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The Degeneration of the Nation

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat

They cut off my tail in a cat circumcision ceremony, and then a Satanic cult burned me which is why I'm black, and then I was saved from being roasted by a Thai worker only to be wounded by a Palestinian worker, who stabbed me as a Jewish cat and then I started writing from the wound, and that's how I discovered that I'm actually a female cat who was raped, and I'm writing from the hole of the black circle

By: The Intellectual Garbage Can

From Bad to Worse  (Source)

I dreamed I was a cat wanting to be part of the world. And all the people on the street hear my howls, but no one listens. The world doesn't believe a cat could have anything to say to the world. And if I see a computer in a coffee shop, I jump on it and try to write with my paws, but they immediately shoo me away, and hurry to erase what I typed. The world doesn't need another cat trying to write. And if I send something to a newspaper under a human pseudonym - then it seems to them a transparent impersonation of a cat, and exploitation of authentic feline suffering, and the world never lacks howls about imagined injustices. They want to hear that they cut off my tail in a cat circumcision ceremony, and then a Satanic cult burned me which is why I'm black, and then I was saved from being roasted by a Thai worker only to be wounded by a Palestinian worker, who stabbed me as a Jewish cat and then I started writing from the wound, and that's how I discovered that I'm actually a female cat who was raped, and I'm writing from the hole of the black circle.

And so every letter I send to the world is thrown in the trash, and thus returns to me, and I send it back up, and it's thrown again, and returns again, until finally one editor takes pity on me and gives me a tip: write about what you know. Write about what they think cats understand - and then you'll be considered a successful writer: monologues from the trash. Write about life on the street, about deteriorating to the bottom of the bottom, about a slow and romantic sinking into the belly of the frog [Translator's note: Hebrew idiom meaning "rock bottom"]. If you write about the sidewalk - you'll gain a reputation as a real writer. And I start a column with him about all kinds of intrigues in the garbage, as he likes. And I write the first column about a scratched and beaten cat found in our trash can, who never retaliates and therefore everyone abuses him, and they call him Jesus the cat.

And I interview Jesus, a cat with one and a quarter cheeks and a quarter tail, everyone's punching bag who suffers like ten cats, and I ask him with bold defiance, as our readers like: Tell me, why do Christians hate Jews? Why are you violent against us? What's the reason for antisemitism? And the wheezing Jesus says to me: Let me tell you the source of antisemitism. Jesus was the resistance to power. That was his essence, his message to the world. And his tragedy was, and this is forgotten - that power won, as always. But then, then something special happened in history, which actually created Christianity. Power indeed won, and in any other case that would have been the end of the matter and you would never have heard of Jesus in your life. But then, and this was the miracle of resurrection, there was a return through the spirit, through faith, against the Roman Empire which was the most powerful force ever in the world, and in the end, surprisingly, amazingly, unprecedentedly - the spirit defeats power. The Romans who crucified me - convert to Christianity. But then, in tremendous irony and in the final account, the spirit gradually becomes power, the Church itself becomes a mighty force, and power wins again in the end. Do you understand? Are you following? And who does it defeat? The original spirit, my Judaism, and it tramples on it with all its might again and again throughout history, and it survives only thanks to the spirit against the much superior power, it is the modest victory of spirit over power, and therefore does not become corrupt, until slowly its spirit grows stronger, becomes more successful and central in Europe. And then what does power do in response, what does it do in the most tremendous and insane outburst of oppression and power? It crucifies it. Power physically eliminates the Jewish spirit in Europe. And now, what happens, in the most ironic development, and therefore the most typically historical - are you following? Even the original spirit itself becomes power! And in doing so disappoints all the intellectuals in the world. That's why they hate Israel. Do you understand?

And all the readers in the newspaper are very pleased with my intellectual current affairs article, and the critics write: This is a brilliant piece about the Netanyahu era. It's the most apt thing written about Netanyahu, about how they persecute him and he plays the victim, and how he's the most powerful precisely because he thinks he's the most original spirit, but actually he's the leader of a garbage gang, and feeds on antisemitism and therefore nourishes it - in the garbage cycle, which the wonderful writer exposes in an original and mature parable. Where has this cat been until now? What a shame he was in the trash, and how lucky we are to have found such a literary discovery in the garbage.

And the second column is about a special cat. A cat that constantly gets entangled in honor wars and every meow immediately leads to a fight - and therefore he's missing an eye and a paw. Muhammad the cat. And I put my life in my hands, and in a brave journalistic achievement I dare to ask the fearsome Muhammad, who sits bleeding at the edge of the trash can licking his wounds after fighting over a female cat (he's married to four cats) over the honor of the concubine, and I ask him and immediately run away: Tell me, why do Muslims hate Jews? Why are you violent against us? What's the reason for antisemitism? And Muhammad the cat climbs to the top of the trash can and wails like the muezzin his doctrine: Wait wait until I catch you, you cowardly Jewish mouse in the form of a cat - and I'll show you the might of my arm and my intellectual prowess and the sharpness of my critical claws! Let's start by explaining to you, you snot-nosed Jew, that the basic division in the world is according to psychological fixations, which determine what nations are good at and what interests them and how they behave. The anal nations: wealth (Protestants). The genital nations: sex (Catholics). The phallic nations: honor (Islam). The oral nations: Africa and the Third World. Which are the most primitive, and still at the food stage of satisfying the most basic need. And the Jewish people - it is the people of the super ego. It has a fixation of a supreme self, and therefore everyone hates it, because it suppresses all other fixations.

Us, the phallic Arabs, you castrated with your circumcision, and when our erect muezzin tower wants to shout in the middle of the night - you silence it. The mosque is called that because it's the tower we worship, like every man wants his tower to be worshipped. Or like you ruined sex for the Catholic nations with Jewish confession and repentance, and now you can't just enter a woman's hole without the matter having a moral meaning, negative or positive, feminist or chauvinist, capitalist or socialist, in every intercourse you're either for Netanyahu or against him. And like you ruined the enjoyment of wealth accumulation for the Protestants through socialism and Marxism and charity for the poor and guilt feelings. You've even turned the ass into a moral issue. You can no longer enjoy hoarding and brooding over golden eggs as you should. And that's exactly your problem, of the super-ego, that you ruin every basic pleasure. For the Third World you've ruined even the simple enjoyment of survival and physical existence, with your Jewish Hollywood ideology, because now with every bite they only envy the West's plate and want to emigrate and their lives are not worth living. In short, you are the conspiracy of the world of spirit against the physical world. The Protocols of the Internet is a Jewish plot - and so is the computer mouse!

And the readers are beside themselves, and the critics unanimously praise: This is the deepest thing ever written on a subject close to our hearts - we've been waiting years for such a fiery article - about Rabin. Finally someone is talking about the heinous murder as it should be talked about, like a leftist moral lighthouse against right-wing muezzin incitement. About how violence is against peace, how Middle Eastern terrorism is against Ashkenazi tolerance, how the murder stems from fixation, how the gun is a phallic symbol that penetrates Rabin's body from behind and turns him into an anal symbol, just after he sang the song of peace in a rare oral outburst, and creates for us a genital wound that's always pleasant to dig into. The cat states loudly, without stuttering and without howling: The right is guilty! The right is guilty of Arlosoroff's murder, Rabin's murder, and Tair Rada's murder. And the article gets countless shares, especially because it came out close to the anniversary of the assassination.

