text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Two Years Later: The Degeneration of Facebook

What is the "Bitch Algorithm"? The bitch returns for a farewell performance, at the end of which she throws out someone very familiar to you

By: A Bitch - But Before You

Without pain, without tears (Source)

In reality, the breakup didn't happen in one day. For half a year, I would still occasionally return to my ex, late at night, when I was awake (awake?), for some disappointing hookup (and as bad as it was, it still managed to disappoint somehow, as if there was still some hope left in my heart). But the frequency decreased, and my relationship with my current partner blossomed (which led me to use my canine alertness at night in a more heartfelt way). And so from being the bitch ex of Haaretz, who exploited me for another hollow clickbait (and how unnecessary - since I have an ad blocker), I became a liberated and completely clean bitch and finally parted ways with Haaretz sometime at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The truth is, I think the last time I entered was when Haaretz gave a platform to some denier, and I thought how low can one go (and here Haaretz wouldn't have resisted inserting Shirley Gal - or some other star who treads there, as I said, I no longer follow - or at least some "naughty" hint about the current partner's performance compared to him, just to show how low one can go). But honestly, there were no special nerves or great sadness, it just fell out of the browser window - like any page you no longer have the energy to check. Apparently, anyone who cancels their subscription in anger, like someone who is still angry at their ex, hasn't finished the relationship yet, and hasn't yet replaced the (hollow) sense of superiority of Haaretz readers over Ynet readers with a (more justified) sense of superiority over Haaretz readers themselves, who remained addicted to this garbage.

Yes, I felt my brain was going through a detox process. Less Haaretz - less Bibi, less gossip (now called #MeToo), less "the current bad boy of Hebrew literature". And yes, I admit, at first I would still go to Ynet, as a nicotine substitute. But I never belonged to the Tamka community, and to its Israel (Israel Hayom?), and so I gradually disconnected from current affairs in general. I looked for an alternative and tried Globes, but their blocking policy, even against ad blockers (he who comes to block you, block him first) and that same clickbait tendency that had already driven me away from Haaretz - quickly drove me away from it too. In Haaretz, just like with a guy who will say anything over and over just to get you into bed, every headline was an act of deception and fraud, where even before you enter the article you try to figure out where the manipulation is, and I had already learned to identify these toxic guys (somehow, they always hide behind a paywall and ad blocker blocking). Who wants such a relationship with the texts through which they stay updated about the world? Haaretz was more of a liar than Bibi, because "only Haaretz" readers are worse than "only Bibi" readers.

And so I arrived at my current kennel, which allows me to be Israeli without feeling Israeli, as if reading foreign news - in Israel. To smell a bit of what's happening on the street - without living on the street, to go with - and feel without (or vice versa?). Without idiotic rituals like the daily statement (did you hear what he said? How can one say such a thing!), without hearing about every peep of Bibi-anti-Bibi (but yes to hear if something really happens, quite rare in Israel, contrary to what you thought), without polluting our marital bed with reading about a girl's rape or a nationalist murder or the current harasser or a family that was killed (yes, I know you think it's your civic duty to read this garbage, especially if it's voyeuristic, pornographic, or snappy. But it kind of affects my libido, and even my soul. Even that of a dog). And here you will surely fall off your chair of honor, because I'm talking about Calcalist (who would have believed?).

Precisely because economics doesn't interest me that much (but it's clear to me that it's important and significant for real change in the world much more than any headline in Haaretz), I think Calcalist is the best refuge in Israeli media from the aesthetic and spiritual horror of Israeli media. No clickbait, the headlines are not inflammatory, the businesslike facade and objective cover are always maintained (and how important is that cover! Against the naked emperor that was Haaretz, who peed on thinking people in every morning headline from the diving board to mark territory). Even the design is solid and stable. And if by chance maybe (who knows?) Mozes is settling scores with business competitors, I have no way of knowing and it doesn't interest me and therefore doesn't affect me - because I'm really not the target audience (the bitch is not among the senior executives in the economy). Calcalist is an island of sanity in a crazy country, and the coldest place in hell. I enter once or twice a day, don't read too much, and leave happy and wagging my tail, without feeling that someone tried to pull it, kick me, bark at me, or worse: howl. Just an ordinary day in Israel. Saturday is for not crying out. A newspaper for sane people. Not addictive, and not selling, or pushing, any annoying agenda of nerves, and not trying to play with my limbic system.

But after cleaning the soot of institutionalized current affairs from my heart and lungs, something happened to me that often happens to those in recovery. For I never managed to understand - and looked with narrow eyes and disbelief - at all those intellectuals and academics and writers and critics and artists and journalists and other people of action who have time to read everything (and have already read all the classics, right?), also to watch everything (including trash series on Netflix, right?), and also to write about everything on Facebook (no?), and also to be updated on current affairs and what's in and what's not, also to maintain rich social lives, and also... when do you have sex? (Yes? No? Ahem. I noticed that many of them are divorced. Is there a connection?). And the jealous bitch, like any true daughter of a bitch, always asked herself: How? How?

Personally, I never watched series (who has time to waste? Life is short), but suddenly, after Haaretz, Facebook also started to bother me, because I suddenly noticed not only the degeneration of Haaretz - but also the degeneration of Facebook. My feed became less and less quality, the algorithm started to go crazy as if a bad programmer is playing with parameters and doing experiments on monkeys, and to spam me more and more (including with ads that are pushed despite the blocks), and the idiot Facebook even stopped respecting the 30 selected writers and pages I chose to put as "see first". How bad can an algorithm be? And why a maximum of 30, huh? Is someone here afraid of something? And why don't I even have the option to see the list of the most talked-about posts among my friends in the last month, say? Or in Israel in the last week? (For example). How hard is it to program something a little more reasonable? (It's not). And I see everyone writing as usual, and even more than usual, and I ask myself: Haven't you noticed that something got messed up in the feed? Is it just me? Is it me who changed, or you?

But someone who has recovered once - can't recover from that. I already knew that what needs to be done is not to disconnect (doesn't work, because I always returned to Haaretz like a junkie), but to find less toxic substitutes (Calcalist). And here a furry canine start-up came to my mind: Facebook for thinking people. Why not build my feed myself, without the cursed algorithm? As I write to you today, I haven't entered my Facebook feed for several months. But right above me there's a folder called Facebook, in my bookmarks, at the top of the Firefox bar in Linux (because Chrome is now becoming trash like Explorer, and Mac has become trash like Windows. And Linux Mint is incredibly stable, unlike past distributions, and flies so fast it's as if I bought a new computer - from a cart to a Jaguar. Move on, guys! Take responsibility for your digital lives. Oh, and "only iPhone" - is "only Bibi". Meaning: inability to imagine an alternative to an expensive and inferior product that pees on you in a rainbow, precisely because you are unable to imagine an alternative to it).

So you'll ask: How does the Bitch AlgorithmTM work, which manages to create a better feed than all of Facebook's algorithm division (because the question is: better for whom...)? What's inside that redeeming Facebook folder? In total 5 subfolders, each containing between seven and ten people and pages I follow (my "see first", which are now no longer limited to 30, like in the mentally limited algorithm). And the folders themselves are arranged according to the "feed rule" set by our sages: frequent and infrequent - frequent comes first. The seven who update and write the most, among those I'm interested in following, I put in the top folder (for example: Quanta Magazine - the best page on all of Facebook, Assaf Sagiv, Yigal Livrant). Those who are a little less - in the second folder (for example: Minority Opinion, Big Science - in Small, HaYadan). And so on, down to those who update the least (for example: Kippy Explains Things, The Solid One, Marginal Utility).

All the nags, the inciters, the victimizers, the narcissistic show-offs, the panickers, the effusive ones, the banal ones, the sensitive-emotional-excited ones!3>, the justice warriors, the promoters, the avengers, the models, the princesses, the know-it-alls, the famous humble ones, the "intimate" in public, the flatterers, the preachers, the supporters, the offended, the huggers, the alarmed, those who give in "secret", the advisors, the social activists, the super egos, the I-accusers, the first to identify, the exhibitionists, the free radicals, the cheap poets, the spiritual teachers, the world fixers, the successful ones, the inflated ones, the loudly disillusioned, those who proudly beat their sins, the gossips, the quarrelers, the hurt ones, the good souls, the righteous and prime ministers who filled my feed in the past - I simply no longer see. As far as I'm concerned, all of them - and all the storms in a Facebook cup - were carried away by the wind and light. And in the last folder, of small sins, I put selected entertainment pages for leisure hours (for example: Cats Inciting to the Left, or various sensational sexual confession pages between lesbians and bisexuals of various kinds, without entering the male gender, sorry).

