It can’t grow if much less is being produced than could be produced.

The situation in Europe is similar. Europe is a collection of welfare states.

The public is not aware of the extent of unemployment. Which explains why false explanations, like the one dealt with here, get attention.

The present government unemployment figure is five per cent. Five per cent is a low unemployment figure. It is the kind of figure that exists in periods of prosperity.

So what is going on?

The government puts out two unemployment figures. Only it does not calls the second one an unemployment figure.

Five per cent is the first figure. Thirty eight per cent is the second figure. The thirty-eight per cent is the number of people who are no longer looking for work.

No longer looking for work. Have they retired?

Unemployed workers have retired? No. They have gone on welfare.

So over one-third of the workers in the United States are not working.

No wonder growth is slow—practically non-existent. No wonder conditions do not improve. Workers have to be working for production to increase. If workers are not working, things are not going to get better. That should be obvious. But since it does not seem to be obvious, explanations like the one dealt with here are put forth. And actually get some attention.

Chapter 5

All peoples accept behavior by their countries that they would condemn in themselves.

All departments of state (foreign ministries) proclaim their intention is to do what is in the best interests of their countries. And that is what they do as well as they can.

But if you tell them that means being immoral they tell you that you are wrong.

The predicament with foreign affairs is the same as the predicament with children. People insist that children’s morality is practiced in the adult world when they all know it is not.

Machiavelli—who admitted the truth about governments—has been bad-mouthed over the centuries. The ultimate was when Frederick the Great wrote a book against Machiavelli, while he himself was a leading exponent of Machiavellianism.

It would be easy enough to admit there are two moralities. One within a country, another with other countries. But this does not happen. Morality by its nature requires there be only one morality. Right is right.

People by their behavior have demonstrated that they can hold contradictory views. They will say that they do not do this and they will twist language into all kinds of shapes to justify themselves. But it is part of the human repertoire and will remain so as long as the human species exists.

Chapter 6

The Industrial Revolution was easy to blame and hard to praise.

Nobody saw what it was doing.

Which was to free humanity from the sorry state it had gotten itself into with the agricultural revolution.

The agricultural revolution had condemned 90 per cent of humanity to a life of poverty, drudgery and subserviece.

This is not generally recognized because what we know about the agricultural age comes from the 10 per cent or less who benefited from it. They thought things were pretty good.

Without an Industrial Revolution life would have gone on like it had been for 10,000 years.

What the Industrial Revolution did to start with was substitute machines for men and animals.

Humanity had been dependent for power on itself and animals throughout the agricultural era. That put a limit on production.

Machines by themselves would have taken the Industrial Revolution a long way. But innovation was not limited to machines. Innovation spread to everything. With innovation production could increase and keep increasing.

With