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18.4.22

 There are people that routinely cause damage to others without deriving any benefit to themselves.  They do not even consciously think they are causing harm. They are much worse than thieves or similar criminal types. 

You might be vaguely aware of these types but you forget about it. 

And you might even pride yourself that you do not mind hanging out with lowliness. But you forget this very important principle. For these people consistently cause damage to others without gaining any benefit to themselves. It is not an accident, but a pattern.

Slowly imperceptibly you lose what ever good traits you have by hanging out with these types.

There is a sort of "evil inclination" that says to you you do not want to be a "baal gaava" [person with pride] so you hang out with low lives thinking you will bring them up or at least not lose. But that is exactly the trick. --To get you to hang out with people whose ultimate effect is to cause you to lower your standards of decency .

, the vast majority of people I met and talked with thought rule from Moscow was much better than from Kiev.

I think that it is better not to get involved in Ukraine. One thing is that, the more weapons sent to Ukraine, the more the conflict will be drawn out. And that will just make things worse for the average people on the street who do not care if the government is in Moscow or Kiev. Plus sending weapons will just begin to involve a war between the USA and Moscow. And that leaves the USA open to nuclear strikes which can be placed anywhere on the map. Is that worth it?
 And the whole approach of painting the Ukraine as saints  does not seem accurate. [I barely escaped.] 
Plus, the oddest fact is, in a city of about 100,000, the vast majority of people I met and talked with thought rule from Moscow was much better than from Kiev.
I recall this attitude even going back to the 1990's and up until I left in 2018. When I asked whether things were better then under the USSR or now? they always said, "Things were better then."Тогда дела обстояли лучше. And in one of the last incidents when I asked this, the shop owner explained how in the USSR you were given a a free house or apartment. You could swap it with someone else, but it was yours.
[That policy began under Khrushchev.]

17.4.22

 z-70 midi music file

z-70 in nwc format

 I gave upon understanding people along time ago. [In White Anglo Saxon {WASP} USA, I realized I did not "get it", when my girlfriend, Wendy Wilson at BHHS [Beverly Hills High School] invited me to a dinner with her parents. I was so out of place, it was painfully obvious.] But then being in Ukraine [Uman for Rosh Hashana], I just as equally poorly understood what was going on. The best I can say is that Ukraine is an equal mixture of saints and sinners.

And in my own understanding of what human life is all about, I discovered the great books of Musar.--that define two major things-Fear of God and good character traits. This helps me navigate my place in an increasingly confusing world.

Musar means four basic books: Gates of Repentance, Paths of the Just, Ways of the Righteous, Obligations of the Hearts.

In Torah good character is one of the main goals, but how to come to good character is the question. The first step is definitions. Then the actual working on it. 

 Even though there is such a thing as positive religious value, unless  it is tempered down with reason, it gets attached to the Dark Side. That is why in the Middle Ages, the connection between Torah and Aristotle and Plato was a major emphasis. Especially you see this in the Obligations of the Hearts and the Rambam.


There is such a thing as insane religious fanaticism --. Rav Nahman brings out this point on the verses before the giving of the Torah. פן יעלו בהר "Least they go up into the mountain." In Breslov this is refered to as "ריבוי אור"{ribuy or} "too much excitement" [literally: "Too much light"].

15.4.22

In the major book of Rav Nahman there is brought the fact that most religious leaders are demonic Torah scholars. That is in the LeM I1:2 and I:28. But this sort of problem has been around longer.

In the Five Books of Moses we find that Korah had a bunch of people with him [250] that were against Moses.  The Midrash says those people were the heads of the sanhedrins. [I mean to say that Moses had picked out judges to provide for small courts and larger courts of appeal. These very same people were the ones that later went against Moses.

I do would not trust religious authorities if they told me the sky is blue.

Nowadays if you want to know what the Torah requires of you there the best way of finding a good Litvak yeshiva based on the Gra and Rav Shach and sitting and learning there for a few years. There is a somewhat shorter approach by getting the basic set of Musar books [Ethics] from the Middle Ages plus learning the Tur with the Beit Yoseph and Bach. [The Tur was the son of the Rosh. His is the best book on law that I know of. It certainly helped me gain clarity about scores of issues.]

14.4.22