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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Desire to Be America: On the Wretchedness of the "Ethiopian Protest"

Political Cat: Second column in Bilha Reuven's new section. This time, the house cat tails a giant and terrifying black cat, with dreadlocks, groove, hoodie, and bling, who looks like the authentic king of the ghetto and calls himself Niger, but for some reason speaks with an American accent, which ruins everything. On another victim of tail-wagging politics

By: On the Third Floor a Black Cat

Authentic Israeli protest against Ethiopian slavery and Ethiopian apartheid and Ethiopian racial segregation  (Source)

When Roy Hasan was once pressed to admit the sources of his poetry, the unsurprising answer was revealed. Not Mizrahi poetry, liturgical poems, or maqamas, not Spanish poetry or influences from the glorious Arabic poetry - but American black culture and its replicated images in American media: revered rappers, NBA, ideology of "unapologetic" resistance to whites, and in the best (and pretentious) case - jazz. From here, everything is imitation and replication of American black ideology to the Israeli space - which explains well the success ("At 23, I had a hip-hop group, which is the only group I'm proud of to this day. It was called Kasha Basha, and there I really felt I was writing poetry"). The authenticity of the protest poetry celebrated here as authentic and rooted Mizrahi is a fitting parable for the Ethiopian protest celebrated here as an unparalleled authentic protest.

The cheap and transparent American imitation is the central characteristic of Israeli media, whose world of images stems from American series it watches every night - for several decades. How many years have we waited to have our own blacks, so we can be good whites, privileged, moral, with guilt feelings (about slavery!), and also play in the recurring script we watch every evening, which shapes our consciousness, but still remains foreign to us? With the Eritreans it didn't work well enough, the Black Panthers - well, that's from Golda's era, the Arabs - completely refused to play the role. So here are the Ethiopians.

An Ethiopian youth killed in unclear circumstances by a policeman? This is our opportunity to live the American left, the American dream, it's perfectly suited to the script of "Black Lives Matter". We too are America. It doesn't matter that just two weeks ago, in another police case, it became clear to everyone how elusive the truth is - this time it's our turn to be on the inflammatory side, and "their turn" to ask to wait for the investigation results. But what can we do, American cultural imperialism is all-pervasive - and the Ethiopians themselves are influenced by its images, its ideology, its manipulative values, and the desire to "be America". They too are Roy Hasan. They too want to occupy the black, prestigious slot, with its imagined cultural capital - the "against" slot. And they too watch YouTube and television (yes, Ethiopians have smartphones and TVs!). Harlem is here, isn't it?

And as usual, the regular chorus marches on, explaining about discrimination, about the economic sources of the protest (Marx!), about exclusion. Everyone knows their role (including the Ethiopians), and everything is as determined by a Hollywood screenwriter, who, what can we do, really loves to cast blacks in crime series (and aren't the policemen themselves influenced by this? Don't they watch Netflix? How many drug series and crime movies has an average policeman seen?). And the one who is really to blame for the Ethiopian community's distress, for the loss of its ethos, and for turning it into easy prey for parasitic and imitative ideology, and unfortunately also one that glorifies criminality as a cultural hero - is not to be mentioned. Because it is the secular elite itself that shattered the traditional Ethiopian culture, its authentic (yes, this time without quotation marks) social and ideological structures, the ethos and the most unique Jewish culture it preserved (including the language!) - with the help of its ideology, in a proven method that has been working on traditional societies for about three hundred years like a jackhammer. What is called - the process of secularization.

Alternative Current Affairs


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Degeneration of the Nation (Part 3): A Moral Lecture - What Does Culture Demand of Us?

What is the difference between the decadence of the late 19th century and the decline of the early 21st century? Why does our longer life expectancy allow us to conduct ourselves creatively in a completely different way than in the past? Is our generation truly special, or is it just dragging on for too long? And how is Brenner, the archetype of the professional generational rebuker, to blame for the bitter dispute in Israel between Bibi and anti-Bibi? Here is the solution to all the problems of our generation - through one additional generation

By: For the Perplexed of the Generation

Human Society: The Human Pendulum (Source)

From time to time, I read contemporary texts that aim to solve some problem in humanity - that is, they focus on the average person and try to help them - and an anachronistic feeling gradually takes over the reading. In our time, those who seriously try to fix something "in humanity" cannot help but evoke a smile, for it seems that every sensible person has already understood - "humanity" is simply idiotic. There's no point in dealing with it. "Society", another desirable target for fixers, is composed of just a very wide variety of stupidities - and there's no reason to bother with it. "The public" is just an eclectic collection of personality problems and incurable neurological weaknesses - generation comes and generation goes, and foolishness stands forever. They are always a herd of something quite moronic, hopefully not too murderous. They never learn. And if they do learn something the hard way, for example in war, a generation or two after them already forgets. To the chagrin of both individualists and collectivists - neither the individual nor the public are truly learning systems. So what is the only system in our world that does learn, and that carries all progress on its back? Culture.

Politics, for example, is not a true learning system. Politics has always been and will always be a collection of idiotisms (usually with good intentions, or at least with some idiot+ism), spread by useful fools, led by imbeciles, followed by a very long line of dimwits. Ben-Gurion was a product of an entire generation, not of individual excellence, and that generation learned the hard way - the collapse of Europe and the Holocaust. The generation after him was already more foolish, and the generation after that (the current one) has already returned to the average historical level of stupidity. Therefore, it is always better to reduce the scope of politics, just as it is better to reduce the scope of the state (in fact, the reason it is better to reduce the scope of the state is precisely because it is better to reduce the scope of politics, and not some pure economic reason: the economic problem stems from general stupidity).

Will salvation come from the individual? The individual is also worthless, contrary to Nietzschean thinking, and we wouldn't remember Nietzsche himself - if not for his books. Only a valuable contribution to culture - will be remembered. And in fact, the multitude of fools understands this, and crowds in masses at the gates of culture, trying to contribute its hollow contribution, and to corrupt even it with its stupidity, as it tries to do to the academic ivory tower (what is called - education for all). Hence the politicization that culture undergoes. But Israel is not forsaken - all those who make noise in today's cultural field, due to their engagement with current affairs, are destined to be quickly forgotten.

Culture has a non-democratic filtering mechanism - but futuristic. Therefore, it works in a learning manner. Culture is the central learning system of the human species, and in general on Earth (science is part of culture, of course), and in fact the only effective learning system known to us in the universe. The brain is not particularly effective or successful, nor is evolution, and it wasn't the appearance of the brain that was the great revolution - but the appearance of culture. The only thing that does progress, and affects positively (somehow, partially, and ultimately) even politics and society and the individual human, is culture. And this is also ultimately the thing that interests us in (surprise!) "past cultures". No one remembers the petty politics there, but only the great culture. Therefore, it probably wouldn't have been so interesting to know what was there in the hundreds of thousands of years of primitive human society, just as the politics in a herd of monkeys are not interesting. The real interest begins with the birth of culture, and from some pioneering leap it made about ten thousand years ago, as an order of magnitude (the cultural revolution - known as the Neolithic Revolution). The only reason for the success of the human species is culture, not the wisdom of the individual (who is smarter than a monkey by less than one order of magnitude).

So, what will become of culture? Culture is a long-term learning system, and therefore what it needs is patience. We can relax - the fools will not affect culture, nor will politics. It may be that culture today is slower in its ability to filter out noise (there's simply much more noise - that is, fools - in its domain). But the future is an excellent noise filter. Fools can shout until tomorrow - no one will hear them in the future. No one will be interested in their banal pains, or in their painful banality. Culture does not appreciate conformism, only politics does. The solution is very simple and as old as human culture itself: you just need to wait a generation. This is always the problem - waiting a generation. For the individual, this is an almost impossible, cruel, heavy demand beyond their ability to bear - but for culture, it's a minimum requirement.

