My Berkshire Presentation- a fortiori logic

Speaking at the recent Berkshire Philosophy Event in March, I decided to take the opportunity to share a few things of personal, historical interest before launching into what I wanted to share with my professional colleagues who were attending. My time was gone before I knew it! As I grow older, it’s too easy to reminisce! The following is a synopsis of what I had planned on sharing: “A fortiori” is defined as “stronger reason” or “with greater reason.” Establishing the reality of the greater establishes by logical reason the reality of the lesser. Let me give you an example of a fortiori logic: If I can bench press 160 pounds, it follows a fortiori that I can bench press 80 pounds. In other words, if I can accomplish the greater, I can certainly accomplish the lesser because it takes less effort. However, we must realize that a fortiori does not relate to quality or quantity. If we related a fortiori to quality we would conclude that if you were a Mercedes-Benz mechanic, which is an automobile of unquestionably greater quality than a Ford Focus, you could repair a Ford Focus. If I had a Mercedes-Benz I would not take it to a Ford mechanic to repair it. Conversely, if I had a Ford Focus, I would not take it to a Mercedes mechanic to repair it. When I, experienced a brain hemorrhage in January 2013, but was unaware of what was actually happening at the time, I mistakenly went to an ophthalmologist because the only problem I had ever had of a medical nature was a vision problem and I was experiencing some similar symptoms. (Now there’s a good reason why chiropractors should not be diagnosing!). He checked my vision, as only a specialist in ophthalmology could do, and said there was nothing wrong with my eye. He realized that although he was an M.D., he was not qualified to render an expert opinion on anything else and refused to do so, even at my request. He was a Mercedes mechanic and would not pretend to know how to diagnose a problem with a Ford Focus. A fortiori is not about quality. Neither is it about quantity. If I can bench press 1 pound 160 times does it logically follow that I can bench press 160 pounds one time? Maybe I can but maybe I cannot. Even though we are talking about the same total weight in quantity, we are still comparing different activities. A fortiori is not about quality or quantity. It relates to the degree of effort. It takes more (or a different type of) effort to bench press 160 pounds once than one pound 160 times or even 80 pounds twice. The issue of a fortiori is always one of degree of effort as well as logic. For it to meet the issue of logic, it must satisfy the concept of reality. If I can bench-press 560 pounds it follows a fortiori that I can bench-press 160 pounds. While I have bench-pressed 560 pounds many times, it is always in my dreams, never in reality.Let’s get to the chiropractic application of degree or effort necessary to meet the criteria of a fortiori logic. Is it a legitimate question to ask whether it take more effort to set a broken bone or to heal one? I think we could all agree that healing the broken bone is not only outside any practitioner’s expertise but, in fact, outside his capability. That’s why physicians only set broken bones. Is it a legitimate question to ask whether it takes more effort to remove a gall bladder or design and build one? Again, it is not legitimate because it is not possible for anyone to design and build one. We must not fall into the trap of comparing apples and oranges. Setting a broken bone is not the same as or can be compared to healing the fracture. Anyone with a little bit of training can do the former; only the innate intelligence of the body can do the latter. Now here’s a question for the chiropractor, does it take more effort to locate and analyze a vertebral subluxation than to do brain surgery? Sorry gang, brain surgery takes far more effort. I have a good friend who has run a very successful high-volume practice for almost 50 years. When asked what is his secret to success he says “all I do is push on bumps.” Now that may be oversimplifying things a little. After all, he has to know where that “bump” is and whether it is an ASLA or an ASRP “bump.” B.J. once said that if you throw all your patients down the cellar steps half of them will get well. He also is reported to have said (although I doubt it), “…but don’t worry about it, you can make a good living on 50% results.” We shouldn’t miss the real point of B.J.’s anecdote or my friend’s assertion. We don’t make the adjustment, the innate intelligence of the body, the practice member’s body, does, a fact for which we can be thankful. In 1895 D.D. Palmer adjusted Harvey Lillard’s spine and his hearing was restored, as our history relates it. The problem was that D.D.Palmer was looking at apples and mistaking them for oranges. He was looking at what was accomplished by Lillard’s body and was assuming it was because he exercised more effort than medicine had during the previous 5000 years. You cannot compare relieving the symptoms of a medical problem (which a hearing aid can do) with restoring life to the body. On occasions it will have the same results, just like the player on the Harlem Globetrotters who drop kicks a basketball from half court and sometimes it goes through the hoop. That doesn’t mean it’s a better method, more accurate, or the same as shooting it with two hands. That was a mistake that D.D. made in 1895. He assumed that restoring life to Harvey Lillard’s body could be compared to, and found superior to, the medical objective of curing deafness. He hadn’t exercised more effort, in fact he had exercised less effort, but that effort was introduced in a different manner, not from outside-in but from an ADIO approach. He found that on that day he achieved a far different, far better result than medicine had. Instead of curing deafness he had restored life… then he, unfortunately, compared that result to the medical objective and found in this case it was a better result. He assumed that he could achieve that same result in every person, every time, for every medical condition. The chiropractic profession has been trying to do that ever since. Every time we missed the basket we would say “wait a minute, let me try that again.” On those occasions when we succeed (and because of the amazing innate intelligence of the body, those occasions occur frequently) we record that event and try to convince the world that it happens every time. We publish it as “research” at IRAPS and think that our effort proves we are as good as the medics. It is not the strength of our effort, in fact one thing we have learned is that the less we do, the less effort we make, the greater the expression of that effort is manifested by the innate intelligence of the living body. As Clarence Gonstead said, “Find it, adjust it and leave it alone.” or more correctly he should have said “Find it, enable the innate intelligence of the body to adjust it, and leave it alone.” Reggie said that his practice took on greater meaning when he realized the purpose of it was not to get sick people well but rather to enable the innate intelligence of the body and its forces to be more fully expressed. Isn’t it ironic, D.D. made the right discovery, misapplied it, and took us in a direction that is leading us down a road which threatens to destroy our profession today? I believe B.J. tried to turn it around but died before he could and at best left us with a blueprint, a game plan, for accomplishing D.D.’s innovation and his own application. That blueprint we call The Thirty-three Principles. Reggie observed that misapplication and used it to try to move us in the right direction.All of them are now gone but have left us with something, a pattern that has benefited a few, far too few, a philosophy for everyone and an objective that has the potential to benefit every member of the human race. It is up to us to take that practice, philosophy, and objective and do something great with it.