War is unpredictable. For some reason it seems that things were on the side of the North. In the battle of Chancellorsville, the Union general made an absurd mistake to give up a high ground with every possible military advantage  and go into the thick woods.  But it seems that mistake was the cause of General Stonewall Jackson being accidently shot and killed by his own men due to the darkness and thickness of the woods that made fighting in them incomprehensible. To that loss even General R.E. Lee more or less implied that after that,  the war was almost guaranteed to be lost.. 

Still it is hard to know. There is a verse in Proverbs ,"Woe to the land that a slave becomes its king." [as happened in the USA]. And there is a statement from the sages: "A person who does a favor for one who does not appreciate it is as one who throws a stone at Markulis." [Markulis is an idol whose worship was in the fashion of throwing stone at it.] And in the USA, it is hard to find a black person who is grateful to the USA for freeing them. Most hate the USA, and are determined to bring it down.  

I can not see why people don't learn Mathematics and Physics. Certainty most people are curious about the nature of reality.

 I can not see why people don't learn Mathematics and Physics. Certainty most people are curious about the nature of reality.  So why do they go into alternative subjects that they must know [at least subconsciously are mixed with delusions. Whether in politics or religion, what people say are poorly thought out delusions.- at least most.

All I can say is that they must think that these subjects [Mathematics and Physics] are too hard. So I suggest the saying the words in order and going on--- from the beginning to the end  and only after one has finished , then to review.

 And to believe that by saying the words/ the idea become absorbed in the subconscious.]

daughter of a Torah Scholar

 If you want to learn Torah there is this idea of the sages "to marry the daughter of a Torah "."

After thinking about this I can see that there is here not a hard fast rule. Good character is not the sole domain of daughters of Torah scholars. If fact, I was advised to take whom was available at the time who had been running after me for years. [Paula Finn.] And I think this was in fact a good choice. Rav Arye Kaplan was the first person to suggest to me to agree to marry her. I said, "But she is not a bat talmid chacham [the daughter of a Torah]! He answered, "If you wait for the religious, they will offer to you a baalat mum [one with a hidden defect.]".

He knew the reality of the religious as opposed to the abstract idea divorced from actual human beings.

[That is not the only example of his great skepticism about the religious world.]

On the other hand I must say that one needs to get married to a girl that is devoted to the idea  that her husband and children must learn Torah. If she is wishy washy about that, then it is hard to imagine one will learn Torah.

For the sake of clarity and openness  I should mention that I consider Physics and Mathematics as being in the category of Learning Torah as is clear in the Laws of Learning Torah in the Rambam, chapter 3 about the subjects defined in th first four chapters as eing in the category of Gemara.

Peah 2:11. But that initial stalk is considered by the Jerusalem Talmud to obligate., and thus not obligated

 The basic issue of "peah" is you are to harvest your field up until 1/60. That us all that unharvested standing corn in left for the poor. But lets say one is tempted to go beyond that boundary? He harvests the next stalk that is part of that 1/60. Then the obligation of peah goes to what was already harvested.

And in fact this is the case the Rambam is talking about in Peah 2:11. But that initial stalk is considered by the Jerusalem Talmud to obligate., and thus not obligated. So that whole 59/60 of the field becomes possible to be made into peah. [In peah one can made all except for the sheaf that beings the process. But he can not make less than 1/60.

So if he says all that I have harvested in peah that is valid since there is still that first sheaf that in not obligated .

What bothers me here is this. The initial stalk is what makes the obligation of peah go to the harvested wheat מן העומד לעומרים. Fine. And we are talking about where he simply went ahead and reaped the whole field. So now the question is why does the Rambam say is he makes most of it to be peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar? It should be 59/60. And if you would hold that that initial stalk of the 1/60 [that was supposed to be let alone and become peah with the rest of the 1/60]  is obligated in peah then fine so the next stalk is not and that is the thing that would make the whole 59/60 plus that one more stalk all possible to be made into peah. So the first question I have here is why does the Rambam not simply say then that if he makes the 59/60 into peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar [or the 59/60 plus that one stalk then it is not obligated in truma and maasar.] What is this "most" the Rambam puts there?

 [I am referring here to the answer of Rav Shach about this difficult Rambam which takes care of the issue to some degree but still leaves this gap between what should be 59/60  not "most". 

Also I admit that I am still mulling over this sort of odd state of affairs where he cuts into the 1/60 and then as per the Yerushalmi the obligation goes to the 59/60 that was already reaped. Let us say that first stalk is obligated in peah? then what makes the reaped sheaves into peah? Nothing. Everything else is standing! Or may that is the exact point of the Yerushami? So that first stalk is in fact not able to be made peah. But there are lots of other issues here which I am not sure if are issues or simply that I have not leaned the subject well.

If you are wondering then I will tell you: The issues that are bothering me are simply these: Surely not all the reaped sheaves are peah [the second he goes over the 1/60 line of demarcation. He has to declare them or some part of them to be peah. So what is left besides what he made peah could be the none peah part which makes the peah valid? And what is the law about what was standing at that minute? Presumably it can not be made peah even if he wants to? He can give it as a present to the poor but it will till be obligated in truma and maasar.

"shver Rambam" [hard Rambam] Peah 2:11

I was not thinking about that "shver Rambam" [hard Rambam] Peah 2:11 at all. Sadly to say I was just lazing off at the beach. But now and then it occurred to me to wonder what he could mean? And what is the answer of Rav Shach to explain him?  Oddly enough right before I drifted off to sleep, the answer hit me.

The answer is this. I knew Rav Shach suggested that that Rambam is based on the Yerushalmi. And now I see what this means. If one reaps the whole field, he is supposed to leave 1/60 as the edge/peah for the poor. If he then goes ahead and reaps one sheaf of the 1/60 then the obligation of peah switches from the standing sheaves to the  stacks that he harvested. The question the Yerushalmi asks then is what is the law about that first sheaf? Is it obligated in peah?

