                           20050526.01

     The simple immediate truth about the mathematical
proposition is that it doesn't make sense.  And that the person
who doesn't understand it is stupid.  And that the person who
does "understand" it is learned or wise.

     But how is this wisdom to be demonstrated, how is it to be
proved? Clearly not by the judgment of the market place: for the
number of individuals who do not understand far exceeds the
number who do.  One recognizes therefore an elite, of whom
Hermann Hesse wrote so admiringly in Das Glasperlenspiel, an
elite with its own specialized language, with its secret symbols
understood only by the initiated.  Hesse underestimated the
importance and misinterpreted the significance of the fault line
which arises from the self-selection and the self-segregation of
the intellectuals.  He looked at them (viewed them) as would an
outsider, seeing only the apparent homogeneousness of their
superiority.

     From within, however, the perspective is different.  Here
there is no uniformity, no unanimity.  Indeed the separation of
the elite is replicated, if one will, by the appearance,
Erscheinung of subgroups, of sub-elites, who may then contend
with each other for primacy within the elite; and thus neutralize
each other politically, but perhaps more significant, who by
virtue of and by the mechanism of disagreement will neutralize
each other conceptually.  The conflicting notions of what is true
and of truth will leave at least the unbiased external observer
with the conclusion thats the conflicting truths have cancelled
each other; truth has disappeared, and with the disappearance of
truth so has the distinction between the elite and the vulgar.

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