9.10.17
Psalms 92: For You have made me joyful Lord by your works, I will sing about the doings of you hands.
כי שמחתני ה' בפעליך במעשה ידיך ארנן For You have made me joyful Lord by your works, I will sing about the doings of you hands.
From the standpoint of Maimonides, there is a close connection between learning Physics and Metaphysics with Love and Fear of God.
This has nothing to do with mental capacity, but rather it is simply considered more or less along the same lines as learning Torah.
This you can see is based on Saadia Gaon. Later the Rambam [Maimonides] and the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות and the מעלות המידות pick up the same theme.
Clearly later on polemics against all secular learning were reactions to the Enlightenment. However some geonim and many other rishonim were against all forms of secular learning unless it is for the sake of a vocation, e.g. Rav Hai Gaon--the last gaon, and the Rashba and Ramban/Nachmanides.
So the issue is simply a מחלוקת ראשונים an argument among mediaeval authorities. And once you have come to realize that, then there is not a lot more to say. An argument among mediaeval authorities is simply one of those things that are un-decidable. They are (as Motti Freifeld [son of the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] once told me) "אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים" "These and those are the words of the Living God." [That is a quote from the Talmud about an argument between the sages of the Mishna.]
I should mention just as a side note that nowadays I generally go with the approach that Physics ad Metaphysics are important which is along the lines of the Rambam and my parents. However when I was in the Mir in NY and also in Israel I was going with the "Torah alone" approach.
One way to defend the Rambam approach is by the idea of the hidden Torah inside the work of creation. That is a mystical concept from Reb Nachman but it does seem to be the way the Rambam is understanding this.
The way I personally do Physics nowadays is the way of "not trying." That is I just say the words and go on. This is called דרך גירסה and for me it seems to work. This path of learning is brought in the Gemara and the Musar book אורחות צדיקים
[I might mention the requirement of learning Torah along with this which to me means basically Gemara Rashi and Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which is the best thing in terms of "Lumdut." --deep learning. I might be doing more of that myself if I had any books.]
From the standpoint of Maimonides, there is a close connection between learning Physics and Metaphysics with Love and Fear of God.
This has nothing to do with mental capacity, but rather it is simply considered more or less along the same lines as learning Torah.
This you can see is based on Saadia Gaon. Later the Rambam [Maimonides] and the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות and the מעלות המידות pick up the same theme.
Clearly later on polemics against all secular learning were reactions to the Enlightenment. However some geonim and many other rishonim were against all forms of secular learning unless it is for the sake of a vocation, e.g. Rav Hai Gaon--the last gaon, and the Rashba and Ramban/Nachmanides.
So the issue is simply a מחלוקת ראשונים an argument among mediaeval authorities. And once you have come to realize that, then there is not a lot more to say. An argument among mediaeval authorities is simply one of those things that are un-decidable. They are (as Motti Freifeld [son of the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] once told me) "אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים" "These and those are the words of the Living God." [That is a quote from the Talmud about an argument between the sages of the Mishna.]
I should mention just as a side note that nowadays I generally go with the approach that Physics ad Metaphysics are important which is along the lines of the Rambam and my parents. However when I was in the Mir in NY and also in Israel I was going with the "Torah alone" approach.
One way to defend the Rambam approach is by the idea of the hidden Torah inside the work of creation. That is a mystical concept from Reb Nachman but it does seem to be the way the Rambam is understanding this.
The way I personally do Physics nowadays is the way of "not trying." That is I just say the words and go on. This is called דרך גירסה and for me it seems to work. This path of learning is brought in the Gemara and the Musar book אורחות צדיקים
[I might mention the requirement of learning Torah along with this which to me means basically Gemara Rashi and Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which is the best thing in terms of "Lumdut." --deep learning. I might be doing more of that myself if I had any books.]
8.10.17
a bad education can damage one's soul permanently.
[1] What is bothering me about religious education is the fact that a bad education can damage one's soul permanently.
