The Truth Virus : Part II

Plato's 'Absoulte Truth'

Plato's original idea was that there is such a thing as objective, 'absolute truth'. Plato's 'truth' idea (like all his ideas) was a product of his imagination. He was the younger friend of Socrates whom he admired greatly and who was also his mentor. It was Socrates who invented the interrogatory style of argument involving strings of questions seeking either a YES or NO response. It's an old dinosaur known as the Socratic Method but it still survives in our legal system and could be seen on TV shows like LA Law and the O. J. Simpson trial.

Both Socrates and Plato became two of the greatest thinking hackers in Western history. To me, the most fascinating of Plato's works is Symposium because it's an insightful account of how it all began at a typical dinner-party back in Athens, around 400 BC, with Plato, Socrates and a few friends.

It's witty, entertaining and shows how their discussions and banter, laced with much wine and bawdy gossip, produced a small collection of thinking ploys, concepts, software and viruses that, amazingly, have dominated Western thinking right up to the 21st century.

Most destructive of all these inventions has been the Plato Truth Virus.

In the Western world, Plato is recognised as the one who put thinking on the map. Plato figured that the more one thought about matters and the more one tried to discover and understand their true essence or form, the more insights one could experience. But he also decided (and this is the killer) that thinking was NOT an open-ended process. Plato figured there must be a finite end to a thinker's relentless search for meaning, an ultimate destination to a thinker's efforts, so he called that destination objective 'truth'. Uh-oh! Big mistake!!

Today, 2,500 years later, much of Western society still behaves as though there is actually such a thing as an objective, absolute truth. Somehow oblivious to real world consequences, many Western universities and colleges are full of discussions about 'truth', 'right', 'wrong', 'good', 'evil', 'honesty', 'justice' and so on. This all spills out into society so that Big Government, Big Religion, Big Business, Big Brother and other groups invoke these 'absolute truths' as the basis for their policies and the justification for their actions - so often with horrific consequences.

The trouble was that once Plato had invented his truth concept, it existed. Subsequently, when other thinkers came along Plato's invention infected their ideas like a virus - and so we name the virus after him, the Plato Truth Virus (PTV). Gradually the activity of thinking came to be subverted by the insidious truth virus. Some thinkers inevitably claimed to have found - The Truth,

PTV, the truth virus, began to control the thinker's set of intellectual claims and so we see a number of philosophies and doctrines and movements that claimed to have discovered absolute truth and gave notice of filing their claims: "Stop looking! ... We have the truth!
... We are right, you are wrong! ... We are good, you are evil! ... Believe in the truth or be damned! ... The truth is on our side! ... We know what's right! Do what we tell you, or else! - Crush the infidel! - Kill the unbeliever!"

My-Teacher-is-Right - Your-Teacher-is-Wrong

The problem for the observer is the number of conflicting claims to absolute truth and unique rightness. The seductiveness of PTV is also what makes it so destructive and deadly: everyone wants to be the one who has 'The Truth'. Therefore, everyone infected with the virus claims to be uniquely right and that's where the carnage begins.

From time to time teachers like Buddha, Jesus and Confucius have emerged in the different cultures of the world. Most people are free of PTV and many have benefited from their teachers' messages of goodwill.

Sadly, these teachers are often upstaged by greedy PTV-infected franchisees who claim to have exclusive rights or their teacher's intellectual property. Who can blame the original teachers for the sickness of their followers?

So often, in the name of peace and goodwill, infected followers fight with a sick rage and burning hatred. The brain virus so distorts the original message that it would be unrecognisable to the original messenger. People have become more interested in the 'truth status' of the message than the message itself. Perhaps it is more important to be an 'effective follower' than to be a 'right follower'.

Truth 'R' Us
Here is small sample of PTV-infected claims which have long since upstaged those claims made by the original teacher:

Christian Science:
... is unerring and Divine ... outside of Christian Science all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of Truth.

