"The cognizance of reality is a sad experience. It teaches the limits on the satisfaction of one’s wishes. Only reluctantly does man resign himself to the insight that there are things, viz., the whole complex of all causal relations between events, which wishful thinking cannot alter... We must see conditions as they really are, not as we want them to be."
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
Human Action (1949), Omnipotent Government (1944)
Yet, regardless the political persuasions, preferences, particulars, partisanships, all sorts of imaginations foment and fester within the common mind often beyond awareness and perception. Insomuch distortion, delusion, perversion, psychosis quite inevitable whether to imagine then assume "what once was" as natural, orthodox, even pristine although contrary to fact's consistency, else to imagine then presume "what could be" as desirable, evolutionary, even utopian although contrary to truth's consistency. Now combine these imaginations with personal, preferential lists of rights, ethics, moralities, pieties, and unavoidable the array of inconsistencies then complexities, creatively written into various isms and ocracies that solicit sentiment, emotion, till frenzy, thereupon elicit irrationality, erraticism, till violence.
If to reassess and identify the earliest of missteps, observe the subtle departures then incremental digressions, water-shedding from the most pinnacle of fundamental understandings, hence the below quote by 19th century economist and logician W.S. Jevons...
"These laws describe the very simplest truths, in which all people must agree, and which at the same time apply to all notions which we can conceive. It is impossible to think correctly and avoid evident self-contradiction unless we observe what are called the Three Primary Laws of Thought, which may be stated as follows:
1. The Law of Identity. Whatever is, is.
2. The Law of Contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be.
3. The Law of Excluded Middle. Everything must either be or not be.
Though these laws when thus stated may seem absurdly obvious...I have found that students are seldom able to see at first their full meaning and importance."
William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882)
Elementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive (1870)
Instead of clumsily paraphrasing what Jevons eloquently wrote, I strongly recommend rereading his quote two or three times, then focus on the last sentence regarding students while inwardly reflecting. Better still, I strongly recommend reading his book.
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Come let us Reason. Peace is always a Choice.
Study, Ponder, Labor, till last Breath.
Is 1:18 / Mt 5:9 / 2 Tm 2:15 / Cl 3:23
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