Perhaps we lack a right to engage in activities thatreasonably appear to show an intention to harm or impose unacceptable risks on others. For example, I may not run towards you brandishing a sword, even if I do not in fact intend to hurt you. The principle also explains why we punish people for merely attempting or conspiring to commit crimes. Thus, suppose that people who believe the Communist Manifesto are slightly more likely than the average person to attempt the violent overthrow of the government. (This might be because such people are more likely to already have designs for overthrowing the government, and/or because the reading of the book occasionally causes]] people to acquire such intentions.) I take it that this would not show there is no on the face of it  right to read the Communist Manifesto —though perhaps the situation would be otherwise if the reading of the Manifesto had a very strong tendency to cause revolutionary efforts, or if the occurrence of this effect did not depend on further free choices on the part of the reader. But let us take the Koran. There is a strong tendency on the part of people that believe it to take violent actions against Jews and Christians. This should be taken as good cause to throw it out. Similarly I think we can show similar effects from that certain books of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on. That is they may not directly cause violence, but  cause insanity. In other words reading any book we have to assume is OK unless some kind of meme inside of it seems to cause people to swallow it and become violent or insane. It is for this reason that pharmacies are not allowed to sell poison under a label "Pain killer. Guaranteed to relieve all your ills." [The advertising would be absolutely true. Still it would be against the law.]

Rebuke

I saw recently in the Even Shelema which is a collection of statements from the Gra that even when you know the person will not accept your rebuke. I seem to recall the Shelah say the same thing. On the other hand one does need to know how to deliver rebuke. If one can not do it without anger then certainly he is not obligated. And the most obvious point is one does need to know when something is truly wrong or not.


There are good arguments for free will. Michael Huemer presented a few and so did Maimonides. But in any case once there is free will you have to assume that men and women can choose good or evil. The only moral superiority anyone has is when they choose good. That is clearly what the Torah holds.
On a side note there is a command in the Torah to rebuke your fellow man or woman when you see them doing wrong.

R48 D Minor

race

 race. I have thought for a long time that the way  nature operates to take  one species and make it into two or more is to start slowly with race.  I based this idea on Darwin. The idea is that you take one species and separate it. You put one group on some island somewhere. Then you take another group and put it elsewhere. After a short amount of time that one species will be two species. That is what race is. Race is you take a group of humans they go down to Africa. Another group goes north. Eventually they become two species.

But added to this I need a little wisdom from the Talmud: that is is not a good idea to go against nature,- because nature will win.

But that still does not mean anything about how to treat other people. It has to do with groups but not individuals.

Second Amendment. Get groups together to get every possible Trump voter to the polls.

The religion of the left is power. I do not think they will give it up without a fight. Thus I think Americans ought to be armed in such a way to make a declaration of martial law and invalidation of the November election impossible.




One way you can defend the Second Amendment is by natural rights of self defense.

To help that things should not come to that Americans should be well armed and organized as groups. The best thing is to already get groups together to get every possible Trump voter to the polls.

There was a group of people in Rome that were religious followers of Plato. They followed Plato and learned him religiously just like we learn Gemara {Talmud.} They sat in the Beit Midrash all day and learned his writings. The Rosh Yeshiva gave  a shiur klali [class for the whole yeshiva]every week and every day there were classes in Plato. One practice was someone would give a seminar. That is for young married men they would give something that would approach a regular class of a Rosh yeshiva but on a slightly lower level.

The unique thing about this place that I find fascinating is the efforts of the Rosh yeshiva to consider Aristotle as a commentary of Plato and not as an adversary.
There was no denying that Aristotle disagreed with Plato on important points but still they sought insights into Plato by means of Aristotle.

What became of this? It became the pillar of all Western Thought. The Neo Platonic school of thought became the basis of Saadia Gaon, the Rambam (Maimonides), Crescas, Hegel, the Ari (Arizal, Isaac Luria), Augustine, Ibn Gavirol.

The reason I bring this up is that I think people have made too much of  a big deal out of the arguments between Kant and Hegel. Way too much. What I see is a kind of learning of Kant that would use insights of Hegel to understand Kant much like the Neo Platonic, Plotinus, used Aristotle as a commentary of Plato.

I mention this because I have been troubled for a long time about what you would call intellectual intuition. This I think is at least one major difference between Kant and Hegel. And On this issue I definitely go with Kant. But I can not see why that would cancel the insights of Hegel.

