Ronald V. Huggins

The singular "they" has become quite broadly accepted in many fields as a way of avoiding repetition of they, (for "he" or "she,") and "them" for "him or her"). You can replace the masculine first person singular with something like "(s)he," but you run into a wall when you get to him/her or his/her and so are still pushed back toward the singular "they, "them, "their" and so on.    There actually was a reason for the use of the collective masculine (present in many languages) other than the desire to promote patriarchy, it actually facilitated compactness of style. You can achieve the same thing now by using "she" and "her" instead of "he" and "him". That is certainly good and valid, so long as you keep two things in mind, one the latter of which second of which flows form the former. In the first place in doing so you aren't really communicating a true g

One of the most helpful categories of going wrong in our thinking is Augustine's idea of   temeritas   (rashness), the tendency to assert as certain what is uncertain and what is uncertain as certain. To "assert the certain as uncertain" is to refuse or be otherwise unable to be appropriately moved by evidence. To assert the "uncertain as certain" is to achieve certainty prematurely. Often those who have very bad case of the first tend to accuse others of being guilty of the second, and vice-versa.   Termeritas   is the sin apologists toward which apologists of all sorts tend to be prone. Then secondly, Vaclav Havel is often quoted as saying, "Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.” I have no idea if Havel actually said this or where, but he is often quoted as saying it. But whatever the case, my experience would tend to lead me to the opposite conclusion, namely that "education is the abilit