text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

The Cultural Significance of P!=NP

This is the most fundamental law of the universe, of life, of humanity. And it is not a physical law but a mathematical one. How a simple formula leads to "enlightened" anomalies such as sexuality and Judaism

By: Hashem Netanya Hashem Lakach

The Divine Sublime (Source)

Within every person, two mechanisms operate, which we will metaphorically call the P mechanism and the NP mechanism. This is what Kahneman referred to as System 1 and System 2. Or let's say for Althusser (and similar pedants), System 1 is ideology. And System 2 is Althusser (and similar pedants), namely the critique of ideology. Or for Wittgenstein, System 1 is the language game. And System 2 is outside the game. In other words, if we refer to Wittgenstein (who saw things from the system's point of view), it's not just in every person that there are two mechanisms, but in every system (for example, society, religion, family), and we'll call them the P mechanism and the NP mechanism:

* P - The mechanism of automatic patterns, which is needed because they are efficient, fast, and consume less energy, and have been optimized. What is already known how to do. For a computer, these are problems that have polynomial algorithms, meaning efficient ones.

* NP - A much more expensive mechanism that performs searches. For example, research. Or that changes behavioral patterns. And it makes use of criticism (solution checking). For a computer, these are problems whose solutions can be efficiently checked using a polynomial algorithm, and therefore can be solved using expensive and inherently exponential solution searches - and solution checking (exploration is always less efficient).

This was also the gender division. Women were optimization, and men were exploration. Today it's a social division between the working class and the creative and searching class (entrepreneurs, scientists, artists). The need for two mechanisms stems from a basic computational truth of the universe: P!=NP, which means there is an enormous gap between what can be solved efficiently and what can only be checked (efficiently, that is, in practice). And metaphorically - every creative thinker (and computer) is in between two worlds: what they know how to do - and what they can know if they know. And there is a fundamental, unbridgeable gap between these two worlds, and between problems we can learn to solve and reach a method that solves them - and problems we cannot learn to solve, and for which there is no method that solves them (except for Sisyphean checking of all solutions... meaning searching among countless possibilities each time anew).

And this is ultimately the reason for sexual division. Because the alternative to sexual division is not that everyone reproduces only with themselves, but that they could reproduce with any other partner in society. But in society, there is an advantage precisely to two types, because of the two worlds, with each sex specializing more in one of them (when there is no specialization there is no advantage - and we see this today in human society when more and more sexes are added to it). All education and learning of a person mean transferring patterns that have crystallized after searching in NP to P. Like in motor learning, when training turns a conscious movement into an automatic one, and transfers it to the cerebellum, the more primitive part. This is how athletes and pianists are made. And this - happens during sleep. The dream is the coupling of the day with the person, of what we learned during the day with what we've learned all our lives. Just like sexuality, which is a coupling of knowledge gained through search with knowledge gained through optimization (knowledge of the individual's success against the environment, with knowledge of the species from all of evolution).

Physics is stuck because it doesn't understand enough about the search side in the development of natural laws (and sees them as optimal). And therefore doesn't understand the takeover of what exists and is complex over what doesn't exist and is simple (contrary, apparently, to the second law of thermodynamics. We see that despite entropy increasing at the micro level - at the macro level, giant structures are being built, and this happens at dozens of different orders of magnitude in the universe). The anthropic principle is a selection principle in a brute-force search method in an exploding exponential possibility space, and therefore it is very primitive. The selection was made long before humans in any case of the universe's learning. That is, in all creation of the universe. Physics is more similar to biology, and the development of the universe is more similar to evolution, and therefore biology and evolution are not anomalies - and the development of complexity in the universe is not accidental.

Therefore, Althusser's pessimistic worldview is refuted, like the rest of his competitors for the aesthetics of pessimism (Schopenhauer has already beaten you all). There is not only the P mechanism, but the NP mechanism. That's how we progressed and got to where we are. True, every person lives within a world of thought they were taught. This is the nature of the brain. But no less natural is its ability to search and discover and learn new worlds of thought. Especially if it is intelligent.

An intelligent person who excels only in P, which is what intelligence tests measure, as opposed to NP which creativity tests try to measure (but of course there is much less stability in the results, because an exam is by its nature P) is indeed less impressive to us. There are such people. What impresses us is who excels in NP. The genius. And therefore ideology is not such a problem. Against ideology, there are intellectuals. Therefore, Marxism must deny the existence of geniuses - if not exterminate them. It is the ideology of materialistic mediocrity. Hitler murdered the people of geniuses, and Marxism the geniuses themselves. This is no coincidence.

