WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestant]

WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] seem to have what you could say is a guilt complex. Anyone that attacks them and their values they see good in. Anyone that stands up for them is suspected of some deep sin like "racism". I saw how the USA was this really amazing wholesome society until political correctness started taking over. A cure to this problem seems unlikely on a large level since at least a good half of the WASP populations in the USA are self destructing. But for individuals I think there is hope. The Ten Commandments.

[I might add two things. One is this idea of going out to a field or forest often to talk with God as one talks with a friend. That would not be prayer exactly, but more along the lines of speaking with God from the inner depths of one's heart.  Another idea would be along the idea of Rav Israel Salanter who started the "Musar Movement" which means to learn books of ethics from the Middle Ages. [For Protestants that would mean to learn the more ancient texts like Augustine and Boethius.] 

[Actually I am not sure if WASPs are self destructing or if there is some kind of genocide that is going on against them in a subtle way--like the schools from kindergarten and onwards convincing children that WASPs are the cause of all human sufferings.] 

tribal identity is evil

 Even though I can see that tribal identity is evil, and leads to evil, but people believe it absolves them from sin. I guess I never made it clear on this blog that I do not think that tribal identity is a good thing. Rather to me what makes Torah interesting is that it teaches what is natural law. What is right and what is wrong. That is how the rishonim [mediaeval authorities] understand it. Not one rishon holds that the laws of the Torah are right because they were commanded. Rather that they are commanded because they are right. [And that in itself does imply a hierarchy of values.

[This is not just in the rishonim but in the Gemara itself. In the Sefer haChinuch [from a disciple of the Nahmanides] there is brought down the rational reasons for every commandment. But the Gemara itself apparently thinks these reasons are obvious because the only argument in the Gemara is if we go by the reason or the literal meaning. To R Shimon ben Yochai Bava Metzia pg 119, we go by the reason. But even to the sages (that disagree with RS),there is no doubt that we know the reasons for the commands. The only thing they disagree with is that even so we go by the literal meaning. If there are deeper reason the Gemara holds they fall off when the open reason does not apply. Otherwise there would be no cause for disagreement. RS himself would hold the literal meaning always holds since we never not the deeper meaning. And that is exactly what the sages would have claimed. But they did not. Rather. they said even though we know the reason for the law, still we go by the literal meaning.

[The main problem of knowing what is objective morality is not simple. Reason alone can indicate anything. Even group identity. So to answer this, the Torah what revealed to tell us what is objective morality.] 

[However even in Torah, there is a law that an individual can judge from the Torah. It is only a decree from the later sages that only three can judge. See Rav Shach in the laws of the Sanhedrin.  And even a court can make mistakes. And if one is aware of their mistakes and still judges according to the Sanhedrin he is held liable because he should have known better that to depend on a mistaken court. And their mistake can even include the things judged by the 13 principles as we see in Rav Shach in laws of mamrim--that if one court decides based on the 13 principles and a later court sees otherwise they can reverse that decision.

Rav Shach says that Ra Abahu and Rav Acha agree that one can judge from the Torah. This answers an apparent contradiction in the Rambam that  the Kesef Mishna [Rav Josef Karo] brings up. And in fact you have to say this because right in the Torah itself there is a sacrifice for when the Sanhedrin is wrong. And in the Mishna we have that if one depends on the Sanhedrin in a law even though he knew the true law, he is obligated.

 I want to mention that I think it is best not to surrender to Socialism. The mere fact that it is wrong morally and logically, means that the surrender to it  will in the end result in the termination of those whose surrender. The Dark Side always swallows its own.

Descartes with his vortexes.

 I have wanted to mention for some time that the very notion of String Theory goes back to Descartes. For at first because of the linear relationships found in the 1950's and 1960's between Angular momentum and the Energy squared that you could have a model of two quarks going around each other. But that left some daughter trajectories unexplained. So the idea was to concern the two quarks joined by a wire or string that explained the full relationship. But that string is in a slightly different from the exact same thing that was proposed by Descartes with his vortexes. [The difference is that two quarks going around in their force field leads to one kind of relationship that is different than if they would be attached by a strong string. The tension on the string is thought to be a constant of nature.]