Seventh-Day Adventists:
The General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists is the highest authority that God has upon earth.

Jehovah's Witnesses:
... alone are God's true people, and all others without exception are followers of the Devil ... At Armageddon all of earth's inhabitants except Jehovah's Witnesses will be wiped out of existence.

Mormons:
There is no salvation outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ... everybody, unless they repent and work righteousness, will be damned except Mormons.

Christadelphians:
None but Christadelphians can be saved.

Islam:
Mohammed is the messenger of God ... the last, and final exponent of God's mind, the seal of the prophets.

The Divtne Light Mission:
The Guru Marahaj Ji alone has the key to the knowledge of the source of God.

The Unification Church:
OnIy the Lord of the Second Advent, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, will be powerful enough to complete the restoration of man to God.



Krishna Consciousness:
Direct love for the Lord Krishna, in the form of chanting, singing and dancing, is the best way to rid the soul of ignorance.

Church of Scientology:
It is only through the exercise of the principles of Dianetics that there is real hope for happiness in this lifetime and the eventual-freeing of the soul from death.

The Children of God:
No power in the world can stand against the power of David. (This refers to David Berg, the sect's leader).

Catholic Church:
No one can be saved without that faith which the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church holds, believes and teaches ... the One True Church established on earth by Jesus Christ ... to whom alone it belongs to judge the meaning and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.

In spite of these corporate claims and the consequences they have caused to millions, most members of these groups are not infected with PTV. Most of the faithful are people of genuine peace who quietly go about their business. They try to live by their creeds without bothering others at all. The silent majority are not the villains, so often they are the victims, too.

If there were ever such a thing as 'absolute truth', by its own definition, there could only be one 'absolute truth'. So, which truth is the true truth?

As a philosophical piece of gamesmanship, this coveting of the label of absolute truth is not limited to religious doctrines, but spills over into political, business, sociological, and even economic theories, although the latter have fallen on hard times lately.

At first, adding PTV seemed to make a set of intellectual claims or doctrines superior to those that were not absolute, but time has shown the opposite to be the case. We know now that once the thinking effort switches to defence and support, (as it must if a doctrine is frozen as absolute truth) further growth and creative development are discouraged. The truth begins to lose its credibility as it begins to lose its relevance and its effectiveness. PTV inevitably serves to undermine the doctrine it was originally meant to reinforce.

Two people can, of course, have two different points of view. Nothing odd about that. But, if each viewpoint is infected with PTV, if each believes his viewpoint is 'uniquely right', PTV can keep them fighting and bullying each other for some time.

Replace two people with two families, two communities, two groups, two religions or two nations and this pernicious truth virus can be passed on to each successive generation and the fighting and persecution can continue for hundreds of years.

It may be that Plato's truth virus has done more damage to Western society than any human thinking device ever invented. Just last century alone more than 26 million humans have been killed by PTV.

Myths, Theories and Hypotheses
It does seems to be a genuine, legitimate and universal need of the human mind to create myths, stories, theories and hypotheses to explain and make coherent an unexplainable world.

Examples: When frightened by a thunderstorm some thinkers explained it as a burst of Zeus' anger. Others later said it's an electrostatic phenomenon. An illness can be seen by some as a voodoo spell or by others as a viral infection. In an attempt to perform their function of making sense out of chaos, myths and scientific theories work on the same principle. The view that we humans build of our world is always a product of our imagination.

Your view of a situation is a cognitive phenomenon. In a situation, your experience of the situation is an electro-chemical event which takes place in your brain. The phrase 'your experience of the situation' is important because it points to the uniqueness of your understanding of the situation. Others in the situation will also have their own unique experience of it. Which is right?

PTV is a problem because it can distort the host brain's ability to make this distinction. The virus-impaired brain may be unable to distinguish between its parochial experience and that of other brains. The PTV brain thinks its experience is uniquely right.

