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#extent b) were profoundly affected by
alliluyevas · 1 year
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🔥 the entire discipline of history
deer in highlights
okay i guess my hot take is i feel like people just have this knee jerk condemnation of history focused on wars and i say this as someone who finds military history generally rather boring. like a) even if i'm not into it i do think it's a valid form of study b) the number of like Old White Men Who Are Obsessed With Battle Formations And No Nuance is not as high as you think it is!
I honestly think it's like really offensive when I see all these posts like "when men say they love history they mean they love reading about wwii and what i mean is i love fashion history" i think it's like...sorry that wwii affected millions of people and the world as a whole and our world today profoundly. it's a very shallow and internalized-misogynistic way of speaking about history.
also like...wars affect women! wars affect everyone! wars may, shockingly, have a greater impact on people's lives and deaths and existences than fashion!
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xtruss · 2 years
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Don’t Believe Those Who Say Ending Roe v Wade Will Leave Society Largely Intact
— By Laurence H Tribe
If the high court adopts Alito’s draft opinion, it will be a legal tidal wave that sweeps away a swath of rights unlike anything America has ever seen
— May 23, 2022 | The Guardian USA
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‘To understand the devastation the court appears ready to wreak on America’s long march toward “liberty and justice for all”, examine the arguments being made in the opinion’s defense.’ Photograph: Caitlin Ochs/Reuters
Now that the dust has begun to settle after the initial explosive news that the US supreme court is poised to overrule the right to abortion and that Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents what a majority of the court initially voted to do, among the most revealing ways to understand the devastation the court appears ready to wreak on America’s long march toward “liberty and justice for all” is to examine the kinds of arguments being made in the opinion’s defense.
The argument that such a ruling would simply return a divisive issue to the people had long since been widely dismantled. It certainly wouldn’t be returned to the people most profoundly affected once women were told they may have to remain pregnant despite whatever urgent reasons they might have for seeking a safe and legal abortion. It couldn’t be described as returning the abortion issue to the states, now that the possibility of a nationwide ban that the supreme court might uphold is on the horizon. And to the extent the issue is returned to the states, it would be returned to state legislatures so gerrymandered that they often represent the views of a distinct minority of the people anyway.
The argument that “only” abortion is involved because Alito’s draft assures readers that the supreme court’s opinion won’t be treated as precedent for anything that doesn’t involve killing an unborn human is both profoundly insulting and manifestly misleading. It insults every sentient person by minimizing the significance of commandeering the bodies and lives of half the population – and re-inserting government power into every family. And it misleads every reader of Alito’s words by suggesting that a court has the power to shape how future lawmakers and judges will build on its decisions and the reasoning underlying them. Alito’s hollow promise brings to mind similar assurances in notorious cases like Bush v Gore, is inconsistent with how the judicial process works, and wouldn’t offer any solace to anyone who might become pregnant or whose miscarriage might be treated as a crime scene for police to investigate.
The foolishness of the argument that there’s nothing to see here other than the future of abortion law is underscored by some of what is said in its support. We’re told not to worry about the future of decisions like Loving v Virginia, ensuring the right to marry someone of a different race than your own because, after all, Justice Clarence Thomas is in an interracial marriage. We’re told not to worry about the right to same-sex marriage because, after all, Justice Brett Kavanaugh would never vote to overturn Obergefell v Hodges, the most iconic opinion written by his proud mentor, Anthony Kennedy – the man who left the court only after he had hand-picked Kavanaugh as his successor. We’re told not to worry about contraception (despite the way quite a few people view Plan B or IUDs as forms of abortion) because even supreme court nominees like Amy Coney Barrett, who were cagey about just how “settled” a precedent they deemed Roe v Wade, said they couldn’t imagine anybody today challenging Griswold v Connecticut. All that prognostication is cold comfort to the millions of people whose lives are profoundly affected by these shaky predictions.
The most substantial argument is one that is equally fallacious but more sophisticated and in some ways more devious and dangerous: it is the argument that supreme court reversals of precedent, like the reversal of Plessy v Ferguson by Brown v Board of Education, are often to be welcomed as needed course corrections, and that this “course correction” wouldn’t be the first time the supreme court has rolled back decades-old constitutional rights. The many commentators who persisted in describing Alito’s draft in those terms – as an unprecedented retreat in the arc of ever-expanding rights – have recently been denounced as either inexcusably ignorant or deliberately duplicitous by distinguished scholars like Yale’s Akhil Amar, who says that every first-year law student learns that the very same thing happened during FDR’s second term as president, when the supreme court in 1937 in West Coast Hotel v Parrish overturned a long line of decisions that had blocked minimum wage and maximum hours and other worker-protection laws in the name of employers’ rights of “private property” and the “liberty of contract”. To be sure, Amar’s argument echoes that of the Alito draft, which cites Parrish and says, in effect, “nothing to see here, we did the same thing before” when we rolled back the liberty of contract line of decisions in 1937.
Justice Alito and Professor Amar are simply wrong: profoundly so. That so-called (and quite misleadingly labeled) “switch in time that saved the nine” was nothing like the switch that Dobbs would represent. The 1937 “switch” was no sudden politically driven turnabout but was in fact the culmination of long-simmering movements in legal and economic thought – movements that were reflected both in scholarship and in judicial opinions from the earliest days of the 20th century in places like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Lochner v New York insisting that “the 14th amendment does not enact Mr Herbert Spencer’s social statics,” movements that represented the growing conviction that the “freedom” to work at low wages and in miserable conditions was an illusion lacking both moral and legal foundations and one that simply helped perpetuate economic inequality and the exploitation of relatively powerless, not-yet-unionized workers by wealthy and powerful corporations.
Indeed, it is noteworthy that West Coast Hotel v Parrish – the 29 March 1937 decision that is usually marked as the pivot point in the great constitutional upheaval – was handed down by precisely the same set of nine justices as the nine who had rendered a decision pointing in the opposite direction less than a year earlier, on 1 June 1936, in Morehead v New York ex rel Tipaldo. One justice of the nine, a moderate Republican named Owen J Roberts, who had been rethinking his position on the underlying legal theories, had foreshadowed his shifting views by writing a landmark opinion upholding milk price regulation, Nebbia v New York, by a 5-4 vote in 1934 – less than two months after the court had upheld a state mortgage moratorium law by a 5-4 vote in Home Building & Loan Ass’n v Blaisdell, a decision clearly foreshadowing the 1937 repudiation of Lochner’s legacy by reconceiving the meaning of the constitution’s clause forbidding all state impairments of the obligation of contracts.
“Dobbs would represent the crude payoff to a partisan political program to take over the federal judiciary”
That history is important to keep in mind if one is to understand the depth of the error made by those who seek to compare the 2022 tsunami that Dobbs would represent with the gradual shift in current represented by the 1937 movement away from liberty of contract to protection of workers and consumers. The head-spinning and altogether untimely switch in the supreme court’s abortion jurisprudence that Dobbs would represent – if the decision the court announces late this June or early July is in substance what the leaked Alito draft indicated it would be – will reflect not the steady maturation of a long-developing jurisprudential movement but the crude payoff to a partisan political program to take over the federal judiciary, one beginning with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the Federalist Society, and advancing with supreme court appointments made by Republican presidents all of whom lost the popular vote (George W Bush, appointing Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts; Donald J Trump, appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), and made in circumstances of dubious legitimacy.
Professor Amar treats as laughably naïve the observation by ACLU national legal director and Georgetown law professor David Cole that, although “Parrish took away some rights of business owners … its real effect was to expand rights protections for millions of Americans subject to exploitation by powerful corporations.” Amar’s rebuttal? He says, and I’m serious here, that it’d be equally legitimate to say that “Dobbs’ real effect would be to expand rights protection for millions of innocent, unborn Americans … unborn humans, subject to extermination by society.”
It’s hard to know where to begin in unraveling that alleged parallel. Suffice it to note that the status as rights-bearing persons of embryos and fetuses remains a matter of profound sectarian controversy in America and throughout the world while no such controversy attends the status as rights-bearing persons of the array of workers whose rights, at least under laws designed to limit economic exploitation if not directly under the constitution itself, were indisputably expanded by virtue of the Parrish decision and the overturning of the Lochner line of cases.
“The radical change in law and society that Dobbs would represent has no parallel in the history of the Supreme Court”
Perhaps no less important is the indisputable fact that, although there remain a few commentators who continue to think that Lochner was rightly decided and Parrish was wrong, there is a nearly universal consensus, certainly covering the ideological spectrum on the current supreme court, that the “rights” protected by Lochner and the other decisions that Parrish tossed into the dustbin of history were not constitutionally sacrosanct, and that inequalities of bargaining power prevented the common-law baseline that Lochner treated as immune to legislative modification from having any special constitutional status. At the same time, the notions of personal autonomy and bodily integrity that provide the constitutional foundation for the substantive “liberty” at stake in cases like Roe and Casey are almost universally accepted as real, although deep disagreements remain about whether, to what degree, and from what point in fetal development the protection of the unborn fetus can properly trump that liberty.
