Mark Mason

18 November 2011

Jeff,

This is a simple thank you for writing the book, Disciplined Minds. When I completed my doctoral work in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, I was conflicted. I was proud of the hard work, but I was confused because something was seriously wrong with academia. It took me some years to clean the foggy windows of my mind. Your book adds immeasurably to the understanding of the function of the educated class.

I am preparing a talk to be given at law schools in the Philippines. I prefer Facebook to academia and the published "scholarly" journals. I have come full circle and your book and thinking is like some kind of touchstone crystallizing decades of confusion.

The objective of state-sponsored education is to produce competent, but invisible technocrats capable of the freest kind of inquiry into the details of subatomic physics, and the fullest investigation of deep evolutionary history of humans, but we are not permitted to ask, what is the just society. We are not permitted to ask, Who am I? Your book asks that taboo question, Who am I. The response to your book, as you know, the punishment you received is concrete evidence that the thesis of your book is correct.

I am available to give my talk in the US, but I don't think anyone wants to hear it. No one is interested.

Regards,

Mark Mason PhD

http://www.masonphd.net