Medieval Ethics --Fear of God and instilling good character

The basic approach of Reb Israel Salanter learning the books on Medieval Ethics --the Musar movement- was directed towards Fear of God and instilling good character. But there is a side benefit that I found very helpful for myself in Musar. The basic set of books helped me get a general idea of the world view of Torah.  That is to say I realized that the Torah had a world view. The Torah is not an empty bottle you can put any worldview into that you want to. But I was not clear about what it is. The "Paradigm."  The benefit of Musar --at least for me-was to get a clearer view of how the Torah looks at the world and human life and everything else. It helped clarify many issues. Of course it also was saying things I did not want to hear. But that is what character correction involves--hearing things that you do not want to hear.

But I also realize there are more modern issues that came up after the original set of Musar books was written. Thus I found the Nefesh Hachaim from a disciple of the Gra to be very helpful.

I did notice in Israel that some people still take the idea of the Musar Movement seriously. For example in Netivot, I saw the yeshiva of Rav Montag  had an actual "Musar room" --the first time I had ever seen such a thing.
I also heard from Shimon Buso [a grandson of Bava Sali] and the daughter of Bava Sali, Avigail Buso a lot about the importance of Musar. But that was really just confirming what my impression already was about the importance of Musar. [The daughter of Bava Sali also mentioned to me about the importance of the books of Joseph Karo, i.e the Tur with the  Beit Joseph etc. ]
 There is also a promise of healing [physical and spiritual] that Isaac Blazzer said in the beginning of his book אור ישראל which he brings from the Rambam.

I imagine some people feel they are born perfected, and thus do not need to hear rebuke. But for the rest of us mere mortals, this seems to me to be the best way to go about character correction.

Why you   might ask is all this necessary? Why not just open up the Old Testament and see what it says? The reason is that any text without background is infinitely under-determined. It can mean anything you want. See John Searle in his theory of the Background and Kelley Ross's critique in which is shows the importance of John Searle's idea.

[This is relevant for anyone who cares about the Torah. The truth is without the background, it is radically undetermined. The nice thing about the Middle Ages was that understanding in a complete and logically rigorous way the entire written and oral law was of the greatest importance for people. So the books of Musar then were written with the whole picture in mind.  ]

Munich

The motive was clear. It was to kill infidels. They were to him “foreigners.” This was done in the name of a false god. How much clearer could it possibly be?

I think Harvard and Yale were penetrated by the KGB somehow. Probably not by hard core bribery, but by the soft sale. That is, the KGB probably had their best and brightest wine and dine and discuss polices and political philosophy  with the best students from those places. This should not have been all that hard. Based on reason alone one could argue from Hegel and a whole long list of great thinkers.

All the KGB needed to do was to send over people that could argue convincing from Hegel and the whole long string of Leftist philosophers and talk to the most impressionable and brightest students from the 1970 and on. See the utube by Bezmenov. They did not need to convince all of America's youth. All they needed to do was to penetrate the top universities. And they had plenty of funding for this kind of operation. And there is no question they spent most of their funding on disinformation;- and most of that on the "Glavni protivnik," the top enemy- the USA.

So that leaves two questions. How to argue from Schopenhauer and Kant? This would be better than Hegel. Second-what if Hegel had some good points?

I do not find Kant to be any less than Hegel, and I think good arguments could be made. But the Right is not as interested in power as the Left. The Right wants nice neighborhoods, and to go to school, and pay its bills. and go to church on Sundays.

The Left wants pure unadulterated power. There is no contest when it comes to passion. The Left is foaming at the mouth. The Right is nice sedate old guys in country clubs.

I should mention that I am on the side of traditional Judaic-Christian Civilization and values. But I realize you have to argue for this from the side of Kant. You can't simply argue from faith, or even from the Rambam. You need to have a rigorous intellectual basis for faith.


There are problems in Christianity, but the vector is toward Torah. See the Guide of the Rambam about the parable of the king where he shows that the vector is everything. [That is I think in the last chapter before volume 3 or 4 in the Guide.]

The Sages of the Talmud said: "For anyone that looks at three things, it is better that they were not created: (1) What is above, (2) What is below (3) What is inside." This goes along with the idea of Kant that when one tries to use reason in areas of unconditioned reality contradictions are created. The practical lesson from this is not to think about spiritual things because that creates contradictions in one's soul.

s3 F Minor   s3 in midi

Gra and cults

The Gra tried his best to stop the cult that ruined Judaism. with no success.

In spite of his signature, on what should have status in Halacha, it is totally ignored. It is my opinion that ignoring this was a terrible mistake. Not just from a Halachic standpoint, but from an objective standpoint. If one can avoid evil, that is the best thing. But if one is confronted directly, the best option is to stand and fight.
This is in fact how Western civilization began. The Persian empire was on its way to destroy Athens and enslave its people. They had already done so to another important city in Hellenes. {Herodotus spells it "Hellas."} The reason the Persians succeeded was that city was divided in counsel. Many escaped. Those that remained were easily defeated.
The 10 Athenian generals were divided equally whether to stand and fight or run. One man the leader for the day cast his vote to stand and fight. The Persians were defeated at Marathon. After that Athens became the source and birthplace of art, music mathematics, philosophy, literature, political thought and everything else good that signifies Western Civilization.  Sometimes you have to stand and fight.

How did the Gra get pushed out?
People are no longer motivated by inner choices — duty, honor, pride, creativity, wisdom — but by what the rest of the herd is doing. For this reason, they are losing out if they do not get in there and force others to pay attention to them, which creates the stunts-based attention whoring that is the basis for radicalism and fanaticism.
With this center of attention,  Crowdism is born.
And the crowd has an insatiable appetite for nonsense. They love to hear the Guru talk hours on end which if you look at what he says is simply "B.S." 

cults and gurus

The best way to deal with a group you are involved with that you think might be a cult- is to learn about other cults, and you start to see the beliefs are not unique or original, but rather the things you thought were special- are shared traits with all cults.
Besides that I  want to focus on the Guru or Shaman. Human have a strong need for  a shaman or Guru. All human groups throughout history have shown this need for some meta magical personality. This goes for groups of the most primitive, vicious type and upward. And their beliefs about their Shaman  are if you look into it are about the same as what any modern cult group thinks about their leader. It is  basic human trait and need to have  a Shaman. These shamans are not schizophrenic but schizo-typal. They control themselves so the visions and hallucinations occur at the right time and place.

Meta magical thinking is the major characteristic of these schizoid gurus and shamans. They believe in strange things. They are really into fantasies in a "frenzy" kind of way. Maybe it is New Age or whatever. What ever religious structure they have it is very literal and concrete. They tend towards extremely literal explanations of religious events or writings.

When you see this you should know you are dealing with a person that has a mild version of schizophrenia. He or she is Schizotypal.
 Nowadays in secular society such people get jobs that fit this kind of personality. But in more religious societies these people tend to go to the top of the hierarchy.