Lashon Hara is a very important subject. I was introduced to this at the Mir Yeshiva in NY. And it was a major area of emphasis for the Rosh yeshiva, Reb Shmuel Berenbaum. In fact, there was a time the secular Russian cooks in the kitchen had made some mistake regarding meat and milk, and people went to him to complain. And he was furious about the people that had complained. And the next day at the normal Musar Shmuz (talk) [Thursday] he made a very big deal about incident. [It was not the normal subject of his Musar. The normal subject was to learn Torah. But he was very strict personally about Lashon Hara. And I always noticed that people that were strict about Lashon Hara always were notably more successful in their learning Torah than people who were not. I tried to work hard on the book the Chafetz Chaim (Laws of Lashon Hara). I think I might have gone through it with the commentary at the bottom at least once, word for word. [I think so, but I am not sure]. [I spent a good deal of time on the other Musar books of the Chafetz Chaim. I think I might have gone through most of them. But at the time I was also trying to do the Musar of the Rishonim [Mediaeval Musar] and the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter so I do not think I finished every single book of the Chafetz Chaim. I was trying to get through all the schools of Musar/Navardok, Kelm, Slobodka, Naphtali Amshterndam, Isaac Blasser. That was besides regular Gemara things I needed to be doing.
[If I would have to explain this it would be thus: If a group is known to be good, and yet because of personal experience you know they are evil, then it is very hard to be careful in Lashon Hara. You can't agree with people and yet you can't disagree. Even if you would want to go into the sordid details no one will believe you so it ends up you transgress the prohibition anyway. If teh general public was more aware of the laws of Lashon Hara I might be able to explain this better. But in a nut shell that is about teh best I can do.
r3 is some music. [r3 in midi] r3 in nwc
When the whole world turned against me, I was aware I was not going to be able to be as strict as I wanted to be in Lashon Hara. This is hard to explain in writing this minute. I can explain this but maybe not this second.
[If I would have to explain this it would be thus: If a group is known to be good, and yet because of personal experience you know they are evil, then it is very hard to be careful in Lashon Hara. You can't agree with people and yet you can't disagree. Even if you would want to go into the sordid details no one will believe you so it ends up you transgress the prohibition anyway. If teh general public was more aware of the laws of Lashon Hara I might be able to explain this better. But in a nut shell that is about teh best I can do.
So at that point I decided the most important thing would be to speak the truth always at all cost.
Also, I think learning programming is very important. Though I would normally say that getting a full university education is important but nowadays universities are off the right path except for the major ones: Stanford, NYU, Cal Tech, MIT. For some reason some universities put pseudo science into their curriculum [e.g. social "sciences" and humanities. Now there in one oxymorn and one case of false advertizment.]
