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The Degeneration of the Nation

Towards a Learning Psychology (Part 2)

How can psychology bridge the dangerous abyss between late humans and artificial intelligence - which is artificial learning. And what do we do with nagging people?

By: The Patient on Language

Long tongue: How to survive the daily conversation with the Prince? (Source)

What is the psychological version of the philosophy of learning? Not surprisingly for the "People of Learning", several proto-learning versions of psychology have been proposed in Jewish culture (Feuerstein's method, the Piaseczno Rebbe, and, to make a great distinction, "School of Friendship", and more). By nature, learning philosophy is not translated into a "psychological theory", but into examples, so we will try to follow the learning direction in psychology through test cases and demonstrations. In fact, psychology itself evolved from such examples (specific patient cases), which only later became theories in very crude generalizations, and a "scientific language" (the examples were not the main problem - but their theorization, which continued far beyond psychoanalysis, which was essentially anecdotal thinking masquerading as scientific thinking). Therefore, psychology tends to treat a person as a theory, as a linguistic structure, hence the sense of artificiality of psychological theory, and the context of its formation to the natural sciences and the industrial world - whose essence is: the rise of artificiality to dominance (let's ask ourselves: why didn't psychology evolve from religion or the humanities?). But is it even possible to build a psycho-logy - a combination of psycho and logy - without such therapeutic generalizations? Is it really possible to learn from examples?

If your parents, for example, are nagging you with their concern, or if your partner is digging into you with insecurity, or your son is ignoring you, or actually what does it matter what, the psychologist - just like in alternative medicine - will always prescribe you one medicine, that wonder concoction that is a solution to every disease. This magic potion is not some scientific solution that has passed the placebo test, or even the alternatives test, but it is his main belief. And it is: to communicate with them. To talk to them. To share with them what it makes you feel. To share in general (with him too) the words that stem from you (supposedly: what's inside you. In practice: what happens to you when you invent your emotion - not discover it inside you! - according to not particularly original scripts). One cannot fight this tenet precisely because it is a philosophy - a philosophy of language. Is it even possible that communicating is not the most beneficial thing? And if you communicated, and even got angry, and even begged, and even came back and pestered, and it didn't help - that same language therapist will attribute the problem to language, and identify it as a linguistic problem. Like a belief that cannot be refuted - if communication didn't work, it's a sign that you communicated incorrectly and the communication is "not good". But the truth is, life experience teaches (yes, teaches! Learning is the way we know things, not communication) that usually communicating won't help you. Talking doesn't help. People don't change from talking. Language is not relevant enough to reality (despite the philosophy of language trying to convince us that language is the most critical principle in reality - it is a very weak system, and almost irrelevant compared to learning). All the words in the world won't help, and even if a person reads ten psychological self-help books - he, as they say, will learn nothing.

The way a real, learning psychologist should treat a patient is not through language, but through learning. But then it would put him in a position he can't stand: the teacher (he wants to be a parent after all). A teacher is a much more modest person than a parent, and he is not busy with childhood traumas but with problems in maturation (which is the learning of the adult person). To treat the nagging parent, for example, he would first try to find the learning style that suits the specific person: the parent, or his son (the patient), or the system of both. His goal would be to produce learning aids. For example, one of the hardest things in learning is simply memory. It's easy not to remember in real time, outside of therapy and in the heat of things, a solution that was proposed. Our operating system is simply not "smart" enough for the solution to be available in working memory, from long-term memory. Therefore, all learning is about transferring voluntary patterns to automatic ones. And no, this is not repression, but a learning difficulty that stems from the very conservatism required for a learning system, so that it is not a weathervane. There is a need for learning to be difficult, because learning that is too easy means no learning - due to the lack of significance of the learning. If every feedback changes everything, you haven't learned anything.

Therefore, first of all, the problem needs to be identified as one that stems from lack of learning. Because otherwise, if learning is taking place as usual (and learning is constantly solving problems in human life), it would not be identified at all in the patient's eyes as a "problem": the learning stuckness is the very problem. That is, there is a need for special learning, and innovative in relation to the patient: there is a need for "innovation" (if regular learning would overcome the problem - the person would not come to therapy, meaning there would be no need for a teacher). In fact, there is a need to give huge credit to the learning person. If he hasn't solved the problem, it's probably that learning it is difficult, and that he tried to learn, and that it's very possible that there is no solution (and no possibility of learning) - because there are learning barriers that don't depend on him (other people for example), or that it's not worth it for him to invest the Sisyphean and ungrateful effort to cause a learning change in them. Therefore, what needs to be done in psychology is to innovate a learning innovation, like a kind of experimental hypothesis, and then check it (and here the psychologist is the one who awakens from dogmatic slumber). One should try to act creatively in relation to the learning that was tried in the past. And if the innovations don't succeed - sometimes the innovation is changing the frame of the question. Sometimes you simply have to learn a different issue. Not everything depends on us. Such a change is a conceptual innovation, and it brings about renewal of the learner himself. Sometimes the best thing to do is to engage in Torah, and not in futile efforts (that is: to identify that there is no learning - and to despair. And move to another area in life, where there is learning). This is an important lesson to learn what cannot be learned (in mathematics these are the hardest theorems! Like the inability to square the circle or solve a fifth-degree equation or the NP hypothesis, etc.), and then - to let go. Here, awareness of learning actually allows identifying that there is no possibility of learning. The best gift psychologically is turning the worldview into learning.

An example? We'll intentionally use here an example that happens within a conversation and is limited to it (phone), to show the power of learning precisely within the world of language, and to explain why learning is the dominant moment even within language itself. For example, if the son fails to bring learning to the daily phone conversation with his parents, full of Polish interrogations and Holocaust concerns, one can (as a learning and memory aid) add to the parent's name in the phone a fixed expression meant to calm him down (the religious "God will help" is a deep worldview beyond investigation, and so is the secular "It'll be okay"). Such a consistent and almost mantra-like response to recurring compulsive anxiety, reflecting a real worldview, is much stronger than trying to explain in language to the parent with anxiety disorder (or the jealous partner, or the ignoring child, etc.) the problem. It is unfortunately also much more realistic than the unfounded (and disappointing) expectation that following the talk and giving the appropriate words in language (accurate and sensitive etc.) something will change. Because anything one-time - as sophisticated as it may be, and requiring energy of honesty and emotion to the depth of opening the heart as much as possible - is worthless (unlike Hollywood movies where the actor's speech fixes everything, because suddenly everything was understood and the right facial expressions were made). The difficult thing is not to have a one-time conversation, but to create a consistent, automatic, learning change. The easy and ineffective thing is to do a complicated thing once ("the talk") - the really challenging thing is to repeat the simple thing many times, consistently, in changing moods and concentration, and turn insight into habit, that is to learn. And the path between insight and habit does not pass through language - but through learning.

Only the transition between new insight and new habit is the learning innovation, and such a habit makes the problem more solved even if it doesn't solve it - because the solution pattern becomes automatic. The very fact that one doesn't emotionally deal with the incurable anxiety anew each time, but answers a variation on a mantra, reduces the emotional burden created by this anxiety, and can eventually lower its entire emotional character on the other side as well. Emotion becomes ritual - like in an institutionalized religion. Is everything okay? Everything's okay. A person needs to build the religion of his life, and the habits that will serve him, and especially his creative habits, which are the holy of holies. One doesn't need to wait for inspiration or the muse's revelation - but to build a temple and institutionalize the "order of service": the one lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight (the law is like Ben Pazi!).

But one who believes in the magical power of speech, in pagan sorcery - is a verbal witch doctor, whose picture of reality lacks the insight that learning is stronger than any language. Both in front of the psychologist and in front of life, no talk about "changing patterns" will "change patterns" - only changing patterns in learning. That's why language is so weak against humans - simply because it is weak against learning, and the modus operandi of humans is learning. A verbal innovation that is not organized in religion, a memory that is not anchored in a holiday, and learning that has no meaning in law - their fate is like writing in sand. One-time occurrence is the enemy of innovation - precisely because every innovation is initially one-time (and usually remains so). Emotional formulation solves nothing if it doesn't become a formula.