I admit i am nervous about saying this because of my lack of  knowledge. Still I see this as a promising approach.

Meta-magical thinking and schizoid personality disorders.

Meta Magical thinking is something I have seen a lot of in the world of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on.
The leaders of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on almost certainly have schizo-typal personality disorders as do many of their followers. People have been able to discern the line between normal thinking, schizo-typal thinking and downright schizophrenia.

So the obvious question is what happens when there are real objective phenomena that seem to be above the natural order?

The awareness that there is spiritual thinking that is downright sick is a strong part of the Lithuanian yeshiva experience, and any slight suggestion of this kind of thinking is rigorously excluded.
They are very well aware that there are people that are very religious, but not from a healthy standpoint.

It would be helpful to have a useful measure of such things.

The problem is that this kind of thinking is sanctioned and when people are not outright schizophrenic and have some control they can direct  their thinking in socially accepted direction and become the holy man of the community.

The problem that I see is that hanging out with sick people can make one sick --even if he starts out as perfectly normal and healthy.  Furthermore following a sick person can make a whole community sick. These are the basic problems I see here.

I know this group likes to think of themselves as super Jews, beyond reproach. It is sad that the truth is just the opposite and the numbers of broken lives and broken homes they leave behind is horrific.
So I would say to be careful to adhere to what the Gra said in all subjects, and especially in this.

Meta-magical thinking and schizoid personality disorders.

Meta Magical thinking is something I have seen a lot of in the world of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on.
The leaders of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on almost certainly have schizo typal personality disorders as do many of their followers. People have been able to discern the line between normal thinking, schizo typal thinking and downright schizophrenia.

So the obvious question is what happens when there are real objective phenomena that seem to be above the natural order?

The awareness that there is spiritual thinking that is downright sick is a strong part of the Lithuanian yeshiva experience. and any slight suggestion of this kind of thinking is rigorously excluded.
They are very well aware that there are people that are very religious, but not from a healthy standpoint.

It would be helpful to have a useful measure of such things.

The problem is that this kind of thinking is sanctioned and when people are not outright schizophrenic and have some control they can direct  their thinking in socially accepted direction and become the holy man of the community.

The problem that I see is that hanging out with sick people can make one sick --even if he starts out as perfectly normal and healthy.  Furthermore following a sick person can make a whole community sick. These are the basic problems I see here.

Hegel is like Aristotle

What Kelley Ross does is he has discrete steps in the a priori. That is not a continuum. That is one thing will be contingent to some higher a priori, but necessary for a lower level.

But within one area of value, he will have continuous values.

This again seem to me to  go along with Hegel. Hegel does not want any universal to be contingent. But to him there is certainly a hierarchy of universals.

In other words though Hegel is like Aristotle in many ways, still in this one area he diverges. With Aristotle the universal is definitely dependent on the particular. Hegel does not want that. He wants the universal to contain the particular. Hegel calls the universal an independent immediacy. [Shorter Logic pg 159.]

Social revolutionary.

Social revolutionary asked on my comment on his blog:

"I think it would be extremely helpful and revolutionary if we could determine where in the continuum one gives way to the other. Or is there no continuum?"


I did not mention it in my answer to him but I think he is  dealing with the issues brought up by Frege and later on people. That is a good deal of 20th century philosophy tried to deny the existence of the a priori. They tried to use Frege for that. But I do not know. I think Michael Huemer also gives a great account of lots of levels of a priori knowledge.
I am reluctant to go further than this because I am kind of on thin ice. I perceive some connection between Kant and Hegel which would be great as far as Shalom Sharabi and Isaac Luria are concerned. But I am afraid to go too far with this. [What I mean is my level in philosophy has not gone much further than what I learned in high school. People like Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer have done a lot of great thinking about these things.

 

Reason perceives universals--not prime substance. The idea of dinge an sich

 "The thing in itself." And that is a concept that is hard to grasp in all its glory. It refers to both a priori and empirical knowledge. The best treatments of this are from Schopenhauer and Dr Kelley Ross. 

The way I see it is that Aristotle is not that far away from this concept with Prime matter being something that reason can not perceive.That is: not only do we have Plato showing there is a an aspect of reality hidden from reason but I think we have to include Aristotle in this also. For the simple reason that Reason perceives universals--not prime substance. The Gra hints to this also in his statement on the Hagada that everything has an open aspect and a hidden aspect. 


