This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Education is more important than ever, yet it is becoming harder for people to learn. We may be good at memorizing information we read in books or see on TV, but what about critical thought and inventive reasoning? Soon after graduating college, I decided to read classic Greek literature, and this turned out to be one of the greatest things I ever did because it transformed how I saw the world. The trivium and quadrivium are principles of learning established by the ancients that create a “unified idea of reality,” starting at the center of our souls. Education becomes much than just sitting in a classroom memorizing words and formulas. It becomes a mindset and personal identity.
The Problem With Modern Education – Pretty much any man who has taken a high school English class in America has seen the problem with modern education. We read some esoteric John Steinbeck quote and tell the class some politically correct moral so that everyone can nod in eager agreement. Underpaid teachers repeat a government-approved curriculum and students display their worth by filling in bubbles on a test sheet with a number two pencil.
The problem with our education system is that the entire thing was designed in 19th century Prussia to produce factory workers for manufacturing textiles, farming equipment, and ladies’ purses. Our education system is a “machine constructed by industrialism to produce” a labor force dominated by “the factory whistle and the clock.” (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock) The problem is people are not machines to be programed with math formulas and the scientific table of elements. In elementary school, my teacher often wrote at the bottom of my report card: “Does not pay attention in class.” It wasn’t until after reading the works of great Greek philosophers that I realized the reason I had a hard time paying attention was because I was not interested in becoming a factory worker.
In a Masters or PHD program that you start to experience a truly constructive environment for learning, closer to the schools of ancient times. If only we could follow this model for the previous 18 years of school! But many great thinkers did not even become great by sitting in a classroom. Albert Einstein thought up his great scientific theories while stamping papers in a patent office. It is foolish to think you can become great with no education at all, but we should also realize that we need to be our own mechanism for learning. The machine to produce our education should be ourselves.
Putting Education In Order
This is my education plan that I came up with after reading Gorilla Mindset and some other great books. I see my mind as a train that is powered by my personal motivation for greatness, pulling a line of train cars that each lead to the final vision for my world.
Impression & Expression – It starts with thinking about what is entering into and what is exiting out of the mind. When young Solomon asked for wisdom from the Lord, he specifically asked for “knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people.” (2 Chron 1:10) We see the same idea of ‘incomings and outgoings’ in the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith; Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord.” (D&C 109:7-9)
Scriptures treat wisdom as a kind of transition of information into and out of the mind, like a gate or passageway between us and the world. In philosophical terms, this is the cycle of impression and expression that determines how we see and influence the world. The first several cars on the mind train are impressions we take in from the world. The last several cars are our expressions that make us part of the world. The connections between each car are a synthesis that lead from one step to another.
Locomotive
First is the internal motivation of self-love. Love for one’s self provides the energy to move the machine, and it can be sparked by the simplest of things: words of encouragement from a father, concern for a loved one, and inspiration from the Holy Ghost. It is important to understand that though this motivation leads to love for others, it always starts with self-worth. Love for others is not the locomotive itself.
As the weight of the train cars gain momentum, this self-worth will improve one’s image of worth and that will further create self-worth, and you start chugging along. If the train stalls and comes to a halt, remember the childhood story of the train that said over and over: “I think I can. I think I can.” Self-love is how we think we can. The locomotive builds steam pressure as resources heat up the very essence of the spirit: individual will. Small bursts of pressure move the pistons in a organized, logical way. The drive shaft follows the rules of physics to transfer energy to the wheels. The wheels touch the ground and move us along, defining us by what we do. So, in many ways, the locomotive is our individual ego which powers everything. Many locomotives have a cattle catcher to move things that get in the way, moving aside people who are stalled in their progression and get in our way. Locomotives also have a smoke stack the move exhaust upward so the rest of the train doesn’t get choked by the fumes produced. The smoke flows back along the rest of the train as evidence for the cause of the entire train’s movement.
Resources
Behind every locomotive is a small car filled with coal. This car contains the psychological resources that enable us to build a picture of ourselves. The important thing is to fill the coal car as full as it will go. Why would you depart on a journey with your fuel only a quarter full? This is something I unfortunately did in school. I determined my resources after I had created my relationships and identity–I let the teacher and classroom determine what I could learn. This reflects a Social Justice mindset where we think the individual is limited by the class he is a member of. The individual is not limited by society, and we should not place our fuel after our relationships and identity. Your teachers, classmates, family, and friends do not determine what resources are available to you.