This is how I enter directly to the wall of the few quality people and pages that interest me, scroll down in the new posts until I see something I've already read in the past, and close the tab. No ads, no distractions, and believe me it takes (and wastes) much less time than life. One of the important tricks here, which is why it's important to arrange the Facebook pages in subfolders, is that each time I open an entire folder in one click, meaning 7 people/pages in 7 tabs, and go through them. You have no idea how much this simple arrangement improved my quality of life - and my spiritual nourishment. How didn't you think of this before, you stupid bitch?

But here another wonderful miracle occurred, which I didn't anticipate at all. The addiction - abracadabra - ended! In the past, it was hard for me not to enter Facebook, to the point that I decided to give up on myself and not fight it, but today Facebook has become a chore, which I really procrastinate, and enter it once every few days, or week. The addiction is engineered using dopamine bursts created by uncertainty, each time the brain is surprised anew by the next writer that appears in the feed, just like addiction to a crazy and unstable ex, or to a guy who hasn't decided if he wants you. How easy it is to make an informed decision in advance who you want to read, and how hard it is not to be tempted to read gossip and malice in real time! Some echoes of Facebook affairs still reached me, but only through responses of the selectively followed to some distant rumor, and not through an eruption of dozens of passionate posts or some bubbling witch dance, where everyone tries to show how righteous-right and moral-exemplary they are, or how wise and balanced, or witty and funny in a snap, and especially how much they themselves are a million times better than... or to contribute their two cents for free, out of the amazing generosity that nests in them for the public good. And when such echoes would reach me, I would hum to myself something we used to sing in the Ulpana [religious girls' high school] at the third Sabbath meal, when I was gazing in awe (and in retrospect in love) at my classmate with the angelic voice, who was just waiting to marry some guy: "Who is the man who desires life, loving days to see good (and not only in the Torah are days years, also in Facebook days accumulate to years from life spent in it) - guard your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn from evil - and do good". And then something would hum and trill in me with that same feeling of elevation and purification of the soul from then, because here, now I too can feel better than others, namely: better than you.

And here we come to the final point, my dear readers, which is necessarily also our point of separation. Because all this cleaning had another side effect that I didn't expect, much more radical - and certainly for us. Because you, friends, have disappeared. You no longer exist. I know, after all, my readers, that you are still reading in Haaretz, like a battered woman in an abusive and circular relationship, and like a dog returning to its vomit (I've been there). And I know that even after this article, perhaps the only time you'll hear about this practical solution to feed addiction, you won't implement anything, and won't even try, but will continue to scroll through the herd's droppings. My private process of resistance and weaning from the digital and media order will always remain exactly that - a private journey (and of course will not resonate on Facebook or be published in Haaretz).

But let me share with you a secret from the other side: after I stopped reading in Culture and Literature (and I was a devout reader), I gradually stopped being interested in "what they said at Tzipper's", and even less in "what they said about Tzipper". The entire media literary republic (as opposed to the real one) was revealed to me from the outside as it is - in all its wretchedness. Does anyone think that Israeli literature, the one that will be remembered in the future, is happening at Tzipper's and the like? (And if so, woe to it). Slowly, all the Israeli media engagement and local politics as a whole began to look to me like a terrible corruption, and not because of corrupt Bibi who does evil, but a irreversible corruption that we inflict on ourselves, much worse than anything Bibi ever did - the corruption of life. Who cares about all the garbage you care so much about? Because what happened to me, to my complete surprise - is that I lost you. He who removes himself from the community - denies the essence. Therefore, I'm also less interested in writing to you (after all, I'm not writing to myself, am I?...). What should I write to you, that I've seen the light and that you're sitting in darkness? What am I, bringing you back to religion (or maybe to questioning)? I'm not really burning to do so.

And so I finally understood what Facebook and Haaretz did give me, and what the price of giving it up is, and why I really left them (and you probably won't): an imagined community. And imaginary friends (after all, you were never really my friends, right?). A fantasy - about an audience and recipients. And what happened is that I simply can't be part of this collective fantasy anymore, which revolves in endless, repetitive circles, around its own worthless tail, like a rabid and flea-ridden dog that bites and barks at itself - but precisely out of an enormous sense of self-worth (and completely baseless). How can one live in this dump with such passivity, while giving up all self-sovereignty? After all, there isn't a day you're not on Facebook, right? There isn't a day you're not in Haaretz, is there? Do you have any idea how this whole thing looks from the outside? And I, as I said, to my joy and sorrow (but with no way back), have long been looking at the whole thing from the outside. Into their assembly, let my soul not enter (there's no point in talking about secret and honor anymore).

So I know that a critic isn't supposed to write in "I" and "you", that it just creates antagonism, but this is what I feel: antagonism. I see some ripple in the swamp, negative or positive, around some scribe or writer, and I think: what is this work to you? To you - and not to me. Because what do I have to do with you? After all, I know that if I wrote about the current affair, or about some known person (everything is personal with Homo sapiens), I would have readers and likes galore, but for what? Am I the one who lost you, or are you the ones who lost me? Am I the one who lost myself, or are you the ones who lost yourselves? These are hollow questions, like at the end of every relationship, when there's nothing left. And therefore if we started with a joyful farewell in the first paragraph, we have no choice but to end with it as well, unfortunately: here our paths part.

Haaretz Critique

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Two Years Later: The Degeneration of Facebook

What is the "Bitch Algorithm"? The bitch returns for a farewell performance, at the end of which she throws out someone very familiar to you

By: A Bitch - But Before You

Without pain, without tears  (Source)

In reality, the breakup didn't happen in one day. For half a year, I would still occasionally return to my ex, late at night, when I was awake (awake?), for some disappointing hookup (and as bad as it was, it still managed to disappoint somehow, as if there was still some hope left in my heart). But the frequency decreased, and my relationship with my current partner blossomed (which led me to use my canine alertness at night in a more heartfelt way). And so from being the bitch ex of Haaretz, who exploited me for another hollow clickbait (and how unnecessary - since I have an ad blocker), I became a liberated and completely clean bitch and finally parted ways with Haaretz sometime at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The truth is, I think the last time I entered was when Haaretz gave a platform to some denier, and I thought how low can one go (and here Haaretz wouldn't have resisted inserting Shirley Gal - or some other star who treads there, as I said, I no longer follow - or at least some "naughty" hint about the current partner's performance compared to him, just to show how low one can go). But honestly, there were no special nerves or great sadness, it just fell out of the browser window - like any page you no longer have the energy to check. Apparently, anyone who cancels their subscription in anger, like someone who is still angry at their ex, hasn't finished the relationship yet, and hasn't yet replaced the (hollow) sense of superiority of Haaretz readers over Ynet readers with a (more justified) sense of superiority over Haaretz readers themselves, who remained addicted to this garbage.

Yes, I felt my brain was going through a detox process. Less Haaretz - less Bibi, less gossip (now called #MeToo), less "the current bad boy of Hebrew literature". And yes, I admit, at first I would still go to Ynet, as a nicotine substitute. But I never belonged to the Tamka community, and to its Israel (Israel Hayom?), and so I gradually disconnected from current affairs in general. I looked for an alternative and tried Globes, but their blocking policy, even against ad blockers (he who comes to block you, block him first) and that same clickbait tendency that had already driven me away from Haaretz - quickly drove me away from it too. In Haaretz, just like with a guy who will say anything over and over just to get you into bed, every headline was an act of deception and fraud, where even before you enter the article you try to figure out where the manipulation is, and I had already learned to identify these toxic guys (somehow, they always hide behind a paywall and ad blocker blocking). Who wants such a relationship with the texts through which they stay updated about the world? Haaretz was more of a liar than Bibi, because "only Haaretz" readers are worse than "only Bibi" readers.