The realistic worldview is much more optimistic: a person, or a system, has the ability to change and learn. And there is also a playful aspect to this, in searching. Creativity is fun for the brain, just like laziness. Someone who studies Talmud, and knows how to turn a topic upside down through a new reasoning, will never be a pessimistic person like the secular critics of ideologies. The search for different ideologies is fascinating - ideologies are a fun possibility space (look how much nonsense I'm inventing in a second!). And Althusser's great trouble is that he is not original enough in this space, but rather a not very far-reaching composition (in zoom-out) of those greater than him. Like Wittgenstein and Marx.

It's very difficult not to be Jewish. Because a Jew is someone who lives in NP. Whose God resides in NP. Through the study of Torah. While a Christian is someone whose God lives in P. A Muslim is someone whose God lives in linear complexity. Very efficient - very primitive. The need for Jews is exactly the need for NP. That's why there's a need for a different kind of people altogether. And as the human world transitions to NP, thanks to computing and automation conquering P, then the world will become more Jewish. This is the messianic trend. But the moment computers are better than us at NP, then it's the end of the human world (the World to Come). Because NP is what distinguishes humans from animals. Evolution is all one long search in NP (while life is in P). That's why it's so difficult. That's why there are catastrophes in it. The suffering of the Jewish people stems from the search in NP. And this search is behavior that drives P people crazy (they will always explain to you why you were wrong, without seeing at all what's interesting in what you did). Chutzpah = the search.

Culture and Literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Cultural Significance of P!=NP

This is the most fundamental law of the universe, of life, of humanity. And it is not a physical law but a mathematical one. How a simple formula leads to "enlightened" anomalies such as sexuality and Judaism

By: Hashem Netanya Hashem Lakach

The Divine Sublime  (Source)

Within every person, two mechanisms operate, which we will metaphorically call the P mechanism and the NP mechanism. This is what Kahneman referred to as System 1 and System 2. Or let's say for Althusser (and similar pedants), System 1 is ideology. And System 2 is Althusser (and similar pedants), namely the critique of ideology. Or for Wittgenstein, System 1 is the language game. And System 2 is outside the game. In other words, if we refer to Wittgenstein (who saw things from the system's point of view), it's not just in every person that there are two mechanisms, but in every system (for example, society, religion, family), and we'll call them the P mechanism and the NP mechanism:

P - The mechanism of automatic patterns, which is needed because they are efficient, fast, and consume less energy, and have been optimized. What is already known how to do. For a computer, these are problems that have polynomial algorithms, meaning efficient ones.

NP - A much more expensive mechanism that performs searches. For example, research. Or that changes behavioral patterns. And it makes use of criticism (solution checking). For a computer, these are problems whose solutions can be efficiently checked using a polynomial algorithm, and therefore can be solved using expensive and inherently exponential solution searches - and solution checking (exploration is always less efficient).

This was also the gender division. Women were optimization, and men were exploration. Today it's a social division between the working class and the creative and searching class (entrepreneurs, scientists, artists). The need for two mechanisms stems from a basic computational truth of the universe: P!=NP, which means there is an enormous gap between what can be solved efficiently and what can only be checked (efficiently, that is, in practice). And metaphorically - every creative thinker (and computer) is in between two worlds: what they know how to do - and what they can know if they know. And there is a fundamental, unbridgeable gap between these two worlds, and between problems we can learn to solve and reach a method that solves them - and problems we cannot learn to solve, and for which there is no method that solves them (except for Sisyphean checking of all solutions... meaning searching among countless possibilities each time anew).

And this is ultimately the reason for sexual division. Because the alternative to sexual division is not that everyone reproduces only with themselves, but that they could reproduce with any other partner in society. But in society, there is an advantage precisely to two types, because of the two worlds, with each sex specializing more in one of them (when there is no specialization there is no advantage - and we see this today in human society when more and more sexes are added to it). All education and learning of a person mean transferring patterns that have crystallized after searching in NP to P. Like in motor learning, when training turns a conscious movement into an automatic one, and transfers it to the cerebellum, the more primitive part. This is how athletes and pianists are made. And this - happens during sleep. The dream is the coupling of the day with the person, of what we learned during the day with what we've learned all our lives. Just like sexuality, which is a coupling of knowledge gained through search with knowledge gained through optimization (knowledge of the individual's success against the environment, with knowledge of the species from all of evolution).

Physics is stuck because it doesn't understand enough about the search side in the development of natural laws (and sees them as optimal). And therefore doesn't understand the takeover of what exists and is complex over what doesn't exist and is simple (contrary, apparently, to the second law of thermodynamics. We see that despite entropy increasing at the micro level - at the macro level, giant structures are being built, and this happens at dozens of different orders of magnitude in the universe). The anthropic principle is a selection principle in a brute-force search method in an exploding exponential possibility space, and therefore it is very primitive. The selection was made long before humans in any case of the universe's learning. That is, in all creation of the universe. Physics is more similar to biology, and the development of the universe is more similar to evolution, and therefore biology and evolution are not anomalies - and the development of complexity in the universe is not accidental.