And with the wind at my back, I go down to the people again, that is, to the trash. And I meet Moses, a well-groomed house cat, sitting on the balcony above the trash eating fish for Shabbat, while all the garbage cats are going crazy from the smell. And I ask him: Moses, why do people hate Jews? And Moses says: Because of the occupation. And goes back to tending to his fish. And the answer stuns me, so I try another way: Why do Jews hate themselves? And Moses says: I wrote a poem about it. Want to hear? And I say: What poem now? And Moses says let me express myself artistically. It's Shabbat songs. My mistress is crazy about the Song of the Sea of Gaza (I wrote that, did you know?), and this is my new one. Come listen. And he wails from the balcony like an opera singer courting under his lover's window, only reversed - he's on the balcony, and the cat he's trying to impress is in the trash. And like every leading intellectual he makes a lot of wind and bells, right above the physical trash, because this is the most successful courtship method... and this is the song (he sent it to the newspaper and is waiting for a response in the coming days):

The End of the Occupation

Again the tears over the occupation/No surprises, nothing new/The celebration is righteous/Self-righteousness celebrates/The Nakba that has no cure/Slipped away like passing love/And only disappointment on the faces/A keffiyeh full of rabbits/All the protesters have bled/Even the critics have fallen silent/The doves have flown.

Both the truth/And the fiction/What was/Was/The clinging to nothingness/And only you still/And again the tears over the occupation/And the struggle, less determined/Choked from your lips/Already parted from your yoke/And an end to the disruption.

And the audience is very disappointed. A flop. Very few shares. And the critics are also in agreement: This is a column on a worn-out and quite banal topic - the lives of cats in the garbage. Again kitsch about dreams and disillusionment from dreams. Yes, it talks about how being black is actually being a cat. How the fur and tail turn you into someone who lives inside a black hat. Portrait of the artist as a hairy shtreimel [Translator's note: A fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jews]. Not particularly original. It seems he's run out of topics and is recycling himself to death. He didn't really manage to get out of the trash. Because he is trash. That's what he is, and that's who he is, and he's not talented enough to transcend himself - and be someone else. For example, a human like us.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Internal Summary: What's Left of the Website?

Dear friends, I feel we can look back with satisfaction, understanding the limitations of the genre, the boundaries of ability, the constraints of the algorithm - and the limitations of the world. Our website stands as a monument to a world we erected in memory of the Netanya teacher - a place of pilgrimage where one can always encounter the birth of the Netanya school of thought

By: Billy

View from Mount Nebo  (Source)

For about a year now, following reports from users and brilliant narrow-mindedness, "The Degeneration of the Nation" website has been permanently blocked on Facebook. Thus, all hundreds and thousands of links to it disappeared at once, and it gradually sank in Google search result rankings as well. This is despite the search engine algorithm's claim to award points mainly for original content, and the site has about half a million words of exceptionally "original content," containing a complete ideological world that deals with almost every field of human thought and creation - a genuine enterprise. In fact, it now contains material for several books (among other things, it includes about fifteen books and booklets, mostly in PDF format). Did the site precede its time, or perhaps it's out of its time? Is the current external world right (after all, ignorance is the essence of the world), and will it never find interest in the world living within the site - ever? Only time will judge between the site and the world - and time has time (humans - not always).

The rest of the Netanya school members long ago stopped publishing on Facebook, and some were never there, but I'm more sociable (everything is relative) and gritted my teeth and continued to publish articles on the social network as a kind of conduit between the site and the world. Overall, the number of new publications by members on the site gradually declined (in my feeling: out of a sense of futility), which increasingly became an arena for internal dialogue - among us (and for such dialogue, we don't need a site, right?). As the level on the site rose, and it is now ten times higher than the initial competitor (whose name we shall not mention, of course...), we lost the reader. Does any of us regret this?

But I prefer to look at the glass half full: The site, as it is, and even if it remains as it is - is beautiful to the eyes and very, very good in my view, challenging and rewarding, stimulating and dreamy, rich and enriching. Everything, including the code, we wrote ourselves from scratch, at a cost of 0 NIS, even for the servers (not to mention the amazing design done by the beloved dog, and the free, beautiful, and apt images from all those paid image banks). Half a million words? That's like all of Plato's writings (!). More could have been added (and most is always lost in time), but it's enough - and it spreads a universe. An alternative to the degenerating land - spreading over it a diverse spiritual world of a complete school (but with a coherent internal logic, of a real school that develops gradually, not a Facebook cacophony trapped in an endless spin).

Above all, a unique alternative to the common discourse was formulated here, in my opinion, whose essence is not "discourse" (a repetitive and externalized matter), but documentation of an internal development system, namely: learning. The materials on the site - from philosophy to literature, from reviews to programs - document a group learning process that is all about aspiration for innovation and novelty, and loathing for clichés and templates - a kind of futuristic opposition to the current world. Even when I read an old current affairs article on the site, or an article that wasn't fully edited (the time pressure towards the end of the Netanya teacher's life led to very hasty publication of his notebooks, in "Philosophy of the Future"), I find great interest in it - which hasn't aged. In my eyes, with all the sadness in the matter, there is also joy in achievement: anyone who ever sits and reads the site will come out enriched as if from a new centrifuge.

Will this happen? Who knows. We all know there's no hope in writing in Hebrew, and maybe one day, if we're lucky, we'll translate the site into English (is there hope in writing in English? Well, we're no longer naive). There's always a horizon, even if it (by nature) is beyond the horizon, and it's hard to imagine it in the current state. The land continues to degenerate - and we have no Sisyphean tendencies to try to pull it up the slope again and again, although there's no doubt that we all invested enormous efforts, which end as always - in nothing. The site that grew distant from the land, and from earthliness, has no "this world," but will it have a "world to come"? Or is this indeed the final verdict: eternal oblivion, which is the paradise of non-updating sites?

I will continue to publish on Facebook from the existing materials and books, like the great book by Circle [Translator's note: likely a pseudonym] that we were privileged to host on our site, until I finally tire (if I don't tire - it will take years). And to the site members who are starting to study in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science (including those completing matriculation exams...) - we wish good luck. The Netanya teacher, who is not with us today, would surely be very angry and upset with us, as usual, and complaining and mourning the abandonment of the enterprise, which is also his abandonment (but, as usual, he would also be somewhat proud of us in his heart, I think - for the very enterprise that was completed). And since this site was born from the trauma of separation (and perhaps also the encounter?) with our teacher - I believe it is fitting that we dedicate the site to his memory, and to the future of his revolutionary "Philosophy of Learning" theory, which in its opposition to the "Philosophy of Language" was never written, but was sealed in learning notebooks and exercises and summaries (and tests!) and lessons and oral study, and now it is revealed on the internet - "before the eyes of all Israel."

Alternative Current Affairs


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Degeneration of the Nation (Part 1): Why is Culture Deteriorating?

What's Behind the Degeneration of the Nation - and What's in Front of It

By: Post-Post-Structuralism

Is Bibi to blame for the degeneration of the nation? Is the degeneration of the nation to blame for Bibi? (Source)

Paradigm Shift and Decline in Quality

Why, in fact, are the gatekeepers deteriorating? If more people are writing, or want to be academics, or artists, etc. - shouldn't competition have led to rising standards and overall quality? If there are more candidates for every cultural position or role, isn't it natural that a more talented person would reach them? How can we explain the opposite phenomenon?

Many are those who lament the degeneration of our nation in the Bibi era, analyzing the powerful historical processes that are leading us from the Western world towards turning Israel into a second-world country (the shrinking of educated elites versus a populist mass with significantly lower human capital. Latin America is the future!). But the degeneration is not at all a local problem - limited to the country. The decline in quality is not happening only in Israel, or in the degenerating Jewish people, or in aging Europe, or in the satiated West, but in the entire world. The Chinese may be a rising economic and even global power, but can anyone claim they are a rising cultural force? The degeneration is a phenomenon that crosses countries and cultures: a global decline in quality. Can we attribute the "decline of generations" to the rise of populism and mass culture, or perhaps the opposite direction is correct, and the decline is an independent force that itself causes populism and the flourishing of low culture?