Bores and Bullies
The sick brain can cause people to become bores or bullies, I'm not sure which is worse.

The boring brainuser is one whose behaviour is wearying to others because he or she cannot stop their tedious, enthusiastic talk about their own interests and experience, not because others are interested but because PTV makes them assume others are interested. Many companies train their salespeople to become bores who annoy their prospects and prevent them from ever becoming customers.


PTV can cause a brainuser to need, want, or demand others to share their 'uniquely right' experience of a situation. The infected brain can cause behaviour that even employs pressure, coercion or force to frighten or bully other brainusers to toe the line.

So much time, effort, peace and productivity has been wasted by nagging bores and tiresome bullies.

Yes, the human brain is an explanation-manufacturing mechanism but that's not the same thing as explaining. Do notice the difference. By creating explanations to fill in the gaps when needed, the brain helps to keeps us mentally stable. This will always be a useful property of the human brain.

Thinking, being a thinker, having a healthy curiosity is a normal part of the functioning of a healthy human brain. What is not healthy or normal but is a very dangerous cognitive disease is the condition of the "true believer". In pop psychology terms, thinkers are OK but True Believers are NOT OK.

The symptom of the True Believer is the colloquial and very crippled viewpoint that says "I have the truth" ... "My policy is the true policy" ... "My doctrine is good and your doctrine is evil", or, perhaps, "Wasn't I lucky to be born into that True Religion and now what are we going to do about you, unbeliever?" It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous mental condition.

Some believe that religious extremism is a greater disease than political extremism. Commenting on the damage being done by religious extremists to the Australian Labour Party, Ben Chifley, the much-respected former Prime Minister of Australia, once said, "The religious fanatic is far worse than the political fanatic."

In the Preface of his book, The True Believers, (Methuen 1986) Peter Bowler warns, "Here they come, the True Believers, wide-eyed and earnest; here they come, the devotees, the fanatics, the evangelists, the pilgrims, the worshippers, the contemplatives - clutching their hymns and invocations, observing their holy commandments and taboos, performing their sacrifices but, above all, believing. Believing in God, or in several gods, or even a goddess or two. Believing in the soul, in demons, in eternal forgiveness, in eternal punishment, in life after death, in assorted varieties of heaven and hell, in the power of faith to heal, to move mountains ...

They are and always have been, the idealists of humankind. Seeking something beyond the material, something intangible, something to explain the unexplainable, something to assuage their fear of the uncontrollable, something to compensate them for the unacceptable, something to offer them a kind of dignity and power in the midst of indignity and impotence.

Let us not mock the True Believer for their idealism. But watch out for them - they can be dangerous. Combative people, they are, by nature; crusaders rather than compromisers. Because they are right, others are wrong. The sinful must be punished, and who more sinful than the unbeliever? The more intolerant and warlike among them seek to punish the unbeliever in this life, with holy wars and inquisitions; the more benevolent and tolerant leave it to their God to punish the unbeliever with eternal torments after death.

From time to time history has thrown up a sect that is gentle and moderate and peace loving, like the Quakers or the Baha'i; invariably these sects are singled out for the most ruthless persecution at the hands of the True Believers.

When two religions are so similar as to be almost identical in every significant respect then take cover, because the conflict between them will be truly murderous. Buddhists and Presbyterians get along famously, but if you are selling insurance you would be ill-advised to set up shop in Palestine or Belfast."

For example, the number of Europeans who died or were killed as a result of the Crusades is put at approximately four million. The victims of the Inquisition, in Spain alone, included:
* 30,000 - burned at the stake
* 17,000 burned in effigy
* 290,000 punished by torture, prison or financial ruin.
Of all these victims, most were women, 'heretics' and Jews.

Today?
That's all very sad, of course, but those medieval days are gone now, aren't they? Today we live in the Age of Aquarius, the new millennium, isn't all that truth virus stuff rather old hat and even slightly alarmist to us cool, laid-back, dudes? 'Fraid not! ...