The upshot is that the radical change in law and society that Dobbs would represent truly has no parallel in the history of the supreme court or in the history of the United States. As David Cole writes, the “proper analogy is not Brown overruling Plessy, but a decision reviving Plessy, reversing Brown, and relegating Black people to enforced segregation after nearly 70 years of equal protection.” For, as Jamelle Bouie rightly observed, “equal standing is undermined and eroded when the state can effectively seize your person for its own ends – that is, when it can force you to give birth.” Whether or not one compares that compulsion and forced labor to literal enslavement, as I did in my 1973 article on Roe v Wade, attempts to minimize the huge retrogression this would represent must be dismissed as little more than shameful efforts to camouflage the carnage the supreme court of the United States is about to unleash both on its own legitimacy and, even more important, on the people in whose name it wields the power of judicial review.
— Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, the author of numerous books and articles, a distinguished supreme court advocate, and holder of 11 honorary degrees
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phoenixtakaramono · 3 years
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THE UNTOLD TALE - CH3 PREVIEW
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There was an important takeaway to be had from tonight’s interaction: Shen Yuan had asserted his place as the lord of this residence and as Luo Binghe’s future ally.
Several thoughts had, however, been plaguing him ever since Shen Yuan gifted Luo Binghe the handscrolls, leaving like the composed gentleman he was while the half-demon pondered over the newfound revelations for the night. Those thoughts filled Shen Yuan’s brain with a renewed vigor that his exhausted body did not feel, roiling through his brain as he changed into his night clothes. Even now, lying down with his hands folded over his stomach, they consumed his mind as he stared up at the azure, gauzy canopy that looked eerily similar to the one in the guest bedchamber that Luo Binghe now slept in.
Wisps of hazy white rose from the lotus-shaped censer he’d brought to his bed. The coals within were still fresh in the copper, keeping him warm in the night, with the fragrance of sandalwood circulating within the room.
His unyielding companion, the blue text box, hovered above. Shen Yuan kept his gaze averted from it; he had read and reread the Chinese characters countless times that if he closed his eyes, he could still see the most recent notification engraved in his mind’s eye.
【Prediction! Future Event <<A NIGHT OF PASSION>> has been changed into <<LOADING CHEKHOV'S GUN>>. You have reached the conditions to clear the scenario. Countdown commencing. Reward: B-Points +50.】
The planes of his face were bathed in a soft blue glow as he ruminated. Shen Yuan couldn’t find it within him to feel any guilt or to throw blame at anyone other than himself. He’d unlocked the <<TRUE END>> main scenario and, judging by how the <<SYSTEM>> was not giving him a choice, he had to build that rapport between themselves and see that friendship through.
These are the seeds you’ve sown, Shen Yuan, he reminded himself. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. He could only dig his hands into the soil and watch the seeds slowly bear fruit.
Bing gē—or, rather, Luo Binghe—was not a 2D character on paper; he was now a real person who breathed and talked and had a will of his own. Even so, Shen Yuan didn’t know the extent of the ramifications if an extraordinary “prodigy” gained self-awareness that he was the male protagonist of a fictional erotica series.
It’d be interesting. If someone found out one day that they were a precious existence in a world which catered to them, they’d naturally become arrogant. All the attractive people belonged to them, hearts were won over for no real reason, and enemies would be seen as less of a threat and more as an annoyance. Shen Yuan could envision it; Luo Binghe would probably behave more recklessly, confident in the fact that he was protected by plot armor. He’d be a spoilt menace in a male power fantasy world—until the novelty wore off, and then the boredom set in.
The corners of Shen Yuan’s mouth curved. He didn’t know how likeminded Luo Binghe was, but if he thought like he did, he’d exploit his advantages.
A protagonist’s existence was akin to a cockroach, dragged from door’s death each time without fail.
This was not merely a case of schadenfreude—another difficult foreign term he’d learned during his pursuit as a novelist—where he reveled in another person’s misfortunes. It was a well-established trope in all forms of literature that when a person was casually dropped into a life-or-death situation, they would resurface as calamities. Since Luo Binghe was an important main character, he would naturally benefit.
...Sorry, youngster. Shen Yuan raised a white flag in commiseration for him in his heart. I didn’t mean to conscript you, but you must continue to work hard. Nationalistic pride exists among many Chinese writers.
Even pre-enlightened Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky had not been exempt from that.
In most narratives, the protagonist’s role was to rise above the rest and “smash the system.” Shen Yuan squinted up at the UI, his eyes beginning to water from its bright glow. He blinked rapidly, but the strain in his eyes refused to ease.
He swore in his head. This better not be the sort of tale where he and Luo Binghe had to compete to establish who was the one true protagonist, having to assert narrative dominance. Shen Yuan had no intention of pulling aggro to himself.
Raising a forearm up to shadow his vision, he groaned. He declared to no one, “Airplane brother, you’ve done your first son a great disservice.”
(He’d done a disservice to the original Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan as well as among many others.)
The events that had played out tonight strengthened Shen Yuan’s conviction. He could now see how people easily fell for his act; the charisma of a stallion protagonist was potent. Even so, he had capitalized on goodwill—and Luo Binghe’s strange fixation—hoping continuous acts of kindness being demonstrated toward him would soften him toward Shen Yuan and prove his intentions were sincere.
Should he prove himself to be of use, surely even somebody like Bing gē would not discard him during his rise to power or see him as a threat?
The only method he could foresee showing his fellow protagonist that his services were indispensable was by lending him his wisdom—and his predictions on the account of Shen Yuan being a <<FORTUNETELLER>>. His goal to leave a favorable impression with the other protagonist was already well underway, with the aim of establishing how it would be in Luo Binghe’s best interests to remember Shen Yuan’s acts of compassion and to return them tenfold in the future unless he wished to owe the celestial favors.
He recalled the last question he’d asked of him before Shen Yuan left, regarding the compatibility of his fated one.
Would it be strange if I wrote a predestined romance, for once? As much as Shen Yuan favored subverting expectations, he was aware of what sold commercially. There was a structure that made their literature different from those in the Western market whose shocking narratives could not only arouse pity in their audience, but also a sense of awe, excitement, fear, and suffering.
Their protagonists were not always someone of high society; they often hailed from humble origins as a device for the writer to underscore the merits of working hard and to criticize the system—a fictional one though, to avoid absolute censorship by the Chinese government. Their heroes began as nothing more than a windblown leaf in the social structure and years of ethical traditions set in place. They started on the bottom rungs of society to draw people’s attention to their lives, to the injustice and unfairness, which made their struggles all the more impactful to the reader.
The fates of the leading characters were tied to the juxtaposition of the harmonious ideal of society and the reality of a flawed system. Chinese tales were inherently romantic oftentimes, with tragic conflicts written to emphasize the beauty of a bond and rousing sympathy and pity for their plight. The archetype of a tragic hero was meant to be presented so profoundly that great reverence would well up spontaneously in one’s heart.
In his opinion, Luo Binghe had suffered plenty.
Under normal circumstances, as Peerless Cucumber, Shen Yuan was the sort of novelist where it would not be considered strange for him to challenge the romantic notion of soulmates by making his leading characters comrades or adversaries instead of lovers.
It was like the overseas Inception movie; he’d satirized enough old and tired clichés, it almost became expected of him to subvert expectations for all of his publications.
Guilt weighed on his mind. While he understood the implicit reality of his situation, he still felt like he was, in some way, disappointing his audience. The shame he felt was bizarre.
He swallowed. “My cherished readers...,” Shen Yuan murmured to the void as though they could hear him, “forgive this writer if I don’t subvert your expectations in this aspect just this once.”
The harem was the closest Luo Binghe had to a family. After the parental kindness of the washerwoman was torn away from him early in his life, after having endured the unhealthy environment that followed, the only love and tenderness he received in his life came in the arms of beautiful women. Tokens of affection were given in the form of intimate acts. It was no wonder Bing gē’s character had ended up twisted. He collected lovers with a greed not unlike a hedonistic minister who accepted bribes.
What a complicated man. Shen Yuan’s heart ached for the “blackened hero.”
There were so many women in the harem. In the presence of Luo Binghe, each one was gentle, kind, respectful, and submissive. But it was unrealistic for one husband, who had undergone the traumas that he had, to share his heart equally amongst them and not expect any misgivings.
What this Luo Binghe needed was a foil to his temperament, somebody patient, charismatic, and well-educated. Since Luo Binghe would be uniting the Three Realms, they needed to be proactive keeping him in check from becoming a self-indulgent, fatuous ruler. They cannot be sensitive to criticisms and speculation. A sensible head was needed on their shoulders to guide their merciless husband in understanding right from wrong and from any sycophants looking to lead him astray. It was integral to help the protagonist maintain a harmonious empire so that, together, they could lead a golden age of reform.
Shen Yuan wondered if there even existed such an extraordinary person.