Kant's original idea is modest: "It is easily seen that this object must be thought only as something in general = x, since outside our knowledge we have nothing which we could set over against this knowledge as corresponding to it...."[Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason translated by Norman Kemp Smith, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1965, p. 134. 

Unbelievably simple. 

But this goes further. We can check empirical knowledge. The way  Kant would  put it is: "We have something to set against it". That is we have a measuring stick. A Priori knowledge has no such measuring stick for its first axioms. Thus, "How do we know synthetic a priori?"
The "Obligations of the Heart" [The first Musar book by Ibn Pakuda] (What a name! Pakuda means an "order," or a "command") says it is by prophecy. That is all advances in knowledge are not by reason but by revelation. 
The Rambam also mentions this in the Guide concerning moral knowledge. 
Schopenhauer always refers to the "Ding An Sich" [the thing in itself] not the plural like Kant's dinge an sich things in themselves. And that brings us to the First Cause and also to the sub levels of  contingency.


So then as Dr Ross puts it we do not think a bathtub full of computer chips can do any commutations.The Structures have to be already there for the mind to perceive anything.

The way this works are by Stephen Gould, Sapolsky, and by a recent essay I saw on a nice blog.
That is structures that stick out to perceive more  than what they were designed for, {Stephen Gould}.
Neural networks and chaos. {Sapolsky}. Quantum jumping.  [by "An Unmarried Man".] Dr Hoffman

The way to understand this the way I usually do is by the idea of plane of existence But a more fruitful approach could be through מרחב כיסוי the covering manifold.

That is p: C to X.  That is "p" is a map from the covering manifold to the base manifold. And p^-1 maps in the opposite direction up to your C [cover]. And every point in your base {"X"} has an open area surrounding it, i.e. "U". And every curve in X that can be mapped to curves in upper manifolds U sub Alpha.  All this means is you have lots of covering spaces over one manifold. That tomy way of thinking means lots of things in planes of existence that  when they get "down here" become existing things.


[I mean this as metaphysics. Not as a biological process. But who knows?]

Anyway the place where Hegel comes into this is in the hierarchy of his triads which really are stages of unconditioned reality becoming reality.
You need Hegel because of this fellow The Maverick Philosopher that prime matter is not up to the job.

The song at the end of the Passover hagada "One Goat."

I think that חד גדיא (one goat) is a very important lesson about במדה שאדם מודד בה מודדים לו which comes from a Gemara. That is: What one dishes out to others always comes back a full circle. [Lit. "The measure one measures out to others is the same measure that will be measures out to him from heaven."] 

I have seen this countless of times myself. And I am always shocked when I see people doing evil to others and I wonder to myself why do they not realize that what goes around comes around.

But that is just how I have understood that Piut [song]myself. I think that is clearly what it is saying. 


I should mention that I am not immune to the process of מדה כנגד מדה. [what one gives is what one gets,] Thus I see everything that has gone wrong in my own life as a direct result of my own sins. This comes from a statement in the Talmud. אין יסורים בלי עוון. (There is no suffering without sin.) Now you could ask on that from Job. But still I am just saying how I see things myself based on my experiences in a Musar Yeshiva in NY. That is I try to see what faults there are in me when things do not go my way. This approach I am very happy that I gained in yeshiva. Because I have seen lots of people when things do not go their way their first reaction is to blame others and almost never look into themselves.

I imagine that if I had not learned this in yeshiva from where could I have learned it? Thus I am grateful to God that I spent some important years in an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. Whether I learned well or not is not the issue. Rather what is important is some amazing lessons in having the right attitude that I gained there.

religious teachers

religious teachers . I never thought they were anything but dressing up like holy people in order to make money. I never thought they knew Torah. Still there are people that go by same name but are in fact devoted to Torah These honest and decent people for some reason have not seen fit to disassociate themselves  from frauds.

There is a custom in the authentic Lithuanian yeshiva world to call people Reb just like you could say Mr Smith. Thus we have even the greatest of Torah scholars being called as "Mr Smith" as in "Reb Chaim" [that is Chaim Soloveitchik] or the "Chafetz Chaim." Or "Reb Moshe" [Moshe Feintstein]. "Reb Aaron" [Aaron Kotler]. But this is only a custom. [That is "Reb" is the same as "Mr."]