And so I arrived at my current kennel, which allows me to be Israeli without feeling Israeli, as if reading foreign news - in Israel. To smell a bit of what's happening on the street - without living on the street, to go with - and feel without (or vice versa?). Without idiotic rituals like the daily statement (did you hear what he said? How can one say such a thing!), without hearing about every peep of Bibi-anti-Bibi (but yes to hear if something really happens, quite rare in Israel, contrary to what you thought), without polluting our marital bed with reading about a girl's rape or a nationalist murder or the current harasser or a family that was killed (yes, I know you think it's your civic duty to read this garbage, especially if it's voyeuristic, pornographic, or snappy. But it kind of affects my libido, and even my soul. Even that of a dog). And here you will surely fall off your chair of honor, because I'm talking about Calcalist (who would have believed?).

Precisely because economics doesn't interest me that much (but it's clear to me that it's important and significant for real change in the world much more than any headline in Haaretz), I think Calcalist is the best refuge in Israeli media from the aesthetic and spiritual horror of Israeli media. No clickbait, the headlines are not inflammatory, the businesslike facade and objective cover are always maintained (and how important is that cover! Against the naked emperor that was Haaretz, who peed on thinking people in every morning headline from the diving board to mark territory). Even the design is solid and stable. And if by chance maybe (who knows?) Mozes is settling scores with business competitors, I have no way of knowing and it doesn't interest me and therefore doesn't affect me - because I'm really not the target audience (the bitch is not among the senior executives in the economy). Calcalist is an island of sanity in a crazy country, and the coldest place in hell. I enter once or twice a day, don't read too much, and leave happy and wagging my tail, without feeling that someone tried to pull it, kick me, bark at me, or worse: howl. Just an ordinary day in Israel. Saturday is for not crying out. A newspaper for sane people. Not addictive, and not selling, or pushing, any annoying agenda of nerves, and not trying to play with my limbic system.

But after cleaning the soot of institutionalized current affairs from my heart and lungs, something happened to me that often happens to those in recovery. For I never managed to understand - and looked with narrow eyes and disbelief - at all those intellectuals and academics and writers and critics and artists and journalists and other people of action who have time to read everything (and have already read all the classics, right?), also to watch everything (including trash series on Netflix, right?), and also to write about everything on Facebook (no?), and also to be updated on current affairs and what's in and what's not, also to maintain rich social lives, and also... when do you have sex? (Yes? No? Ahem. I noticed that many of them are divorced. Is there a connection?). And the jealous bitch, like any true daughter of a bitch, always asked herself: How? How?

Personally, I never watched series (who has time to waste? Life is short), but suddenly, after Haaretz, Facebook also started to bother me, because I suddenly noticed not only the degeneration of Haaretz - but also the degeneration of Facebook. My feed became less and less quality, the algorithm started to go crazy as if a bad programmer is playing with parameters and doing experiments on monkeys, and to spam me more and more (including with ads that are pushed despite the blocks), and the idiot Facebook even stopped respecting the 30 selected writers and pages I chose to put as "see first". How bad can an algorithm be? And why a maximum of 30, huh? Is someone here afraid of something? And why don't I even have the option to see the list of the most talked-about posts among my friends in the last month, say? Or in Israel in the last week? (For example). How hard is it to program something a little more reasonable? (It's not). And I see everyone writing as usual, and even more than usual, and I ask myself: Haven't you noticed that something got messed up in the feed? Is it just me? Is it me who changed, or you?

But someone who has recovered once - can't recover from that. I already knew that what needs to be done is not to disconnect (doesn't work, because I always returned to Haaretz like a junkie), but to find less toxic substitutes (Calcalist). And here a furry canine start-up came to my mind: Facebook for thinking people. Why not build my feed myself, without the cursed algorithm? As I write to you today, I haven't entered my Facebook feed for several months. But right above me there's a folder called Facebook, in my bookmarks, at the top of the Firefox bar in Linux (because Chrome is now becoming trash like Explorer, and Mac has become trash like Windows. And Linux Mint is incredibly stable, unlike past distributions, and flies so fast it's as if I bought a new computer - from a cart to a Jaguar. Move on, guys! Take responsibility for your digital lives. Oh, and "only iPhone" - is "only Bibi". Meaning: inability to imagine an alternative to an expensive and inferior product that pees on you in a rainbow, precisely because you are unable to imagine an alternative to it).

So you'll ask: How does the Bitch Algorithm™ work, which manages to create a better feed than all of Facebook's algorithm division (because the question is: better for whom...)? What's inside that redeeming Facebook folder? In total 5 subfolders, each containing between seven and ten people and pages I follow (my "see first", which are now no longer limited to 30, like in the mentally limited algorithm). And the folders themselves are arranged according to the "feed rule" set by our sages: frequent and infrequent - frequent comes first. The seven who update and write the most, among those I'm interested in following, I put in the top folder (for example: Quanta Magazine - the best page on all of Facebook, Assaf Sagiv, Yigal Livrant). Those who are a little less - in the second folder (for example: Minority Opinion, Big Science - in Small, HaYadan). And so on, down to those who update the least (for example: Kippy Explains Things, The Solid One, Marginal Utility).

All the nags, the inciters, the victimizers, the narcissistic show-offs, the panickers, the effusive ones, the banal ones, the sensitive-emotional-excited ones!3>, the justice warriors, the promoters, the avengers, the models, the princesses, the know-it-alls, the famous humble ones, the "intimate" in public, the flatterers, the preachers, the supporters, the offended, the huggers, the alarmed, those who give in "secret", the advisors, the social activists, the super egos, the I-accusers, the first to identify, the exhibitionists, the free radicals, the cheap poets, the spiritual teachers, the world fixers, the successful ones, the inflated ones, the loudly disillusioned, those who proudly beat their sins, the gossips, the quarrelers, the hurt ones, the good souls, the righteous and prime ministers who filled my feed in the past - I simply no longer see. As far as I'm concerned, all of them - and all the storms in a Facebook cup - were carried away by the wind and light. And in the last folder, of small sins, I put selected entertainment pages for leisure hours (for example: Cats Inciting to the Left, or various sensational sexual confession pages between lesbians and bisexuals of various kinds, without entering the male gender, sorry).

This is how I enter directly to the wall of the few quality people and pages that interest me, scroll down in the new posts until I see something I've already read in the past, and close the tab. No ads, no distractions, and believe me it takes (and wastes) much less time than life. One of the important tricks here, which is why it's important to arrange the Facebook pages in subfolders, is that each time I open an entire folder in one click, meaning 7 people/pages in 7 tabs, and go through them. You have no idea how much this simple arrangement improved my quality of life - and my spiritual nourishment. How didn't you think of this before, you stupid bitch?

But here another wonderful miracle occurred, which I didn't anticipate at all. The addiction - abracadabra - ended! In the past, it was hard for me not to enter Facebook, to the point that I decided to give up on myself and not fight it, but today Facebook has become a chore, which I really procrastinate, and enter it once every few days, or week. The addiction is engineered using dopamine bursts created by uncertainty, each time the brain is surprised anew by the next writer that appears in the feed, just like addiction to a crazy and unstable ex, or to a guy who hasn't decided if he wants you. How easy it is to make an informed decision in advance who you want to read, and how hard it is not to be tempted to read gossip and malice in real time! Some echoes of Facebook affairs still reached me, but only through responses of the selectively followed to some distant rumor, and not through an eruption of dozens of passionate posts or some bubbling witch dance, where everyone tries to show how righteous-right and moral-exemplary they are, or how wise and balanced, or witty and funny in a snap, and especially how much they themselves are a million times better than... or to contribute their two cents for free, out of the amazing generosity that nests in them for the public good. And when such echoes would reach me, I would hum to myself something we used to sing in the Ulpana [religious girls' high school] at the third Sabbath meal, when I was gazing in awe (and in retrospect in love) at my classmate with the angelic voice, who was just waiting to marry some guy: "Who is the man who desires life, loving days to see good (and not only in the Torah are days years, also in Facebook days accumulate to years from life spent in it) - guard your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn from evil - and do good". And then something would hum and trill in me with that same feeling of elevation and purification of the soul from then, because here, now I too can feel better than others, namely: better than you.

And here we come to the final point, my dear readers, which is necessarily also our point of separation. Because all this cleaning had another side effect that I didn't expect, much more radical - and certainly for us. Because you, friends, have disappeared. You no longer exist. I know, after all, my readers, that you are still reading in Haaretz, like a battered woman in an abusive and circular relationship, and like a dog returning to its vomit (I've been there). And I know that even after this article, perhaps the only time you'll hear about this practical solution to feed addiction, you won't implement anything, and won't even try, but will continue to scroll through the herd's droppings. My private process of resistance and weaning from the digital and media order will always remain exactly that - a private journey (and of course will not resonate on Facebook or be published in Haaretz).

