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The Degeneration of the Nation

Divorce

By:

(Source)

My Sister-in-Law

I dreamed I was a butterfly, and I no longer know if I'm a butterfly dreaming it's a Hasidic Jew or a Hasidic Jew dreaming he's a butterfly, but one thing I know that I don't know: how to fly. And I crash trying to beat the sky, right hand smack, left hand harder you dive think you're trying to hurt God and hit the sky, and I can't lift off the floor, even though I jumped from the bed, but my wife tells me outside the house now - fly away. And I understand that being a butterfly isn't just flying among flowers in the Garden of Eden, and I take my wings to the place where angels have atrophied. A place where there are angels who have become like penguins, unable to fly. And they are very afraid that this part of the sky will fall to the ground. Especially since so many are standing on it now, after so many parts have already fallen. And when a tired old angel arrives who has no strength left, they chase him away saying there's no room, and he begs, he can't take it anymore, but they shoot in the air, and he retreats, and often he never finds rest for his feet, until his strength is exhausted, and he plummets, plummets... And here my wife's sister calls, and suddenly announces that she's getting divorced, and I don't understand why, but I smile, and she smiles too. And my wife says she's lucky she doesn't have children yet. And I know who she's thinking about. But to my complete surprise, I really do fold up inside my wings and die, even though I didn't dare try to fly from the window - who remembered that a butterfly lives only one day? - and ascend to heaven. And I discover that all the trees and branches have turned into tables and books, and all the flowers - into buttons.

The First Two Parshiyot [Torah portions]

I dreamed they tell me on the secret radio that there's a match. And I tell her: A wedding without you knowing my name. And we live like that, all good and fine. Then one day I catch her rummaging through my wallet. My name isn't there, and she cries regretfully. And again I enter the room and catch her rummaging in the drawer. And she cries. And I don't believe her anymore, and move to compartmentalization within compartmentalization within compartmentalization. And she doesn't stop crying, and sometimes I almost really want to reveal to her, only the very thought causes me shuddering nausea. And I tell her at night: Religious technology is what distinguishes man from Neanderthal, and various religious technologies that you have already forgotten, are what enabled the development of culture, and caused all development: the urban revolution, the agricultural revolution, the writing revolution, the language revolution, art. The human species. Everything in Genesis Noah. And only a new religious technology will enable the transition from man to the next thing. And she says to me: Women are not allowed to know such a thing. What are we bringing children for. You're not allowed to talk like that. Humans are not allowed to know this. And I tell her: That's right. And she asks me: Are you an animal?

You'll Come Back to Me on All Fours

I dreamed my wife kicks me out of the house and I have nowhere to go. And I try to think what, really I don't have one place I can go to? And I have nowhere to go. And I meet this stray dog and say let's see where the dog goes. Maybe the dog is going to the Temple? But the dog runs and I have no strength. And I return home and beg to be let in. And suddenly the dog opens the door for me. And I see he's wearing my clothes and they're so big on him I only see the tail peeking out of the pants. And my wife shouts from behind who is it at this hour, and he says just some stray dog knocking at the door and gives me a kick and slams it. And I return to the street, and sniff in the garbage, and pee on the wall: this is mine.

And I start to think what are my options as a dog. To enter the Temple Mount. A huge mountain in the shape of a house. And I don't even knock on the door I enter through the crack underneath it, what a scale. And I see the kitchen all kinds of strange utensils like a chemistry lab, experiments on humans, hard to see from below, the cabinets are cliffs and a mighty waterfall from the faucet. And the angels are making in the "kitchen" all kinds of new people, seasoned, recipes, people born with the entire Talmud memorized in their head - and die with their entire head memorized in the Talmud, women with instincts of holy beasts, a great tzaddik [righteous man] who is a small cat and therefore curled up in a circle and fell asleep inside the hat, a hat with eggs whose mother abandoned them, because they're black, and who knows what will hatch, and hats that swallow people, someone puts their head in, feeding time has arrived, and suddenly you only see the hat, and a burp comes out of it, an army of such hats, instead of berets, and even a hat for the Prime Minister, and I must warn the Prime Minister and send him a letter, your bare head is a target for a hat, beware of hats falling from the sky. And I run quickly quickly to the most interesting room, the bedroom. But it takes me days, it only looks close, but as you progress you only understand the scale of things, one tile. And I see God and his wife, like two whales, or sea serpents, that is, actually you only see their wings (or fins?) drooping from below outside the bed, but they must be huge, and the terrible glasses of the angels, to avoid looking at God and going blind, like inverted telescopes on their eyes, whose end doesn't terminate in a lens, but is sharp. And that's why they keep falling, and wounding each other, and the kitchen is full of blood - but the blood is white. Are their hearts full of milk from the sin of the [golden] calf? Or maybe it's liquid paper, books in a different state of matter? And I say I'm not interested in seeing God, but who is the woman, could it be someone else? Is she beautiful, is she ugly? What's his taste in girls. And suddenly I see a tail coming out from outside the bed. And I say wow there's room for progress, man is not the only option, there are dog angels, there is a God for dogs, there is a Torah for dogs, and I was simply born into the wrong religion and now I see the light. And suddenly God's wife wakes up, and I look and see - what kind of - - and I go blind.

Attempt at Reconciliation

I dreamed that my wife and I are getting married again. And everyone says what luck! It's about time they got married after having ten children. But what children are they talking about. How can this be? And it turns out that all the previous children died but now she's pregnant again, is it any wonder they have to get married? And I don't understand how all the children died without me remembering that they died, how they died. And I remember that the first child died by turning into blood, it was a month after he was born, and I wasn't there, my wife only told me after he died in the hospital, as always, typical of her, that's why I don't remember he died. And the second jumped and disappeared like a frog in the grass and we didn't find him. And the third was small like a louse and by mistake we scratched our head. And the fourth was devoured by a swarm. And so on. And only one thing I don't understand is how we're getting married again before we got divorced. And everyone says it's just to get gifts again. And they say that the tenth child she has in her belly is excellent and very wonderful, better than the child who died in darkness. And I don't understand how they know, but it's just something people know, the last will be first, the child is very good. That's how it is with firstborns.

Family Sacrifice

I dreamed that in the Messianic era God decides that everything has worked out and he can already retire, and gives one angel authority without responsibility, and this angel starts going wild. And he starts making new spiritual and progressive regulations, for example that on Shabbat there's no gravity and Jews start flying in the air, and you need to hold onto a tree or something, otherwise the fall at the end of Shabbat will be painful, and all the dishes on the Shabbat table start flying in the air and all our future children are going wild and chasing after the matzah balls all over the room and I can't catch them, and suddenly my shtreimel [fur hat] gets hit and flies out the window. And I lose it, screaming: Who did that? I'll hang him on the spot! And the oldest son laughs and takes a rope and shows how his head flies through it, and all the children laugh and take ropes and tie their necks to the ceiling, at least this way they don't fly, and my wife ties me and the little ones like that too, and finally herself, and everyone's laughing, and you can't even see a black dot of the shtreimel in the sky anymore, and I don't know what to do except cry out to God. And then suddenly the angel decides that he's received many complaints from righteous people that he ruined their Shabbat table, and announces that after a public outcry he decides without delay to return gravity to its place.