But is it even true that the masses are to blame for the global decline in quality? In other words: does the elite really function as a restraining factor and a counterforce contributing to raising standards? After all, the place where we see the decline in quality most of all is precisely in the elites. We are witnessing the collapse in its most blatant form in high culture institutions: humanities departments in universities, museums, newspapers for thinking people (the degeneration of "Haaretz"), journals, publishing houses, the dying of high classical music as a creative field, the deteriorating philosophy on both sides of the Channel and the Ocean - all are deteriorating (perhaps only in mathematics and exact sciences does the flourishing continue, and indeed these fields are becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the world - true ivory towers of intelligence). It's not just the bad readers - but the bad editors and curators (who write as poorly as the worst writers). And it's not just the dilettante students - but the mountains of worthless and unoriginal publications by academic staff, and the embarrassing intellectual stars that academia has to offer the world.

Is democracy to blame? After all, the decline in cultural quality is not limited to democracies, and is not limited to the decline of the USA, which still has no cultural force threatening it (unlike non-cultural forces). The Chinese elites and masses alike are real zeros in terms of culture, and lack any spiritual message for the world, and are even more materialistic than Americans. If there is another issue in which China has remained completely Marxist, and in which Marx's legacy has truly been internalized deeply into the culture - it is materialism as a supreme value. For the Westerner who "happens to work with Chinese people", and expects to encounter a deep culture with different values (as opposed to different customs), the amazing and bitter realization is repeatedly in store that the people in front of him do not understand that there is anything in the world besides money and material success. And so too the Russian kleptocracy, of course. It's embarrassing how bad taste the elite of the superpower of one of the most cultured peoples in the world has (if we only compare to equally corrupt elites in the past - whose good taste funded masterpieces).

Even Russian culture itself is not what it once was, even under the communist regime (!). In some ways, the Putin regime, which does enjoy considerable popular support, exposes the wretchedness of the "Russian soul" even more than communist tyranny. This is no longer a terrible tragic historical mishap - it's nature. And certainly it's still easier to create culturally under Putin (so why isn't this reflected in the output?). Where will the next cultural force that can even challenge the USA emerge from? This is not a badge of honor for the USA but a certificate of poverty for the world - and we're talking about cultural poverty, not economic of course (where the situation is actually progressing okay). Material poverty is being eradicated in the world, but the spiritual poverty report shows a deep spiritual crisis (which is the real reason for the "crisis of the humanities": a crisis in the spirit itself).

When everything is deteriorating regardless - but with vigor - and when there is no force or counterforce that manages to stem the tide, and all the dams are breached one after another, including the most loyal gatekeepers, we must suspect that this broad dynamic has sources of a different kind, which are not just more specific and somewhat random historical "factors". If the fierce competition between artists is not leading to a rise in quality but to its lowering (and so too with writers and intellectuals), then there is no lack of free competition, market, or even talent here, but a loss of relevance of a paradigm. And this is the reason why the decline in quality is general - and therefore no one is to blame for it, and not any one factor.

As is known, fewer higher quality people create higher culture than many lower quality people. So if the level of the gatekeepers themselves maintains itself, they simply reduce the number of people and maintain the quality. But when the general level drops - it doesn't take long before the gatekeepers themselves become lower quality people. There is a decline in the quality of the quality producers themselves: the editors, curators, researchers. And therefore competition is created for a less quality evaluation function. For example: popularity, or conformity to trends, or political excellence and social skills, or just diligence. Therefore we do not see here some titanic struggle between a quality hierarchy and a lowly mass network, but a feedback process of declining quality: degeneration. The entire system as a whole is shaped in the direction of the transition from hierarchy to network. Therefore the quality - which is inherently related to hierarchy - decreases and flattens.

Situation Overview: Hierarchy and Network

In such an analysis, we can identify a structural paradigm shift between two cultural formations - hierarchy and network - as the basic tectonic movement that produces all the changes in the layers of meaning above it (if we can still talk about layers at all, and not networks of meaning). Thus we can explain a long series of trends in our world - in the decline of hierarchy and the rise of the network. For example, the fall of patriarchy will be understood not as the fall of man: not because of the patri - but because of the archy. A fall that stems from a transition from a hierarchical world to a different kind of world, and hence also the sexual revolution, in which sexual connections become a network - and much less policed in hierarchical construction (whose peak: the patriarchal family, in a tree structure).

Therefore the network formation is not only related to the network (meaning the internet), but the intensification of networking preceded the network, and in fact - even created it in the first place. The intensification of horizontal connections in the world, connecting it in a network, began long before the internet, which is only the most complete and ultimate expression of this trend. Whether it's the transportation links that gradually networked the world, or the intensification of migration networks, or communication networks, and even literacy and the decline in book prices that created a much more networked transfer of ideas. The highest spiritual expression of the idea of the network preceded the network itself by half a century, and was based on the perception of communication as the center of being: the philosophy of language. "Family resemblance" means a network of connections, and when Wittgenstein likens his method of investigation to walking in a network of paths, which have no built-in hierarchy - he is actually describing a network. This is the horizontal culture, in which lateral connections in the system come at the expense of vertical connections and a built-in hierarchical perception of the basic structure (which the later Wittgenstein opposed). That is, there is a culture war here: horizontal culture versus vertical culture. Or: network culture versus hierarchical culture.

Therefore all hierarchies in the world are in a process of decline, in favor of network structures, such as the market. Thus we can understand the defeat of communism and socialism and regulation versus capitalism and the free market simply as the defeat of hierarchy versus network decentralization in the economic sphere. In fact, the basic structural differences are more fundamental than any ideology: network economy versus hierarchical economy are more basic ideas than capitalism versus communism (in this sense, Russia has basically adhered to the same economic system for hundreds of years: hierarchical kleptocracy that has characterized it since the days of the Tsar, through communism, and up to Putin. Only the thieves change - while the system remains). Even the wealth distribution gap of our days (or the number of sexual partners, or Facebook friends, or any other parameter that obeys the exponential law) simply stems from the 80-20 network structure (20% of the vertices have 80% of the connections, and vice versa, in an exponential ratio function). And the more we aspire to a completely pure network structure, without hierarchical regulation - this will be the natural distribution function of the world.

In the same way, only in the political sphere, we can understand the fall of hierarchical dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in favor of democracies of the network-communicative type, or decentralized civil wars, in which there is a network of power factors. And so we will also be able to understand the Chinese success - the first network dictatorship. Because contrary to popular belief, Rome - or in its less random name: the Mediterranean Empire (Rome is simply close to the center of the Mediterranean) - is not a parable for the USA, but more for today's China. This is a hierarchical and brutal rule that contains within it a network economy, with emphasis on construction and infrastructure projects (the Roman road and building the empire around the sea) and relative autonomy for provincial rulers (the empire is too large for effective centralized rule). In other words, the Chinese success is the success of network communism, just as the success of Rome compared to other empires in the ancient world was its being a network empire built around the great network of the ancient world - "our sea" - and containing it within it. And if we continue to classify learning and developing systems according to their basic organizing structure, we will discover that globalization itself is an anti-power and anti-hierarchical idea, which means: a whole networked world. There is no superpower or empire that rules the world, not even the USA, and therefore there is no need to fear that China will replace the USA. The world is becoming more and more of a network, in which there is no alpha state at the top of the hierarchy, but only changing networks of interests.