[2] Few people are aware of the dangers of a Jewish education. Learning Torah is not the same as being an apprentice under the local blacksmith. Torah is very different. And since it is usually taught by people that are not worth anything, the results are obviously not far off.
I would perhaps go into this if I was not so weak and sick. But in short the main idea is that bad teachers produce bad results and Torah is not like learning a profession. It goes down into the very essence of one' soul.
Obviously the Na Nach people are acutely aware of this more than any group I have seen. In any case, the issue really began in my mind this morning when I thought about the basic idea of the Rambam that the commandments of the Torah have a purpose and that is to bring to several things which could be called objective morality.
The people that are there even in the best of yeshivas to teach Musar/ Ethics to me seem to be far from normative objective morality. So perhaps how to become a decent person is possible to teach and to learn but they do not seem to be the people capable of doing so.
Just to be fair there are still around a few good places like Ponovitch or the great NY Litvak yeshivas. But my point is that the idea that just getting an education is a good thing is completely wrong. In fact unless you are actually going to the Mir or some clearly decent place then the best thing is to avoid the whole bunch of frauds and jerks.
To teach Torah for money is forbidden. מה אני (לימדתי תורה) בחינם אף אתם (תלמדו תורה) בחינם. So in any case the whole scam does not have anything to stand on. And that is an open Gemara in Bava Batra.
[2] Few people are aware of the dangers of a Jewish education. Learning Torah is not the same as being an apprentice under the local blacksmith. Torah is very different. And since it is usually taught by people that are not worth anything, the results are obviously not far off.
I would perhaps go into this if I was not so weak and sick. But in short the main idea is that bad teachers produce bad results and Torah is not like learning a profession. It goes down into the very essence of one' soul.
Obviously the Na Nach people are acutely aware of this more than any group I have seen. In any case, the issue really began in my mind this morning when I thought about the basic idea of the Rambam that the commandments of the Torah have a purpose and that is to bring to several things which could be called objective morality.
The people that are there even in the best of yeshivas to teach Musar/ Ethics to me seem to be far from normative objective morality. So perhaps how to become a decent person is possible to teach and to learn but they do not seem to be the people capable of doing so.
Just to be fair there are still around a few good places like Ponovitch or the great NY Litvak yeshivas. But my point is that the idea that just getting an education is a good thing is completely wrong. In fact unless you are actually going to the Mir or some clearly decent place then the best thing is to avoid the whole bunch of frauds and jerks.
To teach Torah for money is forbidden. מה אני (לימדתי תורה) בחינם אף אתם (תלמדו תורה) בחינם. So in any case the whole scam does not have anything to stand on. And that is an open Gemara in Bava Batra.
England used to execute thieves.
One person (call him Moshe) was telling me he would not have a problem with people attacking him because he treats people with respect. That ignores the fact that there are people who choose violence as the first option. I have unfortunately encountered people that choose theft and violence as the first means of getting what they want and there are plenty more that I have not met. The next day that same person, Moshe was walking in the city and met a person who told him openly that he is a thief and after talking a while asked him to buy some alcohol. Moshe said fine and bought 50 grivans worth with a 200 grivan bill and the thief returned 100 grivans. Thus teaching Moshe that some people steal and lie just for the fun and thrill of it. This is just one mild example of a very terrible phenomenon that exists among people. There are plenty that choose theft and violence just because it gets results and is fun.
England used to execute thieves. Japan also until recently. No wonder these two countries are First World countries. They got rid of the bad genes and the DNA carriers. [You could also just lock them up long enough to make sure they do not pass on their genes to the next generation.]
[The reason the Tzar and the USSR dealt harshly with thieves was this reason: There is no cure for a thief. Once they have started down that path they do not ever go back to human decency.]
England used to execute thieves. Japan also until recently. No wonder these two countries are First World countries. They got rid of the bad genes and the DNA carriers. [You could also just lock them up long enough to make sure they do not pass on their genes to the next generation.]