The Last Man

I dreamed that I have no more continuation. And I have no more wife. And I am - the last man in the world. But to my surprise, what's written in the prophets actually comes true that in the end of days gender relations will be reversed - and therefore women will chase after men instead of the opposite: "A woman will court a man". And there's a ten-year queue for the harem. King of the world. And here come together to my bed three naked beauties, terrorists, and castrate me at night, and I tell them are you crazy, and they say: Everyone deserves the same thing - equality! And they take it with them, and the scientist in charge of the project closes the door behind them. And she promises: In the next generation normal life, children. And all people are brothers.

Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

I dreamed that against all odds a daughter is born to me, or the son turns into a daughter, and against all odds she's okay and against all odds a son is also born to me. And then my son and daughter come and tell me they want to get married, so we'll have continuity. That I should find them a halachic [Jewish law] permit. And I say what, is your mother a shiksa [non-Jewish woman]? And they convert, love conquers halacha, and in accordance with all odds a pig is born to them.

Run Away

I dreamed that I get into a taxi and I have no money. And I tell the driver: Run away from me. And my wife takes me to the trunk and threatens: You'll want to forget the day we met. I answer: Today I don't want to forget. And I understand that my wife informed on me to the authorities. And all this time she's been pretending. And even in my own house, in my own bed, I can't be sure for five minutes. And I can't write anymore, because my wife wakes me up every morning with screams and I forget the continuation of the dream.

Wait Until They Leave

I dreamed that my wife murders me and puts me in the closet, and she creates a kind of scarecrow that's me and puts a book in its hand with its face to the wall and it studies Torah all day, and everyone who asks she tells them peek through the window my husband is such a righteous saint, doesn't eat doesn't use the bathroom doesn't move for a moment just studies studies day and night. And it becomes a great wonder, people say we didn't know him, we didn't know who walked among us, there's a line to peek through the hole, and the righteous man is immersed in study, no matter how much they provoke him, and she lets flies into the room, countless, dots: all black. The field. The cross. The child. The bird. And my wife suddenly shouts they're downstairs they asked you to come help. I heard. I don't think you heard. Just a moment. Not just a moment! Well, a minute I'm coming down. I see how you're coming down. One second. I know your second. I would have finished already. Nnnooowww.

An Act of Ugliness

I dreamed that my wife is the ugliest woman in the world, all the women on the street are more beautiful than her, and suddenly she meets the most beautiful woman in the world. And the beautiful one doesn't know whether to vomit or laugh, so she's polite, does what always works, and smiles, but that's a terrible mistake, because my wife also feels the need to smile, and she opens her crooked mouth that reaches up to her eye, and a crooked tooth comes out that enters her original nose, bursting pimples, and the perfect teeth opposite can no longer withstand the breach, something is about to come out of there, something inside the teeth, even the slightest chuckle can now boil God, not to mention something else, some venom, a snake's tongue, apple, the original fruit, something she almost said. And from so much tension in the aesthetic function of the sexuality of the world, at this singular point, something goes wrong, some angel mistakenly inserts a multiplier in minus one, or just divides by zero when they touch for a second, maybe a bug, maybe Satan flipped some integral. Inverted. And beauty contests for monsters begin, perfect lack of proportions, especially creative plastic surgeries, like modern art in humans, but everyone agrees there's nothing like natural ugliness. And etrogs [citrons] with horrific mutations, this is my God and I will glorify Him, enhancing mitzvot [commandments] for monsters, grace is deceitful and beauty is vain. It's not easy at all to be ugly, especially if you were born beautiful, working many hours to be disheveled, and guys are willing to marry young girls only in the hope that they'll one day be old and wrinkled, and won't leave them, like old wine. And my wife becomes the most beautiful in the world, all the guys are dying of jealousy, women ask her what's the secret, and she lays out her doctrine, my perfect beauty treatment is my husband, every time I don't feel old enough, I look at him, magazines: The secret formula: marry a dirty black stain, and in the end she leaves me for a handsome world-class ultra-Orthodox rabbi who's better than me in every way. But I'm already very popular among the girls, and have no trouble finding someone almost as ugly as her.

To the Special One

I dreamed that I'm no longer willing to use her name, and call her the monster. On Purim she wanted to dress up as an elephant but there was no costume in her size. Since what happened she hasn't stopped eating even in her sleep. And they tell me it will come back to haunt me, but it's more important to me to call her the monster. And I'm not interested in the secular people either, because I have the very rare option, for the first time in my life - to stop living. We don't have to choose life. And I raise my hands to the sky. And Blessed is He Who Spoke [God] tells me: You need to have mercy on her. The deep part of learning is knowing how to fail. And she doesn't know how to fail. And I say: The first time there I thought she was sick. Just sick. And the grandmother in heaven cries that she took down from all the walls the pictures of her grandson, what a terrible grandmother she is, her grandson, because she couldn't bear to look at him. And in the end I tell Blessed is He Who Spoke: The child, the genius, he's probably not okay. And he says: Oh. And the next day he says: You must come see a prayer of Amalekites [biblical enemies of the Jews]. The root of heresy is that the world is uninteresting, simple, symmetrical, space, and then how can there be God, life, Torah, mathematics in it. It's a wonder. After all, a dream is such an asymmetrical thing. Why specifically this people this planet this Torah this sentence and not another, why a red heifer, and not green? And the root of faith is that the world is interesting, God is complex, He is the most interesting God who chose the most interesting people, that there are real secrets. And heresy: How can it be at all that interesting things exist? How is it even possible? It's not logical - to them. So know this: What's not interesting doesn't exist. That's the reason Satan is the angel of death, of erasure, of nothing, emptiness - the empty space is the other side. The interesting is the rule in nature, not the exception. And why? Because the whole world is a learning process. And God's Torah study cannot be boring. I've never heard of someone who was bored in their own dream. The dream is always - special. And the union of man and woman is always special. And Israel is special and God is special, and this is the meaning of the name One and His name One. Not as a number, but that there is no other like Him, and there will not be after Him, He is the first and last of His kind. He is special.

Shabbat Zachor [Sabbath of Remembrance]

I dreamed that I'm in a synagogue of Amalekites. And they wear huge shtreimels and sidelocks to hide their ears. And when a child is born they secretly take him to a special mohel [circumciser] who rounds the triangle. And here I see Blessed is He Who Spoke praying there! And he shushes me: The sin of Amalek is - "and he cut off", fought with the tail, "those lagging behind you", from the word snake. Not like nowadays when they turn the tail into the head. And therefore we need not only to erase him, but to erase the erasure, a secret within a secret, to erase not only him but also his memory. But what is the erasure of Amalek? Erasure, it's life within death. There's still life inside, because he's mentioned in the Torah, under the heavens you shall not forget. Because there's also above that - to erase the erasure of the erasure, a secret within a secret within a secret. Not you shall not forget. Forget, forget everything. Because there was also another people, who erased even the memory of the erasure of their memory. Who was erased even from the Torah. There was an animal before the snake. There was something after the tail. Thinner. A thread. That connected. Until here.

