SO FAR WE have looked at PTV, how it arose spread via the medieval Church into the Western education system. We saw how this truth-driven education system with its emphasis on 'the search for certainty' was exported to Australia and around the world, and, how your own brain may have become infected.
The Effects of PTV
If this is so, 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. Lets look at just four manifestations of PTV:
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 of being '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 of Queen and country. 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 air-time. Space gluttons may suffer from output mania, the inability to shut up.
Gathering input by listening to the opinions of others in 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 those of others.
In business, much creativity and productivity is lost in meetings due to those suffering from this condition is disastrous for those in sales or in marketing.
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, she never really knows what will happen. There is always risk and uncertainty. This risk is enough to keep the mistake-phobic hiding in inertia. As an effective disguise the mistake-phobic often assumes the role of 'the critic'.
Taking pot-shots from the relative safety of his reluctance, the lazy critic simply waits for another thinker to make a mistake and then the whining 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.
The Brain Software
You can do this by using the brain software which we developed in the School of Thinking. This is the first real software for the brain ever invented to overcome PTV. The brain software is provided in Part Two offline of this book and is for, you to use at school, at work, at home and at play.
It consists of four software packages for your brain. These software packages contain 15 mind - tools. These mind - tools can be used by the brainuser in an ever-widening repertoire of combinations to produce a virtually unlimited number of effects.
The neuro-software is expressed in a four-part code: SDNT CVSTOBVS QRH PRR. Each abbreviation stands for a specific piece of brain software which will be dealt with in the following chapters.
Once it is programmed into your brain, the neuroware helps to neutralise PTV by giving you, the brainuser, a simple way to increase your awareness of the thinking strategies that are available to you in any situation that comes your way.
BRAIN TRAINING
Over the next 24 hours, try to notice at least one example of each of the following:
The main ideas in Part One area:
The Truth, the idea that there is an objective truth, was invented by Plato. Strong defence of The Truth diminished the thinker's ability to escape from his viewpoint to find a much better one. This condition is called PTV, Plato Truth Virus.
Aristotle imbedded PTV in his syllogism. This was picked up by Thomist doctrine and became the basis of logic. Western education has made a god out of logic and the 'search for certainty'.
The Western education system was set up by the medieval Church and spread throughout Europe and exported to other parts of the world. Even today, children are sent to school, their young brains programmed with the logic operating system, and then they're given the impression that all they have to do in life is 'to get the right answer' or 'tell the truth'.
Only Microsoft's global export of Bill Gates' DOS has ever rivaled the Vatican's global export of Thomas Aquinas' PTV.
PTV is ubiquitous. Manifestations can be annoying like Space Gluttons and Bores or fatal like Bullies and Righteous and Sightless thinkers. Over 26 million humans have been destroyed this century directly due to PTV.
Unfair Conclusion?
It is only with the unfair advantage of hindsight that one is able to look back on the evolution of our thinking habits and consider the consequences that they may have produced.
Did Plato ever realise what might happen as a consequence of the ideas that emerged from those Bacchanalian dinner parties he attended on those hot Athenian summer nights?
Did Saint Thomas Aquinas ever anticipate how rigorously later popes would prosecute his ideas and make them the core doctrine of the greatest education enterprise in history?
To be fair, I don't see how they could. Plato and Thomas were not villains. I imagine they were just doing what interested them most at the time and hoping for a modest amount of success.
Could Bill Gates ever have known he would become the richest businessman in the world when he first developed DOS? In his book he says he once remarked to Paul Allen that a million dollars was a huge amount of money, and he could never imagine having more than that.
Hmmm ;)
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