Another product of networking is the destruction of education systems, which are pillars of hierarchy, and the success of more decentralized systems (in Canada there is no Ministry of Education, in Korea education is actually private in private lessons, while in China and Finland enormous autonomy is given to districts and schools). The independence of principals and teachers is more educationally effective than supervision and control from above. In fact, it is possible that the form of educational structure is a more important parameter for future economic growth than the form of economic structure itself. This is in contrast to economic thought concentrated mostly on networking the "economy" and reforms in the economy, instead of the most critical factor for the prosperity of nations: human capital (only Russian human capital explains why it is still a superpower at all). Decentralized (or planned) education is essential for the future even more than the decentralized (or planned) economy. But almost all the intellectual firepower of the economics profession is directed at the economy, that is, at material capital, instead of increasing the combination of society's human capital and cultural capital, which deserves to be called its spiritual capital (by cultural capital we mean here the quality of culture that has economic significance, exactly as in the expression human capital - and not in Bourdieu's sense). Is the missing component that causes us to deteriorate a new model of truly networked education that will fit the structure of the current era?

What's Above, What's Below: The History of Networking and Hierarchy

Vertical economy versus horizontal economy, vertical totalitarian regime versus horizontal regime, vertical education versus horizontal education, networking is inherently liberal (this is, in fact, the liberal tendency) - and hierarchy is inherently conservative (and this is, in fact, the conservative tendency)... Is networking simply better? Is it the future? Should we view history as a long movement towards the horizontal, with vertical bumps - mountains that need to be overcome along the way? Is it like the famous Chabad sign - "Prepare for the coming of the Messiah" means prepare for the coming of the horizon? After all, one can look at history as a long series of networked liberation movements from hierarchical control structures. If we zoom out a bit from the networked gallop of our times, we'll discover that this basic structural gap has been present throughout history: The Greeks - a networked, commercial culture (hence the Macedonian Empire disintegrates into a cultural network within five minutes), while the Romans - a hierarchical empire. The entire Renaissance was an overcoming of networking: shipping, the republic of letters, discoveries and voyages, printing, trade-based culture - and this after the very vertical hierarchies of the Middle Ages. The Jewish exile itself is the transition from a hierarchical, state existence, with a temple at the top, to a networked, decentralized existence. That's why the Torah transformed from a hierarchical system descending from above (Written Torah) to a network of sages and connections between them (Oral Torah). Instead of a dictatorship of the proletariat, should we aspire to a network of the proletariat? Was this the whole mistake? Is the network the form of the desired equality - the horizontal paradise on earth (as opposed to the hierarchical one that is above, in heaven)?

Well, the existence of hunter-gatherers is inherently networked, but the agricultural revolution was the hierarchical revolution in human history (hence it was also the source of patriarchy). In fact, the hierarchical structure - which was certainly then an enormous cognitive innovation and a new method for perceiving and organizing the world - is the one structure that created all the components of the agricultural revolution, including hierarchical control of production sources, animals and plants, in contrast to hunting and gathering which are networked. Movement in space is horizontal, while settling in one place allows for vertical and hierarchical construction - religious, social and physical. Hence the prevalence of monumental construction in the ancient world, and thus the hierarchical idea then reached its most extreme form, just as today networking has reached its most extreme, and almost pure form (perhaps only the future vision of a network of minds where all minds become one network and one mind is more networked than it).

The physical place where the hierarchical revolution probably reached its global historical peak was then in Pharaonic Egypt, in the most hierarchical culture in the ancient world, which not surprisingly brought us the most stable hierarchical building form - the pyramid. Monotheism itself, which seems to us today as a particularly vertical hierarchy, was then actually a movement of descending hierarchy and horizontal flattening: a transition from an elaborate hierarchy between gods and in the cult itself to one god, who makes a direct covenant at Mount Sinai with the entire people, in the format of the covenant in the ancient world between a ruler and his vassals, and whose Torah is full of his direct speech to man. This, as opposition to the ruler's status as a god and as the center of worship, as in Egypt. The Bible itself was not shaped by a ruler as his ideology (and does not display such loyalty), but as a social text, which is the story of the people. Therefore, the Torah of Moses was actually a horizontal rebellion against the uncompromising and unbridled Egyptian hierarchy - and this is the depth of the exodus from slavery in construction to horizontal wanderings in the desert.

On the horizontal-vertical axis, Mesopotamian cultures were then more like Europe in modern times, with much political fragmentation and wars and influences and progress, that is, a more horizontal structure of power distribution between system components (the peak of this situation - for geographical reasons - was then in ancient Greece). And this is in contrast to the high hierarchy of strong American cultures or China. Hierarchy indeed created monumental achievements and exceptional construction projects, but ultimately paid in stagnation. In other words, we see an overwhelming advantage for networked flexibility over hierarchical efficiency only in the long term (and not the short term), or in a rapidly changing world - in the medium term. This is exactly the trade-off between two types of search: network search versus tree search. Or, if you will: exploration versus optimization. That is, there is a dialectic between the two forms, and when one of them is taken to extremes (in Egypt - hierarchy, and in our time - networking) we get a departure from the optimum. And where is the middle? On the border between a hierarchical world and a networked world and in the transition between them (in the ancient Near East: in the Land of Israel and Sinai - where the alphabet was invented and the Torah was created).

Sexuality as a Chaos Boundary

The most appropriate term to describe the most learning-conducive state is unification or coupling. This is an abstract Kabbalistic term describing a relationship between two, like dialectics or synthesis, but in which the two do not maintain their separateness (dialectics) and also do not unite (synthesis) but are in constant movement between these two possibilities themselves (and not just in movement between the two). The Kabbalistic coupling or unification is not a linguistic discourse (heaven forbid) or conflict, but a shared learning system (hence its ability to procreate). Hence it is a second-order relationship between connection and confrontation: coupling is a dialectic between dialectic and synthesis. And also: a synthesis between synthesis and dialectic. And why is the sexual metaphor the most appropriate to describe this relationship? Because sexuality itself was created precisely for this purpose.

The human revolution was a networked revolution: the human brain was a transition to a more networked brain than the hierarchical animal brain based on instincts. Language further increased networking, including social networking. And so we arrived at the networked society spreading and wandering in space of hunter-gatherers, which networked almost the entire globe with human societies (there was certainly a tremendous networked expansion drive here). But human sexuality is unique: it is neither networked nor hierarchical, but resides on the border between them. We are not penguins and not bonobos. The networked and hierarchical logic of sexuality always challenge each other in humans - not due to a malfunction, but intentionally, because it enhances learning. Because what is sexuality? The first great inventions of life creation were hierarchical inventions of control and stability (and therefore evolution was very slow at its beginning): DNA, the cell, the internal division of the cell into organelles (the appearance of eukaryotes), the building of the hierarchy that allowed animals (multicellular organisms) and the various body structures from the Cambrian explosion, predation, the gradual growth of organisms while increasing their complexity, and so on. All these increased the strength of the vertical axis - between generations and in control relationships. And the peak of this vertical peak, which parallels the phenomenon of the pyramids, where complexity is size - was the phenomenon of dinosaurs.

Within all this hierarchical flourishing, sexuality was the more networked and horizontal component of the ecological system, in that it allowed not only a generational genetic hierarchy, in the form of a tree from organism to its offspring, but networked gene transfer within the population (and sometimes - even gene transfer between species! a less known but critical phenomenon for evolution). Thus, for example, the appearance of flowers - which creates from the hierarchical plant growing upwards a horizontal and non-local network of pollination - is a classic example of sexuality. That is, sexuality is from the outset on the border between the hierarchical and the networked, and therefore its most famous place in Kabbalah is the meeting between the hierarchical vertical divine tree and the networked and horizontal Shekhinah of the congregation of Israel and the Torah. That is: between heaven and earth. For the *unification* of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah. Hence the importance of sexuality for learning, and the decline existing in the current, over-networked world, in sexuality itself.