For example, recent world's headlines were filled with stories about a group in Japan whose ideas are very much infected with the truth virus. Time magazine's cover story (April 3, 1995) is about a group that poisoned 3,000 Tokyo subway commuters with nerve gas.

Time reports, "In what could only have been a carefully coordinated, painstakingly planned atrocity, an apparently diluted form of nerve gas called sarin, a weapon of mass killing originally concocted by the Nazis, was placed simultaneously in five subway cars at morning rush hour, killing 10 victims and sickening thousands more. ...
(later at the suspect group's compound) Policeman in protective suits with canaries emerged with ton after ton of chemicals--sodium cyanide, sodium fluoride, phosphorus trichloride, isopropyl alcohol, acetonitrile ... enough to kill 4.2 million people."

Later, it was reported that police found containers of a biological toxin called botulinum, one of the world's deadliest. They found enough to wipe out the whole planet! Presumably this would be justifiable, all in the name of truth. As a result of this atrocity "the Japanese have lost their trust in society," says sociologist Kenichi Tominaga of Keio University. "It will never be the same."

And the name of this post-modern group of the 1990's? Aum Shinrikyo which means - Supreme Truth!

PTV is not just a medieval curiosity. Today, PTV is still very much alive and may be living it up in your brain! Listen!

If Plato was the hacker who invented the truth virus, Aristotle was the first to package it into a powerful cognitive operating system or thinking software package.

Aristotle started as a student in Plato's academy and remained there for twenty years until Plato, his mentor, died. By the time Plato died Aristotle was thoroughly infected with his mentor's truth virus and did much to establish 'the search for certainty' as the basis of all intellectual endeavours.

Aristotle became a passionate and obsessive truth freak. Plato only went as far as saying that truth was what lay at the long end of a thinker's search, an ultimate destination. Not enough for Ari ... No sir! Aristotle said "I want truth! I want it here! I want it now!"

Aristotle went on to insist that the ordinary fuzzy jumble of our daily reality was just not tidy enough. So, to bring order to the world he imposed a kind of truth template over everything.

Mail sorting and Labelling
Aristotle's medium was language. He assumed that the certainty of words could give certainty to the ineffable flow of experience. The untidy chaos of reality offended Aristotle's ordered, PTV-infected mind so he decided to break everything up into pigeonholes and categories - kind of like mail sorting and labelling.

This goes here, that goes there, stick this label on this and that label on that! Let's just tidy everything up. Yessir. A place for everything and everything in its place was Aristotle's motto.

In his classifying fervour Aristotle made up pigeonholes and sorted our daily reality into them. He tried to invent slots for everything. For example, he set about sorting 'government' into categories like: 'constitutional', 'tyrannical', 'monarchy', 'aristocracy', 'oligarchy', 'and democracy’.

He then got busy breaking everything up into subjects like: politics, ethics, rhetoric (speech-making), metaphysics, physics, biology, and meteorology. Finally, he invented his very own thinking software called logic.

Aristotle's Silly Syllogism
Aristotle's thinking software was already infected with the Plato Truth Virus from day one. For logic, Aristotle invented his silly syllogism. I say it's silly because it lacks wisdom and sense.

The syllogism starts with the so-called 'truth' as its premise. Then one simply matches up items that come along and out pops your conclusion. Simple really ... and very silly.

For example:
TRUTH: All swans are white.
ITEM: This is a swan.
LOGICAL EXTENSION: Therefore it is white.

Or,
TRUTH: Salespeople tell lies.
ITEM: Amy is a salesperson.
LOGICAL CONCLUSION: Therefore Amy is lying.

Or,
TRUTH: Our church is the right church.
ITEM: You are not a member.
LOGICAL CONCLUSION: Therefore you are wrong.

Or,
TRUTH: The earth is flat.
ITEM: Therefore it has an edge.
LOGICAL CONCLUSION: Therefore you will fall off the edge if you go too far from shore.

