Link to Kelley Ross's ideas about the present day situation in the USA

So let me ask why is he the only modern day philosopher that has an inkling on common sense? Is it like Sandra Lehman told me that Philosophy removes common sense from people?
Or like Elon Musk that it is simply German philosophy? Who knows?
In any case, at one point when I realized I was going to have to spend some time in university and try to do something about making a living I decided to go into Physics,-- and not Philosophy.
The actual reason was the Rav Nahman actually warned against philosophy I I took that to heart and choose something else.

An employee has no law of getting less that what his labor is worth. [Rambam Laws of Acquisition 13]. That is on most things you buy, if they are marked up from their market value there is a law of אונאה That is if a 1/5 the money goes back to the buyer. If more than 1/5 the whole deal is off.
 But with an employee there is no such law because an employee is bought for the time. [That is he is a slave for the time period that he is being hired for.
This goes to show that there is nothing particularly different from being a slave and being an employee. The only difference is the employee when the term of his employment is over he is no longer owned.

So was the Civil War really worth going into for this. Any employee has a similar dilemma as a slave. work or do not eat. Children are also in a similar situation. They must listen to their parents. They have no choice in the matter.

I saw something interesting about Elon Musk --that a good deal of his motivation for making Space X and the Tesla car was his question in college when he asked himself what can I do to help humanity.

Well that sort of lit a light for me in that I also have a few ideas that I believe would be great for humanity. 

One is learning fast. That is too many people shy away from Math and Physics because they think they are too hard. They lack the confidence that by just saying the words and going on that they will understand. So I want to bring this idea to the attention of people. [That would also have a side benefit that when people would know what real science is they will throw out all the pseudo sciences like the Social Studies and humanities departments of the universities.

This idea is from the gemara Shabat  [I think around page 63] and brought in books of Musar. [e.g. אורחות צדיקים]

Another great idea is talking with God in one's own language. 

Another idea is saying the truth always which also people do not know how this provides a kind of protective shield around one.



[As for the political situation I have little to say but Trust in God.] 

I should add that I see the coming civil war as the end of civilization so I have to explain that Trust in God does not mean to do nothing. Rather it means not to do "over efforts" "ריבוי השתדלות". It simply mean to trust and God and take the basic necessary steps to protect yourself. So for example if Antifa stand in the way of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate. That is a simple basic logical step of self preservation. Also get gun skills.

w99 G Minor edited   It usually takes me a lot of time to get the instruments right, after I have gotten the basic music line down. Plus corrections as to the music line often come only after I have thought about it for a while. So there still might be more corrections that need to be done.  [w99 in midi format]

The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

Idolatry is worship of some being other than the one First Cause [סיבה ראשונה]. And that includes people. It even includes people who have souls from Emanation [אצילות]. So for example when we say that Abraham the Patriarch's soul was from Kindness of Emanation [חסד של אצילות] we do not worship Abraham. Nor do we pray to him. That is in spite of the fact that souls from Emanation are Divine אלקות.

So worship of people that is the basic essence of the religious world should not be considered to be OK.  And from this it is easy to see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication to make this point clear. [And the letter of excommunication I believe has halachic validity in spite of its being ignored. In fact it is hard to understand why anyone would imagine that a letter signed and sealed by the Gra would not be valid in Halacha. Such a thing seems absurd on the face of it.]

[And though you can argue on this point, but my looking at a book that collected all the testimonies in Villna  and letters of excommunication I decided that Rav Nahman was OK. This seems to be a gray area.]

I thought to add the fact that once I got to Tenach [Old Testament] I noticed the central issue pf idolatry. I mean when critique of kings comes up it is always about this one issue. The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

There is a kind of work that is forbidden on Shabat called בורר seperating. The idea is to separate what you do not want to eat now from what you want to eat now. Or to separate what you want for later.

This process can be understood in a  sense to apply to the fact that there is an array of good values that one ought to hold onto. Good points. These have their root in Divine traits [Sepherot]. And there is also a process of combining these good traits. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them. This can apply in science also. Newton and Maxwell could not be combined until Einstein came along. Einstein and Heisenberg could not be combined until Dirac and Richard Feynman came along. [Dirac was OK with one or two particles but once you got more it could not work until Feymann showed the way to QFT. Quantum Field Theory.]

Similar to good traits. There are several areas of positive value. To say the truth, trust in God, learning Torah. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them.
This is a kind of process which you see in Kant and then later Hegel. 

So there is a process of finding the good traits and good points one needs to stick with. And to separate out what is mixed in of the poison of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). And then to combince the good traits.

Sometimes a tzadik comes into the world to reveal one particular trait or more and sometimes another may come to combine traits.
So for example you will find that Avraham Avinu was united with the Divine Trait of Kindness. That would mean not just that his soul was from Emanation but also that he came to reveal that trait in the world.

Rav Nahman [of Uman] explained what was the problem with a country where the taste and scent and beauty had all gone down. He said the problem was the slaves of a foreign king who had been sent in and ruined everything by means of ugly language, sexual promiscuity, and addiction to bringing lawsuits.
The solution in the story of Rav Nahman was to make a separation.

he did not openly say he was referring to the USA but it seems clearly the implication. That is he was predicting already 200 years ago exactly what is happening today.