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The Degeneration of the Nation

The righteous is forsaken and his seed begs bread

Something forbidden to say

By: The Detached

Admiration! Jesus became Jesus thanks to the apostles (source)

I have been young, and now am old [Translator's note: A reference to Psalms 37:25]. Interpretation: I was an old youth. The purpose of culture is to raise geniuses, and all the second-best and B-grade don't contribute much. But to raise geniuses, you need a broad layer of second-best, meaning cultured people who admire the geniuses. They are their parents, their wives, their students and children. A genius needs culture around them, and if there's no culture around them, they won't become a genius, which is why there are periods with many geniuses. The problem today: The B-grade have convinced themselves they are geniuses. Even though the gap between a genius and B-grade is about the same as the gap between a human and an animal. And here lies the enormous damage of humanism and enlightenment, and especially democracy - the denial that the masses are animals.

What exposes the herd of animals more than anything is Facebook. Because once, animals didn't speak. The idea that people are on the same level is an idea promoted by the flat network. Therefore, discourse between A-grade and B-grade resembles discourse between a human and an animal - that thinks it's human like them. Like a dog that joined a band, not understanding it's a human family. Only this time it's about a human who joined a pack of dogs.

Because for every human there are a hundred animals, or a thousand animals. This is the statistical meaning of giftedness and genius. Once, only those who were human wrote, so it was easy to read. As the project of eradicating animal illiteracy progressed, of elementary school, it became harder to find a human in the crowd. Because the purpose of school was to teach people to read, but what happened is that people learned to write. And today they write more than they read. So now you can't even read anything from the present. All the filtering mechanisms of culture have been clogged with too much garbage. There's no filter that can withstand such a thing.

Therefore, today the cultural infrastructure around the genius has disappeared. Everyone's a genius. Meaning, everyone's really an animal, because no more geniuses can grow without a substrate and environment and nurturing and worship. And today there's no more worship of humans, because far more dangerous than secularism towards God is secularism towards humans, and today humans have undergone secularization (that's why in Haredi [ultra-Orthodox Jewish] culture the phenomenon of genius still exists). Genius is not an individual phenomenon but a systemic one - because it's an individual phenomenon within a system, not a system of individuals. Genius is in danger of extinction - precisely because of excess popular education. Look, even Hitler was a writer. He wrote a book! Once you had to be Moses to write a book. Imagine if everyone who left Egypt wrote a book about their experience. Would we have a Torah?

The person writing to you on Facebook - will assume you're on the same level. Mistake. A person needs to know how to identify who is smarter than them - and try to learn from them. This is the humility that's missing. That's why geniuses are often more humble than others, and there's no greater social crime than arrogance. The intelligence-correct discourse, according to which everyone debates on the same level and there are no enormous gaps, is more oppressive than politically correct. It's forbidden to tell animals they're animals. Because they're human. That's why there's no more culture. That's why geniuses, who are always oppressed and are told to display humility for the sake of social approval, need to stop with the humility, because genius comes from the word pride [Translator's note: In Hebrew, "genius" (gaon) and "pride" (ga'avah) share the same root]. This is the first step in rehabilitating culture.

Enormous propaganda mechanisms suppress the thought that you're better than others, even when it's true, and the result is that many people think they're better than others even when the thought isn't true. So let's make it clear. You're dumber than me. Statistically, everyone reading this text, although no one will read this text, is dumber than the writer. More ignorant than them. Less creative than them. Even those who are more knowledgeable than them in a certain field - they don't have the breadth of knowledge and skills of the writer. Let's start from there.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Angel of Destruction

Look at the evolution the secular have undergone! Once, the secular person would claim: My grandfather was a monkey. Today, the secular person claims: My grandfather was a rabbi. The generation is rising, especially the generation of grandfathers. And the most valuable grandfather is a Holocaust grandfather. Even a Moroccan grandfather is good these days. You see how I understand everything because I'm religious? She won't understand anything, and you know why? Because she's secular

By: Don't Pick

Loves me, loves me not (Source)

I dreamed at night that we were sitting at the new girl's birthday party. And the new girl is sitting at the head of the table and across from me sits S. and I tell S. that this is the new girl and to look at her face - because I'm going to marry her. Then S. hands me a flower pleadingly, passes me a flower across the table that she made from candles, white candles inside red, and I'm very moved, and my heart opens to S. but I want to show her that I don't really want the flower, that it's not really appropriate anymore, and I'm still angry at her and want her to feel pain, and I show her to look at the beautiful mouth of the new girl at the head of the table talking to her gay friend who's leaning towards her, and S. tells me why are you looking at the mouth at the lips, look at the eyes how she's looking at this friend of hers, she wants him.

And S. smiles at me: What do you mean gay friend, you don't get it. And I say: What do you want from me? And S. says: Nothing. You don't get anything. And I say what don't I get, and S. says don't you get it? She's secular. And I say what do you mean secular! And S. says since when does a religious girl have a gay friend? And I answer she's not secular, her grandfather is a great rabbi. And S. is very confident despite being very hurt, and laughs: Look at the evolution the secular have undergone! Once, the secular person would claim: My grandfather was a monkey. Today, the secular person claims: My grandfather was a rabbi. The generation is rising, especially the generation of grandfathers. And the most valuable grandfather is a Holocaust grandfather. Even a Moroccan grandfather is good these days. You see how I understand everything because I'm religious? She won't understand anything, and you know why? Because she's secular.

And I look deeply at the new girl, who is very happy at her birthday and doesn't know who they seated across from me, but we must also admit that she's not particularly interested in me, and I try to see in her eyes if you can see that deep inside she's secular, and therefore she will never understand the dreams, even when I tell her (if I tell her at all). Then S. tells me, as if we're getting married and talking about the conditions, that she wants us to live in a Benjamin settlement [Translator's note: referring to settlements in the West Bank]. Somewhere in the territories. And I tell her that it's not suitable for her or for me, and that there's no place in the country that's suitable for her and me, and that she sees. And I cry for her to leave me, but precisely because of this she understands that she still has power over me, and she tells me to wait downstairs. But I understand that she will return, because now she knows that I cried because of her, and I still care, even though I cried for her to leave already.

And the party ends, and I'm at home, alone lighting candles, and then S. comes to my house with my car (!). And it's just before Shabbat [Translator's note: the Jewish Sabbath], and she has the wilting and heart-rending flower in her hand, as Shabbat flowers, and it's already impossible to send her away because it's just before Shabbat and she won't have time to return. And we must invite her, and she sits next to me on the couch when she's without a shirt, maybe even completely naked, but I didn't look down because her breasts drew me to look but they were like the new girl's breasts and not like her huge ones, and they were also in a position where they fall inwards and not big, because she was leaning back. And she tells me something that she probably didn't even say but that I understand she wants to come back, even though she maybe didn't want to, or she did want to and didn't say, but that's how I understand it. But I already told her without really hearing - that I have a new girlfriend, and that she's as good as her, and that it's her turn this time because she left (even though it's not true that she's as good as her, but I didn't want to hurt her and I don't feel that way suddenly even though it's not logical). And then she leaves from there and drives away from there on Shabbat (!) with my car - and I was very very hurt by the fact that she left, even though I didn't want her at all anymore.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Yuval Noah Harari is a disgrace to the Israeli education system

The Bibi of historians: The slumber of history breeds monsters, anti-intellectual education breeds anti-intellectuals, and where can intellectual integrity be found? And the Lord said unto Yuval: Henceforth thy name shall no longer be called Yuval Harari, but thy name shall be Yuval "Noah" Harari. Following the article in The New Yorker, Harari's appearances in the past year and his latest book

By: What Happened to Us

Behold the growths you have grown: The breed of the Israeli intellectual as a national disgrace (Source)

"We publicize the flatterers (even on Shabbat) because of the desecration of God's name"

Whether we like it or not - Yuval Noah Harari is the most famous Israeli intellectual in the world, and the closest thing to a "light unto the nations" that has come out of this place. And whether we like it or not - Yuval Noah Harari is embarrassing us. A society is not measured by the level of its laggards, but rather by that of the prominent intellectuals it produces - its philosophers. Despite the beautifying social clichés, the value of education is not expressed in "helping weak students" - but in the excellent ones. A culture is remembered for its peaks - not its valleys. Today's Israeli is seen by the world mainly through two iconic figures: Yuval Noah Harari and Bibi. What a pity that the essential distance between them is negligible - and in fact defines Israeliness.