Or,
TRUTH: The President is the law.
ITEM: The President did something.
LOGICAL CONCLUSION: Therefore it is legal (Aristotle's Logic software caused Nixon to believe this was so).

Or,
TRUTH: A boss's opinion is best.
ITEM: You are not a boss.
LOGICAL CONCLUSION: So when we want your opinion we'll give it to you.

No Contradictions, Please!
For Aristotle, just thinking wasn't good enough. No, you have to think logically. Logic is obsessed with hunting down contradictions. In logic, a thing cannot be in box A and box NOT A at the same time. No, it must be sorted and classified into the 'correct' box.

Although real life is full of contradictions and paradoxes (is the glass half full or half empty?) this was just not good enough for our man Aristotle. Things must be cut up into pieces like a jigsaw and then sorted into their 'true' categories.

Judging Right from Wrong
Life, according to Aristotle, is a matter of sorting things out into 'right' and 'wrong'. Judgement is the key activity. This is right. That's wrong. I'm right. You're wrong. This is black. That is white. This is American. That's un-American. This is good. That is bad. This is the right answer. That is the wrong answer.

Greyness? Fuzziness? Uncertainty? Open-endedness? Contradiction? Paradox? Well, we cannot have that sort of thing around here. You've got to sort things out! Clean up your act! Get things right! In Aristotle's Lyceum, everything was covered by rules, rules, rules.

The living arrangements, the study courses, the timetables were all dominated by rules and regulations.

Ancient Software
Aristotle craved order. He loved the order that his classifications brought to his ideas and thoughts. He assumed that the same order that he found he could impose on words and language could also be imposed on the real world. Many have made the same mistake.

The Sovereign Thinker
When thinking about thinking, there are two contrasting approaches we can bear in mind: Authoritarian and Sovereign.

The Authoritarian approach is all about someone else doing your thinking for you. That's where THEY say: Do what you are told! Trust us. We know what is best for you. We are the chosen ones. We are right and you are wrong. You wouldn't understand. Do not question our authority. When we want your opinion we'll give it to you. And so on.

The Sovereign approach is all about you doing your own thinking for yourself. That's where YOU say: Why? Why should I do as you say? Where do you get your authority? Why is this so? Why? Why? Why? What have you not told me? What bits have you left out? What proof do you have to offer? I'll think about your proposition and I'll let you know what I have decided. I reject your claim to authority over my mind. I abhor your attempt to bully me. I assert my individual sovereignty as a thinker. And so on.

On Sovereign Thinkers, Religions, Belief Systems and PTV
It is important to emphasise here that it is the right of a sovereign thinker to think what s/he likes and to believe what s/he wishes as long as they do not prevent other sovereign thinkers from doing the same.

A thinker respects the right of individuals to believe in any of the wide variety of human belief systems and religions, which are a testimony to the richness, imagination, and diversity of human thinking.

Many people derive benefits from believing in UFOs, angels, gods and goddesses, supreme beings, trinities, earthly incarnations or heavenly reincarnations, stars, fortune-tellers, dreams, scientific discoveries, miracles, snake-handling and so on.

One respects these believers in the way Voltaire found he could respect others without having to agree with them. What a thinker does not respect but fears, is PTV.

For example, one respects the sovereign right of a Christian to believe in Jesus or a Muslim to believe in Allah or an Atheist to believe in nothing. One does not respect an authoritarian Christian or Muslim or Atheist infected with PTV who feels that their belief is
'The Truth' and others should be made to 'toe the line or else'! A truth may be right enough for the person who uses it but not right enough to force another person to use it.


A Sovereign Thinker
"It is not safe to act against your own conscience". So said Martin Luther and with those words began the world's biggest movement away from authoritarianism towards individual sovereignty of thinking.