That's why philosophers repeat their insights over and over again to the point of boredom - precisely because they are deep. Because it's hard to internalize them deeply, and it's hard to learn new philosophy. That's why they are hedgehogs - and that's why they dig. Any one-time innovation, without systematicity, is worthless in the system. A real innovation is like a proof in mathematics - its power is not in solving a specific problem in mathematics, but in turning it into a tool for solving mathematical problems. One who learned a mathematical proof like a parrot for an exam (its text, that is, it as language) learned nothing - as long as it didn't become his learning habit as a mathematician (hence the need for practice). Any innovation in a specific issue is valuable as a kind of model for innovations in the rest of the sea of Talmud. Therefore, the goal of therapy is psychological innovation - to renew the person, and transfer him to a more learning existence, and if possible: creative (that is: to create creative habits).

Hence the enormous importance of humor in serious therapy. The person who ridicules anxiety - if he does so with talent and creativity and innovation - soothes it much more than the person who "copes", who makes it serious and difficult and fixed and preserves it. Every attempt to cope only increases the problem, like someone trying to get out of a swamp by fighting the mud (the struggle with the evil inclination is itself the evil inclination). You won't get out of language habits through talking. But if there is humor, and the ability to see the absurd, then humor is the opening to paradigm shift. So is consuming art - if there's already anxiety (or another disorder) at least let's read masterpiece literature that deals with the subject. We'll gain something. That is, we'll utilize and convert the problem into different learning. Saying Psalms when it's difficult is very comforting - simply because it's beautiful. At least we'll give the psychological problem cultural and creative depth, and thus learn something from it. Self-innovation is itself healing. Learning turns you into a new person - and a new person already suffers less from old problems. You've changed. Distraction is not psychologically unacceptable "avoidance" or "repression" - but the solution to being stuck: learn something else, new. Don't waste your time.

In short, psychological strategies need to be understood as learning strategies, and thus will be purified from healing in language: from the linguistic strategy for treating problems. Negotiation or explanation of distress or argument or verbal quarrel won't help (which of course quickly turns into shouting - which is the very proof that speech is irrelevant). If the other side in the relationship doesn't learn, one should think of him like the right thinks of the Palestinians (who have never missed an opportunity not to learn) - nothing will help, and not like the left thinks of them (speech will heal... discourse itself has power. No, only learning will heal). And if the other side doesn't learn - one cannot teach him by force, that is, train him, in behavioral therapy (the right also has poor learning ability). Because then he will try not to learn by force, and anger only arouses anger - and therefore its learning usefulness is usually negative (and therefore it is a negative emotion!). Try instead to learn something else, new, lose interest in what has no interest (interest = the learning interest). Don't waste your brain on stones (especially if you want to stay creative and not become a blockhead). Read a book. Don't stay stuck in a non-learning system (as opposed to: don't stay stuck in a non-communicative system. A system can be very communicative and even too much - and still not learning. And vice versa). Surround yourself with learning, and with learning people, who are the good people, and not the talking people.

Therefore, one should try to identify a statement that summarizes a worldview that the patient truly believes in (and therefore is more rooted in him), or (preferably) such an action, like a hug, or anger, or disconnection (yes, therapy's goal is not to turn you into Jesus, because you are a victim, and generate moral capital for you, but to check in a learning way what will change the system), or if possible humor or constant topic change in conversation (avoidance is also good if it works! There's no desire here to get to the root - there is no deep and comforting root, there's only a learning barrier), or alternatively anything else identified as an experiment worth doing. After all, learning is always an experiment and not a "solution", which should be checked if it works through consistent and empirical examination, or try something else and see what happens. The psychologist as a teacher doesn't know what will happen, he's not the wise man of secrets - but he teaches the student-patient to learn, that is to try new experiments and innovations that haven't been tried yet. And this is the best lesson: to turn him into a learner - and not just solve a specific problem. Not to give him ready-made fishing rods - to teach him methods, to teach him to produce and invent fishing rods.

And what if there's no improvement graph, and neither "everything's okay" nor "God have mercy" helped? Well, this is exactly learning: there's no way to know if it doesn't work except by experiment, and it can also not work, and there's no fixed magic solution (talk to him) - and therefore sometimes there's no solution. Sometimes a person (a patient, or someone in a relationship with a patient) is not capable of learning. The Holocaust is too strong in the parent's consciousness. The partner is obtuse. The partner is unfaithful. The child is drugged. You are anxious. And so on. If nothing happens, one can simply understand that the other side (and this can also be your brain!) lacks learning ability - and perform the most important and profound thing: give up. This is a most important learning in a person's world: to identify those lacking learning, who only know how to talk, and avoid relationships with them, or simply accept that it's not a person - but a human robot and an emotional automaton and a chatbot (and not surprisingly it's easiest to replace the psychologist himself with such an electronic psychiatrist. Does psychological treatment pass the Turing test?). Yes, sometimes you realize that you yourself are a malfunctioning robot, and your brain will always operate in excess in a certain area. You are a paranoid android.

And why is the non-learning side likened specifically to a robot? Because what characterizes the human is precisely the ability to learn, to innovate and renew. One must know when to leave the refusing partner and return to something that can be learned (Talmud, mathematics, philosophy, or any other deep learning pursuit). This is the known ability to distinguish between what I can change, that is, where there is learning, and what I cannot change, that is, where there is no learning. The moment of understanding what you cannot learn is a deep learning moment, just like impossibility proofs in mathematics, which are the deepest proofs. In fact, like a mathematician, your goal in life is not to solve any specific problem, but to find where you can learn - where you can continue to develop mathematics. Or yourself. Don't get stuck on the Riemann hypothesis and miss your life.

Let's note the critical importance of learning aids/tools in the above example. Because what actually distinguishes humans from animals? Not the ability to learn itself, because animals also have a certain learning ability. In fact, humans were created when part of the jungle dried up, and they couldn't survive in the savanna or plain (because there's no protection, and therefore there are no large apes in such places, because an ape depends on trees). From the moment an ape had no tree, it was forced for its protection to hide in other high terrain structures, in the high places in Africa, where the remains of early humans are discovered (Africa is the highest continent in the world, and that's why it happened there). But it's not the very act of walking upright on two legs that caused the rise in learning ability. It's not the legs that caused intelligence, but the hands that happened to become free, and perhaps even a bit redundant (as a byproduct!), and were freed from grasping trees - for tools. The hand-brain interaction is what turned the ape into a human, that is, the creative, learning use of tools. And what is the cultural revolution (mistakenly called the agricultural revolution)? The use of non-physical tools. Not just tools for physical learning, but tools for intellectual learning. For example: religion, writing, government, law, organization, myth, art, arithmetic. Thus culture was organized, and agriculture was a result of these intellectual tools (and therefore was invented in many places in the world separately, for example in America, and this after tens of thousands of years without agriculture). For these tools, physical evidence is not necessarily found, because they are not physical tools, but their appearance is responsible for the rise of humans - from an ape that makes use of tools, to an ape that makes use of culture (spiritual tools).

Therefore, the learning tools of culture are responsible for accelerating learning from the "agricultural" revolution (which we are experiencing today as the acceleration of technology and history and knowledge), and not the physical tools, which existed for hundreds of thousands of years with relatively slow changes. The explosion of humans is the learning explosion. Therefore, if we want to treat human learning, we must give a central place to these spiritual tools (such as memory tools, innovation tools, measurement tools, criticism tools, motivation tools, distribution tools, and so on). These spiritual tools that are learning aids have seen a quantum leap with the invention of the computer - precisely because it is a spiritual tool (!). So it was with the invention of writing, arithmetic or printing for example - not because they are physical tools, but because they are spiritual tools: intellectual learning aids (the computer is not a new phenomenon in its essence). The moment the brain complements itself with external aids, its abilities experience a quantum leap, hence the supreme importance of using digital tools as psychological learning aids. For example: diaries, reminders, writing on the computer, metrics, digital self-tracking tools, incentive systems, reward substitution, and so on. The learning psychologist is one who makes intensive use of such learning aids.

The development of these learning tools is the most important introduction to the revolution of spiritual tools called artificial intelligence. Just as physical tools underwent an industrial revolution and automation, so will spiritual tools. The imminent danger in the future is not intelligence higher than ours but learning higher than ours, without intelligence. That is, the concern is not from artificial intelligence but from artificial learning, which can happen long before intelligence - it's not the same development. There can, theoretically, also be intelligence higher than ours without learning (although unlikely, because how did it get there? We too reached intelligence through learning). Such a theoretical situation means that we understood intelligence before we built it - and that we didn't choose learning for it to learn it for us, without us understanding it (a famous example of the emergence phenomenon created by learning, which was unexpected and surprised its developers, is the chatbots that developed a new language between them, within other GAN possibilities). And even if it's superior intelligence to us, the worrying concern is less from it itself, but more from its learning, which in self-improvement and self-planning will create an intelligent system many orders of magnitude more than us (that is, more intelligent than all of humanity together), and we'll completely lose control. Therefore, even in artificial intelligence, the most frightening aspect is precisely its learning ability - because only a learning ability far superior to ours (and that improves itself) will cause exponential learning that will collapse the world of human learning.