Luo Binghe’s reputation was already in tatters in the Mortal Realm on the account of having a demonic heritage and having razed down the great righteous sects. Whatever goodwill he’d originally cultivated with his deceptive “nice guy” act had to be regained. Winning the war against the son of heaven and finding a good match would be integral in swaying public opinion to his favor. In public, they must present a united front, ruthless against their adversaries but dependable towards their subjects. It was only over time that the Sacred Rulers would prove themselves worthy of being idolized and beloved by the masses.
The <<SYSTEM>> had said that he and Luo Binghe should work together and in the end, they would unlock the epilogue that blessed them with their star-crossed lovers.
Until such a person was found, he supposed he could step into the role as his counsel whenever Luo Binghe needed advice. It was like tossing a peach and getting a plum back. Celestial or not, Shen Yuan used to be the son of a family of manufacturing executives. His profession might have been as an author, but he was educated in the principles of economics. Aside from sharing the <<PROTAGONIST’S HALO>>, his modern knowledge and his knowledge of both novel series were his cheats.
Like the spring breeze that thawed the frozen soil, he would be someone who reached into the abyss and grabbed that bloodstained hand. He could set a standard for Luo Binghe to emulate as the type of wise leader he should be, and his handsome junior could learn from his modern examples and put some of them into practice for his kingdom.
He’ll enable him into becoming the best person that he could be. And maybe, just maybe, the new era might be salvageable and worthy of pride for generations to come for not only the immortals and demons, but for the mortals as well.
“I’d redeemed you once,” Shen Yuan declared, his lashes fanning against his cheeks. He closed his eyes in reminiscence of his own fanfiction, inhaling the light, woody scent of the censer nearby. “I can do it again.”
In the meantime, he reflected, I must collect more merits. I cannot be lazy and lag behind in accomplishments.
While Luo Binghe fought his battles, Shen Yuan would be fighting his own—whatever they might be. He would not be outshone by his junior in his own meteoric rise.
“...System?” he inquired drowsily, his voice barely above a whisper. Turning on his side, he stared at a faraway wall. The glazed white surface of the porcelain pillow felt cold against his cheek, its smoothness reminiscent of jade. “Can you hear me?”
Ping.
【This <<SYSTEM>> provides the Esteemed Host a 24-hour service.】
“I don’t remember Airplane brother going into detail about what the education system is like in this setting. Is it supposed to be historically accurate to the ancient feudal model or…?”
Ping.
As he listened to the long encyclopedic explanation, what he’d heard confirmed his worst fears. Education was the privilege of the elites. Immortal cultivators prioritized studying matters of the “spiritual heart” and Qi refinement, in the martial and mystical arts, breaking through the bottleneck of each cultivation stage until their dedication allowed them to reach the pinnacle that was the Ninth Stage.
With that narrow-minded focus on self-enlightenment, the basic education curriculum of the twenty-first century would be seen as innovative in the pre-established setting of this strange world.
In the early webnovels, Bing gē had stagnated as a late-stage Core Formation expert. Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, in his laziness to research the many intricate nuances of the Cultivation World, had waved it all away by attributing his protagonist’s OPness to his ancient, heaven-fallen demonic heritage and to the deus ex machina that was his legendary sword. Even then, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky still occasionally confused the Foundation Establishment with the Nascent Soul stages.
It wouldn’t be until the end of the series—after the outcry of the netizens—that the unsatisfied Luo Binghe made the breakthrough into the proper Nascent Soul stage with the help of his wives and their many gratuitous papapa scenes.
Then in the epilogue, the author had infuriatingly time-skipped all the way to the penultimate Ninth Stage, describing how Luo Binghe became a legend among legends who had finally attained eternal youth and aged back into his late twenties in his new immortal body after having miraculously passed the Heavenly Tribulations—disasters from heaven which were akin to nuclear radiation for those of demon blood. After an unspecified many years of rule, he’d left his legacy behind—with the uncountable size of his harem and a boundless number of his descendants “mourning the loss of a great and oftentimes misunderstood man.”
Just remembering it made Shen Yuan’s blood pressure spike dangerously. Taking deep, calming breaths, he rolled back onto his back as he forced himself to attain catharsis from listening to the mind-numbing exposition the <<SYSTEM>> was extolling to him like a history program. His fingers clenched the bed sheet.
Eventually he found himself feeling adrift, the words beginning to lose their coherency to him as he phased in and out of consciousness, his mind becoming wrapped in a haze of smoke. Soon his tense muscles relaxed.
The countdown had reached 00:00:00 when sleep finally claimed him.
Note: Small details of this scene might be subject to revision when the final draft comes out. Ch1-2 can be found on AO3. Link is in my bio!
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un-nmd · 6 years
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Recent listening—
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 10 (1910—unfinished) I am not philosophically qualified to deal with the multitude of musico-literary questions posed by either side of the debate regarding the extent of Mahler’s authorship of the handful of extant completions that, together with their recordings, their critiques, their revisions, and their stories, form the intricately-woven, cosmopolitan, medium-crossing entity known as Mahler’s 10th. But I am philosophically awake enough to ask a few. For example: Is it to be performed abridged? Is it to be performed in full? Are the completions to be regarded as 'full'? How much authorship do we ascribe to Deryck Cooke, or to Rudolf Barshai? And how much is left to Mahler? In the fourth and fifth movements, how much Mahler is there? And what would be preferable between: a completion that adds nothing beyond the unfinished manuscript and a completion that fills in the short score’s gaps with its best approximation of Mahlerian harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, and textural effect? For answers to these and more I direct you to this superlative survey from Tony Duggan. And also to this recording of Cooke III. But any other will do, of any other completion, for hear it once and you will know: it must be heard. And that means all five movements. While it remains a veiled experience, particularly in the musicological thickets of the fourth and fifth movements, its impression is profoundly, distinctly Mahlerian. The veil is subtle—but close listening brings it into haunting focus. Certain passages in the second scherzo and in the finale’s allegro moderato are texturally malnourished. Passages where the completers were forced to resort to the recycling of earlier material fail to realise Mahler’s art of continuous variation, displayed at full might in the Ninth and even in the Tenth’s Adagio. And so what we have is not Mahler in the flesh but Mahler from the grave, his wisps—like the viola wisps of the work’s opening—imbuing every extant note with the passion and pain of his life—the Adagio’s F# subject and the cataclysmic dissonance at mm. 203-208, respectively—as a final shaken fist, furious and fading like the four-horn statement of the very opening’s viola theme in the dying minutes of the symphony. This moment continues to floor me. It is among the most powerful moments in all of Mahler, and it is also one of the most peculiar. In a sense, it is on the nose. Why would the master of continuous variation write so obvious and so literal a quotation in so obvious and so prominent a spot? There are many psycho-philosophical responses to this. All I know for sure is that I would rather be asking that question than this one: Had Mahler composed a Tenth, what would it have been like?
Ludwig van Beethoven, Große Fuge, op. 133 (1826) And but so: did he mean it? For it is easy (and indeed unoriginal) to ascribe the op. 133′s tortured dissonances and density of sound to the composer’s own torture at his lack of sound. A simple rebuttal is that there are radical elements past these, e.g. the context-less tied quavers (and the peculiarity of tied quavers) in the introduction that teeter on the edge of complete isolation; the wildly confusing syncopation that manifests as complete incoherency of meter without intimate knowledge of the score; the unrelenting contrapuntal tumult of the first and second extended Allegro sections; or the comically insubstantial coda that does not fade out or end in glory so much as sheepishly, obligatorily resolve to a nominal B-flat major as if sweeping the last fifteen minutes violence under the carpet. These are characteristics of the work (rhythmic, structural) whose geneses would not have been affected by the inability to hear—at least three quarters of the works ‘progressive-ness’ can be unequivocally shown to have had nothing at all to do with deafness. To prove the same for the remainder can only be done for yourself by yourself. Listen to the perpetual harmonic momentum that sends the music hurtling down the pages, listen to each voice, each trajectory, the searing intensity of the work’s mode of propulsion: dissonace upon dissonance then momentary resolution then dissonance again and onward... and wonder whether any of this could ever have come about by mistake. Did he mean it? Every note.
Yo La Tengo, There’s a Riot Going On (2018) At first glance it seemed like it would be impossible ever to take this seriously, on account of what is possibly the most lamentably uninspired album art I have ever seen. This is not an exaggeration. Just look at it. On one hand its unfortunate, because this is a good album, but on the other, it’s funny, because this is a good album and you should have known otherwise than to judge it by its cover (but again it really is godawful) because this is Yo La Tengo and have you ever heard a bad Yo La Tengo album? Or even a mediocre one? No. But have you ever heard a surprising Yo La Tengo album? Or a challenging one? ... No.
