"It is possible to serve God with everything."

Grace and Law. The thing is you need a balance between these. You see a kind of balance between these two areas of value in Rav Nahman. In fact in two lessons in his LeM he brings the ideas "Not to be strict" and  "It is possible to serve God with everything." [ LeM II 44.]

The idea is that God's light fills the world. So the idea is not that everything is good. Rather that it is possible to find the Good.

The thing about two different areas of value is you need each area to get to its perfection before it can be integrated successfully with the other. An example would be Newton's Gravity with Maxwell. Each needed to get to the peck until Einstein could see the way to combine, or better said to modify Newton. Same with Einstein and Heisenberg until you got Feynman and Schwinger with QFT. Same with String Theory. So it is with other areas of value.
The way you can see this is with spectral lines. Each one is sharp and defined for every element and molecule. But each has its own signature. so the same element will have very specific lines and nothing in between. No penumbra.

The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true.

Dr Michael Huemer has a kind of point that he answered to me long ago about a kind of problem in the Kant Friesian approach of immediate non-intuitive knowledge [i.e. faith.] [note 1] The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true. So what can you do with that. In my own mind I have thought to answer this by the idea of Hegel of the dialectic. That getting to truth is this process between empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge.

[I mean to say that as Dr Huemer has argued that even the most straight forward empirical knowledge has hidden a priori assumptions. I would say faith has also this aspect. That is the old mediaeval approach of balance faith with reason.]


[In case it is not clear what I am saying it is that moral principles are objective universals. And that Reason's "thing" is to recognize universals. But as Huemer mentions that sometimes even for pure reason to get the concept in the first place requires an empirical element.]

[I am really not able to take any sides here. It seems to me that Hegel, Kelley Ross, and Huemer all have good points. I imagine the Kelley Ross answer to Huemer would be that your prima facie assumption would have have to have a starting point before reason can even start, plus that it can be checked empirically. thus even flat space time which for kant was the start of reason without which reason could not even start, had to be sacrificed to general relativity. this in fact caused the major crisis of the friesian school. but as kelley ross pointed out, it did not have to be so. and here the insights of michael huemer are helpful for if you see your starting principles cause problems, you might as well find other tarting principles--just as Einstein did.   [he assumed Maxwell's equations were  more fundamental than newton's, so with Einstein the starting principle had to be that the speed of light is constant in all non accelerating frames of reference --as is the case with maxwell ] 


[note 1] "Non intuitive" is not sensed by any of the five senses. "Immediate" means not through anything. I.e. no mediate step. That means not derived by some logical deduction. So "immediate non-intuitive" means knowledge that you know not through the sense and not by some logical derivation. 

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w24 G Major

THE LEFT: "The U.S. is always wrong, therefore the Gulf War was wrong."

Abelard Rules for thinking straight

The basic problem is this. The left takes the view that whatever the USA does is wrong. That includes any and all white, males. Especially if they are Protestant.

The question is not weapon quality Uranium being shipped to Iraq.[See the whole history of the Iraq acquiring.] Or N. Vietnam massacres of civilians in S. Vietnam after they took over. The issues are all easy to decide. As long as it is on the side of the USA and/or  democracy,- then it is wrong. The left just needs to think how to argue the point. But the beginning assumption is always the same. White, Protestant, American is always wrong. That is three strikes and you are out. If only one or two of these three evil categories, then one is only part evil. But put all three together, and you get the whole.

It gets tiring to argue when you know the conclusion anyway.

The truth be told, it is hard to get something like justice. But my feeling about it is more or less like Allan Bloom [Closing of the American Mind] said in so many words. The political question is settled. The Constitution of the USA is the best you can get. That does not mean it can not be perverted. But it is the best anyone can get.And countries that follow that basic English British model have done extremely well.  Just take a look at all former colonies of the British. The amount of success and respect for human rights is astonishing.--as compared with any other system that has ever existed in human history.

The issue with the USSR was that sometimes there is such a thing as exploitation. That does not make it right to steal someone else's money. Stealing is still stealing. To exploit was more or less the basic reason that the revolution happened in Russia. But that was not a good reason to go in the opposite direction. You need a kind of balance between private property and government protection of workers. 

Villagers in New Guinea. Should you full their request to send "a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash."

Villagers in New Guinea. Should you full their request to send  "a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash."