Sephardim have a custom that is also admirable. For authentic Torah Scholars they use the name the Talmud gives them: "Rav." So for the greatest Sephardi Torah Scholar we have "Rav Ovadia Joseph."

Gentiles for some reason have not learned to make this distinction, nor have most secular Jews. I have no idea why this is.
But my guess is that the true Torah scholars never made it their business to make this distinction which leaves all us simple Jews in a award position. It is almost impossible to tell who is real and who is putting on an act.
So why do not the true scholars speak up? I could not even begin to guess. It is like unspoken rule.

In the name of all of us simple Jews, I ask the true Torah scholars to help us to make this important distinction. Because without it everyone suffers.

But the silence of Torah scholars is puzzling in more ways than one. Everyone reading this probably knows just what I mean and has encountered this in many other ways. Maybe there is something good about their silence I do not know. But I speak my mind.

A man meets God. The experience is strange. He picks up a book and discovers that for millenia others have had the exact same experience.

https://dougwils.com/

From this link
Try this.

A man meets God. The experience is strange. He picks up a book and discovers that for millenia others have had the exact same experience.

He realizes that he has a 'map of the experience' so to speak. Curious, he digs deeper and discovers principles about this strange thing he was not aware of. The man tests them empirically and they are true.

Being social a social creature, he talks to others who have had the same and similar experience.

Along comes a random heathen man who attempts to cast doubt on the veracity of the experience by pointing to the book. The man looks at the heathen and shakes his head. "you miss the point. you invert the phenomena. you are looking at this wrong. you do not see. "

The differences between Kant and Hegel can be ironed out. [If anyone is at all interested.] The way is simple by an idea from the Rambam. Reason itself needs to be revealed. You have the same unconditioned realities of Kant. But these unconditioned realities are a hierarchy. The same hierarchy of Hegel. But instead of their being perceived by reason, they can only be revealed by the will of God. This was not I think the new idea of the Rambam. You can see this in the חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart by Ibn Pakuda, the judge. I assume he might have gotten it from even earlier sources. That is you could build a Kant-Hegelian system. You would preserve the ding an sich the Reality and realities that are not perceivable by reason, but rather are revealed.--Or the way Plato would say it "Remembered." [See the Meno. And this is not like the Neo Platonic school that did not have anything like unconditioned realities. This rather would be straight back to Plato.] You would also have to realize the absolute Spirit of Hegel is not the same thing as the First Cause as the Rambam also noted a long time before them. I am the hierarchy of Hegel is not the same kind of thing that I am thinking of here. Here I am thinking of Kelly Ross hierarchy of Ur Contingency. But in any case you get the idea. You might not think this is a big deal but I see it as very important for many reasons. One side issue that people might consider is that freedom has not much going for it from a John Lock perspective. If you think individual freedom is important you do need to find a better basis for it outside of the blank slate. Government I thought was only granted certain powers in the Constitution. Even without the idea of rights, I would think that it has no power except what was agreed upon by the States.But it takes power anyway. I think if freedom and individual rights had more of an intellectual backing then people would be less willing to grant unlimited powers to government.Their power ought to be limited by reason of natural rights. You really can not take Hegel alone in that he is definitely  on the side of Aristotle. To him the individual is the same as Aristotle's prime substance-- that is basically just nothing but a vessel prepared to contain some universals. So you need Plato's ideas and Kant's autonomy of the individual. That is you need to take Hegel the same way Plotinus took Aristotle as modifying and explaining Plato. You need Hegel to help fill in the whole picture.

Roosh put this upon his site so I thought to do the same

Bezmenov   Link to Roosh

My comments: That is great that you saw that fellow's utubes. I thought he was totally forgotten. He was absolutely right and I wish more people had heeded his warning. Sadly the KGB got to him. They found him because he was on the radio in Canada.
There was a KGB agent whose job was to monitor the radio in the USA England and Canada and report anything significant to his bosses. Well that is how they found him. He sadlly did not last long after that. It would be great if people were more aware of what he said.

A comment:

Anyone know how, or even WHEN, Bezmenov died?

I once posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking "how did Yuri Bezmenov die?" and I was immediately BANNED.

Bezmenov's Wikipedia entry mentions nothing about his death, and there seems to be nothing anywhere online about it. 