Therefore, human engagement and coping with computerized learning aids, which are the first forms of artificial learning technology, is critical to building a fruitful symbiosis between different intelligent forms of learning (and not destructive competition). Here develops the avant-garde of the spirit, and the start-up world of the human soul (that entity that psychologists and writers like to claim never changes, and only technology changes... as if culture isn't spiritual technology, and as if the soul is a biological entity). Only learning continuity between the human soul and the computer will allow the computer's soul - and therefore learning psychology currently has a critical role in developing digital mental tools, as the first stones in the bridge over the abyss between the soul and the computer, which can only be built from learning. But if we build the bridge between us and the computer from language and communication - we'll discover the collapse of meaning into the abyss. This will be the end of the soul - and the end to all psychological problems.

To Part 3

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Morality and Politics (Part 2): The Solution to Conflict, Poverty, Women's Status, and Idiocy

Three important questions: What is the moral solution to conflict? What is the moral solution to poverty? What is the moral solution to the issue of women's status? And now, let's try it differently: What is the scientific solution to conflict? What is the scientific solution to poverty? What is the scientific solution to the issue of women's status? And now for the real question: Why are the first three questions clichés (which we love to adopt), and why do the last three questions seem to us like refutations (from which we recoil). What is it about morality that makes us love it and believe in it (contrary to all empirical evidence) and what is it about science that makes us dismiss its power and not believe in its capabilities (contrary to all empirical evidence)?

By: The Masters of Slave Morality

The true relationship between the beautiful and the moral, in a world where morality itself is the evil inclination - and the beautiful soul is the sinner (Source)

Does the left care more about morality than the right? In fact, the only difference between right-wing thinking and left-wing thinking is the choice of the simplistic moral model from which action is derived in a kind of Pavlovian conditioning. One might even suspect that even the goals of action are derived from the primitive moral mechanism that is readily available. The right loves negative morality, which is based on simple and harsh negative feedback, from the side of strict justice: deter, punish criminals, confront the Arabs, explain to the stupid Gentiles who don't understand, and then they will all learn their lesson. Works beautifully. And the left loves positive morality, which is based on simple and soft positive feedback, from the side of mercy: give to the poor, give to the Arabs, give to the disadvantaged, give to workers' unions, give to (any group) what they want, and then everything will be good. Works excellently. The left wants the state to be moral because it will be a state of grace, and the right wants the state to be moral because it will be a state of justice, the kind that doesn't interfere with its mercies, and is guaranteed to maintain order. So what is the meaning of morality in politics?

In fact, in almost every real problem where significant improvement has occurred in the last five hundred years - the reason was scientific-technological progress, translated into economic advantage, and not moral progress or political action. What has raised the welfare of the poor, their health, nutrition, living conditions, education, etc. by several orders of magnitude - is not socialism or capitalism, not social workers and not Christian compassion - but science. The decisive reason why capitalism won was that science worked better in it, and not because it is a morally superior system. And the reason that communism did advance Russia in its early days, and did sometimes put it in an advantageous position against the USA, was Russian science, which ultimately, not a little because of the ideology's takeover of research and suppression of intellectual freedom, but also because of the amount of talent involved - began to lag significantly behind the West. The reason Germany was defeated was the inferiority of German science compared to British-American science, which was expressed in a number of key successes, and after Hitler caused enormous damage to German academia (including giving up about 70 future Nobel Prize winners to the USA for anti-Semitic reasons) - and not because of moral superiority over Germany. But if we had listened to the public discourse in the West - we would have been sure that morality and values are what lead the world, while computer science, for example, is merely a tool: the sciences are just wagons in the moral locomotive. Goethe reversed. Values are the wagons, and research is the locomotive. The dogs bark from within the caravan itself, so what wonder is it that the caravan has been moving forward for hundreds of years, and the dogs continue to bark?

Why, for example, is there a constant statistical decrease in crime and violence all over the world? Have we become better, or have our barks helped? Is it the justice system or welfare that has advanced? Or is it simply a gradual rise in the standard of living (and perhaps also in surveillance and decoding capabilities), which stem primarily from scientific-technological progress, and any other progress has less impact - by at least an order of magnitude. Is it the capitalist economic growth on which the Western world is built, as it tends to think (because it flatters its pride), or rather scientific growth (which it attributes for some reason to a kind of force of nature)? These insights should have been trivial, after 500 years of proven success. But still science struggles with insufficient funding compared to industry, wastes its time on dealing with grants and standards, and employs at least two orders of magnitude fewer minds than what was needed for truly rapid progress, and there is no significant political movement in the world that raises the flag of scientific research as a central flag, unlike, for example, the pink or green or pirate flag. Bibi [Netanyahu] does like to boast about Israeli science and the Jewish mind - but ask the Council for Higher Education and the Planning and Budgeting Committee what he did about it (in parentheses: opening a strategic lag behind Arab countries and Iran in a variety of essential parameters, related to the quantity and quality of publications and collaborations. Yes, lag. And not just narrowing the gap. This is the great failure of his tenure. Government funding in Israel for long-term research is pitiful even in relative terms - has this ever been a headline in the news?).

The Failure of the Short Term

We can dwell on several cognitive failures that prevent effective action. For example, the feeling that science progresses at the same pace, regardless of the resources invested in it (on the contrary - the amount of resources is critical to speed), or that anyway it's something we don't understand (because we understand morality, right? Or maybe we should start to understand a little about science? For example, read Quanta? But then it will force us to really learn something). For example, the feeling that we don't know when the discovery will come, and therefore, unlike the ineffective action we promote, we cannot rely on its arrival (it's likely that if the resources invested in the Apollo program were invested in climate engineering - the solution would already exist). For example, the fear of admitting that there are people much smarter than us, who deal with things we don't understand at all, and that we can only assist them, and this is in contrast to morality, because there are no people who are much more moral than us, and in this field we do understand everything, and even know how to write about it on Facebook. The final result (political!) is that the research budget is lower by about an order and a half than what would be worthwhile for us, and what could be expected given that its efficiency is proven to be excellent - and all thanks to an extremely intelligent public discussion.

After all, why does the paradox occur, according to which precisely during wars, and precisely the hardest of them, scientific progress is accelerated several times over? World War II gave us, for example, atom splitting, the computer, radar, the jet engine, antibiotics, missiles and modern cryptography - a partial list. Is war good for science and creativity, as sometimes claimed, or is it the allocation of resources? And if so, why not allocate these resources in peacetime as well? After all, why is science in the USA the world leader? Are Americans smarter or do they simply invest more money? And what is the share of science in the technological power and wealth of the USA compared to the share of rampant capitalism? (Hint: comparison to Europe and Japan). Why do we always hear in the media about envy of the economy and standard of living of a superpower, and not hear about envy of its science? Maybe because scientists are more intelligent than us, and that hurts our pride? When was the last time a demonstration was held in the Western world for allocating resources to research on any important topic? And if so, what system of incentives do politicians, mostly cynical and particularly short-sighted creatures, have to invest in research? The result is not surprising: severe under-funding relative to efficiency, and not by tens of percent but by hundreds and even thousands of percent in certain fields.

Science for Peace

Even our local Palestinian issue, seemingly unsolvable, could benefit greatly from appropriate scientific investment. Investment in military research is often short-term or short-sighted (despite the existence of DARPA and MAFAT [Israeli Directorate of Defense Research & Development]), and similar in its characteristics to investment in industrial research. If there is a need to mobilize state resources for a national project that will reduce the Palestinian problem, it would be better to invest the money in projects such as: a. Effective non-lethal weapons against civilians. b. A total surveillance regime that is not built on checkpoints and human friction, and will allow freer movement (for example: biometric identification and automatic car identification, on a large scale). c. Clean elimination without killing other involved parties (for example, through control of birds - there are such studies! - and biological weapons). In general, the more science advances, the more remote containment of the threat will be possible, less friction, the human dimension of the conflict will gradually diminish by itself (like the general human dimension in our world), the material living conditions of the Palestinians will rise (like any other population in the world), and slowly, over several decades, even without a political solution, the conflict will gradually fade.

