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The Degeneration of the Nation

How is the philosophy of language responsible for the current cultural crisis?

On the philosophical remedy of the 21st century for the philosophical language disease of the 20th century - developed here in Israel

By: Retired Language Publishing

The tongue is imprisoned in language, unable to escape the mouth  (Source)

The choice of the central theme in a period's philosophy has a profound, decisive, and long-term impact on culture - one that cannot always be predicted in advance. Such was the case with the philosophy of language. There are achievements in every philosophical era that stem from the very innovation of a new philosophy. For example - scientific achievements arising from new perceptions of reality capable of describing phenomena in novel ways (DNA as the language of biology, information as quantum language, the dominance of language over modern mathematics, and the language machine - computer). This is prominent in the exact sciences, against the backdrop of their objectivity, but is also true in the humanities and arts (where the influence is sometimes direct - literally deriving the desired from the theory). But alongside these achievements, there are also failures, and sometimes catastrophes, that can stem even from peripheral aspects of that philosophy.

The philosophy of language is responsible for the cultural deterioration after World War II. In short - language is too superficial (in fact, we've known this throughout history, which is why a philosophy that places language at the center of the worldview has never arisen). Ultimately, language is the surface of a system, and communication and information (the two most popular derivatives of the idea of language) are only secondary expressions of deeper phenomena, but we preferred to get stuck in them as if they were everything. Language is also too formal by nature - and too distant from content. Therefore, the philosophy of language creates a superficial culture, lacking the depth of culture in the Kantian and epistemological era (which are fundamentally forms of depth: man as a cave within the world).

Language is also impotent, having no power of its own in the world, and therefore engagement in "discourse" is impotent. The separation between language and power has created a culture that has no power and influence, and criticizes power from the outside, while washing its hands in linguistic purity. Language purification rituals fill the "discourse," which is always busy pouncing on or being shocked by someone who said something. Facebook is the language company - everyone talks, and speech has no value, and nothing accumulates. This is the oral society. Google, not coincidentally separate, is the written society - and it is the accumulating library of the entire world, the repository of language and its memory, organized without a cultural hierarchy of depth and content, but only a power hierarchy (only the strong maintain sites that are strong in Google). A news site will always be above interesting independent content. Unlike a library, where there is a relatively built-in democracy between books all on the shelf, Google reflects the power relations in the world. Because language has no power of its own, and no content higher than others or depth in itself, only power relations.

Facebook is the speech company, and Google is the writing company, and the separation between them is not a glitch, but reflects the linguistic conceptual (and brain) separation between writing and speech. Facebook has no memory and no effective search not because of a technological limitation, but because the philosophical linguistic perception is that this is not part of speech, which is self-consuming, while in Google we have no flexibility to control sources (like friends) and no immediacy ("newsworthiness") and updated feed, meaning it is "out of time," again not because of a technological barrier, but because the same linguistic philosophy defines it within the limitations of writing - and under the fixed structure of writing. Therefore, if a site that was on Google disappears, we protest - but we have no expectations for content preservation from Facebook, and perhaps the opposite. The result of the takeover of the linguistic idea over the world is the Internet in its current form: the result of the ideas of writing and speech, as the two modes of language, is Google and Facebook, and the result of the idea of language itself, without content hierarchy, is lack of reading and lack of listening. When the philosophy of language took over the world - the world turned into gibberish.

Therefore, when we choose a new philosophy for the 21st century to replace the language philosophy of the 20th century, we must choose a philosophy that puts at its center a concept entirely different from language. A concept that by its nature and at the most basic level of understanding, which will always be the one that permeates deepest from philosophy to the world - depth (a crude word in the age of language). And perhaps, in order to fight linguistic shallowness and cultural gibberish, a concept that embodies depth, hierarchy, and the superiority of content over form, a concept that is itself the cure for the disease - and this concept is learning. Learning is the foundation of depth and its purpose, and by nature includes appreciation and innovation in one sandwich, while language allowed (by its nature!) only free innovation without appreciation. What's called: blah blah blah. In language, one can say anything. But we learn only what has value. Language is inherently easy. Learning is inherently difficult. In learning, there are internal power mechanisms, and it is the muscles that operate language from within, while language is only the bones and simple skin of the world. Because learning is content - and language is form.