[The reason the Tzar and the USSR dealt harshly with thieves was this reason: There is no cure for a thief. Once they have started down that path they do not ever go back to human decency.]
What do we do about people who have already turned to violence as their tactic of choice? Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist, that people either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance.
The Cycle of Violence Steven Dutch's essay
Before we go any further, take your mouse and put the cursor on the bold lettering above.
Now, notice what you did. In order to move the mouse, you had to exert force, and very precise and gentle force at that. You didn't rip the mouse cord out of the computer, or crush the mouse in your grip, or push so hard on it that you mashed the trackball flat. The notion that force inexorably spirals out of control is precisely that trivially easy to refute.
Now it's probably true that resorting to unnecessary violence may very well lead to retaliation. So restraint in dealing with confrontations is usually a good idea. But all the talk about "ending the cycle of violence" fails to address the key question what do we do about people who have already turned to violence as their tactic of choice? As a problem-solving tool, "violence first" has a couple of things going for it:
It's simple
It gets results, especially after word gets around that you don't hesitate to use violence
It's gratifying. You get to vent pent-up rage, feel dominance over others, maybe even a sexual turn-on
Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist, that people either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance. But history abounds with examples of people who have deliberately chosen violence. The ease with which people from non-violent backgrounds have been induced to commit atrocities in wartime shows how easy it can be for the violent to recruit assistants, and for the gratification factor to take hold. Thus, a single individual who opts for violence because he enjoys domination may succeed in recruiting many others less bold than he is. How do we respond to people who have opted for violence? Appeasement merely reinforces the conviction that violence gets results. Moreover, it provides gratification by reinforcing the feeling of dominance. When confronting people who have already opted for violence, non-violence has a very good chance of perpetuating the cycle of violence. Retaliatory force, on the other hand, makes the results of violence a lot less simple, a lot less effective in getting results, and a lot less gratifying.
Furthermore, violence is only the far end of the spectrum of force. Every screaming brat who throws a temper tantrum in public is testimony to the fact that children do not need to be taught the use of force. And regardless how loving, benevolent and diligent a parent is in meeting and supplying the child's needs, every child sooner or later runs into the fact that other people, much less the physical universe, will not. Sooner or later every human being has to face the fact that some desires will not be gratified.
Throwing the First Punch
Before we go any further, take your mouse and put the cursor on the bold lettering above.
Now, notice what you did. In order to move the mouse, you had to exert force, and very precise and gentle force at that. You didn't rip the mouse cord out of the computer, or crush the mouse in your grip, or push so hard on it that you mashed the trackball flat. The notion that force inexorably spirals out of control is precisely that trivially easy to refute.
Now it's probably true that resorting to unnecessary violence may very well lead to retaliation. So restraint in dealing with confrontations is usually a good idea. But all the talk about "ending the cycle of violence" fails to address the key question what do we do about people who have already turned to violence as their tactic of choice? As a problem-solving tool, "violence first" has a couple of things going for it:
It's simple
It gets results, especially after word gets around that you don't hesitate to use violence
It's gratifying. You get to vent pent-up rage, feel dominance over others, maybe even a sexual turn-on
Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist, that people either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance. But history abounds with examples of people who have deliberately chosen violence. The ease with which people from non-violent backgrounds have been induced to commit atrocities in wartime shows how easy it can be for the violent to recruit assistants, and for the gratification factor to take hold. Thus, a single individual who opts for violence because he enjoys domination may succeed in recruiting many others less bold than he is. How do we respond to people who have opted for violence? Appeasement merely reinforces the conviction that violence gets results. Moreover, it provides gratification by reinforcing the feeling of dominance. When confronting people who have already opted for violence, non-violence has a very good chance of perpetuating the cycle of violence. Retaliatory force, on the other hand, makes the results of violence a lot less simple, a lot less effective in getting results, and a lot less gratifying.
Furthermore, violence is only the far end of the spectrum of force. Every screaming brat who throws a temper tantrum in public is testimony to the fact that children do not need to be taught the use of force. And regardless how loving, benevolent and diligent a parent is in meeting and supplying the child's needs, every child sooner or later runs into the fact that other people, much less the physical universe, will not. Sooner or later every human being has to face the fact that some desires will not be gratified.
