There are ~258,000,000 voting age citizens in America. ~150,000,000 votes were cast. As you saw and read, I voted. But I didn’t vote for either of the main two candidates.

My sister-in-law graduated from the Ivy League. She voted for one of the two.

My longest standing friend is working on his dissertation and steps away from a PhD—he voted for one of the two.

I don’t have a degree beyond bachelors, but that’s not for lack of ability or low book count or inability to write.

In short, a year or two after I exhausted my GI Bill at the seminary (three years of courses), I finally discovered what institutional education is all about. The goal of all institutional education is to write the 101 or entry level text in your field. For Seminarians, that means being on the NIV committee, or a competitor. For all others, it literally means Literature 101, History 101, Biology 101 etc. My point is that I do not care to write that book. I do not see education proper, the education of a man or woman, as being some big ego contest. “Look at me! I wrote the book that teaches the world!!”

Education is about simple acquisition of knowledge. It is about truth in the biggest sense. People who are truly more educated should tell the truth more. They should also naturally be able to teach and defend the truth successfully, without much effort. And this acquisition, and possible dissemination, of knowledge should feel good enroute.

Notice that this “truth” result of education I propose only incidentally relates to decision making, or behavior, or moneymaking etc. There are, I believe, sharply distinguished compartments in life that rarely overlap. A PhD can have added something profound to add to human knowledge, while also gambling away his family fortune. In short, knowledge can be distinct from morality. But when the knowledgable, when the educated man or woman speaks in earnest, then they should speak more truth than those less educated. This concept is not much different than parent to child.

“I want cookies for breakfast,” says the child. The parent responds, “You can’t have cookies for breakfast (implied “cookies are too powerful a force for your mind and body, and obesity and early disease/death aren’t worth the fleeting joy).”

“EV’s are efficient,” say the uneducated. The educated respond, “That assessment is based on the assumption that the efficiency we care about starts once the electricity is in the EV. Is that the only starting point?”

Trackin’?

Why this post? Because my sister-in-law believes she cast her vote for her candidate because she is smarter than me. And my buddy now defends his vote with his “history PhD” knowledge/status. “Your vote makes you an appeaser, like Chamberlain,” he says.

I join the “I voted how I voted because of my education level” fray, but on this different plane. Ivy League education means nothing if you join hands with 70,000,000 less educated citizens. PhD means nothing if you join hands with 75,000,000 less educated citizens. And if you believe these are educated citizens, then what was/is the point of institutional education? Because it certainly ain’t supposed to be merely trade skills. IE: “I’m an expert welder and therefore I can say I am educated. I am a biology textbook author and therefore I can say I am educated.” No. No one believes that. To be educated means something more, even if it is difficult to say precisely what it means.

I already shared that politics is personal. But education does overlap into life, especially when it occurs at the intensity I am discussing.

In short, I am still bothered, four days later, by the fact that these two non-party members couldn’t figure a way to do their noble duty without getting emotional and casting a vote for candidates that they could easily admit they would never support under any other circumstances.

One totally different angle on the concept is this: I have recorded here many times that Ethiopia is a country whose cultures do not value education. Where “education” occurs, they “teach” each other from used “Western” textbooks in broken English. It is an astonishing behavior. And yet my wife’s brother angrily asked her why I didn’t vote for Trump. And despite my having explained myself both at length and in short, my wife said she really didn’t understand herself and so just told him, “You’d have to ask Pete yourself.”

If some of the least educated people on the earth (no offense) come to a conclusion, then by my thinking the most educated people cannot come to the same conclusion.

You’re different. So be different.

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Oh, and if any faithful reader is interested, the chalk essay I mentioned the other day is truly an incredible description of how once you analyze the “chalk”, you learn it is part inorganic, part organic. After this, you realize it is also part remnants of sea creatures and land creatures. And what is more, there are layers. So apparently the chalk parts of the earth have sometimes been dry land and other times the bottom of the sea.

I do not know enough about all these facts. But I have to say they came across as reasonable, though I still am inclined to find weakness in the theories regarding super old and unguided formation of the universe. I will keep reading but am not certain I will care enough to further explore all there is on these twin topics outside of my present reading plan.