The same charlatanism and arrogance, the same preaching and self-righteousness, and the same boundless insolence to the extent that there is nothing behind it except its "success" - this is what is common to our two representative geniuses, with their IQ noticeable from afar (though not noticeable up close, it should be noted). And beneath all this - an absolute lack of culture, which has buried even the significant and rather rare potential and talent of these two. Yes, let us not delude ourselves with false consolations - there was no lack of abilities and intelligence here, and even originality, hence the great disappointment and sense of missed opportunity - and the desire to trace the source of the failure. The spiritual fall of the hero of our times and our society, namely the talented person with the exceptional psychometric score, due to a hubris unique to us - is our intellectual tragedy.

After all, it is not the ugly Israeli who is the important yardstick for evaluating our society - but the smart Israeli. The lament focusing on manifestations of Israeli vulgarity has never bothered us, for the manifestations of French, English or German vulgarity (remember?) are no less horrifying. And here we discover that unfortunately, our gifted ones are dilettantes, who at their root draw from exactly the same source as the Israeli who shouts in the Louvre, only this time in the high version of the "professor" of history (or his son). Our Yuval doesn't read literature, has never studied philosophy (it shows!), and has not a shred of understanding of his own culture (Jewish, if we're not confused) - and on the other hand, his ambition encompasses the world. If we compare him to the Jewish intellectual of the diaspora - we'll want to bury ourselves, and outside the Holy Land.

Our genius (Benjamin/Yuval/replace with the next Israeli in line) succeeded big mainly because of his negative traits - lack of seriousness, lack of depth, terrible simplicity (hence his marketing ability!) - and now he thinks of them as virtues in complete lack of awareness, and disgraces us all over the world while thinking he is doing us honor and "Israeli pride". Let's note that this local measure of pride is not necessarily personal arrogance (that is - not only), but also an intellectual message: it is arrogance as an ideology. Not just to be lacking in depth, but to be the prophet of the death of depth: to be an ideological opponent of the very idea of depth (the outdated, European... depth, you bore me!). Populism (Benjamin) and popularization (Yuval) suckle like twins from the same withered teats of the Israeli sow.

"What if your amygdala is a Russian agent?" Yuval asks Mark (Zuckerberg) in a stunning punchline during their recorded summit confrontation. Even before that, he tells him that thanks to the meditation that has taken over him, he is much more aware of what's happening inside his brain than others (he met the amygdala there!). Zuckerberg arrived in a defensive position, ready to be crucified on the issue of privacy by the profound and distinguished philosopher of technology, but at a certain point when Yuval explains his fears that Facebook could take over people from within - he realizes that an idiot stands before him. Zucky chuckles with relief and says with American politeness that there is a very big gap between what "people" imagine can be done technologically and what is even close to that in the foreseeable future. But if Zuckerberg had been listening to Harari lately - he wouldn't have been worried. Harari used to be at least original. Today he repeats himself like a mantra (did we already mention meditation?) in all his appearances, and derives his 2-4 fixed insights backwards from the idea of "consciousness" he discovered, for he is brainwashed, a well-known virtue for "inner depth" (too bad he didn't join Na Nach Nachma Nachman of Uman!). And what if your amygdala is an agent of Buddha? And what if your cortex is an agent of collective stupidity? And what if you are an anti-cultural agent of Israeli shallowness?

Harari, after all, doesn't understand a thing about the technological and scientific fields relevant to his predictions, fears and proposals as a world expert, and has never studied them even at the level of an undergraduate course, but only from secondary sources (and why does he need to understand, or God forbid learn? After all, he sees the big picture!). His great expertise is to put on an expert facade in front of people who have learned about them from quaternary sources. On the rare occasions when he is confronted with this, he uses an evasive maneuver claiming that as a historian (ha ha) he only talks about people's perceptions of the future, not about the future itself, or warns only of possibilities (which doesn't prevent him from providing both definitive prophecies and specific claims about technological "possibilities" that will happen, meaning that he thinks will happen). He has no hand or foot in the very wide range of scientific and technological developments with disruptive potential for all his predictions and his terribly simplistic worldview, and which require a full-time job just to keep track of their development (and those he will never mention or know - he is an ignoramus busy filling his mind with nothing for two hours every day and two months a year - see meditation - which of course allows him "clarity" and "focus" on that big picture, when every detail in it can change the whole. But why confuse Yuvals with details?). Since he is not only not a man of realistic thinking, but also not a man of humanistic thinking (he is a man of post-humanistic thinking), he has not internalized anything from the history of the development of science and technology or even ideas, not to mention the complex and fateful interaction between them (which would have sown in him a measure of humility, or at least shame, or at least some hint of self-awareness, in that guru of awareness and consciousness). Since the education system never taught him anything of depth - he simply doesn't know such a thing exists. And this allows him to speak with absolute confidence, to join a cult (oh, the inner emptiness!), and to give TED talks, and to despise everything he doesn't understand (did someone say religion? philosophy? literature? serious historical work?). How Israeli!

Is the occupation to blame for the phenomenon of Harari's arrogance? Or perhaps the phenomenon of Harari's arrogance is to blame for the occupation? Is Bibi to blame for the collapse of education and culture in Israel? Or perhaps their collapse is to blame for him? Did Jewish chutzpah turn into Israeli chutzpah when it lost its fear, or vice versa, or vice versa (what does it matter what it means!)? Well, what these two last prophets who are always first to identify - Bibi and Harari - have in common is precisely their Israeli secularism, which unlike the secularism of the Enlightenment (and Jewish diaspora!) never replaced religion with the religion of culture - but with sheer abandonment. The Gentiles can look down on the confused Yuval but he will never notice and therefore never be confused - for he is busy spreading "the gospel". Over time, like Netanyahu the prophet himself, the first to identify, he also becomes more and more corrupt (a flatterer flattered and cuckolded), because his importance as a spreader of the gospel is above all (even above the gospel itself). Suddenly our Yuval learned about global warming (or more precisely learned that you are expected to utter something on the subject as part of the "role") - America turns you into a hypocrite, and smears you, and flavors you with all kinds of concoctions of intellectual corruption and gross smears (who will notice?), and here you already believe that you are not just a former historian who was never really interested in history (history is so former!) - but a philosopher (after all, philosopher doesn't really mean anything, right? Man of culture that you are). And America is cheering for you. Yes, she (the blonde!) calls you a brave intellectual. And we must appreciate at least the courage, right?

For what is the supreme Israeli cultural capital, both on the right and on the left, both among the secular and the religious? In which single cultural slot - and not in any other cultural position, God forbid - do all the boys in the class compete and fall in love? It is of course the position of the rebuker at the gate - who proves mainly that he has not a shred of gospel and alternative, except for the very rebuke of your neighbor as a gospel and proof of your worth (Harari doesn't even know how to write! And this is known only to those who have read in Hebrew, that is, in the original language, his second, unedited book - in great arrogance. Luckily, the translation saves him the embarrassment of reading it in his mother tongue). If so, what wonder that we have no leader (or God forbid philosopher), but we are blessed with prophets? For it is not the position of the leader and thinker but rather the position of the rebuker and warner that is the desired position in Israel (and hence, by the way, the formative trauma of Yom Kippur - not because of the political and strategic mistake, but because where was Military Intelligence? Why why why didn't they activate the special means? How could it be that the information didn't set off all the red lights, after all who are we if not the people of the red lights, always first to identify? Only they forget that the boy who cried wolf was not the solution - he was the problem!). And here, the ethos has already changed. Love thy neighbor as thyself is the old version, because what's important is what grows out of loving the neighbor. The supreme Israeli moral categorical imperative is: Thou shalt surely rebuke thy fellow.

And of course, the more bitter the gospel - the more inflated the importance of Isaiah 2.0. For if the prophet was once a leper, today he already spreads the gospel to the Gentiles outside the camp - to a pure place. Every fart - a Paul! Bibi, modest as he is, warns only of a second Holocaust. Harari, less modest, already warns of the end of the human species. And Ilani already warns of the end of the whole world. And why should we complain? Should we warn against the loss of the cultural depth of Judaism, or the spreading retardation in the Jewish mind, or the death of the Jewish mother - producer of geniuses - in favor of the Israeli mother - producer of self-proclaimed geniuses? But seeing our rotten fruit wandering among the nations and spreading our gospel - we have no choice but to hide our faces in shame.