But let me share with you a secret from the other side: after I stopped reading in Culture and Literature (and I was a devout reader), I gradually stopped being interested in "what they said at Tzipper's", and even less in "what they said about Tzipper". The entire media literary republic (as opposed to the real one) was revealed to me from the outside as it is - in all its wretchedness. Does anyone think that Israeli literature, the one that will be remembered in the future, is happening at Tzipper's and the like? (And if so, woe to it). Slowly, all the Israeli media engagement and local politics as a whole began to look to me like a terrible corruption, and not because of corrupt Bibi who does evil, but a irreversible corruption that we inflict on ourselves, much worse than anything Bibi ever did - the corruption of life. Who cares about all the garbage you care so much about? Because what happened to me, to my complete surprise - is that I lost you. He who removes himself from the community - denies the essence. Therefore, I'm also less interested in writing to you (after all, I'm not writing to myself, am I?...). What should I write to you, that I've seen the light and that you're sitting in darkness? What am I, bringing you back to religion (or maybe to questioning)? I'm not really burning to do so.

And so I finally understood what Facebook and Haaretz did give me, and what the price of giving it up is, and why I really left them (and you probably won't): an imagined community. And imaginary friends (after all, you were never really my friends, right?). A fantasy - about an audience and recipients. And what happened is that I simply can't be part of this collective fantasy anymore, which revolves in endless, repetitive circles, around its own worthless tail, like a rabid and flea-ridden dog that bites and barks at itself - but precisely out of an enormous sense of self-worth (and completely baseless). How can one live in this dump with such passivity, while giving up all self-sovereignty? After all, there isn't a day you're not on Facebook, right? There isn't a day you're not in Haaretz, is there? Do you have any idea how this whole thing looks from the outside? And I, as I said, to my joy and sorrow (but with no way back), have long been looking at the whole thing from the outside. Into their assembly, let my soul not enter (there's no point in talking about secret and honor anymore).

So I know that a critic isn't supposed to write in "I" and "you", that it just creates antagonism, but this is what I feel: antagonism. I see some ripple in the swamp, negative or positive, around some scribe or writer, and I think: what is this work to you? To you - and not to me. Because what do I have to do with you? After all, I know that if I wrote about the current affair, or about some known person (everything is personal with Homo sapiens), I would have readers and likes galore, but for what? Am I the one who lost you, or are you the ones who lost me? Am I the one who lost myself, or are you the ones who lost yourselves? These are hollow questions, like at the end of every relationship, when there's nothing left. And therefore if we started with a joyful farewell in the first paragraph, we have no choice but to end with it as well, unfortunately: here our paths part.

Haaretz Critique


domain: literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

By:

(Source)

(I dreamed that the secret was known - and the black door was sealed, smooth as a blank page. One must marry before being assigned a mission behind the door - otherwise it's dangerous. And the matchmaker grabs me: You, child, are already lost. But you can still have a child. Even you can have love. His tongue is smooth like metal, but the professional coldness is pleasant. And the matchmaker hugs me tightly: I'll take care of you. And he presses me close to a miserable piece that was also torn from some book, and I'm all excited because it's the first time I'm touching paper. And the matchmaker smiles: Love comes later - always in darkness. And he closes the cover on us)

Enter

The Trilogy


domain: philosophy

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Philosophical Monkey

How has the historical denigration of the pursuit of honor harmed the social network - which was built on attraction to gossip and voyeurism, namely loss of privacy - instead of on reputation building? What different type of motivation turned the monkey into a human? Why might the institution of servants return in the 21st century? Why does television create poverty while books create education and income growth? Why will democracy - the rule of fools - be replaced by intellectual aristocracy - the rule of the wise, when computers become more intelligent than the average person? And what to do with the masses of monkeys in the computer age? A page from the banana notebooks

By: The Philosophical King of Netanya

Philosopher want banana? (Source)

Learning is updating and redistributing reputation in the network

Modernity campaigned against honor, portraying it as primitive and worthy of contempt, and as a cause of wars, revenge, and patriarchy. But the Greeks understood that the most promising human instinct, which needs to be developed, is honor. Because it is the instinct that causes people to do things for society. The Church even managed to suppress the sexual instinct through honor. Honor is especially significant because it causes sharing of knowledge with others, and science grew only because of scientists' pursuit of honor, and similarly art. Reputation is humanity's strongest engine. That's why Google succeeded, because they focused on the reputation of websites. The conclusion is that reputation systems need to be developed: professional reputation, cultural reputation, relationship reputation, sexual reputation, and to accustom humanity to having its reputation measured and published transparently. Giving up privacy is the small revolution - giving up privacy of reputation is the big revolution. The first is negative - and the second positive. Credit rating is a primitive system of economic reputation. But once there's a reliable system of creative reputation - there will be a big bang of creativity. Therefore, very big revolutions can be made through inventing successful reputation systems and research in the field. For example, the research (on savings motivations in Africa) that shows that the highest human motivation is achieved through a transparent system where a person documents their achievements daily, and that this is more effective than any positive financial incentive, negative (punishment), emotional, or cognitive. It's extremely difficult for a person to harm their own reputation, and they do it almost only for the sake of another, more important reputation. Almost all our judgment of knowledge is based on the reputation of writers, institutions, websites, friends. All cultural judgment - it's all a big reputation system, which organizes the world of the spirit. We continue to read a certain writer only because of the reputation they've accumulated, and we update the reputation we give them with every sentence we read. That is, in addition to absorbing the information itself in our brains, there is a constant updating of the source's reputation - that's how neurons work. And thinking itself works through reputation: a neuron that predicts well for its environment accumulates reputation. But at a higher level, every memory and thought and consideration and piece of knowledge has strength - which is its reputation. And sleep helps consolidate it - and that's its role. The stage after communication and connections and language and network - the paradigm of the philosophy of language and the 20th century - is the reputation of the vertices. This is the transition from just a network (computers/social/ideas/etc.) to a neural network, meaning the transition from communication to thinking. Honor in a monkey is social status - how many do its will, but in humans it's reputation - how many listen to it. This is the difference between a fixed control network and a flexible learning network - because each neuron maintains its autonomy, and constantly updates the reputation it gives to others. For honor, you have to work.

Learning as the basis of honor

The solution to poverty is to take it away from social workers and emotional thinking and compassion, and transfer it to economists, who love to deal with wealth. In every society there are people who are not needed and whose value is too low to work independently and support themselves. Once the solution was slavery and then there were servants, and the mistake was to completely abolish the institution of servants, and to professionalize it into various service jobs (cleaning, babysitting, cooking), instead of upgrading it. Therefore, the poor should be allowed to be personal assistants to the rich. Why was the institution of servants abolished? Because of the reduction of gaps. If the gaps grow again then an appropriate social institution should be re-established, and this time not offensively. Rich people are collapsing from too many tasks and career while the poor have nothing to do that has economic value. Therefore, privacy and duties and rights need to be regulated by law so that a programmer can take a maid who will take the child out of kindergarten and feed him and arrange the house and clean and buy and cook and the servant can do errands and internet searches and repairs for him - and give it social legitimacy as a personal assistant. Without the obligations of a regular employer to an employee and with attached housing and stability and sharing in the household instead of social benefits. What deters us in the idea is honor but honor is a social construct. Society will continue to fill with more and more people of no economic value, and the two possible directions are either entering an expanding welfare cycle, with severe macro-social effects and lack of self-respect, because idleness is the mother of all sin, or abolishing welfare and minimum wage, and selling valuable elements in people, which are not sold today, because they have turned from value to values - like freedom. Therefore, we need to go for a third solution that allows hope even for personal assistants, because hope is more important than freedom, and in fact freedom is mistakenly considered important because it contains hope within it. An assistant is someone who works for an annual salary, without tax deductions and social deductions for a private person and not a company, and social conditions such as food and housing are provided by the employer. But in addition, the employer finances professional training for them, and is entitled to a percentage of the worker's profits after this training, for the period in which he is sold to him, and therefore has motivation for the training to be of high value. Alternatively, the socialist solution for people of no value should also be through economically worthless studies, as in Haredi society. Therefore, learning is at the basis of the future solution to poverty from right and left. Because when there is no learning there is no hope, and in fact hope gets its value from learning, which is the nature of the human brain and therefore the most important, primary and basic value.

