The Cold War

There were more than a few incidents in which individual soviet soldiers decided not to launch a nuclear strike against the USA, though the circumstances warranted it. I think there were occasions in which the officer involved was demoted.

There also was caution on the side of the USA. President Eisenhower was being urged to launch a nuclear strike against the USSR by the Secretary of the Navy, but instead decided to begin the U-2 program to see what the Soviets were up to. That showed him that, in fact, the Russian were not preparing any kind of invasion or launching of missiles. My Dad was the leader of one the teams that developed the cameras for the U-2.


The other incident in which the officer was ordered to launch missiles against the USA if he saw a missile launch against the USSR, and he decided not to launch. He was demoted. (He had seen only one missile on the screen, and decided it was a computer glitch. He though if the USA wanted to attack why would they launch just one missile?

S18 A Minor

s-18 A minor

massive welfare for blacks

My learning partner said the problem in the USA  is virtue signaling. That is it is considered good to show compassion therefore the middle class largely voted for massive welfare for blacks because voting for compassion makes them feel good. And the costs were thought to be distributed among a lot of people. So voting in such a way did not directly hurt the person voting immediately.

A positive aspect of Christianity

The positive aspect of Christianity is that Jesus was basically saying the same thing as Reb Israel Salanter.-that the main thing the Torah wants is love and fear of God and good character traits. That is what is called בין אדם לחבירו.
There is another advantage that they are based on and model it on the words and actions of  a true righteous person--that is Jesus himself. [This fact I would not have known outside of learning Avraham Abulafia, a medieval mystic. Recently all his books were printed, but I had to go through the microfilms to discover this fact.]
The negative aspect is they deify  a person.

That is to say I accept that following a truly righteous person helps one to be right with God. And that without a good example it is almost impossible to be righteous on one's own.
It is human nature to need a good example to follow--not just good words.

Not only that but if you weigh these two aspects I think the fact of following a righteous person outweighs the negative aspect of deifying that person.

Still that does not mean that deifying a person is good. Rather it is idolatry.. Still what you see in Torah is that compassion and  kindness outweighs the sin of idolatry. For example you see this in the first chapter of אור צפון which is the collected talks of the Rosh Yeshiva of Slobadka. You see this also in the Talmud itself in terms of the generation of Achav when God ignored the sin of idolatry because they practiced loving kindness one with the other. But He was strict with the generation of the destruction of the second temple because even through they had Torah and Mitzvot still they did not practice loving kindness.

That being said -it is better just to sit a learn Torah, Gemara and Musar. If all that is too much,  then just Musar.

[What brought this on is I see people  are seeing communism does not work, Capitalism has big drawbacks. religions tend to be problematic. Since people are seeking the truth I have here set down my basic idea of what truth is as best as I can see. That is Musar is how I see things. That is I think correction of bad character and fear and love of God are the main things to concentrate on.

[I should mention that Avraham Abulafia is brought down by Chaim Vital in the last volume of his Musar book Shaari Kedusha. Also Professor Moshe Idel has done a lot of research on him. The PhD thesis of Moshe Idel was on A. Abulafia. The actual printed books I only saw after I had done as much work on that sugia as I cared to do. Nowadays you could probably order the entire set in the USA. ]


The two negative aspects of Christianity are nullification of the mitzvot and worship of Jesus, however these are aspects only of Pauline Christianity, not Peterine Christianity as has been well known for at least 150 years since the Clementine documents have been known about.

[Books of Mediaeval Ethics]

In my own approach to Musar [Books of Mediaeval Ethics] I have tried to go more with the Rambam than in the other approaches.

As is well known every school of Musar had a different emphasis. My own approach is to take the idea of Isaac Blasser [the first and foremost disciple of Israel Salanter] that the main thing to emphasize is fear of God. But to get to fear of God I would take the idea of the Rambam of learning Physics and Metaphysics.
This I know is a departure from the traditional schools of Musar.
Most of them were against secular studies completely to the degree that they ignored the fact that the very books the Musar movement was founded on take the approach of the Rambam.
Still I realize that there are different schools of thought in the movement and I do not want to imply any of them were wrong. I can see the amazing effect of going to any Musar Yeshiva has on most people (except the Mashgiach himself who is suppose to be teaching it.)

