February 6, 2005 -- (Somewhere in Oregon) One of the most human characteristics of human knowledge is that the "top" of the knowledge heap and the "bottom" of the knowledge heap, while they may seem far apart, are intimately related and not necessarily removed from each other. It is not the difference between knowing nothing and knowing everything or something in between. That would only be the way knowledge looks through competitive western eyes.

Jefferson put it this way, that "He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." In getting close to the truth, a shortage of formal education is no proof of being ignorant and an abundance of formal education is no proof of being knowledgeable. It depends more upon our values, what we "know" and what we know.

A nice example of "knowing" and knowing comes from ancient Greek medicine. Based on material necessity and empirical observations of contagion, Greek physicians induced the existence of material causes of disease, "miasmas" that could be avoided in the interest of disease prevention. Greek physicians "knew" disease to have material causes because they had rejected explanations involving superstition and supernaturalism. Having rejected nonsense, they relied on "common sense," i.e., human logic that transcends prevailing cultural logic, which very often is not logical at all (AxisofLogic, Feb. 22, 2005). The imposed "logic" of the Bush administration, for example, is found in the Old Testament western notion that nothing can be explained outside of a religious context, that everything can be justified within a religious context, and that comprehension requires invocations of deity.

Science and "we, the people" did not KNOW disease to have material causes until the latter 19th century with Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur's identification of pathogenic microorganisms. The Greek "miasmas" (invisible but material causes of disease) were right here on earth in the form of cholera vibrios and anthrax bacilli. Science had moved from "knowing" (i.e., accepting) something (hypothetical knowledge) to knowing (i.e., believing) something (theoretical knowledge). With this empirical validation of material causes of disease came also a validation of Socratic wisdom and his insight that "Knowledge is recollection." Science now knew what it had "known" all along, in spite of religious perversions of the "why" of disease.

As we work our way up the evolving heap of empirical/logical knowledge, that knowledge must be consistent with empirical observation, it must be consistent with intuitive knowledge (that which we can "know" without knowing it) and it must be held together by and provided conceptual context within larger natural philosophical frameworks embracing all knowledge. At the very top of the heap, where all knowledge can be seen in context, the deepest meaning of that knowledge has been known on intuitive ground all along, i.e., that all is one, that all is interconnected, that all is as we see it and interpret what we see, that God is thoughtful and caring.

In other words, it is possible on the basis of human values and empirical/intuitive knowledge to grasp core human knowledge and to "know" human truth. Likewise, it is possible on the basis of human values and empirical/logical knowledge to grasp core human knowledge and to know human truth. How one gets there does not matter so much as getting there. The difference between "knowing" and knowing is that the latter allows for asking and answering more questions in ways that have operational significance. In other words, while the Greek miasma theory allowed for effective disease prevention in the 19th century, the Germ Theory allowed for even more effective prevention and, ultimately, effective agent-related therapy in the 20th century.

All human thought can be reduced to value-laden precepts from which further thought flows. In the case of religion, this begins with the male values of law and order, obedience, punishment and the concepts of self-righteous vengeance and preemptive violence. In the case of democracy, this begins with dialectic human values and the concepts of human rights, freedom, fairness and equality. Operationally, these values translate into individual voice in government and guaranteed access to educational and medical needs. If, for example, operational policies in your world are not consistent with the values of democracy, then you are not living in a democracy.

Democracy is utterly dependent on human values and knowledge. With the post-Newton Industrial Revolution, capitalism became increasingly dependent on scientific knowledge in its quest for dominion. With the post-Einstein Informational Revolution, capitalism has emerged, like democracy, with an utter dependence on scientific knowledge, but it is a shallow and perverted interest restricted almost entirely to knowledge with technical application, worldly knowledge useful in the creation of new commodities with "cash value" in a consumer-oriented society.

Both religion and capitalism see science as properly being in servitude to the marketplace. Religious capitalism in America has taken this to such an extreme, it has created a national curriculum that is virtually irrelevant to living under capitalistic dominion. It teaches young people nothing about capitalism, its values and its historical roots in colonialism and imperialism. By virtue of this imposed ignorance, it has produced the most ahistorical, aphilosophical socioeconomic system in the western world.

Employing knowledge to make money is not without merit, but that application is only one worldly part of what science and human knowledge are all about. They are also about solving human problems and here is where the marketplace has no business. They are also about the real world and our relationships to the world and to each other. They are about self-concept and what it means to be human.

So, where do we, as individuals, fit into the larger knowledgeable scheme of things in which we are an inherent part of the whole? In contrast to democracy, religious capitalism weighs relative human worth in terms of money, power and possessions. The more you have, the better you look in the eyes of the Roman God, the more you deserve to be in control. Democracy weighs relative human worth in terms of what we "know," what we know and what we contribute to the whole.

Knowledge begins with human values, specifically the values necessary to science, e.g, honesty, integrity, compassion. If you know that "Truth, logic, and passion in thought, word, and action are the only alternatives" (an Axis of Logic editor, personal communication, 2005), then you are on top of the heap. If you have just fallen off a bar stool and you know and honor the values of democracy, then you are on top of the heap. If you know that God is thoughtful and caring, that God is manifest only through our ideas, words and actions, then you are on top of the heap.

One only has to consider the alternatives. If you are a CEO among the already-too-rich in the competitive world of "bidness" and you have just "liberated" a few million dollars from your stockholders and you don't know the least damned thing about the values of democracy, then where in hell on earth are you? If you have, in some religious fervor, gone along with lies and hubris to support an immoral war in Iraq and nourish terrorism, all in the name of the Christ, then where in hell on earth are you?

It is worth one's time to have a human answer to these questions.