When we see an absence of resources–maybe we don’t have enough money for college, we don’t have enough time, or we don’t take the risk that comes with being traditional and religious, etc.–what we need to do is take a quiet moment of reflection and try to see abundance. The temple is a great place to take this moment to reflect. An abundance of resources will always be there if we look for it, because we are only limited by how lofty our imaginations can take us. If you can conceive of it, you can find the resources you need.
Ancient philosophy helped me with this. The scriptures, of course, were a very important resource. But what really helps is if you take a mental inventory and organize your resources as objectively as you can. Write them down in a list. It is interesting that in an age of internet communication, quick transportation, and modern science, there are more people than ever who feel limited. More people than ever can’t find someone to marry, even though they have access to a larger pool of dating prospects than any of their ancestors had–or perhaps because of it. Why don’t we recognize our resources? They are presented to us by the world in total disorder, and this causes a false sense of abundance or limitation. We need to sort it out and be realistic about what we are able to achieve with what we have. Can I change the world with a blog? If I’m honest with myself, no, because media is dominated by a handful of big corporations and they are not going to allow bloggers to reach many people unless we conform to their static dogma. So a blog is just an illusion of abundance. Be realistic about psychological resources as well. What abundant resource is available for you to fill your coal car up with?
Plato said there is an ideal form behind every tangible form. This unfortunately led people of his time to reject tangible form altogether, which is not the way to go at all, but it helps if we try to understand the true form behind every influence we take in. Coffee. Netflix. Church. What do these things mean as mental resources for spiritual motivation? This is, of course, something we talk a lot about in Sunday School lessons, but I don’t know how seriously we consider tangible influences as raw fuel for our lives. When we talk about the Word of Wisdom and then go home and drink Diet Coke every day, do we really grasp the doctrine as a resource? Or are we just picking small parts and leaving the meat of it to waste?
Synthesis
How do we connect train car to the next? What is the process of using psychological resources to benefit the ego? Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were called in De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii the “higher” arts, and Plato said they were essential for any education.
- Grammar seems like a straightforward thing–the structuring of sentences–but what is really the basis for our language? If we consider language to simply be a manner of communication, isn’t it important to understand the structure of communication? What is the grammar of artwork? What is the grammar of spiritual promptings? If you consider everything your senses take in in terms of communication, you can look for natural grammatical structures and start to tweak grammar in your own communication to make it clearer.
- Logic is the structure of thought, and we tend to agree that there are natural rules that logic is governed by. For example, we agree circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. Can we actually take control of our own structure of thought and decide how we think about things? I believe it takes a focused effort to investigate thought in order to take control of our intellectual and emotional processes, and that once we do it becomes much easier to be aligned with the Spirit of God.
- Rhetoric is the application of knowledge in action. Once we understand something and learn from it, how do we apply that?
Environment
The next car on the train is our environment. When we look at the transition into and out of our mind, consider that there wasn’t just a single gate between Solomon’s temple and the outside world. The process of incoming and outgoing occurred through a transition of several spaces of holiness. So psychologically we don’t just step out the door and suddenly we see all our environment. We see it bit by bit. We explore and discover.
First is our relationship to our bodies. The body was the first thing we were aware of as tiny babies and it will be the last thing we are aware of when we die. I think this is why more than just being a matter of respecting our most precious gift from God with respect, treatment of one’s body as a temple is important because it is our first and final layer of communication with our environment. So if we defile it with ratty tattoos, shoddy clothing, and a nasty countenance, that acts as the filter for our incomings and outgoings, and inevitably shapes our spirit and final identity. It also inevitably shapes how we influence others. It is easy to dismiss this, but ultimately our bodies are the primary faculty for all civility and behavior, and should be recognized as such.