Hence the eternal cultural illusion, beloved by self-proclaimed cultural figures, as if in the past there was a higher concentration of talents and masterpieces, while the present is miserable and deprived in comparison - despite its extreme implausibility (it's as old as the world). It's not that fewer masterpieces are being written today (probably more!), but that you haven't heard about essential developments too close to the present, because sometimes it takes even hundreds of years for such recognition (the Zohar [Translator's note: a foundational text of Jewish mysticism], for example, still hasn't received the global recognition it deserves!). Your chance of hearing about the greats of your generation is small - because only the learning of the future will mark them in retrospect as great. And the deeper the new direction (the innovation) - the longer it will take to mark it, and to filter it out of thousands of less deep and less long-term directions, but more politically powerful for their time - and certainly (in our days) noisier. The face of the generation is like the face of a barking dog - and only in retrospect are the cats of the generation revealed, who were hidden in their homes and surroundings.

So is culture progressing more slowly than in the past, because of the enormous noise, which takes time to subside? Possibly, but not at all certain. Because it's possible that what's important for culture is only the dialogue between the exceptional individuals who truly advance it, who converse high above the herd of masses of fools humming with their croaks up to the heart of the heavens. Therefore, in this view, the question is ultimately a question of communication - the ability of true cultural figures to identify the voices of the few other cultural figures, if not in this generation then at least in the previous one. And here, it's possible that the internet has actually contributed positively.

But the learning truth is that even this understanding is less important, and there is wild exaggeration in the importance of dialogue for the progress of learning, stemming from the dominance of the idea of language and communication in our time, which create a temporary bias (that is: only of our time) in favor of linguistic analogies and metaphors. It's true that there is a special enrichment in knowing the cultural figures of your generation, and this probably happens less than in the past, but at the level of the talented individual who contributes to culture, it may be less important than it seems. It's true that the psychological burden of cultural loneliness of the individual is growing in the current situation, where the politics of culture is controlled by impostors, and therefore there is no longer a cultural center but only disconnected islands. But culture grows not only from dialogue, but simply from self-learning. And today the conditions for self-learning, in every respect, are much better than in the past. The internet opens up treasures of scientific knowledge for us, which flows faster than other parts of culture, and has not yet been corrupted - and this is perhaps the most important cultural knowledge for our technological era.

The islands of culture can react in an isolated way to their time. Not to the culture of their time, hidden from them, and will only be revealed in the future, because of the cultural uproar - but the ability to dialogue with time is more important than the ability to dialogue with the culture of the time. One can learn from time itself! And time itself is progressing faster and faster, towards the future, and therefore learning itself is accelerated. Therefore, for those willing to give up recognition, we live in paradise, while for proud cultural figures - our era is life in hell. Therefore, giving up on the self is the order of the day in current culture, if there is still any meaning to this term - current culture - when culture ceases to function in the present tense, and becomes culture in the future only.

That is: Culture becomes futuristic culture. A culture that exists entirely and only in the mirror of the future, and only from within the future will it be possible to see it as culture, that is, as a symphony (multi-voiced, but with a melodic course), and not as cacophony. The future is what will distill from our era the cultural voices, and filter out the politicians of the tongue with the absolute mercilessness reserved for absolute indifference. We do not speak with our contemporaries, and will not participate in the shouting competition, because it's enough that we whisper - and the future will hear.

And what does giving up on the life of this world for the sake of the life of the world to come require? Faith. Faith in culture and faith in spirit, and above all - faith in learning. But on what is this faith based, in an era that believes only in matter? Every philosophical paradigm in history had its way of building a cultural spiritual world beyond the material world visible to the eye, that is, its own way of creating faith:

* The Kantian paradigm could believe from our perception of the world, even if the world itself is material. Faith indeed comes from within me, but like the categories, I basically have no other way to reach the material world without faith. Faith is part of me, which may not depend on my will (for example, the Freudian addition placed a spiritual world in the unconscious - in what operates me myself). In this paradigm, culture is understood as a way of perception built into the human brain, and this is its internal justification, without external justification.

* The linguistic paradigm created the world of faith as a discourse world that has faith in it (for example, the inflated Wittgensteinian religiosity that doesn't really believe but plays in the language game of faith - and prays to God as a language game). Maybe there is no spiritual world, but if we talk as if there is, then that's how we'll have access to the spirit (hence the secular forgery of this paradigm, which parallels the religious forgery). We wrap God (or another spiritual/religious world) in a wrapper of language - and pretend as if he's inside. If there is cultural discourse - then there is culture. So please speak in a cultured manner.

* In contrast, the learning paradigm manages to create a world of faith that does not depend at all on the ontological question of whether there is a God or not, whether there is a spiritual world or everything is matter, whether there is culture or only evolution and neurology and psychology and politics and social sciences and humanities (which are often today enemies of culture). And this is because all there is are forms of learning - and there is no world. If we learn the spiritual world, it is not a claim about the existence of such an external world that is the object of our learning, but that there is an autonomous and unique and interesting and challenging form of learning - a method - which is spiritual learning (and in the same way - religious learning). Just as there is a scientific-material form of learning, or a Buddhist form of learning, or aesthetic, or Kabbalistic, or mathematical. So there is also a cultural form of learning. We no longer need to pretend that we are talking (with profound seriousness of course) about a world that does not exist outside of language, but we come from within - within learning. That is: The learning of the spirit is itself the meaning of existing within the spiritual world - from within. Therefore, all that is needed to seriously be part of any spiritual world, which exists in any culture, is to be interested and learn. There is no need to deal with the question of whether there is God in the world out there, but all that is needed is for there to be interesting learning - which is Jewish learning, or religious, or Hasidic. Because the learning itself is the faith. The study of mathematics is mathematics itself, and the study of Torah is the Torah itself, and not that there is some ontological Torah (or ontological Platonic mathematics) that one needs to believe in order to study it. This is the meaning of faith in the future - it is not faith in some ontological future world, and its preference over the present, but the learning itself - is faith in the future.

Therefore, the very development of culture is faith in it. And culture, for its part, is the belief that the future will hear. Even if in a way we cannot imagine, and which is sometimes ironic and cunning beyond measure. Just as the Pharaohs who so longed to defeat death actually managed to achieve eternal life, but not in the world of the dead - but in museums, as cultural creations. Or as Brenner the heretic received his "nevertheless" from the paradoxical Chabad thinking he received in cheder [Translator's note: traditional elementary school for Jewish children], and the pose and confessional prose and cruel self-flagellation and public from the Musar movement in which he grew up. Thus he founded the Mitnagdic [Translator's note: opponents of Hasidism] tradition within Hebrew literature (which opposes Hasidic stories), from which grew the continuation of the Mitnagdic spiritual world within the secular world (soul-searching, rebuke, rhetoric of authenticity, the soul's roar and the right to shout that becomes the duty to shout, the Musar movement of moral preaching, etc.). And now the dispute from 250 years ago returns, and the secular Mitnagdic left is horrified by the Hasidim of the right and their Rebbe (not to mention the court). Tyrants' pruner and flint knives! Therefore, we must fight today in our culture for the right to whisper. Brenner wrote - and the future didn't even read, but heard. If you have something to say to the future - you don't need to struggle. Just write to it. It is precisely the struggle of the people of the present that shows that they have nothing to whisper secretly to the ears of the future. They have no faith in their own future, and therefore they behave in the cultural market like merchants. Opinions by the kilo and intellectuals for a shekel, on the knife! Are you coming to Facebook? The mashgiach [Translator's note: spiritual supervisor in yeshivas] is now giving a moral lecture (so it's a moral obligation to like him).

But - if despite all this and "nevertheless" we return to the place from which we started, what will really become of "humanity"? What does culture have to offer to the average person? That is - (in our era the question is reversed!) what does the average person have to offer to culture? Is their role merely adoration and financial support? (Preferably not, because their evaluation mechanisms are completely flawed and therefore they corrupt culture when they come to help it). What does this text offer for the correction of "humanity" (the deaf, the foolish, who there is no illusion that they will hear anything)? The great trouble with sterile individualism itself is its own denial of the future dimension of its existence. Yes, you know you're not really talented, not at a level that will be remembered in the future, but because you are an individual in your self-perception you can't help but interfere with culture, make noise and express yourself (and how much noise is inside you! You probably think this is a guarantee of your value, contrary to the mental quiet and enormous concentration that true creation requires). But this need itself stems from a denial of your situation in the world, including the opportunities it offers, and in fact the great opportunity that was known and central to the world of every person until the individualistic era.