That Yerushalmi is the reason the Rambam writes "If he makes most of the field that he harvested as peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar."[The whole statement is if he reaped the whole field he can still give the peah from what is reaped. And if he makes most of what was reaped as peah that is valid and not obligated in truma and maasar.]] That is referring to our case. He reaped the first sheaf of the 1/60. The obligation went to the stacks. But he said "all that is harvested is now peah." Well if that first sheaf of the 1/60 is also obligated in peah then there is nothing left to be not peah. Therefore the Rambam is poskining/deciding that first sheaf is not obligated in peah. So when peah goes over to the stacks, that has validity as peah and therefore not obligated in truma and maasar.   And that is 59/60 of the field. Which is the majority of the field. [The problem was what is this majority? Why not say if he harvested his field and made all of it except for one stalk as peah that has validity as peah and it is all not obligated in truma.]

music file z45

 z45 D Minor  z45 in nwc

morals are objective.

 I have been having a debate on the blog of Michael Huemer about rights and the issue of government came up. I just wanted to say that my idea about government is what I think John Locke meant [even though I do not recall seeing it stated openly in the Two Treaties]. That is this: in the state of nature man has rights. [That is not hard to see that some principles of morality are objective. We do not think it is right to torture millions of people for the fun of it is okay. So there is an objective right of millions of people not to be tortured for the fun of it. Even if someone might do that, it still is wrong.]

But we give up some of our rights in order to form a government. Even though the government is formed to preserve our rights still some of our rights we agree to relinquish in order to have a government in the first place. E.g we agree to have judges instead of deciding argument ourselves. We agree the government can make laws for the common good instead of our deciding our own good and acting on that by ourselves. etc. 

[I am also saying that morals are objective. This is well argued by Huemer in some of his papers on his web site and all those arguments are put together in his book Ethical Intuitionism.] 

This problem of self delusion is wide spread in the religious world, but is just the normal state among "mystics. "

What is called mysticism is thought to have great insights into spiritual reality. This is obviously a mistake since it is too mixed up with falsehood.  While I do agree that the Ari and Rav Nahman had great spiritual insights, that has nothing to do with the basic question. A person can have great spiritual insights because of their work and efforts in learning Torah and in separating himself from the vanities of this world. But that has nothing to do with "Mysticism".

Better it is to stay away from the self deluded.  This problem of self delusion is wide spread in the religious world, but is just the normal state among "mystics. "

Delusion of the religious is, "Because we are strict in certain rituals, therefore we are smarter, more moral, and more holy than anyone else." [And the corollary to this axiom is "And thus we are not begging for charity as it seems we do all the time. Rather we are asking for what is justly ours since we uphold the whole world."]

One aspect of this delusion is the idea that the religious are more moral than anyone else. But experience shows this to be false. They seem nice until you ask for a favor (after you have done tons of favors.]) 

[I hope it is clear that I do not mean to cast aspersions on the truly sincere or the great Litvak yeshvot which are far from all these faults. Rather my hope is to warn the naïve about what is all too obvious to those with experience. And in the Torah there is a specific command ""Do not stand by the blood of your neighbor"אל תעמוד על דם רעיך

the greats, Kant, Hegel, Leonard Nelson

 Once John Searle makes it clear that he thinks the whole problem that started "Idealism" in Berkley is a mistake that caused philosophy to sink into the mud for 300 hundred years is a mistake [See5:16 of this video]-a simple mistake in the word "aware".[The idea is that we are only aware of the picture of an object that we have in our mind] [The logical fallacy of ambiguity, aware of an external thing. Aware of an inner thing.] This lends a lot of support to ideas of Huemer that we have direct awareness of what we see and feel. Otherwise you might say that most of us simple people have not the wherewith all mental capacities to understand the deep logic of the philosophers. However I have been aware of this issue for a long time, I still think the greats, Kant, Hegel, Leonard Nelson  still have very important points. And all the more so that there is no evidence to say that Hegel agreed with Berkley at all. Just the opposite. I have always thought that his point is the exact point of Huemer that we have direct awareness of the real world and the mistake of the later philosophers is just misuse of the double meaning of the word awareness.

The Russians had tried Marx and Communism and found it terrible.

 How is it that Marxism is so entrenched the English departments of American universities? The Russians had tried Marx and Communism and found it terrible. Even as freedom was granted to the republics, there was an attempt to keep Communism. The result was the Russian people elected to have Yeltsin and freedom. Clearly those who knew a thing or two about the joys of Socialism decided it was nothing like its promises.

Laws of Peah 2:11 See Rav Shach

 There is an extremely puzzling Rambam that I have no idea how to deal with. It is this statement "If he gives most of the peah to the poor then that part is not obligated in truma and maasar." [Truma is what is given to priests. Maasar is the tithe given to Levites]

I would like to show what is hard to see in this. Normally if one has a field he must leave 1/60 for the poor at the edge. [That is he must leave of what is standing.] But lets say he reaps the whole field. Then he gives the same amount to the poor [from the reaped sheaves even though he was supposed to give from the standing grain]. The Rambam brings this law and then adds this phrase, "If he gives most of the field as peah, that which he gives is not obligated in trumah and maasar.]"

Obviously he can give the whole field as peah except for the first stalk that he cuts. He cuts the stalk and then automatically he is required to give a "edge" peah of the field. [And that edge is not obligated in Trumah nor Maasar], So what is this "most". Why not just "all except that stalk"?

From what I can tell the things that are worthwhile are STEM [Science, Tech, Engineering, Mathematics.] Gemara and Tosphot.

 It seems to me that in my parents home I developed a desire for learning. Part of that was because of my love for my dad [not that he was learning all the time, but rather because of his work in STEM] and also I think this was i response to school where I wanted to do well. It seems to me that this has stayed with me.. I can see this might not be inside every person that might not be driven to  learn and learn well. This must be an acquired taste. Thus I think that my experience of tremendous admiration for my dad and the sorts of public schools I went to were unique. 

I can see that not everyone has a drive for learning. And certainly I did not either have any kind of drive in this direction except for the set of circumstances I was born into--great parents and great schools and teachers.

To make it clear what I am saying is just a repeat of Aristotle ""Virtue is habit." One ought to accustom himself to learn so that eventually one gets to the point that if a whole day goes by without learning, one feels empty. Almost as if the whole day was a waste.  

But furthermore I would like to suggest that there are subjects that are worthwhile learning and others that are destructive to one's mind. \But how can one know what is worthwhile spending time a effort on and on the contrary what is not just a waste of time but destructive before one has actually learned? 

I guess one must depend on "authority." Or common sense.

From what I can tell the things that are worthwhile are STEM [Science, Tech, Engineering, Mathematics.] Gemara and Tosphot. 