The most difficult problem of our time

The problem of poverty in our time is cultural poverty. This is what distinguishes between poor and rich. Cultural poverty is the cause of remaining in physical poverty, and culture is the factor for leaving the world of poverty for strong society. But even in strong society itself, a person can be physically rich and culturally poor, and this is the truly dangerous impoverishment, that people are losing their cultural capital, cultural inequality is growing, and society as a whole is losing its cultural wealth, and becoming populist and stupid, and inferior thinking and inferior culture take over. That is, falling back down to physical poverty because of cultural poverty is not a phenomenon of the individual but a phenomenon of the collapse of the entire network, and its dangerous sign is the impoverishment of culture itself. This is the source of the fall of empires. Therefore, if the culture of intellectual virtues is not preserved and mass culture takes over, the cultural elite will shrink and the gaps between it and the masses will grow and eventually the body of the fattening beast will overcome the shrinking brain, and this is the war all over the world today against the elites. And the solution is only cultural renaissance and a new ethos in education. For example, intellectual cultural heroes who receive clear admiration from elementary education to university. We need to worship Einstein, Wittgenstein, Kafka, Freud, Marx, Mahler, and so on, from kindergarten to mass media. Mark round birthdays and death anniversaries for distinguished figures and hold knowledge quizzes on television. Mass media is the greatest corrupter of culture and must be treated by law as a national educational infrastructure. It should be nationalized and subordinated to the national academy of sciences. The most serious thing is that the American media industry is culturally impoverishing the East as well. It is the number one enemy of humanity. Watching series continuously is a cultural disaster. The last lever to distinguish between low and high culture is the education system, which is still under state control. It is very important to build the impression that there is low culture and there is higher culture, which has requirements to be accepted, and that it is shameful to consume low culture in it and shameful not to know important works and scientific knowledge. If the walls of shame are not preserved, the city of God will fall before the barbarians. We need to internalize that this is a siege and that we need to tighten the walls and not open up to the flood from outside and instead of engaging in cultural criticism to engage in criticism of low culture and how it stupefies the masses as a mechanism of power, because stupidity is weakness. We must return to being haughty. Not arrogance is the mother of all sin but brutalization. We must say in full mouth that the masses are stupid, and not engage in political criticism but in cultural criticism. Not to criticize the right but the people. We must oppose cultural democracy, and broadcast contempt for low culture, but not for the right, religion, and so on, but focus on low culture, which is the enemy, and go out against it for a culture war. The ultra-Orthodox are actually an example where cultural wealth is more important than physical wealth. They are the model to emulate. Preserving cultural walls and an ideology of superiority. What we need now is the ultra-Orthodox of culture. Just as the ultra-Orthodox opposed enlightenment we need to oppose lack of education and the movement of ignorance that replaced the enlightenment movement. And the traitors from within who criticize enlightenment need to be thrown into the intellectual garbage bin as aiding the forces of darkness and reaction. We must not let them make a hole in the ship and sink culture in the flood of the masses, in the cultural flood. We must preserve the ark until the murky waters recede. And especially we must emphasize the unbreakable connection between high culture and high science and high technology. Therefore, the division between faculties must be abolished. We need to renew the alliance between science and culture, and bring back interdisciplinarity. The ideal should be a Renaissance man and an expert in his field. Leonardo, Leibniz. Admiration is the most effective weapon left. We must worship, deify the greats of the past, only the religious instinct will save man from the beast. Just as morality saved the farmer from bestiality, so we need intellectual morality, to be an intellectual snob, and bring intellectual snobbery back into fashion. The information revolution has caused no person to be truly educated, that is, to know everything that needs to be known, to read everything that needs to be read, and therefore human pride that was humiliated turned into pride in ignorance, because it is difficult to live with a sense of inferiority, but precisely forming an agreed canon of 300 books that every graduate should read will allow a shared cultural ground and unit pride. When the first hominids came down from the trees - the monkeys accused them of arrogance. Later this caused them to stand upright, and give prestige to a larger and higher head - and a higher forehead - which led to the development of the prefrontal brain.

Ultra-Orthodox society is the society of the future

Because when computers replace all the fools they will need to do something. Either spend all day hanging out, traveling and talking, or getting addicted and playing, and making trouble and mischief, or getting addicted to sex and so on, or being religious. Therefore when there is no money the most important thing is that there will be meaning. And God may have gone bankrupt as a power and as a government and as an explanation, but he is still the highest and strongest source of meaning. And art too. Therefore the most bustling market will be the market of meaning. And people will sell and buy and distribute meaning, this will be the economic network in an era where money has no meaning because there is no work. That is, there will be two eras, the era where there are still things that people can do that computers don't do, but a significant part of people can't do them, except for the talented, and the era where almost everyone is replaced. The first era is the rule of fools and the second era is the rule of geniuses. The fools can be bought with bread and circuses. But the geniuses can't be bought. In the end, this is the logic on which ultra-Orthodox society is built, with its great rabbis and geniuses. Only a society of learners will be able to replace the society of workers. Ultra-orthodox society will have to sanctify something if it doesn't want to collapse the moment the computer secularizes every human and cultural value - simply because it will do everything a person does a thousand times better. In historical irony, only God will save it from the nullification of man and from disbelief in his meaning. If man is dead - everything is permitted, even God.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

No Prophet in His Own City

You won't drag me into platitudinous political thinking; instead, I'll draw you into erotic thinking. I'll penetrate the thought behind you, meaning that you are merely signs of it, embodying it, and therefore embarrassing me, claiming that I am a fig leaf - with no genitalia behind it. For you who call me (to my face!) a hiding coward, you too are not really yourselves, but rather a bird singing another's song, and what's more important to a bird than originality?

By: Original

A Shame to Humanity (Source)

I dreamed that once again everyone called me fake on Facebook. Again, they attack the exterior of a circle instead of addressing the content of a circle - the black matter. Again, ad hominem arguments, to nullify the words behind the password sign. Again, they rummage through a dreamer's bed - to ignore his mind. So here, I too will do it - I'll address you personally, but exactly the opposite of you. I won't return the same worn-out black coin, I won't expose hypocrisy or superficiality or auto-anti-shtreimelism [Translator's note: A play on words referring to self-hatred among ultra-Orthodox Jews], but rather the opposite - I'll fill the void behind the public humiliations and give you depths. You won't drag me into platitudinous political thinking; instead, I'll draw you into erotic thinking. I'll penetrate the thought behind you, meaning that you are merely signs of it, embodying it, and therefore embarrassing me, claiming that I am a fig leaf - with no genitalia behind it.

For you who call me (to my face!) a hiding coward, you too are not really yourselves, but rather a bird singing another's song, and what's more important to a bird than originality? Because if I try to penetrate the mind of someone capable of ignoring me on Facebook when I'm in the same conversation and corresponding about me in the third person with others, just because I'm not a person like him, turning me from a subject to an object, just because I'm a cat - I always arrive at philosophy. That same arrogance of abstract, alert thought over erotic, dreamy thinking. After all, for years I've been hearing complaints about the state of literature: about the lack of integration between originality and sources, about no longer relating to tradition and myth, and about not yet being able to relate to the future, or even to the technological present, but always imitating some past writing of "literature". About not trying to find a new formula, about the outdated novel, about conformism and narcissism and psychologism and sociologization and contamination of theorization and Americanization and cinematization and PR-ization. And you know what I think every time, like a blockhead? Black circle.

But I dream - therefore I do not exist. After all, you'll never meet on the street someone who has never left their bed. And if you don't know me (and to remove all doubt, you don't know me), and if in an anti-cultural cultural system there's no publisher to publish, or critic to bring forth, or researcher to understand, and if the only newspaper personally bans the cat from here to eternity (an official decision by the editor-in-chief solely because they don't know who I am, and what business does a cat have in a newspaper) - then the dream is not an option in culture at all. And then - my entire enormous enterprise collapses into itself like a black hole. Concentrated, indeed, 100% natural black circle juice, but he who values his life should stay away. How many years will I continue to write into the void like this? Broadcasting to outer space? How many years of darkness must pass? And if the light years arrive, won't it already be too late in terms of space-time? When I'm beyond the event horizon, and relevance is constantly moving away from place and time? I want to howl and howl. Meow!