True, the human being (and the human condition) is expressed in language, but what stands behind language and drives it is learning in the brain (in the case of the individual) and learning in culture (in the case of society) - the development of culture in history. Money is perhaps the language of the world (and the stock market is the translator of all value into money) - but it is the learning process of growth, investment, and entrepreneurship that drives the development of the economy. Computer language is perhaps the language of the computer - but what develops the software is a learning process, whether by the human programmer and algorithmic researcher, or by a learning algorithm (an option becoming increasingly dominant). Mathematics is perhaps a logical language, but everything that stands behind it and behind the proof of its theorems is an enormous learning process, one of the hardest humanity has faced. The obsessive preoccupation with academic language (publications, writing rules, citations) has severely damaged academic learning and its innovation, for the university is supposed to be a huge learning mechanism in the service of humanity - not a language community preserving its own esoteric and sectarian language. And even in literature - the inferior preoccupation with language comes at the expense of content, namely depth. On the damage caused by linguistic ideology to distinctly anti-linguistic fields such as painting or classical music - there is no need to elaborate. The philosophy of language simply destroyed these fields in its dominance - while learning will rehabilitate them.

Language itself is by nature unconscious, it is the self-evident and effortless that underlies everything, and therefore it creates a critical and conspiratorial-childish worldview, seeking to expose and reveal and pull the rug out from under things and speakers (because language is as deep as a rug). While learning is by nature a process requiring effort, and it is the understood beneath everything, being accumulative - a layered building process in which more and more height, hierarchies, understanding, content - and depth are accumulated. Learning indeed starts from the lowest (learning of neurons in the brain) but rises and accumulates to the highest (cultural learning). Therefore, in language there is a destructive and disassembling component, being a rather low process (what are the protocols of a network - on the internet or in the brain for example - compared to its content layers?), while learning is an inherently constructive worldview. Language is inherently lacking hierarchy - is speaking Hebrew better than speaking German? Why this wordplay and not another, of sticking out one's tongue or evil tongue? - while learning by nature creates enormous cultural towers (Jewish culture, German culture).

It's no coincidence that the metaphor of the game was chosen as the most central metaphor of language philosophy. Language is ultimately a children's game, acquired in the childish stage of man, while learning is an enterprise for adults - and maturation itself. Therefore, placing the concept of learning at the center of culture and philosophy - instead of language - will produce a more mature and profound culture. Unlike language, which is by nature a timeless concept, describing a given state in the present of a certain system, learning always organizes the system from the direction of the past to the future, because of the construction, and therefore it is more suitable for conceptualizing a dynamic, accelerating world facing the future. The philosophy of learning is the paradigmatic example of the philosophy of the future.

The Netanya School has dedicated its research in recent years to the philosophical world of learning. It develops this world - in its many facets - in dozens of articles on our sites, and recently even in the collection of introductory essays it created (link). The most basic and comprehensive conclusion arising from the entirety of its research is that learning is a concept no less fertile and rich than the concept of language, and with the potential for revolutionary and fundamental contribution to all fields of knowledge and culture - and therefore a leading candidate for a new paradigm of thought, which can replace the "linguistic turn" with a "learning turn." The philosophy of learning, as a replacement for the philosophy of language, will be able to gradually change humanity's worldview - and even the technology created in its image and likeness. An internet network in a learning era will add learning and evaluation mechanisms to every platform, thereby taking flat platforms and networks, lacking inherent learning mechanisms, like Google and Facebook - and turning them into deep networks whose essence is learning and not communication. Just as the essence of the human brain network is not communication or discourse between neurons or information transfer between them but learning - and only in learning lies the ability and uniqueness of this network: its intelligence. Indeed, language is unique to humans, but it is only a unique characteristic - not its essence. While the unique essence of man is learning.

Alternative Current Affairs


text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Psycho-El

Public consciousness has become a dream! A truly endless and infinite collection of dramatic affairs, changing without connection, one after another, except for being associative variants of what truly troubles the collective subconscious. And so consciousness changes at a high frequency, over years, and accumulates to nothing, except for a vague sense of distress, anxiety, helplessness. And that's my role as the psychologist of humanity to treat it. To bring it back to reality. And that's precisely by exposing the dream contents as a dream, he says with professional pride

By: Countertransference

Even God has fallen victim to the therapeutic brainwashing. He no longer judges you - he understands you (Source)

I dreamed that God got tired of judging the world. Because it really became excessive, and this world doesn't need a judge but a psychologist. There's already a serious problem judging minors, and He no longer has patience for nonsense, at His age. So He goes to sleep in the heavens, to dream in the upper worlds - like a serious person - and appoints an angel psychologist to deal with the whole pile of mental issues. God deals with souls, and it's really too much to expect Him to provide mental health care too, and what's the point of sitting on the throne of glory - if next to you on the couch lies a narcissist, complaining about who did what to me and who said what about me.