Whitening of Faces

I dreamed that I said something about someone, something terrible, I discovered, and now everyone knows. And my heart is troubled, but I'm not willing to go to him to ask forgiveness. And leprosy starts appearing in my house, but I don't tell the priest, and the house is destroyed. And leprosy appears on my clothes, and I swear to the priest that I truly have no idea why. And leprosy starts appearing on my skin, and I don't reveal it to the priest, I'm not willing to tell that I spoke. And they send me from priest to priest, running between priests all day, this one will heal you, no, I heard that one can heal you. And there sits some leper in the final stage of the disease, and he says it's better to have white faces - than to enter the fiery furnace. And he whispers to me that there's some priest that no one goes to, because he himself is a leper - and he'll be able to heal you. And I think why don't people go to him, because if he knew how to heal he would heal himself. But that's not true, because a person doesn't see his own afflictions. And I go to the leprous priest and he leans towards me with sores dripping pus, and says: Do you know why I'm sick? I'm not willing to reveal. And I suddenly understand that they think the goal is how to be healed - but the real goal is not to reveal! And I shudder all over and recoil backwards with tremendous force, fall onto the chair, and the chair hits the door and it opens and I roll down the stairs, flying backwards, and start walking on the street with my face backwards, and think that now maybe I won't be able to see where I'm going, but at least I'll be able to see who's following me. And my face is already completely white, dripping from so much white, and I understand now that it's not for nothing that the angels are white - they're lepers, because they reveal. Because the goal is to become whiter and whiter. And the higher they are the more they reveal, and their leprosy is already beyond white, new forms of white, bright, radiant, shining on the forehead, and accordingly the highest must be a leprous God who is whiter than white, infinite light. But here up above I see that there is - a furnace.

And my neck already hurts from looking up, the black hat that goes in front and has become my face almost falls to the floor. And these black faces look down, and say that just as the goal there in the upper world is to become whiter, our goal is to become blacker and blacker. But just as creation develops more and more downwards - so too upwards, and therefore it's called a tree: just as the roots constantly branch out and search into the earth, in development into the depths of black, so too above the branches search into the depths of light. Constantly developing. And only in the middle is there the dry trunk, which is the tzaddik [righteous person], and therefore he is boring. He connects between them. He brings down the white from above, and raises up the black from below, and therefore he is gray. If their goal is to reveal, our goal is not to reveal. And the goal of the tzaddik is not to reveal that they reveal.

And I ask - but why do they need the blacks up above at all? And the tzaddik says: The fire! And I shout: What? And the tzaddik says: Why are you shouting, life is combustion. And I'm not willing - no! And the tzaddik says: Up there are the branches, the leaves, the fruits, additional universes. And two birds fly out from the tree: to one side flies a bird of water, and to the other side a bird of blood. To reveal - the affliction, to tell - the hair. A leper [metzora] is bringing out evil [motzi ra], and what's the opposite, what's below? The opposite of evil [ra] is not good, but awake [er]. Bringing in awake. Ugly [mechoar]. And he's so choppy that I can't understand - what, is someone cutting down the tree? And I think to myself, actually, why do I need all the dreams and wars with all the whites, when all I need to do to turn the whole world black is to close my eyes.

And it was turned and turned and turned and turned and turned - it

I dreamed that my wife is calling everyone she knows and telling them I'm garbage. And one of these people, she doesn't even know, is darkness. And she puts me in a bag, goes down the stairs with me, and throws me into a frog. And there's darkness there, but I'm not alone. There's life in the darkness. There's a cat the size of a mouse and a mouse the size of a cat, and they don't know who will eat whom. And they tell me from above that they won't talk to me because I'm in the place of filth, but there are angels who are themselves dirt, recycled, or more precisely old angels that were thrown away, that are garbage, and they'll take care of me. Because there's a world of garbage, which has spiritual garbage from all the worlds, because instead of fixing and cleaning it's cheapest to throw away and transfer there, and there are remnants there from worlds that long ago went to the trash. And even there, there's a Satan and demons, who rummage through documents in the garbage and discover all kinds of things that should have been destroyed. The secret Torah of garbage. A Bible that went to the trash, Torahs of ruined worlds, and characters that were thrown away, like Adam and Eve's daughter, or Moses' son and Pharaoh's son, or the serpent, which is a branch that didn't die from that tree. And their sin in the Garden of Eden was a sin with inanimate objects, like our sin is with plants, because they are one stage back. They were in a garden of books, and one angel tempted to read from the forbidden book, and then they cut off his wings, and with one leg he became a serpent, one direction. Because once there wasn't just one past, but four pasts. And afterwards in creation there was only east, and from all three directions you could reach a new world, three directions of possible future - which are three possible end directions of the world. But today since the secular people turned the world round all directions meet at some completely opposite point on the other side of the world, and only the center is the present, and the direction to the future is upwards, into the black. Dreams are the garbage of the day, the garbage of the spirit, libraries that grow by themselves, which are trees, books that are trees, closets that grow by themselves and more and more drawers appear in drawers, doors in doors, that you don't manage to go to the end of the corridor and already another door appears there, and another room, and more rooms within rooms, ultra-Orthodox within ultra-Orthodox, that an ultra-Orthodox person is even afraid of himself, black within black, that even pockets have pockets - of their own. That in a tree you see all their history laid out before you, all the directions they tried and didn't try and the branches that reached dead ends and those that produced fruits, because their fruits are books. That not only do they make a book from the tree, but there's also the opposite, that they make a tree from the book, and when one world ends and another begins - they also make a tree from a person. And the two trees of our Torah, they are the two Messiahs of the previous Torah, this is what happens in the end, with Messianism, and the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge are a couple, man and woman. Because the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge - which knowledge was separated in the Torah from life - they were the Adam and Eve of the previous world, who in the end became its two Messiahs, the male Messiah and female Messiah, Messiah son of Joseph (the foundation) and Messiah son of David (the kingdom). And therefore Adam was supposed to eat from the Tree of Life, and only his wife was supposed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and his wife tempted him. But the animal that was supposed to tempt him to life, the counterpart of the serpent, didn't act to tempt the man, some instinct was missing. And only knowledge remained, only good and evil. And it's clear to me that they're telling me this not in order to know - what was in the past, but for life - in the future, in order to learn what happens when passing from world to world through time, instead of through place, because place is God but each new learning time is a world. In order to reach the end of this world we need to learn the end of the previous world, and the mistake was that they always learned the beginning of this world, and tried to reach and go back more and more towards the beginning, against the direction of time and learning, to the act of creation, instead of starting from the end of the previous one, and trying to progress in it and reach the edge of its end, with the direction of the previous time and learning, to the act of the end times (and perhaps, from there, also to reach the act of creation that comes after it). And how do we progress to the end? The coupling between the two trees, knowledge that is life, it's not a dead book, it's a living book, the connection of knowledge and life is learning, because nowadays knowledge is dead and the book is inanimate, while life develops without knowledge, from within life, and in the future to come they will be one thing. That we need to ascend from plant to animal, because the trees are stuck not moving, and therefore we need a bird that will fly and graft between the two trees, in order to couple them. And trees have a way to pass messages and warnings to each other through the roots, and that's how messages started to arrive that there's the cutter, and they can't escape just pass the message on and on, that the cutter is coming. And the cutter easily reached knowledge, which is revealed in the center of the garden, and threatened it that if it doesn't say where life is, which is hidden far away among the trees inside the forest, then he'll cut it down. And it didn't betray its beloved husband - whom it had never seen - and he struck with the axe and it didn't say, and didn't say, until he cut it down, and started to search for the Tree of Life, to cut down all the trees in the garden. And they had - they were the Adam and Eve of that world - two children, a son and daughter, and they told them that they're forbidden to marry each other, that they need to separate and go search for spouses far away in the forest, but the brother and sister married each other. And every time a child was born to them the mother would immediately look to find the defect in it, one had a tail instead of a leg, another had a tail instead of a nose, with the third she panicked that they couldn't see what the defect was, but when he started to speak they saw that he had a tail instead of a tongue, and here with the fourth they didn't see anything, and this is what scared her the most, because who knows where the defect is if it's not something external, and one day this child went into the forest and disappeared. And suddenly they show me in the dream some impressive black tree that above the treetop - wears a shtreimel. And afterwards they show it to me riding on a white donkey, its roots entering into the donkey and it grasping it into the flesh and blood and the donkey screaming, writhing in pain, but unable to free itself from the tree riding it. And the tree grabs my head with a branch: We need to prepare the Tree of Knowledge that we'll pass to the next world, after the world of life, and the tree that will replace the Tree of Life, when there will be artificial Torah learning, and artificial knowledge and life, and the body will die, the human race will die. Therefore we need continuity of the soul in the trunk that will replace us at the end of the world, to pass the torch to the beginning of the next world, and Jewish culture which is the leader in the world in cultural continuity needs to prepare the culture of the next world, the books that will survive, because even if materially they'll start from scratch, there must not be a cultural holocaust, a religious holocaust, we need to prepare the serpent that will tempt at the beginning of the next creation the creatures that will be there to eat our fruit, even though it's forbidden to them. It's not enough to survive the test of generations, we need to survive the test of the end of generations: when what will be here will no longer be human, and we'll be a tree for it. It's not enough to care about the Messiah and redemption, we need to care about what will be after the redemption. For the next sin. It's not simple, sin, in order for there to be sin an enormous infrastructure is needed, we need to care for the next Torah, the next instinct, the next Garden of Eden, we need to understand that we'll be stuck in place, like a tree in the ground, and only someone else will progress in time. We need to care for garbage, that's what will remain after us. Not heaven forbid to clean it, but that it should be worth more than gold. That our spiritual garbage should be Torah. In the Holocaust the Torah of Genesis was destroyed, and thus this world was also supposed to be destroyed, but somehow something went wrong, something went wrong in the destruction.