The Musar movement? Please. You are a crooked and foolish tree, which will never straighten, and you have only one opportunity in life to make a real fruit for culture: Einstein you will never be, but you can still be Einstein's father (who, miraculously, was also called Einstein!). The only future dimension of existence of the reasonable "human", in which he contributes to culture, is known as: Jewish parenting (yes, it's not just the mother, despite her public relations). This is the parenting whose entire purpose is to create a genius child who will contribute to culture much more than his parents are capable of, while giving up on their own self ("What I did for you!"). And the achievements of Jewish culture in the world - testify that it works. Jewish parenting was a cultural enterprise of the first order on a global level, and if there is any cultural loss to lament in our time, and hope for its return to its former glory, it is this parenting. And this is exactly the trouble with culture. All it demands is to wait a generation. This is an unbearable demand for the individual, but as an individual you are worth nothing, contrary to what they sold you. What can you do - culture's minimum requirement (a generation!) is always the maximum demand from the human.

To Part 1

Culture and Literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Degeneration of the Nation (Part 3): A Moral Lecture - What Does Culture Demand of Us?

What is the difference between the decadence of the late 19th century and the decline of the early 21st century? Why does our longer life expectancy allow us to conduct ourselves creatively in a completely different way than in the past? Is our generation truly special, or is it just dragging on for too long? And how is Brenner, the archetype of the professional generational rebuker, to blame for the bitter dispute in Israel between Bibi and anti-Bibi? Here is the solution to all the problems of our generation - through one additional generation

By: For the Perplexed of the Generation

Human Society: The Human Pendulum  (Source)

From time to time, I read contemporary texts that aim to solve some problem in humanity - that is, they focus on the average person and try to help them - and an anachronistic feeling gradually takes over the reading. In our time, those who seriously try to fix something "in humanity" cannot help but evoke a smile, for it seems that every sensible person has already understood - "humanity" is simply idiotic. There's no point in dealing with it. "Society", another desirable target for fixers, is composed of just a very wide variety of stupidities - and there's no reason to bother with it. "The public" is just an eclectic collection of personality problems and incurable neurological weaknesses - generation comes and generation goes, and foolishness stands forever. They are always a herd of something quite moronic, hopefully not too murderous. They never learn. And if they do learn something the hard way, for example in war, a generation or two after them already forgets. To the chagrin of both individualists and collectivists - neither the individual nor the public are truly learning systems. So what is the only system in our world that does learn, and that carries all progress on its back? Culture.

Politics, for example, is not a true learning system. Politics has always been and will always be a collection of idiotisms (usually with good intentions, or at least with some idiot+ism), spread by useful fools, led by imbeciles, followed by a very long line of dimwits. Ben-Gurion was a product of an entire generation, not of individual excellence, and that generation learned the hard way - the collapse of Europe and the Holocaust. The generation after him was already more foolish, and the generation after that (the current one) has already returned to the average historical level of stupidity. Therefore, it is always better to reduce the scope of politics, just as it is better to reduce the scope of the state (in fact, the reason it is better to reduce the scope of the state is precisely because it is better to reduce the scope of politics, and not some pure economic reason: the economic problem stems from general stupidity).

Will salvation come from the individual? The individual is also worthless, contrary to Nietzschean thinking, and we wouldn't remember Nietzsche himself - if not for his books. Only a valuable contribution to culture - will be remembered. And in fact, the multitude of fools understands this, and crowds in masses at the gates of culture, trying to contribute its hollow contribution, and to corrupt even it with its stupidity, as it tries to do to the academic ivory tower (what is called - education for all). Hence the politicization that culture undergoes. But Israel is not forsaken - all those who make noise in today's cultural field, due to their engagement with current affairs, are destined to be quickly forgotten.

Culture has a non-democratic filtering mechanism - but futuristic. Therefore, it works in a learning manner. Culture is the central learning system of the human species, and in general on Earth (science is part of culture, of course), and in fact the only effective learning system known to us in the universe. The brain is not particularly effective or successful, nor is evolution, and it wasn't the appearance of the brain that was the great revolution - but the appearance of culture. The only thing that does progress, and affects positively (somehow, partially, and ultimately) even politics and society and the individual human, is culture. And this is also ultimately the thing that interests us in (surprise!) "past cultures". No one remembers the petty politics there, but only the great culture. Therefore, it probably wouldn't have been so interesting to know what was there in the hundreds of thousands of years of primitive human society, just as the politics in a herd of monkeys are not interesting. The real interest begins with the birth of culture, and from some pioneering leap it made about ten thousand years ago, as an order of magnitude (the cultural revolution - known as the Neolithic Revolution). The only reason for the success of the human species is culture, not the wisdom of the individual (who is smarter than a monkey by less than one order of magnitude).

So, what will become of culture? Culture is a long-term learning system, and therefore what it needs is patience. We can relax - the fools will not affect culture, nor will politics. It may be that culture today is slower in its ability to filter out noise (there's simply much more noise - that is, fools - in its domain). But the future is an excellent noise filter. Fools can shout until tomorrow - no one will hear them in the future. No one will be interested in their banal pains, or in their painful banality. Culture does not appreciate conformism, only politics does. The solution is very simple and as old as human culture itself: you just need to wait a generation. This is always the problem - waiting a generation. For the individual, this is an almost impossible, cruel, heavy demand beyond their ability to bear - but for culture, it's a minimum requirement.

Hence the eternal cultural illusion, beloved by self-proclaimed cultural figures, as if in the past there was a higher concentration of talents and masterpieces, while the present is miserable and deprived in comparison - despite its extreme implausibility (it's as old as the world). It's not that fewer masterpieces are being written today (probably more!), but that you haven't heard about essential developments too close to the present, because sometimes it takes even hundreds of years for such recognition (the Zohar [Translator's note: a foundational text of Jewish mysticism], for example, still hasn't received the global recognition it deserves!). Your chance of hearing about the greats of your generation is small - because only the learning of the future will mark them in retrospect as great. And the deeper the new direction (the innovation) - the longer it will take to mark it, and to filter it out of thousands of less deep and less long-term directions, but more politically powerful for their time - and certainly (in our days) noisier. The face of the generation is like the face of a barking dog - and only in retrospect are the cats of the generation revealed, who were hidden in their homes and surroundings.

So is culture progressing more slowly than in the past, because of the enormous noise, which takes time to subside? Possibly, but not at all certain. Because it's possible that what's important for culture is only the dialogue between the exceptional individuals who truly advance it, who converse high above the herd of masses of fools humming with their croaks up to the heart of the heavens. Therefore, in this view, the question is ultimately a question of communication - the ability of true cultural figures to identify the voices of the few other cultural figures, if not in this generation then at least in the previous one. And here, it's possible that the internet has actually contributed positively.

But the learning truth is that even this understanding is less important, and there is wild exaggeration in the importance of dialogue for the progress of learning, stemming from the dominance of the idea of language and communication in our time, which create a temporary bias (that is: only of our time) in favor of linguistic analogies and metaphors. It's true that there is a special enrichment in knowing the cultural figures of your generation, and this probably happens less than in the past, but at the level of the talented individual who contributes to culture, it may be less important than it seems. It's true that the psychological burden of cultural loneliness of the individual is growing in the current situation, where the politics of culture is controlled by impostors, and therefore there is no longer a cultural center but only disconnected islands. But culture grows not only from dialogue, but simply from self-learning. And today the conditions for self-learning, in every respect, are much better than in the past. The internet opens up treasures of scientific knowledge for us, which flows faster than other parts of culture, and has not yet been corrupted - and this is perhaps the most important cultural knowledge for our technological era.

The islands of culture can react in an isolated way to their time. Not to the culture of their time, hidden from them, and will only be revealed in the future, because of the cultural uproar - but the ability to dialogue with time is more important than the ability to dialogue with the culture of the time. One can learn from time itself! And time itself is progressing faster and faster, towards the future, and therefore learning itself is accelerated. Therefore, for those willing to give up recognition, we live in paradise, while for proud cultural figures - our era is life in hell. Therefore, giving up on the self is the order of the day in current culture, if there is still any meaning to this term - current culture - when culture ceases to function in the present tense, and becomes culture in the future only.