I think that with in mind that every human enterprise has the flaw of being run by humans, still the Musar movement deserves consideration.
I see other ideas that have been suggested to help either individuals or larger groups. Most of the ideas come under the group heading of religions of political structures.

No one that I have seen emphasizes Musar on a global scale. And that is sad because I can see how it could help almost anywhere.


The Renaissance was caused by a return to the the ideas and writings of Ancient Athens and Rome. By taking of what was great from them it surpassed them in many ways. I also have seen the Middle Ages as having elements of greatness that the modern age lacks completely..
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Though Musar is founded on specific books the basic idea is universally applicable. That is the main thing is to work on one's מידות character traits and the way to do that is by learning books from the Middle Ages that emphasized that and explained it. For books like this have a background that is religious but the emphasis is on character.

stress and religious fanatics

Damage to the hippocampus seems to aggravate normal religious behavior and make it obsessive.
What causes this kind of damage? Glucocorticoids that are caused by stress.

What that means is do not spend time with jerks and a stressful crowd. That is to say they hurt not just your subjective feelings, but also your biology and that causes damage to your hippocampus and that over time will causes different types of mental problems.
It is part of the rule not to do things which damage your physical health.

There is no obligation to go to  any kind of religious gathering that is filled with jerks.

Reb Israel Salanter

I see most of the world is far from the Musar approach.
[That is the idea that to gain good character is by learning Musar (Ethics of the Middle Ages).]





That is sad because I see a lot of other approaches and systems being tried.  Israel Salanter's the original idea was that the main aspects of Torah are good character, Fear of God and Trust in God. Many other systems are being tried --the USA Constitution, communism etc. Personally I see that Reb Israel Salanter was right. That the main thing about Torah is character and the way to gain good character is by learning Musar.
[That is-- some think the fundamental aspects of religion are rituals, and meta-magical thinking, and a  shaman or guru.  Israel Salanter saw that Torah is something else entirely. It is about being a mensch.]



If possible I would like to suggest this approach on a wide scale. That is I suggest the ideas of Reb Israel are universally applicable. To everyone for all time.
That is the main thing is to have good character and the way to gain that is by learning works of Ethics of the Middle Ages.  People with different aspects of character that need correcting might try different books. The main set is well known. That is Obligations of the Heart and others.

Joseph Horwitz of Navardok emphasized trust in God

Each of the disciples of Israel Salanter brought a different message into the world.
One disciple Joseph Horwitz of Navardok emphasized trust in God.

In Kings 2 chapter 7 we find Elisha (a prophet) saying tomorrow wheat and barley will be sold for pennies.

The שליש (secretary of the treasury) asked, "How is that possible? If God would make windows in the heavens, could such a thing be?" Shomron [Samaria] was under siege by the Syrians.

Elisha said, "You will see but not eat from it."

Then next day the secretary was trampled and died.

Joseph Horwitz {Navardok} asked why people that ask the same question do not get the same punishment?
He said: "They do. They see others sitting and learning Torah, and somehow God provides for them, but they themselves are sentenced to a life sentence of hard labor."

Trust in God was the message brought by Navardok.

This got mixed up to some degree with learning Torah. But in fact no yeshiva is depending on trust in God except the Mir in NY. All other yeshivas tell a lie that it is  a mitzvah to support them and thus turn the Torah into a means to be making money. [Don't be fooled by their rhetoric. They are definitely looking for ways of conniving and convincing  people to give them money. They definitely are not trusting in God. ]

To some degree I had confidence in God for some time. Then I faltered. Still, I would like to let people know there is such a thing as trust in God,  and He reciprocates when one really has complete trust in Him.


I see most of the world is far from this Navardok approach. That is sad because I see a lot of other approaches and systems being tried. Reb Israel Salanter's the original idea was that the main aspects of Torah are good character, Fear of God and Trust in God. Many other systems are being trying --the USA Constitution, communism etc. Personally I see that Reb Israel Salanter was right. That the main thing about Torah is character and the way to gain good character is by learning Musar.

s17 E Flat Major  s17 in midi

If one believes all people are equal, then why did white men create...[Women do create things, but not much innovation. Feminism added nothing to this]

If one believes all people are equal, then why did white people create : Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Calculus: Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Algebra [Euclid and Diophantine],Abstract Algebra, Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Every symphony ever written. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, String Theory, The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Apollo 11,The Space Shuttle, Surgery. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Bible, The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, that’s nerve gas, and maybe we didn’t really need it.) Silicone. The automobile. public-key cryptography, Night vision. Lasers, the James Web infra-red telescope [Invented by Philip Rosenblum (Rosten)]etc., The reason then has to be exploitation. That is why the idea of exploitation has become so popular among intellectually and morally challenged people. I am not saying the exploitation theory is right. Rather it is more likely that not all people are created equal.