The learning existing in the universe indicates that there is some aspiration in it for a chaos boundary: convergence not to absolute chaos and not to an orderly structure - but to the border between them. After all, what does it take for complexity to be created in a physical system, and not just mess or infinite stagnation? If we infer from mathematics - very little is needed. In almost any structure we create, based on some mathematical structure, there will be tremendous learning complexity. Mathematics formulates what is possible, and it turns out that complexity in what is possible is not exceptional, but rather the lack of complexity. Complexity is common. We have a bias in favor of simplicity because we are stupid (limitations of the human brain, especially in working memory) and therefore we repeatedly search for simplicity in the universe, but there is some attractor we don't understand that draws the universe to the border between order and disorder - and to learning.

Therefore, extreme networking is destined to fail and stabilize again in a structure with more hierarchical characteristics. Our era allows us to learn the opposite failure to fixed hierarchy - decentralization without grip - and to observe the destructive results of the Tower of Babel: flattening and dispersal over all the earth. As is known, discourse cannot be criticized from within the discourse itself: criticism of the Facebook network will never be viral on Facebook, and even the linguistic ideology associated with the decline in level is difficult to eliminate through its own means - communication is opaque to its deterioration (one can think here of Israeli media, and also of "Haaretz" in particular). There is a failing method here, which perceives the essence of the network as communication and discourse (and not, for example, as a brain learning network), and therefore thinks that if it spreads an idea on the network and makes it popular - it will succeed and be successful (give me a click, give me a byte, what do you get? Clickbait!). Just like a teenager who wants to be famous (it doesn't matter in what, for what and why), because fame itself is important - and not the content. This method does not understand that there is something outside the network - and therefore it sets out to conquer it, and often claims in the name of networking and popularity against hierarchy and reputation (who are you to determine what culture is?).

Perception versus Discourse versus Method

Indeed, the attempt to describe and understand history as a struggle between structures (hierarchy versus network) is a step back from language, to the philosophical paradigm before the philosophy of language, in order to criticize the current paradigm with known and agreed tools. While the more correct description (that is, more future-oriented) - which the current consciousness only approaches - is a struggle between methods, not between structures. In the structural view, philosophy is the highest form of organization - because it is (simply) the form of organization in its purest form: its abstract form. Philosophy formulates a paradigm of organization - of its time. Therefore, for it, understanding is the construction in structure, just like perception in Kant. Because the depth of the Kantian paradigm was structure and organization (for example: categories). The Kantian method was a form of perception, and therefore it enabled the structures of bureaucracy and mechanisms of human control over the world - which became worldviews, and struggles between worldviews, or between forms of building the world. Exactly as we presented history as a struggle between structures.

These struggles are foreign to linguistic struggles, which are not struggles of perception and ideologies and construction, but struggles of power and popularity and control of discourse: communicative struggles. This linguistic paradigm naturally understands philosophy itself as the highest form of language - as discourse in its purest form. As language about language (or one that examines its boundaries). But in a learning view, philosophy is actually the method in its purest form: the method of methods. And history is perceived in it as struggles between methods. In this last view, the networked and decentralized linguistic method defeated the more structural and hierarchical Kantian method. Hence the decline in level - because level requires height and depth, while language is the horizontal surface: a shell. In the Kantian method, content from the world is perceived within the human structure, with deep legitimacy for the human structure as inevitable and positive, and therefore there was legitimacy in it for human hierarchy as valid. You could learn a certain field of perception - and become an expert and authority in it. You could combine subjective and objective components in your taste. You could learn and teach to appreciate works or texts - learn perception. Learning was construction - and the result could be built to perfection.

Language attacked this method as arbitrary, unjustified - and even illegitimate. Why is your perception better than mine? Every hierarchy is institutional and powerful and oppressive. Every structure - fossilized. The linguistic method saw in language itself the exclusive plane in which there is development and learning, that is - learning itself was flattened to learning how to talk about something. Precisely because mastery of language is not fortified in any structure and learning is open to all, the result became powerful many times over, only that power passed to the masses - the struggles became who shouts louder, who manages to shape the language, and who manages to organize the network and control it and incite it (right) or purify it (left). The structural struggle is an orderly war - and the networked struggle is terrorism. Or alternatively, civil war. Or alternatively, a kindergarten quarrel. Instead of struggles between perceptions - we have wars over discourse, over attention, and over narrative, and over what he said that she said to him that you said to me. Did you hear about the new statement of...? What a terrible thing to say. Go to the bathroom and wash your mouth with soap. *Learn* how to speak! The general method for the intellectual of language is simply to learn how to speak in a certain discourse - academic jargon, poetic style, an article in Haaretz, the genre of Israeli prose and its accessories - and then maintain conformity to the discourse, because it gives value to your words, and you reaffirm it back, and thus babble yourself to knowledge (because content is secondary to language, not to mention learning innovation).

But learning within language defeats itself, because there is no internal basis in language - which is conventional and arbitrary many times more than perception - for why one speaks this way and not another, or worse: why to say this and not that. Therefore, the learning method will replace the linguistic method, and will reconstitute the ability to learn something, that is, to learn why this and not otherwise, from the power of a learning system (as opposed to a language system). Learning systems are actually good at creating flexible hierarchies, and therefore there is meaning in them to the idea of level, and there is room in them for the dimensions of depth and height, far from the linguistic surface. For this purpose, we really need to build new learning systems, because cultural institutions are really dinosaurs (that is, fossils of dinosaurs). In contrast to the Roman/Chinese method of containing a network within a rigid external hierarchy, we need to create hierarchy within the network, just like in the brain (or in Google's algorithm). For this purpose, it is necessary to add to the various networks an internal *hierarchical* ranking of the vertices, in order to create vertical structures within the network itself. Because there are different levels of people. Not everyone is equal. Plato already knew that there are people made of iron - and there are those made of gold. Not all language users are entitled to the same listening: a post by a person ranked as gold is worth more than a post by a person of copper. And the critical difference from the Platonic state system is that we now have a variety of flexible learning and ranking algorithms to determine what material you are made of - within the network (PageRank, Hebb's rule, h-index, and more). That is: we have mechanisms to incentivize you to become precious metal. This way we can turn the babbling network - into a learning brain, and the straw and chaff it produces - into gold.

To Part B

Culture and Literature


domain: philosophy

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Biologization of the Inanimate

Which meta-metaphor will replace language in the philosophy and spiritual world of the 21st century? On the surface, it seems that technology is the buzzword of the era. But a deeper look will reveal deeper layers of meaning that are preferred candidates to stand at the center of the new conceptual world, such as organizational theory, learning systems, and "evolutions"

By: Darwin of Philosophy

The Origin of Ideas - A new evolutionary theory of spiritual development after the extinction of the dinosaurs of philosophy. Philosophy as evolution (Source)

Did technological development lead to the Middle Ages? No, it was the disintegration of organizational forms, and reorganization, due to Christianity (the Roman Empire of the "holy" type was less strong than the ethos of the original strong Roman Empire, because Christianity is more egalitarian and universal, and competes with nationalism). Did technological development bring about the Bible, perhaps the invention of the alphabet? (No, the alphabet existed in other places). We've become accustomed to thinking that all historical development is fundamentally technological development, but this is a new phenomenon, which is essentially what defines the modern era, from the Renaissance.