That is: Culture becomes futuristic culture. A culture that exists entirely and only in the mirror of the future, and only from within the future will it be possible to see it as culture, that is, as a symphony (multi-voiced, but with a melodic course), and not as cacophony. The future is what will distill from our era the cultural voices, and filter out the politicians of the tongue with the absolute mercilessness reserved for absolute indifference. We do not speak with our contemporaries, and will not participate in the shouting competition, because it's enough that we whisper - and the future will hear.

And what does giving up on the life of this world for the sake of the life of the world to come require? Faith. Faith in culture and faith in spirit, and above all - faith in learning. But on what is this faith based, in an era that believes only in matter? Every philosophical paradigm in history had its way of building a cultural spiritual world beyond the material world visible to the eye, that is, its own way of creating faith:

The Kantian paradigm could believe from our perception of the world, even if the world itself is material. Faith indeed comes from within me, but like the categories, I basically have no other way to reach the material world without faith. Faith is part of me, which may not depend on my will (for example, the Freudian addition placed a spiritual world in the unconscious - in what operates me myself). In this paradigm, culture is understood as a way of perception built into the human brain, and this is its internal justification, without external justification.

The linguistic paradigm created the world of faith as a discourse world that has faith in it (for example, the inflated Wittgensteinian religiosity that doesn't really believe but plays in the language game of faith - and prays to God as a language game). Maybe there is no spiritual world, but if we talk as if there is, then that's how we'll have access to the spirit (hence the secular forgery of this paradigm, which parallels the religious forgery). We wrap God (or another spiritual/religious world) in a wrapper of language - and pretend as if he's inside. If there is cultural discourse - then there is culture. So please speak in a cultured manner.

In contrast, the learning paradigm manages to create a world of faith that does not depend at all on the ontological question of whether there is a God or not, whether there is a spiritual world or everything is matter, whether there is culture or only evolution and neurology and psychology and politics and social sciences and humanities (which are often today enemies of culture). And this is because all there is are forms of learning - and there is no world. If we learn the spiritual world, it is not a claim about the existence of such an external world that is the object of our learning, but that there is an autonomous and unique and interesting and challenging form of learning - a method - which is spiritual learning (and in the same way - religious learning). Just as there is a scientific-material form of learning, or a Buddhist form of learning, or aesthetic, or Kabbalistic, or mathematical. So there is also a cultural form of learning. We no longer need to pretend that we are talking (with profound seriousness of course) about a world that does not exist outside of language, but we come from within - within learning. That is: The learning of the spirit is itself the meaning of existing within the spiritual world - from within. Therefore, all that is needed to seriously be part of any spiritual world, which exists in any culture, is to be interested and learn. There is no need to deal with the question of whether there is God in the world out there, but all that is needed is for there to be interesting learning - which is Jewish learning, or religious, or Hasidic. Because the learning itself is the faith. The study of mathematics is mathematics itself, and the study of Torah is the Torah itself, and not that there is some ontological Torah (or ontological Platonic mathematics) that one needs to believe in order to study it. This is the meaning of faith in the future - it is not faith in some ontological future world, and its preference over the present, but the learning itself - is faith in the future.

Therefore, the very development of culture is faith in it. And culture, for its part, is the belief that the future will hear. Even if in a way we cannot imagine, and which is sometimes ironic and cunning beyond measure. Just as the Pharaohs who so longed to defeat death actually managed to achieve eternal life, but not in the world of the dead - but in museums, as cultural creations. Or as Brenner the heretic received his "nevertheless" from the paradoxical Chabad thinking he received in cheder [Translator's note: traditional elementary school for Jewish children], and the pose and confessional prose and cruel self-flagellation and public from the Musar movement in which he grew up. Thus he founded the Mitnagdic [Translator's note: opponents of Hasidism] tradition within Hebrew literature (which opposes Hasidic stories), from which grew the continuation of the Mitnagdic spiritual world within the secular world (soul-searching, rebuke, rhetoric of authenticity, the soul's roar and the right to shout that becomes the duty to shout, the Musar movement of moral preaching, etc.). And now the dispute from 250 years ago returns, and the secular Mitnagdic left is horrified by the Hasidim of the right and their Rebbe (not to mention the court). Tyrants' pruner and flint knives! Therefore, we must fight today in our culture for the right to whisper. Brenner wrote - and the future didn't even read, but heard. If you have something to say to the future - you don't need to struggle. Just write to it. It is precisely the struggle of the people of the present that shows that they have nothing to whisper secretly to the ears of the future. They have no faith in their own future, and therefore they behave in the cultural market like merchants. Opinions by the kilo and intellectuals for a shekel, on the knife! Are you coming to Facebook? The mashgiach [Translator's note: spiritual supervisor in yeshivas] is now giving a moral lecture (so it's a moral obligation to like him).

But - if despite all this and "nevertheless" we return to the place from which we started, what will really become of "humanity"? What does culture have to offer to the average person? That is - (in our era the question is reversed!) what does the average person have to offer to culture? Is their role merely adoration and financial support? (Preferably not, because their evaluation mechanisms are completely flawed and therefore they corrupt culture when they come to help it). What does this text offer for the correction of "humanity" (the deaf, the foolish, who there is no illusion that they will hear anything)? The great trouble with sterile individualism itself is its own denial of the future dimension of its existence. Yes, you know you're not really talented, not at a level that will be remembered in the future, but because you are an individual in your self-perception you can't help but interfere with culture, make noise and express yourself (and how much noise is inside you! You probably think this is a guarantee of your value, contrary to the mental quiet and enormous concentration that true creation requires). But this need itself stems from a denial of your situation in the world, including the opportunities it offers, and in fact the great opportunity that was known and central to the world of every person until the individualistic era.

The Musar movement? Please. You are a crooked and foolish tree, which will never straighten, and you have only one opportunity in life to make a real fruit for culture: Einstein you will never be, but you can still be Einstein's father (who, miraculously, was also called Einstein!). The only future dimension of existence of the reasonable "human", in which he contributes to culture, is known as: Jewish parenting (yes, it's not just the mother, despite her public relations). This is the parenting whose entire purpose is to create a genius child who will contribute to culture much more than his parents are capable of, while giving up on their own self ("What I did for you!"). And the achievements of Jewish culture in the world - testify that it works. Jewish parenting was a cultural enterprise of the first order on a global level, and if there is any cultural loss to lament in our time, and hope for its return to its former glory, it is this parenting. And this is exactly the trouble with culture. All it demands is to wait a generation. This is an unbearable demand for the individual, but as an individual you are worth nothing, contrary to what they sold you. What can you do - culture's minimum requirement (a generation!) is always the maximum demand from the human.

To Part 1

Culture and Literature


domain: philosophy

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The Degeneration of the Nation

About the Learning Advisor

On the profession of the 21st century, which will combine individual treatment (psychologist), organizational treatment (consultant), and system treatment (manager) - because both the individual and the organization will be understood as systems. With the spread of the learning revolution, we'll discover that we're all learning advisors, half necessary and half superfluous, because the split state is the advisory state - and the learning state. Advice is guidance - not instruction, and not just a possibility, but an intermediate state between possibility and instruction. This unique logical state, between the possible and the necessary, resides in the space between language and programming, that is, in the space where learning occurs

By: Eitzas Giber

The Advisor as a Phantasmatic Synthesis between Parent and Psychologist (Source)

Psychoanalysis created the figure of the therapist, Nietzsche the figure of the superman, and Marx created the figure of the communist revolutionary. What, then, is the figure, and perhaps the profession, created by the philosophy of learning? Is it the figure of the teacher, the student, the researcher, or perhaps the student as a profession - the scholar? All these are figures of learners, but as an advisory philosophy, dealing with guidance (and leaving the learning itself to the system - that is, to the learner himself), the philosophy of learning gives rise to another figure: the learning advisor. This figure is somewhat similar to the organizational consultant and somewhat to the teacher, and in fact replaces both, while creating a theoretical-conceptual basis for their action.

Every learning system - whether it's a person, organization, market, culture, field of research, language, society, or any other system - maintains the basic property of learning: learning is always within the system. The meaning of this saying is almost tautological. The way we see learning in a system is by examining it as internal development - learning is looking at a system from within and inside it: with its own tools. For example, if we examine cultural development with economic tools, or artistic development with political tools - we are making an external reduction of the system to another system, and thus we are not looking at it as a learning system, because we are not looking at it from an internal perspective.