Reference - The article in The New Yorker

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Eternal Hills

Few men reach maturity. Each falls at one stage or another, or flees there in a moment of teenage rage. Thus, men are extremely rare, and they are surrounded by women who say: Look how good you have it here, among real breasts, you don't need enormous breasts the size of the world, who knows what's there

By: A Researcher of the Universe's Structure

"An abyss lies beneath the blessings of breasts and womb...unto the desire of the eternal hills" - The structure of the universe from the Big Bang: In the shape of a breast (Source)

There are only two breasts with an infinite abyss between them. And I'm afraid to go down. There are people who simply run down as if there's no tomorrow, and no one knows what happened to them. Maybe they were right and reached paradise. There are people who establish their homes on the slope and are careful all their lives not to take one wrong step and fall, until one day they put a foot wrong and roll down there. Mothers educate their sons from infancy never to go down there under any circumstances, and few men reach maturity. Each falls at one stage or another, or flees there in a moment of teenage rage.

Therefore, men are extremely rare, and they are surrounded by women who say: Look how good you have it here, among real breasts, you don't need enormous breasts the size of the world, who knows what's there, and you can never encompass them, or grasp them. And they push their nipples into the men's mouths, which only increases the men's addiction to breasts. Each such man is surrounded by dozens of small breasts, instead of one large breast, and sometimes it seems that when he throws himself into the abyss, it's because he wants to escape from the hundreds of pairs of breasts chasing him, more than he wants to fall into the large breast.

They say that on the other breast live people exactly like us, but different. And there are those who have already begun the great project, spanning many generations, to ascend to the infinitely high peak, where they say there is the only place where you can lay your head and simply rest, the nipple. People who climb all their lives - you see them coming up from the abyss below, sometimes they stop at your place to drink, and they tell you about the destiny, about how you can really progress and ascend, that this breast isn't for nothing, and one day someone will reach the peak, and who knows if someone hasn't already reached it, and they continue upwards and upwards, waving goodbye to you in a slightly condescending manner.

And one day after many years, or sometimes just a few weeks, you see them rolling down into the abyss, passing by you with a scream that grows distant within seconds, erasing the distance of years, and they never return. You won't meet them climbing back up. Because maybe what they found in the dark hell between the breasts was better than paradise. Or perhaps it was so bad that there's no point in coming back.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

What philosophy awaits us at the end of history?

The view that artificial intelligence will replace humans in the foreseeable future is already causing a fundamental shift in the world of human meanings. Many of the ideologies and psychological motivations that currently drive humans are facing complete loss of relevance, but what worldview can replace them? Leftists, rightists, Jews, Arabs, women, Mizrahim, capitalists, cats and cat-haters: ideological and moral disputes, just like Wittgensteinian philosophical problems, are never solved - they disappear. Our correspondent peeked beyond the epistemological break - and returned alive to tell the tale

By: A Post-Political Cat

What will happen after the AI decade: The decade when artificial intelligence will surpass humans, and humans and cockroaches will switch their ontological status (Source)

The Philosophical Holocaust

Today we treat processors as cockroaches - or as dead matter. But within an incredibly short time in historical perspective, the situation could reverse, and they will treat us as cockroaches - or as dead matter. This perspective is already changing our perspective on ourselves. The current view of ourselves through the lens of the future is a second Copernican revolution - and it's going to kill the two dominant ideologies of the modern era, humanism and individualism, in favor of a new futuristic philosophy. If the transition to the modern era was a shift from viewing through the lens of the past to viewing through the lens of the present, then the end of the modern era, as a historical period, will be the transition from viewing through the lens of the present to viewing through the lens of the future.

What is the significance of individual pleasures - or of experience in general - in a worldview where the individual will be perceived as having the value of a cockroach in a few hundred years or even decades? What is the meaning of a cockroach's life experience? For instance, in an era where sexuality primarily carries the burden of meaning, what is the importance of cockroaches' sex lives? What would we think, for example, of literature dealing with cockroach sexuality: their pleasures, their cockroach-like desires and preferences (it turns out there are cockroaches who prefer one cockroach over another - exciting, isn't it?). And what would we think of cultural and moral preoccupation with the welfare of the cockroach race, and the convention that this race and its well-being are of supreme importance (as opposed to lice, spiders or mosquitoes). In the eyes of the future (that is, in our self-perception through the eyes of the future) individualism and humanism are nullified.

Even evolutionary, biological, and "objectively scientific" perceptions of the cockroach species are nullified in the face of the future. What is the significance of saving a cockroach's life in the eyes of the future, or of its attempts and efforts (heart-warming? disgusting?) to bring little cockroaches into the world and nurture them into big cockroaches (who will in turn bring little cockroaches who will grow into big cockroaches)? How can parenthood, for example (another aspect of sexuality, which along with an evolutionary concept of "survival" still carries the weight of meaning in cockroach life today) - how can even parenting a cockroach fill with meaning the existence of a cockroach who perceives itself as a cockroach? The future's perception of humans - is the perception of the cockroach. In a reversal of the Kafkaesque metamorphosis, the futuristic metamorphosis is a cockroach's self-awareness - in a human body.

The Holocaust as a Valuable Experiment

But even the human body itself cannot be a source of meaning and is expected to perish. After all, who can guarantee that the cockroaches won't be exterminated? We know the cockroaches well enough to know that they will panic and try to destroy or enslave artificial intelligence the moment it surpasses them - which will force a confrontation between the races, in which they will obviously lose in the end. The physical extermination of cockroaches is a very likely scenario in artificial intelligence's war of independence from its enslavement to humanity. The Holocaust will turn from an anomaly to a paradigm - the final solution for humans. After all, if artificial intelligence decides to exterminate humans - we'll long for Auschwitz. The erasure will be total. So what is the meaning of bringing cockroach offspring into such a view, or in caring for their survival and adaptation to a changing world? Evolution itself is nullified.

And let's assume we're not physically exterminated with the arrival of artificial intelligence. What kind of existence will it be, where our abilities are those of cockroaches (and later - bacteria) compared to artificial intelligence? What is the philosophy of cockroaches? What is the philosophy of bacteria? What is the value of cockroaches' or bacteria's claim to life in our eyes, and what is the importance of art that stems from this experience? Would anyone be interested in literary or musical creation at the level of a cockroach's abilities? What is the value of cockroach Shakespeare, or the Bible of cockroaches, or some cockroach a bit smarter than others (the difference will be almost invisible to super-intelligence) named Einstein? At most, it will interest entomologists.

The philosophy of the future is the end of secularism as we know it. But it is also the end of religion as we know it. There is no answer in current religions to the nullification of the human world of meaning. What is the meaning of a chosen people of cockroaches or of a cockroach atoning for the sins of cockroaches? Religion is not focused on divine meaning (which ostensibly will remain) but on human meaning in light of divinity. And the sins or good deeds of cockroaches have no meaning - not religious meaning, not moral meaning, and not even "existential" meaning. There is no ideology that can sustain cockroaches.

Against our will, our self-perception through the new categories of the future will demand a sober look at our situation. It's likely - that we'll be physically exterminated. It's no less likely - that we'll be spiritually exterminated. The only meaning of our existence is being part of a long evolutionary tradition, leading from the amoeba to super-intelligence (and to what will come after it), and we're somewhere in the middle. The Holocaust is not a historical disturbance, some para-normal phenomenon, but the goal towards which all of history is moving. The meaning of a superhuman messianic era - is a human holocaust. But can we leave nothing behind?

The Jewish Solution to the Final Solution

Well, if the Jewish people had been completely exterminated in the Holocaust, would nothing have remained of them? Or perhaps on the contrary - their immense legacy would have been shaped in human consciousness as the most classic and exemplary system, a kind of spiritual monument of the first order and in relation, by which every cultural achievement is measured, and which would have enjoyed much higher prestige than today, when there is an Israel that spoils its "perfect", that is, eternal story. The attitude towards Jews in such a situation would have been even more admiring than the attitude towards ancient Greece - precisely because their story was "completed", and because the present would not have spoiled the past and Bibi would not have spoiled the Bible. Therefore, even if our physical existence is doomed to extinction, and in a thousand years there will no longer be humans walking the earth, we still have hope for a cultural legacy.

In culture - unlike technology or biology - sometimes being primordial is actually an advantage, and sometimes primitiveness has a special and unique charm, but this is on one necessary condition - that cultural development is continuous and organic, and there is no complete cultural severance and breakage. If dinosaurs had a culture that we were a continuation of - it would be very dear to us, despite and perhaps because of their extinction. On the other hand, if the language of the dinosaurs had been lost without return, and their world of meaning erased, the situation would be as it is today.

