Natural rights

Natural rights was a development from Natural Law. Natural Law was introduced I think by Saadia Gaon and later Maimonides. Then Aquinas developed it into a whole system--which I sadlly enough did not get a chance to study. In any case this led eventually to the John Locke concept of individual rights as being things the government could but should not interfere with. From what I can tell most people want their freedom. This seems clear. But Brett Stevens is noting when rights get out of hand to be demands for free stuff and calling these demands rights.

So my feeling is that rights are important but as limitations of what the government can do--not of what it must provide.

[The basic John Locke idea is the individual gives up certain aspects of his rights in order to create a political entity that is safe to live in. But not all his rights. See the Two Treatises for details.
A later note: I mean to say here that John Locke basing himself on Aquinas and Hobbes made the jump from natural law to natural rights. He was also thinking of state of nature. But his state of nature was slightly different than Hobbes. In Locke's state of nature man has all his natural right and the right to enforce them. But in order to live in  society he then gives up some of his right and prerogatives to the government in exchange for the safety of living in a civil society. It is a social contract theory.]

I would love to go into this more but I really recommend to people to learn the Two Treaties by John Locke. 

Leftist agenda

Leftist agenda was the default position of philosophers in the USA. On the other extreme you had Heidegger and that kind of approach did not seem right to Middle Americans who fought the Nazis. Philosophers were simply  not very smart as the affair with the NY Physics professor that got a essay of complete nonsense  but with the right jargon published in the most prestigious  philosophy journal. It took a long time for people with real talent to start noticing the problems with academic philosophy. The job of philosophers is to learn an obtuse jargon which inspires awe. People think, "Gee golly, you must really smart to understand that stuff!"

Suka [a booth] and the festival of Booths

ענייני סוכה
 ) במשנה הראשונה בסוכה הגמרא אומרת שאם הסכך והצל שווים על גבי הסוכה אז הצל הוא יותר בתחתית כך שהיא כשרה, כדאמרי אינשי כזוזא מלעילא כאסתירא מלבר. אם אתה במדבר ואתה מנסה לזהות מטוס קרב מתמרן בשמיים, הדרך לעשות את זה היא לחפש צלה. הסיבה לכך היא הצל הוא תמיד הרבה יותר גדול מהמטוס עצמו.  התמוה על זה הוא העובדה שנראה שהגמרא שוקלת צל על הרצפה כדי להיות הגורם המכריע בשאלה האם הסוכה כשרה או לא. זה אומר שלהיות שהם שווים למעלה הוא בסדר כי בתחתית הצל הוא יותר. על פי היגיון זה אז סככת העליון יכולה להיות הרבה פחותה מהצל בגלל שבתחתית הצל של הסכך יורחב. זה אומר גמרא זו היא חידה כי זה אומר על גבי סכך והצל צריך להיות שווה. הפתרון שלי הוא העובדה שאין פתרון מתמטי מדויק לבעיה של עקיפה. אני מתכוון לומר שלכל צל תחום אחד שהוא כהה ואזור אחר שהוא חצי אור וחצי כהה. האזור הכהה יכול להאריך עד אינסוף. אז כשאתה אומר הצל בתחתית צריך להיות יותר מן האור, לא ברור מה זה אומר. האזור של הצל יכול להיות אינסופי. לכן הגמרא מחזיקה שרק כאשר הצל וסכך על גבי סוכה שווים זה כשר. אתה אולי יכול גם להציע לקחת את האזור הכהה כגורם מפתח. אפשר לקרוא לזה מאה אחוז כהה ואז כשזה הופך להיות ארבעים ותשעה אחוזים  לקרא לזה לא צל. אבל הגמרא לא בחרה בדרך הזו.

Mainly I was bothered by the problem of the shadow being more that the light. The problem I wanted to deal with in that book was that as a rule when one is in a desert and looking out for an enemy spy plane he does not look for the plane but rather for the shadow which is always much easier to spot than the plane because it is much much larger.  i really do not remember much but the problem I think is that the Gemara seems to imply that the Suka is kosher if the shadow is more than the sun on  the floor. My answer is based on Physics that the solution to the problem of diffraction is not mathematically rigorous. It is a approximation. So in fact the areas are not rigorously defined.

You have I kind of remember two areas of shadow.  The one that is a mix can go off to infinity. So in fact the Gemara settles on a kind of approximation.