The development of art should be examined with the tools of the system itself - that is, as artistic development, and not with tools external to it (power struggles, morality, politics, economics), because only in this way can we examine artistic learning - that is, the learning that occurs in the art system. And so for any other field. If we claim that the Torah study system stems from various material interests, foreign to the system, we will not understand the phenomenon of learning in the Torah system. It's not that we'll be wrong, but that we'll miss examining the learning of the system, because this is a dynamic that is perceived when examining the inside of the system.

When literature develops for internal literary reasons - this is literary learning. And if literature develops for non-literary reasons - this is not literary learning. If we look at the brain as a physical system, we lose the understanding of human learning from within as a learning system (how learning looks inside a person). The reduction to external causality is not wrong - it's simply not learning-oriented, and therefore less interesting. Because learning is interesting and enriching - and reduction is flattening and simplifying, and often misses what is special to the system and therefore internal to it (and therefore often has weak explanatory power - empty, conspiratorial or circular - because it is disconnected from the internal dynamics, like a "deus ex machina" is disconnected from the plot of the play). Therefore, leftist reductions - Marxist to economics, politically correct to morality and political agenda, Foucauldian to power - are anti-learning. And therefore the politicization of everything is anti-learning - because it is external.

Therefore, the learning advisor does not analyze the system from the outside, and does not teach it from the outside, but from within. Therefore, he is only an advisor - he is not responsible for bringing it to a solution, but to guide it. He does not manage it - neither directly nor manipulatively - and he does not know better than it what is right. In fact, a good manager whose organization is a system with high learning abilities - he too should not manage it, but be its learning advisor. And in the ideal, learning state - the prime minister is the learning advisor of the state. The goal of the learning advisor is to bring the system to a state where it is a learning system, and to enhance its learning abilities. How does he do this? For example, through examples, and particularly examples of learning. Through analogies. Through narratives. Through conceptual images. That is: through learning aids. He of course does this through questions, exercises and drills, thought experiments, experiments and games - all these are examples of learning aids. Since it's about learning, there is no general method, but only examples, and no tools but only aids.

The best learning example (that is, the most instructive) of the learning advisor is a learning history of the field in which the system is engaged. A learning advisor for mathematical research will expose the history of the field of mathematical research and its development. A learning advisor for a student will expose him to the history of the field he is studying: how the field itself learned. A learning advisor exposes the learning infrastructure of the system - and makes it visible to the system itself. If the infrastructure is not efficient, for example, the system is fossilized, he cleans the infrastructure and offers learning as an ethos to the system. That is, he strengthens the learning components within the system, but the learning advisor cannot and should not create learning abilities out of nothing, but works with - and within - a learning system. There is no learning advisor for a stone, and no advisor will teach it to learn. A learning advisor encourages and develops existing learning abilities in the system, and he is the ideologist and disseminator of the philosophy of learning, until it becomes self-evident.

But even when the philosophy of learning becomes the philosophy of common sense, and is fully internalized in the system, and in the world in general, the role of the advisor will not end - because the role of learning will never end. It is easier to present learning strategies than to implement them. It's easy to aspire to exemplary examples - it's hard to be an exemplary example. It's easy for an advisor to present even to a very advanced student - more advanced than the advisor himself, and even to the point where he has surpassed everyone else - the masterpieces as a goal, but it's very difficult to create masterpieces (in fact, it's exactly the advisor's role to be the one who presents this goal to the student - especially when he has progressed far beyond his teacher, the advisor). It's easy to criticize - it's hard to do. We know that the teachers of the great artists were almost never greater artists than them. The advisor presents tests to the learner (like in NP), and the learner will always find it difficult to find a solution for them. Therefore, the advisor is necessary even for a great artist. The advisor doesn't know how to learn better than the artist, but he knows how to advance him in learning.

If we take an extreme example: the advisor can be less intelligent than the learner, but still will have no substitute. Thus, as the learning abilities of the computer increase, the human - who is currently a user and controller - will gradually become the learning advisor of the computer. We can imagine that the learning abilities of the computer will surpass those of humans - and still there will be a need for humans as learning advisors, to guide it on what to learn. Ultimately, this is the future of humans: learning advisors. And as the importance of learning in various systems is recognized - learning advice will spread as a practice and profession. There is room here for empirical learning research: how to create more efficient capitalist learning? More efficient democratic learning? Cultural learning? Advising is learning about learning. Therefore, if learning is within the system - advising is within the learning system of the system.

Therefore, there is no general, external, ultimate method for advising. This is a field that must be learned from examples, from experience (actual personal experience and past experience before us - that is: previous examples) and through learning creativity (that is: new examples). Because as learning ability advances in the world - so must advising itself advance, because one needs to learn to learn. Advising is the second-order operator of learning (and therefore an advisor to an advisor is the third order and so on - just as there is a guide for a psychologist, and a parent for a parent, and a teacher for a teacher). Good advice for a good advisor is to be well-versed in philosophy, because this way he can give many examples of conceptual revolutions. In learning, one can only give good advice - not good methods. Another good piece of advice is to be well-versed in the intellectual history of the field to which he advises - and especially in the connections between the history of this field and conceptual revolutions (philosophical history of the field).

The next stage in historical understanding, after the history of ideas, will be the history of learning. The history of learning is, for example, the connection between methodological revolutions in various learning fields and methodological changes in philosophy, but mainly it is a history of different forms of learning in a specific field: the history of methods. Therefore, above all, the advisor needs to know and understand the learning history of the field he is advising, or build one together with the learner, as part of the advising. Thus, the question of what to do from here and for the future comes from understanding the internal learning trends of the field, and a hypothesis about the continuation of learning in it - and an attempt to reach an understanding of what is the next important (and perhaps even revolutionary) learning change that will occur in the field. That is, predicting a learning future.

The psychological learning advisor will try to identify psychological learning strategies that will help the learner overcome his problems and achieve accomplishments. Therefore, he is not limited only to those who have psychological problems (negative motivation that stems from lack), but to anyone who wants to develop psychologically and achieve psychological accomplishments (positive motivation that stems from opportunity), for example: to enrich the personality, develop sensitivity, or increase creativity and flexibility. Indeed, those who turn to this psychologist do not necessarily have the narcissistic-Christian profit in seeing themselves as victims or as damaged (although there may of course be learning failures that need to be corrected), but this loss in finding sins is compensated by the reward of finding commandments and learning Torah.

As advisors to advisors, let's take as an example what is at the core of psychoanalysis, and give an example of a learning approach to it. The need for a concrete example stems from the fact that there are no general learning truths, all learning is an example, and therefore learning advice is under the danger of talking in the air and learning nonsense - if it does not find itself an object. Just as there is no vision or cognition in itself, without an object, so there is no learning without an object. Hence, the cornerstone in learning is the example (and there are many forms - as forms of learning - of examples and demonstrations). So, first of all, we will characterize learning in fields at the core of psychoanalysis, such as sexuality and dreaming, that is, we will offer a tool (learning aid) that can create psychoanalysis. This is the learning substitute for historical explanation, and it is aware from the outset of its partiality, and of being only guidance and aid, and of a certain arbitrariness: there can be many aids that answer this function, and each of them will create different learning when operated again. But what is important to us is not to give a "correct" explanation of the learning that was performed, and to answer the question of "why", but to extract from it learning aids and strategies, to answer the question of "how" with multiple possible answers. We need to extract learning as a possibility and not as a necessity. So, how was psychoanalysis created?