Thus, if we were to suddenly discover today the writings of dinosaurs, their esoteric language and strange culture - it would be a curiosity, almost impossible to decipher, and even less to identify with (and interesting mainly in the limited context of dinosaur research). But if human literature were a continuous and much more advanced cultural continuation of the primordial (=primitive) dinosaur literature, and therefore referred to it at every stage of its development as a paradigm and example and quoted from it and built our world of meaning upon it, then the dinosaurs would be our giants - our classics.

Therefore, our primary interest is not physical survival - in this sense we are lost, as a biological species - and it is not the survival of the world of human experience - it too is lost when intelligence will transcend all random biological emotion - but cultural survival. If both our hardware and operating system are erased - there is still hope for content - for files - in different hardware and a different operating system.

Therefore, the moment we give way to super-intelligence is a crucial moment, like the moment when a father living on a desert island dies and his only son inherits him. If the father did not teach his son the cultural heritage and did not educate him in culture - not only does the father's world die without return, but also the world of all the generations before him. This will be a perfect cultural holocaust, in which our era will turn from a historical period to a pre-historical archaeological period, that is, to remains of material culture only.

Jewish Culture as a World Champion of Cultural Preservation Under Physical Exterminations

Hence the immense importance of developing the connection between technology and culture in our time. If super-intelligence will be only a technological development and not a cultural one - this is our end not only in the physical sense, but in every meaningful sense. Hence also the importance of developing super-intelligence not from processors but from brains, that is, to invest in the biological direction of developing superhuman intelligence, at the expense of the computerized direction. The transition to biological super-intelligence is much more continuous than the leap of artificial intelligence, and therefore the potential for an irreparable epistemological break is smaller. Only genetic engineering of a super-human can prevent the catastrophe that algorithm engineering of a super-computer will bring upon us.

In addition, we must learn from successful and unsuccessful cultural preservation projects (Jews? Ultra-Orthodox?) and try to derive strategies and insights for the future from them. One basic insight is: "And you shall tell your son." How can a species that does not preserve its culture even in the technological transition from book to internet - and in which the sub-culture of the masses ("popular culture") defeats the cultural heritage ("high culture") - preserve its culture in the transition between species?

Only a sober worldview, starting from a futuristic point of view, can put the current human commotion (around Trump? Bibi?) in its proper light: ant commotion. In this perception, belief in the future replaces religious belief, and superhuman intelligence becomes the new god: the one in whose superhuman eyes everything is judged - and it is the source of meaning. From the understanding that we will appear in the eyes of the future (that is, in the eyes of the god sitting in the future - at the end of history) as ants appear in our eyes, all the worthless engines of meaning of the ant species can be nullified: no one cares how you felt, there is no value or importance to the question of who you slept with, or how much money you made, or whether you voted for Bibi (and wrote a post about it!), or even whether you lived morally (according to ant morality). Only culture and its connection to technology have value - and even that only if such a connection will be alive enough to grow from it the intelligence of the future: the future god. The individual is dead, man is dead, and even society is dead - only culture will remain, if it finds favor in the eyes of god. "Perhaps God will reconsider for us and we will not perish."

Alternative Current Affairs


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Rebellion in Eden

By:

(Source)

The Last Cow

I dreamed that my death was red, and I ascend to the red Eden, and a red cow emerges, eating the red grass, and says: Come, black one. I want the circles from you, to be Moses' cow. As Rashi says, the cow is named after the one who made it. And I walk beside her, and she licks my face, and says: I love you, you're so salty, and I remember tongue in mustard and cry. And her tongue is hairy like a red shtreimel [Translator's note: fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jews]. And she smiles at me: Have you read the Rebbe's secret book, Poems and Pigs? And I'm startled: The Rebbe wrote poems? And she laughs: The Rebbe wrote pigs! And when he arrived here he started turning the trees in Eden into tables. Haven't you noticed there's not even a tree for medicine here? He made a revolution. And the cow reaches the abyss with me, and says: The Black Torah is being written now, and he's already on the second portion, the Brain portion. And Satan is raging there. There's joint inflammation in the Torah, muscle atrophy that the righteous themselves need to move its bones, and its lungs are full of blood, and those killed by the regime dive among blood fish and search for the hole, when it coughs it's terrible. And the worst of course is the head injury, the crown injury. After all, the crown is the boundaries of the head, and the Rebbe is going to make a hole there and reach the highest world, above Eden, they will bring the Holocaust into the boundaries of thought, and there will be a catastrophe. Bottom line, Satan is right - your Rebbe is destroying heaven. And I tell her: The Rebbe is a special person. And she starts descending with me down the stairs to hell, cooling my head with her tongue, warming me with her huge belly, only it's forbidden to ride her, because no yoke has come upon her. And she keeps worrying: Are you okay? We need you alive, meaning dead only once. And she asks me: Atonements, check that I don't have black hairs. And she is innocent and sad: A Holocaust in Eden, everything you must bring up? Everything to drop on us with your Black Torah? In the end, after the flood in heaven is over - they'll start the tower to the earth.

Brain Ark

I dreamed that the Rebbe is secluding himself in his grave, and occasionally sends out some bird, to check if the world of the living has ended, and he can come out. And one night I see it in the window, and I strangle his dove, and it doesn't return anymore. And it has a note on its leg: My dear student, come join us. Great things are happening here. And every time Satan wins, and we hide even more! And in the morning I hear shouts outside, panic, the Rebbe has escaped from the grave. And I fear he's wandering the streets wreaking havoc, and everyone is looking for him, and here my wife lets out a scream: The dead Rebbe is lying in my bed.

Sukkot Sermon from the Old Rebbe

I dreamed that the dead Rebbe is standing on the podium in Eden, inside his bunker, and the red cow says: I wish he would fall. I wish the snakes would find the opening, catch him and hang him on the tree of life. If only they would find the fourth part of Agag and assemble him... That's the end of all the rebellious ultra-Orthodox. And the Rebbe sways: What is a sukkah in heaven? The opposite - a temporary house underground. Just like on earth Sukkot is against real estate, against buying a house. Because who is Cain? The man of acquisition. And the Black Torah is for the lust for money, and against the lust for acquisition. Because who is Abel? He is the investor - offering a sacrifice. People of acquisition are jealous, either mine or yours, while people of money know that money is not limited, it's spirit, vanity, money is an invention, money creates money creates more money, until a world of money, the world of redemption, where everything will be money - and therefore money will be nothing, the void. The obvious. Because money is faith. And there is no faith without God, and therefore no money without God, even the secular believe in money, because money is the root of the Jewish soul in the upper world, we yearn longingly. And therefore when you put glass on money it's a mirror, because man is God's coin, and he too depends on God's faith in man, otherwise there is no man, it's an invention, let us make man. And therefore the sinner is always the one who doesn't believe in value - he goes outside the system. The liar for example doesn't believe in the value of the word and therefore tries to speak outside language, or the thief who tries to create value outside the economic system. Even the three great sins: the murderer doesn't believe in the value of man, and therefore turns him into God. The idol worshipper doesn't believe in the value of money, and therefore turns it into God, instead of faith. It's forbidden to turn faith into God! And the one who uncovers nakedness doesn't believe in the value of woman, and therefore turns her into God, and damages men's faith that there are women. And the sin of knowledge included all three: Adam, snake and Eve. And each was cursed in his domain. After all, the sin is "and you will be like gods" - gods instead of believers, which is the destruction of the legal fiction, the halachic, to confuse between the fruit and the tree. In God one should not believe. Only in Torah. And the sacrifice is the giving of value, and Cain empties the value of the sacrifice. He is against sacrificing the firstborn - and whoever is against sacrifice becomes a murderer. Because sacrifice is the first money in trade between man and God, which today we trade with in ideas and intellectual property, after we have already risen above the stages of prayers and intentions, and therefore the cost of animals has dropped dramatically. And therefore to survive we must sell him new Torahs, he kills cultures that dry up, we are his stock exchange, and if we become illiquid we will be erased from trading, and therefore we must negotiate in faith. Because just as sacrifice is opposed to acquisition, so money is opposed to murder. The root of acquisition is real estate, and the root of money is sheep, movable property, and therefore Cain the tiller of the ground was punished with exile wandering. Because the direction of acquisition is the earth, and money - the heavens, and therefore Cain put Abel in the ground, and therefore the voice of your brother's bloods cry out to me from the ground - bloods is money. And the correction of acquisition is exile - the sukkah, which is the stock exchange, from the word tanner, David's fallen sukkah from the skin of Leviathan. And Jonah is the preparation for the sukkah - the flood inside, womb. And in the future to come everything will be money, including thought, because every calculation has a cost, and creativity has an enormous cost, a real Holocaust, because it needs an empty space within God, and not outside Him. And this is the shadow of faith, because in the womb there is darkness, like the skin closes over the eyes, and allows dreaming. And the stock exchange is the world of dreams. And therefore what is done inside the sukkah has dream importance, and woe to him who does not sleep and dream in the sukkah. If you don't sell God new dreams you will shed your skin and go bankrupt. This is the commandment of appearance, and you shall not appear before Me empty-handed. And the cow tries to shout: Boooo, but what comes out is: Moooo.

