[Newspoetry] Training Stands to Reason?

[Donald L Emerick]

NYTimes QUOTE OF THE DAY      October 6, 2002
"If you look at the number of people who went through the Al Qaeda training camps, and there are literally thousands who did, it stands to reason that a certain percentage of them are in this country."  JOHN E. BELL Jr., a former F.B.I. agent. 

It stands to reason that if you look at the number of people "trained" to do almost anything, almost anywhere, almost anytime, almost none of them will ever do anything remotely related to what the training intends to instill as a best (or better) practice.

For instance, look at the number of practicing Christians in the United States, and compare that with the total number trained to be Christians.  I think you will find the actual practice to trained-to-practice ratio is about 1 to a gazillion, but it could be far more astronomical than that, I suppose, if there were more people undergoing the training-to-be-a-Christian-program.

So, then, what is the purpose of training programs?  We learn so that we do not have to make the mistake of actually practicing what we have learned.  We call this error-avoidance: we learn not to make a mistake.  So, our thinking, as people, somewhere, must decide that if it is important enough to be taught, it is important enough never to be done, because it must be a big mistake.

I do not want to mistaken for a pessimist, in general -- just as a person who has a very low regard for the actual success of most training programs that he has ever experienced.  People just want the sheep-skin and are willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes and told that the piece of paper in their hands is a sheep-skin -- even though it is much more like their fore-skin.  (Is there where the Yiddish says "Schmucks!" and means it?)

So, I think I agree that training stands to reason, but I think that it also stands to piss me off when you think that you know how unreasoning the trained become -- for they always find ways to avoid the consequences of their having been trained.  And, as we deconstructionists will have always already noticed, look who is talking, now!  Why, it's a former FBI agent: a person trained at the nation's expense to serve the nation's interest!  He does not do what his training prepared him to do -- instead, he sells his labors (as must we all, somedays, I suppose) for more money.

So, if there remain any undetected Al Qaeda trained persons, the question is never whether they were trained -- but whether they were ever properly motivated to use that training, extensively.  And, the answer, sadly, perhaps, or fortunately, perhaps, or even otherwise, perhaps, is that ideology of training motivates only very small consequences against the larger and more general kinds of motivations rampant in our world.  (And, this very fact, be it noted, is descried by many persons, including -- perhaps strangely -- even the religious devouts who adhered to bin Laden -- a fact that is rarely sighted and never given it true weight in any America media stories, because we Americans prefer to talk about complex problems in the simple black-and-white languages of our even simpler-minded idiocy, where good and bad truly exist, where it is possible to be certain, all of the time, that you are, precisely, always right and always on the side of right.

And that this dangerous ideology runs so deep in America was proved when we had our great civil war -- and we both were wholly willing to mindlessly slaughter the evil of the other one, because we were certain that we were wholly right and wholly on the side of total goodness -- and this kind of fervored blindness has marked how we have approached and entered into all of our war practices.  For we think we are trained to be good citizens of a democracy -- which training we exemplify in how we treat those who dissent from Der Leader's path.

Civil liberties: Are they useful only to those who need them for protection?  Well, the majority says, "we don't really need freedom of the press (and it is rare that we ever actually see it anyway); and free speech? why we should not allow it when it imperils our Leader's war plans!  And the right to form political associations and not to be accused of a crime, except on the doing of some actual and substantial act that constitutes that crime itself?  Well, Ashcroft now freely substitutes the ghostly vapors of insubstantial conspiracy for the true bodies of deceased crimes.

Almost anything, in this premeditated pre-emptive world is lighter than air, holier than thou, turning you, by its emptiness, into the hollow man whose head piece is stuffed with straw -- while the world goes gang-banging in the night, goes good night-ladies, farewell gentle-men... when I have been trained to stand up for reason and not to let it stand to reason, by itself, like some infinite automata, typing telepathetically its commands to me as on my console.

Thanks, again, for listening
or, better yet, for not listening and
thus, maybe, for doing what listening never teaches,
which is what the stuff of truth is,
which must be a learning otherwise,
Donald L Emerick
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