What is not a new phenomenon is that, like in the brain, there are different levels of organization and different forms of expression of the same basic development, which is fundamentally organizational. Technology is an example of organizational development, as is the beginning of the Middle Ages. For instance, we've already understood that new technology will also be expressed in literature, economics, the state, aesthetics, law, psychology, sexuality, etc., and everything will reinforce the others, so everything will go together, but it's not because of technology, rather because everything is reorganizing. Therefore, it's not correct to say that philosophical-ideational development created a certain economic or technological development, nor vice versa, not one as the cause and the other as the effect, but rather all are expressions of a new form of organization, which is also the basis for new philosophical thinking.

In other words - there is philosophy beneath philosophy, philosophy is not the basis for everything but rather the highest form, just as high-level thought is the highest form of describing neuronal activity. But what creates new thought, meaning a new form of thought, is a reorganization of the brain, not a previous thought - not as a cause. In fact, there is a totality here, a phenomenon that has no causal explanation but different levels of looking at the same thing and different aspects. We'll call this holistic totality a form of organization, even though it's an empty expression, and not a new discipline that explains (which is equivalent to claiming that organizational theory and systems theory replace technology as an explanation for everything), but merely a description of a phenomenon, of the reorganization of systems (as opposed to a cause which is local, an arrow from one specific thing to others, here it's a description of the system).

What was actually new in the development of "life"? The cell is an organizational force of chemistry. Nazism succeeded because of Germany's organizational power (and the Jews were defeated because of their poor organizational power - not because they didn't have a state, that's just a result of poor organization). Athenian philosophy was part of a reorganization of the Greek world, where abstraction and idea also prevailed in politics. Now we call a certain type of organizational forms "technologies", which are mainly the development of inanimate objects outside of humans (as opposed to agriculture which was the development of plants, and domestication which was the development of animals) - and a reorganization of the human world because of them. In fact, it's possible that in retrospect (in the future) the Internet will no longer be considered technology, and perhaps not even the computer, but rather a different type of organizational form. These are no longer tools, and it's an outdated way of thinking to consider them as tools. It's no longer use but essence - Wittgenstein reversed, or at least the metaphor of games triumphs over that of tools and is understood as more advanced.

But a better metaphor is learning/intelligent systems or perhaps "evolutions". Not things that people use (technologies), as if raisins added to the human cake, but things that people are inside of, new cakes where people are the raisins in them, where we are their tools. The computer is the moment when the relationship of user and tool between humans and technology reversed, it was the equality, and today humans are becoming the tool and the computer is becoming the user. And this fits with us being players and the network being a game, the players serve the game, not vice versa, because they don't set the rules. They don't create the game, they only play in it. And if the game changes, it's because of the evolution of games. Therefore, we are in transition from the era of technologies to the era of evolutions.

Just as technology caused things like the agricultural revolution to be retrospectively called a technological revolution (although perhaps it was a religious revolution?), so too will everything in history appear as particular cases of evolutions. And perhaps a more successful name is needed - and that's the role of philosophy to find a more successful metaphor, and less empty. What characterizes evolution is that it has no factor, or cause, but there is innovation that reorganizes the species, and it's not a change in individuals, but a change in the species. No single individual undergoes evolution, it's a systemic matter.

And perhaps it's just a less successful name for learning systems. The Internet is a learning system, changing, unlike the computer which was programmed technology, even if flexible in programming unlike a car, and therefore an intermediate stage. Why is the economy so strong in the world, and leading everything? Because it's the strongest evolution currently, and the economy is the first to have become an evolution on a broad scale. Capitalism is the evolution of the economy. Biology naturally aspires to expand and become the driving force of the universe at the expense of physics. The living wants to defeat the inanimate. Perhaps the inanimate will defeat the living in the end, but that's when the inanimate itself will become living.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Philosophy of Psychology (Part 3)

What is the meaning of meaning? Why should the philosophy of language be buried outside the fence? On suicide, parenting and hedonism from a learning perspective

By: The Name is Meaningless

Is suicide a language act? Does it have meaning? (Source)

Are we a language system or a learning system?

What is a learning existence versus a linguistic existence? Ordinary language is a very fixed habit, agreed upon, automatic to the point of being autonomous, learned in childhood. Any innovation that is purely linguistic, like linguistic experimentation in literature, is destined to be erased in the face of ordinary language like a splash of a thrown stone in a flowing river. Therefore, it is a disturbance and disruption, not an innovation (this is the radical political action of our time, and often the artistic one as well). Because the moment you work in language - it's very easy to innovate an innovation that has no substance, like any nonsensical sentence, nonsensical any sentence like, that has no very easy innovation substance in it (what shall we say, poetry). Because the innovation is mechanical. In mathematical language, we would call this a combinatorial system of combinations, where the number of possibilities grows exponentially, because at each step the number of possibilities is multiplied by the number of possibilities. Therefore, innovation is just another possibility, and another possibility, and another - a low-value game in possible combinations. Therefore, in order to truly innovate (even in language, in writing) one must bypass the uncontrollable theoretical exponential explosion of possibilities (like in NP), of why this way and not another, in a kind of illusory freedom. The theoretical possibility must be replaced with a more effective and efficient practice (i.e., more like P), and even heuristics. Because if you say it this way, or say it another way, what difference does it make, and how will it help - what comes out of the mouth is vanity. But if you learn this way and not another - it makes a huge difference.

Any psychological change that works, even today, is created through learning, and essentially bypasses the incorrect linguistic picture of the person in learning practice (and this includes linguistic changes themselves, which are also learned). Language is the ideology - but learning is always the practice. Those who think of humans in linguistic terms, as linguistic creatures (meaning their essence is linguistic) instead of as learning creatures (meaning their essence is learning), imprison themselves in a struggle against the formidable apparatus of learning with the clay tools of language. They are like someone trying to speak in words about the core of a primordial learning monster, shaped over billions of years of learning, namely evolution - and is surprised when it swallows them, and it was not known that they came into its midst. Splash.

This is the reason why writing history in language as lessons has never succeeded in changing history - as opposed to historical learning expressed in institutions, laws, organizations, and methods. And this is also the reason why economic regulation doesn't succeed, because it's impossible to capture economic learning in language (such an attempt will only show the limitations of language) - and therefore there's no need to believe in that "miraculous" invisible hand, because the true name of the invisible hand is learning. In linguistic existence, your algorithm is too mechanical, in a binary phase transition from fixation to liberation: either too hard and not innovative enough, or too easy in low-value innovation (bullshit) - and these are two sides of the same hard coin. Whereas in learning existence, the algorithm is organic: it's not easy to innovate, but it's also quite difficult to remain fixed - innovation and fixation are equally natural, and the transitions are smooth, analogous, and soft. Language is an agreed-upon symbolic illustration of the Middle Ages (don't go outside the lines!) - and learning is sfumato.

Learning as the Creator of Time

The Freudian idea of healing through speech parallels (also historically) the idea of politics through speech (which is propaganda and what is now called "communication", and whose peak was totalitarian propaganda). In the same way, it also parallels the idea of a media-based economy, where every product undergoes advertising mediation, the sale is a conversation, and the transaction is communication. And just like the idea of healing through learning, not speech, there needs to be a parallel idea of politics through learning (and therefore effective) and economy through learning (and therefore less manipulative for consumerism) and sociology through learning. Because the idea of healing through learning doesn't see the particular case of the individual patient in isolation from the general social system, and therefore doesn't see the psyche as disconnected from historicization. In every era, there are new and more characteristic challenges for the psyche, and the psyches in society that seek such solutions are the place for psycho-social innovations, and for solving the problems of the time.