[Though some rishonim (mediaeval authorities)emphasize Metaphysics it is hard to know what is worthwhile to look at in that area.] The problem in philosophy is every professor disagrees with every other professor. You have nothing like that in math where most teachers agree that 2 +2 =4. Philosophy is nothing like that where if one does not downgrade everyone else, then one gets zero credit. 

And as far as public schools are concerned, there is no question that my parents would have kept me from them nowadays as highly destructive.  

 z35 E flat Major  z35 nwc

Music File z45

 z45 D minor midi     z45 in nwc format

The fragmented soul.

 The fragmented soul. In this generation the mind has been torn apart. According to Freud we are a Easter basket that contains  different eggs, the id and ego  and the super ego. What makes these things one thing? Nothing. Just they are all in one basket. With Kant things are not so much different with many different functions of the mind and in particular the categories. What makes them one?

It is as if there is no soul. But in fact the religious are not so much better. The  trait of the religious is the desire for your money in order to finance their fanatic life style which in terms of having a sex life is very successful. The religious have lots of children. And they get to fry secular Jews to pay for it.

The proper approach I think is balance. ["Balance" is not a word that my parents would have used but it describes to a large degree their approach of a middle point between faith and reason. It sees there is a limitation to faith --where faith can believe in too many false things which lead it to tremendous evils. But Reason also can be a obstacle to truth since it does not know its limits. So one needs a balance. To get to the place of balance, one needs a certain kind of common sense. 

I have to say that Philosophy is looking good. For some reason there seems to be a new generation of university professors that have become aware of the bankrupt twentieth century philosophy. Or take the few morsels here and there. This gives me great reason for optimism. The best of the moderns Kelley Ross [based on Kant, Fries, and Nelson], Michael Huemer [Foundationalists].Robert Hanna [straight back to Kant with no detours.] And more. At a lot of the insane noise of 20th century philosophy post modernism existentialism etc. they have all seen through the spider webs of verbiage. They are no longer impressed with Freud's steam engine model of the mind. [It seemed original at the time, but it was all taken literally from how a steam engine works. --like sublimation of heat energy to mechanical energy. Steam pressure etc.] Nowadays he would have decided that the computer is the latest thing and aid the mind is a computer. ut in the same way that is pseudo science. There is no relation between a computer and the mind since the computer has no mind at all.

 z44 E Minor

On one hand Rav Israel Salanter was right in emphasizing the actual sitting down and learning the basic books of Musar, I would suggest that Physics also adds to this. This certainly was the path of my parents of balance. Torah with the way of the Earth.תורה עם דרך ארץ

 In the book Or Israel [Light of Israel אור ישראל]  by Isaac Blazer he brings the idea that just knowing the essentials of Musar is not enough. One should spend much time and effort to come to fear of God. While this is certainly true, I think the religious that emphasize rituals think that they have fear of God.  I think the emphasis on rituals is what replaces authentic fear of God. 

So what can lead to Fear Of God? On one hand Rav Israel Salanter was right in emphasizing the actual sitting down and learning the basic books of Musar, I would suggest that Physics also adds to this. You do not see this in the Mishna Torah of the Rambam openly, but in the Guide you see that when he emphasizes learning Physics and Metaphysics he associated Physics with Fear of God, and Metaphysics with Love of God. {In one place only.}

At any rate, I have two points to make here. One is that fear of God and good character which are the goals of Musar are in fact very important. On the other hand the religious world is the exact opposite of fear of God. The emphasis on rituals  and the worship of dead people has nothing to do with authentic fear of God.

But I must make distinction. There are great Litvak yeshivot which learn Torah for its own sake. This is praiseworthy. There are also dens of thieves that the Gra signed his name against- since he saw their root and essence. 

The Obligations of the Hearts [Chovot Levavot] in the first part is Neo Platonic [[which is  a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle]. And you can see that the Ari also is Neo Platonic. But I can not see how   a neo Platonic system is possible to hold with except by Kant or Hegel. The reason is the straight Neo Platonism does have to face a series of challenges.

 For example the challenge of Berkley where he shows that there is something incongruous about the Aristotle idea of knowledge. For Aristotle we know the fire is hot because the form of the fire comes into the head. Berkley shows that there is nothing of the hotness of the fire that comes into the head to make me understand that fire is hot. (See Thomas Reid) There are also problems with combining any sort of Platonic system with Monotheism. [i.e, in Torah you must preserve Divine Simplicity. God is not a composite.. 

And I do not think these issues can be ignored. So you have to deal with these issues somehow or other.  

Kant and  Hegel are I think the only two still standing after 200 years of Philosophy. I mean to say like Robert Hanna "forward to Kant". --that almost everything that came after these two had some good points here and there, but that is like looking for  needles in a haystack. E.g. Wittgenstein had a great point to show how Husserl was wasting his time. But not much in any other way. That seems to be the main thing about everyone after Kant of Hegel-- they get one  point very well and everything else wrong. [However I think the Kant Friesian School does make progress.]

Western doctors find things that are not wrong and give medicines that are not needed , and have no idea of what to do when there is actually a problem.

I think that even a slight raising of temperature of the oceans seems to cause a great increase in the number of parasites in the waters. For some reason I seem to be the only person that notices this. Other people spend all time surfing and swimming. But I have not heard of anyone's complaint . Still to me it seems the waters are much more filled with little worms the get under one's skin and build nests there. This we already know happens to Salmon fish. But it seems to me that this phenomenon is increasing to include humans. I myself have gotten a few and I have found squishing them and applying some kinds of hard things helps. [for example I put on toothpaste mixed with bicarbonate. This seems to help.] 

But I am not going to Western doctors who find things that are not wrong and give medicines that are not needed , and have no idea of what to do when there is actually a problem. I would have a lot more confidence in Russian or Ukrainian doctors that seem to have a rule "do no harm". That is they do not try new supposedly effective methods which are really just the new toys.

I had a intense love of Torah and hoped to spend my life learning Torah. But I can see that  there is such a thing as השגחה פרטית (Divine Providence) that sometimes can create a situation where what might be right, but that there is some deep reason why things have to work out in a different way. So while surely learning Torah is the greatest of all mitzvot as it states clearly in the Mishna in Peah (and made even more clear by the Yerushalmi that every word of Torah is worth more than all the other miztvot,) still there is plenty I needed to learn by being flung out. One invaluable lesson I learned was that the Litvak yeshivot, have no idea of why the Gra is important. They walk in that path (to some degree), but really have no concept of "Why?" I learned that the herem (excommunication) that the Gra signed is much more significant and relevant than anyone today can even begin to imagine.

