How much is Hegel really to blame for the terrible use the Marxists make of his writings?

 How much is Hegel really to blame for the terrible use the Marxists make of his writings? They reject openly most of his system [objective morality] but still use some of his paradigms. [Marxism holds that moral values are not objective but are mere fictions invented by the ruling class to further its class interests (much like religion)] It should be easy to say this except for the fact that obviously the Kant/Friesian school does not like Hegel and in fact put the full blame and guilt of communism on his shoulders. Popper especially. It is not uncommon to hear people saying Hegel was incoherent.

But there was one thing that always bothered me about the idea of accusing  Hegel of absurdities. That is that I had read about 20 years ago in NY a Cambridge companion to Hegel and I knew he had a well worked out system.

To me it  makes more sense to redeem Hegel than to blame him.


This issue seems urgent because the USA is breaking apart over  the battle between traditional family Judaeo-Christian values as opposed to Marxism (Socialism). And to me it seems obvious that without Hegel, the Marxists would never have gotten off the first floor. They  could never have convinced anyone of their absurdities if not for taking the name of Hegel in vain. It was the use of Hegel that let  them be  believable.

[I broke my leg and after that got diverticulitis.  I was in a hospital in Uman and my brother urged me to leave the Ukraine and get an operation in either the USA or Israel. I stayed where I was and I am very grateful to God that He sent to me a great doctor who did the operation Alexandr Sergevitch, and a great nursing staff. Later after I was released I got diverticulitis and went to the other hospital right outside Uman that has a very good reputation that is called the hospital of the region. [Bolnitza Rayona.]  [It is outside of Uman on the Kiev Odessa highway.]  There God again had compassion on me and sent to me great doctors. [There had been a doctor at the first hospital who was a leftover from the old USSR who caused disasters on whom so ever he touched. But he was no longer working there. The doctor who saw me after my accident was not Soviet trained but young and had learned in Dnepropetrovsk. Apparently they have  a big institution there.]

This accounts for my not writing on my blog. I have been very weak and not able to do any learning or thinking.]

After I was out I talked  with a nurse that was visiting from Estonia. I told her that I suspect that medicine in 1st world countries is not so great, and that is one reason I did not run to the USA for an operation.  And she told me about one patient of hers that the doctors in the one of the best hospitals in the West killed by means of chemotherapy. He walked in looking 50 years old and two weeks later looking 70 and then a short time later died. I said: "The trouble with medicine in 1st world countries is they have too many toys."

Putting together my worldview in elementary school and high school. Going to a Lithuanian yeshiva was the best possible choice.

I spent a good amount of effort putting together my worldview in elementary school and high school.

I had a notebooks filled with ideas that I would jot down at night before going to sleep. Often I would think of some new idea right before falling asleep and get up and write in down and then go back to bed.

It is hard to know if I would have been doing this thinking if the atmosphere of the time did not call for it.That was at the height of the hippie movement. The hippies had one basic message:"Tear down the system," and they assumed that after they would succeed they would build a utopia in its place. But most people did not think tearing down the system was the best idea. But people did accept that the system needed to be examined.

I did a great deal of readings: Plato, Dante, Spinoza, Herman Hesse, Chinese Philosophies. But Philosophy of the twentieth century seemed to me to be obviously false and vacuous. It was not just that it was self contradictory and full of circular reasoning, but also they (twentieth century philosophers) did not care about reason and logic at all. To them the more unreasonable their ideas were  the better.

But my ideas had a lot to do with Socrates and living the good life. Not just philosophy for the sake of interesting ideas.

So going to Shar Yashuv and the Mir Yeshiva in N.Y. was about as a well thought out choice as I could have made.

There was also the issue that my parents obviously had a extremely happy marriage and sense  of family values. And to me it seemed secular society was on the warpath against family values. I did not think I was going to manage to build a family in secular society.

