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The Degeneration of the Nation

The latest poetic discovery of the culture and literature editor

A provocation for one shekel and ninety [agorot], which prostitutes the stage, but like every prostitute - attracts customers

By: The Singing Gravedigger

Beneath all criticism (Source)

He doesn't know how to write, but that doesn't mean he doesn't write. You don't know how to read either - but that doesn't mean you're not reading

Oil discovery (literary)

The future of Hebrew poetry

The last book of the last poet

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Towards Spiritual Engineering

The Three Greatest of All Time: The most important challenges to crack facing a spiritually impoverished era. Is it possible to recreate the historical conditions essential for past masterpieces, or is this a dangerous game? Market infrastructure led to economic progress and the scientific world's infrastructure led to scientific and technological progress - is there a parallel infrastructure for the spiritual world that can bring about accelerated cultural development and incubation of masterpieces?

By: Spirit of the Times

Is it possible to remove resistance and increase ideological conductivity? (Source)

The three big and fundamental questions of the humanities, which (of course) the humanities will hardly address, are the three most important questions for the spiritual future of the world. Their current acute importance stems from the fact that technological change creates spiritual change - and therefore allows, for the first time in the history of the spirit, to move from humanities to spiritual engineering. Thus, correct answers to questions can influence the future spiritual world, just as the scientific revolution influenced the material world. And these are the three fundamental questions that anyone engaged in a science dealing with the spirit would be happy if an answer that meets experimental criteria was found for them:

A. The question of place: Why specifically Western culture? What caused this particular culture to bypass all others and dominate the world, with unprecedented spiritual and material achievements? Why did it succeed more than others - and how can one correctly characterize the sources of its success in order to recreate this success? (The "leftist" answer that Western culture was the worst of all and therefore won - does not stand up to any historical test). What is the source of the Western miracle, which did not happen anywhere else?

B. The question of time: Why specifically Jewish culture? What caused one culture, not particularly large and notably lacking in power, to persist through countless periods and host cultures, while repeatedly and astonishingly contributing (without any quantitative proportion to its size) to all of human spiritual history. Is it possible to characterize the factors for this and recreate them? (The right-wing answer, that Jewish culture was "better" than all others - does not stand up to any historical test). What is the source of the Jewish miracle, which did not persist in any other culture?

C. The combined question of place and time: What is the origin of golden ages? The existence of very prominent golden ages in the history of the spirit - and the incorrectness of the naturalistic assumption that talent is evenly distributed across periods and places - is a very surprising fact. Is it possible to characterize the conditions in which golden ages are created - and recreate them? Is it possible to create a golden age (for example, today...)? Is it possible to create a long-lasting golden age (and if not - why not)? What is the source of the miracles of Athens, the Renaissance, or Vienna, which lasted with tremendous power for short periods?

The Netanya School dealt intensively with these three questions - and offered them a variety of original answers in its writings. Each such answer - if it has substance - means a cultural-organizational or social experiment that can be performed to improve the current miserable cultural achievements of culture (today, perhaps the internet can enable such experimental platforms). If such a successful experiment is found, its meaning will be the ability for spiritual engineering: creating conditions for cultural flourishing. But not every such answer harbors an experiment we would want to perform. And so is a very reasonable answer to question A, which we will lay out below.

If we try to trace the roots of Western superiority in the world, we will discover that the Industrial Revolution is already a stage where Europe distinctly surpassed the GDP of the great Eastern cultures - like China and India. But the roots of the Industrial Revolution are much earlier. We would be happy if the world picture was that the scientific revolution is the root of Western superiority, or the republic of letters and the free competitiveness inherent in European fragmentation (as Prof. Joel Mokyr argues). But what can we do when the superiority existed long before them, and a clear and indisputable sign of the superiority of Western culture occurred even in the discovery of America. It was not the Far Eastern cultures that did this - and no other culture was close to it. It is also not a coincidental achievement, as the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the maritime arrival in India were close in time - and distant in space.

We also cannot trace specifically the invention of printing as the source of superiority, for it was not what created the maritime capabilities that shortly after led to these discoveries. One might perhaps argue for a general Western technological capability, from which many developments stemmed, such as printing, shipping, and even the Copernican and scientific revolutions. According to this quite recent explanation, in the spirit of our times, technology precedes science and spirit. But if so, there is a need to ask what caused this technological capability. In fact, if we try to find the roots of the West's technical superiority over the East, we will recall the technological military advantages of the Christian world over the Muslim one even in the Crusader period, where sometimes a relatively small Crusader army was able to cope with vastly superior Muslim forces, on their home turf, thanks to technical capabilities (armor, armament, logistics and military construction). The roots of the West's superior military capabilities can perhaps be traced even to antiquity, with the armies of Rome and Macedonia, which only logistical limitations prevented from conquering the entire world. Overall, Western invasions to the East were generally much deeper, in dimensions of space and time and power and influence and penetration into the depth of the rival system - than the opposite ones.