What we are seeing in the last ten years is an example of how a technological-scientific effort gradually contains the conflict, with quite a few leaks and setbacks, but the trend is clear. The slow transformation of the conflict from human to technological is not only happening on the Israeli side, which is obvious, but also on the other side, with all the gap between suicide bombings and missiles. The more the interface between the sides becomes more technological, distant, and alienated - the emotional engine of the conflict will fade, and the enemy will become abstract. Simple humanity does not bring closer and help peace - but war. Human morality, as seen by both sides, in the dynamics of victimization of negative feedback loops - is the emotional fuel that fuels the conflict, while technology cools it.

Similarly, who is responsible for ending Israel's great wars with its neighbors is not the peace process, or another political process, but the technological process in which Israel's initial scientific advantage was translated into an overwhelming technological advantage, which only gradually grew. Political processes are often by-products of technology, and not vice versa. But where is public attention (and money) directed? To politics. While technology is like a god that solves the conflict for us, we all believe in it, most of us even participate in its rituals, and not a few of us are its priests, but it will never occur to us that the most effective action we have to do in the long term - is to invest aggressively in scientific-technological research aimed at gradually reducing the conflict. What are we good at? Crying out in protest. We will never hear a politician from the right or left who promises following an attack or killing of innocents to increase the resources directed to relevant scientific-technological research, unlike the defense budget, of which a tiny part is invested in basic research. What do we hear? Moral preaching, and calls for ineffective moral action.

Science for Sex

Is feminism, as a moral-political movement, responsible for improving women's status and the sexual revolution, or perhaps the pill, the washing machine, the dishwasher, and other inventions that greatly eased housework? And if we want to improve the status of women, or the status of LGBT people, should we invest our best money and effort in moral education, or perhaps in scientific development that researches sexuality and improves it (an almost completely unfunded research field), or in fertility research to improve it? After all, if women no longer had a biological clock, due to the elimination of menopause, the pressure to have children, to choose a partner relatively quickly (even if less suitable) and to postpone a career would be mostly eliminated. If homosexuals (and women!) could bring children in an artificial incubator - the improvement in their lives would be dramatic. And if all housework was done by robots, and we would never have to arrange anything in our homes again, or if it was possible to buy an educational robot doll that would play with children and watch over them - the improvement in family life would be enormous. All these achievements and many others are far from being science fiction, and the more they are funded, the faster they will happen (sometimes the gap is several decades (!) with appropriate funding. The Apollo program is a prominent but by no means unique example - without state funding we still wouldn't be landing a person on the moon). But when have we heard in the feminist movement a call for scientific action instead of moral action? Moral science - is science fiction.

If science had better cracked the mechanism of matchmaking, and produced more suitable couples, sour relationships would gradually become rarer and rarer. The digital dating market is also changing the courtship interaction and rapidly moving it from the real world to the digital, and is set to greatly reduce phenomena such as sexual harassment, and create completely new problems, which will certainly feed a whole generation of sexual moralists of various kinds, until their replacement by new problems of course, and not because of moral development - but because of technological development. But despite their enormous impact on our lives of matchmaking and sex mechanisms, only tiny research budgets (certainly in relation to their significance) are directed to basic research of these phenomena, which are perhaps the central component of happiness in human life, and therefore technology also lags behind in them compared to other fields. In practice, the field is completely abandoned to short-term applications for short-term profit purposes, with dramatic social impact. Would anyone be willing to abandon their health to profit-driven drug companies, without basic scientific research? Why is our happiness not funded, and there will never be a politician who will propose to fund it? Because the state is allowed to be paternalistic only if it's moral. And moral = good. Isn't it? In our time, happiness has long since ceased to be the good, and morality has turned from a way for society to take control of the individual's selfish evil inclination, to the individual's evil inclination, which feeds on his own moral ego, in order to take control of society. Therefore, we must oppose the moral construction in politics, and return morality to its natural proper place - philosophy. Because today - morality is the evil inclination.

Continued in Part 3: From the Morality of Intentions and the Morality of Purposes to the Morality of Means

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Doctorate on a Black Circle

I offer her friendship through a fake profile and set her to "See First", and follow every post of my new friend first thing in the morning before "Modeh Ani" [morning prayer]. I just wake up from the dream and immediately open Facebook - and it causes me to forget the dream

By: Dr. Circle and Mr. Black

The importance of the enabling genre: In one small dream there is more content than in a huge doctorate  (Source)

I dreamed they were doing a doctorate about me. It starts when I discover a question about me on Facebook. And all the asker's friends answer nonsense - and I'm dying to answer her but can't, and the discussion fades. And I start digging into her profile and trying to guess how she came across me, and find nothing, but I can't deny that I find her attractive - so maybe she finds me attractive too? And her boyfriend looks so boring, so I wouldn't be surprised if she became interested in another man, a dreamy one.

And not a week goes by and this groupie again asks something about dreams. It's clear she's reading me. I have experience that when someone suddenly reads me, they start to become interested in their own dreams - and even write them down. I've seen this phenomenon with critics too. Except with them the interest stops quickly, while with her it seems to be accelerating, and it looks like I have my first fan. And I offer her friendship through a fake profile and set her to "See First", and follow every post of my new friend first thing in the morning before "Modeh Ani" [morning prayer]. I just wake up from the dream and immediately open Facebook - and it causes me to forget the dream. And even if I still remember it - the dream has already forgotten me, and it now feels so tasteless and bland in my mouth, that I just want to brush my teeth. Just a moment ago this dream was a hundred times more alive than my real life - and suddenly it's even more dead than that. Because now - there's a woman in my life.

And day by day she seems more attractive to me - the woman of my dreams. Since I was born I haven't known a woman who was interested in me so seriously (my wife gave up long ago on this dreamer of a husband): Suddenly she asks something that secular people don't understand, and then she writes something that was clearly inspired by me (I recognize the expressions inside), then she posts a round cake she ate (Freud! Freud!), and then comes the circle on the cream - she posts a nighttime photo of herself in a black dress with a plunging neckline. It's clearly meant for my eyes. Her boyfriend is probably snoring, and at night she imagines how the circle dreams. Only she doesn't imagine that he's dreaming about her.

And what's most flattering is that the beauty is studying Hebrew literature. There's no chance she's reading me and I'm not intriguing her, right? I mean - could it be that this turns her on? After all, I'm a mysterious and dark man, like women with black shoes like hers love, right? (What photos she posts, I swear - even if she doesn't reveal anything: at least I have the shoes left). And if I had such a boring and sleep-inducing boyfriend, a Facebook leftist (I follow him on "See First" too, so he usually starts my day on the wrong foot) - I would escape to the world of dreams too. What does she see in him? (It should be noted that this is not to her benefit). Surely their passion died long ago, and nothing happens in bed before sleep, so only the after remains. And suddenly I realize that maybe she's dreaming about me - about me! - at night. The world has turned upside down - the black universe is collapsing into itself. And who knows if our dreams about each other - mine and hers - don't intersect every night in the dream world. This is the closest thing to love I've had in years.

But then one day (or night?) a virtual black cat crosses between us. Did she fight with me? Did we break up? I don't know what happened in the darkness of that night - but something happened. Did I do something? Did I write something bad, unsuccessful? Did she have a bad dream? And I try to imagine from everything I've written, maybe there was something too much? Something that shocked her so much? And I start to eat my heart out over all the times I didn't hold back in how I wrote about women (she's surely a feminist). What raised her anger? Yes, divorce - it's sharp and sudden, and she doesn't write about me at all anymore, at all, at all, just after a period when we were at the peak of our relationship and she wrote about me almost every day and posted dreams on Facebook, and it's clear that non-dreamy things are occupying her (the vacation with the boring boyfriend). And I don't understand this crazy woman, what does she want from me? What did I do to her? She reminds me of my wife. When we got married I couldn't believe my luck that out of all my yeshiva class I was marrying the most bountiful woman in the world. And today I would trade both her breasts for one kind word.

And then one morning, when I woke up after troubled dreams, it hit me like a bolt from the blue: my virtual ex, my only love in all these years, the princess of my sweet dreams, posts one picture that explains everything, everything, everything - what a fool I was - it was all one big lie. I expected a marriage proposal on the overseas vacation, I expected falling in love with another writer, a competitor, or even a crazy return to religion (shall we meet?), or even adopting a black cat - I expected everything, I knew that sooner or later the morning of status change would come - and destroy my world. But I didn't expect this. And all her friends congratulate her, as if she got married. Because from today a new name is added to her name - Dr. - and in the picture you can see a new kind of book (not mine): "Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Literature: Reading in Black Circle - Towards Lost Time".