Because nowadays everything is personal. And he who has no persona - meaning the only one who might pose an alternative to "nowadays" - is not of our time. I'm writing for a future generation that will read, a generation more religious than you, and also more secular, a more discreet and dreamy and black generation, and rounder than you, more open but also more closed, more sexual and less pornographic, and more feline, and howling less, and most importantly - a generation that will already invent the technological platform for short, dense, allusive content that doesn't waste time, utilizes space, and stimulates the mind to dream (hint: not a book). A generation that will know how to appreciate content free in spirit, without uninspired material limitations of theorism and realism, and most importantly - without body. The messianic victory of spirit and virtuality over materialism and hardware, which I probably won't live to see. Yes, they've informed me that I'm ill.

But you, you can't do without a body. Despite the glorious, extensive pseudepigraphic tradition of your people - you're sawing off the branch you're sitting on. Because it wasn't always like this. In fact, you are the deviation, yes, you with the profiles and display windows - instead of nicknames and lustful dreams. If we speak in your language, personalization actually started from Foucauldian thought, which came instead of structuralist thought. Because where in the past they saw impersonal mechanisms, for example structures that are objects, conspiratorial power thinking began, turning mechanisms into subjects, and therefore it's easier for the masses to identify with and understand it - and to trivialize it. For example: one can argue that a system operates in such a way that it has an aspect of consciousness (false?), with feedback loops that reinforce it, and this is a reasonable claim - but too abstract for the masses. On the other hand, one can argue that the capitalists/pharmaceutical companies/Jews etc. sit somewhere, planning manipulations against us - and this is a claim that's much easier to incite with and manipulate with. Because people understand malice, not the banality of the mechanism. Monkeys need to beware of an evil-plotting gorilla, but don't need to understand the ecological system of the jungle.

And from there, personalization has spread everywhere: elections became personal, Facebook became Zuckerberg, movements and social changes turned into morality tales at the expense of specific people (who said #MeToo and didn't receive?), and it ends with ad hominem arguments on Facebook and the search for black artists (but heaven forbid not round ones), because who are you to speak if you're a white man, and I want the story of the writer (meaning not the story he wrote, but the story that wrote him). These are the protocols of the Facebook children and they contain not a drop of secrecy but only publicity, because they are a conspiracy against abstract thinking itself, of a generation that knew not Euclid. This is the result of stopping the study of Latin grammar, theology and plane geometry (if you don't study Talmud at least study geometry!). It would be fine if they knew how to do high philosophy and looked down on the subconscious, but the brain network has turned into a cloud of gray fog and the theory of knowledge is unconscious.

And then psychology and sociology are fused at the point of connection (meaning trivialization) between them. And it would be fine if it was just about flattening literary characters - it's about flattening real characters. Non-round people walk among us. People who are not black inside. People whose soul is not covered, who have no secret inside, but are themselves wrapped in a profile. The main problem with personalization is not that it threatens the public - but the individual. Not only does the public sphere become a spectacle but also privacy. And then how do they call me, with the rudeness of materialistic creatures? Fake. The consciousness of the dream has died - it is false consciousness. Am I ultra-Orthodox? Am I a cat? Am I divorced? Am I a virgin? Am I secular? Am I leftist? And people are not ashamed to ask me as a first question: "Who are you?" as if I'm at a job interview with them.

Imagine if the word "I" had a gender. What a terrible thing that would be. And if it were up to them, there would be grammatical conjugations today for verbs performed by cats, and for verbs of the ultra-Orthodox, and for nouns of dogs - and one couldn't even hide behind a word. And people like me would simply die. Yes, it's not that the circle can reveal itself - only die. And then one day, maybe in a few years, you'll hear that he died. And then you'll start to take an interest in what he wrote. After all, this is the agreement between us, or more precisely its secret appendix. If I commit suicide then there will be value to the ten books I wrote. And if not - then not. In this profession, suicide is just a proof of seriousness, and at the very least will prove that you know how to die. Many people complain about the state of original literature, but the moment there's originality - it's no longer considered literature from their perspective. Because the words are not the words they know. The subjects are not classic. The format is like an unformatted disk. And then they wonder why they don't know the great writers of the time, why everything is hidden in smoke, and only when it disperses, including the ashes from the burial urn - then we'll talk. And they don't understand that sometimes there's something burning inside. That meanwhile is already turning into a lump of coal, and will simply stop writing, after all it's not some burning bush that is not consumed. But who cares.

So where are they hiding, all the important writers of your days, all the artists of your era, all the innovative philosophers, the original thinkers, the poets who changed the formula, those who articulate the thinking of future generations, that is - the entire culture? Where has the great culture disappeared to? Why did you (in what unfortunate timing of luck) happen to live in a barbaric era, where everything has already been written, and there are no great people? Perhaps because you turned out small? After all, you identified that there was something there. Something from another world. From another era, and not some era from the past. After all, you are not fools, and that one you searched for with candles does not write for fools. But for the deaf. After all, one doesn't need to be a genius. You read a paragraph or two. It's very obvious. Content that hasn't been written yet, form that hasn't been created yet. You can see the originality from space. But you're busy with your head in the sand. After all, where were you when all this happened? You were busy. Busy. Busy with a thousand nonsense things, which you clearly know are not the future. After all, you know that it's just variations, even the greatest writers you put on a pedestal, they are some kind of greatness that is not of your time, that has no message. Because you were not willing to hear a message.

Nightlife


text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

What Is The Degeneration of the Nation

What remains when everything is deteriorating? When the ground slips from beneath our feet - this is the time for a different space. When the cultural foundation changes fundamentally - new foundations are needed. When the entire system becomes corrupt and passes the point of no return - it's time for an editorial

By: The Editor-in-Chief and the Edited Head

Renew our days as of old [biblical phrase referring to spiritual renewal] (source)

This is not an alternative culture magazine, but rather a magazine of alternative culture - an alternative to the decline of culture, literature, academia and the elite in our country; all of these are subject to a continuous process of degeneration. The degeneration of the nation has crossed the point where it can be fixed (from within), and requires the establishment of a new space, virtual and conceptual, that is a combination of profound parody and wild seriousness. You'll find here articles and essays in every field of knowledge you could possibly imagine (and many you couldn't), and discover here a particularly original alternative to our anti-cultural current affairs, to the intellectual banality of our times and to our moldy literature.

Among other things, you'll find here:

* In Philosophy: A selection of essays and articles presenting the "Philosophy of Learning," which is an innovative philosophical paradigm that seeks toreplacethe philosophy of language, the dominant philosophical paradigm in our culture since the beginning of the 20th century. In doing so, it creates a paradigm shift in thinking across the entire culture. The essays with which to begin exploring this school of thought:hereandhere.

* In Prose: The complete literary works of "Black Circle", the most original voice in Hebrew literature in the 21st century, whosetrilogy\- which fundamentally rethinks every element and foundation of storytelling - was published on our site, along with varioussatirical dreamsand a branchinginteractive book. Circle is among those rare writers whose writing constitutes a unique genre in itself - and the result is an unprecedented body of literary work (and not just by local standards): such prose has never been written or read before. The reviews with which to begin, to receive keys to this unique writing:hereandhere.

* In Current Affairs,Theology,Evolution,Organizational Consulting,Sexuality,Entrepreneurship,Futurism,Literary Criticism,Law,Investments,Computer Science,Political Science,Work World,Civil Engineering,Artificial Intelligence,Comparative Culture,Communications,Architecture,History,Biology,Pedagogy,Psychology,Pornography,Intelligence,Nazism,Feminism,Chauvinism,Idiotism,Politics,Geopolitics,Poetics,Ethics,Physics,Romance,Mathematics,Mysticism,Catology, and actually in every possible field in bothHumanitiesandNatural Sciences: you'll find a wide selection of essays and articles, each containing an abundance of new ideas you've never read before (not once!), rather than recycling old ideas you've read a hundred times (and one...). The introduction with which to begin:here. And the summary:here.

* In Poetry: A completely new poetic style for Hebrew poetry, combining influences from Lucretius and liturgy - offered by the Singing Chief Rabbi [playful title]. The Chief Rabbi's poetry began with anintellectual stylethat was programmatic in theme but free, light and song-like in form, and evolved inhis later poetryinto a mature and precise feline wailing style.