I do not have the Gemara but it seems that the Gemara takes the idea of the shadow as being more than the sun on the bottom floor as a proof that on top the shadow and sun are equal. But why would that be called Kosher? Should not the shadow on top be more? To answer this I think you could say the bottom is the determining factor

There is no such thing as a layman. You either know it or you don't.

The difference between a layman and an expert is something that I was aware of from a  early age. In my home my father was very much into STEM. In particular he got his Masters from Cal Tech and  went into aerospace engineering. His specialty was inventing stuff.  In any case  in our home e were getting month a magazine that was directed towards laymen.
I do not think I ever said this to my parents but my degree of frustration was immense. I would read some article about science and realize that there is no such thing as a  layman. You either know it or you don't.


But I had no idea how to cross the barrier from not knowing to knowing. I think the first hint of how to cross that barrier came from my first year in yeshiva in Shar Yashuv [New York, Far Rockaway.] There I encountered the first most frustrating thing that every yeshiva bachur encounters--the fact that the yeshiva spent about a week or two per page of Gemara. So one "Zeman" Session from October until April would be spent on one chapter of Gemara--about 15 pages.

Only after much time I began to realize the important foundational principle involve here: To know a basic component of any subject takes total immersion in that subdivision for at least 6 months.

The reason the Kant School is important is I need to defend the Torah from an intellectual standpoint besides just gut feeling. While you can't actually prove Torah, you can at least defend the basic belief system. This is something that Saadia Geon and the Rambam tried to do, but the modern questions are different.

Universals, Aristotle, Rambam

Avraham rosenblum
Sep 7

to Kelley
Dear Dr Ross. You wrote here : However, a stricter empiricism again creates the difficulty that the apparent "form" of an object cannot provide knowledge of an end (an entelechy) that is only implicit in the present object, and so hidden to present knowledge.

This seems to be the only statement in that essay about the problems with Aristotle.
I thought there were more serious problems with Aristotle like this: from Stanford: Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:
(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.
This seems important because the  Maimonides is considered to be going with Aristotle. It does not seem that he would have missed these problems. Is there perhaps ways to answer these things? Or Perhaps Maimonides was aware of these problems and therefore took a kind of Middle path between Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists. Sincerely Avraham Rosenblum


Dear Mr. Rosenblum,

Aristotle’s forms must be hidden in part, for we cannot tell from the inspection of an acorn what the grown tree will look like.  The Aristotelian “form” thus becomes separate from its obvious meaning in Greek, i.e. eidos as image.  Since Aristotle wants to be a kind of Empiricist, with the “form” derived in some way from the perception of the object, the universal that is mentally abstracted from the image carries with it things that are not actually visible.

In a Kantian theory,  what we know about universals will only apply to phenomenal objects.  The status of abstract (universal) objects among things-in-themselves is left open, as with other matters of transcendence.  At the same time, hidden features of universals obviously cannot be abstracted directly from perception.  Thus, what the oak will look like is a matter of speculation, scientific investigation, or just waiting around for the tree to grow from the acorn.  What scientific investigation has learned, of course, is that the form of the oak is determined by the DNA in the acorn.  The “entelechy” has a physical basis, but this could be not gathered from the mere inspection of the acorn.  Aristotle’s “entelechy” was thus for real, but not in the way he thought.

I would agree that Aristotle affirms (i) and (ii), but I don’t really see (iii).  Universals are forms, and forms are substance.  I think that Maimonides is actually a Neoplatonist, where the chain of Being is grades of form, and universality, from the four elements up to the One.

So I am curious why you, or anyone, would say that “No universal is a substance” in Aristotle.

Best wishes,
KR

In my apartment [in Ukraine] besides the home owner here coming in every few days to steal money and any kind of alcohol he had a son who is criminally insane who made it his business to steal from me and break down my door and steal from the other students in this dormitory.