For example, the problem with a partner can be perceived as a problem arising from the current stage in the sexual revolution (or feminist, or information revolution, etc.) - and therefore as part of the broad search for solutions to the problems of the hour, and for innovations that will advance them. Therefore, the solution should also be derived from a vision of the future, for example, understanding the future of the sexual revolution (and so on). Suffering is not a malfunction or worthless, but indicates an attempt to solve a problem of the generation, so that future generations can progress and solve more advanced problems. All treatment focused on the individual disconnects him from learning, which began before him, will continue after him, and occurs on a broad front around him. In such a view, the innovation of the solution is not only of personal egoistic value - but of broad learning significance for the system, and both the therapist and the patient have a role in cracking it and spreading it to advance the learning of the system. The right side of history to be on is always the side of the future, and psychology is also part of history.

In fact, people compete in being ahead of their time (a state that has psychological and even economic advantages), and this overall competition is what advances time and creates the future (just like hamsters running on the wheel of time, and without their running time will not progress). Such a view gives a much broader meaning to learning - and therefore to the psychological problem, and therefore to the person. A psychological problem is a learning problem, meaning an obstacle that prevents progress to the future, and therefore progress in it is bringing the future, just as religious correction of the individual is part of bringing the Messiah. Every person is an example, and everyone can discover and embody an innovation of value to the whole. A person is a small generation.

This approach can particularly suit intergenerational problems (like parenting), which are not "communication problems" between generations, requiring "language translation" (a harmful conceptualization), but distinct learning problems. Each generation needs different parenting, and there is a need to grasp the future in a certain way to crack it in real time. It's easy to blame and say in hindsight what should have been (and in this psychology has made a name for itself), after culture has reached conclusions on a broad front (which of course are only valid one generation back, and therefore don't help the next generation). But such blame can also undergo transformation through learning understanding, which steps into the shoes of the learning challenges of parenting then - through the history of generational learning. Expanding meaning in learning time and space gives meaning that expands the soul - to the soul.

The Meaning of Meaning

The philosophy of language has answered on its part very unsatisfactory answers from a psychological perspective to the question of meaning (use? translation? picture?...), precisely because it distanced itself from any specific content to language itself. In doing so, it abandoned meaning, which is basic in the psyche, to ideologies and religions and even politics (God forbid) or to inflated and pathetic literary kitsch (see existentialism) - and thus philosophy itself lost meaning. The secular fear of the religious distanced itself from any general meaning, and left it to the particular case. But as language did understand, meaning by nature is related to the general system, and particular meaning is not sufficient. What the philosophy of learning does is provide systemic, general meaning, of direction for the system - and its progress. Because unlike the language system, a learning system has a direction - and meaning in it has a dimension of time, and particularly time that is very suitable for our times: the future (a dimension that is completely missing in language, and in fact learning can be defined skeletally as the result of the composition: language system + future direction). Thanks to conceptualization as learning - unlike various ideological utopias - the direction exists but is not predetermined and marked in advance, and there can be progress not towards a specific and limited (and therefore destructive) goal. There is meaning - without ideology. Evolution can progress - without man being the crown of creation and its desired end. The soul can progress without there being some desired ideal of normality and balance and mental health - and precisely because of this there are always new spaces for progress.

Unlike philosophy, which completely failed to be part of human life in the past century, and was exiled to academic death, psychology actually recorded its greatest success in it, and conquered the world from within academia. But this success stems precisely from entering an empty space, which philosophy failed to enter. In fact, psychology succeeded in the past century only following secularization, and following its replacement of religious functions - such as confession, dream interpretation, expressing hidden wishes (prayer), private meetings with the Admor, setting dates for inner correction, etc. - this, while replacing the soul with the psyche and the spirit with emotion and the religious myth with the childhood myth (the myth of the child). But more than replacing any specific function, psychology owes its success to being the privatization of meaning, that is, being a secular systemic function that transfers the focus of meaning from the general to the particular.

But private meaning fails just like private language, and we've come out bald from here and there. On one hand, we understood in philosophy that meaning is a systemic phenomenon, and meaning in the brain or in evolution does not stem from any neuron or individual, but from the learning that takes place in the system. On the other hand, we tried to find private meaning in the individual, and this philosophical mistake eventually becomes a psychological mistake, and masses of people live their lives without meaning, and raise children without meaning. The disastrous attempt to give up meaning in spirit and replace it with meaning in psyche has become inferior Hollywood kitsch (because what is the meaning of life? Love).

If so, what is the meaning of life in learning philosophy? To be part of the general learning in the system. Therefore, one who is not part of the system, and has no part in its learning - their life is meaningless. Just as there is no meaning to private language, there is no meaning to private learning of a person that is outside the learning of society. Unless in the future it will be part of the learning (for example, he wrote a book that will be distributed after his death). If a tree learns in the forest and no one will ever know about it - there is no meaning to its learning. The pain of our removal from the system - is the pain of our disconnection from learning, and therefore excommunication is severe in Judaism and similar to death - because a tree of learning is for those who hold onto it.

The pain of loneliness is the pain of disconnection from general learning. Other mental pains stem from personal non-learning, like depression and anxiety - which are learning disorders. And what heals the pain is its transformation into learning. Thus, one who suffers from social rejection can turn it into new insights and reconnect to learning. Unlike the attachment psychologist, who sees the need for connection as the mental need and healing, the learning psychologist sees learning as the mental need - and therefore the source of healing. For example, one who has no children - in the past he was not part of the learning of the species, if he was an animal, hence the pain of infertility (and even the pain of premature death). But since human social learning, one can contribute to social learning even without children, and since literature one can contribute to social learning even without social connections. As the ability to be part of world learning increases, people feel less need for children, not because they have no need for learning - but because learning is possible even without children. Learning is the criterion of meaning. And if the mystic, for example, learns something that there is no way to teach - it has no meaning.

The Suicide of Philosophy in the 20th Century

The escape of philosophy in the last century from meaning in favor of language created mountains of meaningless writing (in both senses), and entire corpuses written in special philosophical languages created so that their meaning value is low to zero, and no one will read them in the future (and in the future lies the true, learning-based meaning). One who flees from meaning loses meaning, and all learning is a pursuit of the meaning that resides in the direction of the system's development. Thus intelligence emerges as the supreme meaning of evolution, and life emerges as the meaning of the universe. The meaning of a story stems from its organization towards the plot, that is, from the learning process towards its future and end (and that's why the ending is always so critical to the question of meaning. The Holocaust redefined the meaning of exile). The philosophy of the second half of the 20th century will be remembered in the future exactly like the art of the second half of the 20th century - the stage where language coiled within itself and created zero meaning and therefore zero value. Indeed, today the meaning of art is private, therefore psychological, and therefore will not interest anyone in the future.

The private meaning of linguistic psychology fails in an astonishing manner precisely in extreme cases, such as suicide. From the perspective of pure private psychological meaning, we have no justification to say anything to a person who wants to harm themselves (since they are not harming others), or who wants euthanasia for reasons of mental suffering, and even forceful intervention to save them is without any justification. A person is the master of their life because they are the master of its meaning, and the therapist is merely a servant in service of that master. Of course, in practice something entirely different occurs, because billions of years of evolutionary learning have imprinted even in the most dogmatic psychologist the learning-based meaning, according to which suicide is a disaster - the greatest harm a person can inflict against the future (even more than murder).