["Herem" as understood as excommunication is not an exact translation. It means not to have anything to do with one under the herem at all. Not even to sit within four yards of that person. Much less to learn Torah from them.]

But by being in my personal exile, I learned at lot more. But not everything is applicable to everyone in the same way as that first lesson. For example, I learned the importance of the opinion of Ibn Pakuda [of the Obligations of the Hearts] and the Rambam about the importance of learning Physics and Metaphysics. But I realize that the Ramban [Nahmanides] must have disagreed with this at least in terms of the Metaphysics part.] 

Though not at all talented in Mathematics and Physics, I did gain some understanding by means of the idea of the Musar book אורחות צדיקים [Ways of the Just] where in the part about learning Torah, he goes into the idea of "Girsa" saying the words and going on. I used that idea of just saying the words and going on for Mathematics and Physics. That does not make me smarter, but it does help me understand a lot more than if I would say, "I am not genius, so why should I try?"

Or the sweet policy of Mao to force industrialization and thus force the peasants into industry and with no one left to plant and harvest 38 million peasants "disappeared".

 University professors in the USA can be extremely smart. Take for example Robert Paul Wolff. So what do you do when smart people argue for absurd nonsense? When it comes to Kant the guy is a genius. So one might be inclined to ask did he never hear about the Gulags? Or the sweet policy of Mao to force industrialization and thus force the peasants into industry and with no one left to plant and harvest 38 million peasants "disappeared". 

In the Vorkuta Gulag, a general came and asked over and over for at least 20 minutes the men to speak up if they have any complaints. And he promised no one would be punished. A professor of history stood up, and said "I know that for what I have to say ten years will be added to my sentence."     The general again promised for the umpteenth time that no one would be punished. The professor recounted the history of slavery, and finished by saying that what we are experiencing here, is the worst kind of slavery in the entire history of mankind.  He did not get the ten year sentence that he expected. He was shot immediately.

But this problem has bothered me for as long as I remember. I have always believed that smart in one field meant smart in another field.  However it is clear to me that Americans know this to be not true. No one [but me] ever thinks that Mozart could have been a mathematical genius. 

So back to Wolff being a Marxist. I would like to suggest that care for the weak and feeble is not a Marxist invention, but goes back to the Golden Rule. [This is something that Nietzsche saw clearly. He put the blame for morality and compassion squarely  on the shoulders of the Bible. And he was right!

But obviously the Nietzschean critique of the central problem of morality is true--most of what people claim to be their moral motives are all hypocrisy.  But contrary to Nietzsche, the fact that getting to be decent and really authentic caring person is hard, does not mean that it is impossible. [As noted  before me.] We know this already from Isaac Luria that most of this world is evil. [Foundation is equally good and evil. Creation is mostly good. Emanation is all good.] 

I think the best understanding of communism can be gained from the example of a village in South Vietnam after the Communists took over. They had been fishing, and thus making a small amount of a living. They could at least make ends meet. The Communists came with the (usual) promise of free stuff for everyone. Then came in and took away the fish. [I forget the name of the village that I am thinking of, but this was the general approach]

I can see that 20th century philosophy went from worse to worse. From where do you get that everything is a social construct? Foucoult. It is helpful to realize that he openly said that nature itself is a social construct. And his thought has been enormously successful for the Left. He could write three whole volumes concerning a philosophical understanding of sex and entirely leave out women.

I mean to say to the Left: why follow a madman?

But the problem is that it is not always easy to tell who really is mad--especially when they can talk in the sophisticated sounding talk of academics.

What are plain people like myself to do when their arguments are in areas where we have little understanding? How can we tell who really is a  tzadik and who is wicked? 

I am not sure how to answer this question since the sort of sense one needs to tell who is a righteous person whom it is fitting to take advice from and whom is wicked is not as easy as you could find in a Batman film. There is no ambiguity who is the tzadik and who is the joker.

But there is a suggestion from Michael Huemer: that reason is meant to tell us about universals. And morality is  a sort of example of universals that apply to human beings. That is a very old idea from Socrates that Reason can discern morality. Reason can also tell us whom to pay attention to and whom is the joker. 

To Saadia Gaon also we know natural law by reason. But to Maimonides reason can not know morality.[]You see this in his explanation of Abraham the patriarch who knew natural law but not by reason but by revelation.

[Of course  Kierkegaard help truth is known not by reason at all. The divide between reason and faith is not bridgeable. But I think faith and reason are mutually dependent. And faith is not by following anyone at all. And I have a certain degree of sympathy towards this idea. I see the religious world in fact is not at all religious. They believe in dead people, not God. And this fact is way beyond obvious.

I still wonder why the worship of dead corpses that the religious world is involved never seems to draw any questions. I had thought idolatry is wrong and even mentioned in the Ten Commandments. So why are the religious thought to be religious? they are heretics.

The Stogy German Professor [Marcuse] finds himself in Southern California and finds that the land of eternal sunshine and surfing and girls is all really Nazism

 The Frankfurt School is an important subject. The Stogy German Professor [Marcuse] finds himself in Southern California and finds that the land of eternal sunshine and surfing and girls is all really Nazism [just hidden and waiting to break out onto the surface.] [The One Dimensional Man of Marcuse became the main text of the student radicals.]The idea off the alienation by technology of Heidegger gets accepted by the "Greening of America" of the 1960's. The whole mixture of Freud and Marx as the liberators of Mankind becomes the norm.

The attempt to understand surfing and girls as proto Nazism had it effect as we see today with the consistent onslaught against all America values by the Left.

[The reason why these German professors were doing this is the same as "Antifa" working on getting away from Nazism. So their solution was to go to the Far Left and Show that America was too dangerously in the center. [In the 1920's there was no center.] 

[But I claim that the center is not the place of danger but rather the right place to be. But to the Left there is no center. if you are not a Freudian Marxist then you are a Nazi.]

The first blessing before the Shema in the morning in the sidur of the geonim

Blessings are a subject that is not well known. Many people think that the order of blessings established by the Kneset Hagedola [Men of the Great Assembly] means the actual language of the blessings. But the Gemara in Brachot makes it clear that that is not the case. What they established was whether whether you have a structure where there is a "Blessed art thou " in the beginning and end or only in the beginning. So for example the blessing after a meal of bread. What was established was that the first blessing starts with "Blessed are Thou" and ends after a middle area with another "Blessed art thou." 