Israel Salanter

Israel Salanter thought people need to learn Ethics. That is you should not expect them to be born with ethics, or to just pick it up from some religious context, but to learn it actively. He was focusing on a certain set of Mediaeval books, but the principle applies across the board. That is even if ethics is mentioned in religious books, that does not automatically help. Ethics has to be learned as subject in itself. Judgybitch: "Do men and women learn the same ethics, or different ones?" Avraham: "It would be the same ones. There are the classical ones and later works built on the classics. But the principles are the same. This is a long story. In any case the books of Ethics that I like the most were the Obligations of the Heart and also two more recent books of disciples of Israel Salanter. One emphasizes trust in God [Level of Man Medragat HaAdam]. But the general gist was more along the lines of fear of God and good character traits. The general idea was to put emphasis on one's obligations, not one's rights." BG "Why would God be a component in treating fellow humans equally? What is wrong with old fashion "mutual respect"? Or, the old adage, do on to others, as u would want others to do onto you. What I find most hypocritical, is women preach this to their children, and yet,..." Avraham rosenblum to BG All true critiques. Like I said this is a long story. I wish I could make it short. There is a connection between fear of God and character. But not fear of God in the way the religious fanatics think of it. [I should mention that my parents sought to instill ethics in my brothers and me as their parents before them.]

This is an argument: Hegel holds that we can come to true morality by logic and reason. So also Michael Huemer [based on the Intuitionists: Prichard, GE Moore, etc.]

Fries holds that morality is in the realm of Dinge An Sich [things in themselves] that we know, but we do not know that we know, and it needs to be dug out like Socrates by careful questioning brought forth knowledge of Geometry of a slave boy.

Joan of Arc

Henry V was perpetually in debt. Most of his soldiers did not get paid until many years after their service. There simply was not enough money in the treasury.
Still the English paid for Joan of Arc 10,000 francs. Compare that to the price of a horse which in those days was from 10 to 12 francs. The average horse today is about $1000. So in today currency he paid about $1,000,000 for Joan.
She was a threat to English rule in France in a way that the English recognized.


I have a great sympathy towards Joan of Arc I should mention. In fact if we consider her mission as valid [which I do] that would mean the French were wrong for getting rid of the Monarchy.

new moon

I think one should go by the actual new moon which makes now the 9th of Av. That is there is one second when the moon and sun are in conjunction. That is called the Molad. In Tosphot in Sanhedrin 10b the first opinion of Tosphot is that the Molad fixes the time of Rosh Hodesh.


The calendar that is used nowadays was instituted by Meton in Athens. It was adopted during the time of the Geonim but was not used during the time of the Talmud. The whole thing is  a misunderstanding based on the idea of Saadia Gaon of Tradition שמיעה.
He said the calendar is משמיעה from tradition.
What he meant was as he used the concept elsewhere the whole body of oral and written Torah. But what people thought he meant was הלכה למשה מסיני A law to Moses at Sinai. But that is not what Saadia Gaon meant.

That means the calendar is not accurate. It is better to simply go by the actual new moon.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin 10b is also clear in that way. Rosh Hodesh to that Gemara is not dependent on Beit Din. Rather if the beit din declares it at the right time fine, if not then they sanctify the real new moon anyway from heaven.

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I think one should go by the actual מולד. There is one second when the moon and sun are in conjunction. That is called the מולד. In תוספות in   סנהדרין דף י'  ע''ב the first opinion of תוספות is that the מולד fixes the time of ראש חודש.