Throwing the First Punch
7.10.17
How much is Hegel really to blame for the terrible use the Marxists make of his writings?
How much is Hegel really to blame for the terrible use the Marxists make of his writings? They reject openly most of his system [objective morality] but still use some of his paradigms. [Marxism holds that moral values are not objective but are mere fictions invented by the ruling class to further its class interests (much like religion)] It should be easy to say this except for the fact that obviously the Kant/Friesian school does not like Hegel and in fact put the full blame and guilt of communism on his shoulders. Popper especially. It is not uncommon to hear people saying Hegel was incoherent.
But there was one thing that always bothered me about the idea of accusing Hegel of absurdities. That is that I had read about 20 years ago in NY a Cambridge companion to Hegel and I knew he had a well worked out system.
To me it makes more sense to redeem Hegel than to blame him.
This issue seems urgent because the USA is breaking apart over the battle between traditional family Judaeo-Christian values as opposed to Marxism (Socialism). And to me it seems obvious that without Hegel, the Marxists would never have gotten off the first floor. They could never have convinced anyone of their absurdities if not for taking the name of Hegel in vain. It was the use of Hegel that let them be believable.
[I broke my leg and after that got diverticulitis. I was in a hospital in Uman and my brother urged me to leave the Ukraine and get an operation in either the USA or Israel. I stayed where I was and I am very grateful to God that He sent to me a great doctor who did the operation Alexandr Sergevitch, and a great nursing staff. Later after I was released I got diverticulitis and went to the other hospital right outside Uman that has a very good reputation that is called the hospital of the region. [Bolnitza Rayona.] [It is outside of Uman on the Kiev Odessa highway.] There God again had compassion on me and sent to me great doctors. [There had been a doctor at the first hospital who was a leftover from the old USSR who caused disasters on whom so ever he touched. But he was no longer working there. The doctor who saw me after my accident was not Soviet trained but young and had learned in Dnepropetrovsk. Apparently they have a big institution there.]
This accounts for my not writing on my blog. I have been very weak and not able to do any learning or thinking.]
After I was out I talked with a nurse that was visiting from Estonia. I told her that I suspect that medicine in 1st world countries is not so great, and that is one reason I did not run to the USA for an operation. And she told me about one patient of hers that the doctors in the one of the best hospitals in the West killed by means of chemotherapy. He walked in looking 50 years old and two weeks later looking 70 and then a short time later died. I said: "The trouble with medicine in 1st world countries is they have too many toys."
But there was one thing that always bothered me about the idea of accusing Hegel of absurdities. That is that I had read about 20 years ago in NY a Cambridge companion to Hegel and I knew he had a well worked out system.
To me it makes more sense to redeem Hegel than to blame him.
This issue seems urgent because the USA is breaking apart over the battle between traditional family Judaeo-Christian values as opposed to Marxism (Socialism). And to me it seems obvious that without Hegel, the Marxists would never have gotten off the first floor. They could never have convinced anyone of their absurdities if not for taking the name of Hegel in vain. It was the use of Hegel that let them be believable.
[I broke my leg and after that got diverticulitis. I was in a hospital in Uman and my brother urged me to leave the Ukraine and get an operation in either the USA or Israel. I stayed where I was and I am very grateful to God that He sent to me a great doctor who did the operation Alexandr Sergevitch, and a great nursing staff. Later after I was released I got diverticulitis and went to the other hospital right outside Uman that has a very good reputation that is called the hospital of the region. [Bolnitza Rayona.] [It is outside of Uman on the Kiev Odessa highway.] There God again had compassion on me and sent to me great doctors. [There had been a doctor at the first hospital who was a leftover from the old USSR who caused disasters on whom so ever he touched. But he was no longer working there. The doctor who saw me after my accident was not Soviet trained but young and had learned in Dnepropetrovsk. Apparently they have a big institution there.]