This is obvious in many places in Brachot and Tosphot. But one example I thought to bring to show this point is in one of the earliest sidurim of the time of the Geonim where the first blessing before the Shema in the morning is the first short sentence. Then another short statement. And then the final, "Blessed art Thou who makes the lights".

So while it is true that this blessing and many others were expanded, still the actual obligation is very short and simple. [The knowledge of what is obligatory and what is optional would make the morning prayer shorter.] 

Words are radically subjective

 Words are radically subjective. There is not the slightest objective connection between the word "dog" and an actual dog. So when English American Philosophy took its linguistic turn it became completely irrelevant   meaningless and just shows the amazing stupidity that really smart people can get into.

z44 music file

 z44  D Majormidi  z44 nwc   r77 mp3   r77 midi  r77 nwc

The flat tire of philosophy

It seemed to me when I was in high school that philosophy in fact had fallen  after being preoccupied with words. I felt that if philosophy is worth anything it must be about "the big picture". So what is "Being" itself as Heidegger pointed out is a part of that question. But also the simple person (the Dasein) also seemed important. Where do we fit into Being?

Philosophy seemed to get no where near answering or even asking any of these questions. Physics is certainly asking about the very nature of reality, but to go into that seemed to me at the time to be too hard. [I was not familiar with the idea of Rav Nahman that just by saying the words of what you are learning the learning gets absorbed subconsciously. If I had known that, I probably would have gone into Physics or the Aerospace industry like my dad.]

So today I would like to say that the Kant Friesian School as developed by Kelley Ross  answers a lot of the issues I had back then. You do not want a philosophy that ignores the Inner World [who we are as people with love and imagination.] You also do not want a philosophy that gets the outer world wrong like the existentialists and post modernism. 

To me it seems the the Kant Fries School is the best. But it took time to develop the approach. I was not all with Kant of Fries or Nelson. Rather it took time to get to a place where you have a a coherent approach that also takes an eagle eye of reality.

z43 music file

z43 C Minor

Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics. That is it has become all about man and not about Being.

Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics.  That is it has become all about man and not about Being. And he proposes to understand Being (Sein) by means of man (Dasein.) But he felt that this later part of his project was not possible so he never wrote the second part of Being and Time.. [Which was all about Dasein].

Why do I mention this? because I feel that the Kant-Fries School [and see https://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm] does have a lot to say about Being itself, and succeeds where Heidegger knew he had failed. 

Or maybe it is not that he failed, but did not see how to bring the project to fruition. 

Heidegger is a very Kantian sort of project. Instead of our accepting the dinge an sich things in themselves into computer chips, with Heidegger we impose our form of Being onto things in themselves.  But this is just as unsatisfactory as Kant himself. Imposing our forms onto things tells us nothing at all about anything except our delusions. [And in fact, I gave up after getting about half way through it. It did not seem to me that he succeeded in his original point, and about half way through Being and Time it seemed to go downhill.]

It is Fries who discovered this sort of knowledge that is not by reason nor by the sense that it is possible to understand the dinge an sich.

I was at the beach the whole day so I have nothing here to add about Gemara Rashi and Tosphot. And I am nor really able to concentrate on my learning as I should, so instead I elect to share my thoughts why I think the Kant-Fries School is important [in spite of my feeling that the serious disagreement with Hegel is unfounded.] At any rate, I discovered great ideas in Gemara really only because of my learning with David Bronson in Uman. It is really not all that innate to me. Inherently I am more interested in philosophy.

I might add here that there is a an idea in Heidegger of forsaking beings and follow Being. To seek authenticity. This strikes me as very close to Rav Nahman of Uman in his idea of Hitbodadut.. Go to a place where no one else is and talk with God. For when one is surrounded by people all the time it is very easy for one to lose entirely who one really is.

[The problem with Heidegger is that there is a sort of self worship there. All there is is to be who you are. No obligations to anyone else as Dr Michael Sugrue points out.] 

 For the type of dynamics you have with Lagrange [or the Hamiltonian] you find things tend to their place of minimal energy [or maximal sometimes like in optics], Causality is not at all the determining thing. 

This is something I have already mentioned this in terms of the Kant Friesian School. Where causality is not a part of things in themselves.

I might add to this that time also is secondary as we see in Quantum Mechanics. [As Lemaitre wrote almost a hundred years ago in his papers showing the Big Bang and that time only  began after there were a few quanta around to make time to be able to exist.] 

And this also goes with the Kant Fries approach where time itself is not a part of things in themselves.,

z42 music file

 z42 D minor  z42 nwc

Every group is trying to get to the top. Some by intellect. Some by skin color.

 As Jordan Peterson points out, hierarchies are imbedded into the DNA of not just mammals and chickens, but also in lobsters. So they are not the result of Capitalism. [Presumably lobsters are not adept at being shopkeepers.] So we see Nietzsche was right. Every group is trying to get to the top. Some by intellect. Some by skin color. 

The idea of the will to power but modified from Schopenhauer who was trying to say that there is only one dinge an sich. The Will. But Nietzsche  asked what does that will want? And he saw what is known as the will to power. You can see much in affairs where you might otherwise wonder what is this or that group trying to get to?    Well the answer is blowing in the wind. They all want power. Not equality. Not fair treatment. They want to be on top. But they dress it in fine sounding noble words of equality and justice.

With John Locke things have primary qualities and secondary qualities

 With John Locke things have primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary means in themselves. Secondary is things that they have only because of our sensing them. [Like it feels hard and cold.] Kant noticed all qualities are secondary. Everything you know about a thing are things you know in relation to yourself. So what is left? The thing in itself.  That is like the old difference between form and content. The thing is the content and the form is your categories that you put it into. [The categories are like computer chips that process the information.] But "It exists" or "It does not exist" are also a priori forms . So we add that also? Then the thing in itself maybe is just not there? 

With Fries immediate non intuitive knowledge is how content is known. So this sort of knowledge does answer that question and many more.

With Hegel, the Logos [in Neo Platonic philosophy] is the source of everything. Not just the logical forms, but even beings. So our minds (which are small parts of the Logos) perceive immediately the categories.

