Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Literacy, Lunacy and Lamentations.

  • Who would like to be labelled as a lamenting loon with a loathsome lack of literacy?
  • What if definition thrusts you, even partially, into that position?
  • If untutored thoughts and expressions, wild postulations, and sorrow over present, or potential future, outcomes exert control, does the shoe fit?
  • Since literacy is comprehensively defined as: “The ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that allows effective communication and make sense of the world,” is that you?
  • If etymological, moon-based lunacy is craziness, how is it displayed, manifested in life?
  • If ineffective communication and a senseless sense of the world, as judged by personal measuring sticks, are normal, who is loony?
  • With certainty?
  • If threatened or thrust into a pit of despair, especially if politically generated, and Jeremiah-like lamentations are accompanied by a lashing out at the obvious stupidity and venality of others, how literate or lunatic is the situation?
  • What to do?
  • Why not just blurt out today’s Third-Degree title and storm around the house a bit or?
  • Is reading all the words, not just those reinforcing of position, a sign of literacy? Watch out for headlines?
  • Is writing down and testing thoughts with pause, pondering and editing a sign of literacy or lunacy?
  • Should literate listening augment hearing and recognize gradation of meaning, context, humor, satire, unsettling truth, posturing or falsity?
  • Are we right to reject a speaker’s words and the author’s writings, if observed actions don’t reinforce same?
  • How about issue loyalists on the payroll?
  • By example, do green new dealers, global warming and climate change “experts” deserve informed skepticism at minimum?
  • Is authenticity paramount? Does mistake, or grievous error by leadership shake our literate souls or is it the aftermath?
  • Are spin, duplicitous language, outright lies and cover up more grievous and test our own senses trying to make sense of the world domestically and internationally?
  • Is there an almost, irresistible tendency to explode with “To L With It” and blow off any semblance of literate behavior?
  • To “L” with that option, keep marchin’?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. “The answers and actions are yours.”