Monday Ménage: Knowledge. Born Ignorant. Unbelievable Thing.

Thomas Hobbes. Baruch Spinoza. The Former Guy.

Desire of knowledge, and of arts of peace, inclineth men to obey a common power; for such desire, containeth a desire of leisure; and consequently protection from some other power than their own. … And they make little, or no inquiry into natural causes of things, yet from the fear that proceeds from the ignorance itself, of what it is that hath the power to do them much good or harm, are inclined to suppose, and feign unto themselves, several kinds of powers invisible; and to stand in awe of their own imaginations; and in time of distress to invoke them; as also in time of an expected good success, to give them thanks; making the creatures of their own fancy, their gods. Thomas Hobbes, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, 1651.

The natural right of the individual man is determined, not by sound reason, but by desire and power. All are not naturally conditioned so as to act according to the laws and rules of reason; nay, on the contrary, all men are born ignorant, and before they can learn the right way of life and acquire the habit of virtue, the greater part of their life, even if they have been well brought up, has passed away. Nevertheless, they are in the meanwhile bound to live and preserve themselves as far as they can by the unaided impulses of desire. Nature has given them no other guide, and has denied them the present power of living according to sound reason; so that they are no more bound to live by the dictates of an enlightened mind, than a cat is bound to live by the laws of the nature of a lion. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and Tractatus Politicus, 1670.

I actually took one when I — very recently, when I — when I was — the radical left were saying, is he all there? Is he all there? And I proved I was all there, because I got — I aced it. I aced the test. I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors. And they were very surprised. They said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did. The Former Guy on Cognitive Test; was given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in 2018.

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