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major (1945) Less so a symphony and more so a suite—and yet this is at odds with the clearly symphonic conception of the form: The fast-slow-fast-slow-fast structuring of the movements, the sonata-allegro of the first, the scherzo in compound that the third somehow passes for, and likewise the fanfare and quasi-rondo in the fourth and fifth are all blatant signifiers of the Austro-German notion of the symphony. And in a classic Shostakovichian irony he, at the same time, evidences a blatant disregard for the Austro-German notion of development. For each idea is treated with a madman’s haste, is played twice or thrice without the least concern for variation, then passed on for some other ideas which are treated with equal disdain, and then all the ideas are played at end (separately, in succession) and this is somehow deemed an appropriate point to conclude the musical argument that had barely even begun. There is some interesting rhythmic development in the first and fifth but that’s about it, and even then, you’ve no chance of a breath to appreciate it since the fast movements are such frenetic whirlwinds. At worst, this symphony may be described as alternately skittish and languid. At best, it’s fun and concise, a woodwind extravaganza brimming with a barely contained energy. And it comes with an inherent immunity to any criticism it receives: As David Foster Wallace made clear in 1993′s E Unibus Pluram, an ironic work absorbs any criticism incident to it by saying that it already knew it, and that was the point. And no-one was more ironic than Shostakovich. So who was he making fun of? Stalin, probably. But now it’s you.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Sketches of Brunswick East (2017) Mood music. Non-confrontationally paced, easy-toned, sleepy, psychedelic jazz delivered in nonchalant, smiling gestures; there’s pleasure to be sought in familiarity with the material, unexciting though it may seem.
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marthas-feral-cat · 6 years
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How about Hamilton and Laurens? :)
Yours:A Lams Reincarnation AU
Coldin my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might bein my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you. Ishall only tell you that ‘till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value youhad taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done.You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire topreserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happinessindependent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of mysensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you havedone it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scrupleto pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if notfor your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you haveso artfully instilled into me.
Yours,
AlexanderHamilton
 John read the letter from his lover, and in doingso, could immediately feel the redness creeping up into his cheeks. His?Alexander was his? Not only that, but he loved him? Alexander had never said thatto his face, but now John found himself reading it over and over, brand newalthough he felt as if he’d read it long, long ago. He quickly shoved theletter into his breast pocket when a group of soldiers came into the tent, butcouldn’t seem to wipe the smile off his face. He went to his own little privatecorner and began composing a response to Alexander.  He stared at the pen and paper before him andsighed. Alexander wrote so eloquently, so profoundly, like they were in aperiod drama of the 1700s, but John himself, no, John couldn’t possibly writelike his lover did. He simply couldn’t convey the extent of his emotions onpaper. He would have to call him later and thank him for the letter; it meantso much to him to receive them day after day on the front here, while Alexanderwas fighting at home to end the war.
Alexander waited patiently with his cellphone closeto him, as he did at this time every week, John will have received his letterby now, and the time difference worked perfectly at this time for them. They wouldmore than likely talk for a few hours and then John would go to sleep andAlexander would return to his desk and finish his day’s work. He smiled as hisphone started ringing and John’s contact photo lit up the screen.
“Hello, John,” Alexander smiled.
“You’re amazing, did you know that?” John asked him,“That letter was the most beautiful thing I have ever read in my entire life.How do you write like that?”
“I don’t know about amazing,” Alexander blushedslightly, “It just comes to me, almost like I’ve written it before, like I’veloved you in every life previous to this.”
“So it is true?” John asked softly, “You love me?”
“I didn’t think I could’ve been clearer, my darling,”Alexander laughed softly.
“I love you too, Alexander,” John told him, “Somuch, I’ve never felt like this before about anyone. And I’m yours, completelyand totally yours.”
“That sounded pretty poetic to me, my love,”Alexander smiled.
“Oh, hush, you know full well that you can writecircles around me any day,” John chuckled, “That’s why you’re home writing anddebating and fighting to end the war back home and I’m here fighting the enemy.”
“Stop that, you’re doing more to end this war than Iam. No one listens to me here; you’re at least making progress towards the end,”Alexander sighed.
“There will be no sadness on this phone call, Alex,”John reprimanded him teasingly, “ I get one moment of pure happiness every fewdays, and I will not have it ruined by a sulking boyfriend.”
Alexander laughed softly, “Okay, okay, no morecomplaining,” he shook his head, “Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven,” John smiled.
“You’re going to kill me but I’ve got a meeting inten minutes,” Alex sighed.
“It’s alright, Alex, I’ll call back tomorrow sametime,” John assured him.
“Promise?” Alexander asked.
“Yes, I promise,” John laughed.
“I hope I get to see you soon, love,” Alexander toldhim, “I miss you so much.”
“I miss you, too,” John almost teared up.
“Laurens!” His commanding officer shouted.
“I’ve got to go, Alexander, I love you,” John rolledhis eyes at the shouting.
Before Alexander could respond there was a loudexplosion on the other end.
“JOHN! JOHN!” Alexander called frantically.
“Alexander?” John whimpered softly, “I-I’m alive…fuckit hurts…”
“John, stay with me, what happened where are youhurt?” Alexander asked.
“B-Bomb…explosion…my legs…I can barely feel them and…I’mnot breathing right, I need help…I’m trapped…”
“John listen to me,” Alexander tried to remain calm,“I need you to put the pain aside and scream for help as loud as you can, okay?”
John did as Alexander told him and waited for aresponse of any kind, “Alex, I’m scared…I’m not going to make it…” he criedsoftly, “I love you…and I swear I’m yours.”
Alexander didn’t have time to respond before heheard voices approaching John, “Laurens! Laurens is alive! Come on, kid, we’regoing to get you home.”
“My…my phone…”John whimpered quietly, “I n-need it…”
“No time, kid, sorry,” They picked him up andcarried him to the medics that had gathered.
The phone connection went dead before Alexander heardif they got out safely. He stared at the black screen of his cell and tried notto slip into a panic. He couldn’t lose John, not again. Again? Had he lost himbefore in another life perhaps? Was he doomed to lose him in every life if thatwas the case? He couldn’t. He cancelled his meeting and went home for the day.
Late that night his home phone started ringing.
“Hello?” Alex answered groggily, “Who’s calling?”
“Alexander Hamilton?”
“Speaking,” He replied.
“This is John Laurens’ commanding officer, he toldme to call you with any information. His legs are both shattered, and he maynever walk again, but we’ve regulated his breathing and he’ll be flying home inthe morning. He’ll be landing at around noon your time. He’ll need someone tocome meet him at the airport, if you can come or send someone— ”
“I’ll be there,” Alex responded quickly, now wideawake, “I’ll be there for him.” He thought he might burst into tears of joy,his John was okay, that was all that mattered.
Alexander was at the airport at ten in the morningjust in case John’s plane got in early. But it was right on time, arriving at12 noon on the dot. He rushed to the gates to get to him.
John smiled when he saw Alexander waiting for him ashe was rolled over to him.
Alexander ran up to meet him and dropped to hisknees to hug him tightly, “I love you, too, I’m yours. I’m always yours.”
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skinnyloves-blog · 4 years
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MOSHIACH COMES TO TOWN (HQ)
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the vilna gaon dons beggar’s clothes and goes out of town to do penance. on the way home there are some strange happenings. original music & images added to a retelling of the traditional jewish story. TO VIEW OR DOWNLOAD ALL OF MY VIDEOS, PLUS 1500 PAGES OF MY EXPLANATORY ESSAYS (ALL AT NO CHARGE) PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE: franklynwepner.com. ALSO PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH ME ANY COMMENTS ABOUT MY WORK: [email protected]. IN THE LISTING OF VIDEOS THE LETTERS (HQ) REFER TO A HIGHER QUALITY VERSION OF THE VIDEO, WHICH IS AVAILABLE TO YOU IF YOUR COMPUTER CAN HANDLE IT. How can I justify the wild associative leaps that I make in this video? For example, by substituting Netanyahu for the Vilna Gaon, and Barak Obama for Moshiach? The answer is that I am following the formula of Nachman of Breslav, when he writes, “my Torah is completely behinot (hebrew: “associations”). A string of intuitive associations that generates a work salad, such as Nachman’s “Likutei Moharan” (hebrew: “collected essays”) is based on inductive rather than deductive logic. Inductive logic was taught by Francis Bacon and Georg Hamann within the Christian tradition, and no doubt Nachman found similar sources within the Jewish tradition he studied. What follows is my own essay about how inductive thinking is the key to understanding Nachman of Breslav. Since most of my videos also are constructed inductively, it is an important essay to read if you wish to make sense of what I am trying to do in the videos you have here on the net. ……………………………………. ….