For one one year things went kind of unnoticed. [The criminal was stealing but not too much.] I was basically alone. The second year students started showing up. and the criminal would steal stuff from me and them on a constant basis--a computer, cell phones, money, products in the refrigerator and basically anything of value. [a motor cycle that one fellow bought and lots of other stuff.]. How did it become clear who was doing it? He asked money for the stolen good in order to return them. Dealing with the criminal made the actual home owner seem like a saint to me. I told the landlady that her son is a problem, I called him the "Narcoman" because the first year I was here he came up every night with his friends to do drugs. At one point I asked God for guidance. I have a "girl friend" that invited me to stay with her. There is a pastor in this city that made it clear I could live in his guest room. He had already invited me before,   but when I actually had to move it was the winter and he said it was not heated and and he was just then finishing to build it. [My mental state was such that also because I was going to Reb Nachman's grave site and there is a profusion of insane people that that I was very tense.I like Reb Nachman's teachings but there are kelipot [evil forces] there and I would have to go into the mikveh with my clothing to get off the bad feelings I had from the people there. [I do not go there anymore.]It was at that time that had begun to learn Musar/Ethics. I asked a fellow from Israel to bring to me a few books of Musar/Ethics. I saw in a book of Musar/Ethics the idea of trust in God so along with prayer I decide not to move unless actually physically forced to. That is I trusted in God to do for me hat needed to be done. That is trust with no effort. The land lady asked me to stay when I told her I was thinking of moving. It was she was kind of pleading with me. Not just asking. For two more years the criminal kept coming up to see what he could steal and I was growing more and more unhappy and getting OCD.. The more he would touch stuff the moire I felt I had to go to the mikveh when I touched something that he touched. That is I felt he is possessed by an evil kelipa. [Because theft was considered OK to him I did not think he would ever get any better. I think once a person believes theft is OK then nothing will help him.]Right before Rosh Hashanah he was put into the local home for the insane. Now I am in a situation of great thanks and gratitude towards God. Ho I feel recovery will be a slow and difficult process. Thanks for reading this and sharing my experience with me. I am still very nervous when I hear any kind of male voices outside my door. I should however mention that trust in God and also the fact that God was granting to me to be basically productive in my room caused me to hesitant. God has granted to me great gifts that I am eternally thankful to Him for like Music and learning Physics and Torah and even writing some ideas in Torah.

Experience frum [religious] world

Experience. I saw the frum [religious] world was not as great as I had thought it was, so I had to reevaluate my priorities to see what is valid and what to disregard. Also further study. That is it was a combination of further study, plus experience. I began to see what is valuable in the Torah path, and also to see a lot of what the frum world is about was not really Torah.

It was a lot of observation and a lot of study.

How to put this in a more simple form? I saw discrepancy between the claims and the reality.

I also saw discrepancy between what the Torah [the Oral and Written Law] actually says and what people were claiming in its name.

The religious world [frum] is kind of a nasty place. That was clear always. Religious fanaticism does not equal moral decency. But the Litvak yeshivas were very different. I had thought that in fact the Litvak yeshiva was a place where human perfection could be attained or at least striven for. That is I was expecting too much from the Lithuanian Yeshivas. 

In the realm of thought I also needed to do more learning.

In any case my conclusion from it all was that the Torah path is valuable and touches on a very important realm of value


Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and hat was not.




Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and what was not.

However there was some interaction between my thoughts about what I was doing and what I thought my service was about. 

In the Mir I was very happy very very happy.


For example sometimes a claim is made for a certain kind of Divine service--that is a service towards God. For example Hisbodadut which is in theory great enough to bring people closer towards human perfection When the actual result is the opposite as can been seen in people deterioration in character this case one to wonder.

   

Introspection can cause insanity.. Though Reb Nachman's idea of hisbodadut and speaking with God from one's heat in one's mother tongue is a great idea but it can be overdone and lead to insanity as we can in fact. The point here is it is possible and desirable to generalize about groups.There is such a thing as a Bell Curve and average behavior. If a group on the average displays a high degree of mental instability then it is permissible and desirable to generalize about it and ponder what is the cause?

  

s56 6-8 time mp3   s56 midi  s56 nwc

introspection of one's self can cause insanity. I think Rav Eliezer Shick must have been aware to some degree of the problems involved with התבודדות.

I think Rav Eliezer Shick must have been aware to some degree of the problems involved with התבודדות. (That is a practice of talking with God in one's own language. This might include prayer but most often simply means talking about one's problems.) One thing you can easily see in his writings is the idea of unifications of the Ari.[[Issac Luria]]
So even if he did not say so openly his must have been aware that introspection of one's self can cause insanity.

That is he certainly saw the importance of prayer and talking to God in one's own language and asking him for help and thanking him for his blessings.  Still there is the danger of just talking with God as a friend can get to be just going on and on about one's miserableness and state of affairs.