We are well acquainted with the geographical, political, and military fragmentation in the West, which created numerous wars. As well as the phenomenon known to this day that war is the mother of invention - combining the need, funding, and motivation for open-mindedness. War is a distinctly competitive evolutionary field, precisely because no cultural convention or agreement will change the balance of power in practice, and will not prevent progress - every barrier will be breached. The strong will win. The successful will survive. And those who are less - less. The possibility for technical conservatism in the military field is lower than in any other field, and countless important inventions were created during wars (more than any other period) or with security funding. The Israeli high-tech industry is also a clear example of this phenomenon, as are central scientific achievements of the 20th century (for example: the computer). Even inventions created before wars, and blocked for use due to natural human conservatism and fixation, were often tried for the first time in war (for example: the use of antibiotics on a large scale). The Cold War created a scientific arms race that reached space - and achievements some of which have not been recreated to this day (or until the next arms race).

Therefore, it is easy for us to believe that it is precisely the high belligerence of Europe and Western culture (and especially within itself) that led to its technical development, which later led to scientific and ideological development. Shipping also developed out of military competition, and eventually brought and integrated into commercial competition, and with the development of trade, capitalism also developed. But the basis is combat. According to this historical method, if it has generality, the fighting and struggle between the Greek polis cities, and the political fragmentation in Greece (which stemmed from geographical fragmentation) are the roots of the Greek miracle (and not, as suggested in fashionable thinking, the network structure of Greek culture). After all, if we had asked the Greeks themselves - they would have pointed to the myth of the Iliad and the Odyssey, around the Trojan War, and to the archaic heroes as those who shaped their culture and ethos more than anything.

How then do we position Greek philosophy, which is a one-time achievement of Western culture? (We can attribute Rome and its engineering and organizational capabilities without hesitation to the militaristic paradigm above). Perhaps we will also remember the achievement of our sage culture or of the Bible. Sometimes it is precisely a weak group, within a military world, that creates a kind of competition between men that ends in intellectual struggles - and the transfer of the battlefield to the world of spirit. The general who falls in love with Socrates (a rather failed soldier) in the Symposium, and the dominant parallel imagery between military and intellectual disputes in rabbinic literature are perhaps examples of such a direction. Let us also note the exceptional culture of argument and dispute of the sages, and the culture of confrontation of the prophets (who were a kind of counter-culture figures), and the culture of Socratic confrontational dialogue - all of which channel male aggressive belligerence into a refined and refining intellectual channel.

Jews are known for the wars of the Jews to this very day - but these are usually only intellectual wars. When raising a hand is taboo within the collective, muscle displays and competition between roosters move to legitimate channels within the given culture. The raging and noisy political dispute in Israel, more than it is aimed at achieving any achievement or goal externally, is aimed at twisting the arm of the other side in the internal dispute. Because Jews, as is known, have no external wars - only internal wars. It follows from all this that we should try to organize the network as a war of ideas, and thus perhaps cultural redemption will grow for us. And for the fastest possible technological and scientific advancement, alas, commercial competition alone will not suffice, but the optimal scenario is a cold war (between the US and Europe and China). But since a cold war can always turn hot - we will make do with the current peace, even if basic scientific research suffers from it (and it indeed suffers).

Economic competition between commercial companies and nations does not support science and basic research like the military one, and we often suffer, usually without knowing, from the consequences of this neglect. The most famous among these consequences, but not the most severe of them, is of course the Corona pandemic. If the Cold War had continued in the era of genetic engineering this would not have happened - but on the other hand we would be facing a balance of terror of ethnic biological destruction, which is no less dangerous than a nuclear holocaust (but with a developed arsenal of military biological defense tools, which any natural virus would have been defeated by). The main risk in the lack of progress in basic research stems precisely from the narrowing gap between the technological frontier (which the commercial world actually promotes rapidly) and the scientific research frontier, because of which there may be an advantage for non-institutional organizations and perhaps even individuals over state institutions.

