Pigeons, it turns out, are highly superstitious. If you give them a few times food after some type of action they did, they almost immediately they learn to associate the coming of the food with that action. They will dance that same dance over and over again thinking that that is the action that caused the food to come.
To some degree this seems to be in accord with  what Rabbainu Yona says in Shaari Teshuva אין יסורים בלי עוון ''There are no troubles without sin.'' However as this train of thought goes on I will try to show there is a better approach.  But just for now I want to make a note that different people will emphasize one particular action just like the pigeons.
They will choose one particular action they will say that all of one's happiness in this world and the next depends on. שמירת הברית to Reb Nachman. Learning Torah to the Litvaks. Every cult will say it depends on service to their cult.
To some degree, I can agree with the Litvaks that a lot depends on learning Torah.
But the way I see things, a lot of these approaches promise much and deliver little.  Often they are consciousness traps to get one into some Sitra Achra cult.

To me it seems the Torah itself deals with this mentality. It says, "This is the mitzvah I have commanded to you when you enter the land God has promised to you, burn down and destroy all the places the nations have served idols in." In other words, don't worry about everything I have commanded. Just concentrate your focus on this one thing. Destroy the cults at all cost.
Causality while true tends to be too difficult to work with. There are too many factors to deal with. Physicists have found the Hamiltonian to be an easier method. That is to find the total energy of the system and find its minimum. The Lagrangian works better for Quantum Field theory where you look at the difference between the KE and potential energy and look for a maximum or minimum.
You look rather for the right balance of values. This explains a lot. It shows that even though the Litvaks are clearly right about learning Torah, my approach shows why it is of limited effect. While a good amount of exercise every day is good for your heath, that does not mean an insane amount of exercise is insanely good for your health.

Going beyond the point of  balance detracts from the Torah. Just like water is good for you but one can overdose. But I do not mean one can overdose on Torah. Rather I mean that when starts to use Torah for money that immediately turns it to poison.

But I would rather not concentrate on the Litvak world which is at least of the good side. It is highly disappointing to me that the Lithuanian yeshiva world is no where near as great as I would have hoped based on the fact they have most things rights in terms of world view. It is rather the aspect of the cult the Gra put into Cherem that is more of a problem because it apparently has a connection with the Dark Side that causes insanity to anyone that gets near. It is like  a fish hook. To the fish swallowing the worm on the hook, everything is fine. It is getting a free meal. And it is tasty. The trouble begins when it tries to break away. And the harder it tries to get away the worse things get.
That is the same with cults. Getting in is fun and exciting. The trouble is to break away means death.
My basic feeling is that I can not learn Torah and there is some kind of force from the Sitra Achra stopping me. And what makes it hard is internal and external. It is like the Sitra Achra plants its agents in the yeshiva world to make things hard for anyone that wants to learn Torah for ts own sake
I am not saying this is not my own fault. I fully believe if I had been steady to "remain in learning" that things would have worked out as we already know that real trust in God tears down all obstacles.

The basic structure of reality as we know from the Ari is the ten sepherot. But Rav Shalom Sharabi [from Yemen and then Jerusalem] showed how that boils down to five Partzufim [פרצופים] and from there down to three.

I had a few thoughts--but nothing really worked out.

Hegel's triadic (three fold) structure which he acknowledged came from Plato and obviously Kant. To me it is seems certain that to some degree he was inspired by Isaac Luria. [at least we know Hegel quoted the Ari and so he must have known about him to some degree.] 
To some degree it is possible to see the importance of the triads of Hegel by means of the Cantor set. In the Cantor set you keep taking out the middle third and if you go to infinity it turns out that the Lebesque measure intersection of all the subsets is zero. 