FRANKLYN WEPNER [email protected] June 5, 2009 LM 4: BACON, HAMANN AND NACHMAN CONTENTS (1) INTRODUCTION (2) BACON TO HAMANN TO NACHMAN (3) BACON AND PERLS (4) LM 4 (5) HAMANN ON LANGUAGE: (a) imagery (“bilder”) (b) analogy (c) parataxis (d) paradox (e) multiple levels of language (f) affective terminology (6) CONCLUSION REFERENCE: “JOHANN GEORG HAMANN, BY JAMES O’FLAHERTY (1) INTRODUCTION FW: The Breslaver Hassidic movement as it is set up and operates today is an introverted sect, in contrast to the Chabad Hassidic movement which is set up and operates today as an extroverted sect. Breslavers tend to keep to themselves, while Chabadniks drive around town in Mitzvah Tanks seeking wayward Jews as potential recruits. But opposite as the two sects are in that respect, one thing they have in common is an aversion to “philosophy” in its traditional academic sense. Both sects condemn “philosophy” as “chochmot chizoniot” (external wisdom) or “avodah zorah” (strange work). even through ironically they both embody philosophy in the most profound manner possible. Breslav is largely Jewish neo-Platonism, while Chabad is largely Jewish rationalist Aristotelianism. However, since, of course, their educational curriculums contain no Philosophy 101 course. they pay the price of ignorance and intolerance as a result. The Chabad press, for example, once published Nissan Mindel’s excellent “The Philosophy of Chabad”, but today that book is almost impossible to find, and Chabad has no plans to republish it. The book is being supressed most likely because in that book Mindel contends that Chabad is ideologically within the tradition of Moses Maimonides’ “Guide For The Perplexed”, which, as everybody except Chabadniks themselves know, is ideologically within the tradition of Aristotle. Breslavers are even more anti-rational than Chabadniks, since their theory base is primarily neo-Platonic mysticism. Merely mention the word Plato at a Breslaver shul on the Sabbath, and you can be sure nobody will invite you to dinner! Or go to a Breslaver mikvah after demonstrating your philosophical insights concerning the writings of Nachman, and there is a good chance that after you emerge from the holy waters you will not find the clothes you hung up! FW: Another price that Hasidic sects pay for ignoring their intellectual roots is mistranslating the writings of their own originators. The originators, fortunately, were profound philosophers, but much of what they are philosophizing is wasted on their disciples, who are preachers of the sect rather than teachers of the Word. Preachers of a sect aim at building up the sect by glorifying their colleagues, in this case the “tzaddikim” (Hebrew: pius ones) or “talmid chachams” (Hebrew: wise students, students of wisdom) of the local congregation. Teachers, on the other hand, have a primary loyalty to the subject matter they teach, i.e., to the truth. By translating the phrase “talmid chacham” as “wise student” or “Torah scholar” rather than as “student of wisdom”, the deeper reference of the word “chochmah” (wisdom) to the right pillar of the tree of life, or inductive logic, goes into the trash can, and we end up with the notion that anybody who sect leaders designate as “wise student” or “Torah scholar” is thereby empowered to serve as a spiritual guide. But preachers are not necessarily teachers, and so most talmid chacham’s today are serving the needs of the sect rather than propagating the message of the sect founder. Thus, for example, Nachman’s emphasis on the individual’s search for God by “hitbod’dut” (being alone with God) is these days transformed into a typical cult emphasis on groupie gatherings, mob hysteria, guru adoration, nonsense “bubbeh maysehs” (Yiddish: grandmother stories), 18th century sect uniforms and scribbling the name of Nachman of Breslav on public buildings. Have you heard, for example, the bubbeh mayseh about how Nachman himself is sitting up there somewhere near God’s footstool sending letters or emails to the chosen few?! What ever happened to the basic belief of Judaism that God is One, not two or three or whatever? FW: But fools step in where angels fear to tread, as the saying goes, and so this essay is all about the roots of the Breslaver Hasidism in the neo-Platonic tradition as this was modified by Francis Bacon in the scientific renaissance of the 16th century. As if this topic is not heretical enough, I will in this work find much of the support for my contentions in the writings of a Christian theologian whose writings appeared in Europe not far from the doorstep of Nachman, fifty years or so before Nachman wrote his main work, his “Collected Essays” (Hebrew: Likutei Moharan). Now, I am not at all claiming here that Nachman plagiarised Johann Georg Hamann, since it is extremely unlikely that a person growing up in the communities that Nachman did had direct contact with the work of Hamann. But the mere historical fact that the two authors published books dealing with similar topics in a similar manner in the same historical period certainly suggests that they both were tapping parallel Christian and Jewish threads of the religious world that flourished in 18th and 19th century Eastern Europe. One can muse that perhaps Nachman during his occasional trips to Lemburg for medical treatment or to dialogue with members of the Haskalah movement thriving there did come upon a Yiddish translation of something by Hamann or by one of the followers of Hamann, but to date there is little basis for such fantasies. FW: My goals in this essay are modest. I will make use of an excellent commentary upon the work of Hamann by James O’Flaherty, his “Johann Georg Hamann”, Twayne Publishers, and merely demonstrate how the same six key ideas which, he maintains, underlie the work of Hamann can be used as a royal highway to quickly penetrate what appears to be in the writings of Nachman of Breslav an impenetrable hermeneutic jungle. As a prelude to my interweaving of Hamann and Nachman, I will tap a bit of the philosophical tradition which underlies both authors, in particular the work of Francis Bacon who lived in the 16th century. Why Francis Bacon? Because even though Hamann and Nachman are often cited as the epitome of anti-rationalism, yet at the heart of both authors is a sort of logic which is quite profoundly rational. We will contrast inductive logic, what Bacon calls concrete, analogical logic based upon juxtaposing ideas, with deductive logic, which is abstract, mathematical, systematic, and based upon arranging ideas in syllogisms. Once we grasp this distinction between the two types of logic, we will understand why in essays that embody reasoning of the inductive sort, Hamann and Nachman can tell us – without fibbing – to avoid like the plague “philosophy” or “reason” and rely upon faith. The two theologians simply are splitting hairs between induction (which they like) and deduction (which they do not like). They mystify us, however, by calling deduction “philosophy” and induction “kabbalah” or “Judaism or “the Word of God”. But obviously any philosophy or theology worth the name must incorporate both sorts of thinking. So let’s stop mixing up apples and pears and recognize both of them as fruit! The Word of God is smart enough to encompass both the left pillar of sefirot (deduction, differentiation, creation, the downward path), and the right pillar of sefirot (induction, integration, redemption, the upward path back to God). We are dealing, after all, with the dialectical tradition of mainstream Judaism, within which Chabad appeals to folks that stress the left pillar, while Breslav appeals to folks that stress the right pillar. For the Catholics analogous slots are occupied by the Dominicans (rationalists) and the Franciscans (pietists), respectively. O’Flaherty says it well: O 87. A superficial analysis of Hamann’s prose may result in the conclusion that its all too frequent obscurity is rooted in sheer irrationalism. This is, however, by no means the case. Its obscurity derives for the most part from an excessive use of intuitive reason rather than from true irrationalism – quite a different matter. Having seen to what extent Hamann is committed to intuitive or analogical reasoning, while at the same time rejecting the abstractions of the Enlightenment, we can more readily understand why he alternates between praise and vilification in his references to reason. Thus, when he makes such statements as “Faith has need of reason just as much as reason needs faith”, “Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion,” As soon as one knows what reason is, all conflict with revelation ceases, since Hamann is obviously referring to what he considers the legitimate use of reason.” FW: Most of the essays that constitute Nachman’s Likutei Moharan anthology would serve as examples of Nachman’s use of intuitive reason, of induction, and I have here merely selected LM 4 arbitrarily from the list. Like the others, the overall structure of LM 4 consists of a Houdini magical demonstration of how just about anything can be seen as an aspect of anything else, without losing the encompassing subordination of particulars to emerging generalities. The longer the process of finding associations and aspects (Hebrew: “behinot”) goes on, the more the series of particular items coalesces into higher and higher levels of integration and encompassing general ideas. But let’s now zoom in and be specific. On the side of the particulars Nachman cites at the outset a Talmudic yarn calculated to boggle any deductively oriented mind and delight the imagination of most 5 year olds. Here is the Talmudic fable. LM 4:10 Rabbah bar bar Chanah recounted: One time we were traveling on a ship and we saw this fish in whose nostrils was sitting a mudeater. The fish died and the water tossed it about and cast it ashore. It destroyed sixty cities. Sixty cities then ate from it. Sixty cities salted its flesh. And from one eyeball they filled three hundred kegs with oil. When we returned after twelve months time, we saw them sawing planks from its bones with which to rebuild those cities. (Bava Batra 73b) FW: And on the other end of the chain of exegesis in LM 4 Nachman presents his final inductively derived generalization. LM 4:11. This (the above Talmudic story) is the explanation of the opening verse: “I am God your Lord Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” FW: The entire essay LM 4 is a string of associations and analogies that begins with the ship, the fish, the mudeater, the cities, the oil and the bones and gradually arrives at a level of intuitive wisdom sufficiently profound to qualify as an important contribution to our grasp of the meaning of God’s role in the Exodus saga. You will see, of course, that during this intuitive, inductive process of “behinot” there are very few abstract, deductive syllogisms of the sort “if A and B, therefore C”. The process is mostly intuitive leaps of the sort, “this is an aspect of that, and that is an aspect of something else”. My project, then, outrageous as it might appear to be at the outset, is to apply an account of the methodology of Christian theologian Johann Georg Hamann, in an effort to