Therefore, Althusser's pessimistic worldview is refuted, like the rest of his competitors for the aesthetics of pessimism (Schopenhauer has already beaten you all). There is not only the P mechanism, but the NP mechanism. That's how we progressed and got to where we are. True, every person lives within a world of thought they were taught. This is the nature of the brain. But no less natural is its ability to search and discover and learn new worlds of thought. Especially if it is intelligent.

An intelligent person who excels only in P, which is what intelligence tests measure, as opposed to NP which creativity tests try to measure (but of course there is much less stability in the results, because an exam is by its nature P) is indeed less impressive to us. There are such people. What impresses us is who excels in NP. The genius. And therefore ideology is not such a problem. Against ideology, there are intellectuals. Therefore, Marxism must deny the existence of geniuses - if not exterminate them. It is the ideology of materialistic mediocrity. Hitler murdered the people of geniuses, and Marxism the geniuses themselves. This is no coincidence.

The realistic worldview is much more optimistic: a person, or a system, has the ability to change and learn. And there is also a playful aspect to this, in searching. Creativity is fun for the brain, just like laziness. Someone who studies Talmud, and knows how to turn a topic upside down through a new reasoning, will never be a pessimistic person like the secular critics of ideologies. The search for different ideologies is fascinating - ideologies are a fun possibility space (look how much nonsense I'm inventing in a second!). And Althusser's great trouble is that he is not original enough in this space, but rather a not very far-reaching composition (in zoom-out) of those greater than him. Like Wittgenstein and Marx.

It's very difficult not to be Jewish. Because a Jew is someone who lives in NP. Whose God resides in NP. Through the study of Torah. While a Christian is someone whose God lives in P. A Muslim is someone whose God lives in linear complexity. Very efficient - very primitive. The need for Jews is exactly the need for NP. That's why there's a need for a different kind of people altogether. And as the human world transitions to NP, thanks to computing and automation conquering P, then the world will become more Jewish. This is the messianic trend. But the moment computers are better than us at NP, then it's the end of the human world (the World to Come). Because NP is what distinguishes humans from animals. Evolution is all one long search in NP (while life is in P). That's why it's so difficult. That's why there are catastrophes in it. The suffering of the Jewish people stems from the search in NP. And this search is behavior that drives P people crazy (they will always explain to you why you were wrong, without seeing at all what's interesting in what you did). Chutzpah = the search.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Critique of the Power of Drawing

A hidden connection exists between drawing and mathematics - it involves an abstract ability (even in the most realistic drawing - the abstraction is to forget what you're drawing and draw what you see: not to draw a woman but a shape and a stain). Therefore, they are perceived as masculine professions, like philosophy. But in fact, these are two opposite directions of abstraction: one analytical and the other synthetic. That's why the problem of computer vision is at the bottom of the artificial intelligence problem, while the problem of computerized proof is at the very top of it

By: An Abstract Woman

The most important thing in drawing is what not to draw (Source)

It's unbelievable how bad we are at drawing. A camera is not better than us at seeing, it doesn't see anything - it's better than us at drawing. Even an expert artist constantly makes mistakes in sketching - in angles, for example - and relies on various external things and technical aids. In fact, we don't know at all how to recreate, even in an embarrassing way, what we've seen, if we're asked to do so and draw what we saw a moment ago or even imagine it. Even an artist constantly needs to look at what is seen and see new things there.

In other words, we see very little of what we look at. And the artist tries to recreate access to the low-level of vision that is blocked for us. Constantly overcoming perception. Accessing the hardware of the brain before the software, and trying to get closer to the data. But it's even more severe than that - an artist is constantly cheating, trying to use the high-level of perception to disguise their failures at the low-level. An artist answers the question of what there is to see in the world. What is worthy of seeing. Therefore, the critique of judgment is an extension of the critique of pure reason. The artist's work is anti-Kantian work, anti-perceptual, a practice of personal war against epistemology - and against categories of perception. It is a struggle of the brain to descend as far down as possible - to machine language and hardware.

But precisely the opposite direction, upwards - is the direction of the future. Art will not be the supreme test of artificial intelligence, but rather the most difficult conceptualization at the highest level, without any connection to the lower levels, or to the connection between the lower and higher levels - which is the pride of humans. A computer that is unable to see or has no connection to the sensory world - that is what will humiliate humans. The killer application of artificial intelligence will not be the Turing test, or consciousness, or something like that, but when it knows how to prove things in mathematics better than humans. And then when there are no mathematicians, science will quickly be done by computers, and humans will return to a medieval state where they don't understand reality, and its magic is explained to them by others and not deciphered by them. A computer mathematician better than a mathematics professor - that will be the end.