Which simply means if you take out the middle term you get no connection between the first and third.

trust in God

I know I have not been clear about trust in God. I am sorry about that but the ambiguity comes from experience. That is,-- the ambiguity of experience creates ambiguity in my thoughts. I am not even sure is there is any lesson that can be learned.
The major events were that I decided to go and learn Torah in NY somehow trusting that God would take care of "parnasa" [making a living]. And that attitude basically paid off with dividends until at some point it stopped (or more accurately I stopped trusting).  One way or the other the whole thing collapsed. So, while I agree in principle, I can also see it is a delicate principle. But it is a terrible mistake to associate trust in God with the religious world which puts on a facade of righteousness to bilk naive secular Jews out of their money. 
While trust in God is  a great thing, it is an error to think it has anything to do with kollel. Most kollel people are enemies of Torah and of Israel. They use Torah as a disguise. I have therefore tried to be very picky about which yeshivas to recommend which I believe learn Torah for its own sake

To get to Torah requires getting through the major obstacle--the pseudo religious world. As soon as one can get over the illusion that thy have anything to do with Torah at all, that is when one can begin to come to true Torah.
In terms of funding, I think it is the best approach to not punish the innocent with the guilty. Thus the vast majority of religious organizations which are scams should be cut off from all funding. Especially those in Israel. And the clearly honest places like Ponovitch  and the great NY yeshivas should continue to get even more funding. But with proper care taken to insure the good institutions, the rest of the 99% of the religiosity parasites and institutions should be cut off from all funding, private and government.
[Even though the pure Litvak Yeshivas that keep out all nonsense are pretty good, there are enough there also that are just playing games. As a rule the religious world has pitted itself against the State of Israel and thus should be thrown out. Getting the massive amounts of funding they get from the state is ridiculous. I never saw such insane hypocrisy in my life as this. And then they go to the USA to beg for charity from rich American Jews that they stab in the back if they dare to come to Israel.
[The good places are not just Ponovitch but also branches of Ponovitch. Same with the great NY yeshivas Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat. Rav Montag's yeshiva in Netivot I think is also very good/

The major issue is to direct funding to the proper places that are doing good work and to cut off all funding to the cults that pretend to be learning Torah. That type of knowledge is hard to come by except by experience. The main guidelines should be whatever comes under the category of the חרם of the Gra should be eliminated. Nowadays appearance counts for ore than substance.  So these cults make a lot of effort to appear Torah'dik [of the Torah] while in fact being agents of the Devil.

You fun these cults in Israel or in the USA, you give them power to seduce ore and more innocent Jews into their insanity.
I should mention also the Merkaz HaRav of Rav Kook at teh general Mizrachi yeshivas which are very good. 

the decline in the Armed forces in the USA.

I have heard about the decline in the Armed forces in the USA. A lot of the trouble seems to be in the kind of people enlisting. But I have seen plenty of cause for optimism. One is the election of Trump. Another is the fact that there still are good people in the armed forces. Not everyone has been affected.

In Israel, also I see good reason to support the armed forces. 

Mainly the idea comes from Hegel-that not every state deserves support. But some do. Those that maximize human freedom.
This is roughly based on Howard Bloom and his book on the super-organism and the social meme.[The Lucifer Principle]
That is Hegel saw the importance of the State, but not every state. Only the ones that are committed towards what he considered to be true justice. And justice in Hegel is not ill defined. It means a maximum of freedom within the limits of responsibility and moral law.

This is more or less of what Richard Epstein (in law at NYU) means with his limited kind of government. [Though he would not put it in terms of Hegel. And he is in any case not looking for philosophical justification for his limited government approach anyway. But that ignoring of the philosophical issue seems to  me to be  a weakness in his thought rather than a strength

Beginning of Bava Metzia

Someone sent to  two volumes of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. One is gone. But in the one I still can read, he brings an amazing idea that the Rambam's idea of  דררא דממונא is when each one is saying a טענת ספק. He brings this from a book called אבן האזל.

Rav Shach himself uses this idea to answer some questions in laws of פקדון. but without actually seeing the arguments in  אבן האזל I can already see what the Rambam must have been thinking.

He must have seen that there are two opposing approaches to דררא דממונא in the Gemara. One is is Bava Batra that סומכוס Sumchos said his law {ממון  המוטל בספק חולקים בלי שבוע, money in doubt is divided with no oath} only in a case of דררא דממונא. The other is in the beginning  of Bava Metzia, that if Sumchos said his law in a case of דררא דממונא, then all the more so in a case that is not דררא דממונא. And I already mentioned in my little booklet on Bava Metzia that some of the Mishnas that the Gemara says are Sumchos do not seem to conform to the definition of Tosphot ספק לבית דין בלא טענותיהם.