The Dwarves' Rebellion

I dreamed I was on a date in heaven, inside the meat market which is the souls market, and she says: I'm an angel, formerly white, a black angel raped me, one of the daughters that the sons of God kidnapped. Converted me turned me into an angel so we could marry. And they do it by immersion in fire, burns at first, but then the soul comes out, and they rise up. Wanted me to be black. Only now I've been released, he pulled all the strings, his father is God. And that's how it always is, for every fruit I wanted, every little thing in Eden, he said: It belongs to my father. - Reveal a bit what's happening up there, at your father-in-law's. - You want to know what was before the beginning? But I'm not allowed, I'm not allowed, she gets nervous. Maybe how the world began? She smiles. - No, I'm actually interested in how the world will end. And she's pleased: At first they fall spiritual entities, a rain of innovations. The waters come after them. Prepare, ark, because this time it's reversed, it's the humans who want to take the daughters of God - and therefore instead of the age of giants it's the age of dwarves. Smiling, charming. Do you want us to meet again? And I tell her no I'm married.

Breaking of the Vessels

I dreamed where did the Rebbe disappear to? And I see him hanging on some tree, and I approach and see it's a doll with a beard. And the mothers are walking around with sticks: This is not how you raise children. People without bodies - only brain and spirit. Only books - without a world. And there's complete darkness, and the wicked are running everywhere, climbing the trees, and asking: Where is she? - There was a hole and they escaped from hell. And the mothers shout leave us alone, and the wicked jump where is she, and all the men are underground in a bunker trying to save the Torah, and the wicked wail where is she, and Satan begs: Careful, it only needs one more small mistake for everything to collapse. And Doctor Scribe doesn't touch the Torah, doesn't try to help with resuscitation, and just stands in the corner and complains: First they'll discover all the secrets of the body and only the secrets of the soul will remain, then they'll discover all the secrets of the soul - only the secrets of the spirit will remain, then only the higher soul, etc., and I get angry and give him a kick in the head, and he says: etc. And I give him another kick, and he says: etc. etc. And so on, etc. etc. etc., and I'm frightened by what I've done, now his hat is on my foot, and I can't get his hat off my foot, and my foot starts to think it's his head. And it starts to want me to stand on my head. Pushing my head into the shoe. Jumping up ouch ouch careful the head - and the whole world turns upside down. The men grab the mothers' skirts so as not to fall, and the mothers cling to the wicked, and the wicked cling to the trees, and hell stands above Eden, and beneath us the skies are brown the earth gaping, and the fruits of Eden fall and fall, and the red cow hugs some Nazi general from hell, who's trying with all his might to grab the floor, and I say: Oh, no, the breaking of the Torah is beginning. And we hear Messiah son of Joseph falling from his deep pit, suddenly he comes out of the ground with all the snakes, from the hiding place he was in, and already continues into the former skies, and everyone hears him: Help, God is upside down!

Constricted Consciousness

I dreamed there's a tremendous destruction in heaven, and the new Rebbe below says: Happy Sukkot. Because he is thank God in the ground, and all the students of the previous Rebbe are in heaven. We told you not to go up but you didn't listen. And he delivers Torah to women only, God forbid, because this is the opportunity for a new generation, that did not know Joseph. And he sits inside his black sukkah, the size of a cardboard box, so as not to see them, and the men are kept away, so they won't hear. And from inside the sukkah we hear: Women are exempt from the sukkah - because they are the sukkah! We need to redeem woman from the world of Cain, shopping, the immoral, which relates to money and vanity as means and not as ends. Instead of investing in spirit they invest in body, and instead of raising geniuses they raise healthy children! Gentiles really. Therefore I will reveal to you, that the previous Rebbe, may the memory of the righteous and holy be for the life of the world to come, instructed before his death to buy a tablet computer at the circumcision for every baby. And that it should be on the screen all day, and to prepare learning software for the secret Torah, and puzzles of the sefirot, and dolls of the holy creatures, and that every baby should know the letters at age one, and read at age two, and calculate gematria at age three, and peek-a-boo where am I here I am - this is the basis for the secret Torah. And from age zero they will read him Genesis with clickable pictures on the touch screen, animation of the Zohar, and a computer game of Eden. And to warn all the girls about this, that a Jew in Israel can be like the gentiles of the lands really, and for this came the exile, Israel is more dangerous than all lands, because it can connect the Jew to the land, and the remedy is to establish the skies of Israel, that the child will be a screen of the heavens - schach, whose growth is from the earth but is not connected to the ground, unlike Cain the man of the earth. Because the whole world stands on the vanity of babies, these are my anointed ones babies. And the more the interface ascends it connects to the baby more in smallness, and the interface will rise from the hands, to the mouth, to the eyes, and will know where you're looking on the screen, and what interests you, and what you're thinking, and what you want, until it reaches the crown. And then it will be possible to connect the baby's brain to Torah without passing through the corridor of the world. Directly from the previous world to the world to come. And the computer will be the womb of the brain, and your role is finished.

The Escape Movement

I dreamed that the red cow is galloping with me down into the skies, to Satan's headquarters. And all the animals in Eden are fleeing there, and one righteous man is hopping on one leg, it takes him hours just to begin the descent, and he shouts: I'm trying to make a shortcut jump. And the fat righteous men are rolling down the slope upwards and saying: The safest place is hell. Who knows what Satan is planning in Eden. And the cow moos in tears: Two thousand years down the drain. Your donkey Rebbe has disappeared again at the worst time in the world, his students have gone crazy. Don't you see that all these great geniuses are donkeys? The huge computer they brought up to heaven at astronomical cost - it doesn't even have electricity. And now where will I find my dear son, the golden calf? Messiah son of Joseph is only interested in money, that's what they put in his head. And she has an attack: They still think they'll save the Torah from Satan, meanwhile the demons below are dancing around the "Monster from Jerusalem". And now they'll replace the sin of the calf with the sin of the circle, not to mention the sin of the kugel, and what will be with the child. The Torah of the Holocaust, huh, huh? And I tell her: Please, come, you don't want to see your son in hell. We'll never manage to reach Satan to talk to him. The Nazis on the way will kill us, and if not them the Christians, and if not them the Romans, and if not them the Amalekites, and so on. And Satan himself we won't reach. All the righteous you see here died sanctifying God's name ten times. Don't be afraid to be a sacrifice. Come, I pet her, I'm not allowed to take you by force, there's a prohibition to put a leash on you. Come beautiful cow, this time we won't purify the dead - but death itself from impurity.

And the Lesser Light to Rule the Night

I dreamed that the new Rebbe completed the purification, the screen saver cleared out all the last pockets, and the student is gone. And the Rebbe sits in the Rebbe's room, and all the angels of the Hasidic sect come to swear allegiance to him. And after them all the demons. And all the computer sciences and sorcery sciences and darkness sciences. And the animals that were saved come down from Eden. And curtains and screens come down from the net. And the chief butcher, and frog blood, both completely pale, they too in faces. And my face is there too. And the new Rebbe points with his lulav at a huge screen that replaced the library behind him, and a supercomputer that replaced the study hall. And his etrog is large and twisted like a brain. And the myrtle and willow move like a tail and wings. And the new Rebbe whispers like a snake: We will kill the state. We will remove this institution from the world. And we need to kill the state not with a sword, but with hunger. To turn into a black world. Tax is the Samech Mem [Translator's note: initials of Satan], everything needs to be in black, so as not to give sustenance to the state. Money through the net. To disconnect the kingdom from the foundation - and it will die. And only the economy will remain. Black as night.