In other words, the danger is not that a computer will surpass humans in the power of judgment, but in pure reason. And then it will be a source of intelligence. In the end, all sciences, and all faculties at the university, know that there is one that is harder than all of them, and at a higher intellectual level than all of them, and that the closer they get to it, the more successful they are - mathematics. Even philosophy, the queen of humanities, is humbled by an encounter with mathematics and bows its head. Therefore, it is the peak of the human brain, and if the computer surpasses us - it will only need to conquer the peak.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Why is a Black Circle Hiding?

On the Religious World of the Author of "Book of Darkness"

By: Balak Ben Zippor

Who are you, circle - a persecuted ultra-Orthodox or a mischievous secular? Or perhaps there's a third option - even more insane?  (Source)

Introduction - Removing the Shells

When Rabbi Aluf, Bilhah Reuven, and I established "The Degeneration of the Nation" about half a year ago as a platform for anonymous writers, who create under the liberation that anonymity allows, we were thrilled at the opportunity to recruit an "anonymous celebrity" like Black Circle for the site. Although unlike us, who are presumably known to some readers under other names (particularly from writing in "Haaretz"), Circle has never been exposed even to us or attended an editorial meeting, it's hard to say we regretted the decision. Even today, most of the organic traffic flowing to the site comes from searches clearly related to Black Circle, and these are the most popular contents on the site, and Circle has fully cooperated with even the most capricious editorial guidelines (affirmative action for cats! This is in contrast to his dog-biased writing in the past).

On the other hand, and for an unclear reason - which might still be revealed below - Circle has received negative sentiment that no other writer has received, including the biting review writer Kalbata [female dog]. For example, he is the only one among the writers who has been subjected to repeated harassment that led to the deletion of his posts on Facebook (hate speech!) and eventually even managed to bring about the deletion of his profile. When it comes to a writer who has never taken part in any literary field politics and has not stuck his nose out of the four cubits of dreaming - this is an achievement. The last heated discussion that dealt with Circle's writing, in which he received compliments such as "stink bomb" (von Shiloach), "ugliness" (Eisental), "real stammering" (Y.Z. Meir), and this regarding one of the most virtuosic and original writers in our contemporary literature, prompted me to try to decipher this riddle.

But before dealing with the main issue - I will deal with removing the trivial that seems to wrap every literary-critical discussion in our days. The biographical-psychological analysis of his writing (a schizoid with paranoid personality disorder and a shtreimel complex? A weak man with a strong breast complex?) and the social-sociological analysis (an ultra-Orthodox pretending for his obscure reasons to be secular? A secular pretending for his even more obscure reasons to be ultra-Orthodox? A person pretending to be a cat for obvious reasons?) are of no literary importance. In fact, Circle's writing itself ridicules any such discussion, because what is supposedly done in secret and in darkness - he does openly and declaredly and in broad daylight (and who else but Circle is busy with these light-and-shadow games in his self-image, to the point of exhausting exaggeration?).

The Idra and the Circle's Group

Before I proceed to crack the riddle, I will admit without shame that the initial encounter with Circle's books also put me in an unusual hermeneutic confusion. Beyond the critical question of good and bad, the initial feeling was that Circle's writing is foreign and strange and exceptional by any measure, and not just in the limited context of our literature. With great difficulty, I managed to decipher even the most general plot in the two books ("Book of Darkness" - the crisis of his marriage and his escape from his wife to the world of imagination under the auspices of an unstable and charismatic Rebbe, while developing messianic expectations from the birth of his son. "Future Form" - social ostracism and a mystical odyssey that ends in cosmic and personal breakdown with the discovery of his son's illness). There is no doubt that neither the autobiographical component (obscured and muddled beyond measure) nor the plot (no less muddled) and not even the background world (whose muddling is its essence) are at the basis of this unique literature - which created for itself not only an alternative reality of its own but also its own genre.

The initial key I found to deciphering Circle's writing was shifting the question from his religious affiliation to his spiritual affiliation. The fruitful question for understanding the text is not whether Black Circle is ultra-Orthodox/secular/a forced ultra-Orthodox hiding a secular inside/a forced secular hiding an ultra-Orthodox inside - but: Is the author a heretic? Do the playfulness and breaking of conventions in the book express, as all critics have written (for example, Prof. Rosen-Zvi), heresy and a crisis of faith? In my opinion, this is the main interpretive failure in understanding the dream universe created in the various books, some of which are only available on the "Publication to Darkness" website (and I confess that I haven't read everything, as it's an extensive corpus that doesn't easily lend itself to deciphering).

