You can tell a lot about a person by what their goals are. I have noticed that people in the space program wanted to accomplish something great for all mankind.


My dad was like that. He contributed a lot to the advance towards space. Little known to most people is the fact that NASA makes very little of what they send up. It was TRW that made the first early warning satellites and later on developed the advance laser beam communication satellites.

My dad was the leading engineer in the infra red satellites. The reason was that he was the person that invented infra red camera in Monmouth Army Base. So when TRW was contacted  and asked to make an early warning system they contacted my dad and asked him to drop what he was doing and help them develop the satellite system.

See this link on page 24 about the first infra red camera invented by Philip Rosenblum.  https://books.google.co.il/books?id=D1QEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Later after the last infra red satellites went up he stayed on a for a few years to make laser communication satellites. But even though TRW had the plans for that for  along time these more advanced satellites were not made until the 2000's--way after my dad left the corporation. [The reason was that TRW lost all its contracts after the Russians were discovered stealing the plans.]


My feeling about this is there is a need to be able to get out of the solar system. In the short term settling Mars I believe is an important goal. But eventually there is a need  to discover some way of traveling to the stars. And the only thing that I or anyone else can contribute to that at this point is to learn String Theory and make some kind of progress in understanding the basic nature of space time.

As for Mars--there is no need to develop any new technology. everything has already been invented that Mars needs. Nuclear power is 1940's technology. We had it before colored TV's and transistor radios.

Incidental my dad also was the leader of Team II for the camera on the U-2. But that was when I was too young to remember. When I recall when I was five we were already in Newport Beach CA and my Dad had his own company to market a machine he had invented the copymate machine that used x rays technology to make super sharp copies. That went on until TRW contacted him as I said and then we moved so he could be closer to TRW.

[I admit I do not know why my dad is never mentioned in connection with the U-2 camera. There were two teams.]

According to the Rambam, the Torah is a consequential system.--But not in the same way as consequential theories of morality. Rather to the Rambam the idea is that the laws of Torah have a purpose to bring about good character traits and peace of the state and to lessen ones physical desires and to avoid idolatry.

You can see this theme all the time in the Musar movement of R Israel Salanter. One of his original motivations was when he asked someone a polite question but the person was so busy being frum he did not even notice his question. So Rav Israel started putting two and two together seeing how that Rav Shmuel from Salant had come to good traits as by intense learning of Musar.

You can see this in the Gemara itself in the places where the argument between R Shimon Ben Yochai and the  Sages is brought down.

Space Travel.

In the Universe there is a lot of energy which has not been identified. In fact, the vast majority of stuff in the universe is dark energy and dark matter.
For dark energy there are two possibilities: the Lambda constant of Einstein or a scalar field.
So there does seem to be an anti gravity force. This opens possibilities for space travel.

And not just normal space travels in regular space time--but also the possibility of poking a hole in a black hole or a worm hole.to get to another universe.

What I am suggesting here is that I think that space travel is a possibility, but it seems to depend on string theory. Though in the near future it is probably best to concentrate on getting to Mars. But what I am thinking is that to settle the universe is also a possibility for mankind. But it would depend on further work in string theory.

[I admit that I think that string theory is good to learn for other reasons besides the possibilities it opens up. That is that it is the wisdom of God in his creation.  Plus there is a element in it that the Rambam brings of love and fear of God and of learning Torah.]

wife that rebels against her husband

So what is the din about moredet? [דין מורדת]  A wife that rebels against her husband? What is the law? What if he is sitting and learning Torah for its own sake--that is not getting paid and his or her parents support them until at which time she decides to go out and work herself as was the arrangement with Rav Shach and many gedolei Israel?
Or to ask even further--what if her husband in in a kollel? A kollel in itself is really not legitimate; but what if anyway he is sitting and learning in such a place?

[The regular law about a wife that rebels is she loses her ketuba.]


I ask this because one of the very first tracates that I learned was Ketuboth. In Shar Yashuv of Rav Friefeld and Rav Naftali Yeager they were doing a lot of the first and third chapters. But after I got to the Mir I spent a lot of time on the fifth chapter.--where this issue is located.


This is an issue which strikes me as being relevant. Some people will tell the wife to get rid of her husband even though she is in fact being supported by his or her parents and is not exactly starving!
It seems to me she would have the category of a moredet in such a case.