The calendar that is used nowadays was instituted by מטון in אתונה. It was adopted during the time of the גאונים but was not used during the time of the תלמוד. The whole thing is  a misunderstanding based on the idea of סעדיא גאון of  מפי השמועה
He said the calendar is משמיעה from tradition.
What he meant was as he used the concept elsewhere the whole body of oral and written Torah. But what people thought he meant was הלכה למשה מסיני A law to Moses at Sinai. But that is not what סעדיא גאון meant.

That means the calendar is not accurate. It is better to simply go by the actual מולד.

The גמרא סנהדרין י' ע''ב is also clear in that way. ראש חודש to that גמרא is not dependent on בית דין. Rather if the בית דין  declares it at the right time, fine. If not, then they sanctify the real new moon anyway from heaven.


אני חושב שצריך ללכת לפי המולד. יש שניה אחת כאשר הירח והשמש נמצאים יחד בקו אנך. זה נקרא המולד. בתוספות סנהדרין דף י' ע''ב הדעה הראשונה של תוספות הוא כי מולד קובע את הזמן של ראש חודש. לוח השנה המשמש כיום הונהג על ידי מטון באתונה. היא אומצה בזמן של הגאונים, אבל לא היה בשימוש במשך הזמן של התלמוד. כל העניין הוא אי הבנה מבוססת על הרעיון של סעדיא גאון של "מפי השמועה". הוא אמר שלוח מן "שמיעה" (המסורת). כוונתו הייתה כפי שנהג המושג במקומות אחרים בגוף כולו של תורה שבעל פה ובכתב. אבל  אנשים חשבו שהוא התכוון הלכה למשה מסיני (חוק למשה מסיני). אבל זה לא מה סעדיא גאון התכוון. כלומר, לוח השנה אינה מדויקת. עדיף פשוט ללכת לפי המולד. גמרא סנהדרין י' ע''ב ברורה גם ככה. ראש חודש לזה גמרא אינו תלוי בבית דין. במקום זאת אם בית הדין מכריז עליה בזמן הנכון, בסדר. אם לא, אז בשמים הם מקדשים את הירח החדש (ראש חודש) האמיתי בכל מקרה.


ideas in Shas

Race

Race is the beginning of separation of species. This was the spark that kindled the idea of evolution in Darwin when he saw this.  The idea is you take one species and divide it into different areas. The first difference that appears is color. If they stay separated long enough they become two species.

To me it seems that race is not a social construct but a fact of biology and the way nature begins to divide that which ought to be divided. And fighting nature is futile.

Th thing is according to Howard Bloom we should put the center of gravity on the Super-organism and the social meme that unifies it. Based on that we could say even though Sephardim and Ashkenazim have been separated by time and space still since the Torah is the social meme , therefore they can be united. Clearly that is what Bava Sali thought, even though he did sign his name 'with a (ספרדי טהור (ס''ט after it to show that he could trace his lineage to Jewish people before the mixing that began under Arab rule. Still clearly he though the main thing was loyalty towards the holy Torah. That is even though lineage is a big deal still everyone has free will. and one can still choose Torah no matter what his lineage is.


[I focused on color because that seems to be the first marker. Maybe there are others. Color is what got Darwin thinking and I also noticed the same thing. Take a species lets say squirrels and separate it. Put one set into the USA and the other into the USSR. After some time one comes out grey and the other brown. Same with birds in England. There are lots of examples.]

Religious fanaticism. Ultra-religious people are insane.

Religious fanaticism seems to be related to the hippocampus. That is a lot of what I have seen is the idea of rituals as cause and effect things. That is people tend to think "I did this ritual and thus and thus happened afterwards." So they are connected.

Pigeons have the same thing. If you randomly reward pigeons they will on their own come up with a superstitious belief  system.  They think, "Since I did thus and thus before the food appeared therefore that must have been the cause of the food appearing." You thus can get a whole room full of superstitious pigeons doing all kinds of nonsense because they think that that is the thing that caused the food to appear because it was the thing that they did one time before it appeared.

But if the hippocampus is damaged the effect is much stronger. There is much less of an ability to tell the difference between cause and effect random correlation.

That is religious fanaticism is biological.

Lithuanian yeshivas are obviously aware of this and therefore discourage religious fanaticism. Learning Torah and keeping Torah are one thing. Religious fanaticism is something entirely different.

Thus you get a situation where most Ultra-religious people are insane as we see in reality and in biology..
So while there are some drawbacks to the average Litvak yeshiva, (because it is an human institution like all others  that has failings.) still it is a huge advantage to the other kinds of insanity out there in the ultra religious world.