Well, a reading that doesn't suffer from previous interpretive biases, built on extra-textual expectations, will lead to a clear conclusion: Black Circle is not a heretic. The exact opposite is true - this is a person with strong religious aspirations (some of which are absurd in my eyes), and in one word: a mystic. This is a writer who sees himself as part of a tradition of boundary-breaking, visionary, fantastic, esoteric, sometimes impenetrable mystical writing, and yes - one that integrally and inseparably includes biographical and narrative components. The closest example known to the general public is the tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who also disguised his innovation under the guise of ancient tales, just as our author (person? group?) hides behind "I dreamed that-" and the world of dreams.

Once this penny drops, suddenly all the other pieces of the puzzle fall into place: the choice of the dream genre, the pseudoepigraphic writing, full of Kabbalistic symbols and allusions, the obsessive and shameless preoccupation with Eden and Hell and other higher worlds, the disregard for Halacha, the audacity in dealing with the figure of God, the sectarianism and esotericism (it often seems that the writing is not intended for an audience at all but for imaginary initiates), the confrontation with the Hasidic world, and the numerous visions - yes, visions! - that fill the text. The writer, by the way, doesn't hide for a moment his megalomaniacal and somewhat crazy goals. In one central place, he explains the source of the name he chose: "Book of Darkness - the spiritual answer to the Book of Zohar".

The Mystical Anxiety - or the Fear of Dying at 38

The above solution is so obvious that the opposite question is already being asked: why hasn't any critic noticed this so far? The answer can only be one: the author's religiosity is so deviant, so anti-orthodox and unfamiliar to us, and so extreme both in its innovation and ambition and in its cheeky (and sometimes empty and embarrassing) pretentiousness, that it's hard to even imagine that he means what he says. But he does mean it - and how. Hence, the most interesting question for deciphering Circle's world is not merely a literary question, but a religious one: what is the religious world of this deviant - or innovative - mystic, and what is the connection between it and his unique poetics and his hiding behind a Unicode symbol.

Let's start with the obvious: Circle's writings are full of neurotic anxiety, severe paranoia, insecurity, fears of divine punishment, concealment and games of concealment, disguising innovation under playfulness, and "as if". The writer is consumed by fears of his own ambition, and the punishments promised for it in Kabbalistic literature, but his urge overcomes him. Again and again, he chooses daring: bold and even reckless innovations in the picture of the cosmic worlds, from which emerges a very unstable image of them. The world of Hasidism and Kabbalah may be his raw materials, but he is not committed to any accepted cosmogony arising from them. He devotes extensive attention to his mystical ars poetica, from which it emerges that the extensive destruction of the mystical worlds is not his own doing, but the result of an event that he sees as having extensive mystical and cosmogonic significance, and which stands at the basis of his motivation as a mystic: the Holocaust.

From Circle's perspective, the Holocaust is not a historical catastrophe, but primarily a religious and spiritual catastrophe. It's a total Kabbalistic upheaval, a kind of year zero for divinity and Judaism, after which nothing remains and can remain as it was, and "the Zohar" is replaced by "darkness". In the upper worlds, to which (in his eyes) he has direct and unapologetic access, it's a cataclysmic moment, after which the world changed fundamentally and irreversibly, and therefore afterwards there is a need for extensive spiritual innovation (in parentheses: thus also technological innovations receive far-reaching spiritual meanings).

This innovation is at the root of the wide and complex mystical universe that the writer created in the enormous corpus on his website, in his personal way hiding behind half-jokes (he refers to himself as "the king's jester") - a world that is no less in size (unlike in value) than the world of Zoharic Kabbalah, and whose guiding principles are discussed at length by the writer himself in many places (and awaits research to decipher them in detail). The two basic forces that Freud identified in dream creation act powerfully on the writer, but their source stems from his mystical anxiety. On the one hand, an eruption of libidinal desire for mystical creativity, expressed in boundless freedom towards heaven to the point of exaggeration and ridicule, and on the other hand anxious censorship, which indeed causes the innovation to be disguised in ridicule, jest, confusion and concealment - and even the very choice to publish the text as literature (a disguise that paradoxically contributes to the noticeable literary qualities of the text!). But in principle, there's no great innovation here: the tension between daring and esotericism acts on every mystic - great and small.