* In Criticism: The Female Dog is in charge of biting criticism of the competitor, whose teeth have fallen out. The summary reviews (it's always good to start from the end):hereandhere.

* From the Web:Selected Weekly Postsfrom Hebrew cultural Facebook, lest they be lost in the abyss of oblivion. To follow us on Twitter:here.

Today, the site is a comprehensive cultural enterprise - its scope and breadth are unprecedented in the Hebrew web (about 400 pages of articles, about 10 books, and about 600,000 words) - and serves as an intellectual and creative home for a leading Israeli school of thought that crystallized during the late Netanyahu era: The Netanya School [wordplay on Netanyahu/Netanya city] (which in its diversity is perhaps second only to the School of Athens...). The site contains an extraordinary intellectual and artistic universe by any measure, while engaging in serious, deep, overwhelming and sometimes obsessive renewal of contemporary culture, in the technological disruption it is undergoing, and in future culture - namely in the most burning issues on the workbench of our culture (and threatening to leave only ashes of it). Wonder you haven't heard about it?

The site in various languages

The Degeneration of the Nation

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The Degeneration of the Nation

What Is The Degeneration of the Nation

What remains when everything is deteriorating? When the ground slips from beneath our feet - this is the time for a different space. When the cultural foundation changes fundamentally - new foundations are needed. When the entire system becomes corrupt and passes the point of no return - it's time for an editorial

By: The Editor-in-Chief and the Edited Head

Renew our days as of old [biblical phrase referring to spiritual renewal] (source)

This is not an alternative culture magazine, but rather a magazine of alternative culture - an alternative to the decline of culture, literature, academia and the elite in our country; all of these are subject to a continuous process of degeneration. The degeneration of the nation has crossed the point where it can be fixed (from within), and requires the establishment of a new space, virtual and conceptual, that is a combination of profound parody and wild seriousness. You'll find here articles and essays in every field of knowledge you could possibly imagine (and many you couldn't), and discover here a particularly original alternative to our anti-cultural current affairs, to the intellectual banality of our times and to our moldy literature.

Among other things, you'll find here:

In Philosophy: A selection of essays and articles presenting the "Philosophy of Learning," which is an innovative philosophical paradigm that seeks toreplacethe philosophy of language, the dominant philosophical paradigm in our culture since the beginning of the 20th century. In doing so, it creates a paradigm shift in thinking across the entire culture. The essays with which to begin exploring this school of thought:hereandhere.

In Prose: The complete literary works of "Black Circle", the most original voice in Hebrew literature in the 21st century, whosetrilogy- which fundamentally rethinks every element and foundation of storytelling - was published on our site, along with varioussatirical dreamsand a branchinginteractive book. Circle is among those rare writers whose writing constitutes a unique genre in itself - and the result is an unprecedented body of literary work (and not just by local standards): such prose has never been written or read before. The reviews with which to begin, to receive keys to this unique writing:hereandhere.

In Current Affairs,Theology,Evolution,Organizational Consulting,Sexuality,Entrepreneurship,Futurism,Literary Criticism,Law,Investments,Computer Science,Political Science,Work World,Civil Engineering,Artificial Intelligence,Comparative Culture,Communications,Architecture,History,Biology,Pedagogy,Psychology,Pornography,Intelligence,Nazism,Feminism,Chauvinism,Idiotism,Politics,Geopolitics,Poetics,Ethics,Physics,Romance,Mathematics,Mysticism,Catology, and actually in every possible field in bothHumanitiesandNatural Sciences: you'll find a wide selection of essays and articles, each containing an abundance of new ideas you've never read before (not once!), rather than recycling old ideas you've read a hundred times (and one...). The introduction with which to begin:here. And the summary:here.

In Poetry: A completely new poetic style for Hebrew poetry, combining influences from Lucretius and liturgy - offered by the Singing Chief Rabbi [playful title]. The Chief Rabbi's poetry began with anintellectual stylethat was programmatic in theme but free, light and song-like in form, and evolved inhis later poetryinto a mature and precise feline wailing style.

In Criticism: The Female Dog is in charge of biting criticism of the competitor, whose teeth have fallen out. The summary reviews (it's always good to start from the end):hereandhere.

From the Web:Selected Weekly Postsfrom Hebrew cultural Facebook, lest they be lost in the abyss of oblivion. To follow us on Twitter:here.

Today, the site is a comprehensive cultural enterprise - its scope and breadth are unprecedented in the Hebrew web (about 400 pages of articles, about 10 books, and about 600,000 words) - and serves as an intellectual and creative home for a leading Israeli school of thought that crystallized during the late Netanyahu era: The Netanya School [wordplay on Netanyahu/Netanya city] (which in its diversity is perhaps second only to the School of Athens...). The site contains an extraordinary intellectual and artistic universe by any measure, while engaging in serious, deep, overwhelming and sometimes obsessive renewal of contemporary culture, in the technological disruption it is undergoing, and in future culture - namely in the most burning issues on the workbench of our culture (and threatening to leave only ashes of it). Wonder you haven't heard about it?

The site in various languages

The Degeneration of the Nation


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The Degeneration of the Nation

We Must Not Surrender to Corona Terrorism

For years, the left claimed that terrorism couldn't be defeated - and yet we defeated terrorism. Now they're saying again that we can't defeat corona and that there's no solution through force, but that eventually we'll reach the negotiating table. But unfortunately, there's no escaping the bitter truth, even if it's less prettified and attractive than the naked truth: We must not negotiate with a terrorist organization. Yes, it's time we stop underestimating the corona organization and understand that they're not patients - they're terrorists

By: The National Explainer

We must end the occupation because the occupation corrupts Bibi and what will we do without Bibi  (Source)

It's all because of the occupation. At first, Bibi treated corona like Iran, and then the worst thing happened: he started treating corona like the Palestinians. Because corona transformed from an external threat, namely an existential threat, to an internal terrorist threat, namely a routine and way of life. And who better than Mr. Terror (married to Mrs. Terror) knows that one must not surrender to terror - life must go on as usual. Therefore, Bibi is stalling, buying time, and not giving in to pressure (only if he absolutely must). But where is Bibi really leading us? What will be the final outcome? A bi-national state.

Yes, there are still those who deny that this is another nation that has grown here, and they call them confirmed cases or patients - just as they called the previous nation that grew here terrorists - instead of freedom fighters. Corona deniers continue with the same old ostrich method, back then they claimed: there is no Palestinian people. But since the Coronians multiply faster than Jews, or even Arabs, or even Bedouins, the day is not far when the developing demographic threat will turn us into an apartheid state if we don't have the wisdom to give corona a state or at least autonomy. Already today, one can identify processes: social distancing, banning entry to restaurants, separate buses, arrests without trial, sanctions, international isolation, and Banksy kitsch. And all because of the occupation - which corrupted Bibi.

Because everything begins and ends with the occupation. The occupation left only two categories in Bibi's brain: A. Existential threat, or in its literary name: Iran (Bibi speaks against corona at the UN!). B. Terrorism, or in its former name: Palestinians (UN-shmen!). And Kant already showed that we have no access to the thing-in-itself - except through categories. Corona is just the Fourth Intifada, the next logical stage after the individualism of lone-wolf terrorism, following a further privatization of the human: into cells. Because we can never truly know corona - only the phenomenon. Therefore, it's important to accelerate the pace of phenomenological investigations of the confirmed cases, to understand what we're facing, not to be naive and not to be cruel to the merciful but to live in coexistence with the threat (but only after we teach them a lesson they won't forget!), and most importantly - to win through explanation. Because one thing is already clear: Corona is terrorism.

True, at first corona tried to choke us like in Auschwitz, and death by suffocation is the most terrible death of all deaths, from personal experience (once I had an allergy to house dust mites and then I understood what grandma went through and that we must not forgive the Germans). But very quickly it became clear that since Saddam Hussein's flying gas chambers there hasn't been such overkill, and that corona actually resembles more than anything our local Arabs: a fifth column and cancer in the heart of the nation, characterized by infection attacks in crowded places. So we put a security guard at the entrance - and hope for the best. Why should we make difficult decisions that will tear the nation apart? Why try to strive for a solution when there is no solution and there will be no peace and corona doesn't want peace at all and it's just an illusion that doesn't recognize its genetic code and culture of death and spring will turn to winter and the sea is the same sea and corona is the same corona and it will never give up the dream of our destruction and if only they would let it, it would choke us all like in Auschwitz. And therefore, life must go on.