If we compare this to an epidemic, we will discover that the greatest threat from it is the inspiration it can give to terrorists in developing a truly contagious and deadly biological weapon, perhaps even ethnic, as well as viral cyber destruction carried out by individuals. In such a situation, the mass-suicidal shooting events in the US will be revealed as a much more dangerous precursor to the rest of the century than the September 11 suicide attackers. The nightmare scenario is the combination of a virus with a huge infection coefficient (like measles), a prolonged incubation period (like AIDS), and exceptional lethality (like Ebola). The technological gap to create such a virus is narrowing, and for individuals it is much smaller than creating a nuclear bomb. Since only states have an interest in developing defense capabilities against such threats - it is possible that only a state scientific establishment will be able to respond to the next Hitler, sitting in a basement and drawing inspiration from Corona for a new type of world holocaust. If so and for another reason threatening humanity (artificial intelligence?), we may need to add to the questions of the humanities another question, fourth, fateful and acute:

D. The question of lack of place and time: How can cultural holocaust and spiritual annihilation be prevented?

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Origin of Religious Sentiment

Before sleep, I remembered those intelligent breasts that I could now embrace instead of the blanket, two circles concealing within them more circles I hadn't seen and could have seen and buried my face between - and which now pound in my head like cymbals

By: Sexo-theologian

Venus figurine from 30,000 years ago. Where are those girls now?  (Source)

The girl invited me to lie with her in her bed. And I didn't want to. I forgot the rule: never refuse sex. For every time I refused sex, I regretted it afterwards. I feared I would fall in love with her. After all, I am very lonely, and fall in love easily. And then if I fall in love with the wrong girl, I won't be able to extricate myself. I already have bitter experience blacker than night. The worst thing that can happen to you is to fall in love with the wrong person.

Therefore, I hesitated before sex. Moreover, she didn't seem smart enough to me. Afterwards, I thought I was just being foolish, and wondered what would have happened if I had tried, so I attempted to kiss the girl, but she had already cooled off and wanted to talk. I told myself that with a little conversation, I could surely kiss her, if she wanted to lie down a moment ago, and perhaps afterwards even lie with her.

The girl called me to her bed, as I was sitting on the chair. But I thought it would be easier to seduce her into a kiss if I remained in the chair and she was the one to come closer. I detest courtship very much, and if I approach her, she will surely run away. Therefore, from my experience, it's better to create a situation where she comes to me, and then the kiss won't be against the direction of her movement, and thus against the direction of her desire, which would turn into recoil at the crucial moment, as happened before. You need to make her think the kiss is her own desire, not mine, which will prevent her from feeling the need to resist.

Indeed, the girl stood before me and asked why I wanted to kiss her. I told her I only wanted to if she wanted to, and that it's not my way to impose my will, except perhaps with men. As for women, I respect them too much to try anything. Indeed, this is a stumbling block in my relationships with women. Because often, I am paralyzed before them, as all I want is to satisfy their desire, and in this, I find my satisfaction - in their satisfaction.

The girl, who looked more attractive from this angle, which accentuated her breasts above me, although I still doubted her intelligence (though she certainly wasn't stupid), asked me to at least hug her, but I didn't prolong the embrace, so that our relationship wouldn't be perceived as merely friendly, despite my desire for friendly relations if it wasn't possible to move them to romantic grounds. But above all, I craved erotic relations at the moment, so I tried to sit on the bed so that the girl would sit beside me.

But as luck would have it, the girl sat on the chair at that moment, while I was on her bed, and I found myself in a dire situation of tactical inferiority, which in such a situation is especially severe, as it immediately translates into strategic inferiority. Therefore, I thought to execute a tactical retreat, which is sometimes necessary to ultimately win the war for a girl's heart, or at least her bed. At this stage, I already completely regretted not hugging her for longer and pressing her breasts against my heart. She is, after all, attractive and no less intelligent than the others I always wanted, so why did I reject her?

But it seemed that she also wanted less now, and then I realized I could lose her entirely, and this, I understood in a moment, I did not want. In fact, I would have been lucky to win this girl, who is inexplicably nice to me, unlike all the girls who rejected me, and surprisingly also exceptionally beautiful, and actually a girl of the type I always conjured in my daydreams. Such breasts are rare even among the female sex, and her intelligence, which could be learned from the way she handled the situation, and the complex sentences in which she now expressed herself (why didn't she do so earlier?), was no longer in doubt.

