I first heard Jan Irvin interviewed on the Alex Jones Show on the subject of the Trivium and logical fallacies as a way for people to protect themselves from propaganda, deception and disinformation.

This interview at Red Ice Creations is a good introduction.

The Trivium series can be found here at Gnostic Media.

The Trivium is the first three subjects in the Seven Liberal Arts: grammar, logic and rhetoric. In other words: knowledge, understanding and wisdom:

1. Collect all the knowledge or data (general “grammar”) you can find on a subject.

2. Apply logic to the knowledge and remove contradictions. This includes the subject of logical fallacies.

3. Be able to explain what you have learned to yourself and others.

To get a clearer picture of reality, repeat these steps more than once if necessary, and repeat for every topic that interests you. Life-long learning.

The series discusses how these disciplines are missing from the education system.

One major type of control in our society is the skewing of information by the power structure, by the corporate and government controlled news media so that only part of the story is presented. This shapes our opinions and view of reality.

We are trained to not even see there is a manipulative power structure, even though we constantly hear of information that has been kept secret for decades, classified or declassified.

I think this whole situation we are born into – with the way we are taught and the way the media presents us with information – is meant to confuse us and to make the world seem like a confusing jumble. Everything just seems to become an uncertain “opinion”. There is so much confusing information out there – on alternative or mainstream sites – that we are mind-bombed and not able to feel confident about obtaining some kind of objective knowledge.

The episodes by John Taylor Gatto, for example, present the historical evidence that this type of dis-empowerment through lack of knowledge is intentional. There is an elitist class that runs this power structure. It’s just not mentioned in school or by the media.

They leave that part out, the part about the international banks controlling our governments through debt and printing money out of nothing. We are taught that we live in an Egalitarian Democracy where amazing experts boss us around.

When they send millions off to be exterminated in the trenches of World War I, that’s the elite sending them. When they fluoridate the water with toxic waste, that’s the elite doing that.

As part of step 2, there are many questions we don’t ask about our society, such as: What kind of people inject syphilis into Guatemalan mental patients and others? Why don’t you have a say on each major piece of legislation? We need to remove the inconsistencies in our view of what kind of system we live under.

In any case, maybe because of the confusion, not just because of laziness and impatience, we don’t go through step 1 properly of gathering all the data (“grammar”). Instead we prematurely jump to step 2 of trying to work through our logic and conclusions about reality based on partial data. We need to spend much more time on step 1.

We fall into traps because we are NAIVE about the criminality of the system we live under, and therefore we don’t dig for the information that is available but which is put just out of reach. We think the media and school system is there to hand the truth to us, but they don’t. So we don’t know. We also think that the more elevated the institutions are, the more credible and truthful they are. I wish the facts didn’t show the reverse!

As far as step #2 (logic or understanding, removing contradictions and inconsistencies), we are not nearly skeptical enough towards established institutions. So whether on a smaller scale, in terms of being conned by a cult, or on a larger scale, of being conned by war propaganda, we actually ignore the problems and inconsistencies that are there in the open, even briefly mentioned in the media. We make excuses for the questions that arise in our minds and suppress them immediately. We would prefer to believe the world wasn’t so top heavy with con artists.

I don’t necessarily agree with all the points of view expressed in this series, about hallucinogens for example, which is beside the point. I could also say the same for other sites linked to. But I want to share this series with others because there is some great information in the episodes I have heard so far.