Inferential thinking, part I

Notes for the reformation, continued

“If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless.”

—A Gurdjieff Aphorism

When I was 11 years old I was invited to a birthday party by a Jewish friend in Hamburg, Germany. I was the only goy in the crowd; my friend Avi’s mom told me I was invited because I was the only kid in the community who didn’t discriminate against the Jewish kids. She put it gently and wrapped it up in cotton balls, but we both knew that was what she was saying. This was a touchy subject to be sure, because we were in Germany, homeland of the holocaust; and by that time I’d already met a woman with a number tattooed on her forearm… not quite the same thing as what I see on all the younger people around me these days… and I’d been to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. So even at that tender age I was under no illusions as to exactly just how “loving” and “kind” human beings were to each other.