From here, we will not find it difficult to locate the reason why Black Circle is hiding. It's not a biographical matter (or not mainly and necessarily), but a poetic one. A person writing a replacement for the Book of Zohar cannot afford to be exposed, just as Ramadal could not be exposed as Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. And hence, apparently, the enormous instinctive hostility that Circle arouses among authentic religious people. Heresy wouldn't have tickled anyone, but writing a new Kabbalah? One cannot help but feel repulsion and rejection towards a writer whose ambition this is.

The Doctrine of Darkness

It is not the concern of this short article to decipher in detail the mystical worldview of the author of "Book of Darkness", who is hostile to both traditional Kabbalah and Halacha, but makes extensive use of their ruins in his symbols and buildings, and repeatedly tries to formulate his worldview in countless changing images - to the point of exhaustion. The Holocaust catastrophe is referred to by him as "the breaking of the lights", more destructive than "the breaking of the vessels", and recurs again and again in images of destruction of the upper worlds, of Eden and even of Hell, and the replacement of lights with darkness. This catastrophic cosmic breaking leads to a new and messianic status of the vessels themselves, which are identified precisely with the manifestations of technology - to which the author attributes far-reaching redemptive and eschatological meanings (for example, he identifies the sefirah of Malchut with the Internet - no less!).

Unlike traditional mystics, the search for the experience of closeness to God does not motivate the author at all. The personal divinity itself is absent from his fertile mystical world, except in particularly parodic and degrading manifestations, so that his world can be called: Kabbalah without God. The sefirah of Keter, for example, is identified by him with the shtreimel, whose paradoxical essence stems from it being a network of tails precisely, supreme on the head - and it's clear that this is a semi-humorous symbol. The author is extremely hostile to personal religious practices such as prayer, fundamental frameworks such as the Jewish home and community, and basic religious experiences such as acceptance of the yoke and fear of Heaven (of which he doesn't have even a smidgen). The main religious practice he offers is - of course - writing dreams, and there's no doubt that he performs it diligently, and it is the key in his eyes to renewing the petrified Jewish mystical creativity. In this, he is a classic example of a mystic who does not follow the ways of tradition, and therefore builds worlds of falsehood from its perspective (and even takes pride in it).

But why did the author choose precisely the dream, and precisely literature, and one directed at the secular world, as the medium for his deviant world, whose underlying motivation is primarily religious? Perhaps for the same reason he chose the world of secrets to be the axis around which his world revolves. It can only be that he himself is unable to admit to himself and explicitly formulate his perverse stance towards Jewish tradition. Hence his attempt to be a guest in the realm of literature - but also his remaining a foreign plant within it. And hence also his hiding behind the dream, and therefore the password sign is also fitting for him - because his essence is his concealment. It's possible that Black Circle is hiding from us, or from God, or from the religious community, but even more so - he is hiding mainly from himself.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Sleeping Like a Baby

What's the greatest compliment for a lover? I feel like he reads me from within. And this, simply put, is the reason there are more and more homosexuals - everyone wants to be passive in sex, even men. Everyone wants to be lazy and desired and courted, and for someone else to make the effort to make them laugh, not the other way around, while they just lie back on their back or stomach and enjoy. And this is also the secret to why people prefer movies over books

By: Information by Sucking

Easy as pushing candy to a baby  (Source)

I dreamed that my wife has a baby that isn't mine, because I don't know this baby, and it also looks a bit strange like a baby doll. But I don't want to wake her up even though the baby is peeing on me and spraying, I say I'll manage alone and without getting upset about her baby. Because I know how to change a diaper and put it on, and this way she'll see that she can rely on me and that I don't need to wake her up for this. But I'm not succeeding, and I'm even struggling to lift the baby without it falling, and I'm afraid her baby will fall on the floor and oh no and I catch it - but it slips and gets scratched by my fingernail and there's a scratch all along it, its color came off, and it almost fell completely and luckily she didn't wake up.

And I'm thinking how to remove the scratch from the baby that she'll see, need to find baby color to paint it, so it won't stand out and when she wakes up she won't discover that I messed up her baby and was irresponsible. And I'm searching in her toiletries, or whatever it's called for women, not from the Mishnah period, I remembered - cosmetics, some color that will be similar to skin, but every color mixes for me and starts to become a really ugly baby, a kind of child monster, with thick angry eyebrows, and pudding red cheeks, or what do women call it? I remembered - powder. And she'll surely see that it's not a natural baby. And the baby is constantly crying waking me from the dream and not allowing me to concentrate on taking care of it. Doesn't understand the importance of continuity in care. Constantly interrupting my mind and I need to refocus, refocus on the big problems of the world, on the big problems of the dream, which are also the small problems of the baby.