Moments of quiet reflection help me take a snapshot of my environment. I have learned to do so with brutal honesty and not paint a rosy picture of aspects that aren’t what I wish they were. I find this actually helps me be optimistic, because there is so much negativity in the world, and a wide scope of the world helps remind me the eternal picture. Moses in his visitation with the Lord after leaving Egypt saw his environment and shrunk because he saw what a small role he had. He saw that he was a small insignificant speck in the universe. But then later he was able to look Satan in the eye and declare he was a son of God and Satan wasn’t worth his time. There is so much around us built on illusion. So much depends on everybody buying into an idea and deciding that’s the right way for it to be–everybody stopping at stop signs and exchanging money in stores for purchases. If we can explore our environment, place levels of importance on our environment, and discern resources for what they are, this will allow us to see what we have control over and what we don’t. We can stop worthless pursuits on trails that don’t lead anywhere and focus on what matters. We can have the courage to study both sides of every argument and nurture true faith rather than try to justify our cognitive biases.
The tools for checking in with the environment are sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. The first step for self-mastery is to treat the senses for what they are: utilities for taking in the environment. When you see a fast food commercial on TV, do they advertise the nutritional benefits and how food helps you connect with the culture you are part of? Not usually. Usually, food commercials are about how it makes you “feel.” Music is advertised for how it makes you “feel.” And that is why so many people are obese and listen to trash hip-hop. It should be a utility for nourishing the body, connecting around the dinner table, and connecting with the culture of which we are a part. It is a tool for discovery. So try not to prematurely define your relationships or identity based on what your senses take in.
Relationships
Narcissists place people into the category “environment” and people become just another tool to exploit. Again, don’t prematurely switch up categories. It is important to treat relationships as a closer influence on our identity than just the overall environment.
But it is also important to recognize relationships as another matter of incoming and outgoing in our mindset–influences that shape what we are and elements that are shaped by our influence. As a kid, I always had a hard time with advice I got from people who said I should pick good friends and avoid people who are bad influences. Isn’t that intolerant? Shouldn’t we accept everybody? But it is wise to objectively see people as influences and not think you are above being affected by them. Your first obligation is to yourself, and if somebody needs to be cut out, that is very sad but it also may be necessary. Conversely, there may be important relationships that we for some reason refuse to allow that would be to our benefit. Maybe someone is uncool, or a friend doesn’t like them, or you have some grudge or bias. I have found that when I sit down and analyze the benefits and disadvantages of having a relationship, it leads me to give someone a chance that I otherwise wouldn’t have, and they end up improving my life.
One hugely important thing about this train car is that our foundational sense of justice is built on relationships, so like the primordial battle of heaven it is fundamentally a question of equality versus meritocracy. We must figure out what kind of gate we place on the walls of our inner temple. How much influence should we let other people be on our identity? Should the psychological spaces of the mind transition from holiness or unconsecrated space or should all spaces be equally holy? The Social Justice ideology leads us to give up ownership of our very psyche to society for the greater good. The mind becomes the “people’s temple.” A Divine Justice mindset, on the other hand, makes us each gods in our own mind, sitting on the throne of the inner sanctum, creating worlds and speaking words of truth. As for me, I pick the divine justice model. Rather than being another piece of a machine, this model allows us to be our own locomotive, pulling our own train, going our own direction.
Yet a train can only follow the tracks it is on, can’t it? A train can’t leap off the tracks and go cross-country. Much of life is outside of our control, and you can only decide whether to keep going the direction you are in or turn around and find some different fork in the tracks. To put this in terms of Mormon imagery, you don’t get to decide where the rod of iron that leads to the tree of life gets placed. You don’t get to decide whether that path is level or steep. Our environment is given to us as it is and the relationship we form to the environment is very limited in how it changes the environment.
Identity
Now you can focus on your identity. While many people are pulled by the whims of popular culture, friends and family, their mood, and social restrictions, a person who takes inventory of their environment and takes charge of their relationship to the world can now take charge of their own identity. You can sit down, decide who you want to be in five years, and write down a step by step plan of how to get there. It’s like trying to climb Mount Everest. You gather your resources, you figure out how to do it, you plot your trail, and then you go for it.
For me, this kind of focus made it much easier to appreciate the hard work that I had to do to accomplish great things. Always before, I saw men who worked hard and thought I could never be like that. But all great people become great because they enjoy work. The worst thing you can do for a person is give them free handouts that they don’t deserve and don’t appreciate, because that reinforces a mindset that resents work. At first when I was trying to learn German as a missionary, I resented the work that it took. Learning a language doesn’t come easily to me. But once I realized how this was shaping my very identity, my very soul, and opening new doors of opportunity, I embraced this task as if I were eating a steak dinner. Now I make vocabulary lists of English words as well to improve my communication.