Freud, who came from a Hasidic family, transferred the basic Kabbalistic idea to the world of the psyche (like Hasidism), but because he perceived the psyche as a scientific thing, he created a scientific version of Kabbalah. The most central innovation of Kabbalah in relation to sexuality was its transfer from the traditional space in which it was perceived in the Middle Ages (and until Freud's era) - as something belonging to the material realm (and precisely the most material) - to something belonging to the spiritual realm (and precisely the most spiritual). From the bottom of the world ontologically, from the lowest place, sexuality rose to the height of the world, to the highest and most spiritual thing. From here, the path to the sexual revolution was only a matter of time. Sexuality moved from negative to positive delineation, and therefore focused less on its traditional role in bringing children and more as heavenly pleasure. Unlike Marx and Nietzsche, whose foolish followers brought about terrible revolutions (the Red and the Brown), Freud's foolish followers brought about the sexual revolution. Philosophy always needs to take into account precisely its foolish followers (!) - and this too Freud learned from Hasidism. Even the degeneration of Rabbi Freud's path should be relatively graceful, unlike the Communist and Nazi monsters. Wise men - beware of your philosophies.

Therefore, a psychological learning advisor is not necessarily someone who seeks to correct sexuality and its failures, but someone who comes to develop it. The starting point is not trauma - but learning. Also, the starting point for understanding dreams is not trauma - but as a learning mechanism, and the goal is to develop the dream world, and learn from it for everyday life or for the life of the psyche. The goal is to enrich the person, and not just the poor person living in scarcity, but also the one living in abundance. Therefore, even if there is no psychological problem that needs to be treated, the learning advisor presents to the psyche an opportunity and challenge - the artistic field. His goal is to develop dreaming and sexuality into art, culture, spiritual life and masterpiece. Acts of love and dreaming can be private and secret masterpieces, and then receive broader artistic expression (thus defeating pornography). Thus, we can continue the Kabbalistic/Freudian trend of elevating them out of the religious/scientific world, into the artistic world - thanks to framing them as learning. And learning has no upper limit - and no desirable mediocre normality. Learning is not treatment - it is research.

In fact, the great artist and the intellectual need higher and deeper learning advice than the miserable and suffering, who is a person whose learning abilities are low. Poverty, after all, does not stem from lack of money, but from conduct, from a learning failure, and so does emotional poverty. The advisor should identify learning failures and help the miserable become an effective learner, but even more so he should be the critic of the achiever - and identify his own failures (missing an opportunity or challenge is also a failure) - in order to bring him to even higher achievements. Everyone needs a learning advisor. And a partner can also assist in this, if he has the appropriate skills, and if it's a relationship that encourages learning and development. This is also the role of the parent towards his child. There is no commandment to love your child - there is a commandment to teach him. But in fact, the essence of love is a binding learning relationship. Therefore, good love between partners creates good sexuality, just as good love between parent and child creates talent and even genius. The genius is not the wisest of all, but the one whose learning abilities surpass everything (including his abilities to perform the creative leaps in research learning, not just the step-by-step progress in knowledge learning).

The great shame of the current intellectual sphere is its low level of originality and creativity, in favor of "reasoned", "moralistic" or "knowledgeable" discussion (and this too in double quotes) at best, and complete nonsense at worst. Innovation and creative ideas will always receive a much lower priority than replication, which is of course a much lower level learning strategy, and which is the source of both nonsense (discourse replication) and stagnation (ideational replication). Hence the lack of inspiration, boredom and learning fossilization of the current spiritual world. A learning advisor should release the humanities from their scientific, explanatory, reasoned pretension, in favor of spiritual technology, that is, creating tools and not explanations, learning aids and not knowledge, learning aesthetics and not moralism. In this, learning will show its emancipatory power towards the spirit. Between fixation and detachment, between solid and gas, between petrification and air talk - learning is liquid flow, it is an uncommitted but existing and possible connection between tradition and learning achieved in the past and the future and future learning. The first philosopher was right when he said that everything is water: everything is learning.

The more talented a person is, and the more successful and learned an organization is, the greater the need for a successful learning advisor. We know the importance of the (often accidental) encounter with a good teacher in the biography of famous people, innovators and inventors. Without Socrates - there is no Plato. And without Plato - there is no Aristotle. And without Aristotle - there is no Alexander. We must increase the chance of such mentorship, which was inherent in the Greek world, by institutionalizing the existence of the learning advisor and making it a standard. The theoretical reason why all successful learning requires such an advisor stems from the fourth principle of learning. Within learning itself, there is a need for feedback loops, evaluation, setting challenges, and guidance. While a conservative organization and a conformist person can somehow manage without an external advisor - there is no artist who can manage without editing, criticism and feedback, and there is no scientist who can manage without a community that provides evaluation, stimulation, and standards. This situation is the cause for the existence of two species in evolution - there is a need for two types of agents in a learning system, or at least two sides, as in a study partnership. Make for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend, and seek help from an advisor. It is the interaction that will save the great person from dogmatic slumbers, and save learning from getting stuck and confused.

The advisor must beware of the paternalism of the teacher or guru figure. The advisor does not know what he wants to teach. His goal is learning itself - and he has no purpose outside of it. This is a process goal. The belief in learning is not justified (only) by outputs, successes and achievements - it has a dimension of ethos: learning for its own sake. Perhaps "interest" drives it from within, but interest is also a circular definition - as the interest of learning. In fact, only the belief in learning justifies the desire for outputs, successes and achievements in the first place - and gives them their value - and not the belief in happiness, pleasure, or morality, for example, which can contradict them. After all, even monetary profit derives its meaning only from its conversion into learning and being its quantification: we pay for a product, for example, that embodies knowledge and organization, which embody learning. Only one who believes in learning gives value to Nobel Prizes. Only if honor stems from learning does it have value, and only if pleasure stems from learning does it have value, and only if morality stems from learning (and therefore grows it) is it a morality of value (one can imagine many theoretical moral systems, but learning produces a criterion for choosing between them - every real moral system grew from learning). In the end, learning cannot be justified - because it justifies everything. Therefore, the advisor can glorify and exalt and praise learning - but he cannot prove its value, not even to a student who denies it. And it is not his role - it is his self-evident, which gives him his value. What he does need to prove is his contribution to learning.

An excellent advisor is characterized by excellent students, or by great learning progress, as recognized by a learning system much broader than himself. An advisor cannot choose a learning direction that has no desire for connection to the system, and decide to promote his students towards it. Because then he disconnects from the great learning. An advisor cannot promote an exclusive and ultimate learning direction aimed at creating paper clips, as a life goal, because by ignoring the unimportance of paper clips to the learning system around him - he testifies that what interests him is clips and not learning, meaning that learning is not a goal in itself. The advisor's goal is not for them to learn something specific, but for learning itself to progress, just as one who teaches or researches mathematics does not aim to prove a specific theorem in mathematics but to advance mathematics as a whole. Sometimes the great innovation in mathematics is precisely a new definition - that is, new questions - and not a new proof. The advisor is an expert in difficult and challenging questions - and not in answers. Just as an editor of a book is usually a much less good writer than the writer himself, or an art critic is a less good painter. Thus, there can be a psychological learning advisor who understands the questions more than the answers - and he himself does not live his life well.

The philosopher too is one who opens a form of thinking, and others are those who apply it to great achievements: in literature, science, mathematics or economics. A good philosopher is one who provides a method. Therefore, a school is created from him. Not necessarily because of his wisdom and insights - but because of his learning. Philosophy is the learning advisor to learning advisors. Therefore, it does not convey any concrete information - but teaches a lot. It also allows the advisor conceptual questions that will embarrass and challenge the most skilled learner. Therefore, good philosophical questions are precisely questions that have no answer. A question that has an answer is not philosophical, and thus the sciences and mathematics left the realm of philosophy, once answers were found for them, while religion re-entered the realm of philosophy, since it became a question rather than an answer due to secularization. In fact, philosophy can be defined as the field dealing with questions that have no answer. In this view, every important philosopher does not disagree with his predecessors, but adds more such questions - he disagrees with their questions and not with the answers. The content of philosophy is mostly just a demonstration of a certain way of learning and thinking, and not a final conclusion or some orthodoxy, but only a good example. Therefore, its arguments and claims are never truly convincing - but always interesting. And therein lies their value. The purpose of philosophy is to be interesting, that is, stimulating to learning - to be a learning tool and learning aid. Therefore, a learning advisor studies philosophy.