And with Hegel just pure reason can know things. [So that is very close to Fries -- as far as I can see,-we know the thing in itself by reason to Hegel, and by a sort of knowledge that is not reason to Fries.]  

So what I getting at? It is that I think both Fries and Hegel are important. [But I should add that both are in some need for sieving. There are  along the way lots of places that can cause misunderstanding. And when I say Fries I really mean how that approach was developed by Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross. When I say Hegel while I think it is fairly plain and simple, but I can see that McTaggart and Cunningham added clarity where before there had been misunderstanding. 

In any case, I see "Back to Kant" straight just means the old problems cropping up again as was noticed immediately after the Critique was published

The Continental Schools give upon talking exactly in order to say something relevant about one's inner mental states. But can say nothing true about the external world.

I suggest that to see what it is about the Kant Friesian School that is so great  it is helpful to compare it to Husserl. With Husserl we see he was trying to put a person into a sieve. That is to sieve out all the predicates that do not belong to a man per se. By that he hoped to find he essential mental states that make a man into a man and thus to create his method of Phenomenology. And thus comes to true and sure knowledge. [A very ambitious project, which is highly circular.] 

To see and understand just what he was up to helps to see the advantage of Leonard Nelson. who realized that knowledge has to start with axioms. Not mental states. The is the regress of reasons. You have got to start somewhere. And that somewhere can not be just mental because that says nothing.(Nothing by itself.) And that somewhere can not by the senses because they also say nothing at all. But you can not put these two together to make something sure and certain because then all you have got is nothing plus nothing. You have got to start with Immediate non intuitive knowledge.

I hope that is clear enough. And I admit I am on the side of Nelson for a another reason. That is the Nelson Affair file in the drawer of David Hilbert.

But here I also wanted to add another point which I believe is very important. There is something about the Leonard Nelson School [Kant-Fries] that deals with the very areas where the Continental and English Schools [Analytic] fail. The English Schools start with the external world and insist on talking exactly. Well they talk exactly but can say nothing coherent about the Inner World. {My mind is not just a jumble of sensations. I have got this news to report to them.} The Continental Schools give upon talking exactly in order to say something relevant about one's inner mental states. But can say nothing true about the external world.  

So you can see what it is about Leonard Nelson that gets both right and once you get into it, it is impossible not to be impressed. [See the web site of Dr Kelley Ross.]

music z40

 z40 G Minor  same piece in nwc

getting a salary for learning Torah or even judges does not work

 If only all yeshivot would be on the level of Ponovitch or Brisk [the Ivy league].where Torah is learned for its own sake. But outside of the few great Litvak yeshivot, most people use Torah to make money. And I mean this in the widest possible extent. I mean even judges. "A judge that takes a salary for judging all his judgments are null and void." שבר בטלה [payment for taking time out of his regular job,] does not count because it has to be שדר הניכר [Visible salary]. He can not say "I could have been an astronaut, but instead I learn Torah So I should get the salary of an astronaut.] [I have heard a person in kollel actually tell me as much.] 

{The idea of שכר בטלה [payment for taking time out of his regular job,] is this. A judge can judge a case for free. And if he receives money for judging it, the verdict is null--and he pays from his own pocket. But if he has a regular job and two people want him to take out time to judge their case they can pay him שכר הניכר [Visible salary]. That is if he gets 10 dollars an hour on his regular job then he can be paid 10 dollars an hour for judging that case. But it has to be  areal job. Not a job that he thinks he could have had.

So using this idea to answer for people getting a salary for learning Torah or even judges does not work.

To object to wrong actions is important as we see in the Concubine of Give where the whole tribe of Binyamin was punished because they did not object and also the events of Kamtza and Bar Kamtz in Gitin

In Torah midot tovot good character is the main thing. This You can see in the books of Musar which brings many proofs for this fact. [Midot Tovot good character means to be a kind decent human being.]  And so it seems that at all clear that the religious world as a whole is really keeping Torah. They surely keep rituals. Bur who says that that is the main thing? When in need you are more likely to get help from secular Jews or gentiles rather than the religious to whom you are barely human .

You might see propaganda trying to show how the religious are all so lovey dovey. But that is just propaganda. The reality is the opposite.

[The shock of this realization can be a heart breaking and traumatic event. When one realizes that  his or her's minds was being played with. 

[Some of the places where you can see the prime directive of good character is in the classical books of Musar of the Middle Ages אורחות צדיקים, שערי תשובה, חובות הלבבות, מעלות המידות, ספר הישר המיוחס לרבינו תם,

Sadly they get away with this fraud because no one objects. And I believe that in such a case one is obligated to object. To object to wrong actions is important as we see in the Concubine of Give where the whole tribe of Binyamin was punished because they did not object and also the events of Kamtza and Bar Kamtz in Gitin

 Honor of ones parents means to walk in their ways and to obey them as Confucius saw clearly. How could one possibly think  that he is honoring his (or her) parents while not listening to them? And what I must add is important about this? It is that ones inner light comes from the mother and the outer protective light comes from the father. [As you can see in the Rav Isaac Luria in the Gate of Gilgulim (I think that is where I recall this from)]. So you might be more aware of your connection with your mother since that is inside of you and less aware of your connection with your father. After all the later only surrounds you as a sort of protective cover. [The connection with one's father only becomes apparent after he is not in this world any more. That is when the protective cover disappears.]

Thus, I see this emphasis on finding what is wrong in one's parents in the West as a sort of evil inclination. One of the obstacles one must face in order to find the way to do what is right.

 Religious leaders always emphasize how they know more than your parents. That is one reason why Rav Nahman said most religious leaders are "תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים"(Torah scholars that are demons).

 I was in the Breslov place nearby today and that is why I was listening as they were learning the LeM  vol II perek 7. The interesting thing is that Rav Nahman holds that by saying the words that one is learning the learning enters the mind.

But this saying of the words does not have to be aloud. It can also be in a whisper. But the words need to be said. If I had known this in high school I might have gone into physics or math. After all this method of saying the words and going on would have helped me enormously. But I was not aware of this method at that time.

People in philosophy tend to lose common sense

People in philosophy tend to lose common sense. I am not sure why this is. Maybe it is because they are so smart that they start to build in their minds all these strange utopias in the sky. They think "If only we could make the perfect classless society like Marx, then everyone would have plenty of stuff.] They tend to forget the Marx was tried. It did not result in plenty of stuff. The reason why Marx was never attractive for me  was that I had heard in school about the scientific method. That is: that no matter how wonderful an idea sounds and is worked out in every detail, still if it predicts a certain result and that result does not come to pass, the theory is wrong.