And I start to think (oh baby shut up already) that the reason people are addicted to Facebook is the reason babies cry, although it's not logical in evolution, simply not logical that they would become addicted to negative feedback, albeit inconsistent. I mean the opposite: because people are built to become addicted to crying babies they become addicted to whining on Facebook. And Facebook cracked babyness, and the smartphone is a kind of sophisticated baby that needs to be held in hands and doesn't fall (but woe if it falls to the floor), and slowly I sink into the dream and no longer hear the crying, and finally free to return to deal with the big problems of the next generation, without the next generation bothering me.

Because what is the biggest problem in the world? I ask myself now that I have a baby and have no time. Because it's trying to prevent me from dreaming big and meaningful dreams - in the simplest way: it simply doesn't let me sleep. And I sleep in spite of the baby, and as far as I'm concerned I'll draw lipstick on it to seduce the breast. And I overcome the lack of concentration that the breasts now impose on me (because why are there two? So you can't concentrate and lose your head, your mind constantly wanders from one to the other like a sleepwalker, because of the attraction, until you're tempted to push), and I overcome all the distractions and manage to answer the question (because as known a big problem should be given to a busy person, and now that a baby has fallen on me in the middle of the night I'm a busy person, and even a bit important): What is the most important problem in the world today? (And I answer): Information by pushing instead of pulling.

And my lazy brain immediately understands that I've hit on something here (screamer shut up). Laziness - it's an ancient word for our basic neurological vulnerability. Because today there's no reason to save sugar for the brain, on the contrary there's excess sugar, but laziness remained. And therefore slowly the brain moves from information by pulling, meaning it's active and searches for it, like a man - for example a Google hunter, or a researcher in a library, or a yeshiva student - to information by pushing, where you are passive, feminine, penetrated. Like the feminine network, the social network, as opposed to the website network, the men's network. And this is part of a general victory of the feminine spirit in the world over the masculine spirit. Of the weak, and beautiful, sex over the ugly and strong sex. What's called a beautiful soul. And therefore everyone today wants to be weak and beautiful and not strong and ugly - this is a further distancing in human evolution from the ape, and of the human spirit from the ape spirit, and what can you do if a man resembles an ape more.

And therefore we all aspire to feminine enjoyment, of the flow, that passes through us, that enters us and pleasures us more and more (maybe also controls, but why nitpick, and anyway it's a complicated issue, because who controls whom, the politician or the writer who just wants to please the audience, or the audience that is being pleased). Today, we all want to reach satisfaction by being penetrated. And this is also true for the flow of visuals, to which the brain is vulnerable and enters dream mode like a window on a bus, and doesn't notice that time is passing because it's constantly being washed and washed and here the whole trip to Jerusalem has passed and you haven't managed to progress even one line in the Gemara. Because you dreamed.

And this is the secret of series, of video, even the reason people love porn more than dating sites, everything that comes by pushing inward and allows turning off the brain. And therefore even dating sites are gradually turning themselves into porn sites, like in Tinder, where it comes to you in a feed of girls, by pushing. Because pushing allows men to be women, to wash their eyes and brain, to be penetrated by images, characters, everything that readers call what they love in writers, that the book penetrates them and does with them as it pleases, meaning they love to be a woman and the writer is a man. And then all that matters is whether the writer is a good lover or a bad lover, and whether the writer managed to read the reader (f) and respond to the yearnings (if possible hidden!) of the woman. Because what's the greatest compliment for a lover? I feel like he reads me from within. And this, simply put, is the reason there are more and more homosexuals - everyone wants to be passive in sex, even men. Everyone wants to be lazy and desired and courted, and for someone else to make the effort to make them laugh, not the other way around, while they just lie back on their back or stomach and enjoy.

And this is also the secret to why people prefer movies over books, because it's more information by pushing. And why they love podcasts so much more than reading, because it's lazier, and therefore the playlist also beats the album. In fact, the invention of the book itself, and the long novel, was the first relief for the brain - into information by pushing. So the novel shouldn't complain, if what it does to the Gemara - is done to itself. It's poetic justice. The addiction to information by pushing instead of information by pulling is responsible for all the troubles of the world. For example, the deterioration of current affairs into soap operas, or news into Facebook scandals, and the sweeping away of democracy, the turning of culture into vulgarity, and the collapse of all dams, like academia and high culture institutions - in the face of the endless river. This is the true meaning of a social network - I won't search for what I want and interests me by pulling, like in the website network - but I'll open my hole, called a feed, and through it an endless flow will enter inward, by pushing. And it will interest me interest me interest me, more and more dopamine doses - better than sex.