If you look at the history of England and the USA as one continuum

 If you look at the history of England and the USA as one continuum [instead of as two separate entities], you can see a pattern in which WASPs may endure unjust tyrannical rule for some period, but eventually get fed up with the nonsense.  Most people's are not like like, but rather this seems something unique to Protestant-Anglo-Saxons.  So no matter how much the Democratic party wants to impose on WASPs the rule of socialism on real Americans, the likelihood is that Americans are going to fight back.

And they probably should, because I just do not see socialism or communism in a good light. Even if its results where it has been tried had turned out OK, it still would be in my eyes as very wrong and unjust. All the more so that it never seems to work out very well without breaking a lot of eggs to the tune of at least 100 million broken egg shells.

What the USA needs now is a Boris Yeltzin moment to stand on the top of a tank and tell the Congress that we the people of the USA will not stand for Communism or socialism any more.

Rav Nahman wrote in the LeM that the wicked win in judgment in order that God should protect the righteous. So the fight for freedom from the socialism and communism is not over. It has just begun.

 Talking with God as one talks to a good friend [that Rav Nahman calls "Hitbodadut"]. Even though I assume most people do this automatically when a time of crisis arrives but with Rav Nahman of Uman this was a major goal in life. That is to spend as much time as possible praying to God and learning Torah. It just so happened that in a way that Carl Jung calls synchronicity that soon after I got this idea from the books of Rav Nahman that I also found myself in Safed in Israel surrounded by forests. So I actually has some opportunity to do this on a daily basis.

Now the actual idea of Rab Nahman was a bit different than a fellow by the name of Brother Lawrence who also talked with God all the time but that was amongst his regular chores. [See the book The Presence of God.] But with Rav Nahman the idea was to actually go out to the forests or any area where no one else is and to spend as much time as possible talking with God as a friend.

So you can ask the obvious question that there is no such commandment to do this. Learning Torah is what the Torah holds one ought to do all the time as the four volume of Nefesh Hachaim of Rav Chaim of Voloshin makes clear. Even so I can see the point of Rav Nahman since we do find that there is a commandments to pray to God in times of trouble. [See Nahmanides on the commandments ]. So Rav Nahman noticed that all of us are in times of trouble in spirit and body. The only thing is a lot of us do not realize it. So it is better to go to God and ask help even before the troubles begin.

I would like to recommend what one ought to at have finished once. The two Talmud and Midrashim [even with no commentaries] so that at least once he will have finished the entire Oral Law.

 I am noticing that as time goes by, it gets more difficult to spend time learning. I mean,- on one hand it was never all that easy- since by the time I got home from school, I was usually too tired to do much homework. But in any case, this seems to be universal. Only some rare individuals manage to grow and develop as time goes by. Leopold Vietoris wrote his last mathematical paper when he was 102 [or 103]. [He stopped skiing when he was 80, and he stopped mountain climbing when he was 90.] Beethoven as time went by just got better and better. The 9th is nothing like the 1st symphony.

But for most people like me it is hard to improve with age.

So as a minimum at least to keep the goals in mind, I would like to recommend what one ought to at have finished once. The two Talmud and Midrashim [even with no commentaries] so that at least once he will have finished the entire Oral Law. Then the entire Avi Ezri of Rav Shach at least one time from cover to cover in order to gain an insight into the depths of the Oral Law. Then in terms of the two other areas that some rishonim/mediaeval authorities recommend Physics and Metaphysics, I would say to get through the basic material at least up until String Theory. [That would means the two basic areas Algebra and Topology, plus the basic subjects leading up until String Theory--Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.] When Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam recommend metaphysics it is clear they meant Aristotle and his commentaries. But after that I am not sure, since philosophy seems to have taken some detours. The best I saw is the Kant-Fries-Nelson school. And I think Hegel is vey important, even though he is different from the Kant-Fries School. Each has some important points, but it is hard to see which are the important point to embrace, and which are the weaker points. How to separate the wheat from the chaff?  

It was pointed out to me that some parts of the Oral Law do not seem relevant. My answer to this is that learning Torah is more about the idea of holiness [or the idea of the numinous of the Kant Fries Nelson school.]