The Case against "Thirst for Knowledge"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Picqued, but not silent, in Darien is Yaleocomrade D. X. Miller (’63).

If there exists any "education bubble" at all, naturally you and I would take for granted that the uppuffin’ thereof began _anno religionismi_ 1112-1701-5460, being ... lemme see ... three hundred and ten solar revs ago a week from next Wednesday.

I imagine the chagrin felt by ex-President (as he already was [0]) Mather on hearing how far Neohaven was pushin’ its neoterroristity. I imagine his scion, taking one eye off the Invisible World for a moment, remarking "¿You mean to tell me, Daddy, that those boondocks hicks out there want another option when they already have Wunnerful US? ¡Maybe The End really is nigh!" [1]

Moving whight along, I believe I told you about the spread-ego Homeland™er of about 1273-1857-5618 who advised some vagrant Old Euro "England has two universities; Prussia eleven. In Ohio, however, we have sixty-eight thousand, four hundred and twenty one." [2]

***

One trouble with free-lance scabs for Party an’ AEIdeology is nicely illustrated by the yaleocomrade: DXM-63 is only vaguely on the proper page. The neomechanism can find a market for its higher school-bashin’ because the big Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters of its faction definitely want some such bashin’ done just at the moment, yet the mechanism does it its own way, or possibly Frank Sinatra’s way. We get past the theme "Too many kids go to college" safely enough, but then the yaleopiper wanders off into dissonant variations of its own willful ivy-tower devisin’ not at all suitable for AstroTurf™baggin’ purposes.

Especially notice the bit where the oboes and bagpipes wail "To spend four unproductive college years only to be spit out at the end with no more thirst for knowledge than upon entry is a waste."

¡As if those wunnerful folks who give us wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’-down, MurdochNews an’ yellow-pajama ‘journalism’, are likely to be interested in helpin’ to inflate a Thirst-for-Knowledge Bubble!

Plainly the sort of pipin’ Daddy Warbucks an’ Uncle Scrooge _y Tio Ruperto_ have in mind to fund on this subject is quite different. Too much booklarnin’ is to be discouraged because Wally an’ Cindy Wingnut are gonna find themselves neo-appalled one of these days when Wally Junior comes back from St. Dilbert Antistate College havin’ larned nothin’ in particular that will get him a good job an’ get it for him _pronto_. [3]

"Thirst for knowledge" is not even neutral, Dr. Bones. From the Scrooge-Warbucks-Murdoch-Strangesimon standpoint, it is positively deleterious. Suppose the personnel manager somewhere down the Great Chain of Corporation slips up an’ actually engages a thirst-crazed Wally. Suppose the thirst extends to knowin’ how Black Helicopters Dogmatic Slumberware Inc. (let’s call the subsidiary) works, and who makes it work, and who they make it work for -- and so on, and so forth. Next thing you know, very likely, Wingnut Jr. will be foregatherin’ with Union Thugs, or ambulance chasers, with "community organizers," even, to try to make BHDS work different -- to make it work what Wallyboy would call ‘better’ or ‘fairer’, but Big Management is far more likely to call "flat-out theft an’ Bolshevism."

I don’t claim that this needless tragedy is bound to happen in every single case, but it does happen in so many cases as to have become a cultural cliché out at Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie. Panamá is even farther out than that; perhaps the yaleocomrade is simply unacquianted with conditions that have developed in the _Heimatland G*ttes_ since he emigrated hence.

The neomechanism itself may have that excuse, but I cannot think of an excuse -- off-hand, anyway -- for Roger, Freelord Strangesimon, who has opened his blog to this manifest subversive.

It can hardly count as a proper excuse that his freelordship has perverted to Party an’ AEIdeology only recently an’ may not yet have fully grasped all the implications. ’Tis not a recondite implication, after all, that "thirst for knowledge" must be a permanent menace to keepin’ the Secret Sector secret. [4]

_Señores las indocumentadas y los indocumentados_ have an apopthegm _Saber es poder_, "knowledge is power." Though not, in my judgment, 100% accurate, there is enough in that to cause Strangesimon an’ Scrooge an’ Warbucks _y Tio Ruperto_ serious alarm, ¡were they but aware! Wingnut Minor is a stick of dynamite even if it has never (yet) crossed the overeducated little laddies’ mind that he might conceivably be thirstin’ for a swig of the hard stuff, not just Saber Lite, but El Poderoso Añejo.

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


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[0] ¡Oops! Big LEW says "On June 27, 1692 he became the President, a position which he held until September 6, 1701."

Chronology corrected, the possibility appears to arise that the Birth of Ed Bubble was itself the cause of the termination of Mather Minor. However I am quite sure that if that was the case, I would have read about it long ago. Unless I have forgotten my Perry Miller altogether, at least half of Hill City City hated the prototype of Neocomrade President L. H. Summers (’##) for more or less Larrysommersville reasons, lots of chickenshit politics that did not rise to the dignity of Dogmatic Mythology.

**

[1] I imagine the substance of the speech only, the magnaliaquence of that young (as he then was, probably, sorta) man’s style being well off my scope.

You might, by the way, consider the whole business a subtle joke by Father Zeus at the expense of Master Cotton’s gran’daddy: "You want to call your brat ‘Increase’, eh? Well. EYE shall grant him some increase that will not soon be forgotten!" Especially funny would be if one of the Salem Village coven freedames had put the ed-bubble idea into Himself’s head in the first place.

***

[2] I won’t go to the stake for the exact numbers, which do not matter to make the point.


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[3] That is the cause that the Freelords an’ Kiddiemasters want their agitproppers to bring to the attention of Mr. & Mrs. Wingnut. They themselves have, of course, other an’ loftier corporate reasons of their own to deprecate overschoolin’ the lower orders, reasons which had better be kept in the comfy shadows of the Secret Sector than exposed naked for us lieberals an’ demoncrat donkeys to probably use against.

***

[4] Though Strangesimon is far from bestembright enough to play such a game, a really fiendish Kiddiemaster might conceivably hire Wingnut Minor, "thirst for knowledge" and all. His freelordship would then procede to tantalize the poor boob for a while, keepin’ him on the payroll as long as he’ll stay, but never, ever, lettin’ him near even the smallest scrap of _poder_, no matter how much _saber_ he comes by.

Plainly Don Gradgrindo would have to be very secure against data theft to attempt this.

Or maybe not -- were the Don a throroughgoin’ _entrepreneur_ an’ devotee of Destructive Creationism™, he could perhaps engage Master Wally (junior) as a sort of canary for his mine, carefully watchin’ Wally attempt to slake that Millerite thirst an’ thus find out whether there are any information leakages his freelordship’s regular unthirsty peons have failed to notice.

If there are, I suppose Wally will have to be dismissed when he finds them. Which would probably make him a conscious bolshie ever after.

Though even this is not absolutely certain: I can imagine a pscenario in which the Don makes Wally one of those unrefusable offers Dons like to make, maybe even lettin’ him marry the daughter an’ hope to inherit the widget mine in the traditional Horatio Alger way, PROVIDED Wally carries all his knowledge with him to the grave. To the grave of Don Gradgrindo, if not necessarily Wally’s own.

But obviously I am gettin’ fantastic fast. In practice, Don Gradgrindo should just glance at the lad’s résumé and then give instructions that calls from that direction should not be returned. ¿Why take chances?

His freelordship might also arrange to be spared personal interviews in future with anybooby else recommended to him by Don Danielito Miller de Darién y Neohaven. ¿Why waste time?