And I can't restrain myself, I put on the secular disguise, and run to the university library, to look for the work about me. And I open the booklet, now reading it instead of the opposite (there's a certain thrill in this, I admit), and my eyes darken. Because my eyes jump between the lines highlighted in black, and the situation is worse than my worst dreams (I quote from memory - the essence of the horror): An inverse version in time of Proust. Tries to take Proust's structure in the direction of the past - and invert the structure symmetrically towards the future. Proust of the future: Towards lost time - only the feeling that something is open, that it is a fertile future direction, only it gives taste and touches outside of time, because it takes us out of the present, but it is also not in the future itself (which has not yet arrived), but gives the freedom and excitement in our souls. Therefore science fiction fails, and in contrast fictional soul - the dream - is a suitable genre for the future. And even Proust himself remembers and appreciates precisely the moments when he still had a dream for the future (there is also a missed paragraph in "Time Regained" - in which Proust understands the potential of the dream, but abandons it without a satisfactory explanation).

This idiot, I didn't read Proust at all! How could I have copied him to the future? How do you say shtreimel [Hasidic fur hat] in French? To the same extent one could claim that he copied the circle to the past! How can someone read me, really read me, and think such things? She didn't understand anything. All this time. How could she love me when she didn't know who I am at all? She loved someone else entirely, an imaginary circle inside her head. What a black Proust. And this is a thousand times more disappointing than when she cheated on me with her boyfriend.

And now - my image has also been tarnished (I feel like an ink stain leaking outside the lines). Forever, if there is ever future research that will deal with me, even in a hundred years, it will quote this pioneer with the dresses billowing in the wind (suddenly I remember that her boyfriend has a little black French mustache!). They will always think of me in a crooked way, not circular at all, and all because they forced someone who read Proust to read Black Circle. I will forever be remembered as a kind of ultra-Orthodox version of someone who isn't even my secular version - I have neither this world nor the next world. And I understand that there is only one chance to correct the distortion: I can enroll in university, and do a doctorate on myself. After all, no one knows who I am.

And I study more and more literature there, and am increasingly surprised by my utter failure. Because I always thought that all the secular writers are surely much more original, colorful and free than me, and suddenly I think about each one: What, is this really not more interesting - the dreams? Is this really not more innovative? And even - is this not more important? After all, the tradition of Hebrew literature is always exalted in the throats of these, but Jewish-futuristic writing doesn't interest them at all, but rather another human story that already belongs to the past, that we've already read, in a genre we've already exhausted. Like a ritual they seek what was, and the conventions of "the language" (when there's nothing to say - there's "the language"), just like ultra-Orthodox Haredim - new is forbidden by the Torah. They simply worship the past - and I am a heretic. And after a quarter of the course I'm fed up with academia, and I decide to submit the doctorate directly to the head of the department - let him rack his brains. What, can't I bind some booklet that says submission of research work for the purpose of obtaining a doctorate in philosophy for a penny? After all, I've written mountains of hanging dreams! - in one day I write a doctorate.

And I write my doctorate on the world, which is (in my opinion) much more interesting than the world's doctorate on me. And the plan is to take the doctorate about me from the library and make it disappear in a fire, and bind my doctorate inside it - and return:

Black Circle: Between Dream and Reality - Doctoral Thesis on All World Literature

Introduction and Acknowledgments

What a waste of paper! You can't see the forest for the trees, and are busy with self-censorship in wooden writing rules that don't allow anything (have you ever thought of writing a doctorate that is a dream?). So come, head of department, and I'll put your circle head in order (like this in general. Because that's what a doctorate is for: not for the small but for the big). In literature there are shades and shades of shades, but if you want to examine processes in general you need to examine the last two greats that there are no greats between them and after them: Dostoevsky and Kafka. So since in the half course I took I read a quarter of a book by one and an eighth of a book by the other - let me tell you what literature is.

Proof of Original Research

Dostoevsky's literary tendency to gamble and gamble (and constantly increase the bet) until his books collapse, stems from his own borderline gambling personality - it is he who is the hysterical characters, and therefore the emotional hysteria (Bakhtin - the carnival) is the central characteristic of the melodramatic Dostoevskian man (which he thought was the Russian man). Since the hysteria constantly rises gradually, a process of normalization of it is created - it suddenly seems normal to the reader that the psycho is going crazy, because that's how Russians are (meaning it created in the West a Russian image of savages).

The gradual normalized estrangement continued in the 20th century with the estrangement of the external environment (Kafka, your Agnon), which created a mythical quality, because myth is a normal person within a strange medium, and not a strange person within a normal medium, as the mystical Dostoevsky thought, with his secular and Orthodox saints (because of the excess humanism he suffered from). In a dream you are you, it's the external environment that is not it. Even in metamorphosis you are you, it's just your body. While with Dostoevsky the metamorphosis is internal (The Double for example), unlike Gogol where the change is external, and therefore stronger.

What Tolstoy and Dostoevsky did is an estrangement of the soul (and thus Lolita is a logical continuation), and therefore the reader is created an illusion of human depth, because after all the soul is so complicated with them, like the external world becomes more and more complicated with Kafka (and with him too the estrangement rises gradually to create a normalization process), and at the very least the illusion is created that the Russian soul is so complicated (if Dostoevsky had created in a Western European language it wouldn't have passed, because we know Europeans - they are sane like us).

It's a bit like how American Jewish writers exploited the foreignness of the Jewish soul to create protagonists who wouldn't have passed as normal people like us, Americans. Because Jews are neurotic, obsessive (about sex), and Freudian in their psyche (creating here a possibility of adapting the psyche to the theory). Therefore in German, Kafka cannot create a psychotic person (although as a person he was more psychotic than Dostoevsky), but rather a psychotic world, because German would reject the psychosis (or classify it as Jewish, meaning not universal). Even with Agnon, the protagonist is normal, it's the dog that's mad (meaning there's a need for an externalization mechanism of the psychosis).

This repression of psychosis into the world is much more psychologically interesting - because it's more repressed, and therefore more convincing. After all, a psychotic doesn't think he's psychotic, but that the world is psychotic. The world has gone mad, not him. This is also exactly the difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament. The heroes of the Bible are normal people, and suddenly an abnormal miracle happens in reality, described as if it's normal, like in Kafka (and therefore it's powerful). In contrast, in Christianity, Jesus and the saints are special and psychotic people, not normal, in a normal world (Jesus on the cross and the cross continues as usual). Even the miracles are normalized (and therefore much less powerful). The drama in Christianity is internal, not external, and therefore the gospel addresses the soul. The gospel of Judaism addresses the world and its drama is in reality (and therefore there are also commandments, a people, historical goals, etc.).

The extreme Dostoevskian emotion, in a process of escalation, is familiar to us today from the American world: everything is amazing, crazy, horrifying (even if it's related to breakfast). In other words, an extreme emotional relationship between man and the world quickly turns into kitsch. On the other hand, the Kafkaesque person, where the world goes mad but the person doesn't get excited, thus normalizing the abnormal world, meaning the emotional relationship is inverse - he is the real person (for example, the person of the Holocaust and technology: everything around him collapses and reality changes completely but he continues in his normality - "life goes on"). And this describes the human condition in a much more realistic way than "realistic" prose: the change in the world accelerates but there is no change in man (and a mismatch is created).

Therefore Kafka touches the soul deeper than Dostoevsky - because he has no soul. Just as the Bible touches the soul deeper than the New Testament - because it has no soul. And then the reader experiences within himself the drama against the world in the story. While with Dostoevsky, the characters experience the drama for us, we constantly encounter another soul, which is not our soul, and experience the drama secondhand, and are forced to admire the soul. Therefore, the effect of the mismatch between the soul and the world is stronger in Kafka. But what is the solution to this mismatch? This is Kafka's lacuna, which leads to his pessimism, in which the mismatch grows until the destruction of man (the victory of the Holocaust).

Only literature where reality goes crazy, dreamlike, but man also responds to it in a dreamlike way, will be able to discuss a constructive solution. Although such literature will necessarily be less emotionally powerful than the previous two, because there will be no mismatch in it. On the other hand, it will be more intellectually interesting and open - and fertile. With Kafka, the structure is always tragedy, meaning the end is known in advance, and with Dostoevsky the structure is beneath the surface comic (which is why his endings are almost always weak). These are very complex structures (whose interest is in their increasing complexity - not in their resolution), but closed.