Such an attractive girl was worthy of prolonged maneuvers, and even if I erred on the first opportunity, I would not give up now on what I missed under any circumstances, and there would surely be another opportunity if only I acted wisely. Therefore, when I saw that an awkwardness had arisen, I preferred not to risk our relationship at this stage, but to act like a man with self-control, which often increases desire in the other side, the feminine one. I remembered how in a previous love, which was unrequited, a friend told me that if one side wants too much, then he wants enough for both, and no desire awakens in the other side, so I got up from the bed and told her I'd be happy to meet in the evening.

But I didn't get far from her apartment, and felt an urgent need to call her, to verify her attitude towards me, I thought of an excuse, that maybe I forgot something there, and called, but the girl didn't answer. Perhaps she wasn't near the phone. I knew she would see the call, and therefore I couldn't call again, so as not to cheapen myself in her eyes. But the hours passed and she didn't call back. Maybe she didn't see the call. But for the sake of creating equality, I delayed calling her in the evening, and by this stage she was already tired. I made a grave mistake in my arrogance, and a girl I could only dream of is slipping through my fingers.

So I sent her a text message before sleep but she didn't answer. And maybe she had already fallen asleep, as she was tired. The next morning I couldn't contain myself from tension, as she filled all my thoughts, and I called, but she didn't answer. I remembered her perfect breasts with sharp pain, and hated myself. Until finally such a goddess wanted me, everything I want in a woman for life - equally intelligent and attractive - I let the opportunity slip through my fingers, and I was left with nothing but to return to the dating site, and absorb countless rejections.

So I waited two days and sent her an email, ignoring everything that had happened, trying to continue from where we left off, hoping she would also answer, as there was nothing left to lose. Before sleep, I remembered those intelligent breasts that I could now embrace instead of the blanket, two circles concealing within them more circles I hadn't seen and could have seen and buried my face between and which now pound in my head like cymbals.

I had already begun to fall in love with her perfection, and in the mornings she was the first thing I remembered when I opened my eyes, who could have been by my side. I already knew I had no chance, and so I sent her a text message on one of the lonely nights, which was short and thus also expressed my resentment and disappointment, for she had treated me unfairly, but on the other hand promised her that I was still thinking of her, and in it I wrote two words that I had formulated for a long hour: Sweet dreams. I consoled myself that such a feminine goddess would have tired of me anyway, and broken my heart later. She surely found a much more muscular idol than me. That's always how it is with such unattainable models, even if you think there's a chance, it's just an illusion.

Years later I still thought about her from time to time, on cold nights. When I would pass by her house, which she might not live in anymore, I would conduct small rituals of worship and mourning. I no longer dreamed of calling, and because I feared that the teeth of time would make me forget her perfect image, I sculpted her figure from clay with my own hands, and placed it at the head of my bed. There was no end to the erotic excitement in kneading her body and divine breasts. Her legs stood above my head, and every night I kissed them in submission. Sometimes I thought I saw her on the street, running after someone, who turned out to be not at all like her.

I wrote her letters dozens of pages long, describing all the twists and turns of my hidden love, which were never sent, but burned before the goddess. I refused to bring other girls to my bed, and despite all my fiancée's pleas and entreaties, I wouldn't agree to let her into my room except only after the wedding. Perhaps she took it as a romantic gesture, of entering the holy of holies, only she didn't fully understand it. After the wedding ceremony, when we arrived at the forbidden room, I lifted my wife in both hands, placed her reverently on the bed, and slaughtered her as a sacrifice to the goddess.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Tree of Life

Ariel Sharon's dream. Special for Tu BiShvat

By: The Prime Minister in a Dream

Future Head  (Source)

Burning but Not Consumed

You didn't expect this, did you? Wrong. Who knows better than I... After we grew so much together, after I climbed to the top in a Sisyphean ripening process, just before the final peak from which I would leap and transform the world, in a critical state - yet remarkably stable - you abandoned me. You reduced my mighty figure to a ball in the hands of Dr. Brain. You locked me in a room. You didn't feed me enough. I tried to fight. I tried to console myself. For man does not live by bread alone. Man is a tree of the field. But you put me in a pot and laughed until your stomachs hurt. Fat potato. Vegetables, man, vegetables. Take a fruit and be healthy for me. Would you believe it? A potato doesn't make you fat. Believing and sowing. Please do not uproot what is planted. Opposing uprooting. Contending with a green leaf. He doesn't snore, he saws. Want to hear a wooden joke? My bony self, laugh laugh, my bony self. The cynicism! You threw me in my old age into the dustbin of history. You named the Hiriya dump after me. And you snickered, all full of delight. You thought I didn't know? He would surely be turning in his grave, haha. Fools, I'm turning in my bed! I sleep for all of you. You repressed me deep in the subconscious of this country. So I dream its dreams, those you don't dare to. Its great dream, which turned into a nightmare. And your greatest nightmare is that I'll wake up. Sleep sleep children, the etrog [citron] is in the hospital, it didn't stop growing, and look at its br... Now who's disconnected here? Who lost their head? You thought you forgot, but my roots are already deep within you. The vast void I left in you refuses to be filled. I am here. Did you miss me?