And the angel Psycho-El, the world's psychologist, comes to me at night in a dream, to treat my reality. Because I am a dream without reality, and we need to start connecting them until people mature and become realistic, and if I have no love and no work - then I'm not okay and need treatment (Freud said). And he sits by the bed, and I lie on the bed, and he immediately starts complaining about the tough night he had at work, and about the boss: God doesn't understand anything about psychology!
And I try to soften: I understand you're very critical of God. But He wrote the Bible, didn't He? Surely He understands a bit about the human psyche.
And the psychologist attacks: Have you read the Bible? Do you know why it's such a successful book? Because there's no psychology in it! A good writer needs to understand psychology, but a genius writer becomes one precisely because he doesn't understand anything. And God doesn't understand anything about humans. Absolutely nothing. That's why His creation is superhuman. Because He doesn't have a drop of consideration for psychology in His commandments. And then they send me to mediate between Him and reality. Do you understand?
And I say like a psychologist: I understand.
And the psychologist is agitated: You understand? He doesn't understand that it's a systemic problem! And then they send the angel Psycho-El to treat individuals. What good will that do? Can you treat all of humanity one by one? I need to be the psychologist of the entire world, and the whole world should lie down and I'll do psychoanalysis and talk therapy. And what does the world say?
And I ask him with psychological empathy: What does the world say?
And he charges: Haven't you opened the news? Don't you hear?
And I'm startled in my sleep: What don't I hear? Did I miss something, did something happen?
And he says with a victorious expression: That's exactly it, nothing happened. Public consciousness has become a dream! A truly endless and infinite collection of dramatic affairs, changing without connection, one after another, except for being associative variants of what truly troubles the collective subconscious. And what they have in common is that they all deal with individuals, meaning characters, and in all of them the plot is melodrama, and the result is a balloon opera of soap sensations that continues to the perverse contents of the id (sex and violence), which once were pushed to the back pages and margins of consciousness - and today they are the headlines. He said this and that one did that, and this was done to her here and there. And so consciousness changes at a high frequency, over years, and accumulates to nothing, except for a vague sense of distress, anxiety, helplessness. And that's my role as the psychologist of humanity to treat it. To bring it back to reality. And that's precisely by exposing the dream contents as a dream, he says with professional pride.
And I ask: I understand. So can you interpret this dream for me?
\- No, no, no, you didn't understand. You're not important. That's exactly it - you're not important, and your personal dream is entirely your private matter, contrary to what you think is of interest to the public and troubles the world, and thus dismantles reality, instead of dealing with the world's dream. It's precisely the obsessive focus around the individual that creates mass psychosis, and pulls the world map to the right until it falls off the table. As long as your dreams deal with yourself and not with the world - you're collaborating with the neuroses. With Trump and Bibi!
\- Bibi? What's Bibi doing in my dream?