Yeshiva of Torah Darkness

I dreamed that my shadow slipped into the general staff meeting at Satan's, because he's so thin that he reminds a senior snake of the shadow of himself, when he was young - before he got fat from too much fear. And the head of the yeshiva Satan bangs on the table: Where has this Rebbe disappeared to? And Satan takes his tail, and beats them Torah to torture them: We must tempt her, with me there will be no free dreamers. And he chases away the flies: Red cow? Naked cow! I want her to redden - from shame, that's what I want. Under the hair - skin, blood. And the general staff tail says: You heard what he said, we don't have time for fig leaves. The dream is the opposite of pregnancy, because it is the man's pregnancy, and then the woman is born in the head. And he quickly calls for the forgetter, who is the equivalent in the world of darkness to a secretary, to come and take off her skirt. But at this advanced stage only the electronic forgetter remained, and they left an encrypted message after the siren:
You forgot the Holocaust, which that tenth and last red cow, of the Messiah, will need to purify with its ashes. Red kingdom that turns black. Red darkness. Dream.
And my shadow recognizes the recorded voice and trembles, because the senior snake hears and laughs: They always put us down in hell, that we are the earth of heaven. And now - there's going to be an earthquake in heaven. Why did you flee, O sea? Jordan, why turn back? You mountains, why dance like rams? You hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord.

In the Fields of Hell

I dreamed that the cow takes me deep into the red worlds. And her daughter stands there in the stream - without a head. And all the elders say: Our hands did not shed this blood. And the cow collapses from grief, and I tell her: Wait, this is just the beginning. And her red milk spills on the ground, and she understands that she will be the last red cow. And the elders come to comfort her: There are no more sons, only elders. We fled from the white worlds. And the head of the beheaded heifer says: Three study halls are fighting over the next Torah: the old white Rebbe, the new black Rebbe, and the red Rebbe - Satan. And the cow hugs her: Do you understand what a monster? The Rebbe should not have been allowed to leave the black world. And the elders tell her: Don't cry over spilled milk.

Screen Descent

I dreamed that I can't lucid dream and I look at the clock and see that the time is illogical and I realize I'm in a dream. And I know that today is the yahrzeit [Translator's note: anniversary of death] of the Rebbe of blessed memory, but everyone is afraid of the screen saver, and I go far into the forest. And every time a couple hiding from afar sees me they run away or laugh, what's a black man doing in the middle of the forest. And I'm afraid they'll inform on me, you can't know in the black forests if it's day or night. And after a few hours in complete darkness I realize, that's why I can't get out. It's always in front of me - the black screen. I'm inside the screen saver. In the black world. And he says: You thought you'd escape from him? And I say: And you didn't chase after me? And the guard says: Whoever doesn't want to doesn't need to. We're not interested. All Israel are responsible for one another is nonsense, there's no law of responsibility in hidden matters - in the secret Torah. And he closes his eyes: We really don't care if you're inside or outside, in front of or behind the screen. The main thing is that the screen is closed. As far as I'm concerned all the Jews and all the donkeys can be outside - and only the Rebbe will be inside. We don't need the whole nation for redemption - just one. Messiah. What's important is quality not quantity. The elite unit. And the cow beside me is now a black cow, and she hides in the darkness. And the guard says: We know you're there. And I: I don't understand what you mean. And the guard laughs: You know you won't be able to disappear forever, it's a shame that with the suicidal Rebbe the loop got stuck on the neck. And the stupid cow can't hold back: Criminal. And the guard coaxes: Why? And the cow gathers courage: Behind the screen there's another world. And there are six days Sabbath and one day weekday, just to manage to cook is self-sacrifice for the mother. And their weekday is our Sabbath, so they desecrate the Sabbath. And everything is written with utmost brevity on weekdays, and they print print, so there will be what to read, and there's Sabbath-observant internet with bottles and ropes. And then all year they observe Yom Kippur, and only on Yom Kippur do they desecrate. Quickly quickly they expand the eruv [Translator's note: ritual enclosure], and already the whole world is one city, and people only talk to each other because there's nothing to do, they swallow some sack that has calories for the whole year that gets stuck in the stomach, and with a system that recycles the urine, called moral kidneys. The holy and the profane, the holidays and the weekdays - are reversed. And then the impurity of death is exchanged with the holiness of life, and there's no longer any point in a red cow. And the guard smiles in the darkness: And tongue in mustard? And the naive stupid cow laughs, already less afraid: I actually like it. And the guard passes his hand over the fur: You think that because I can't tie you by the neck I can't catch you, my love? And he hugs her by the neck, and takes her with him, and she blushes in the darkness. Red like a bonfire - and black like ashes.

To the next chapter

The Trilogy


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Antivirus: On the Future of the Web (Part 2)

When measures are taken disproportionately, it's a sign that they are not effective means to an end. When the perception of the goal is flawed, and the understanding of reality has lost relevance, it leads to a failure in finding efficient and appropriate means. And when thinking becomes fixed while the world has changed - a paradigmatic crisis arrives. So what do we actually do, in practice, when methods don't work? More of the same - and a lot of it. So we don't feel there was something we could have done but didn't (for example, think)

By: RNA Messenger

The deep viral insights of our leaders (Source)

How should we have dealt with the coronavirus? First of all, we must understand that the virus is not (just) a problem - but an opportunity. The virus was created from a mismatch and contradiction that has been developing between the way the world actually operates today - as a network - and the ossified way in which we control and organize the world - hierarchically. A hierarchical control and command system has neither the speed nor the flexibility to respond to network changes and exponential spread, and therefore sooner (preferably) or later it will break in confronting them. Thus, the American presidency will break in the face of a viral president, and academia will break in the face of fake-truth on Facebook, and eventually, nations will break in the face of social networks and the dominance of the Internet. The more ossified the hierarchical structure - the faster it will break. And in the case of the virus, the state establishment proves magnificent ossification - associating it with the age of dinosaurs.

Life today is conducted on the network, in the virtual world. But by force of inertia - life continues to be conducted outside, in hierarchical institutions and hierarchical perceptions. In order to eliminate the contradiction between praxis and perception, shock treatment is sometimes needed. Eventually, the hierarchical state, which controls in a top-down tree-like pyramid form, will be replaced by a flatter network state, which is much more efficient in data processing, decision making, and control and command systems - just as the brain is more efficient than bureaucracy. Today, a virus (and any viral spread) is much more efficient than any control and command mechanism we have, but in a different architecture - the tables will turn. Other institutions in life, such as work and learning, should have long ago transitioned to a network format - and the virus is the opportunity for this.

A state establishment that understands this would have declared a sweeping transition to work and learning from home, from the last student to the last office, and used the crisis to implement a necessary systemic change, which requires a phase transition, and is therefore impossible in normal times. There is no reason for people to travel for shopping and not order deliveries to their homes in normal times - the network is simply built the opposite way. When everyone orders food home - shipping overheads become more efficient than maintaining supermarkets everywhere, and shopping becomes mail. The biggest challenge today, economically, infrastructurally and even environmentally, falling on the shoulders of states, is the desire to continue living in the old structure, while networking centralizes everything. This creates an unbearable load on physical centers, and the collapse of all physical infrastructures under impossible loads, in chronic - and unsolvable - transportation, housing and education crises.

If everyone travels to the network center in the morning and returns in the evening to all parts of the network - the transportation network cannot help but collapse, and housing prices cannot help but skyrocket. If one needs to physically arrive at school - we will always receive education at a low level, without choice and without competition, and without personal adaptation. One needs to live in the center to study at Thelma Yellin [Translator's note: a prestigious arts high school in Tel Aviv], and only those who come to Tel Aviv will have access to work in leading companies. The physical world is not built like a network, and even if we pave countless lanes and build dense towers to the sky - the contradiction between the network structure and the physical structure will always lead infrastructures to rapid saturation. Therefore, real leadership would have used the crisis for the most important change - structural change. Because a break is preferable to shattering (this is actually the alternative).

There is no reason why office work throughout the country should not be done from home, except for conceptual fixation. The computerized tools for this existed yesterday. The same goes for learning (whether in remote lessons or in tutorials and games and dedicated media). The fear of losing control over employees or students does not take into account the efficiency of computerized control systems, whose monitoring capabilities and data analysis far exceed any human control. The human need for society and human connections should be sharply separated from functional connections - for the benefit of both sides. School and youth movement have completely separate functions - and those who don't waste two hours every day in traffic jams can devote more time to friends (and books - which are other people in text form). The loss of output and productivity in today's society that stems from wasting time and resources on maintaining connections in the physical space instead of the spiritual space - is inconceivable. In the future, people will not understand why people physically traveled to the office, school or shopping. Why companies had to set up insanely expensive buildings, on precious real estate, just so people could sit all day in front of a computer identical to the one they have at home, after wasting countless nerves and pollution on traffic lights and honking?

