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.

I see the Alt Right and monarchists are not so thrilled with the Enlightenment. That would seem to be along the lines of Allen Bloom. (Closing of the American Mind). But Bloom takes the critique mainly from the beginning of the Enlightenment up until Kant and then skips over to the modern day American University. So he did not deal with German Idealism nor its offshoots. I am not sure why?

I see a lot of value in German Idealism and the later people like C.G. Jung who built on Schopenhauer and Kant.

Still the overall impression is that none of these people liked the Throne and Altar approach of the Middle Ages.


In any case you can see even in Jung  and Hegel the struggle to get out of a Torah Framework.

Certainly not in Kant though.


In any case I am still trying to evaluate the whole thing. I read Allen Bloom about 5 years ago and pretty much what he says makes sense. That is: The Enlightenment and the Anti Enlightenment have both been on a collusion course for some time and now are colliding. The devastation of the Enlightenment is apparent in the modern USA university. But the solution is no where to be seen. He certainly does not think a return to Throne and Altar  is a good idea. I also have sen plenty of abuse in religious settings. There is enough abuse for me to shudder at the idea of religious authorities have any kind of power.

I prefer to remain in the Allen Bloom Zone where both the Enlightenment and Throne and Altar approach have some validity and that the best way has simply not been found yet.

Just to be clear I think the modern world got intoxicated with modernity. The best thing is to learn Gemara, Musar [medieval ethics] Math and Physics. Take the best of the holy Torah and science.  [Hegel I am not so thrilled with.]

The Social Meme and the Lithuanian yeshiva model. There is a correspondence between what people are doing and what they think they are doing.

Every group has some social meme it is founded upon. Sometimes it is a positive thing and sometimes not. This is the reason I mention the Lithuanian yeshiva world often in  a positive light since the basic social meme [the set of core principles] is to learn and keep Torah. All other groups in the religious world are defined by things they hate. For example the very religious in the Jewish world could not care less about Torah. What they hate is hate defines them.  They hate secular Jews. They hate the State of Israel. They hate Christianity. And they love the money of secular Jews, They often have some central object of worship that is not the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.


[The Lithuanian yeshiva model at least in the form I saw in New York is amazing. The energy of Torah that fills these kinds of places is astounding. When you are a part of it you really live in order to learn and keep Torah.]

The great advantage of the Litvak [Lithuanian] yeshiva model is there is a correspondence between what people are doing and what they think they are doing. In that way it can be called true. In the religious world however there is a kind of disconnect. What people are doing has no connection to what they present to others what they are doing or what they themselves think they are doing.

 Yom Kippur we say the long confession which includes the idea of listening to one's parents and teachers. I think there can be cases in which parents and teachers are not teaching the right things and thus should not be listened to. Still, in my case, I had an amazing set of fantastic parents and amazing teachers. It is however hard to figure out how to balance the lessons I learned from them into one whole.  



The way I have tried to do this is by consciously arranged my daily schedule to include the different things I learned were important. That is small sessions. I go with the idea that even a little bit of something important is also important. 

[Learning Music, Math, Physics, Gemara, the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach would be my idea of  a great way to spend the day.]
[There are other subjects which are worthwhile to learn but not on a daily basis. ]


Reform Judaism I should mention is great in terms of the emphasis on obligations between man and his fellow man. But it has change over the years to be mainly a belief in Socialism instead of Torah. In the more religious circles others things are used to replace the Torah.