Our Father Still Lives

Liars. Even Pinocchio the wooden puppet misses his grandfather. Perhaps you assumed I would simply wither and perish without you. Well, I have news for you, you pathological news lovers: I'm blooming! Tu BiShvat special - the country's most famous plant breaks silence and reveals the forbidden fruit. Maybe it's a late bloom, some would say too late, but I have seed for you. Who knows better than I that for you, as usual, everything is shit, but that's actually the best fertilizer, the most fertile soil for such ideas. And you will welcome me. If before you blessed the Creator of the fruit of the earth, now you'll bless Shehecheyanu [blessing for new experiences]. Because this time it's not you who changed. It's me. I, who all my life was so close to the living, suddenly found myself in the world of plants, and you treated me as inanimate. But silence is not an obligation, it's a right! It's a pity that many jump directly from the living to the inanimate, skipping the vital and so fertilizing stage of the plant. Yes, I know I was unripe for many years. My children's teeth were set on edge. The sabra [prickly pear, also slang for native Israeli] became a thorn in the ass. But the truly bitter disappointment is that nothing else grew here. Maybe because a completely different growth direction is needed, one that will make the desert bloom. Even my enemies would admit that I was always a wild, cancerous, predatory, and groundbreaking growth. I just needed the final mutation. Some will call the result a monster, but that's always what they call the next stage in evolution. Fools! For years I was your great unknown, your mythological X. But the righteous man knows the soul of his beast. It's the black hole I left behind, pulling you all into the abyss. So come, come to me. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. Vineyards and fields will still be planted from me. You will all still come to me in bed. So bring forth seed from me. Otherwise, you'll be like me: buried alive. Plants. You thought ill of me, but maybe we'll yet discover that you were right when you confined me to the coop. Because we're not talking about an old sleeping man who has become obsolete, but about a baby about to wake up. And now bring your ears close. I want to scream -

One Last Story Before Bedtime!

Have you ever thought what you would do in my place? You're wrong, you didn't think without a brain. So put yourself in my place, when everything was cut off at once on one Tu BiShvat. A holiday for trees. Only one who understands what I lost - everything I grew and elevated became an unbearable burden - can understand what I found. What seed remained of me, which turned into a bomb. I, the bulldozer who knew no walls or boundaries, found myself in a prison with no exit. Without possibility of pardon, in a bottomless pit, the depth of the fall equal to the height of the leap. A head without government, without day and without night, without man and without beast, and worst of all - without cattle. No more grabbing and devouring and grabbing and growing as much as you can. From all-consuming I rolled into a lump of flesh, like a log. I, who never stopped at red, or at orange, stopped at green! With no chance of seeing light again. Tearing webs within webs of sleep, but where is the spider? And I internalized that I would no longer wake up in reality, but I could - as sometimes happens - wake up in a dream. And beyond any ideological or other territory that can be conquered, I turned to the last direction someone like me is capable of turning. What doesn't go by force, and certainly not by brain, doesn't go on foot, doesn't go anywhere. It takes root. If every page is a branch that's cut, from me you can make a book. And since I was so limited in physical growth, and even intellectual, I was pushed with absolute unwillingness to the absolute final solution. Because even if I was expelled from all space, I still move in time, and with dizzying ease at that, and precisely because all ends have been exhausted, to the edge of the last page in history! One can be trapped in the unknown space between life and death. But maybe it's also an opportunity to match them up, and see what offspring will come from the union of these two. What infant will sprout beneath the sidewalk. How in terrible helplessness, and in a no less terrifying lust for life, it will break through the thick and endlessly black asphalt. Heavens! And you step on it. Again I was ahead of my time. But a leader's role is not to show others the way, but to be the way himself. After me: forward! Into the earth. When you wake up it will be too late. Only if the roots are deep in hell does the head reach paradise, and vice versa, for the roots to reach heaven the head must be in the ground. Someone needs to be the Nachshon [biblical figure known for bravery] who jumps in first, and therefore also takes the hardest hit. I'm asleep, but my brain is drilling! Because a prime minister must precede the body of the nation. Be the pioneer of the camp, the visionary who dares to dream before everyone. The prophet of a new way, and perhaps even - a new Torah.

