[June 21, 2022] Educating ourselves is no easy task but necessary. It’s difficult because you have to find people who can tell you what to read and how to write to formulate your thoughts more precisely. The world is full of ideologues and puppet masters (pulling the strings of many), and they are happy to misdirect and obscure what you need to know.
Universities are full of those who would send you off course; redirect you to a place that portends good but is not. Today’s abdication of advanced education to simplistic ideologies is a reason to educate ourselves. My warning is to be very careful when walking the grounds of formal education; you could fall into the traps of those who hold dear to a secular religion that claims, wrongly, to be the model of moral virtue.
Learn how to write. If you can write, then you can think. If you can think, write, and communicate, you are unbelievably powerful because your arguments can move the world forward. If you can tighten and construct your arguments well and carefully think through them, you’re a serious force to contend with. You will be powerful.
This is what we are not educated about in schools, from grade 1 to the graduate schools of great universities. They have done us a disservice. Yet, if your education is proper and balanced, it organizes your mind, grounds you, and puts you on a solid foundation. But, to do so, you must study the right people, the great people of the past.
I have put together a reading list that can create a basis for authentic learning and includes writers such as Orwell, Huxley, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Frankl, and the Bible. Many of these writers are covered in articles under my blog; go there a read them. The men who wrote these texts help us follow the logical pathways that the greatest minds have chosen. You must read these books because they address our culture’s central issues TODAY.
If you fail to read these great men, you cannot participate in the current debates over the great ideas except as a puppet (and you don’t know who is pulling your strings or why). If you read these men, you can figure out what else to read. But if you chose the difficult path, read them. You will find it very hard, and you will come out on the other end a different person.
You can decide to either be an intellectual infant, which is not something I recommend or choose the proper path. And when you do that, you will have to face what we all fear, a path few have chosen, but you will be truly free.
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Please read my new book, “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).
Wow, Gen. Satterfield, you certainly nailed this article on whether we should educate ourselves. I’ll say it another way that you and the others here can appreciate. You are RESPONSIBLE for your own education. Now, that does not apply to children because they don’t know better but if you are an adult, it’s all about you taking on the job to ensure you have the skills to be a better person.
Good comment, Lynn. I’m on board with this. Gen. S. is giving us the forum and the guidelines. Now it’s up to us.
This article is a good reason to keep reading this leadership blog authored by Gen. Satterfield. If you want to read real ideas about how to be a better leader or person, this is the place to go. Thank you Gen. S. for your efforts and for making this website ad free (others are soooo irritating).
….. and a great patriot to boot.
https://www.theleadermaker.com/why-im-an-american-patriot/
Got that right.
Silly me, and I thought college was for education. Now, I know it’s to indoctrinate. So sad.
Gen. Satterfield, you certainly got my interest with your article. First, thanks! I love it when our systems are criticized properly because we should take it to heart and fix those problems. Second, we need to take this idea of educating ourselves to a new level and begin some sort of organizations that can help (with the right leadership). Maybe start simple and work up. Just an idea.
Read Gen. Satterfield’s reading list. And there is a link for a much longer list that I’ve already started. But before you do that, go out onto Amazon and buy his book, leave a review, and then help him by giving feedback. Here’s the link for his book: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Longest-Year-Iraq-Construction/dp/1737915510/
Got my copy. Best read I’ve had on a book in years!
Me too. Get a copy of Gen. Satterfield’s new book (from late last year) and read it. Learn about the Iraq War – not the blood and guts, but overcoming bureaucracy and stupidity of our so-called leaders. Our Longest Year in Iraq will help set you straight.
I bought my copy last week and am enjoying it every day. Quick, easy read. Reads like he talks.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle
Good quote. And this exactly what today’s university academics can not do.
Pow, got that right. Too many accept anything at all that is said to them. They ping pong back and forth from one ideology to another. They are not grounded in any basic values – core values are adrift – and they are reward with good grades, not based on thought, but based on regurgitating the pabulum of the brainless.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” …. Benjamin Franklin
“If you fail to read these great men, you cannot participate in the current debates over the great ideas except as a puppet (and you don’t know who is pulling your strings or why).” OUCH. Gen. Satterfield nailed it with this comment.
A great question proposed, “Should we educate ourselves?” Of course, the answer is up for debate but I believe – in my honest opinion – that we are not just responsible for our own education but for our families too. Do not be distracted by the shinny objects colleges put up for us to attract another generation of robots, walking jackbooted to the neo-Marxist ideologies of progressivism and anti-good. These people are EVIL and they know it.
Ouch, tell us what you think Max. But, I will say, I agree 100%.
Excellent article, and scary in its own right. ✔
Yep, do NOT trust the woke big colleges any more. They are full of anti-Americanism and anti-Christian perverts.
“Pervert” is such a weak term. They are much much worse. Our universities are cesspools of ignorance, the opposite of their mission.
All the more reason we should take Gen. Satterfield’s approach and educate ourselves but we still must find those who can help and guide us and those folks are few and far between. That then, becomes the issue for those of us wanting to find a better “education.” 👍
If you trust the college professors for anything, on anything, then expect your brain to become mush with a bunch of slogans and you will never learn how to think for your self and never be free.