And I think: Why do I want her at all if I only get garbage from her? And I come out of the frog and go up home and sit on the bed and go into the computer and close the lid.

The Tale of the Lost Princess

I dreamed that I would already prefer if she had cheated. And each time I discover how much further back it went. And further back. Suddenly it explains all the behaviors, the sharp changes, the unexplained ones. Already preferable infidelity with a man, than with a rabbi. The period when they tried to push me to the extreme with all their might, to get something out of me that would finish me off, to set a trap for me, they hoped to bring me to the edge (they tried to provoke violence from me), and then when that didn't succeed, how they quietly gathered like ants everything that could be against me and every piece of dirt, went to all my remaining relatives and friends and tried to draw them out with their tongue, to extract and bring out black pearls without their knowledge, and then the period of false honey and anesthesia - the last honeymoon, and to wake up in the morning - to discover that they seized me, emptied everything, I can't even buy food, and certainly not cope, and my own money is going to finance everything against me, and against the child, that is, for the "good of the child". They must feel so clever, what a deception. Camouflage, outflanking, maneuvering, military operation. The sons of Zeruiah are too hard for me. And I try to remember what I even thought once, in the beginning. I loved the white skin, so pale, from lack of exposure to the sun. I believed in fairy tales about a princess.

-End of my wife-

I dreamed that I'm no longer interested in you, the worst punishment you can give someone is to not be interested in them. To no longer be interested in a particular rabbi or Rebbe. Because love is to be deeply interested in someone, interesting, why was Absalom's son Shalom erased from the Bible, for reasons known to God, and the demons say these are black things that the screen cannot bear. Because, as is known, in God's world: a year is a thousand, a day is a thousand. And what is the Sabbatical year? The produce of the sixth year (the sixth millennium) needs to suffice for the next three (thousand) years. He who labored on the eve of the Sabbath will eat on the Sabbath (the seventh millennium). He who wrote on the eve of the Sabbath will read on the Sabbath, and he who didn't care for material for the soul will die of boredom, because on the Sabbath it's forbidden to write. And these are the judgments which you shall set before them: for six thousand years we are servants of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and in the seventh millennium we will go out free. Because the world of man is 6000 years, created on the sixth day. Therefore this is how one should read the secret of reincarnation: If his master-6 gives to-6 a wife and she bears to-6 sons or daughters, the wife and her children-5 shall belong to her master-5 and he shall go out by himself. And now one must decide whether to give up on the wife and children, and go out in body, or: And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master (God) my wife and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.