Luther's rebellion against the authority of the Pope provided the trigger that set off a chain of events which went on long after he died. His challenge to authoritarianism led on to the splitting of the Church, the destruction of the Pope's temporal power, the bursting of the Church's monopoly on The Truth and a greater freedom of people to question things without automatically being treated as heretics. Those of us who cherish personal freedom owe a lot to Luther. What kind of man would defy a pope?

Martin Luther was born in 1483 into a peasant mining family in Germany. At fourteen he showed sufficient promise to be prepared for university. By then his father had risen to be manager of a group of smelting works and could afford for his son Martin to read Law.

So Martin went to Germany's top University of Erfurt and graduated in Law, second in his class. Everyone knew that he had a promising law career ahead of him. But no, Martin changed his mind and one day he suddenly decided to join an Augustinian monastery and changed his direction from Law to Theology.

He began to absorb the predestination ideas of Saint Augustine that men are sinners (Original Sin) and are therefore predestined to whatever God has in store for them. Such a point-of-view reduces the role the Church plays in mediating a person's salvation.

At that time, Rome claimed that it, and it alone, had the only ticket to salvation. If you wanted to get to Heaven then you bought your ticket from its representatives on the only flights scheduled to get there. "You fly with us. You buy our ticket or you don't go to Heaven at all! That's it. Take it or leave it. You're in or you're out".

The Scheme
The Pope, the Roman Curia and clerics feathered their nests (amassing huge fortunes) by selling to the True Believers tickets to Heaven in the form of indulgences. This is how they pulled it off. In all their Holy Authority, the popes and clergy would draw up long lists of activities relating to everyday human behaviour and call them 'sins'. So, every day when you committed your 'sins' you attracted debits points that prevented you getting into Heaven.

Then, cleverly, Rome drew up a catalogue of indulgences. Indulgences were credit points you could collect to wipe out the debit points you had in your account. And, if you collected enough credit points, well, the Church could get you into Heaven.

Collecting Heaven Points
This was a brilliant scheme! Through indulgences, Rome had invented a kind of Holy Currency of its own. These were Heaven Points which members needed to collect to pass through the Pearly Turnstile into the 'Members' Only' enclosure in Paradise. This was the world's first loyalty marketing or frequent flyer program and has subsequently built the most powerful, multi-national, private enterprise in human history.

As a member, how did you collect the credit points? Why, you bought them, of course. The Catalogue of Indulgences listed matching Heaven Points for even the wickedest crime. Murder had its price-tag and could be absolved for 20 crowns. An assassination could be absolved for 300 livres.

But mostly, it was just the humdrum everyday human activities like gossip, envy or telling lies which were proscribed as sins and attracted ongoing debit points.

Pay Your Money, Collect Your Points
The 'Indulgence Scheme' with its Catalogue of Indulgences meant that members had to make regular purchases of Heaven Points. These credit points (known as Sanctifying Grace) were the currency you needed to save to buy your permanent condo in Paradise just like you need to save your Aussie dollars if you want to buy a condo in Surfer's Paradise. "Step right up folks. Pay your money. Collect your points. Step right up sinners! Get your Heaven Points here. How many do you want? How much money have you got? Don't push, there's plenty for everyone".

Luther's pope was one of the most infamous. He was the youngest cardinal ever. Given a Red Hat for his thirteenth birthday he became pope when he was 38. It is recorded that as the triple tiara hit his head, Pope Leo X turned to his illegitimate cousin, Giulio de' Medici, and exclaimed: "Now I can really enjoy myself".


It was Leo's ultimate act of obscene greed and blasphemy that finally pushed Luther into action. In 1517 Pope Leo X, in cahoots with Prince Albert Hohenzollern, pulled a major scam on the
long-suffering German people.

Leo offered to sell Albert the See of Mainz and the Primacy of Germany for 30,000 ducats. But, since Albert didn't have the money they conspired to raise the cash by selling indulgences to the German
people saying the money was going into a building fund St Peter's in Rome.