A comment by Dr Kelley Ross on

A Death in the Rainforest, by Don Kulick

A fascinating update to the story of the Cargo Cult, and its reception by a Western liberal, is A Death in the Rainforest, How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick [Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2019]. Kulick is a scholar in linguistics and anthropology.
Kulick is apparoached by a villager, and is asked him to send various goods, like a satellite phone, a flashlight, and the equivalent of about $20,000 in cash. Oh, and don't forget to let him know his mobile phone number. Kulick can only tell him that "I'll do my best".
This occasions painful reflections on the part of Kulick for the tragedy of life in the village of Gapun:

"I read Luke's letter as an entreaty to white-skinned people everywhere. I see it as an appeal. I think it is a guileless call to acknowledge the privilege that white skin has acquired, and a gentle request that white people recognize that vast inequalities that we have begotten around the world. Most of all, it seems to me that Luke's letter is a heartfelt plea to begin to redress those inequalities by giving something back. "[p.238]

From this, we might wonder what Kulick expects "white" outsiders to do -- forgetting that globalization and development in the Third World now often involve the Chinese, if not the Japanese, Koreans, Indians, and other people arguably not "white." And we get the cliché about "giving something back," which ought to raise the question exactly what has been "taken" from Gapun. No one has come in to loot their limited possessions, certainly not white people. Arguably, they have been "robbed" of their traditional culture; but then their way of life, daily farming, hunting, and eating, actually have not been changed that much (contrary to the "a Way of Life Came to an End" in the book subtitle). What has changed are their expectations. They know that a better life exists, and they would like to be part of it. But giving them these ideas is part and parcel of "robbing" them of their traditional culture. Does Kulick think that they should have been kept in ignorance of the outer world? Does he believe, as the saying goes, that "the Wogs should stay Wogs"? But this is otherwise regarded as one of the worst, most condescending, colonialist attitudes.

Thus, the "rainforest" is a wonderful place, the "lungs of the planet," with marvelous diversity of life, etc. Nature at her best. On the other hand, a "jungle" is a threatening, dangerous place, probably populated with head hunters. Obviously this is the result of some kind of racist smear. However, Kulick points out, the environment of Gapun is much more like the dangerous "jungle" than like the romanticized "rainforest." The people of Gapun suffer from endemic malaria and rarely live to old age. Their environment is on land that is largely mud, frequently flooded, with leeches, snakes ("Death Adders"), and crocodiles all over the place. And the villagers used to be actually be head hunters, in a culture of constant warfare with neighboring villages. The villagers know that there is a better life elsewhere, but their isolation, many hours up small rivers and through swamps, prevents their full participation in the modern world. Nevertheless, they benefit from artifacts like cooking pots, steel knives, mosquito nets, and even flashlights -- but replacing batteries can be a problem.

Western Civilization as opposed to religious fanaticism

The issue of religious fanaticism is best addressed by Kelley Ross. [That is the Kant-Fries school of thought based on Leonard Nelson]. That is simply this: you have an array of positive values from one end of the half circle of no value but all form [logic] going through various middle stages of partly adding value but lessening form until you get to the peak of all infinite value and zero form [God].


But so you have to have a hand in all the areas of positive value. But you just as much and even more so need to avoid every equal and opposite area of negative value.

Certain people were able to hold onto one particular area well and open up a path through that area into ultimate holiness.
Those are individual great people that hand a hand in perfecting some area of value.And there are people that Allan Bloom calls "civilization founding people" that go beyond one or two specific areas but are able to hold the entire superstructure in the first place like the basic foundations stones of Western Civilization.

Hegel also has the same kind of array of value, [http://autio.github.io/projects/scienceoflogic/] but connects them through a process of dialectic. Hegel is quite interested in fact in doing the same kind of defense of Christianity that Aquinas was doing, but somehow or other his ideas got to be used in the exact opposite ways he was intending them to be used. [Incidentally the opinion of Rav Avraham Abulafia, a mediaeval mystic was also very positive towards Jesus himself but not toward the actual functioning Catholic Church. In that way he was very similar to Hegel.]] But if in fact he is all that different than Leonard Nelson, I am not so sure of. [McTaggart answers a lot of the question son Hegel. Some he admits openly are a problem. Some he adjusts Hegel. Some he shows the questions are based on misunderstandings.] 

religious fanaticism.

My parents were very much against any kind of path that reeked of religious fanaticism. While having great respect for Torah. but anything that would take a person out of a path of balance and sanity was totally off the radar for them.
So with due respect for the Gra and Rav Shach, and Rav Nahman,-- they would not have agreed with elements of fanaticism that one might find in their writings. And the result of this kind of thinking would mean [at least in our present day and age] to stay away from the religious world as far as possible.

Their path was to send their children to public school, and emphasize getting a good education. Going for weekend excursions to the ocean etc. I.e., a normal, wholesome American home (in those days when there was such a thing). I am not so sure any such thing exists anymore. But it once did.

[Nowadays the secular world seems to be a kind of secular fanaticism. I am sure  my parents would never send me to public school today. They would find some private school. In fact, I almost went to a private school. My parents were willing to send me there. But in the end I backed out and continued in my regular high school which in those days was also excellent.]

 My basic orientation is not to follow any religion as a belief system, but rather to follow Reason. Sometimes Reason points out that some points are valid. Sometimes there are in other questions not. So the standard ought to be the question what does reason require? Not what does any particular religion require. There are no package deals. 

 However reason is a hard. But that only means that to reason well is hard. It does not mean that there is any better standard.