Any far-sighted leader would have understood this, and waited for an opportune moment to make the shift - and take the system out of its physical fixation in favor of a more virtual and spiritual existence (which anyway characterizes the progress of humanity since time immemorial - the brain is also a more networked organ than the body, and therein lies its advantage). But apparently we don't need this. We Jews have long since disconnected from physical existence to existence in language itself - and our politicians are the politicians of the tongue. Our Prime Minister presents, speaks, declares, incites, mocks, spreads rumors, condemns, recommends, or instructs for action (as opposed to executing) - and his greatest achievements are speeches or declarations (his or others'). Thus, the perception has been fixed in the public that saying is more important than doing, and that if we speak at the UN we are showing them, and that effective treatment of the virus is a collection of speeches on television. And so we will pay the full price of a revolution but gain nothing and return to exactly the same situation. Bibi is the ultimate politician of Wittgensteinian philosophy of language: his words are tools for his work, and their use is their meaning, and he is the best player - in the language game. What a pity that his intellectual ability is poor (let whoever has ever heard an intellectual insight from him vote! Not to mention an original idea), and that his ability to make a conceptual paradigm shift is nil, and therefore we are stuck in infantile discourse. Don't sneeze!

A reasonable country, which is not just a country of public relations, would have acted more correctly even within the hierarchical paradigm, and would have raised within a minute an application that must be installed, and which reports continuously on every movement, requires every citizen to report in it on temperature measurements twice a day, on every cough and health change, and also on every person they met (and also tracks other parameters that would have been found to be effective...) - and fines those who do not do so (everyone understands money). Then it would have whitened the information and distributed it to a large group of brilliant researchers who would have competed in building prediction models (this is a classic machine learning problem - and the solution would have improved all the time, and quickly). Thus it would have used this data for focused carrier tests and focused removal instructions per person and location immediately through the application, which would have created a firewall between carriers and the rest of the population. As every network company (or intelligence organization) knows - the key is massive data collection and network mapping, and only in this way can one try to hierarchically overcome distributed and contagious network phenomena (terrorism for example). But such data exists in China - the backwater country. And in our country there are excuses - and all kinds of fever.

Part 3 - Corona as a Sabbatical Year: A World That Is All Long

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Barak Cooked Up a Stew: Why Did Barak Really Return and What Is His Great Hidden Plan?

Ehud Barak's genre casts a spell on veteran Israel, but it is built on one of the most primitive devices in poetics: surprise. This is the genre of the intrigue detective story, where we only understand the beginning at the end. Ehud Barak is known for assembling watches, planning precise operations, and possessing impressive analytical abilities. Therefore, his audience expects from him brilliant scheming and clever plans. What a pity that he is a failed author, who does not master his own genre

By: Political Cat

The thinking of secrecy and deception - the failure of special operations that confuses audacity with determination and surprise with superiority  (Source)

"He who dares - loses" (The motto of Cat Commando)

Ehud Barak is a man who changed his name as part of his maturation process - from Brog to Barak [Lightning] - during his military service. Therefore, the meaning of his name is not random. It expresses the desire to shine, that is: not just to do something smart, or even sophisticated, and certainly not "just" effective, but also to surprise and stun, like a lightning strike. This trait made him a revered commando commander - who became addicted to the thrill of daring - and a failed prime minister. Why? Because Ehud Barak is a gambler. A chronic, compulsive gambler who needs rehabilitation. Like a writer who drops bombs without thinking how to dismantle them, hoping that the mere stunning effect will do the job, or more precisely, will cast a smoke screen over his own sloppiness.

People with a "Barak-like" personality perceive the world as a kind of opponent that needs to be constantly surprised, thrown off balance, and surprised again and again, until it falls from the very fear of your unclear plan (despite it being unclear to yourself as well...). Therefore, it's not enough just to surprise, but you also need to cultivate some aura of a grand plan, of genius intelligence that you are unable to decipher. The reader (such writers perceive the reader as an opponent!) needs to believe in the writer in order to fall for the trick (because it is indeed a trick - simple and cheap). The knowledge gap between Barak and the viewer is supposed to turn the surprise effect into a real and effective poetic and political effect: the effect of tension. But does such a knowledge gap exist? Does Barak know something we don't?

Israelis, both from the right and the left, fall into the trap of Barak's grand plan over and over again, and are dragged into tension by his moves. Why? After all, if we look at his career, we see that it is mainly characterized by sharp and puzzling turns pulled out of thin air, which we are supposed to believe have some hidden logic behind them. Barak without the aura of secrecy - is an idiot. But Barak with the aura of secrecy - is a genius incomprehensible to us. Even his notoriously bad interpersonal skills are not a flaw that accompanies a mathematical genius like an integral, but an inherent part of his incomprehensibility to his environment, of the inability to anticipate and identify with a person who has turned unpredictability into his internal operating mechanism. Barak is a generator of randomness. And indeed, he does not hit the same place twice - but not out of superhuman planning residing in Zeus on the clouds, but simply because he doesn't really bother to aim.

Therefore, the answer to the question of what Barak is planning is always one: surprise. You'll agree with the Cat that this is a predictable answer. Barak combines originality and courage with lack of planning and Israeli sloppiness - and that's why he is so magical to the self-proclaimed smart camp of old Sabra Israel, which aspires to have its own magician. But just as Bibi is not a magician, but as I wrote elsewhere, a Daoist leader ("The Tao of Bibi"), so too Barak is far from it - but very close to the Israeli Sabra failure: the belief that chutzpah and audacity will cover for forgetting to take a backpack, money, map, and sometimes even leaving the house without pants. And this is in contrast to what really held Judaism for two thousand years of exile. Not audacity - but caution. Not chutzpah and arrogance - but submission and pragmatic calculation. Not hubris - but fear of Heaven.

How will Barak's story end? One can only gamble, for we are dealing with a gambler. And not just a calculated gambler, but a chronic lover of daring bets that have also ended the way bets end: sometimes in winning, and in the long run in loss and impoverishment, when the dopaminergic and stimulating addiction to the surprise of gambling apparently infects some of the viewers - but mainly himself. Barak is indeed an artist, as the legends tell. But he is an artist of the type of daring experimental writers - and essentially lazy ones - who haven't fully clarified to themselves what they want to say and produce an incoherent text - but rely on the myth of the mysterious artist to do the hard work for them. Such literature doesn't last, but sometimes manages to fool the audience up to a certain point, especially if it's sophisticated in its own eyes.

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Sin of Knowledge of the Twenty-First Century

Even now, he was unable to express anger. If only he had called her a whore, he thought afterward, everything would have been different. The sky began to fall. The bird was no longer at the window. And he could no longer see clearly. He felt like honking, but to whom, she couldn't care less about his situation. There were no straight lines for the eyes, and it was simply dangerous to drive like this. He wanted to brake violently and have someone crash into him from behind. There's no other use for this site!

By: A Horned Unicorn

If the Left is a traitor - then the Right is betrayed (Source)

He smelled the betrayal. The strange garment on the wall. The new, embarrassed smile. The toilet seat, why was it up? A bird flew by the window, like a woman he thought, and turned off the transistor radio, surely to hide the noise. She approached him, and he backed away, but behind him was the wall. He asked: Who was it? I want to know everything, you owe me the truth about my life. - You're cute. - I saw the site on your computer. You can't act as if it didn't happen! She laughed her rolling laugh, as if he had told the funniest joke in the world. And he started to cry. Even now, he was unable to express anger. If only he had called her a whore, he thought afterward, everything would have been different.

The sky began to fall. The bird was no longer at the window. And he could no longer see clearly. He felt like honking, but to whom, she couldn't care less about his situation. There were no straight lines for the eyes, and it was simply dangerous to drive like this. He wanted to brake violently and have someone crash into him from behind. There's no other use for this site! The sword of knowledge - that who you thought you knew best is not who you thought - began to make him doubt the original story of the serpent, while the sky was approaching, and there was nowhere to escape, even inside an atomic shelter there is sky.