There might be other issues that she feels she can not live with. But the fact that her husband is learning Torah "lishma" (for its own sake) seems to not be a reason that makes her move moral or valid in terms of halacha.

The issue is that here is one area where religious leaders will in general tell the wife to get rid of her husband  because they either do not know Torah, or do not care. The main thing for them is to get money for their social clubs called kollels or yeshivas which really have nothing to do with Torah.

[You can see this fact in Rav Nahman's detailed treatment of religious leaders in his major books. Clearly he thought there is some kind of problem with religious leaders. See the LeM vol 1. chapters 8, 12, 28 61. and vol 2 chapter 8--and other places that I have forgotten off hand.]

The way the evil inclination gets into people is by "first come first served". It is the power of delusion that after it is in one, has a defense mechanism. If one tries to take it out after it has already entered, it brings one into even worse delusions.

You would hope that perhaps Musar [the idea of Rav Israel Salanter of learning Medieval Ethics]  would be solutions to the problem of the evil inclination. But this does not seem to be a very satisfying solution.

Physics.

Eventually I noticed something like that in Musar itself. Mainly from the Middle Ages there was Benyamin the Doctor author of maalot Hamidot. [That used to be part of the regular set of classical Musar]. Then I saw something like that in Ibn Pakuda's Obligations of the Hearts.
Then eventually I saw the Rambam. [This is not to saw the rambam's Guide was not in Shar Yashuv. It was. But while in Shar Yashuv I simply was too busy with Gemara to pay much attention to "Hashkafa" World view issues.

In any case nowadays I am thinking the the Rambam was thinking something along the lines that is pretty much spelled out in the Guide that Physics and Metaphysics brings to love and fear of God and he sees this as a cure for the evil inclination.

The idea is to be connected with God's wisdom as it is revealed in his Creation. You can see this idea in the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] who holds that as great as the Oral Law is still it is on the level of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [That is in the beginning of the Eitz Chaim]. So while you might hold then why not concentrate on the Eitz Chaim itself? The problem with Kabalah seems to me to be more clear when you look at people that learn kabalah. There clearly seems to be some kind of problem. Perhaps they are simply not ready? But also I think that what Rav Yaakov Emden was saying about the Zohar that there are a few parts that are authentic but a lot is not. [I forget the name of his book on this subject but it is fairly well known.] So in terms of learning God's wisdom it seems best to go to what is more or less crystal clear--not people's opinions. 

Howard Bloom's Lucifer Principle   brings the idea that units of social information get get into people's head's and then get hardwired. But I go further and claim that these memes are like the Alien that has a protection mechanism that when you try to take it out it sends out some kind of acid that makes things so bad that you dare not touch it.

The whole idea of the Lucifer principle has to do with the super organism and is a way of understanding Hegel's more philosophical approach to the State.


The thing is that the evil inclination some kind of delusion gets into people and then can not be extracted. This is always some kind of delusion as Rav Nahman said that now we have to call the evil inclination with a new name--the power of delusion.

Sex between males does get the death penalty even though not all forbidden relations do. For example even though sleeping with a woman who has seen blood is also in the list of forbidden relations but does not get the death penalty. And this means that it is a serious issue. In fact there are four kinds of death penalty and sex between males gets the most sever one--the same as idolatry. That is even more serve than murder.

The idea that this became OK at some point in time goes against a few statements in the Old Testament that the Law of Moses is forever.

However it is true that the religious world does give a bad name to the Written and Oral Law by means of their evil actions. But that does not make the Law of Moses bad but rather reflects on the religious world.



So why is this pushed so hard nowadays. It all comes down to Daniel Defoe that explains how the evil inclination changes form in every generation. And Rav Nahman also said as much. The issue seems to be this. When people get into a fallen state of mind מוחין דקטנות, the evil inclination can attach itself to them.

לקוטי מוהר''ן חלק סימן כ''ה
. The issue according to Rav Nahman is the the evil inclination has a new name כוח המדמה delusion. That is to say in the old days the evil inclination was devoted towards getting people into physical desires or simply to go against the Bible. But nowadays it has acquired a new trick--delusion.

The answer to this usually is this. You find a place in the book of Rav Nahman that deals with your particular problem and then read it forty days in a row. Also the tendency is that in that very lesson itself are mentioned some themes which relate to the problem.

For example in that Torah lesson Rav Nahman brings the way to get out of the power of delusion by charity.