Using the new technology of the printing press to spread his ideas,
Luther became the first thinker ever to bring his argument to the general public. His example, soon followed by others like Calvin, began the unravelling of the authority of Rome that led to the
Reformation.

If Gutenberg was the inventor of the printing press, perhaps Martin
Luther can be considered the inventor of the media, free speech and the right for individuals to think for themselves.

It may be that the Internet is the next biggest leap for sovereign thinkers since the printing press. Perhaps the Net is becoming the new medium that will provide a fresh hope for individuals who wish to think for themselves and who, like Brother Martin, wish to defy the authoritarianism that still exists in many of today's institutions.

The Effects of PTV
How does PTV work to inhibit your abilities as a sovereign thinker? Well, as a cognitive disease, PTV in your brain can produce a number of deleterious effects. Let's look at just four manifestations of PTV:
- Brain Vain (opinion pride and conceit)
- Righteous and Sightless (consequence blindness)
- Space Glutton (output-mania)
- Lazy Critic (mistake-phobia)

Brain Vain
A brain vain thinker is one who is suffering from opinion pride. This PTV-infected brainuser is unable to see a better way of looking at things. Because the brain vain thinker is so proud of her or his own opinion they find it difficult to do any other kind of thinking but to defend it.

The more intelligent the brain vain thinker, the more they may suffer from this kind of cognitive conceit. Very bright thinkers who are PTV-infected may be only using their brainpower to defend their opinion. They are unable to escape from their viewpoint to look for a much better one.

Righteous and Sightless
The righteous brain is blind to consequences. PTV may have so incapacitated a True Believer that he is unable to see the results of his actions. In the belief that they are "morally right" any action is justified by the Righteous and Sightless, regardless of what follows. This is a very dangerous condition and so often fatal.

Millions have rushed headlong into death because 'God is on our side'. Millions have been killed because they are 'infidels', 'Jews', 'Catholics' or 'Protestants'. "I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong" is the hallmark of the Righteous and Sightless condition.

In 1994, John Paul II urged all Roman Catholic Cardinals to reflect on this aspect of the Church's history. He wrote to them asking them to seize the unique beginning of the new millennium to recognise the "dark side of its history". He asked: How can one remain silent about the many forms of violence perpetrated in the name of the faith--wars of religion, tribunals of the Inquisition and other forms of violations of the rights of persons.

Space Glutton
In a meeting, the space glutton always takes up considerably more than his or her fair share of airtime. Space gluttons may suffer from output mania, the inability to shut-up. Gathering input by listening to the opinions of others is an important cognitive skill which is crippled in the space glutton. PTV may allow the thinker to wreak such enthusiasm for her own ideas that she is quite unable to listen to others.

In business, much creativity and productivity is lost in meetings due to those suffering from this condition. This condition is disastrous for those in sales or in management.

Lazy Critic
Lazy critics suffer from mistake-phobia, the morbid fear of ever making a mistake. The PTV-infected brain has an aversion to ever being wrong. It comes from our medieval habit of looking at the world through the concept of "right" and "wrong" (not shared as much by other cultures like the Japanese).

When a sovereign thinker tries to create something, s/he never really knows what will happen. There is always risk and uncertainty. This risk is enough to keep the mistake-phobiac hiding in inertia. As an effective disguise the mistake-phobiac often assumes the role of 'the critic'.

Taking pot-shots from the relative safety of his bunker of reluctance, the lazy critic simply waits for another thinker to make a mistake and then the whingeing begins.

These are a few of the cognitive conditions caused by PTV, there are many others. The purpose of the School of Thinking is to help brainusers deal with these conditions.

Over the next 24 hours, try to notice at least one example of each of the following:
- Brain Vain (opinion pride and conceit)
- Righteous and Sightless (consequence blindness)
- Space Glutton (output-mania)
- Lazy Critic (mistake-phobia).

(Edited and Extracted from Dr Michael Hewson Gleeson Workshops)