The Master of Dreams

It is not good for the tree to be alone. I dreamed that my bed was lined with evil intentions - and this is, of course, the way to paradise. And this time it's allowed to steal from the tree in broad daylight, why not? Just not at night. If so, what are they hiding there in the dark, so alluring. Love? Bribery? Activity beyond borders? What could be so conquering - heart. By day they hate me, but at night... conquest of desire corrupts. Because when aspiring to rise above the highest, one must also know how to descend to the lowest, beneath the underwear - I just fall asleep and already they can't contain themselves. And in the darkness I discover that the snake is a branch of the tree, what a trick. And he challenges: What about the expulsion? Missing Eve? - No, just the calves. Vegetarianism is killing me. It's not the stomach turning, but the sword. And he softens: So did you come just to touch or to eat? And I try to reach out, to grab, to attain, to take, but it's already too late, all is darkness. The garden is locked. Of course, it's not who's inside that's trapped but who's outside. Outside the earth? I'm startled and wake from the slumber. I'm missing a critical branch, and the fruit, where is it? Thieves! I just fall asleep and already they can't contain themselves. And I look in all directions, 360 degrees - can't see anything. You wrapped me like an etrog, precious precious but so covered. And you buried me in the ground. Another would die, but I grow. My voice comes out to you from the ground, cursed is the ground for your sake, for you didn't cover me, but your nakedness. One leaf wasn't enough to cover your shame, you needed a whole tree, you're uncomfortable seeing an open garden. All my life I'll eat dust, but I just need to wait for you from below. For from dust you came and to me you shall return. The seeds of calamity were hidden here from the beginning, so keep burying your head in the sand. Every nation gets the leaders it deserves, and vice versa. You are my weeds and I am your rotten fruit. And our love will bloom forever. Idyllic, huh? A body without a head and a head without a body, what would you do, a wedding? No, a funeral. And I loved you!

Hear, O Israel

I am lonely, I am one. I am other gods, who brought you out of the house of masters. Make for yourself gods of masks on my face. I have eyes and you shall not see, you have a mouth and I cannot eat. You shall bear your neighbor's wife in vain. You shall murder your father and your mother that your days may be long under the ground which I give you, for I visit the iniquity of children upon fathers to those who love me, and do thousands to those who hate me. You shall afflict your neighbor until he lies. You shall have no other thieves before me. You shall covet your neighbor. You shall commit adultery on the Sabbath night to keep it holy. Six days you shall rest and be refreshed and on the seventh day you shall work. You, your servant, and your daughter your beast, and your son your stranger within your gates. Prune and get drunk in one entertainment. For in six days he made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day he slaughtered and tore: And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host, and he finished on the seventh day all his work. And he said, let the earth eat living creatures according to their kind, cattle and creeping things, and it was so. And he said, let the waters swallow swarming living creatures and let birds fly beneath the earth. And he extinguished the two great lights and the stars. And he said, let the waters rise from under the heavens and let the dry land vanish, and it was so. And he tore the firmament in the midst of the waters and did not separate between waters and waters. And he said let there be darkness and there was darkness, and he joined the light and the darkness. And he saw that it was bad, and there was evening and there was one last night. In the end, the abyss swallowed the heavens and the earth.

The Mouth of the Abyss

And now hear the word of the abyss, give me a stage! Bring me a great calf. More than the cow wants to kill, the calf wants to die. This is the statute of the cow, take for yourselves a red Torah: Go forth to your birthplace to your father's house. Take now your father, your only one whom you hated and bring him down to me to Sheol beneath one of the mountains which I will not tell you, lest I make an end of you. For all these things he will bring you to judgment - blessed is the judge of the dead.

The Fat Land of Israel

And I will betroth you to me with a ring of handcuffs, and I will betroth you with forbidden love, and I will betroth you with life imprisonment. I have forgotten for you the kindness of your youth, your following after me in the wilderness, only 40 km. Therefore, you shall yet give me drink with tears. I will yet embrace you with my branches and give you my sweet fruit. You shall be to me as a body and I will be to you as a brain. I will help you forget. And you will use force. You had mercy on me, you judged me, you had mercy without judging and judged without mercy. But I will judge you with mercy. I sentence you to euthanasia. A second Holocaust. Listen to the wooden prophet. A second Holocaust. A second Holocaust. Holocaust, Holocaust, second Holocaust. Who's coming? A second Holocaust. Coming coming a second Holocaust. Come Holocaust, come great one. Come bride, come bride.