And besides that he had been learning the Ari. So at some point he realized the unifications of the Ari were just the thing to be doing while spending time with God as a kind of Dekakut [attachment with God in fulfillment of the verse ולדבקה בו].

This seems to me to be an important point. In fact I had been looking at the Ari [Issac Luria] for some time before I got to Israel but did not see how unifications were practical.  So Rav Shick's approach to this was an eye opener for me and that is in fact what I spent a lot of time doing In Safed.

Still I should mention I am not overly impressed with Rav Shick. To some degree, I see him as setting a stumbling block in front of people. Going into places where people were learning Torah and getting them involved in the books of Reb Nachman had the effect of getting people to throw away their Gemaras and stop seeing learning Torah as the highest ideal. Plus many  many other problems that came along with the whole business, Still from Rav Shick's approach I learned some very important lessons.


Appendix:

Note 1: Unifications is a subject that comes up mainly in שער רוח הקודש. You really do not see it in the עץ חיים itself of the Ari except as simply giving over the different Divine names that are in the interior of each world. And  even that he does not get into until Volume II of the עץ חיים.
In any case what Rav Shick noticed in the book of Reb Nachman in Vol I ch 2 was a hint to a simple way of doing unifications. Reb Nachman simply  mentioned the 686 lights  (תרפו אורות).
Rav Shick realize at that point that simply concentrating on the 686 lights was easy to remember and also provided a way to be thinking about God all the time without the general problem of moaning and groaning about one's problems that even when done in talking with God generally causes a kind of insanity.

Note 2: In short the 686 lights are these:

יוד הי ויו הי

יוד הי ואו הי

יוד הא ואו הא

יוד הה וו הה

אלף הי יוד הי

אלף הא יוד הא

אלף הה יוד הה

The Lithuanian Yeshiva world is asleep

The Lithuanian Yeshiva world is asleep during a time it needs to be the most alert; the following blog will begin by tracing how the yeshiva world has been lulled into this stupor. The Sitra Achra Dark Side poison has devastatingly seeped into most of our yeshivot today. 

In the mid to late 1960's, there were profound changes taking place in America - changes to our social, political, and spiritual institutions. The entire cultural landscape was in upheaval. All the old assumptions, i.e., the Western-rational, science-based understanding of the universe and our understanding of social relationships were challenged and discarded by the "elite." There was a concentrated assault on our moral base and on the concept of morality itself. 

Relativism was the moral philosophy du jour. Consciousness was being expanded and "raised" by the use of hallucinogenic drugs and forays into the Occult and Eastern Mysticism. This attitude of experimentation was transferred into the yeshivas as many of the young  came from the counterculture and brought with them many of the drug and Eastern mystic-induced "revelations" with them. 

This was a time when all institutions and their foundational truths were challenged and if possible changed. The yeshiva leadership was profoundly influenced by the incursion of psychology and the occult with their  claim to superior knowledge, while the groups from primarily the occult embraced and mentored these young radicals. The religious teachers found in the new infusion of radical, social, political and spiritual concepts of these young people a fertile field in which to plow their aberrant occult, and to produce a harvest of very strange fruit - fruit that was not Torah in its origin or in its outcome. They eventually came to fill the leading post in synagogues of many of the mainstream groups. 

As our society had become more permissive and tolerant, so were these attitudes introduced into the yeshivot. Many in the  movements had already experienced this permissiveness and tolerance of a "low-view" of Torah and tradition and had the obvious signs of heresy and lack of sound Torah teaching. The other more traditional denominations maintained a veneer of Torah. However, the inoculation against the truth had come in through the "Trojan Horse" of psychology, permitting every deviancy the counterculture had, challenging  Torah and orthopraxy. 

They did this in the name of science and with the blessing of virtually every yeshiva leader in America. The seeds of the lie were planted deep within the soil of the yeshivas, the satanic seed of deception, being watered and cared for by the very ones that were looked to as the leaders of God's flock. The false shepherds of the flock of God tended the garden of הסטרא אחרא the Dark Side in the full view of the people  and were never challenged. As God has said in the נביאים ,Woe unto those shepherds... ".

With this change of paradigm from a Torah based understanding of man and his condition to a pseudo-scientific understanding (really nothing more than a rationalization which is all that psychology is), came the acceptance of every type of experience into the yeshivas. Because all sources of "truth" were being taught as equal, why not accept those that could only be found in the Occult and Eastern Mysticism as being as valid as any other source of truth? 