Every suicide is in fact a suicide bombing - an incomparably violent act of deep harm to the environment, from the parents (who embodied their future in the child) to expanding and wide circles (and therefore it shocks every person), because it is an act of terror against meaning, and therefore against learning in the system. The moment meaning is not psychological and not property in the land registry of the person themselves but of the learning system towards the direction of the future - it is clear why suicide is an act of terrible violence, more than murder. Suicide does not deny the meaning of any particular individual - but the most general possible meaning, in all meaning that can exist towards the future, that is, in all learning whatsoever. Therefore, a learning psychologist has a solid stance of meaning against suicide, while a linguistic psychologist only has such an instinct. He does not understand the meaning of burying the suicide outside the cemetery - and the justification for the enormous social anger towards him.

Interest as a Motivator

But why is the idea of learning so suitable for human psychology? Because human psychology itself was shaped to produce learning. We see this for example in the emotion of suffering (which is after all the justification for everything for the shallow therapist). In the short term, pleasure is much preferable to suffering, and indeed this is how motivation is built in primitive creatures with primitive (behavioristic) learning, but human learning is built mainly differently. Learning itself is the long-term motivation/pleasure, from the direction of the future (similar to what Aristotle tried to call happiness and is mistakenly interpreted as the emotion of happiness). And from the perspective of the future, for example after years, there is an equalizer phenomenon: in the range of negative and positive experiences, suffering and pleasure, there is a reduction, and the criterion that becomes much more relevant is interest, that is, how much we learned. People are able to remember periods that were difficult in real time positively, and periods that were easy in real time negatively, and our general satisfaction stems from how much we learned.

In other words, contrary to the hedonistic picture (which we feel in our animality), we discover that in humans, interest (that is, the learning motivation imprinted in us, the interest of learning) is a much stronger emotion than suffering and pleasure, and even suffering and pleasure (for example sexual) are subject to interest, and therefore suffering and pleasure without novelty fade on their own. And when looking at the short term, that is, how people act in the short term, we again discover that interest (versus boredom) is no less strong than suffering and pleasure, and that people act according to interest much more than according to the hedonistic picture. Dopamine is a much more dominant neurotransmitter than those associated with various animal pleasures, and therefore we can "control" ourselves, that is, prefer learning over immediate gratification and act contrary to it. This is precisely the advantage of humans from a psychological perspective.

But those who see humans in a communicative way, without internal motivation, believe that the world communicates with them through "feedback", and that humans are Pavlovian creatures shaped by being told "good" and "bad", while the story of the Tree of Knowledge teaches exactly the opposite: knowledge and interest and curiosity overcome all good and evil and all reward and punishment. People are religious not because of reward and punishment, but because it interests them and teaches them (and this is also the main reason people become secular or religious). And this is the same reason they enter romantic relationships for example, not because of the pleasure waiting for them at the end in intercourse, but because of the interest created in them by the other side, which is the attraction (and therefore complex courtship interests and challenges them). And why does sex itself interest them at all? It's not the simple pleasure that motivates them, but precisely because it is a complex and complicated field that requires learning. And this is the very reason that human sexuality is so complex and "difficult", unlike animal sexuality, and unlike what is "hedonistically efficient", because otherwise humans would not be interested in sex. And this is exactly the reason people are more interested in sex than in food, because food is less interesting (that is: there is less to learn in it. And to make food interesting and therefore enjoyable you need to complicate it: in preparation methods, complex flavors, textures, smells, presentation and an entire culture around it. Once the interest in food was in obtaining it, for example hunting it, but agriculture created sexual culture).

Of course, interest itself can be subject to corruption, like any biological mechanism. For example, we will tend to stare at moving images (television trash or changing landscape while traveling or flowing water), or listen to chatter on the radio and read Facebook feed or a fluent novel (an inherently inferior genre, which gained prestige thanks to exceptions that do not teach about the rule). That is: we are vulnerable to sequences of stimuli, which capture interest thanks to simple change that does not teach, that is, novelty without novelty. Many of us will leave learning itself to the sleep stage, when the brain shuts down the body in order to force the internalization of learning into it. If psychology has a general role, it is to turn higher learning into a habit in the psyche, and to expand the creative dream stage at the expense of the waking stage, subject to the tyranny of inferior changing sensory novelty.

The aspiration to elevate the soul is not by chance opposite to dealing with the subconscious and "depth", and focusing the gaze on the future is not by chance opposite to looking "backward" (in the past, in childhood, in trauma), and the aspiration for creation and innovation is not by chance opposite to the idea of repair and plumbing of the soul (which is not a collection of impulses in pipes and covers). Attachment is not the central drive of humans - but interest. And therefore, harm to interest is the most severe harm to personality, because much more terrible than a suffering personality is a boring personality (and psychologically balanced of course). Suffering and imbalance and lack of satisfaction are powerful drives for innovation - and therefore they are the normal of humans, while balance is a severe pathology, because only thermodynamic imbalance can perform work. There is no greater damage to human creativity than taking away the deep lacks from which they operate (see Buddhism), and therefore these lacks are so common (not because all our parents are so terrible, but because humans are built as an incompleteness that produces learning, unlike the psychic completeness of the natural animal).

Would people invest psychic motivations in projects if not for the hole in their soul? The whole purpose of psychology should be to take this hole and channel creative streams towards it - and not to cover it or plug and close it. Because suffering is improper treatment of the hole, for example non-creative verbal dance around it, while creative pleasure is proper use of the hole - as a psychic resource of imbalance, which allows flow and dam construction and power station. Instead of treading water in repetitive and psychological talk (which is itself the problem), the repetitive cycle should be opened to new talk. Because psychic harmony is not desirable, but learning-creative harmony, which constantly produces innovations - is the ideal. Instead of the system reaching balance, as if there is some final rest and inheritance (and therefore repair and treatment), the development of the system should be constant - to walk you need to be constantly out of balance. The human ideal is constant interest, not to be happy and complete. Because rest and inheritance only exist in death, hence its being the end of the world of meaning. It was a fatal mistake to seek meaning in language (and indeed no meaning was found) - because meaning is in learning.

The Psychology of the Future

In summary, as we have seen in the three parts, learning-based therapy can have many directions, just like the many schools that were part of linguistic therapy (and in parallel to them). Even when linguistic therapy did work - it was precisely because it was (in disguise, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes hypocritically and sometimes in dissonance and inconsistency) learning-based therapy. This is the fate of an incorrect worldview with a relevance gap to reality - that it implements precisely the rival ideology, in secret, in order to work. Read my lips: it's learning, stupid. Relationships were never about transferring information (communication) between the parties, but about learning that occurs between them, and that learning is what turned the relationship - into a system.

Therapy in the next century will use the root l-m-d [learn] much more than the root k-sh-r [connect] - and this conceptualization will permeate practice in a variety of learning methodologies, which will distill what does work (learning) from methods that almost don't work, but talk a lot. People's attraction to methods where they talk - stems precisely from the fact that it's easy to talk and hard to learn. Therapists' attraction to primitive learning methods (the conditioning of behavioral psychology instead of teaching, or learning through verbal repetition in endless sessions) stems from the fact that it's difficult to be a teacher. The school experience, the most anti-learning institution, took away people's desire to learn (and therefore turned them into a human industry) - and it is responsible for the very rise of the conceptualization of "psychological problems". After all, after we finished the production process of a person, if there is a problem, then it needs to be fixed, just like a car that finished production and goes to the garage - hence the medical idea behind psychology ("treatment" of the psyche parallel to "treatment" of the body, because a malfunction in the body needs to be "fixed" with a doctor, because the body is supposed to be "functional"). A learning-based conceptualization will understand that the psychologist is not a doctor (and certainly not a confessing priest), but a teacher. And therefore one doesn't go to him when there is a problem (a "problematic" conceptualization in itself) - but when one wants to learn and develop. And therefore therapy (a terrible and parental word - teaching is preferable) should become higher education of the soul.

To Part 1

Culture and Literature