• Me:

  There was a blog called "The Useless Dissent" that I had a link a long time ago. I was sure that Bezmenov was right and shocked that no one paid attention to him. Someone from the KGB worked at listening to broadcasts from the USA and Canada. He heard him and passed the information on to his superior. Bezmenov was then killed as the regular policy was in those days. There was more info a few years ago, but info on the internet tends to disappear quickly. Some information was never put on line and you had to know the people involved to put the picture together.

_________________________________________________________________________

If you look up Scientology you might be able to find a link to the English translation of a document that provided the handbook of the KGB for subverting the USA that Scientology utilized in pursuing its own goals.

The people in the KGB that were not directly involved did not think the KGB had the resources to subvert the USA by the strategies outlined by Bezmenov. But I think that they were simply compartmentalized and did not see the big strategy.

How likely is it the Left after perverting the USA, will give up power willingly? Thus, I suggest to all Americans to arm themselves. Thus to make sure that if martial law is declared, and the election of Trump is invalidated, then regular Americans have  away of defending themselves.

World view issues have always been important to me and when I was young I looked into a lot. West  and East. Mainly I settled on the Oral and Written Law.  The Oral Law has no claim to divinity except in so far as it is accurate in its rigorous in its analysis of the verse of the Torah. In so far as it is objectively accurate to that degree it partakes of the holiness of Torah. But as a philosophical backing of Torah I have taken it as an axiom that Saadia Gaon and the Rambam knew what kind of world view was implicit in Torah.
And their approach while having some implications of mystic experience is not mystical but philosophical-and thus subject to the same kind of critique that any philosophical world view is subject to. So Torah has to stand up to critique. The way I have defended Torah is mainly by defending the Rambam's exposition of it in the Guide.

But as a rule I should say almost all world views I have encountered have serious problems with them. Some are obviously circular reasoning. Some are less obviously so.

On choosing a good wife. essay from a blog

On choosing a good wife.

 Is she a good follower? Or does she constantly buck authority when a decision is made. How she interacts with authority is a good indicator, especially with her father.

Generally speaking, the “actions” of someone are a fair indicator of the state of their heart although I would state that attitude is a better indicator. Heart intentions always lead to actions. If there is good fruit from the actions, then it’s most likely their heart is in a good place.

However, actions can indeed be deceptive. This is why when you vet for a wife I suggest mainly vetting for character along with actions. How do you vet for character?

Character is really only revealed in difficult and/or morally compromising situations. Thus, the “real” person you’re looking at is:

• What they do when they’re angry?
• What do they do when they’ve been proven wrong?
• When they are at fault do they apologize and make amends or double down?
• How do they react under pressure filled situations?
• Are they gracious and humble?
• What do they do when someone is harassing them?
• How do they treat the people that do bad or evil to them?
• How does a girlfriend react when she’s angry with you AND you ask her to do something?
• Does she actually “follow” or retain control by “letting you lead?”

These are the types of things that are difficult but reveal a mature character:

As we live in first world countries, there are not many instances where actual life threatening difficulties befall us. Hence, we need to be vigilant in understanding that the few places where you can view someone’s character is what they are really like underneath the surface. Do not brush character concerns under the rug as these are the types of things that come back to haunt you.

What type of attitude do they take in all of these situations?

In marriage there is much good, but there’s always going to be difficulty. How are they going to respond to that when things get rough? Are they going to quit or reveal their bad character like they did in certain circumstances prior to marriage? Or are they going to reveal their good character, tough it out, and submit to God and to you?

Attitude reveals the heart’s desire. Are they for God AND for you, or are they against you? Sadly, women can be for God and against you because they can be deceived. You need to make sure that this is not the case, and that she will not persist in such a deception.

Finally, is she teachable and does she learn from her mistakes?

In marriage, both the husband and wife will grow and change over time. The most important thing is if she is teachable and willing to learn from her mistakes and not make them again.

If she is unteachable then it’s a waste of your time. Likewise, if she repeats the same mistakes over and over… you know what the Proverbs has to say about a fool and his folly.

These types of things are partly revelations of character. Teachability and learning from mistakes is a critical factor  because these are some of the concepts that underlie repentance. She may be  good otherwise, but can she also display these traits when she is with you. That is the question.

however, women are good at pretending these very same values. In fact, there is really no such test and my own wife pretended well, until her true evil character came emerged. still from that relationship I gained some very good children and one really great one who unfortunately is no longer among the living. However i still hope to learn and implement the things that he told me like the importance of the Gra, the land of Israel, the state of Israel, and even the importance of Jesus which he was aware of