And he explains to me the psychological logic of the current world: As long as the media deals with individuals - the right will always win. Because the right is exactly this perspective - of the individual. The freedom of the individual, the responsibility of the individual, the crime of the individual, the terror of the individual, the ownership of the individual, everything is privatized. Whereas the left is the systemic perspective, for example society. Or the international system. Or the community. Or a group within society. Ideas like equality and fair distribution are only a derivative, a very simplistic one by the way, of a systemic view. And that's why the whole world is moving to the right, because public consciousness no longer sees the world systemically, unlike in the past, when the systemic idea of the conflict, for example, was the main thing, or of the economy (the Cold War!) or even of world wars, after all, modernism was Kafkaesque helplessness in the face of the system - while today the view is of individuals. And then the left is dragged into the right's field, and turns people into stereotypes, which is a first-degree literary mistake: the homosexual, the woman, the black, the Arab at the checkpoint. Because that's the only field that exists today: the individual. And there the right always wins. Because even if the left wins, in this or that struggle, for example on sexuality, it's actually the individual who defeats society. And systemic matters become unconscious, the tectonic plates move with enormous forces unseen beneath the world, while everyone is busy with what a pin-sized lady said to Mr. Thumbtack on the giant board. And they don't notice that the board itself, beneath the game, has long been gone, and this is the new subconscious. The subconscious and reality have switched roles! Today reality is the unconscious, and the world lives in a dream.
\- I understand.
\- After all, on the moral level, the right and left are equally correct at the individual level. Because it's really impossible to judge a character morally. Immediately the writer will bring you more depth, and suddenly the judgment is reversed, and here's more depth, and again the judgment is reversed, because judgment belongs to God. After all, the secret will always be revealed that what you thought is not what you thought, and morality will slip away from the left and right like from a pair of slippery octopus hands that get tangled up between themselves - which doesn't stop them from reaching out decisively each time anew to intimate places and sexually harassing reality. But this is exactly the acquired moral failure. Because the great Kantian secular mistake was to think that morality is at the individual level, and to oppose collective morality. After all, the Holy One, Blessed be He, never commanded each person as an autonomous subject, like secular law, but He commanded the people, the system, and that's what He punishes and to whom He promises. His relationship is with the people. True, if there's a subject who deviates from the people, then maybe (maybe!) he receives a different judgment. But today everyone thinks they're a subject who deviates from the people. One man will sin and You'll be angry with the whole congregation is the rule, and the exception is that if this man deviated from the rule then maybe they'll have mercy on the rule. Judah has sinned - not "the Jews have sinned". The idea of individual morality is an idea that leads to endless contradictions, after all, poor Arab who murdered. On the other hand, in collective morality, we don't care at all about the Arab's grandmother, but about the Palestinian national movement versus the Jewish national movement. And there we see the Palestinian failure to connect dream and reality, compared to the realistic Jewish dreaming - and therefore the danger if the Jews also lose the connection between dream and reality, instead of the opposite happening, and the Arabs learning how to dream. Therefore, from today I want to see a change in you - from disconnected personal dreaming to connected global dreaming.
\- Haven't I done that already? Haven't I already tried to connect to the world's dream? And what came of it for me? And what came of it for the world? If I remain alone anyway, what good does it do, all the whole world I wrote, I created, I dreamed? Isn't it better that I dream my own dream, if the world doesn't understand anyway?
And he says to me with psychological, angelic, divine empathy: I understand.

Night Life

source: degeneration-of-nation

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Psycho-El

Public consciousness has become a dream! A truly endless and infinite collection of dramatic affairs, changing without connection, one after another, except for being associative variants of what truly troubles the collective subconscious. And so consciousness changes at a high frequency, over years, and accumulates to nothing, except for a vague sense of distress, anxiety, helplessness. And that's my role as the psychologist of humanity to treat it. To bring it back to reality. And that's precisely by exposing the dream contents as a dream, he says with professional pride

By: Countertransference

Even God has fallen victim to the therapeutic brainwashing. He no longer judges you - he understands you (Source)

I dreamed that God got tired of judging the world. Because it really became excessive, and this world doesn't need a judge but a psychologist. There's already a serious problem judging minors, and He no longer has patience for nonsense, at His age. So He goes to sleep in the heavens, to dream in the upper worlds - like a serious person - and appoints an angel psychologist to deal with the whole pile of mental issues. God deals with souls, and it's really too much to expect Him to provide mental health care too, and what's the point of sitting on the throne of glory - if next to you on the couch lies a narcissist, complaining about who did what to me and who said what about me.

And the angel Psycho-El, the world's psychologist, comes to me at night in a dream, to treat my reality. Because I am a dream without reality, and we need to start connecting them until people mature and become realistic, and if I have no love and no work - then I'm not okay and need treatment (Freud said). And he sits by the bed, and I lie on the bed, and he immediately starts complaining about the tough night he had at work, and about the boss: God doesn't understand anything about psychology!
And I try to soften: I understand you're very critical of God. But He wrote the Bible, didn't He? Surely He understands a bit about the human psyche.
And the psychologist attacks: Have you read the Bible? Do you know why it's such a successful book? Because there's no psychology in it! A good writer needs to understand psychology, but a genius writer becomes one precisely because he doesn't understand anything. And God doesn't understand anything about humans. Absolutely nothing. That's why His creation is superhuman. Because He doesn't have a drop of consideration for psychology in His commandments. And then they send me to mediate between Him and reality. Do you understand?
And I say like a psychologist: I understand.
And the psychologist is agitated: You understand? He doesn't understand that it's a systemic problem! And then they send the angel Psycho-El to treat individuals. What good will that do? Can you treat all of humanity one by one? I need to be the psychologist of the entire world, and the whole world should lie down and I'll do psychoanalysis and talk therapy. And what does the world say?
And I ask him with psychological empathy: What does the world say?
And he charges: Haven't you opened the news? Don't you hear?
And I'm startled in my sleep: What don't I hear? Did I miss something, did something happen?
And he says with a victorious expression: That's exactly it, nothing happened. Public consciousness has become a dream! A truly endless and infinite collection of dramatic affairs, changing without connection, one after another, except for being associative variants of what truly troubles the collective subconscious. And what they have in common is that they all deal with individuals, meaning characters, and in all of them the plot is melodrama, and the result is a balloon opera of soap sensations that continues to the perverse contents of the id (sex and violence), which once were pushed to the back pages and margins of consciousness - and today they are the headlines. He said this and that one did that, and this was done to her here and there. And so consciousness changes at a high frequency, over years, and accumulates to nothing, except for a vague sense of distress, anxiety, helplessness. And that's my role as the psychologist of humanity to treat it. To bring it back to reality. And that's precisely by exposing the dream contents as a dream, he says with professional pride.
And I ask: I understand. So can you interpret this dream for me?
- No, no, no, you didn't understand. You're not important. That's exactly it - you're not important, and your personal dream is entirely your private matter, contrary to what you think is of interest to the public and troubles the world, and thus dismantles reality, instead of dealing with the world's dream. It's precisely the obsessive focus around the individual that creates mass psychosis, and pulls the world map to the right until it falls off the table. As long as your dreams deal with yourself and not with the world - you're collaborating with the neuroses. With Trump and Bibi!
- Bibi? What's Bibi doing in my dream?