So it is amazingly clear what the Rambam thought. He looked at the Gemara on page 100 and saw that there is an argument between two Amoraim about when Sumchos said his law. One said only when both say טענת שמא and the other opinion is even when both say טענת ברי. So the Rambam simply decided that that is the definition of דררא דממונא and that accounts for the difference between the two Gemaras in Bava Metzia and Bava Batra. That is the Gemara in the beginning of Bava Metzia is like the opinion Sumchos said his law in both cases (certainty and certainty) and the Gemara in Bava Batra is like the opinion Sumchos said his law only in the case of doubt and doubt.


The place to begin work on this would be to look at the those Mishnas that the Gemara says are Sumchos and to see how they fit with Tosphot and/or the Rambam. But I will have to leave that work for others since I have no Gemara.

I mentioned in my notes about the Maharam from Lublin conserning the fact that Tosphot's version of the Gemara in th beginning of Bava Metzia does not have דררא דממונא לזה ודררא דממונא לזה. That fact I used to help explain Tosphot on page 100b but it might help us here also to understand why Tosphot was not able to use the pshat/explanation that the Rambam uses. 



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  בספר של רב שך האבי עזרי he brings an amazing idea that the  idea of the רמב''ם that דררא דממונא is when each one is saying a טענת ספק. He brings this from a book called אבן האזל.

רב שך himself uses this idea to answer some questions in laws of פקדון. but without actually seeing the arguments in  אבן האזל I can already see what the רמב''ם must have been thinking.

He must have seen the there are two opposing approaches to דררא דממונא in the גמרא. One is is בבא בתרא that סומכוס  said his law ממון  המוטל בספק חולקים בלי שבוע only in a case of דררא דממונא. The other is in the beginning  of  בבא מציעא that is סומכוס  said his law in a case of דררא דממונא then all the more so in a case that is not דררא דממונא. And I already mentioned that some of the משניות that the גמרא says are סומכוס  do not seem to conform to the definition of תוספות ספק לבית דין בלא טענותיהם.

So it is amazingly clear what the רמב''ם thought. He looked at the גמרא on page דף ק' ע''א and saw that there is an argument between two אמוראים about when סומכוס  said his law. One said only when both say טענת שמא and the other opinion is even when both say טענת ברי. So the רמב''ם simply decided that that is the definition of דררא דממונא and that accounts for the difference between the two גמרות in  בבא מציעא and בבא בתרא. That is the גמרא in the beginning of  בבא מציעא is like the opinion סומכוס  said his law in both cases (certainty and certainty) and the גמרא in בבא בתרא is like the opinion סומכוס  said his law only in the case of doubt and doubt. 

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 ב''מ ק. בספר של רב שך האבי עזרי הוא מביא רעיון מדהים שהרעיון של הרמב''ם כי דררא דממונא היא כאשר כל אחד אומר טענת ספק. הוא מביא את זה מתוך ספר אבן האזל. רב שך עצמו משתמש ברעיון זה לענות על כמה שאלות בדיני פקדון. אבל מבלי לראות טיעוני האבן האזל אני כבר רואה מה רמב''ם חשב ודאי. הוא בוודאי ראה  שישנן שתי גישות מנוגדות בדררא דממונא בגמרא. אחת היא היא בבבא בתרא כי סומכוס אמר את החוק שלו ממון המוטל בספק חולקים בלי שבוע רק במקרה של דררא דממונא. השניה היא בתחילת בבא מציעא כי אם סומכוס אמר את החוק שלו במקרה של דררא דממונא, אז על אחת כמה וכמה במקרה שאינו דררא דממונא. וכבר הזכרתי שחלק של המשניות שהגמרא אומרת הן של סומכוס לא נראות עונות להגדרה של תוספות, ספק לבית דין בלא טענותיהם. אז זה ברור מה הרמב''ם חשב. הוא ראה בגמרא בעמוד דף ק' ע''א שיש ויכוח בין שני אמוראים לגבי מתי סומכוס אמר את החוק שלו. אחד אמר רק כאשר שניהם (הבעלי דין) אומרים טענת שמא ואת חוות הדעת האחרת היא גם כאשר שניהם אומרים טענת ברי. אז הרמב''ם פשוט החליט כי זו ההגדרה של דררא דממונא, וזה מסביר את ההבדלים בין שתי גמרות בבבא מציעא ובבא בתרא. זוהי הגמרא בתחילת בבא מציעא היא כדעת שסומכוס אמר את החוק שלו בשני המקרים (ודאות ודאות, ושמא ושמא) ואת הגמרא בבבא בתרא הוא כדעת שסומכוס אמר את החוק שלו רק במקרה של ספק וספק כשיטת רבא בבבא מציעא.