decode the compositional procedure which Nachman has followed in this LM 4 essay. First I will set out some simple logical rules that Francis Bacon gave us in the 16th century, and then I will present a grid of six linguistic techniques which, according to O’Flaherty, 18th century Romanticism overlaid on Bacon’s framework. In a word, 16th century Bacon plus 18th century Romanticism together give us a key to decode much of the vast, profound, Scriptural and kabbalistic tapestry which is the work of either Hamann or Nachman of Breslav. I am grateful to O’Flaherty for making these connections clear to me and encourage you also to profit from the work of an excellent teacher by reading his book. Just substitute Moses for Jesus as you read and your Jewish ego will be immune to indoctrination! (2) FROM BACON TO HAMANN TO NACHMAN Here then, to start off, is a brief chapter summarizing the contribution of Francis Bacon concerning these matters. My text is simply a presentation of the succinct summary given us by Vatican priest Frederick Copleston in his “History of Philosophy”, Volume III. But Hamann and Nachman of Breslav are figures of the late18th century, and so in their work a tradition of Romantic style exegesis and poetry overlays and masks the underlying rigorous logical foundation provided by Bacon. Bacon’s theory of induction is the philosophical seed of which Hamann and Nachman are glorious flowerings. For what appears in their work to be the exact opposite of scientific rigor is indeed, as I shall demonstrate here, a meticulously devised associative network of the most profound logical interconnections. Let us begin, therefore, with the basic logical principles of Francis Bacon, which are spelled out quite clearly by Copleston in his presentation of the influence of the new Renaissance sciences on philosophy. C 289. As a preliminary, one may remind oneself of the two elements of scientific method, namely the observational and inductive side and the deductive and mathematical side. The first aspect of scientific method, namely observation of the empirical data as a basis for induction and for discovering causes, was stressed by Francis Bacon. C 300. [According to Bacon] the purpose of science is the extension of the dominion of the human race over nature; but this can be achieved only by a real knowledge of nature; we cannot obtain effects without an accurate knowledge of causes . . . The syllogism (deduction) consists of propositions; and propositions consist of words; and words express concepts. Thus, if the concepts are confused and if they are the result of over hasty abstraction, nothing which is built upon them is secure. Our only hope lies in true induction. . . finding the truth may proceed from sense and the perception of particulars to immediately attainable axioms and thence gradually and patiently, to more general axioms. . . this is the true way. The mind proceeds from a careful and patient examination of particulars to the interpretation of nature. . . . Induction starts with the operation of the senses; but it requires the co-operation of mind, though the mind’s activity must be controlled by observation . . . Bacon rejects the syllogism on the ground that induction must take its rise in the observation of things, of particular facts or events, and must stick to them as closely as possible. The logicians wing their way at once to the most general principles and deduce conclusions syllogistically . . . In induction we proceed in the opposite direction to that in which we proceed in deduction. C 302. But to attain a certain knowledge of nature is not so easy or simple as it may sound at first hearing, for the human mind is influenced by preconceptions and prejudices which bear upon our interpretation of experience and distort our judgments. It is necessary, then, to draw attention to “the idols and false notions” which inevitably influence the human mind and render science difficult of attainment unless one is aware of them and warned against them. Hence Bacon’s famous doctrine of “the idols”. There are four main types, the idols of the tribe, the idols of the cave or den, the idols of the market place and the idols of the theater . . . (a) The “idols of the tribe” are those errors, the tendency to which is inherent in human nature and which hinder objective judgment. For example, man is prone to rest content with that aspect of things which strikes the senses . . .”for what a man would like to be true, to that he tends to give credence”. Further the human mind is prone to indulge in abstractions, and it tends to conceive as constant what is really changing or in flux. (b) The “idols of the den” are the errors peculiar to each individual, arising from his temperament, education, reading and the special influences which have weighed with him as an individual. These factors lead him to interpret phenomena according to the viewpoint of his own den or cave. (See Plato’s metaphor of the cave.) (c) The “idols of the market place” are errors due to the influence of language . . . Sometimes words are employed when there are no corresponding things. (d) The “idols of the theater” are the philosophical systems of the past, which are nothing better than stage plays representing unreal worlds of man’s own creation. C 305. The best demonstration is experience. But it is necessary to make a distinction. Mere experience is not enough . . . True experience is planned, . . . proceeding by an orderly and methodically inductive process. What, then, is true induction, positively considered? Human power is directed to or consists in being able to generate a new form in a given nature. (Read: a new gestalt in a new situation, here and now.) From this it follows that human science is directed to the discovery of the forms of things. Form does not refer to the final cause; the form or formal cause of a given nature is such that “given the form, the nature infallibly follows”. It is the law which constitutes a nature. . . . the primary task is to prepare a “sufficient and good natural and “experimental history” based on the facts (Read: what Hegel labels an “objective history” in contrast to our subjective illusions.) . . . These tables having been constructed, the work of induction really begins (Read: what Nachman is referring to when he says, “my Torah is entirely behinot”, i.e., a string of associations and interpretations.) . . . which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at. (For example, the “existential message of the dream”, which emerges at the end of a three hour gestalt dreamwork session, which is what Maimonides labels the unripe fruit of prophecy now ripened into a Word of God.) (3) BACON AND PERLS FW: But before we jump into the great ocean, the turbid waters of inductive interpretations and Romantic theological poetry that is the work of Hamann and Nachman, let us stop at the banks of the ocean and examine a rather clearcut version of the same process, a contemporary example cut from the same cloth. I refer to the Gestalt Therapy lore of Frederick Perls, which while it makes no pretense of being the basis of a religious sect, probably has attracted more devotees worldwide than the opus of either Hamann or Nachman of Breslav. Perls gives the seeker after truth a rather simple task to explore. He tells me, his gestalt therapy client, to talk about what pops into my awareness and to stay in the here and now. Focusing this process on a dream raises the efficiency level, but just shooting the breeze also will yield useful results. Now, if I accept Fritz’s invitation and set out on this verbal monologue, a mysterious sequence of events is likely to unfold. As I listen to what comes out of my mouth and respond to those sounds, a sort of instantaneous feedback system is generated. In fact, it is genesis in the most profound biblical sense. For lo and behold, I begin to create a world. I am operating, as says Maimonides in his “Guide For The Perplexed”, “in the image of God”. For I am copying the manner in which God does His creating. We need to distinguish the path of Fritz Perls from the path of Sigmund Freud in these matters. For if the therapist has me lie down while I do my dreamwork monologue, and if he hides behind me and limits much of his function to being a tape recorder documenting my output, then the setting is Freudian. But if, on the other hand, the therapist takes an active role, helping me to take responsibility for my actions and deal actively with the impediments to truth which come up along the way, then we have the Gestalt approach. From the theological point of view, the crucial element that Perls and Freud share here is that language is the medium for a truth search, and that man speaking is paralleling God creating His world. FW: Entering even further into theological analogies to psychological processes, do we not have here also the unfolding of the love affair of Adam and Eve, as I, the subject, the kabbalistic First Adam, emanate language, the object, Eve from my own being and then precede to constantly impregnate it/her with my ideas as my dreamwork monologue goes on and on? Just label me, as Nachman does, the Talmid Chacham, wise student learning as I go along, and label my verbal output “my world”, and we have the makings of a kabbalistic mystical system, with chochmah (Hebrew: wisdom) impregnating binah (Hebrew: building a world) with ideas. In the neo-Platonic version of the kabbalistic tradition, all this is unfolds on the level of pure Platonic ideas, known as “sefirot”. The Hebrew word “sefirah” means “number”, as in the use of numbers by Pythagoras in Greek philosophy to relate theological truth. In terms of the Romanticism of the 18th century I am, furthermore, during the course of my Gestalt monologue generating “poetry”, in the sense of an emotionally grounded form of linguistic action. Returning to Francis Bacon, let me repeat the previous quote and we will explore what else we may learn from it. C: Human science is directed to the discovery of the forms of things. Form does not refer to the final cause; the form or formal cause of a given nature is such that “given the form, the nature infallibly follows”. It is the law which constitutes a nature. . . . The primary task is to prepare a “sufficient and good natural and “experimental history” based on the facts. . . These tables having been constructed, the work of induction really begins . . which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at. FW: Let us interweave these words of Bacon with the Gestalt therapy monologue. The monologue of here and now verbal expression is part of the flow of here and now contact experiences. These experiences constitute what Bacon labels an objectively real “experimental history based on the facts”, and what Hegel labels an “objective history” of real experiences. Then, “these tables having been constructed the work of induction really begins, which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at”. The positive affirmation that is the result of the work of induction is a new idea which is the result of “Platonic collection”, i.e., gestalt formation or a figure emerging from a ground here and now. In Gestalt dreamwork, this