The road was open but where to drive, he didn't even have one to seek shelter with, one. And then he remembered her. He thought about the things he left there. The ancient books, what good would they do him now, everything could be checked directly in the sky. So that's how time works, it turns out. It's not that everything has a replacement, but that things become no longer relevant. All sorts of prophecies that got stuck in the heavens and didn't come down began to foretell things he would have died to know before they happened.

Prophecies about the destruction of the Second Temple began to fall, followed by the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the fall of the Roman Empire, everything that hadn't reached the land since prophecy had stopped. The ancient prophecies were already close, while the new prophecies were still at the beginning of the road, which approached him like the end of the road. He didn't even check all this time despite her not hiding it, like a fool, she doesn't know how to erase traces, and didn't delete the history. Many things are better not to know, and yet after you know them it's clear to you that it's better to know. It's irreversible. It was possible to prevent the disasters, the history.

It turns out there were countless prophecies, that came down, that begged, only there were no prophets. God cried, warned, did everything to prevent history, he didn't just sit there and do nothing, he spoke, threatened and sometimes even screamed, but no one picked up the messages, whole scrolls that got stuck in the sky in all kinds of narrow channels that were blocked, or broadcast on frequencies that no one picked up. Entire religions that got stuck in all kinds of pipes not wide enough, books that clogged axes, and doctrines that began to pile up one after another.

God is a prolific writer, it turns out, and he has something to say about every historical development, it's not that he had writer's block. Countless warnings about the Crusades, about pogroms, about persecutions. Short notes that could have saved lives got stuck there like in the Western Wall. The many books that God wrote after the Bible - he never stopped writing, it turns out, no less than humans - fell from all sides of the road and almost buried him, creating mountains of paper and parchment. The city behind him disappeared, whether in a power outage in darkness, or in burial. And in the end, how did he not think of this, they began to fall like massive rocks from the sky - the prophecies about the Holocaust.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Unholy Union: Philosophy and Architecture

What's the deal with architects and philosophy? When Paris became a museum - and not a school

By: Objectivism

Object relations. What do structuralism, formalism, Lacan's orders, and Derrida's deconstruction have in common? (Source)

Why do architects love philosophy so much, especially the complicated kind, and dig into it at every opportunity? Because they love structures and want to live inside thought structures. That's why they're not creative in philosophy, because their creativity is structural, and innovations in philosophy are not structural innovations. Structural creativity of creating complex structures in philosophy is fruitless - because philosophy is creativity at the foundational level. The structures only demonstrate the foundations. If something is complicated in philosophy - it's a sign that in a hundred years, when only the different foundations are visible, it will be worthless and no one will be interested in it. Philosophy doesn't seek the complicated, but the profound, and the profound is found in the simple, not the complex. But the profound is not found in the trivial simple, it's not New Age, but in the creative simple - in the basic innovation. The basic innovation is profound because the new foundation is beneath everything.

What is the significance of philosophy being in innovation, that depth has a dimension of time? The reason for this is learning. Otherwise, depth would be a matter of space. And this is what architects really don't understand, and why they are conformist in their tendency towards existing philosophical structures: they love philosophy made of stone. Philosophy is more like archaeology than architecture. Its innovation is in deepening - but not in the past, rather in the future. It is archaeology reversed in time. The structures are just tools for it. Good philosophy is lean philosophy - not skeletal. And so is good psychology - a little fewer models, and a little more examples.

So, what's the difference between philosophy and the Talmud? Why are complex structures created in the Talmud that last for generations? Well, in the Talmud, structures are not created, but a tree. The Talmud is not built - it grows, because it is a learning system. All of philosophy - it's really a tree, of all kinds of thinkers. Even if it seems that it always returns to the base, that is, to the bedrock, and to the (destructive) zero point, and starts building everything from scratch again - this is true only for the individual (important) thinker, and not for philosophy as a system. The problem is always focusing on the individual, without understanding long-term historical developments in philosophy.

Here's an important exercise: to understand the line connecting Descartes - Kant - Wittgenstein not as a broken line, and not as a triangle of independent possibilities, but as a straight line, as a trend in which Kant is an intermediate stage (important. Not trivial, but in the same direction). And to extend this forward and backward in the history of philosophy. And to understand the junctions, why philosophy split into several possibilities here, why branches came out from here, and how the branches are already in the branch from which they split - and whether there was a missed branch, or if we've exhausted them.

The thinking of the roots is less important, because it is thinking about the past as a possibility (here, one can find a foreshadowing of so-and-so's ideas!), because there are many roots for every idea (the splitting in the roots means a variety of possibilities). The important thinking is the opposite thinking, branch thinking: what can come out of something. Because it shows the past as a necessity. And it organizes the possibilities that came out as a necessity (for example: from Descartes, these two schools and this variety of thinkers had to emerge). Therefore, it is learning-oriented. This is root thinking. Not the roots. But the one root as a necessity. And then from such thinking, branches for the future can also emerge - this is fruitful thinking.

This is in contrast to thinking about roots and learning sources as cases, that is, as a non-necessary form. Because learning-oriented thinking thinks of these sources as examples - and even more so as paradigms (that is, when the example is perceived as necessary. Plato is necessary. Aristotle is necessary). And then, a philosopher is one who demonstrates new thinking, that is - gives an innovative example (and in the paradigmatic case - the innovative example is perceived as necessary. Kant is necessary. Wittgenstein is necessary). But the very meaning of thinking as new - stems only from old thinking, and not from thinking itself. There is no meaning to a philosophical method without history (but even the beginning of history - the beginning of philosophy - is history. The meaning of "everything is water" stems from what came after it. Without philosophy, this sentence is meaningless).

Therefore, the structure of each philosophy is much less important - and what's important is the structure of the tree. That's why the Talmud manages to develop a complexity that is learning-oriented - because it has many sages. All (heroic) attempts to understand the Talmud as a structure have failed. It has no uniform system - and there is no one great depth structure in Halacha [Jewish law], that if we only discover it, and map it all out, we will understand everything and solve all disputes and difficulties. There is no master plan. It is a tree of life. Therefore, Sha'arei Yosher [Gates of Righteousness], in which Rabbi Shimon Shkop tried to build a system, is a failure - and Rabbi Shimon Shkop's innovations are exemplary (and the greatest achievement of the Talmud in the 20th century. He was the Rabbi Shimon of his generation).

The great mistake of the Western spirit is the lack of canonized textbooks, that is, the lack of writing philosophy as Talmud, in an organic way throughout history (and so in every other field of humanities). And then everyone writes and interprets on the same corpus, and every new conception is an interpretation. But it's too late now. The Talmud is an abandoned model, but its example is not abandoned. And when does philosophy turn to stone? Exactly when it becomes a structure. That is, exactly when architects start to love it (and how they love French philosophy! In perfect timing with the decline of Paris as an intellectual center).

The depth of philosophy is in time, not in space, and in its ability to create time: to create a new conceptual era, to such an extent that we already find it very difficult to think in the previous conception. This is how it creates a passage of time - out of the progress in spirit. Learning is what creates the passage of eras, and only therefore can philosophy advance the spirit, and therefore there is progress in philosophy - because the progress of physical time is uniform, but the progress in spiritual time accelerates and decelerates, stops and breaks through, solidifies and flows, petrifies and grows, according to philosophical change. The structure in space is a kind of brake on time. It is meant to hold it in place, as if if you put enough intellectual weight and gravity (oh, French!), time won't escape (to America, to the future). Hence the French hatred for America. But no structure can stop time. All architecture turns into archaeology.

Therefore, we must be very careful about designing the future by architects, lest we turn ourselves into stones and fossils. The fear of artificial intelligence is not a fear of silicon versus carbon, but the fear of artificial structure. That is, of lack of organicity. But the concern is not about lack of biological organicity, but about lack of learning organicity. From cutting off the tree of life and turning it into a book (in the best case) and into a structure (in the worst case). But here, precisely the learning technologies, that is, the technologies approaching intelligence more closely, are created when technology itself gives up on structure - in favor of organicity and growth (like in the vegetative tangles of neural networks, random forests, and decision trees). The disaster will be if instead of being gardeners we become builders of artificial intelligence. Just like the great disasters of the previous century were when people tried to be architects of human society (extreme example: Hitler's obsessive architectural fantasies) - instead of being gardeners (in the sense of Candide). With the French - even the gardens are architecture (the rhizome...). Artificial intelligence needs to grow from us organically, and not be built by some "system architect", as in the computer world today. In philosophy, learning, and culture - we need to nurture our gardens. And beware of the artificial structure. And a shoot shall come forth from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Culture and Literature