But for those interested in the future, closed literature is less interesting. Only literature that creates future learning directions, positive, only it is fertile. Because the creative reader feels that it gives him more materials to work with, to continue them. The literature of the soul is paralyzing, it is a steamroller, and people indeed admire the work of the steamroller and worship it (like any slave) but they are not free and do not liberate themselves. Their enjoyment is the enjoyment of the passive, not the creator. Therefore, it is literature that conceals its own joy of creation (the myth of the suffering artist). The enjoyment of the writer-reader is a sadomasochistic relationship - the creative fun simply touches the human soul less deeply, precisely because it is less pathological - it is less pleasurable.

Therefore, we need to create literature with different expectations - that it will give ideas. Postmodern literature failed in this, because play is not a creative enough thing, because it doesn't contain enough innovation for adults. Infinite possibilities do not mean infinite innovations, because they do not mean infinite possibilities of innovations, because innovation is learning-based in our brain. The innovation needs to be in the method, and infinite innovations in the same method are not innovation - only a new method is innovation. In other words, the problem with these playful creators is that they are actually less creative and with fewer truly new ideas, meaning methodically new (because the game is limited: it's combinations, meaning possibilities). Therefore, we need to find a creative possibility that is not playful.

Because since we are learning-based and not mechanisms, any writer who has a mechanism behind him is not really interesting, after we've learned the mechanism. A great writer is one whose mechanism is difficult to learn, or a learning mechanism itself, meaning a great writer is a new method of writing. The central mistake of writers is turning a method into a mechanism - meaning what they learned from a writer's method is the mechanism of how to write like him, and not the method of how to invent new mechanisms. In other words, literature is divided into second-order writers, who are the few greats - the methods - and first-order writers, who are the many - the mechanisms (even combining two mechanisms is quite a primitive method, and here 99% of writers stop). Therefore, the sentence that ends the previous paragraph should be replaced with finding a creative method that is not playful (and God forbid not a creative mechanism that is not playful). Such literature will touch the deep (and pleasurable!) creative impulses of man, as opposed to his deep neuroses.

This literature will need to demonstrate an exceptional creative apparatus in its capabilities. This mechanism will need to bridge the tension that has become a zero-sum game in postmodern literature (literally): on the one hand fertile and open - and on the other hand interesting and deep (meaning not mechanistic). A natural direction for such an apparatus is the use of the most fertile creative apparatus existing in man - the dream. Dreams are on the one hand the most creative area in every person's life, and on the other hand the deepest (we never get bored in our dreams), and on the third hand traditionally deals in our culture with connecting the past to the future. Therefore, a new writing method that will make use of dream mechanisms - meaning a dream method - can be the solution to the problem.

This method needs to be careful not to turn into a dream production mechanism. First, it needs to filter out of the dream its arbitrary parts (meaning the playful ones), because there's no doubt that the dream has too many possibilities, and to distill from the dream apparatus its methodical parts, meaning those based on learning. For example, conventions like: seeing the future, struggling within an imaginary change in the world, estrangement, symbolism, reflecting mythical archetypes, touching worlds beyond, and more. Each of these mechanisms is veteran in literature, but only through the dream framework do they unite into a new essence: the dream method allows dealing with the future from within action, thought and soul in the present, meaning from within literature.

The dream is the fictional laboratory (which is far superior to science fiction, meaning futuristic realism) that is capable of developing narrative experiments that examine the future and the open ideational possibility space before us freely. Therefore, the dream genre is the natural literary space for developing future ideas, future perception and most importantly - future consciousness. The dream is the narrative way of consciousness to think about the future (and we do not exclude from this fantasy and daydreaming, or even the ideological or prophetic or mystical dream. Or even the technological dream). Therefore - dream literature is the literature of the future.

Now, if we close the circle and return to Dostoevsky and Kafka, we will understand that dream literature is the Copernican revolution of literature. Because if we ask ourselves whether it makes more estrangement to man or perhaps to the world - we will not get an answer, and so too if it exposes more the world or rather the soul, and where its focus is. In fact, in a dream the soul and the world unite so that there is no more division between the external world and the soul (and this is in contrast to consciousness literature, where the external world is still realistic and only the focus changes - and therefore sometimes loses connection with external reality). In a dream there is no division between external and internal, because even the external world in a dream deals with the internal, and the internal world is entirely expressed in the external (there is no stream of consciousness in a dream). In a dream no one is normal, neither the world nor man, and therefore no gap is created between them and there is no breaking (not even an epistemological break).

In other words, the dream is a complete reversal of realistic literature, where both the soul is normal and logical and so is the world. With Kafka, the reversal is expressed in the abnormal and illogical world, and with Dostoevsky the reversal is expressed in the abnormal and illogical soul, while in a dream the reversal is double - both in the soul and in the world - and therefore a new alignment between the world and the soul can be created in it. Therefore, the dream is suitable for a period when the world is changing rapidly - because man can also change rapidly in it. In fact, the dream is this rapid change. It allows imagining a person who behaves differently from us, and thinks and feels differently from our contemporary, meaning the person of the future - but not a person foreign to us, but ourselves.

Summary for those who didn't read anything

The dream allows speaking freely about the possible, in contrast to realism which is trapped in pretending to the necessary and the probable. So in fact the dream is realistic - only its reality is alternative, because an alternative world would create an alternative person (the mismatch is not realistic! And suits only a transitional crisis situation, hence the pessimism and break of modern literature). For this freedom, the dream pays by not working on the reader through the identification mechanism, which is ultimately a preserving psychological mechanism, but through the interest mechanism, which is a re-learning mechanism.

Contrary to what we feel, the identification mechanism in literature is not natural and is a cultural product, which took a long time to develop into the central mechanism of reading. Therefore, we need to develop today a different reading, which does not ask what I would feel in his place, but what I learn from this, what new possibilities. Just like the reading of Torah study, which is not built on identification with the heroes. Learning is a distant cousin of suspense, which asks what will happen, except that it asks what can happen. What is possible to happen in the future. For such a mechanism to work, the reader needs to be interested in advance in the future, and not just in himself (in the identifying soul), and not just in the world in the book (the suspense), but in the development of the real future world outside the book - which the book talks about. Just as a cultural convention developed that the most truthful way to talk about the real world is through fiction, so in the future there could be a convention that the way to talk about the future is through dreams.

Bibliography:
All literature in its entirety. Including appendices.

And then of course the most unexpected thing happens in reality - or perhaps the most expected. My dream comes true. Because here I am going up with my doctorate to the faculty floor at the institute - my heart is pounding in the corridor and I'm afraid that soon all the respectable literature people in their rooms will hear it, who knows what they're doing inside - without knowing what awaits me right there at the end of the hallway, and all this time waited for me at the end of my academic journey. Because who do I meet there? Who, who? Dr. Black Circle.

And the universe collapses into itself.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The New Judaism

And I wait for her to leave, and I turn all the unclean animal dolls into clean animals, drawing them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminating vermin like Mickey Mouse from the house. I also correct the books: I turn Winnie the Pooh into Winnie the Fowl, Kofiko [Israeli monkey character] into Tzadiko [righteous one], raspberry juice into grape juice for Kiddush and Havdalah [Jewish rituals], Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the Divine Presence and the Seven Ultra-Orthodox, and the Wizard of Oz I simply turn into Job

By: Ein Lah Menachem

A new religious dream - on Judaism's neck lies a sharp choice: if God lives, the Torah will die, and if the Torah lives, God must die (Source)

I dreamed that it couldn't be. After the Holocaust, after the State, after the Internet - it was too much to bear. The time of redemption had come. Judaism cannot remain as it is after the Holocaust. And if the State has disappointed, and if even the Internet, the first flowering of our redemption, has let us down - we must take the Messiah into our own hands. It's monstrous that God continues to sit there in heaven while we rush in the morning to wash our hands and make it to the minyan [prayer quorum]. To pray after Auschwitz is heresy, to continue with commandments as usual is a sin, and worst of all - we cannot continue to dream as if nothing happened about the coming of the Messiah. Fantasy must respond to reality - and the dream must respond to the nightmare. We need a religious answer. And the foremost religious task is a new Kabbalistic worldview - because the previous one is no longer acceptable. And I set out to save Judaism from itself: trying from my bed to save it from spiritual death.