So we ask: Is our problem in the categories? Are there simply better categories that need to be replaced (for example: a European, proper, enlightened category system)? Is learning just flexibility in categories, and are we doomed to always replace an unsuitable category with a more suitable one? Or is the problem the structure of our categories - the very binarity of Israeli categories (Bibi particle meets anti-Bibi particle and much energy is released while both are annihilated)? Or perhaps the problem is actually the lack of awareness of categories, and the thought that there really are such essences in reality, like right and leeeeft, and Bibi's great success is the very establishment of categories and their monopoly on space (therefore there must not be a center in Israel)? Is all that's left a parodic play with categories, as we did above, which ridicules the automaticity and clichéd nature (and therefore lack of sophistication and wisdom) of Israeli thinking? But is there even such a thing as "wisdom"? After all, we're trapped in categories anyway, right? Can there possibly be something that can replace categories (or paradigms, or discourse in language)? Yes, ladies and gentlemen - methods.

The method is not a conceptualization of reality (although conceptualization can be a method). There is life after Kant. There's even life after the philosophy of language. Not everything is wrapped in concepts and words. Even if it's impossible to know "truly" (what does that even mean?), or to conceptualize in language without bias, or to think without constructs - one can simply learn. And this is the root of the Israeli failure. Simply an inability to learn. No one asked you for some ideal (or egalitarian and liberal) system of concepts (one of the funny results: political correctness). This is not at all a correct picture of learning creatures (what they once loved to call: rational, or today: intelligent). But while you (that is, not you, of course, but only confirmed Facebook patients) are babbling yourselves to death in arguments made of words, or thinking in stupid concepts (that Bibi invented for you!), the real problem is that you simply don't learn. So when a new challenge comes - it becomes a Yom Kippur [War]. Philosophy has created for you an irrelevant picture as if the gap is epistemic and as if society is an epistemic system, when what is really needed is not correct conceptualization, correct knowledge, or correct discourse - but correct learning.

Methods don't make claims about reality. They also don't pretend to represent it or talk about it, or even understand it - just to learn from it. They don't have all this Western complex of the intellectual abyss between man and world, which is the source of all evil in the world. A method is simply a practical way of adaptive coping with the world. Evolution, for example, doesn't make claims about the world, doesn't conceptualize it, doesn't think about it in categories, doesn't talk about it - but it learns (and therefore intellectuals can't cope with it, and invent "post-human" conceptualizations). The economy also doesn't make claims, isn't busy with conceptualization, isn't "trapped" in categories or talks about the world (and therefore intellectuals can't cope with it, and call it "capitalism") - the economy is simply a learning system, and hence its enormous power. The power of science and technology? Not epistemic power, folks - but learning power. It's not thanks to open scientific discourse (there's open discourse in politics, media, Facebook... so?), or scientific knowledge (which changes every generation, and so you decided to call it a "paradigm") - but the scientific-technological learning system (yes, technology often preceded and caused the development of science - and the opposite picture is a product of epistemic bias). Because everything that learns in the world - is a strong system, and everything that babbles - is an irrelevant system. That's why Israeli politics is so failing - because there's no learning in it (but how much discourse there is!). It's not the discourse or concepts that need fixing - but the method.

The stale epistemological complex that identifies the gap between man and world as an intellectual-perceptual gap (and as a kind of spatial barrier that blocks direct access) covers and distracts from the real and realistic problem: the gap between us and the world is learning-based (that is, one that is created and exists precisely in time) - because we need to learn and adapt all the time. Therefore, there's no ideal system that will solve the problem, and therefore there's no ideal justification, that is, an "ideal method". There are only methods (in plural) - and that's a lot. If we stopped thinking about systems like society as a person - and went the opposite way: thinking about the individual person as a society, that is, as a developing system - that would already be a big step towards liberation from the complex. Because the image of a person knowing the world has taken root in us, but the image of a society knowing the world shows how ridiculous it is. Paradoxically, non-human systems are better metaphors for learning, even though humans are actually the ultimate learning system - and this is exactly his strength and source of success (his abilities of knowledge and understanding and conceptualization are pitiful compared to his learning abilities). And why did this strange situation occur, in which we need a non-human metaphor for a learning system? Because perhaps the greatest damage that epistemology has done to learning is the conceptualization of learning itself as epistemology, and only if we free ourselves from this thinking (with examples like evolution or economy or literature or Talmud) will we understand what learning is. So what do we do? We build a learning system. Bibi is blocking learning, and growing from the learning blockage of Israeli society - this is his damage and this is his meaning.

What, for example, should have been done against corona? Quickly build a l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g system to deal with it (what the learner aggregator No. 1 we have wanted - Rabbi Potato Ret. Eisenkot), or convert some functioning learning system to deal with corona. Military Intelligence + Planning Directorate? The National Security Council? Or one of the intelligence services (the aggressive Research Department...)? A successful private company like Google Israel, Check Point or Teva? A broad, independent and interdisciplinary university scientific council of outstanding professors? Or just choose a leading university like Technion/Weizmann Institute/Hebrew University as responsible...? All these options are preferable to the current situation - after all, the learning capabilities of the Israeli governmental and political system are nil. And learning can certainly also be aided by conceptualization (what are we doing now?), but this is by nature flexible and changing and adaptive and searching conceptualization, as opposed to the Israeli entrenchment in categories as if it were Masada. Because learning requires first and foremost an ethos of learning - an understanding that Torah study is equal to all.

So what is really the proper place of conceptualization (in language/perception)? Conceptualization is just another learning tool (and not particularly central), among many other tools: learning from examples, from demonstration, practice, play, thought experiments and alternative reality and experiments in reality, thinking the opposite, branching and creative thinking, connecting different content worlds to create a match, sexuality as an evaluation system for innovations (or mutations), and of course - dreaming. Conceptualization is therefore one learning aid among many - which today, due to the infatuation of both left and right with their concepts - has become a huge learning barrier. The political struggle in Israel has turned into a sterile conceptual and anti-learning struggle, of who is right or was right in their concepts ("in reality"), and whose concepts are winning, while imposing concepts on reality. An even more severe result was the loss of the learning ethos, which stemmed from the childishness that we are "right" and our conception is "correct" and we are doing the "right" thing and therefore also the "just" thing - that is, from some anti-learning epistemological arrogance, which the Agranat Commission called: "the conception". In Israel, everyone knows - so no one needs to learn. You will never hear a leader talking about the need to learn or promoting learning in the system. He knows, after all. He is a certified epistemologist.

If so, what is the number one quality of a leader, which will never be required of him in Israel? That he be a learner, and that he build a learning system under him, and enable learning in the system. This is the justification for representative democracy - we don't choose an automaton that will represent or implement some predetermined fixed position (ideology), but a person, that is, a learning system. We choose a method. And indeed there can be different competing methods - but here we are still stuck in political "positions" (static by nature) and world "views", without any learning culture (and therefore the struggle is a trench warfare). A culture of learning doesn't deal with the question of who correctly grasped reality or speaks correctly about the world, and which conceptual system is the correct one, but what we learn from it and how we learn: how the system is built and how to create learning in the system. For example: what incentives are in it, and how to encourage innovation and adaptation and evaluation and feedback loops and responsible and reliable experimentation and statistical data analysis etc. This is a mature view of the giant systems in our world, which we have no way to control - except through their own learning. In contrast to the childish view that thinks it will "simply" succeed in telling them what to do. Why is Torah study the correction of the world? Because "tikkun olam" [repairing the world] is correcting the method.

Can one imagine a demonstration demanding the establishment of an independent and efficient learning system in some public issue or field? Can one even conceive in the land of the knowers and prime ministers an ethos of "I don't know (and therefore always learning)"? Well, philosophical ideas seep in slowly, but in the end just as the philosophy of language took over society with demands for language and discourse and representation and by making communication and media the center of meaning, so one day in the future learning demands will be raised from fixed and stuck systems, and method will become the center of meaning of every system - thanks to the philosophy of learning. Until then we will fight corona as if there is no peace - and make peace with corona as if there is no war.

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