could be, for example, the “existential message of the dream” that might occur to the protagonist after three hours of exploring his objective history in the here and now dreamwork process. The protagonist is working his way up from specific concrete contact moments, weak gestalts (Perls), low level monads (Leibniz), some would say angels (Maimonides), towards more and more encompassing strong gestalts, monadologies, some would say archangels. Maimonides labels them “cherubim”, since the Hebrew root is “karov” (near), and cherubim are closer to the oneness that is God than are ordinary angels. The new idea emerging from the void of not knowing the answer is what Bacon labels “the form of things”, the “law which constitutes its nature”. He is referring to the distinction between matter and form, the form being the idea which is the gestalt or pattern which man imposes upon the items of his sensory and motor experience. Nachman says in LM 1:1, “The Jew must always focus on the inner intelligence/idea of every thing, and bind himself to the wisdom and inner idea that is to be found in each thing. This so that the idea which is in each thing may enlighten him, that he may draw closer to God through that thing.” We already have here the logical seed upon which Nachman built his LM 4, but as a transition into the text of Nachman let us see what his contemporary Hamann has to say concerning similar matters. Hamann is a convenient bridge here, linking Francis Bacon with Nachman of Breslav. O: While it is correct to say that Hamann stands in the empirical tradition of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Hume, the important qualification must be added that for him experience is always crystalized in language. There exists, of course, an inner correlate of the objective facts of language, the invisible essence of our soul which is conjoined with the outer correlate by an “incomprehensible bond”, which he describes, invoking religious terminology, as a “sacrament”. But whatever the nature of the inner correlate, it is the evidence of the objective facts of language to which Hamann appeals, and from which he draws inferences as to the nature of mind and of reality. “I concern myself with the letter and with what is visible and material” . . . In his view God is above all a speaking God, indeed an Author: “God reveals Himself; the Creator of the World is a Writer”. It is always God’s Word which evokes our rational powers in the first place. Hamann employs a sexual metaphor in this connection, stating that our reason must be “impregnated” by the “seed of the divine Word”. FW: It is this mysterious freely associating monologue in the here and now, this mix of thinking and speaking unimpeded by the distractions of everyday cause and effect logic, which is the open sesame which for inductive “science” (from the Latin, “scire”, to know) unleashes something analogous to The Word. C: Such unity as man possesses is mysterious in its origins, and derives from a source which lies outside of himself. Only through the individual positive response to the Logos can man’s collective powers of faith, passion, and reason be brought into harmony. Otherwise they fall all too easily into strife with one another. For Hamann God is the One in whom all opposites coincide, and it is this principle of the coincidentia oppositorum which, embodied in the Logos and manifested above all in the “form of a servant” in which Christ appeared, which succeeds in reconciling the opposites within the human psyche. . . . “Here on this earth there is no possibility of a metamorphosis or transfiguration into the divine nature, but only the old message of rebirth”. FW: Jews do not need the allusion to Jesus as “the form of a servant”. In LM 4, which we are considering here, Nachman attributes to Moses the same function. LM 4:9. This is: “No man knows [the burial place of Moses] – even Moses did not know. For he was negated in Ein Sof (Hebrew: God as Endless). All this was at his death. However, also during his lifetime Moses certainly stripped away all corporeality and attached himself to the Light of Ein Sof. But then, this stripping was in an aspect of “the living creatures ran [from being an ego] and returned [to being an ego](Ezekiel 1:14). This is because the Holy One desires our service, as is written (Yom Kippur Liturgy), “You desire praise from mounds of dust, from lumps of clay.” FW: Hamann, writing only a few years before Nachman, created his own theology by portraying language as a powerful creative or destructive force in the world. We need not now grope further back into the history of religion to find other predecessors of Hamann and Nachman. It is sufficient to recognize that the two authors here under scrutiny are drinking from the same fountain, with some minor variations. One of these is the question whether we are to label the holistic embodiment of language the Jesus function or the Moses function. We will ignore that battle, but now we are ready to appreciate Nachman’s contribution in LM 4 to this linguistically inspired tradition of the theology of The Word. As we read, we will keep in mind (a) that YHVH and the Talmid Chakham (wise student, Torah Scholar) are standing in for the subject, the Divine Author learning as he creates His world, and (b) that Elohim is standing in for the object, the world being created, and (c) that the Kingdom of God, Malkhut d’Kedushah, is standing in for the language of the dreamwork monologue on the material level. The problem, for Nachman in particular and for Romanticism in general, is that language in its pure, primordial form of “poetry” has been co-opted by the system of deductive logic and lost its original roots in inductive logic. For Nachman, as for Hamann, it is only the complete system encompassing deduction and induction in a higher synthesis which will give us a “foretaste of the World to Come”, the messianic idea, and get us out of Egyptland. This is a longing, paradoxically, on the one hand for the messianic future and on the other hand for the pre-Industrial middle ages of shtetl life. Nachman is talking primarily about a Gestalt or hitbod’dut (being alone with myself and talking to God) monologue here, even though he provides a second level of meaning for those not privy to philosophy and linguistics, and for those who need an excuse to follow Torah Scholars and other gurus blindly. For as a matter of fact, (a) hitbod’dut and (b) confessing in front of a Torah Scholar, and (c) doing a Gestalt Therapy monologue, all mean the same thing, given the manner in which the concepts are used in Breslav theology. FW: Confessing in front of a Wise Student means doing my Gestalt Therapy monologue in the manner of a feedback loop and carefully (as the “subject”) paying attention myself to what comes out of my mouth (the “object”). Just substitute “God is listening” for “I am listening” or “the wise student is listening” and this will be clear. Basically, it is The Author, the Creator, the Gestalt client, who is listening to Him creating, and this feedback loop by itself re-animates the dead forms, the selfinterrupting non-creative speech habits and manipulations, which man in his Fallen state tends to spew forth. In the down-to-earth jargon of Fritz Perls, instead of verbalizing my usual elephantshit in defense of my ego games, I need to emanate poetry, sacred truth from my true source. What clearly distinguishes Breslav pietism from Chabad rationalism is the emphasis on being alone before God, me being immersed in my monologue and relying on faith, rather than me being part of a vast pyramid of scholars and relying on guidance from a Jewish pope on the top of the pyramid. The Catholic parallel here is the Dominican sect versus the Franciscan sect, or more generally the Catholics versus the Protestants. (4) LM 4 FW: Here, then, is the beginning of Nachman’s LM 4, as it is published by the official Breslaver translators. Let’s immerse ourselves in Nachman’s poetically inspired prose for a few moments, to get a sense of the overwhelming assault to which our rational, deductive faculties is subjected in such an experience. PROLOGUE. I am God your Lord, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. (Exodus 20:2) LM 4:1. When a person knows that everything that happens to him is for his benefit, this perception is a foretaste of the World to Come. As said, “When He is YHVH, I will praise His word; when He is Elohim, I will praise His word” (Psalms 56:11). And this perception is a foretaste of the World to Come, as our Sages taught: “On that day God shall be one and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9). They asked: Is He now not one? And our Sages answered: At present the blessing “Who is good and beneficent” is recited over good, whereas “the truthful Judge” is recited over bad. But in the Future it will be entirely “Who is good and beneficent”(Pesachim 50a). The holy name YHVH and the holy name Elohim will be totally one. LM 4:2. Now it is impossible for a person to grasp this perception except when he uplifts Malkhut d’Kedushah (Kingdom of Holiness) from its exile among the nations. For presently, malkhut and rule the nations. This is the reason . They nurse from the aspect of Malkhut, which is called Elohim, as is written (Psalms 74:122) “Elohim is my King from long ago”. But when a person raises Malkhut from among the nations, it is the fulfillment of the verse (Psalms 47:8) “For Elohim is King of all the earth.” LM 4:3 Yet it is impossible to return the kingdom to the Holy One, except by means of spoken confession in the presence of a Talmid Chakham (Torah scholar). Through this one rectifies the aspect of Malkhut and raises it to its source. [Take d’varim (words) with you and return to YHVH (God) (Hosea 14:3)] This is the meaning of “Take D’VaRim with you . . .” – i.e., spoken confession. This is the aspect of Malkhut, as in, “one DaBoR (spokesman) to a generation” (Sanhedrin 8a) – dabor connotes and ruler. ” . . . and return to YHVH – so that they rectify and elevate the aspect of d’varim/Malkhut/Elohim to [the level of] YHVH. As mentioned above, “When He is YHVH I will praise His word; when He is Elohim, I will praise His word.” This is, to know that everything that happens to him is all for his good, and to recite the blessing “Who is good and beneficent” over everything. LM 4:4 Knowing all this is called complete awareness. For the essence of awareness is the union of . This is called daat. In other words, he does not differentiate between lovingkindness and judgment, but blesses “Who is good and beneficent” over everything. This is called “YHVH is one and His Name is one”. As our Sages taught: In the Future there will be total oneness and it will be entirely “Who is good and Beneficent”. This is: YHVH is echod (one) [and His Name is echod].” “His Name corresponds to Elohim/Malkhut, as is written (2 Samuel 8:13) “David made a name for himself” – . Echod has the same numerical value as ahavah (love). Therefore, whether it be YHVH – which is compassion – or whether it be “His Name” – which corresponds to Elohim judgment – all is for your benefit and a result of the love which the Holy One has for you. As it is