Therefore, if there is an unexplained leap in a philosophical sequence of claims, the problem with it is not a hole in the chain of argument, but in the discontinuity of learning. This is not a logical problem, as in a proof, because this is a chain of learning and not a chain of proof, that is, these are points in the sequence of learning flow, whose purpose is to outline it, and not to be the steps themselves. And if too many points are missing (we can never put all the points!) it is no longer clear how the river flowed and meandered. The reader who moves between the points should be able to jump between them smoothly to understand the "move", but points that are too dense will hide the true learning path and pretend to be proof, and will not teach the reader to jump, that is, to perform the learning move. Therefore, it is necessary to challenge him with a jump, in measure and gradually (so he doesn't fall into the river). Learning is like reading a text where the different points are the sentences and the sequence is the move that hides between them, which the reader needs to understand - and perform. This is the meaning of studying a text. Therefore, a good literary text does not spoon-feed, and tire with dense points, but allows enjoyable jumps, but which do not become arbitrary holes and unjustified in the plot or blurring and smearing (when a point becomes an area).

If so, what makes a learning sequence valid, as opposed to a non-learning sequence? Where does the sequence stand between the arbitrary possible and the rigid necessary? The learning sequence is not a proof but a sequence of inferences that are reasonable, but it is not about probability (this is not fuzzy logic or partial inference of prediction). In addition, this sequence does indeed work according to a method, but the method is not its criterion - it is not about a method of inference rules (this is not alternative mathematics). The characterization is different: a learning move is an organization of the possible as necessary. There is no internal demonstrative necessity here but organization as necessity. The content is possible and the form is necessary. It's not like mathematics but more like in law ("more like" - meaning law is an example, not a model and definition...). But above all, it is about organic growth, in accordance with a learning and adaptive mechanism - not arbitrary and "in the air", and not mechanically hard (as in mathematics and computer science). The same move itself can be "just", possible and arbitrary, but in a learning context, as part of a learning system - it can become a learning move (and eventually, based on learning trends in the system, even necessary). There is no learning in isolation from a system - and this is just an example of the more general rule: that there is no learning outside a system.

For example, in an extremely extreme example (and not learning efficient), let's even take a random mutation in evolution. If your child just grows a unicorn horn, that's one thing, but if he's measured by it as part of a learning system and inherits it and the horn undergoes adaptation - it's already part of learning, and if a new race grows from it with technological capabilities of connecting the horn to a computer, we'll understand in retrospect that it's part of a necessary adaptation of connecting the biological to the technological, and that actually this stupid horn, than which there is nothing more stupid and everyone laughs at him, was part of a deep move, which was ripe in a certain evolutionary state. Suddenly the random horn will become part of a learning move. And needless to say regarding an ideational or artistic innovation, from which a school grows. The burden of proof is on the innovation - that it is not innovation for its own sake but innovation within the system, that is, within learning. But if the deviation was just outside the system, it had no way of being learning, because it had no context - the innovation was disconnected. Learning is always within a system.

From all of the above, it follows that the advisor should increase the learning flow of the advised, by creating questions that he can jump into, and progress, and opening learning spaces - in which one can learn. If in the past, in the bilateral relations of the spiritual world, the teacher was perceived as male, who gives, and the student as female, who receives, and learning as inserting the teacher's seed into the student's brain and transferring information, then when the teacher becomes an advisor the stereotype is reversed. The advisor opens a feminine space into which the learner can enter. The advisor provides evaluation, context, system, open question - and the learner is the one who acts within the advisor, and navigates within this coordinate system. Thus, for example, the role of a masterpiece is not to transfer to us exemplary and culturally authoritative knowledge, but to open up a world of thought and cultural space for us, and above all - a form of learning. But the content of learning is ours, as students, and not its content. Its immense importance is in opening a new horizon, and not in the directions of the path within it. The advisor is a landscape within which the student walks. And therefore he is not didactic, does not wash his brain, and has no pretension or motivation to produce from him an exemplary democratic citizen as a kind of product (or any other ideology). The advisor is not a teacher and there is no indoctrination in him - there is no specific content that he wants to teach. And he does not want to create a soldier for the ranks of any doctrine - but a learner. The idea of a goal for learning is identical to the idea of a goal for evolution.

All philosophical writing is a learning move that demonstrates a philosophical space, and if it is deep writing it spreads it to its depth, and shows the depth of its possibilities, and thus creates a feminine space. It breaks through if it opens an opening in the opaque and self-evident part of the world, where it was never thought there was space. Hence the constant confrontation of philosophy with the self-evident, which is its competitor for the world, until sometimes it is defeated by its opacity and fails to say something that is not self-evident. The hatred for the self-evident is what drives much innovation, and then come the people of establishment, and turn the new floor, which was laboriously carved, into a new self-evident. Unlike the people of establishment, the people of innovation are those who chase after innovations, and their danger is innovations that have no substance, lazy innovations that pretend to be innovations but actually have nothing beyond the self-evident. They are defeated by the wall and do not notice it - and the exaltation of innovation is in their throat.

The learner must be careful of this, but because human nature is more conservative than innovative, he must be even more careful of conservatism. And why is this human nature? Not because of some unsuccessful case, but because any long-term learning system, like the evolutionary one, has learned to innovate very carefully, and to prefer its conservative action over innovation. Therefore, organizations are by nature conservative, and not by nature innovative. Organizations (and people within them) very much like the self-evident - and like philosophy less, despite the fact that the achievements of philosophy from a historical perspective surpass any self-evident. And if we just compare it to Eastern philosophies that sanctified the self-evident (in various ways: Confucius' rituals, Tao, Buddhism, castes and more) - we will understand why Western culture succeeded, that is, learned, more than all of them: thanks to philosophy. Philosophy is the unique and one-time advantage that grew only in the West, and not in any other culture. The only period in which a culture surpassed the West since the invention of philosophy was when the Arabs continued the learning of philosophy and the West abandoned it - an abandonment that led to the Middle Ages and the fall of Rome (precisely because of lack of learning, which is the cause of petrification and the fall of cultures. The fall of institutions occurs not when they change, but when they do not change, when their strength is hard wood - and not growing).

But if organizations and organisms have learned conservatism, maybe it is preferable? Well, it is preferable for the short term, but not for the long term, and it is difficult to learn something for the long term that contradicts the short term. Therefore, the purpose of philosophy is to open the long horizon, and the purpose of the advisor is to care for the long term. Learning - it is infinite. It is the source of infinity and the only infinity that exists (and it will also be the next stage in expanding the definition of infinity and convergence in mathematics). Therefore, the idea of infinity and the hidden - two phenomena that seemingly have no necessary connection between them - are one and the same, and therefore infinity is a secret, that is, unlearnable. Learning is the constant desire for the unlearnable, just like the male desire for the feminine. An advisor should always remind an organization or a person of their deep desires, their dreams. To the same extent, he should remind him of the nightmares, the greatest risks that have no answers. And to the same extent, he should remind him of the simple things, the neutral, the trivial and the self-evident that there is simply no way to progress in - that have no answers. Only constant reminders of what has no answer will spur departure from comfortable questions and easy answers.

The advisor should awaken in the student the desire for the secret, and philosophy should open the space of the secret, and not close it with ready-made answers to questions. Therefore, there is an advantage to its characteristic answers that are not entirely valid, and essayistic by nature, because it is precisely incomplete answers, half answers - and half questions, that open the space of the question. Because on the other hand, it is not enough to ask the question itself to open the widest possible question space, but one needs to tour it and show its obstacles and structure - its depth. Therefore, philosophy specializes in opening deep questions, but does not end with question marks alone - which would leave the space opaque and not show the importance of the question and its power - but with learning answers for example, such as this example, whose development can be followed during the writing (just as the Talmud does not hide from us the development of the law - and thus creates the space of law: the Torah). Philosophy is the landscape of learning - and man is the landscape of his learning.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The First Spirit Olympics

What other initiatives could justify the Israeli pretension to be a light unto the nations in a positive context - not victimized and preachy? The local baboon offers a brilliant proposal to the Israeli government that will help fight antisemitism through competitiveness and envy. More cultured, higher, stronger

By: The Land of Israel Baboon

When one could win an Olympic medal anonymously. The Baron (Source)

Few know that Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games that began in 1896, himself won a gold medal in the 1912 Games, and he did so anonymously. The field in which the Baron won an Olympic medal might surprise contemporary viewers of the Games: literature. It turns out that the Olympic Games were not always a celebration of the body alone. At the Baron's initiative, starting from 1912, competitions were also held in various artistic fields, a practice that ceased after World War II. Even the Delphic Games, which were the early model for the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, included competitions in the arts, which even preceded the sports competitions. In their earliest origin, the sacred games in Greece began as competitions in the realm of the spirit, until the body took over as the basic Pan-Hellenic common denominator.