In hind sight, the going to a Lithuanian yeshiva was the best possible choice I could have made in terms of family. But right outside the door of many Lithuanian yeshiva is a "kelipa" (a dark force of evil/ the religious world) which is a power from the Dark Side that is more destructive to family than secular society.
I was not aware (at the time) of the danger of the religious world. I am now.

[The way to understand the problem is that where holiness exists, the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side) surrounds it as it says in Psalms "Around and around go the wicked." Wherever there is holiness, around it is always found the forces of the Dark Side trying to get in.]
It is well known that Evil that does not pretend to be other than what it is, is much less dangerous than Evil which pretends to be Holiness.

Las Vegas

I  am inspired by the amazing stories of heroism--parents protecting their children with their own bodies etc. Someone commented to me that that is no surprise when it comes to Americans  that have a kind of compassion for others built into their souls.

The good thing about this is that the first reaction of Americans when they see a person that needs help is to help. That is the prima facie position. Only if evidence adds up to show otherwise will this change.  

I did a lot of reading about cults when I was trying to figure out the issue for myself.   The reason is that once one is involved in a group, it is difficult to get a 3-d perspective on it. You can not just learn more about it, and then decide if it is  a cult or not. I found looking into other groups that  are cults was helpful to gain some perspective on these issues. In particular, I read as much as I could about Adi Da and also Scientology- two very good examples of cults; the later more secular and the other religious. After gaining some knowledge about those cults, it became a lot easier to evaluate almost any cult.

My basic impression when it comes to Torah is the closer one gets to the Silverman approach the better. That is to go with the Gra's approach, or what is more commonly known as the Litvak Yeshiva approach.

[The basic idea is when you are coming into some area of positive value, e.g. Torah, there is a nee to pass through the regions of the Dark Side that try to seduce you with clever words. The best thing is to go by your gut instinct-- if it walks like  a cult, if it talks like a cult, then it is a cult and stay away as far as possible.


People might know the name of Clifford from Clifford Algebras. But it so happened that he wrote a nice essay on the ethics of belief that says it is not ethical to believe in whatever u want to. Your beliefs effects those around you. There is an obligation to test your beliefs and to believe only on sufficient evidence.

A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.



The credulous man is father to the liar.

quick dismissal of the ISIS claims

https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/10/stephen-paddock-could-have-been-muslim.html#disqus_thread

I've found the quick dismissal of the ISIS claims by "authorities" very odd. Probably just more western authorities not wanting to stoke "islamophobia" so desperately hoping for another explanation. Every time a terror attack happens in Europe and the person is an ethnicity that is 99% Muslim they still spend time searching for a mysterious motive or saying its unknown why "they did this". So no surprise when an old white guy kills some people they dismiss it even when Daesh is jumping up and down saying he is their guy.



Something else to consider is U.S. has many mass shootings. Does ISIS claim them? Only in a very small number of cases, and they were right as far as we know.

ISIS released even more posts this morning. They have doubled down, tripled down, and quadrupled down on their claim. I am sure ISIS is not that stupid (their IQs may be above 105) and they know these repeated claims will immediately cause Daesh to lose all credibility if any evidence of another motive comes out. Of course ISIS can make false or mistaken claims. But for them to back it up to such a strong degree, I would say its very unlikely they would do so and risk losing all credibility going forward.

My basic feeling about Reb Nachman is that important aspects of reality were revealed to him. Or as one person put it, "He is one important part of the big picture."

The problem is well known to be the cults  and groups that pretend to be going by his approach.

The general rule of cults is they are never satisfied. And the danger is they can get a person off track. And that usually happens by means of the the good ideas that are mixed up with bad ones.

Islam and Mass Murder

 In Islam to die by means of killing infidels is considered the only guarantee to get into Heaven. I mean to say that in Islam there is nothing about living a good life that guarantees getting into heaven except one  thing--to die by means of murdering infidels. So as far as that murderer was concerned, he went out in the only reasonable fashion possible.

[Later note--This post was about some incident that I have forgotten. In any case, I think the point is clear that there is  some kind of tendency with Islam which provokes towards violence. I would guess that the reason for this is found in the life of its founder.]