To me it seems that the left has lost the intellectual and moral high ground.

I see the problem was simply that the left had the power because it had what seemed to be true. Socialism seemed to be the wave of the future. To me it seems that the left has lost the intellectual and moral high ground. It will just take time until people see this. Sure in universities  Left wing drivel is still taught, but that is changing. And even the philosophy departments are changing for the better.
John Searle, Kelley Ross, Richard Epstein, Michael Huemer, etc. 


But that is not to imply the religious world is very good. Anyone who has ever been in a religious neighborhood knows  one immutable fact about the religious world שכן רע. They are evil neighbors.  Not just that they do not mind their own business but insist on poking their noses into everyone else's business and then go looking for even the slightest fault and then exploiting that to make some crusade against anyone they do not like.  Living anywhere near a religious person is an experience like no other of Hell on Earth.  

Some people seem to equate being religious with being righteous, moral and decent but from long experience I can say that is not true. In fact as a rule, the relationship is inverse. Righteous=1/ religious.
Clearly Reb Israel Salanter was aware of this and tried to correct it to by means of the emphasis on Musar thinking that people would see the main emphasis of Torah is on בין אדם לחבירו [human decency]- but the only people to have gotten that message are Reform and Conservative Jews.

Without the actual Talmud in front of me, it is hard to speculate. But I think that you have to say that Rav Shach has some way of understanding R. Yehuda (of the Mishna) in a different way than he is usually understood. R. Yehuda says ביעור חמץ the destruction of leaven is by fire. The way this is usually understood is based on a statement במה דברים אמורים קודם זמן איסורו אבל אחר זמן איסורו השבתתו בכל דבר. [When do we say this? Before the time it is forbidden. But after that time one can get rid of the leaven in any shape or form.]  Now based on a later on sugia [treatment of this subject] around page 93-95 in Pesachim it says leaven shall not be found is a prohibition that is transferred to a positive command. {לאו הניתק לעשה/a negative command that even if one transgress it he does not get lashes because it can be rectified by a positive command }That can only work if ביעור חמץ is only at the time of the prohibition. So to whom is that Gemara referring to? Apparently R. Yehuda.
This would at least help to understand the Rambam who does hold that ביעור is only at the time of the prohibition  and yet he gets lashes [because obviously he is going like the sages against R Yehuda] But the thing you see in the Rambam is the way he understood the argument between the sages and R. Yehuda--is what is the destruction of leaven? Anyway possible or only by fire? But both hold it is at the time of the prohibition. So this is how Rav Shach understands the Rambam and I think he must be basing it on that later Gemara.
Of course, none of this is like Rashi or Tosphot. And that leaves us with the obvious question what do Rashi and Tosphot do with that Gemara on page 93-95?

In any case there is clearly a lot of work that needs to be done here. Reb Chaim Soloveitchik also deals with this same question but I do not have his book nor the Gemara. At any rate his answer, is that לא יראה ולא ימצא is a positive and negative command--so that is how he answers for the Rambam which does not help us about the Gemara on 95.

In case it is unclear what I am saying here it is this. You can not have  לאו הניתק לעשה when the עשה starts before the לאו. They have to start and end at the same time for this law to apply.