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3.1.21

Furthermore what does one do if let's say he or she is "possessed"?

Jordan Peterson  discusses ideological possession in one video which kind of set off a whole train of thoughts in me starting from Howard Bloom with the issue "social memes".

It certainly seems related to what Rav Nahman talks about with "Torah scholars that are demons" [LeM vol I ch.s 12, 28.] meaning "possessed" I guess.


Furthermore what does one do if let's say he or she is "possessed"? 

My thought about this is the idea of Rav Nahman of "hitbodadut" which means going to  a place where no one else is around and talking with God as one talks with a friend. That I think is the way Rav Nahman is thinking that it is possible to get to one's inner core or the authentic you, and shed all the layers of false ideologies that one has picked up from other people.

[Besides that, Rav Nahman has advice for every possible problem in the Sefer HaMidot. I just do not recall what he says that would help for this problem.] 

1.1.21

The problem with modern philosophy is the tactic of writing in a manner that is incomprehensible, then accusing critics of failure to comprehend, as though the fault resides with the critics rather than the original writer.

I do have a point of view in which I try to fit the good points of many different philosophers. That is basically of Plotinus (i.e Neo-Plato). So while I accept the insights of the Kant-Fries-Nelson school of thought, I  think about Reason as not being human reason at all,  but Divine Reason  which can be manifested in living beings to some degree.

[So I do not think human reason determines the nature of things. Rather Divine wisdom permeates Creation and determines the laws of nature.]   



But it takes a certain degree of common sense to be able to tell who really has something to say and who does not. 


The problem with modern philosophy is  the tactic of writing in a manner that is incomprehensible, then accusing critics of failure to comprehend, as though the fault resides with the critics rather than the original writer. 


So I do try to use common sense to have a consistent world view. But I do have a kind of starting place which is Plato and Plotinus. And with that context I manage to fit in the insights of the Kant-Fries-Nelson school of thought, (non intuitive immediate knowledge --faith) [but also find an important place for G.E. Moore with the fact that reason recognizes universals,  Certainly each of these schools would disagree with each other. But by means of the Plato Plotinus system I manage to fit it all in one consistent system.   But I am not arguing for this. I am simply saying my own world view for those that might care what I am thinking.

Now you might wonder from where I picked up this world view. Well in part because after school I waited for my dad to pick me up at the library and while waiting I used to read Plato. And then later I learned the Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts by Ibn Pakuda] while at the Mir in NY  and his system is neo-Platonic [i.e. Plato-Plotinus.]

Pinocchio

 Pinocchio gave his life to save his father. And he did in fact lose his life. But what kind of life was that? of a puppet? It was in fact his supreme sacrifice to save his Dad that became the cause that he became a real boy and in fact started having a true life, not the life of  a puppet.


Why does this matter? because often art precedes philosophy in insight and depth.


31.12.20

music file x65

 x65 C Major MP3 file

the Labor Theory of Value is false.The value things have does not depend on how much labor went into making them. I do not are if someone spent a whole day making one needle.

 The major thing I dislike about communism is that it makes no sense. [It is based on the Labor Theory of Value which is false. The value things have does not depend on how much labor went into making them. I do not are if someone spent a whole day making one needle. That makes it no more valuable to me than if  a factory produced it and I can buy it for one cent. Rather, the value depends on how much people want it. And the factory owner does not extract excess value from the worker. He creates value. The proof you can see yourself. Try to make on your own something and then try to sell it on the street. One day of doing that would have shown Marx and Lenin a thing or two about capitalism.] But that is besides the fact of its supposedly scientific predictions came out just the opposite of what it was predicting. But when things are in chaos, it does provide a means to taking control. That was the assessment of the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover. And he meant that in a negative sense. But the same idea was expressed to me by a Mormon who worked as an economist. [I asked him about President Hoover  and the depression and the fact that Roosevelt instituted lots of socialist policies to bring the USA out of the Depression. Whether that worked I do not know, but the answer that Mormon fellow told me was that sometimes in a times of chaos, you need some way that central government can take control.] And in a more startling way it was expressed by many people I met in the Ukraine. No one ever told me things were better under democracy than under communism. Whenever I asked, people always told me things were better than than they were under democracy. [They always said: "It was better then than now." And I saw that also. The police were spending their time hiding in their station, and the streets were empty of police. The more the fear of the KGB dissipated, the more crime and chaos.] You could see this clearly. The more distance the memory of communism was, the more crime was taking over.  

Still the point seems to be the same. To establish some kind of stability when everything is in chaos. But the order ought to be to first bring stability and then an free market democracy. Not the opposite.

So if one is connected with this highest area of value--when he falls he falls into its exact opposite the peak of evil

 It is an odd thing that you see in the Kant-Fries-Nelson school of thought that there is no cause and effect relation between subject and object (as Dr Kelley Ross makes clear in his blog site https://www.friesian.com/).

And in fact when I was looking at Physics I noticed that Newtons laws are expressed by the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian  in such a way that objects simply tend towards the lowest energy state [or in optics towards the highest energy state] [So one might be excused to wonder how to they know where the lowest energy state is? Are particles that smart?]The causes of things seem to be the actual laws of nature, not the physical forces. It is almost as if we live in a Platonic world where the really real are the laws of mathematics. The physical world is a shadow representation of the really real.

One advantage of the Kant Fries school for me is after one has worked out all the kinks which was done by Greta Hermann and Kelley Ross, it proved me a sort of template to understand my own experience. For seven years in Tzefat [Safed] I had what in various schools of thought is categorized as "devekut", the "Infinite Light", Samadhi etc. [Though I can not tell which is more to the point.] This is not religious fanaticism  but rather a direct experience of the Divine. Or sometimes even more--a direct connection with the Divine.-and absorption into the Infinite Light. But what you see in Kelley Ross is that this is just one area of value. Not all. In terms of the Ari one would say this is the area of value of "Keter" but lacks a;; the other areas. Thus one might have total devekut with God but lack any of the other areas of value. And even more so--each area of value is opposite to its exact opposite. So if one is connected with this highest area of value--when he falls he falls into its exact opposite the peak of evil   


30.12.20

He was dealing in this from strictly a legal standpoint, but I think he also saw some of the implications of using Torah as means to make money. One implication is the ruin of Torah.

The major place where the Rambam is critical of the yeshivas in his time is in his commentary on Pirkei Avot  דאשתמש בתגא חלף. ["One who uses the crown passes away."] [Not in the first place in Pikei Avot where this statement comes up but later in ch 4.] So he would not have been very happy with the kollel system. And even today it is a major shock to read what he wrote 800 years ago and basically is still impossible for anyone to swallow.  He holds that (I am paraphrasing) the heads of the yeshivot that say it is a mitzvah to give money to support these institutions are liars.

There should be yeshivot where people learn Torah, but they ought not to be means of making money.


But in his own days, the implications of what he wrote were clear to people and caused the first major controversy.
 He was dealing in this from strictly a legal standpoint, but I think he also saw some of the implications of using Torah as  means to make money. One implication is the ruin of Torah. Or rather-the ruin of sincere Torah. Those that are sincere are despised.