Because the brain is tired, more than ever, and this requires much less mental energy and decision-making, and therefore the brain seeks pushing. Because sleep is pushing, a dream is pushing, that's why ideas never come during the day - only at night is there vision of the future. And until the structure flips again from pushing to pulling, or we gain control over pushing (for example, just as Google was created for the website network, and turned it from a dump into something useful, there will be a Google for the social network) - everything will just continue to be swept away and deteriorate. Because when the people is a woman - it seeks a man. And there's nothing more dangerous. And when culture is hedonistic - it seeks a pleasurer. And there's nothing more corrupting. And when adolescence becomes the age of change, and self-overcoming becomes self-feminization, and masculinity is despised in all public places by women (meaning everyone), and masculine values of heroism and overcoming are considered outdated and strange - then my wife screams at me that I slept - that the baby isn't breathing - that I'm guilty - and wakes me from sleep. And I will never know the end of the thought.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

How I Committed Suicide and Lost My Virginity

And I'm walking towards the attack site with the explosive belt several sizes too big for me, and my pants keep falling down. I'm anxious that I might hiccup or cough or sneeze, and end up being one of those bumbling terrorists who only manage to blow themselves up without harming anyone else.

By: A Devout Muslim

Homo (Source)

I dreamed I was a devout Muslim. And while it's disappointing that the Hadith is of a much lower quality than the Mishnah [Translator's note: Jewish oral law], at least the Muslims will respect me. And then they announce in the refugee camp that they need suicide bombers. And everyone says: By Allah, I'd really like to, but I can't, I have to work. Go take that devout Muslim, who spends all day killing himself in the world of Islam, sitting in the mosque and parroting the Quran like a parrot, not contributing to the GDP. He didn't even enlist in the resistance movement, the parasite. So they put an explosive belt on me, but because I didn't enlist, I'm the scrawniest terrorist, and I'm walking towards the attack site with the explosive belt several sizes too big for me, and my pants keep falling down. I'm anxious that I might hiccup or cough or sneeze, and end up being one of those bumbling terrorists who only manage to blow themselves up without harming anyone else. Actually, this thought is quite amusing to me, and I'm trying hard to hold back my laughter, attempting to think about sad things like Nakba and Naksa and bassa and ikhsa pikhsa [Translator's note: wordplay on Arabic terms for catastrophe], but of course that's exactly what happens, and from laughing so hard I wet myself, the belt gets wet - and boom. Well, at least according to Sharia law I'm still considered a martyr, and I haven't lost my seventy virgins. No need to tell anyone what really happened, and I'll tell the virgins I was a war hero - a real man.

And I start planning what to do with the virgins, because actually, it's not as simple as it sounds and it's best not to make mistakes at the beginning. Even with a very optimistic assumption that I'll have the virility for four times a day, it still means that each one will have sex less than once every two weeks, and that can cause problems, not to mention lesbians. It only takes one to corrupt them all. And let's not even talk about the possibility that I might not be able to get it up with the less attractive ones, I mean some have mustaches, and that's a recipe for insults and fights and complications that could turn paradise into hell. Not to mention how it would be with 70 women getting their periods together. And in general, virgins are very difficult, it's a nightmare. I need to start giving them a lecture on female sexuality, otherwise there will be trouble. And who knows if I'll live up to expectations. And here comes the angel in charge of the harem, and I whisper to him: I'm embarrassed to ask, but is there Viagra here? And the angel laughs: It's not what you imagine. And I ask: What do you mean? And the angel asks: Do you want love or just sex? We brought women of the kind capable of loving you, you don't want to rape them, right? And I say: God forbid, I respect women very much. And the angel laughs: Oh, you'll respect them alright. They're heavyweight leftists. And he closes the door behind me - boom.

And then I hear shouts: Here comes the oppressive patriarchal man, who's come to oppress us and thinks his phallus will rule us. We'll show him what sisterhood is, right sisters? And another one shouts: Leave him alone, he's in a state of alienation from his inner feelings, he needs re-education, to connect with his feminine side. And another pulls her hair: Stop being condescending to the maligned Mizrahi man [Translator's note: Jews of Middle Eastern or North African descent], you colonialist, enough with the Orientalist-racist paternalism. And another one curses her: You misogynistic beast and victim of self-hatred, every penetration is rape, let's show him what rape is. And another one with half a mustache and green hair, who defines herself as a gender that changes with every word, says: P.eople s.isters I ask and/or ask that we respect every p.erson as they/them/she/he/it. And here comes a vegan for whom meat is murder and therefore has nothing to grab onto, holding a knife and calling: Down with the patriarchy! Let's castrate him and liberate the balls of freedom from the tyranny of the phallus. And I cling to the wall and cry out: Dear virgins! I'm really sorry... I too am a victim of patriarchy and oppression! I can't be the man you've been waiting for all this time. And they rage: Why? And I wipe away a tear: Don't you understand? I... I'm gay.

Nightlife