This accounts for my not writing on my blog. I have been very weak and not able to do any learning or thinking.]
After I was out I talked with a nurse that was visiting from Estonia. I told her that I suspect that medicine in 1st world countries is not so great, and that is one reason I did not run to the USA for an operation. And she told me about one patient of hers that the doctors in the one of the best hospitals in the West killed by means of chemotherapy. He walked in looking 50 years old and two weeks later looking 70 and then a short time later died. I said: "The trouble with medicine in 1st world countries is they have too many toys."
6.10.17
Putting together my worldview in elementary school and high school. Going to a Lithuanian yeshiva was the best possible choice.
I spent a good amount of effort putting together my worldview in elementary school and high school.
I had a notebooks filled with ideas that I would jot down at night before going to sleep. Often I would think of some new idea right before falling asleep and get up and write in down and then go back to bed.
It is hard to know if I would have been doing this thinking if the atmosphere of the time did not call for it.That was at the height of the hippie movement. The hippies had one basic message:"Tear down the system," and they assumed that after they would succeed they would build a utopia in its place. But most people did not think tearing down the system was the best idea. But people did accept that the system needed to be examined.
I did a great deal of readings: Plato, Dante, Spinoza, Herman Hesse, Chinese Philosophies. But Philosophy of the twentieth century seemed to me to be obviously false and vacuous. It was not just that it was self contradictory and full of circular reasoning, but also they (twentieth century philosophers) did not care about reason and logic at all. To them the more unreasonable their ideas were the better.
But my ideas had a lot to do with Socrates and living the good life. Not just philosophy for the sake of interesting ideas.
So going to Shar Yashuv and the Mir Yeshiva in N.Y. was about as a well thought out choice as I could have made.
There was also the issue that my parents obviously had a extremely happy marriage and sense of family values. And to me it seemed secular society was on the warpath against family values. I did not think I was going to manage to build a family in secular society.
In hind sight, the going to a Lithuanian yeshiva was the best possible choice I could have made in terms of family. But right outside the door of many Lithuanian yeshiva is a "kelipa" (a dark force of evil/ the religious world) which is a power from the Dark Side that is more destructive to family than secular society.
I was not aware (at the time) of the danger of the religious world. I am now.
[The way to understand the problem is that where holiness exists, the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side) surrounds it as it says in Psalms "Around and around go the wicked." Wherever there is holiness, around it is always found the forces of the Dark Side trying to get in.]
It is well known that Evil that does not pretend to be other than what it is, is much less dangerous than Evil which pretends to be Holiness.
I did a great deal of readings: Plato, Dante, Spinoza, Herman Hesse, Chinese Philosophies. But Philosophy of the twentieth century seemed to me to be obviously false and vacuous. It was not just that it was self contradictory and full of circular reasoning, but also they (twentieth century philosophers) did not care about reason and logic at all. To them the more unreasonable their ideas were the better.
But my ideas had a lot to do with Socrates and living the good life. Not just philosophy for the sake of interesting ideas.
So going to Shar Yashuv and the Mir Yeshiva in N.Y. was about as a well thought out choice as I could have made.
There was also the issue that my parents obviously had a extremely happy marriage and sense of family values. And to me it seemed secular society was on the warpath against family values. I did not think I was going to manage to build a family in secular society.
In hind sight, the going to a Lithuanian yeshiva was the best possible choice I could have made in terms of family. But right outside the door of many Lithuanian yeshiva is a "kelipa" (a dark force of evil/ the religious world) which is a power from the Dark Side that is more destructive to family than secular society.
I was not aware (at the time) of the danger of the religious world. I am now.
[The way to understand the problem is that where holiness exists, the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side) surrounds it as it says in Psalms "Around and around go the wicked." Wherever there is holiness, around it is always found the forces of the Dark Side trying to get in.]
It is well known that Evil that does not pretend to be other than what it is, is much less dangerous than Evil which pretends to be Holiness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)