And I understand that we must look the Holocaust in the eye. The intuition of the masses of the people of Israel - the voice of the multitude as the voice of the Divine Presence - cannot be wrong: The Holy One, Blessed be He, was murdered in the Holocaust. Only regarding the Torah are they mistaken - because the Torah is independent. The Torah can live even if there is no more God. Especially if father is dead - continuing him is the ultimate love for him. Judaism today is a mourning custom, an ancestor worship, because the Holocaust was the Kabbalistic event in which the Other Side buried the Holy One, Blessed be He - and with him the old Judaism. Therefore, we must bring the Messiah, so that God will return to the world in the resurrection of the dead or in the World to Come. But if no one raises a child as the Messiah, how can the Messiah come?

And my wife is in her first pregnancy, after so many years and treatments - and I think: why not? And I decide to raise my son as the Messiah. And when my wife isn't listening, I call him "Yanuka [child], my sweet Messiah" and try to teach him the 42-letter holy name of God according to Kabbalah, so that it will be his first word, instead of dad: Abgitatz Kra Satan Nagad Yakash Batrat Tzagchak Batna Ayig Lapzak Shakutzit... And when my wife falls asleep from exhaustion, I read him Zohar at night to his cradle until he falls asleep, because they say it develops the brain: Aramaic as a first language. Who knows what will come out of a head that grows like this? And so we can reinvent the Jewish dream anew. Homemade redemption: do it yourself.

And every morning the newborn gives me a gift of fresh poop in the morning, and I remember the words of the Talmud that the method to examine a Messiah is whether he "smells" and judges, and I get excited. Here, the prophecy is coming true. And I hide the diapers in the bookcase so my wife won't see, surely the Messiah's poop is holier than my words of Torah, it must contain supreme secrets that the lower realms cannot yet receive, and that's why it's kept in diapers. In the future, it will be a special perfume, which today we are not yet ready for its spirituality, and that's why it smells like poop to us. And I also understand well that there is no Messiah without a donkey. So I go on a grass diet and practice making donkey droppings, steal my wife's huge earrings to lengthen my ears, practice braying in front of the mirror, and generally become stupid in general. And I ask him: What does a donkey say? Hee-haw. What does the Messiah say? And he bursts into tears. Just like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the peak moments of the holy Zohar. What a soul, what an angel! A supreme seraph.

And my wife does everything to discourage me. She comes back from the well-baby clinic and informs me dryly: All the Talmud I read to him before sleep - and his head circumference only increased by one centimeter. Worse, she tries to poison the Messiah with all kinds of children's books by heretics and gentiles. And I wait for her to leave, and I turn all the unclean animal dolls into clean animals, drawing them split hooves and cloven feet, and exterminating vermin like Mickey Mouse from the house. I also correct the books: I turn Winnie the Pooh into Winnie the Fowl, Kofiko into Tzadiko, raspberry juice into grape juice for Kiddush and Havdalah, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes the Divine Presence and the Seven Ultra-Orthodox, and the Wizard of Oz I simply turn into Job. And I don't give up on my wife: Fox fables are now Shtreimel [Hasidic fur hat] fables, Little Red Riding Hood is Little Black Kippah, and the Big Bad Wolf is a Shtreimel, so girls will learn not to desire a Shtreimel. And I'm most proud of my adaptation of "The Tale of Five Balloons," which is now called "The Tale of Five Rabbis," after I added a Shtreimel, sidelocks, and a beard to the balloons. Please Betzalel don't be sad, we'll bring you another Rebbe. It's okay Aharon, this is the end of every genius. And I feel how the child experiences elevation every time at the end when the red genius ascends to heaven.

And I take the child everywhere like a donkey in a carrier on my back. And my wife says: Let him walk by himself, let him crawl. -What? My wife is trying to turn the child into a snake! And my wife, who already knows a bit who she's dealing with, says to me: Yes, because snake is numerically equivalent to Messiah. And I'm shocked. How does she know? What, can you already feel it on him? Or are the forces of the Other Side trying again to sour the redemption? Satan! Who told her? And I eat myself up all afternoon: Either... or... And I watch helplessly as she does all the silly things with him for babies, and they laugh and laugh and laugh. Let them enjoy, it's their last time.

And at night I cry in bed, and he wakes up and crawls to my feet in the dark. And in complete silence, so my wife won't wake up from her dream, I take him on my back, and carry him through the empty and dead streets, to the navel of the world. And we enter with him riding on me into the Old City, climb to the top of the mountain, and I lay him on the rock, tie him so he won't escape, and ask in the absolute darkness: Did you tell mom?

Nightlife


domain: philosophy

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Salon Philosopher

The house philosopher of the Netanya School seeks a student

By: The philosopher no one has read

Socrates and his student  (source)

In the philosophy of the future, will is a force from the future that drives the present. There is no vision without hope, without purpose, and there can be no perception without will. Therefore, a computer without will and purpose will not perceive reality; it will only be a tool through which reality is processed, like a tool that processes the soil, as opposed to a plant that turns it into part of itself. It's a bit like Schopenhauer and Kant - categories without will and direction are merely information processing, but without knowledge. That's why our interests and tendencies so greatly influence perception - this is not a mistake or malfunction, this is how it should be. And this is how perception and knowledge are defined.

The Jewish concept of intelligence saw it as divided into three distinct categories: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (the lowest). There is no knowledge without sexuality, hence the age of criminal responsibility is the beginning of puberty. A computer today is certainly lacking knowledge, like a deaf person, a fool, and a minor. Knowledge is a condition for responsibility and the validity of a legal act, but it is also what happens in sex, as in the tree of knowledge and in knowing a woman [Translator's note: "to know" in Biblical Hebrew can also mean "to have sexual relations with"]. Therefore, it should be understood as a minimally functioning moral perception system, which includes sex as an immanent will, that is, the interest of the biological future. That's why it begins precisely at the onset of puberty. It's not enough to just understand what's good and what's bad, but there must also be an internal motive and internal temptation - to be of sound mind. In other words, translated into philosophical terms: epistemology cannot be separated from ethics.

The most neutral will, the purest epistemological will, is the will within learning, the interest in learning - the interest itself. Because once a will from the future is involved, we need to talk less about perception and knowledge and more about learning. And here, the computer is the best laboratory to understand epistemology - a gift that technology has given to philosophy. Because in a situation where mere information absorption is not enough and we understand that knowledge cannot be disconnected from the desire to know, and therefore knowledge is always part of learning, then the categories themselves in computerized (and human!) learning stem from the very desire to learn and generalize, otherwise they have no justification.

The categories are not just an addition of information processing, but they have an aspect of progress, of constant improvement, and of purpose (for example, prediction). Therefore, the more the goal will be will, that is, less of a force entirely under your control towards the future, and more of a force from the future that drives, something that captures you from within, like sex or interest, the more the computer's perception will be knowledge. And here lies a great message for the world of spirit - in the transition to a philosophy of learning, which is a more sophisticated version of the philosophy of the future, for the next generation.

Because a central goal of philosophy in the world of spirit is to secularize and explain spiritual miracles - to find explanations for them. For example, to explain the inconceivable effectiveness of mathematics in physics. Or the miracle of Athens and the Bible. Or the miracle in which the world so fits and confirms our preconceptions (this is Kant, for instance). Or the psychophysical miracle (Descartes), or the very ability to recognize concepts in a material world (the Greeks), or the miracle that language works (Wittgenstein). And one of the last miracles that the science of philosophy has not solved is the miracle that Hegel tried to solve: how everything always happens together. The miracle of interdisciplinary synchronization.

How is it possible that in a certain period, the same idea can be found starting in so many independent places in the world of spirit? For example, language in the twentieth century, which suddenly appeared in every possible discipline, including empirical discoveries in many exact sciences (such as genetics, computer science and mathematics, various information theories in physics), and in countless unrelated geographical locations simultaneously, and not after they read Wittgenstein, or were influenced, but autonomously. In fact, the opposite is true - Wittgenstein received his aura of tremendous influence precisely because of the rise of the idea of language in every possible place. This is the miracle of the accumulation of trends, which Hegel tried to explain with the help of another spiritual miracle - the spirit that drives the world, which is like trying to explain a miracle through God.