The Sages at Night

I dreamed that they call me for registered mail. And I say what could possibly be in registered mail, only bad, and I don't go and forget about it. And one day I discover that they're after me, right on the street, and they did everything behind my back without me, and I don't even want to look who it is, because I don't want to see their faces, because they'll see that I'm looking, and they'll have proof that I know there's something to look at, that I understand the new thing, that pulls instead of women, and from here the way is already short. And the package goes everywhere and tries to pounce on me, what's in there, I really want to know, but I know it's not in my best interest to know. And I decide to leave the world. Because if I leave no one in the world will be able to do anything to me. And I run away to the hospital, because there they'll never look for me and you can live there for years, it's open 24 hours, there are showers, there are meals, there are endless places, only what - there are diseases there. And meanwhile they search in cemeteries, in synagogues, turn over books, rampage in bedrooms, press all kinds of buttons that might do something, where did he disappear to, they must give me this, where, the dog. And in the hospital I look for a really strange disease, a disease that doctors can't find any patient willing to be infected with, because doctors have many diseases and not enough patients willing to get sick, but with this disease no one is willing to touch, and this will be my advantage with the doctors that I'm willing to get sick with what no one, and this disease will take me out alive from the world, without passing through the cemetery where they're waiting for me because they think everyone ends up there. And meanwhile the package wanders the streets and recruits public opinion against me, what does he have to hide, since when do people receive packages, we've never received packages in our lives, gets all the rabbis to sign, complains all the time, but no one dares to open it and see what's really inside. Supposedly because it's meant for me - but I don't believe it. And all the secretaries already know this poor patient who wanders around all day in all the departments and no one knows what he has. And I read in the fine print of the disease I signed that there are two openings to exit the world, the opening of death, and many don't know, but there's also the opening of birth, from which you can also exit, just as you enter. And I am born again. At first I look for a father and mother. And since I already understand that higher lineage is preferable as much as possible, I choose the moon as father and the sun as mother, interesting what will come out of them. And I wait for there to be an eclipse, and the moon hides the sun and does to her what it does, and no one in the world knows but now she's pregnant, and the sun starts to grow, and at first people on Earth say turn on the air conditioner, but then it's already clear that human civilization will be wiped out and people flee to the poles because only there is there still life, and there are the people of the North and people of the South and connections are severed, and they move to live underground buying time, packing up the whole yeshiva, transferring everything, we're black we're not afraid of heat, and most of the students are already dead, only at night do they come out, and there's light like day, and it's very dangerous if you go far, those who were outside at sunrise evaporate, only a smoking hat remains, atop a pile of ash, and throughout the study hall books burst into flames on their own and those remaining continue and study, and the rabbi preaches inside the fire Jews love to sweat, Jews shower in their own sweat, the achievement of the Jews will be that we'll die last, and indeed many of the gentiles are already committing suicide and there remain a few blacks and a few ultra-Orthodox who can endure the oven, but even the blackest person doesn't reach the artificial black of an ultra-Orthodox, it's more than skin, the rabbi gets excited, the books are already completely black, all the pages, the gentile may be black on the outside but we are black on the inside, and here comes the day of the astrologers (the astronomers perished long ago), the sages of the heavens, the day the sun is supposed to explode and everyone is already saying confession, but instead, the sages of the sun are amazed, instead a river of blood comes out of it, a trail of blood, and they start shouting doctor doctor, there's still a chance, that we won't die, and the rabbi searches in the back of the study hall, if there's no doctor at least we'll find a sick person, maybe he understands something, and they rummage through things, shouting she's screaming she's giving birth, and there's also the package, and they open it - and I'm found inside.

To the next chapter

The Trilogy


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Prefaces to All Future Philosophy

A summary of trends in the Netanya school. Following the glorious philosophical tradition of those who were completely misunderstood in their lifetime - the philosopher establishes a new tradition of those who were not read at all. Prefaces as a summary - this is a fitting end to the work of a school that dealt with the future. In keeping with the school's condensed tradition, whose single book contains material equivalent to about a thousand non-fiction books, and which abhors the waste of time in philosophical jargon (which broke negative records in the twentieth century, in a trend common to both the analytic and continental traditions), the Netanyite compresses his entire doctrine into a short article. The rest is commentary

By: The Most Important Philosopher in the World

A famous philosopher enlightens his students - and seeks a person to continue them (he'll settle for a dog too)  (Source)

Ethics of the Future

Unlike utilitarianism, the philosophy of the future does not choose a goal in the future, but the future as a goal. The moral is what needs to be done in the present from a future perspective, and therefore there is always uncertainty in it, but it is not empty and there is no arbitrariness in it, for the future will surely come. Therefore, the long-term view is inherent in future-oriented ethics, which solves many philosophical problems, including hedonism and cynicism and Buddhism. For example, of course the future is against suffering in the past, but this is not a primary consideration, rather it is subject to advancing history in a positive direction in the eyes of the future.

Critics will argue against this ethics that it does not provide a stable criterion in the present, but there is always a dichotomy between the principled ethical criterion - and practical ethics. The uncertainty in the current moral act should instill modesty, not despair and nihilism, for we know with a high degree of certainty that murder has never been and will never be considered moral. In the philosophy of the future, not only moral error, but any error, stems from a lack of foresight. Epistemology and ethics are one (because any correct perception is the correct perception in the future specifically). In fact, as part of morality, it is required to predict the future, and as evolutionary machines built for the future (which is the definition of life) we are capable and built to do so. In fact, this is the only thing evolution does - builds future machines.

Our goal is not to err and go against a future consensus against us, and therefore there are many actions in shades of gray (which the future will not form a clear view of), but there is also a black and white domain. As with Plato - no one does evil willingly, and ethical error is an error of knowledge, but regarding the future. Let's take an extreme example: Hitler erred because he did not foresee the future (and in an extreme way). The victors write history. And this is precisely the moral work - to look far ahead. Evil is the will of the present to dominate the future. And in abstraction - evil is the rule of the present. Hence the confusion throughout the history of philosophy between good and purpose, because good stems from the future.

It is also true that the present can dictate, to some extent, a future view, if it succeeds in pushing history in its direction. But it needs to consider if this is the reasonable direction. And this circular game between morality in the present and morality in the future, where both can influence each other, is permissible and okay, and does not negate the criterion (because, in practice, it will be known in the future if there was an influence). Although every act is a moral gamble - there is still a good moral gamble and a bad one. Hitler fought against the future, and murdered part of the future - of what would have advanced the future without him. The concealment shows the knowledge that the act must be hidden from future judgment. Even the unintentional offender suffers from partial assumption due to lack of knowledge of his present, and not due to lack of knowledge of the future, meaning he agrees with the future moral view.

Future-oriented philosophy can solve the problem of creating a morality that will oppose slavery and the Holocaust and past injustices - without being dragged into an attempt to compensate for the past in the present. The morality of victimhood is a desire to judge the past according to the morality of the present - instead of judging the present according to the morality of the future. The subordination of ethics to the philosophy of language - as part of the broader language trend of the past century - is what led to political correctness (the French - often accused - are just an excuse) and therefore this is an ethical trend that emerged from Anglo-Saxon discourse specifically. In a world of language - ethics deals with "slander", and with what is forbidden and permitted to say, as opposed to classical ethics that deals with action. The understanding that this is an ethics stemming from a specific moment, which is already fading, in the history of philosophy, is what gives a more futuristic perspective on ethics. Learning the history of ethics is important - because it gives a more correct ethical future vision, and therefore more ethical. The righteous is the one who foresees the future, that is, the moral prophet.

Metaphysics of the Future

The past has no volume, a single line, one possibility that happened, and no longer exists, dead. The present is a thin hole that pulls a single thread out of an infinite world of possibilities, which always remains as such (as infinite), which is the future, and thus contracts it down to one dimension. The world of the future is constantly changing according to new possibilities and branching into countless futures, and is more alive and dynamic than anything else, narrowing as it approaches the present, because not every future can continue from the present, and only it exists. Because the present is actually the end of the different possibilities, the endpoint of the future, just like the point of creation of the universe, with the entire universe after it and nothing before it. In fact, the present is the end point of the world, which is all in the future, it is the collapse and catastrophe that turns future into past.

The soul, the living, is a touch of the future in the present of dead matter, due to its continuation in the future, and the moment of death is the moment when it remains in the past. Physically, the future is a space of possibilities, and the past no longer is. What distinguishes matter from life? The fact that life is an ongoing phenomenon in the future with the intention of existence in the future, which is its entire purpose - its purpose is the future itself. In this, it is already part of the future in the present, and in contrast, matter is already part of the past in the present. What distinguishes between soul and matter is their being on the side of the future or the past, exactly on the border between future and past. Because the soul is the end of possibilities that is still part of the possibilities, because that's where it is drawn - to the future, while matter is the end of possibilities that is no longer part of the possibilities, because that's where it belongs - to the past.