Nationalism seems to be related to Hegel. I noticed this before but did not write  a comment because I felt I did not know Hegel at all. Still the connection is there. And for some reason I think Allen Bloom might have been thinking along the same lines when he said that "Hegel was the greatest university man that ever lived." So while not recommending a Hegelian State he still obviously saw lot of potential in Hegel. From my perspective this is awkward since my own intellectual framework is close to Kant.

Zionism is certainly related to Hegel. And scholars have said that clearly Rav Kook's ideas were influenced and sometime borrowed from Hegel.

The Alt Right seems pretty much to have the idea of patriotism and nationalism in mind.


You could justify Hegel in this way: he is referring to a plane of existence in which objective idealism is true. The relation between Hegel and Kant is the same as the relation between Quantum Mechanics and relativity. Both are true but refer to two separate planes of existence. We know both are true. GPS proves both Special Relativity and General Relativity every day. The double slit experiment proves quantum mechanics. [GR says the clock on the satellite will go faster since it is further out from earth. SR says it goes slower because it is moving. So you adjust its rate by about 38 micro seconds per day slower.]

Christianity.But in its modern forms Christianity looks pretty bad.

But in its modern forms Christianity looks pretty bad. Still my major complaints are that it is not very convincing. A good deal of the premises seem to be founded on very strained readings of the New Testament. Still for Christian saints of the past I am willing to cut a lot of slack because of the pureness of their intentions.

What I mean is the divinity of Jesus is not supported by the text. Doing miracles has nothing to do with divinity. Answering a question "Are you so and so?" and answering  "I am" also has nothing to do with it. [If someone would ask me, "Are you  Avraham?" I would say "I am".] It is just the common way to answer a question. And if Jesus had meant to use the name of God אהיה (as God said his name is in the burning bush), then he would have had to have said, "I will be."
For the way the English Bible translates it is  a mistake. אהיה אשר אהיה means "I will be that which I will be." Not "I Am."

For a comparison you can look at writings where someone was claiming to be G-d and they make it clear that that is what they mean like in Bhagavad Gita.

Similarly nullification of the mizvot is not supported by the text. [That is nothing that Jesus said would support such a conclusion.]

What Christianity is based on  is mainly Paul's interpretation of Jesus. It is clear that James disagreed with him.

[In other words as far as Christians follow the example of Jesus they do well. But then some people throw in Paul who is the direct opposite of everything that Jesus said. And then they have to change the simple meaning of everything the Jesus said and did to make it correspond to Paul.]


[Wasp’s tend to take their social meme from Luther [even though in theory they come from Calvin]. I am not happy with Luther. The social meme of WASP's does not even come from the NT but rather Luther and Calvin.]

capricious divorce

Children who experience pointless, capricious divorce (I.e., 90% of divorces) simply never recover. Divorcing destroys childhood. It’s hard to survive with so-called adults stealing one’s childhood. You don’t go to work and get married if your primary life lesson is that a woman can take your home, children, money and freedom with a single phone call.
Women tend to look at divorce as a solution to all their unhappiness. And Beta Males only encourage this.   [See this site RedPillGirl]

Divorce fantasy is the many movies, books, TV shows, talk programs, websites, etc. (an entire industry, really), that sell divorce to women as something noble, necessary, and vital for their future growth and happiness in life.  They show women like Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love abandoning her family and leading an exciting life bedding exotic men in exotic locales.  But for large numbers of divorced, male or female, the reality is far different: they are middle aged, well past their prime, and generally wind up much lonelier, must less happy, and much more materially poor than before.  Like all things satanically inspired, the fantasy is swank and sexy, the reality is frequently miserable.

We are still sold an image of the divorced woman as having been abandoned by her husband.  But women now instigate divorce 80% of the time in the United States.  No fault divorce laws make it impossible for many distressed and abandoned fathers to stop the process.  And of course the children are the ones who pay the ultimate price for this process of female marriage abandonment.  Of course there are men who step out, it happens all the time, but the statistics do not lie – over the past 35 years, women have filed the overwhelming number of divorce claims in this country.  Many of those have been filed for frivolous or entirely self-serving reasons.