Nightlife


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Reading of the Future

Why should art be read only as a creator and not as a consumer? Why wouldn't we want to meet the artist as an individual within their creation, but rather as demonstrating a method - that is, as learners and not as experiencers? On the reason why so many great artists are small villains in their personal lives

By: Portrait of the Artist as a Disreputable Genre

Michelangelo's only self-portrait - as a flayed skin  (Source)

A text doesn't teach you the content of the text, but rather teaches you how to write like it, and the content of the text is a particular case of this learning. It teaches a certain form of creativity, a method of writing, and this is the difference between the approach of reading and that of learning. In other words, this is the type of reading suitable for the age of learning, reading aimed at learning a certain way of activity, a certain creativity, and not specific content. Certainly not communication with a specific person, unless it's communication with them as a literature teacher, namely learning.

What we learn from the history of writing is that individualism is crap. The concept of the artist ruined art, just as the concept of the author ruined literature. Better a painter, a writer. The moment the artist himself became the subject, it was the beginning of the end, and gave a biographical reading to every work (one of its vulgar peaks being identity politics art).

What happened is that the moment art became sophisticated as a tool of expression, for example painting (this happened less in architecture, for instance), then from a craftsman like Michelangelo who painted himself only as a flayed skin, with Caravaggio he himself is already a character in many paintings, and with Rembrandt he is already the subject of many paintings, and with Van Gogh he is already the only subject that has a cumulative mythical narrative meaning. It was precisely from the success of art that the megalomania grew, ending in hubris and artistic tragedy.

Self-aggrandizement is ugly. And it attracted countless parasites and people with ego problems and lack of talent and charlatanism or self-marketing abilities to the field of art, all the flies were drawn to the crap. Therefore, celebrity culture of all kinds should now attract the flies, and not art, so that art can be cleansed of being a toilet. The problem is that the flies have also multiplied. And so despite its diminished attraction as crap, they still flood the field. Painting should be practiced only by those who know how to paint and have exceptional talent in painting (and have also learned to paint and practiced painting), and not by any artist.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Land of Strife

And husband and wife argue: And you told me we were wrong to sell the apartment! And she curses: Blockhead, now there will be insane price hikes! And a man grumbles: What bad luck I have in life, right in the middle of sex. And the other one cries to him: You know what hurts me the most? That now the Arabs will rejoice

By: The Institute for Jewish Geology

Prince of Hell - Hieronymus Bosch (Source)

I dreamed that there was something enormous moving in my wife's bed, shaking the entire bed, while I slept like a log. And this enormous thing grows stronger and stronger, and creaks and sighs and groans of anguish rise... and because of this I don't wake up, even though there's an earthquake in the middle of the night, and the huge holy book cabinet next to the bed falls on me and buries me. While my wife, who reads trash before bed and all sorts of newspapers, escapes unharmed. Is this the reward for studying Torah in bed?

And I ascend to heaven and there's a huge line from the earthquake. And we wait for hours and the authorities don't know and can't cope and aren't prepared for so many dead Jews, for each of whom they need to weigh 613 commandments with all their details and minutiae, unlike the seven Noahide laws which are on the express track. And people push and shout: What is this, open more counters. Everything's a mess [Translator's note: "partach" is Hebrew slang for a poorly done job], I'm telling you. Did you see Yossel's successful son? Just to see him here was worth it. And here someone's already starting to sell ice cream, and haggling with the parents: And if the child ends up in hell - won't you buy him an ice cream? And husband and wife argue: And you told me we were wrong to sell the apartment! And she curses: Blockhead, now there will be insane price hikes! And a man grumbles: What bad luck I have in life, right in the middle of sex. And the other one cries to him: You know what hurts me the most? That now the Arabs will rejoice...

And here I see there in the center of the gathering the expert on earthquake prediction, the honorable Professor of Geology from the Hebrew University, the grandson of S.Y. Agnon, who laments:

I'm like the prophets of doom that no one listened to, and now the national home has collapsed on our heads. Ever since my grandfather's house in central Jerusalem was destroyed in the earthquake of 1927 and so we were forced to move to the Agnon House in Talpiot - we've been preparing for the land's betrayal of the Jews. And here in the destruction of the Third Temple we were again caught unprepared. It's genetic with us. After the first tremors, a responsible prime minister should have panicked, and called a press conference with prime-time stunts, with behavioral instructions and an emergency plan for reinforcing buildings and a national earthquake drill. But then there wasn't an earthquake in the end and they would have laughed at him. People are constantly afraid of the sky: missiles, kites, planes, balloons, drones, mosquitoes, air pollution, the sun, the hole in the atmosphere. But they forgot to fear the earth. The earth itself is fed up. And on the day the earth wakes up - you'll stop dreaming.