The same goes for psychology. After trillions of dollars of government money, have they ever cured even one single person of anything? If you want to make someone insane, send him to a psychologist.

[ I thought to add here one point. That is this is why the Friesian School of Kelley Ross has always impressed me very greatly--because not just that his approach based on Kant, Fries and Nelson has some major advances in philosophical thought but also he seems to be the only philosopher with common sense. (I am not sure why this is.  I am thinking that mainly the great thing about this approach is more based on Ross than on Fries or Nelson. It is as if Ross went to collect the important points of Fries and then the important points of Nelson and Schopenhauer and made his own structure. He calls it the Friesian School. But it seems like a vast improvement on Fries or even Nelson.]

Why is Fries important? Because of the thing in itself. The question about this is if we can not know anything about it then we can not know it exists. So Hegel simply said we can know about it because our minds are all part of Logos.(There is no dinge an sich because all Being is rational) [Neo Platonism ] Fries said we know the thing in itself by means of a kind of knowledge that is not by reason nor by the senses. So we know about electrons that they exist and also properties based on mathematics and Physics which also have to start with basic axioms that can not be proved. 

LeM of Rav Nahman

 In the LeM of Rav Nahman of Breslov [and Uman] it is brought [vol II. perek 7] that R. Eliezer was on the level of son, while R.Yehoshua was on the level of servant. That is to say there is a tzadik who serves God on the level of son and another who serves God on the level of servant. And the level of son is איה מקום כבודו [like the question the serafim angels ask: "Where is the place of His Glory?"] The level of serving God like a servant is on the level of מלוא כל הארץ כבודו [that is the statement of the ophanim angels: "The whole world is full of his glory."] 

And there Rav Nahman explains that even the tzadik who serves God on the level of son should still be aware of the level of "The whole world is full of his glory." And the tzadik that serves God on the level of servant should also be aware of the question "Where is the place of His Glory?" which shows when one reaches a higher level in the service of God, the more he knows how much more of a way there is to go. 

I think this balance is a lesson for each person. Even as we gain in understanding in Torah, we ought to retain the knowledge of how far we really are. And yet not be so discouraged as to think progress in impossible.

I have not tried to object strongly to the practice in Israel of using Torah to make money. The reason is that it seems if you would simply come at the end of the month and give to each person a monthly salary then no one would learn. Still the way of having the young men in kollel take exams to show they went over the material seems to be that that is forcing them to use Torah to make money. I find it hard to object to this practice but I myself found it so repulsive that I left the kollel system for this exact reason.  

I said to my wife that, "We will trust in God and he will help us. But if it ever comes to a situation where there is no parnasa [means of a living]I will find an honest job rather than use Torah to make money."

[In fact, I find the whole profession of using Torah to make money highly odd. And I think the Torah they learn has no blessing in it.

[This is besides the fact that young people can be convinced that the the  teachers of Torah that use Torah to make their living are all righteous and all the secular Jews and gentiles are all wicked. However that is only because young people do not have much experience with any of these groups. They assume the religious world is righteous, not from experience but from what they have been told. However, as is well known, the truth is very different.   Even by the most rigorous standards of Torah, we find many gentiles willing and anxious to extend a helping hand to you, and many religious that will use you for their own interests until you are no longer of any use to them. So if we look at the standards of Torah, we find many secular Jews and gentiles much more righteous than any of the religious. 

However I might take down this blog entry since I would not want to disparage the importance of learning and keeping Torah. Rather I would hope t encourage others to come to midot tovot {good character}. It is just that  religious people as a rule seem to be  very far from human decency. It seems they think they can get away with this fraud to pretend tp be righteous  since young people do not know any better and have no real experience with them. 

Even though most women never become zavot [women who have seen blood after the first seven days],

 Even though most women never become zavot [women who have seen blood after the first seven days], still I wonder why there is no mention of "מים חיים" [live waters-- or river or spring]in their case? I mean to say- that the law of the Torah is a nida [the regular monthly cycle] sits seven days and goes into a collection of water [a place where rain water has collected.] Still there is a custom to sit seven clean days.. Seven clean days is for a zava. So if you are worried about a zava (even if you are pretty sure she is not a zava) then why not require a spring or river? At least be consistent. If she is a zava? Fine. Have her wait seven clean days and send her to a spring or sea. If she is just a nida, then why wait seven days? Make up your mind.

I think the most basic problem in Kant is that we know nothing about electrons, photons, other people, etc.

 The basic approach of the Torah is Neo Platonic as you can see in the Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts] by Ibn Pakuda. [Also Saadia Geon, the Rambam and Ramban and all other rishonim that I am aware of] But this needs modification because it is based somewhat on Aristotle. Now with all due respect to Aristotle, there are some issues that need addressing as Berkeley noticed. There is nothing in the sharpness of the knife that enters into the human brain to give it the idea of sharpness. There is nothing in the heat of the fire that comes into my head to give me an idea of hotness. You go back and forth on these issues until you get to Kant and Hegel. But going back to the straight Neo Platonic view is impossible. So you are left with who was right? Kant or Hegel?

Maybe this will be like the problems between Plato and Aristotle that also had no resolution until Plotinus came up with the Neo Platonic school. May that is how things will eventually work out between Kant and Hegel. It seems each has some things right, and some things not so right. So until a new Plotinus comes along, I think we are stuck.

{I can imagine you can look up the problems in each. Critics abound. But just for one example of a problem in Kant. The mind imposes the categories on the phenomenological world. OK. But whose? My mind? Yes. Your mind? Yes. Lots on minds imposing all their rules on the world. There is something odd about that. Plus, the other issue that a central proof in the Critique is to show from the fact of time ordering events in the mind, Kant gets to time ordering events in the world. Well, no. That is Relativity. Problems with Hegel on the other hand also abound. Mostly because of his political views which in fact seem a bit hard to swallow. The individual is not a microcosm of the state. The only way a well ordered state can function is by division of powers. Not the king, not the parliament, not even the people have all the powers. Examples abound when one of these gets the upper hand what goes wrong. But the individual is just the opposite.  I would rather my heart not be working against my lungs. The individual works only when everything is working together. The state is just the opposite.  