And he explains to me the psychological logic of the current world: As long as the media deals with individuals - the right will always win. Because the right is exactly this perspective - of the individual. The freedom of the individual, the responsibility of the individual, the crime of the individual, the terror of the individual, the ownership of the individual, everything is privatized. Whereas the left is the systemic perspective, for example society. Or the international system. Or the community. Or a group within society. Ideas like equality and fair distribution are only a derivative, a very simplistic one by the way, of a systemic view. And that's why the whole world is moving to the right, because public consciousness no longer sees the world systemically, unlike in the past, when the systemic idea of the conflict, for example, was the main thing, or of the economy (the Cold War!) or even of world wars, after all, modernism was Kafkaesque helplessness in the face of the system - while today the view is of individuals. And then the left is dragged into the right's field, and turns people into stereotypes, which is a first-degree literary mistake: the homosexual, the woman, the black, the Arab at the checkpoint. Because that's the only field that exists today: the individual. And there the right always wins. Because even if the left wins, in this or that struggle, for example on sexuality, it's actually the individual who defeats society. And systemic matters become unconscious, the tectonic plates move with enormous forces unseen beneath the world, while everyone is busy with what a pin-sized lady said to Mr. Thumbtack on the giant board. And they don't notice that the board itself, beneath the game, has long been gone, and this is the new subconscious. The subconscious and reality have switched roles! Today reality is the unconscious, and the world lives in a dream.
- I understand.
- After all, on the moral level, the right and left are equally correct at the individual level. Because it's really impossible to judge a character morally. Immediately the writer will bring you more depth, and suddenly the judgment is reversed, and here's more depth, and again the judgment is reversed, because judgment belongs to God. After all, the secret will always be revealed that what you thought is not what you thought, and morality will slip away from the left and right like from a pair of slippery octopus hands that get tangled up between themselves - which doesn't stop them from reaching out decisively each time anew to intimate places and sexually harassing reality. But this is exactly the acquired moral failure. Because the great Kantian secular mistake was to think that morality is at the individual level, and to oppose collective morality. After all, the Holy One, Blessed be He, never commanded each person as an autonomous subject, like secular law, but He commanded the people, the system, and that's what He punishes and to whom He promises. His relationship is with the people. True, if there's a subject who deviates from the people, then maybe (maybe!) he receives a different judgment. But today everyone thinks they're a subject who deviates from the people. One man will sin and You'll be angry with the whole congregation is the rule, and the exception is that if this man deviated from the rule then maybe they'll have mercy on the rule. Judah has sinned - not "the Jews have sinned". The idea of individual morality is an idea that leads to endless contradictions, after all, poor Arab who murdered. On the other hand, in collective morality, we don't care at all about the Arab's grandmother, but about the Palestinian national movement versus the Jewish national movement. And there we see the Palestinian failure to connect dream and reality, compared to the realistic Jewish dreaming - and therefore the danger if the Jews also lose the connection between dream and reality, instead of the opposite happening, and the Arabs learning how to dream. Therefore, from today I want to see a change in you - from disconnected personal dreaming to connected global dreaming.
- Haven't I done that already? Haven't I already tried to connect to the world's dream? And what came of it for me? And what came of it for the world? If I remain alone anyway, what good does it do, all the whole world I wrote, I created, I dreamed? Isn't it better that I dream my own dream, if the world doesn't understand anyway?
And he says to me with psychological, angelic, divine empathy: I understand.

Night Life