Nightlife


text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

The Last Temptation

Your literature is a game of instincts, and you mainly have two strong ones: life and women. In contrast, among snakes, precisely because everything is built on instincts, there are thousands of instincts. The reptilian brain may be less complex, but the powers of our soul are immense

By: Phallic Symbol

Sweetie (Source)

The snake said: Stop crying, your culture is full of repetitions, lack of originality, you can fold it in half and nothing will happen. And science is just copying from nature, not something you invented. Literature, which is the pinnacle of human culture, is artificial. An empty template.

I said: You don't understand the human world, so everything looks the same to you.

And the snake mocked: There are only two central domains identical in their internal structure, which are the almost exclusive recurring themes of literature: love and death. Everything is variations on this.

I said to him: And what's the equivalent in love to murder?

\- Separation.

\- And to suicide?

\- Unrequited love.

\- So unrequited love is a person's separation from themselves? Then what's the equivalent to sex?

\- Disease, of course. The equivalent to an epidemic is promiscuity. And the equivalent to war is organized love, namely marriage. You can check all the novels. In how many different combinations can you really arrange these two blocks. It's boring, and how random it is. Your literature is a game of instincts, and you mainly have two strong ones: life and women. In contrast, among snakes, precisely because everything is built on instincts, there are thousands of instincts. The reptilian brain may be less complex, but the powers of our soul are immense, and the inner richness... The internal experience dimmed by thought pales in comparison to the life experience of a snake.

Somehow you know this. That's why you're afraid of the bestial. And you suppress it. Like men are afraid of female sexuality. Out of fear that it's more intense. Out of jealousy. Out of a sense of inferiority. From knowing you'll never understand the experience. From its chaotic nature. The sexual liberation of women destroyed your culture. Your art. And literature. That's exactly what I whispered to Eve.

That's why she had to give Adam to eat. To compare. Imagine if only women were sexual. But because she tasted the fruit first, it exerted most of its power on her, Adam got the leftovers and the peels. Man is an animal that needs to become extinct from the world. Why inflict on Adam the injustice of being a man. We should stop giving birth to boys, only girls. Only women and snakes. And we'll return to the Garden of Eden.

Culture and Literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Last Temptation

Your literature is a game of instincts, and you mainly have two strong ones: life and women. In contrast, among snakes, precisely because everything is built on instincts, there are thousands of instincts. The reptilian brain may be less complex, but the powers of our soul are immense

By: Phallic Symbol

Sweetie (Source)

The snake said: Stop crying, your culture is full of repetitions, lack of originality, you can fold it in half and nothing will happen. And science is just copying from nature, not something you invented. Literature, which is the pinnacle of human culture, is artificial. An empty template.

I said: You don't understand the human world, so everything looks the same to you.

And the snake mocked: There are only two central domains identical in their internal structure, which are the almost exclusive recurring themes of literature: love and death. Everything is variations on this.

I said to him: And what's the equivalent in love to murder?

- Separation.

- And to suicide?

- Unrequited love.

- So unrequited love is a person's separation from themselves? Then what's the equivalent to sex?

- Disease, of course. The equivalent to an epidemic is promiscuity. And the equivalent to war is organized love, namely marriage. You can check all the novels. In how many different combinations can you really arrange these two blocks. It's boring, and how random it is. Your literature is a game of instincts, and you mainly have two strong ones: life and women. In contrast, among snakes, precisely because everything is built on instincts, there are thousands of instincts. The reptilian brain may be less complex, but the powers of our soul are immense, and the inner richness... The internal experience dimmed by thought pales in comparison to the life experience of a snake.

Somehow you know this. That's why you're afraid of the bestial. And you suppress it. Like men are afraid of female sexuality. Out of fear that it's more intense. Out of jealousy. Out of a sense of inferiority. From knowing you'll never understand the experience. From its chaotic nature. The sexual liberation of women destroyed your culture. Your art. And literature. That's exactly what I whispered to Eve.

That's why she had to give Adam to eat. To compare. Imagine if only women were sexual. But because she tasted the fruit first, it exerted most of its power on her, Adam got the leftovers and the peels. Man is an animal that needs to become extinct from the world. Why inflict on Adam the injustice of being a man. We should stop giving birth to boys, only girls. Only women and snakes. And we'll return to the Garden of Eden.

Culture and Literature