The infinite God containing all is the future, and therefore He cannot have an influence on the present in matter, except in the soul. From His revelations in the past, one can only know how He was in the future in relation to that past, that is, how the future looked from Moses' point of view, even though this future may have already passed. Creation is the present which is the point of God's contraction into matter and soul, from which in the past only matter remains. Revelation is actually a full encounter of the soul with the future, some deviation from the boundary of the present a tiny step - one moment - into the future, and then it is a point contained in the future, and at that moment even its immediate past is a moment of future, and there is no present, because there is no collapse and contraction of possibilities, it is contained in them - and this is the mystical. Love is an encounter of soul with soul and then they touch the future and also another point from the future from the side, because it is a moment of continuity of species and soul - which can create another soul between the two points.

Aesthetics of the Future

The sole purpose of the art world should be to produce masterpieces that will stand the test of time, and to consume those that have stood - and these two goals contradict each other, so they should be separated into different institutions. Nothing created in the current generation should be presented to the public, and any work that is not a masterpiece, or is expected by someone to be a masterpiece in the future, should not be created or displayed or read even in the present. And everything else is entertainment. In libraries too - there should be a separation between libraries for high literature and entertainment institutions.

Institutions that cannot afford masterpieces should only display excellent digital copies, such as reproductions, recordings, copies, and so on, and specialize in the context and knowledge provided around them. Therefore, the most important thing in the field is strong criticism, which will turn the field empty. Classical music is the model for healthy art, because in it the empty modernism did not gain prestige, and it is simply waiting for a better period. Visual art is in the worst state in its surrender to the logic of the present, and literature is in the middle.

Art, therefore, is not art at all in real time, but only in the future. Therefore, it is a non-existent field in the present, but only in the past. Because aesthetics is looking back, and seeing something from the past as something of value for future time. The purpose of art production is to convey meaning to the future, not to the present, it is not communication in the present and therefore cannot be political. What characterizes art is the desire to communicate with the future, and to convey a message to it. It is an appeal, prayer, warning, lesson, or any other content transfer, towards the future.

Therefore, indeed, in praxis, no one knows how to identify art in the present, and know what will be a masterpiece in the eyes of the future, because it is impossible, and therefore one can stop trying to pretend to do so. Only the artist, who sees himself as a prophet who has something to say to the people of the future - and not to the people of the present about the future - has the right to try to speak to the future, and only if he has something of tremendous importance to say to the future. And the main thing that an artist has to say to the people of the future is about the present, for example its preservation so it will not be forgotten. Therefore, art is often an expression of its time, and not because it is intended for its time.

Even beauty in nature is evolutionary beauty whose purpose is to convey something to the future. For example, through sex. Or a landscape that calls you into it. The interest of beauty is always not in the present but in the future. The peacock's tail is not useful to it in the present, but is useful to it in the future. This is the purposefulness that Kant found no purpose for - because the purpose is in the future. Therefore, artists cannot be pursuers of honor in the present, but pursuers of honor in eternity.

Epistemology of the Future

Knowledge is the transfer of information from the past to the future - all knowledge is an inference from the past (for example, sensory data, or previous stages in a mathematical proof) into the future. This is in contrast to ethics which is the transfer of information from the future to the present, and from aesthetics which is the transfer of information from the present to the future.

Metaphysics is special - it is the passage of the subject itself into the future, and not of information (or - if he is dead, the transfer of the subject into the past). Hence there is a meeting between ethics and aesthetics in it. Ethics in its greatness, when the subject is entirely enveloped in it and in what flows to it from the future, is a resemblance to its entry into the future, and therefore it is in the direction of life (for example, saving lives), and aesthetics in its greatness is a resemblance to its entry into the past, and therefore it is in the direction of death (for example, saving death).

What is not philosophical, but ordinary - is the present. The most terrible currents in philosophy preached for mundane life in the present, in being. The present is the natural and terrible transition, occurring all the time - from the future to the past. This is the transition against which life came out, and against which culture came out, and against which the disciplines of philosophy came out, and from it the philosophy of the future, as a spearhead.

Knowledge is always a hypothesis from the past to the future, and then ethics returns from the future to the present what needs to be done, and if the thing is done then it passes from the present to the past - which is a counterclockwise circle, the circle of justice, the right circle. Whoever makes this circle of passage in a large radius between all times, which the larger the circle the more righteous it is (passage from the depth of the past to the depth of the future and back) is the righteous one. And this is in contrast to the point circle that is really around the present, which resembles the present itself.

The deeper the transition between present, past and future reaches and the longer the time spans, the more righteous the ethics, the more masterful the aesthetics and the more well-founded the knowledge. One cannot compare knowledge about another second to knowledge about another thousand years, or to a masterpiece that has lasted a thousand years. The eternal, constant knowledge is mathematics. Since each previous stage in the proof is absolutely connected to the next stage, it is an unbreakable transfer of knowledge from the past to the future.

Political Philosophy of the Future

The state is an organizational framework that has an ethical aspect and an aesthetic aspect. It stems from ethics that teaches us that the state is necessary for it, because for thousands of years a state framework has been more ethical and therefore we have relatively solid knowledge that this will be the case in the future, and therefore we must maintain it in the present (the ethical inference). But it also has an aspect of aesthetics - to convey to the future how one should live, and to pass on to future generations a cultural and artistic heritage, and to interest the people of the future in our civilization. The state's greatest success is in history and archaeology.

But from the ethical side, the state must allow elections, which are a second-order ethical transition from the future to the present, that is, choosing subjects in the present as those who will do the ethical act in the future and transfer from the future to the present. The entire state is directed towards the future of the state, and therefore democracy is needed, which is oriented towards change, and not a state that is oriented towards preserving the past and its power, as in dictatorship or oligarchy. The future is the argument for democracy, and without perceiving it as the supreme time over all times, it cannot be imagined.

Democracy is always oriented towards the next elections, that is, indeed to the future, but of a few years. But part of the state is its improvement in the future, and making it more and more future-oriented in the future. The danger in democracy is short-term action, while the most ethical state action is always the longest-term, and the state method for this has not yet been deciphered, and therefore democracy is a flawed system, which should be replaced in the future.

For example, in addition to elections, complementary institutions should be initiated with longer-term elections, for example for ten and twenty years, and an institution where members are elected for life, and an institution whose purpose is to care for how the state will look in the eyes of eternity, that is, in the farthest future (and not in the eyes of the farthest past, which is not eternity, and therefore reliance on an ancient myth is not legitimate, unlike a futuristic myth). The one who cares for how we look in eternity from the side of the eyes of people of the distant past is actually religion, whose entire validity is only if the religion will hold in the future, and thus we will merit good judgment from the people of the future. Therefore, only long-term religions are reasonable, and new religions are cults. And therefore the beginning of religion is in the religion of the fathers - how we look in the eyes of our dead fathers, and the beginning of the state is in caring for children. This is the justification for its power and the source of the social contract.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Intellectual Sublime

Philosophy of philosophy, which explores the sublime in philosophy versus the mythical in religion - through an unsentimental lens. Philosophy has accumulated many sentiments and myths throughout history, which obscure its true mode of operation, just as the myth of the artist conceals the process of creating art. From the love of wisdom, philosophy has ironically become the fear of wisdom, and has gained prestige as the highest discipline in the world of humanities, parallel to mathematics in natural sciences. What has made it so?