Globalization culture makes extensive use of the human body to cross boundaries of nationality and culture. Whether it's global sporting events that unite all of humanity around them, international food and clothing brands, or images of violence, sex, and pornography - the lowest common denominator of the body crosses cultures. But considering the anti-cultural implications of focusing exclusively on the material side of human beings, it is worth seeking a cultural common denominator for humanity as well.

In light of the success and immense cognitive significance of global competitions in the realm of the body, it is possible to initiate an international Olympics in the realm of the spirit. Israel, in particular, has successful experience in this field, with the television tradition of the International Bible Contest. An intellectual Olympics would be a competition between representatives of national delegations from countries around the world, held every four years, and would include the main academic disciplines. In the humanities and social sciences, the competition could be based on a knowledge quiz and include Olympic disciplines such as history, psychology, philosophy, world literature, art history, law, archaeology, and geography. In the exact sciences, the competition could be conducted in the style of science Olympiads, which combine puzzles with knowledge quizzes, in Olympic disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, neuroscience, and computer science.

The language of the competitions would, of course, be English, with simultaneous translation into major languages, and live broadcast of the competitions worldwide. The question writers and judges would be world-renowned academics, chosen by the Humanistic Olympic Committee, with emphasis placed on intercultural balance. Every country in the world would be allowed to send representatives to the competition, and the anticipated prestige battle between countries might turn out to be no less instinctive and inflamed than in the regular Olympics. Hosting the Olympics would rotate among the various cultural capitals of the world, which could compete among themselves for its location.

Similar to the Nobel Prize, such a competition can capture global attention even if it originates from a relatively small country. In fact, the world's imagination might be drawn to it precisely if it comes from the People of the Book, who are much more known for their competitiveness and global excellence in the intellectual field than in the sports field. The State of Israel can see this as an opportunity to position itself in a positive global cultural context, in accordance with a glorious Jewish tradition, too neglected today, of contributing to the universal world of the spirit. This is certainly a worthy inter-ministerial initiative for the Ministries of Culture, Foreign Affairs, and Public Diplomacy. By the way, there's no reason why the first Spirit Olympics shouldn't be held in Jerusalem, and thus we might finally get to see Israeli gold medals.

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The Degeneration of the Nation

How the Tail Saved My Life

Without voting, without army service, without being Jewish, without being Arab, without being married, without being single. I came to return my ID card and I want them to inject me with a chip. Like any other cat in the State of Israel. No more and no less. Equal treatment. And she says: Are you willing for us to neuter you?

By: Trans-Humanist

A house cat and not a state cat. And all thanks to the tail (Source)

I dreamed that I wanted the state to recognize me as a cat. And I go to the Ministry of Interior, and the amused clerk actually says: We have a department for people like you. And I correct him: Cats! And he loses patience: Go to the room in the corner. And the compassionate social worker for treating trans people tries to look professional: So you claim that just as the state recognizes sex and gender identity by choice, it should also recognize your identity as a species, and therefore you want us to recognize your identity as a cat? That your ID card should say: "Sex: Cat"? And I say: I find the mockery in your words offensive to my feline identity. And she immediately understands: I'm sorry! And I lower my eyes: I don't want the state to recognize my identity. I want to be treated like a cat. I want them to take away my ID card and for the state to stop recognizing me as a human. I'm a cat. And she doesn't understand: What do you want from the state? And I say: What does a cat want from the state? Nothing! No obligations, no rights, except maybe animal rights. No bank account, no taxes, without voting, without army service, without being Jewish, without being Arab, without being married, without being single. I came to return the ID card and I want them to inject me with a chip. Like any other cat in the State of Israel. No more and no less. Equal treatment. And she says: Are you willing for us to neuter you? And I burst out and unsheathe my claws: Do you really ask this to the trans people who come to you too? This is catphobic humor. And the security guard arrives and asks: Do you want me to escort you into the nearest trash can or are you leaving on your own? And I say: Enough with this stigma. I'm a house cat.

And I go to a legal clinic for animal rights and want them to represent me in a petition to the Supreme Court to recognize me as a cat. And they send me to a human rights clinic but I don't see the relevance. And in the end I appeal to the Supreme Court myself, and the bored duty judge calls me just to see what this thing is, and His Honor asks: What makes you a cat? And I say: Meow! And His Honor says: Even my dog makes a more convincing meow than you. And then - all the discrimination I've been through suddenly bursts out of me (because I see that the typist is recording the protocol): Yes, I'm a kind of homo-cattus. And all I want is to stop being considered a human being. I'm fine with belonging to someone, having an owner. To have a collar. I'm fine with not worrying about my own food. I don't want to function anymore. Enough. For years I haven't been functioning and only now I realized it's not because I'm a failed human, it's because I'm a successful cat. That deep inside I always suppressed, or rather society suppressed within me, my feline identity. I would cry at night when the meow was choked inside me. Every time someone addressed me I wanted to answer meow, but I knew society wouldn't accept it. Years of repressed meows. Meow to the teacher at school. Meow to the commander in the army. Meow to the boss at work. Meow at the Torah reading at my bar mitzvah. All the meows I held back are now bursting out in a wail. Let me be a cat! This is who I am. So Your Honor laughs at me, but within that small meow I answered you are folded the sufferings of an entire life, which I have no way to express except in a meow. And I break into a long, long wail until the end of all generations, and the judge loses patience and gets angry: The petition is rejected. And I'm writing you, Mr. Cat, symbolic court expenses. And I say: No no, even if they put me in detention, even if now all my life I'll roll from prison to prison because of a hundred shekels, I won't pay because I'm a cat and a cat can't have money. A cat is not part of capitalism. Let me out of the system! And the judge says: Sounds like you've really gone out of the system. Then he concludes (apparently also for the protocol): The court is the last station in change, not the first. You need to start with recognition from society. First of all, you need the first person who will recognize you as a cat and accept you as you are. Only in the end will recognition come from the state. You sir, like a typical cat, are starting from the tail.

And I walk down the street sad and miserable, and realize that this is not my place at all. I'm a house cat. And every time I go to a different girl and meow at her and she runs away. There's no mercy even from righteous women for a cat like me. Maybe it's my nakedness that scares them? But I'm a clean cat. And I start licking myself. After all, I'm also a strong cat, flexible, agile, a very beautiful cat. Very very beautiful! And finally I see one fat woman crying alone at the end of the street at night. And I have nowhere to go and nothing to eat, so I go to her, sit next to her, and meow. And she's not scared at all. She examines me from head to toe, including tail, and it seems I even appeal to her. Immediately I make faces of a self-satisfied cat, and approach her slowly and with feline gentleness, and rub against her legs, and this actually appeals to her very much, although she's a bit hesitant. And she asks: What happened to you? And I say: Meow! And she laughs: Is this some kind of show, is it fringe [Translator's note: referring to fringe theater]? And I say: Meow. And she says: Are you a cat? And I say: Yes, and I have nowhere to be. And she becomes curious: What do you do for a living? And I say: I'm a full-time cat. And she chuckles: Where did you learn that? Can you make a living from it? And I say: Depends if you find an owner. Meow... And she looks at me and softens: Why are you so sad? Where do you live? And I say: That's my tragedy, I'm a house cat, but I'm here on the street. And she examines me with concern: Aren't you cold, honestly? Like this without clothes? And I lower my neck: Very cold. Brrr... And suddenly a look of courage and exciting adventure flashes in her: Do you want to come up to my place for a bit, my kitty, to drink a bowl of milk? And I jump: With pleasure, my mistress. And she bursts out laughing. And as we go up the stairs she winks and promises: If you know how to cuddle, pamper and lick, you might even be able to stay. And maybe maybe I'll even allow you to sleep in the bed in the end. Since then I haven't left her doorstep - and so began my new life with my spinster.

Nightlife