Marriage today is undergoing some kind of strange transformation

 I have no advice but I just wanted to mention that when my wife left me I found it helpful to be very careful  never to say a negative word about her to anyone. Since I knew I was going into a period of tremendous turmoil I also found it useful to find one core principle to stick with at all cost and that was to tell the truth always under all circumstances. These two ideas I believed helped me get through the problems..

Anything to do with Kabalah today is coming from the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side].

I see there is critique on Kabalah. Some consider it Occult. Which is true for much of it, and certainly for all modern day people that indulge in it. It surprised me when I found this modern attitude in people that were interested in Kabalah. Where it comes from is easy to see. People are interested in the deeper meaning of the Torah, and then the subtle hints and promises of secret powers gets to them.


[I meant to get into this subject in more depth, but did not get a chance. In any case, I could have to agree with the critique that almost anything to do with Kabalah nowadays is basically coming from the Sitra Achra. ]


Critics typically do not differentiate between types of Kabalah when they are including it in the category of Occult. They are certainly right for the critique on Occult practices. However I must distinguish between what they are criticizing and the Ari (Isaac Luria).

In fact the very word used for Kabalah in the yeshiva world refers to only the Zohar, the Remak, and the Ari. These is not the same things that the critics are criticizing.


There is however a kind of grey area in which even legitimate kabalah gets into the wrong energies.


In  essence the Ari,  Remak, Zohar, Rav Avraham Abulafia are giving a mystic view of the Torah, not advocating occult or magic practices

Later groups supposedly going with the Kabalah  however are defilement from the dark side.

 In the realm of witchcraft and the occult, and there are profound scriptural warnings not to remember them or to be "a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer" (Deut. 18:11). 

The Jewish orthodox world also believes in the blending of psychology and Torah as if the Torah was not enough. They think the Torah says, "I have placed the good and the truth, Jung and Freud before you this day." And "These are the modern theories of psychology by which a man will live by them."

The Sitra Achra [Dark Side]  goal is ultimately to lead to worldwide demon possession.

The default position of American youth is "No one can tell me what to do." This is stated as an obvious axiom although there is nothing obvious about it.
It is hard to know what it means. Does it mean no one has the right to tell him what to do.


Imagine a recruit in the Army. That thinks he knows best how to take a rifle apart and clean it. He is taking twenty minutes and still has not figured it out.

The instructor comes over and shows him his mistake. The recruit says to the instructor  "No one can tell me what to think." How is this defensible?

Or you have a cash register worker with sticky fingers. At the end of the day  money is missing. The store owner asks him about it. He answers "No one can tell me what to do."


Even if one is alone, no one is alone. One's parents have something invested in him. Many parents care very deeply about their children. And in any case no one is alone. Everyone one lives in some groups and everything he does or does not do affects others.Imagine a world with no traffic rules. No one would be safe.

You can have someone walking in front of a moving car and he keeps on walking straight at the car and the car keeps coming expecting him to  move  of the way. They get within about 20 inches of missing. You tell the fellow, "Don't walk in front of a moving car." He answers "No one can tell me what to do." I am not exaggerating. This is how ingrained this attitude is today.

s55 g major  s56 6-8 time

s57  F Major edited  S-57 in midi format

The Modern world developed as a reaction to religious abuse.

Society has become secular. No Numinous value. I can see this as a problem. But numinous value is also confusing. It is hard to find a proper balance. One does not wish religious authorities  to have power. I shudder at the thought. The Modern world developed as a reaction to religious abuse. So all we have are two approaches neither of which seems very good.


So my suggestion is to learn Torah --that is the Oral and Written Law of Moses, plus Math and Physics. This approach is based on my parents and it happens to corresponds to what Maimonides said in the Guide. [Maimonides also emphasized Metaphysics the set of books of Aristotle by that name.] [Philosophy and philosophers nowadays are  stupid. But there were  great thinkers like Plato Aristotle and Kant. ]




 [I should mention that the Oral Law is a lot of material to go through and therefore the best idea for a fast introduction is to learn what is called Musar/Ethics. Musar in its essence means medieval Ethics like the Obligations of the Heart, and Paths of the Just, The Ways of the Righteous etc. But to get a better idea of Musar it is helpful to learn the books of Reb Israel Salanter's disciples.]

Musar is based on the Written and Oral Law but extracts the basic aspects of Fear of God and Ethics.