By: Holy and Awesome is His Name

Only in a church without a roof can one see the sky  (Source)

A philosopher has no control over or ability to invent their philosophy; they are trapped in their thinking like everyone else, like all people of a particular era or place. What they do is clarify and purify and reach this thinking in its pure and skeletal form, and expose it. This is an activity of awareness, but they do not invent the thinking, and that's what I didn't understand before. Hence the sense of depth, because it's like archaeology that cleans around the skeleton, not like a sculptor carving a skeleton. It's not art.

Philosophy is a profession precisely because it's not an invention, but rather like in literature, it's about explicitly saying things that no one says, putting what's under the table on the table and exposing the shape of the table on which everything rests, exposing it in its arbitrariness despite it not being arbitrary because there's no ability to invent a table or free oneself from it. But to show how the non-arbitrary thing in which we're trapped appears arbitrary, to show how the innermost appears from the outside.

That's why Wittgenstein has two schools not because he was smarter and more cynical, but because he was active in two periods and two philosophical continents, Germany (in the sub-continent of Austria) and England, so in each he exposed, simply because people live longer and wander more in our times. And then once the basis is exposed, the next generations see it, notice its arbitrariness. But a period or place that doesn't have a philosopher simply changes gradually and the form of thinking drifts and no one remembers the change anymore and there's no evidence and it's very hard to even imagine in retrospect how they thought and perceived. Like periods in archaeology from which no material evidence remains and have disappeared, for example nomadic cultures.

Therefore, philosophy is most similar to archaeology - archaeology of thought that exposes itself in real-time and thus leaves remnants for future generations, who are always amazed at the thinking of the past, which suddenly they have a gateway to understand and how different it is. Not because the philosopher was a genius or invented the thinking of their era, but because they documented it, and it's the change that amazes us. Precisely because we perceive differently - so a very different perception is amazing.

Plato didn't invent the wisdom of Athens but documented it, and he seems the wisest because of the time that has passed and therefore the distance from him that has grown. That's why the further we get from him in time, the greater he becomes, like in archaeology where the same remains become bigger and bigger as time passes and the same structure is much more impressive from the Stone Age than from the Middle Ages, say. And meager remains from a million years ago are more impressive than a huge building from a thousand years ago. The past creates monumentality, because the same thing of the same size is viewed but from a greater distance of observation appears larger. And therefore the most sublime structures are in the past.

Here, Machiavelli was just a repulsive and despicable political operative, but when forced to retire and expose the foundations of his world, he became an important philosopher - a philosopher of the trashy world he came out of. Conversely, important worlds that didn't have an important writer or philosopher were forgotten and lost. And here Machiavelli provides a key to understanding the sublime, in that the ruler needs to evoke fear but not hatred. That is, the sublime, what seems to us so high that it cannot be challenged, needs to evoke aesthetic terror but not disgust, because Machiavelli says that fear is a negative emotion that prevents action, causes passivity, while hatred is a negative emotion that causes positive, active action. Therefore, the ruler, in order to maintain stability, needs fear, and that's why rulers build sublime structures, but not ugly ones, and that's why there's a tendency for unnecessary monumental construction throughout history.

Therefore, culture must evoke the fear of the masses through books they don't understand, enormous, vast bodies of knowledge, but not through nonsense. American culture doesn't evoke awe compared to European culture, and therefore the rabble rules, while in Russia the dictatorship succeeds thanks to the heavy Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Kafka is more Jewish than Proust because he wrote short, awe-inspiring texts - Jews inspire awe in their brevity. This is the Jewish paradox, which Borges tried to imitate but with too much awareness, and Agnon somewhat succeeded in a few of his short stories. That's why Jews evoke both hatred and awe, and this is anti-Semitism, because apparently anyone can write this but no one can.

The highest aesthetic category in Judaism is not the sublime, but the mythical, that's what they aspire to, including in Hebrew literature, and we see this also in the difference between a synagogue - a time machine (axis stretches furthest back in time and furthest forward to the future) versus a church - a spaceship (stretches highest to the heavens or lowest to hell, axis stretches furthest up and down). Therefore, the aesthetic ideal of Judaism is the deep and ancient, to get into the book, to be inside the foundational text. While the Western ideal is height, hence high culture, and the aspiration for superiority. And hence also philosophy, since the days of Socrates, as superior to all forms of discourse and bringing them to embarrassment - the acropolis of the spirit (which conceals that it is an archaeological site).

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Is communication with the metaphysical possible?

Why is a shared metaphysical infrastructure necessary between cultures for war and commerce? Why was the Bible created between Egypt and Mesopotamia? How did world Jewry function as the Internet of the Middle Ages? How is the gradual approach of Judaism to centers of power throughout history related to the gradual distancing of God from man throughout Judaism? And what is the banana waiting for the human monkey at the end of history? On all this and more - in another chapter from the Banana Notebooks

By: Philosopher of the Couch

The transformation of the metaphysical from subject to object in secular thought, in order to prevent communication (Source)

The Culture of War

Once it was thought that trade arose from scarcity and surplus, and therefore the more different countries are, the more trade there would be between them. But it turned out that trade actually occurs between similar countries, and there is hardly any trade between different ones, meaning trade actually arises from shared culture. And so it is with conflicts and wars. Conflicts don't happen between different countries but rather between similar ones. The Cold War happened precisely because of the similarity between the USA and the USSR, as empires based on economic agendas, and therefore it's a mistake to think that because China will be a superpower it will have a conflict with the USA. These countries are too different; conflict stems from spiritual conflict, which requires a shared spiritual infrastructure. That's why with Jordan and Egypt, with whom we have nothing in common, there is peace, and precisely because of the similarity between Israel and Iran there is conflict, despite having no shared border. The same goes for the similarity to Palestinians and Lebanese, and with the Palestinians the conflict is the hardest because they are the most similar to us, and both sides compete for the role of victim, and are not willing for the other to take it from them; there is a spiritual agreement on the victim structure and therefore there is competition over it. And so it was in the ancient world, there was no conflict with the cousins Ammon and Moab like with the brothers Edom and Ishmael. Christianity hated Judaism because of the similarity between them, and so did Muhammad fight the Jewish tribes. The Israelite kingdoms did not have an active conflict with Egypt but with the northern kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon, because the cultural source of the Israelites is there, not in Egypt. The Germans hated the Jews precisely because of the similarity of Judaism to Nazism, as a chosen people. The Crusades were because of the similarity of Christianity to Islam, therefore Islam fought towards Europe and not towards Hinduism, despite them being ostensibly more idolatrous. This is the conclusion of Genesis that the hardest quarrels are between brothers, and precisely because of the increasing similarity between men and women, their relationships are at an all-time low. Apple, Google and Facebook fight because they are similar, and don't fight against food producers, for example. Philosophers fight philosophers, and cats fight cats.