I think the most basic problem in Kant is that we know nothing about electrons, photons, other people, etc. That is the very reason I had to write "phenomena" instead of "appearances". All we know about are the image of electrons in our minds. I this so obvious? Would it not take a lot of evidence to show that we know nothing about electrons, only our concept or electrons? Lacking any definite proof, would it not make sense to say that we know E=mc^2 about actual electrons, not just the ones in our minds.

This was the exact point of Hegel. This was later taken up by Michael Huemer and the Intuitionists. But they diverge from Hegel in other points.]

Would not physics seem to be about actual electrons? Not just the appearances on our heads? I thought Physics is telling us something about electrons and the Schrödinger equation. Not just he ones I have in my head. I after all I a not smart enough to have come up with the Schrodinger equation all on my own. No in my conscious nor in my subconscious. So why should those poor electrons worry about what I think? Besides the fact that I could not have come up with the Schrodinger equation even if I had thought nut i a thousand years. Would t t]have giv3n  chance to those poor miserable electrons some toe to have fun until I cam along with my preconceived ideas anpoiyt ow they ought to behave

Trust without effort.]

 Trust in God is a difficult issue to know when it applies. On one hand when I was about to go to Shar Yashuv [a great Litvak yeshiva in NY and now I have heard that there is one in Israel also], my parents were saying that they thought most people going to a yeshiva were doing so in order to make that into a profession. And I was claiming that "No. They are learning Torah for its own sake."

 And as far as the Litvak world of Yeshivot based on the Gra I think it is clear that I was right.

But since then this issue of trust in God has always been a difficult issue to figure out.

Before I got married I mentioned this issue to my father in law (Bill Finn) and he agreed totally with me. Trust in God is everything and carries the day. 

[By that time I was at the Mir, and I think I must have been aware of Navardok. Trust without effort.]

the religious world actually believes [as strange as it may see,) that they keep Torah.

 Even if I learn a great deal R. Rav Nahman,I do not give approval to everything he says.

In terms of Torah I think that the Gra was right. The problem the Gra was addressing in the letter of herem [excommunication] was that of idolatry (or worship that is not of God alone.) This is totally ignored nowadays to the degree that the religious world actually believes [as strange as it may see,) that they keep Torah!?? No. Not at all. They keep rituals in order to seem as if they keep Torah. But the religious world is the opposite of Torah since their religion is based on idolatry.] [If the Torah is not about not to worship anything but God, then it is not about anything at all. The rituals do not count.]

See Proverbs  3 verse 5 and 6 in the commentary of the Gra. Trust in God. Forget about your own efforts. And not not trust in anyone except the First Cause.]

There is a right and wrong way in Torah.

 There is a right and wrong way in Torah. [So even if there some valid approaches that does not mean that all approaches are valid. Some are simply false. And that is the reason the Gra signed the famous letter of excommunication --to show that idolatry is not in accord with Torah. [This is kind of hard to miss in the Ten Commandments.] 

 For example in Philosophy. You might have a few different approaches to Kant. But that does not mean any approach approach is right. Some are false.

There might be better ways of approaching Beethoven. Some better and some not so much so. But that doe not mean scratching on a blackboard is playing Beethoven.

 You can see why Leonard Nelson was so perturbed by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It goes against the major argument of the Critique of Pure Reason.[The Transcendental Analytic] Kant proves there is an objective order of events. (Plus causality. That is not against Relativity but it seems to be somewhat of a problem in Quantum Mechanics). He takes nine closed argued steps to prove this. [And to me it seems not clear if Friesian concepts can help Kant. 

[As for the first point, in some way Kant was right because events [for one observer] to be taken in reverse order [by another observer] would be out of one of the light cone of one of those observers. Kant wants events in the mind to have an objective order in time. And that is true. But then to apply that to the world outside one's mind is what he is trying to prove --in order to disprove sceptic claims about reality. But there is where the proof seems to fail. I mean to say Kant wants to prove that we have a priori knowledge of the phenomenal world--for example we know causality.(He goes with Newton as opposed to Leibniz.)  [Clearly Kelley Ross would have an answer for this that is. After all Gretta Herman found the reconciliation between Relativity and the Friesian School. Still, it seems that this is some area that shows a problem.] 

[One thing I might mention. Kant was trying to refute Berkley. {It is all in the mind} He wanted to prove causality and simply existence of the objective world. But the way he must causality is events which happen according to a rule." Well That is certainly true. when the particles coming out in EPR [Einstein Podolsky Rosen] decide to refrain from being upor down spins until they interact, they are doing so according to a rule. 

Nietzsche is surely right that people's morality changes all the time.

 Nietzsche is surely right that people's morality changes all the time. Both individual and in whole societies. And certainly right that they flow from some unconsciousness places inside of us. [The irrational unconscious of Schopenhauer.] 

But that does not show that there is no objective morality. Rather that it is hard to get to.

[He was attacking Hegel on that score. Hegel thinks that people keep on progressing towards the Absolute Idea. Well, yes and no. There is objective morality, but we do not progress towards it at all and there is no reason to think that we now have it or will ever have it. 

But as Michael Huemer points out that just like in math you can start with very simple assumptions and build a lot on that, so in Ethics it might be possible to start with a simple axiom and build on that.

In math that works by you have the idea of a number  and add to that the idea of a vector and then the idea that things have shapes. These are not hard assumptions. Then you come up with Vector Calculus and Algebraic Topology.  So in ethics you might start with a simple rule: one should not torture millions of people for the fun of it. 

In fact we do find in the Gemara that the laws of the Torah have simple reasons. The Gemara however never tells us what they are. But later you find starting from Saadia Gaon and Ibn Pakuda that the reasons for the laws were made more explicit. --[Not to do idolatry or believe in idols, rather to believe and trust only in the First Cause. Peace of the state.]

[The hidden assumptions are in the modern world, not so hidden. The problem is not that they are hidden but rather that they are unexamined. The advantage of philosophy is that one learns to examine his or her assumptions about right and wrong. Feminists for example start with the assumption that they have been abused. That is perhaps sometimes true, but it is an unproven rule. Perhaps some girls have had good parents? I know for example that my mother had good parents.]

This mentality gives rise to the "Me Too" movement. And comes from a phenomenon seen by Nixon: that Americans believe in the news media more than they believe in their own eyes. Thus people will believe things that they are supposed to believe, - even when their own experience tells them that those beliefs are untrue.