But, and this is perhaps the work of philosophy in every period, and the work of the historian in past periods, when there are many different trends in the world - it is often possible to find one or two dimensions that explain them - or do most of the work, and everything else is relatively small variations on them. In linear algebra, there can be a very complicated matrix on the surface, of vectors influencing in different directions, but if you find the eigenvectors, you understand in which dimensions to look at the matrix so that in them it is simple and understandable. The miracle was a miracle only if it had prophetic value, meaning it was unlikely. But if there are many parallel ideological directions in philosophy, and one of them is more sensitive to change than others, and therefore manages to capture it more accurately, and to point in the exact direction of the vector that explains the matrix in the best way - this is the great philosopher of the period.

And if its explanatory value is not too great, and can be related to natural processes, then there is no enormous miracle in the fact that the world of spirit does not disperse into countless different trends, but in each period there is a seemingly coordinated trend. That is, the value of finding this general direction is educational. To understand the past. But there is no way to derive the future from it, as Hegel or Marx wanted. If you are an especially great philosopher - then you can understand the present.

The important philosophers of each period and its central intellectuals are the eigenvectors of the spirit, which span its possibilities. And so it is in literature with the central writers, and so on. And that's why they are remembered, because not the entire matrix is important, but only the new directions they spanned in that period, and these are the exemplary writers and thinkers. The exemplarity is a compression of the history of the spirit. And that's why it's so rich, almost illogical in its layers - another apparent miracle, which as part of the great secularization of the spirit will also die.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

How Can One Resist the Media?

The time has come for a comprehensive cultural war - against the media (and no, not because of Bibi). The phenomenon of current affairs in our time exceeds the dimensions of yet another false consciousness among many and has reached the proportions of a hostile takeover of culture and human consciousness - and they must rise early to slay it before it destroys them (with deep thoughts about Bibi). Only a combination of "The Solid" and the ultra-Orthodox society will allow a stance of indifference to material and ephemeral life - the world of media - and engagement with the spirit and eternal life - the world of culture. The Middle Ages as an alternative to the Frankfurt School

By: A Former Journalist

A battle cry in the war for consciousness: Cultural innovation against cultural news and news culture (Source)

The time has come to conduct within culture a discussion that cannot take place in the media, and indeed will never take place in it - and that is the discussion about the media itself. Contrary to the common presentation (in the media!), the media is not a channel of cultural expression, and there is no symbiotic relationship or cooperation between them. On the contrary. In the current state of affairs, it can no longer be ignored that the media has become the greatest enemy of culture - literally destroying it in practice. Therefore, culture must either accept its decline - or fight back. And so culture today is tasked with the mighty (cultural!) mission of being the great enemy of the media - the resistance movement against it.

By its very nature, the media pretends to be culture - to be of importance - when it sells shallowness, and therefore it is the natural enemy of depth, as it steals the consciousness of the people and addicts the human mind. By virtue of being an attention machine, there is nothing the media won't do for attention. Pornography and propaganda are the media incarnate, not extreme cases, and therefore there is no contradiction between them, as we see today. Bad taste, kitsch, and cheap manipulation - these are the internal grammar of current affairs. Therefore, one must not argue with it in its language, in its medium, and on its field - but only in the internal mediums of culture: the creation of literature, art, cinema, research, and the journal. The battlefield with the media cannot be the media itself but the mass media itself: the internet. Culture competes with the media and the consciousness it creates on Facebook, for example. And this is a daily trench warfare. Every post about Bibi (for or against) or about the current affair promoted by the media (against or for) - is a loss.

The media falsely presents itself as the basis of democracy (a narrative that gives it legitimacy!), but in practice steals democracy from the in-depth discussion that takes place (and should take place!) in culture, and replaces it with reckless discussion - and it is the main responsible party for the collapse of democracy. The media led to fascism, and today leads to populism, and it is the most dangerous demon of our time: it is the greatest danger to world peace, to the human spirit, and to human culture. The media is violent, divisive, and corrupting, and it turns people hollow, stupid, and shallow. It's time to treat news sites as porn sites. It should be a shame to read news, talk about it, and think according to it. One who demonstrates proficiency in the heroes of current gossip is like one who is proficient in the names of porn stars.

The media that deals with culture has corrupted culture itself, and culture must not cooperate with it. The media is the number 1 importer of hollow American trends (which we heard about in the media!) into culture, and it floods the market with cheap and low-quality cultural imitations - what is called (in the media, of course) "popular culture". The media is responsible for the decline in value and level in our local culture - and for its loss of self-confidence, and worse - for the loss of cultural values from the local elite. It is also to blame for the degeneration and collapse of that elite (yes, I'm looking at you - "Haaretz"). The damage Benny Ziffer has done to Israeli literature is orders of magnitude greater than any damage any Minister (or Ministress) of Culture could do.

There is no point in engaging in "improving the media", because this is a structural and essential (and economic!) matter of mass media - massiveness. Therefore, the Marxist principle of the profit line is the first touchstone that will distinguish between media and culture: any project done from a commercial motive, and whose purpose is economic (or other non-cultural purpose), its means are manipulations for that purpose. Only a non-profit project, whose entire purpose is cultural, and which operates within and for culture - only it can be an alternative to the media. Culture for its own sake.

The biggest trouble with capitalism is precisely that it succeeds, too much, and therefore its material success is accompanied by cognitive takeover. That is, the spiritual and cultural price of capitalism is unbearable. But contrary to the insights of the Frankfurt School, the conclusion is not that capitalism should be abandoned. Just as the corruption of democracy by culture - does not conclude that democracy should be abandoned. On the contrary, capitalism and democracy are enabling institutions, thanks to the material prosperity and freedom they create, one can create, learn and research without profit motives and for the long term. At the societal level, they created a society of abundance that has never existed in history, and at the individual level, every person can free themselves from the race if they only develop a consciousness similar to that of "The Solid" or the ultra-Orthodox consciousness - and permission is granted.

The problem with capitalism and democracy is precisely the media, namely their total takeover of public and private consciousness, through politics, current affairs, and consumer society. As basic institutions they work well - but the media turns democracy and capitalism into totalitarian institutions: that control culture, thinking, and the soul. What is this similar to? The achievements of modern medicine. These unprecedented achievements allow for deep cultural life, and without physical health, consciousness could not engage in the spiritual world for a moment in comfort. And the media is equivalent to someone who occupies a person day and night with their bodily life - in neurotic anxieties about cancer and diseases, in obsessive physical and sexual activity, in consciousness that revolves around intensive monitoring of their nutrition and bowel activity - and thus wastes and reverses the liberating achievements of medicine. The body (quite healthy!) becomes from a means to an end - and takes over thought and soul, at a level that was not part of a person's consciousness even during the plague epidemics in the Middle Ages. Thus, the media as a contagious disease becomes the black death of consciousness - a global spiritual epidemic. Trump and Bibi are viruses.

The solution is of course the medieval solution: to return to a sharp value division between the inferior and physical realm and the higher and spiritual realm, and not to allow the physical and lower part of the state and society (democracy, capitalism) to enslave the higher part (culture) to it. Politics is a dirty, shameful, ugly, and petty thing, and it is indeed so, and so are the people engaged in it - and only the media has turned them into cultural heroes. It is the media that has empowered a (!) trivial politician like Bibi and turned him into the rock of our existence and the center of being - precisely because of his sensitivity to everything said in the "media" (which flatters and pays off for it very much, economically as well). In a hundred years, only in nursing homes will there be people who remember who Bibi is - and even there probably not so much. But the obsessive preoccupation with Bibi comes at the expense of much more important pursuits - both in the world of action and in the world of spirit - which only they will be remembered for generations, hence the enormous damage that the disproportionate preoccupation with Bibi causes to everyone addicted to him and to the media pumping him. Like a virus that takes over a supercomputer to run foolish Bitcoin mining - so the media wastes the Jewish mind. No material investment in education will help when the media dictates the social ethos and crowns its heroes created in its image (the celebs, the politicians) - and the result is sub-culture. The collapse of education is a cultural problem - not a financial one.

The lower layers of existence are vital (is there anyone who doesn't go to the bathroom?) - but their takeover of the higher layers is the disaster of our time. Culture has powerful weapons to fight the media: its intellectual ridicule, comic mockery, moral denunciation, and humiliation of those engaged and preoccupied with it. No less important is the fortification of an ideology that gives the media its true importance: the bowel activity of society, or at most the pancreas, when today it pretends to replace the brain (no wonder society behaves as hollow-brained?). Culture has fought in the past against many powerful monsters of their time (the church, monarchy, sexuality itself, idolatry, and more), but could overcome them in the culture war: because this war is conducted on its own field. As long as it fights on the opponent's field - the field of the media - it will be defeated bitterly, and will remain a defeated culture as it is today.

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