Geophilosophy - Geopolitics of Ideas

What protected the Egyptian kingdom, which was not conquered for thousands of years and maintained cultural continuity, was the desert, which protected it from the changing empires in greater Mesopotamia. Until the conquest route moved to the sea, and then it was conquered by Rome. Israel was not in the area that was conquered the most times (to its north), but rather between the stable area of Egypt and the cultural turmoil of Mesopotamia, and therefore was influenced by both - absorbing both the advanced dynamic and competitive influences and the monopolistic cultural stability. Canaan was not a center of war or empire, but rather a center of trade, a route between the constant empire and the changing empires. The stability of Egypt led to ongoing trade, and the dynamism of Mesopotamia saved from stagnation. It was on the border between stability and instability, which from a physical perspective is the most fertile and fractal place - the edge of chaos. In Mesopotamia there were many empires and therefore a civil society of Hammurabi's laws, because every time the state changed, and this law influenced biblical law. In contrast, in Egypt there was a state religion in its most extreme sense, with Pharaoh as a god, and all religion revolving around his immortality, because stability created the pyramids and resistance to death and mummification and eternity, and this influenced the totality of monotheism - our god is like a Pharaoh of the gods. Thus we received a total and timeless god with human law. And the friction between these two elements, between human temporality and law from a constant source - this is the Torah.

The Holocaust Affected the Arab World More Than Europe

What caused the destruction of the Arab world is Israel, which took the Jewish elite, which connected it to the West, from all over the Arab world, emptying it of Jews. Therefore, it's a world that had its Jews taken from it, even more than Europe after the Holocaust, and a cultural vacuum was created, which led to fundamentalism. Just as Russia today, where the Jews there are no longer what they used to be, is being drawn back to the Tsarist era. It's not that Americans are more creative than Japanese and Chinese, and more entrepreneurial, but that in America there are enough Jews to change the ethos of the country, and the media that comes out of it. Jews, being the human Internet of the world, as a networked people found everywhere, have always attracted societies for the benefit of trade and exchange of ideas, particularly between Muslim and Christian cultures. Because Jews had no connection to Indian and Chinese cultures - these two remained isolated from the rest. If Jews had been exiled to India and China - culture would really look different, and it's possible that the East would have led over the West, and monotheistic religions, capitalism and the idea of messianic progress would have developed there. The reason for the Cold War is that after Europe was emptied of Jews there were two superpowers with millions of Jews - Russia and the USA - who exploited the Jews to obtain nuclear weapons, and adopted opposite Jewish-economic ideologies. But the persecution of Jews in Russia contributed to its collapse, because its Jews could not be part of the global Jewish network behind the Iron Curtain and collapsed under oppression, and only in the capitalist period after its fall did they stand out as oligarchs until its return to Tsarism. After victory in the first Cold War, the USA made the same mistake with Russia as it did with Germany after World War I. And therefore we are under threat of the outbreak of the Second Cold War. But the decline of Russian Jewry is what left the USA as the only leading option in the world. If Hitler had waited too long after expelling Jews from their positions in the university, Germany would have begun to lag significantly technologically behind the countries where Jews remained part of the scientific establishment. If, for example, he had restrained himself for a decade, then other countries would already have computers and atomic bombs and he still wouldn't. Therefore he had a narrow window of opportunity. On the other hand, if the war had lasted another two or three years, and the USA had defeated Germany using atomic bombs which are weapons of mass destruction, then the moral account of the Holocaust would have been different, and would have diminished the crimes of the Germans who would have seen themselves as victims. The Holocaust was a severe blow to European culture, but what contributed to global barbarism and the rise of low culture more than anything is Zionism, which drew Jews from all over the world and greatly weakened networked Judaism. In the end, only the USA, England, France and Russia were left with relatively developed Judaism - and these are exactly the powers that defeated Hitler. In other words, it's possible to deconstruct all of history through Judaism, not because Judaism really drives history, but from its perspective as a global network. Because historical explanations (intelligent ones) don't claim to have found the mechanism that drives history, but that they've found an important perspective through which to look at history, and therefore the driving of history is reflected through it, like an X-ray of a body that can be in all kinds of planes, and the claim is that a certain plane captures something essential and predictive (for example, they can diagnose a disease or the development of a new organ in advance). From this perspective, the Jewish claim is strong: the Jewish plane captures something essential from the heart of history. Therefore it's also important to think how the Jewish perspective predicts the future, and in particular how Judaism integrates with the essential revolution of changing man. And here it can be argued that Judaism is the current edge of human enhancement, whether it's cultural or genetic enhancement - its intellectual excellence is a fact. And this orientation in the history of ideas can provide religious and cultural justification for enhancement. Religious justification: to learn Torah better, to decipher its mysteries that were not revealed to previous generations, to get closer to the supreme intellect according to Maimonides, and maybe even to give birth to the Messiah. Cultural justification: in order to produce geniuses from within it and to be a light unto the nations and to find technologies that will protect Jews from extermination and prevent a Holocaust. Even secular Jews will go further than any other culture to prevent a second Holocaust, and this includes against risk from artificial intelligence or risk from aliens or risk from brain cyber or any other futuristic danger. It has simply become a principle. Jews will do anything to survive, even if there will no longer be any reason for man.

Our Naive Era

The Fermi paradox stems from the fact that even a gap of just a thousand years is enough, between the stage at which different cultures leave their planet and reach the explosion of progress, so that there is no scale for comparison between their development. Even if there are many such species, or even cultures on the same planet, they never emerge in parallel. Because in a thousand years our development will be incomparable to that of today, and therefore if the acceleration is great enough, a small gap in departure times for the race is enough so that any two will never get close and never compete, and therefore every race will be unique in its level of development, as far as can be seen on the horizon. And a race that precedes us by a thousand years, or a hundred thousand years, is perhaps already capable of creating the entire universe, and being our god, and maybe that's what happened, because who said that the amount of matter and energy and distance in the universe are large? Maybe they are tiny in relation to another universe, and we are a mini-universe, a nano-universe. But maybe these gods are still sensitive to suffering, or to ignorance, and therefore play a little with history, or at least create uniqueness and interest in it, like in a game or a book. We need to stop thinking about aliens and start thinking about gods, because the gap between us and them is a gap between man and god, not between man and foreign man or animal. Because even to be a game or scientific experiment requires some ratio between the sophistication of the game and the sophistication of the player, we could be a god of ants but less a god of bacteria and even less a god of atoms or photons. And therefore it may be that each race is the god of the race that emerges shortly after it in the race, and these are spheres of gods within gods, expanding circles, the gap between them only grows and hence the distancing of God from us in history. And there may be races that are a little closer to their god than others, although of course because of the acceleration the gap tends to infinity. Therefore the Fermi paradox is a religious argument, and the prevalence of life in the universe leads to the existence of gods, and science at its peak can still merge back with religion. Maybe God really looked for someone to talk to in humanity, and found that the Jews are the most worthy interlocutors relative to the rest. Or decided to teach it something and create a partnership through Jesus, who was an alien in a human body.

Philosophy of the Future