I can’t stand if I’m wasting time, if I’m sitting in a movie theater watching a dumb movie. I would rather be sitting in a car driving on a boring road than watching a typical Hollywood movie, because at least in the car I can quietly think about something. The same goes for menial labor. What is menial, when you are working hard flipping burgers or playing an amazing video game? The burger job actually creates something while the video game is just a waste of your mental faculties. Playing games has its place, but so many people are stuck in a playground and won’t step out and actually experience the risk of real pursuit.
There is one scene of the film ‘Grease’ I enjoyed where the coach is giving a pep talk to the football team, and he is describing graphically violent things that they are going to do in the football game while the female principal looks on in disgust. There are masculine and there are feminine virtues that are simply different. As world powers seek to gain control over the individual’s identity, they try to erase all distinction of identity by sex, religion, culture, etc. or simply twist them. They try to turn us all into the same robot. As we try to regain control over ourselves, we can’t try to form our identity totally independent of these things either. You’ll become a hermit going crazy out alone in the woods. Culture, religion, and sex are important resources that we should use. Embrace the virtue. Is it unmasculine to enjoy opera or want to become a school teacher? No. Virtue is not the passion you pursue, but the fitness you develop to pursue it.
Identity can be described in terms of how a person expresses themselves. I consider this in terms of what is known as the quadrivium–geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (in that order).
- Geometry- Spatializing. This could be a logical investigation of space in our environment, but it could be spacializing abstract thoughts or an arrangement of things to form some sort of plan. It helps us understand how things relate and how to create unity.
- Arithmetic – The design or construction of something. This could be deducing a logical solution to a math problem, but it could also be just coming up with a solution to a problem in your daily life.
- Music- Music is the consideration of time, which is extremely important when we consider that we are all mortal and time is a constraint that we can’t bend. We seek harmony and pleasantness within our constraints.
- Astronomy- Greeks used the study of the cosmos for everything they invented or created. The most important thing we learn is that we are part of a hierarchy, and we should fit things into proper hierarchies as well.
Each person is a river who is constantly flowing and never the same in any two instances. Lehi counseled his sons to direct their education toward the source of all righteousness like a river flowing into the ocean, and yet to also be firm like the mountain , unshakable in determination. A river digs itself into a canyon as it flows in the same way over time, and so we solidify our identity and we settle into lifestyle choices. We can still change if we need to, but it becomes harder over time.
Vision
Now we can look to the future. It is tough to know how a hike up a mountain will be until you start hiking. Looking at a map isn’t good enough. Once you are there starting along the path, then you can get a sense of how it is like and where the path will lead. Now we can cycle back to the beginning and reconsider what kind of resources are available, what our environment is like, and so forth.
When I seek a vision for where I am headed, I try to always keep in mind that it is a matter of my personal expression. I pay attention to my language, my dictation, my posture, my anxieties, and how I treat those around me. I know I can’t stand tall if I haven’t exercised my mind, heart, and spirit, and I know I can’t know something until I have turned around every side of the issue. Like Bob Ross said about oil painting, the hardest part is deciding what to paint. There are endless possibilities to pick from, and you can’t sit in the station idle trying to decide all day. But the great thing, perhaps the most important thing, to remember is that once you make a choice you aren’t stuck with it forever. You can go backwards. Backtracking makes you lose time, but it is definitely worth it if you aren’t going where you want to go. Of course, in the church we call this repentance, and we correctly think of it in terms of putting off the old man and being reborn. Our understanding of divine justice and the atonement of the divine Creator is crucial for us being able to make a change when we need to, to have the fortitude, courage, and faculties.
Conclusion – This is not something I learned completely from the church, or from a university or self-help book. It is something I pieced together by reading the words of great philosophers and thinkers, such as Plato, Cicero, and Vitruvius, and personal religious study. Once I started to apply it to myself, I found it much easier to figure things out and innovate. I found myself becoming insatiably interested in textbooks and college lectures instead of playing video games. From little things to the big picture in my life, things started working out the way I wanted. I wish I had figured it out long ago, but it is never too late.