written, “For those whom God loves He rebukes (Proverbs 3:12); and “Of all the families of th earth I knew only you [Israel}]. That is why I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2). (5) HAMANN ON LANGUAGE FW: Rather than a crystal clear Torah message graspable by deductive logic, the above word salad strikes us as a murky bowl of borsht or shabbat cholent. Therefore, we will turn now to Bacon and to Hamann to help us get our bearings in decoding Nachman’s Torah offering. The allusion to goyishkeit suggested by the names “Bacon” and “Ham” need not, I hope, deter us! I stated above that aside from the philosophy of language, much of Hamann (and Nachman) is an update on the philosophy of Francis Bacon, in the context of an 18th century aesthetics of Romanticism. In support of that contention, here are six specific techniques of Romantic style poetic expression which, according to O’Flaherty, lend themselves to the purposes of intuitive (inductive) rather than abstract (deductive) reason. but to start off here is Hamann’s version of Francis Bacon. O 83. In order to comprehend Hamann’s understanding of reason it is necessary to distinguish between two modes of cognition, namely, the intuitive and the abstract . . . Abstract reason affects language in precisely the opposite ways from intuitive reason . . . “Human living seems to consist of a series of symbolic actions by means of which our soul is capable of revealing its invisible nature, and produces and communicates beyond itself an intuitive knowledge of its effective existence” FW: And now comes Hamann’s list of the six Romantic techniques for poetic expression, which in the sequel we will illustrate using the text of Nachman’s LM 4. In my essay our focus is to illustrate these six techniques. Therefore, we will not give as much attention as perhaps we should to other important aspects of Nachman’s text. Most of what Nachman has to say he says again and again, we surely will run into these other themes in the sequel. Here, then, is a preliminary listing of Hamann’s six techniques of language expression. O 83. Since in Hamann’s view there is no thought apart from language, it seems quite appropriate that we should look to language for the earmarks of reason. It will be seen that there are six salient features which characterize the language of intuitive reason, i.e., reason functioning within its appropriate limits. To be specific, we may say that intuitive reason manifests itself in language by the following: (a) the abundance of concrete images (Bilder); (b) the employment of analogical reasoning; (c) the frequent recourse to paradoxes; (d) the presence of multiple levels of meaning; (e) paratactic sentence structure; and (f) the presence of affective terminology. O83 FW: We will examine how Hamann explains these six poetic tools, and at the same time we will illustrate how Nachman of Breslav brings over each technique into the realm of Hasidic Torah commentary. (a) CONCRETE IMAGERY OF EXPERIENCE VS. ABSTRACT RELATIONSHIPS OF WORDS O 84. Hamann maintains that natural language is, to adopt Henri Bergson’s phrase, “molded on reality”. Ordinary language or “the language of nature” is for him the historically developed vernacular of a people, which has been “unimproved” by grammarians or the creators of technical jargon. It is this kind of language which can be raised to the level of poetic expression . . . Wrote Hamann, “The sphere of poetry does not lie outside of the world as a fantastic possibility conceived by the brain of a poet; it strives to be precisely the opposite, the unadorned expression of truth, and must for just that reason reject the deceptive finery of the alleged reality of the man of culture” . . . Hamann’s conviction is grounded in the essential nature of both God and man. Hence, God, “the Poet at the beginning of days”, always speaks to man in poetic language. “The Scriptures cannot speak with us as human beings otherwise than in parables because all our knowledge is sensory, figurative; and because understanding and reason transform the images of external things everywhere into allegories and signs of more abstract, more intellectual, more lofty concepts.” FW: Analogous to Hamann’s theory of poetic expression is that of today’s Gestalt therapists, as laid out by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman in their text, “Gestalt Therapy”. For Gestaltists poetic speech refers to contactful speech, supported by man in action, rather than man stuck at an impasse and brooding abstractly about his life. The choice is between a concrete reality and mere aboutism. If I see a fly buzzing over there and I say, “I am aware of that fly buzzing over there”, that is “language molded to reality”, even more so if I identify with that fly and say “I am a fly buzzing over here, hoping that my buzzing will get you interested in my ideas.” By identifying with the fly, finding the inner idea of that fly as Nachman puts it in LM 1:1, I am concretely at this moment in touch with my existence. But if I am an entomologist and I say “flies are arthropods”, that particular fly out there has disappeared from my life into abstract jargon. Verbalizing has replaced poetry. The fly buzzing out there had the potential to be part of my existence, say, my tragic death as one day it may buzz around my rotting corpse, while the “arthropod” of an entomologist is cut off from my existential experience by being locked into a grid of dead, abstract terminology concerning, for example, information about how many legs it has. Likewise God, the “poet at the beginning of days” is engaged in a living action of creating His world, while a geologist who lists the layers of rocks making up a particular mountain range is cut off from the real experience of creating that mountain range. How does Nachman of Breslav deal with this requirement that expression be poetic? That is to say, how do Nachman’s Torah commentaries serve as a symbolic overlay for human action? First of all, he is assuming he, Nachman, the writer, and we, his readers, and also the protagonist he is describing all are spiritual pilgrims, seeking to return to God. All three personnas therefore share a common grounding in concrete here and now experience. Let us see how all this works in the continuation of Nachman’s LM 4 text. LM 4:5 And a person’s iniquities are on his bones, as is written (Ezekiel 32:27), “And their iniquities will be etched upon their bones”. Each sin has its own combination of letters. When a person commits a particular sin, a negative letter combination is etched upon his bones. This brings the spoken aspect of the prohibition which he has transgressed into the realm of impurity. In other words, he brings the aspect of Malkhut among the nations, giving them the power to rule. For example: If he transgressed the utterance of the prohibition “You shall have no [other gods besides Me]” (Exodus 20:3), then he destroys the utterance’s positive letter combination and forms a negative letter combination. This letter combination is etched upon his bones “It is your iniquities that have turned away these things (Jeremiah 5:25). And it is written, “Evil is the deathblow of the wicked” (Psalms 34:22). By means of spoken confession, however, the letters disappear from the bones into which they have been etched and are transformed into the words of confession. For speech emanates from one’s bone, as is written (Psalms 35:10), “All my bones will say”. He tears down the negative structure and combinations, and from [the letters] builds Makhut d’Kedushah. This is what the Sages said: During the time the Israelites traveled in the desert, Yehudah’s bones rolled about [in his coffin] until Moshe said (Deuteronomy 33:7) “Hear, O God, the voice of Yehudah” (Sotah 7b). Moshe requested that the Holy One remember for Yehudah’s sake the confession he had made. And this is just what happened. Thus it was specifically “his bones rolled about”, as is written, “and their iniquities will be etched upon their bones.” But by means of the confession they were rectified and each one went into its place. And Yehudah corresponds to Malkhut – an allusion that the aspect of Malkhut is rectified through spoken confession. This was accomplished with the aid of Moshe, who recalled the confession. For it is necessary that the confession take place in the presence of a Talmid Chakham. And every Torah scholar is an aspect of Moshe “Moshe, you said it well” (Shabbat 101b). By Moshe’s mentioning the confession, it was considered as if [Yehudah] had now confessed . This caused the aspect of Malkhut to be rectified and the negative letter combination, which had been etched upon [Yehudah’s ] bones to be torn down. FW: There is a real life struggle going on here in Nachman’s text, involving bones, Yehuda and Moshe, as though the story has been told around a campfire or dreamed by a Gestalt client. Nachman is not merely “talking literature”, but is presenting an epic human action being carried out by a protagonist, and by implication also by a reader who is struggling with the iniquities etched in his own bones. Moses first identifies with the needs of the bones of Yehudah. Then the confession, hitbod’dut, mini-Gestalt session that Moses expresses in language brings those needs of Yehudah into the midst of a committed authentic action by Moses. Moses as strong gestalt and encompassing messianic monad here fulfills the logical function of induction, Platonic collection, in relation to the bones and essences of the existence of Yehudah. The parallel to Gestalt dreamwork is very clear here. According to Perls, we must identify with each of the different images and aspects of the dream we are exploring, in order to grasp the overall existential message of the dream. We move from ordinary everyday objects, like trees and clouds and bones, more and more in the direction of encompassing ideas, encompassing essences of our existence, as we move inductively upwards towards the final encompassing existential idea and message of our work on this particular dream. And yet in this dreamwork process everything must remain concrete, articulated, eventually, in terms of the unfinished business of important childhood relationships. The inductive ascent is not at the same time a flight to abstractions. That is to say, the three personnas involved in the ongoing storytelling process are active readers. They (we) maintain their (our) identification with the story which is unfolding. Here is an analogous message from the work of Hamann, with the messianic role shifted from Moses to Jesus. O 86. The abstract language of the philosophers fails, according to Hamann, to take into account the fact that God’s infinite love for man is revealed precisely in His willingness to condescend to man’s estate. God has humbled himself to the extent of speaking in the everyday idiom of the people by means of “little contemptible events” and “humanly foolish, indeed sinful actions . . . For Hamann does not subscribe to any form of the double-truth theory; spiritual truth does not require two forms, one for the philosopher, another for the masses. “To say that Moses wrote only for the common people is either meaningless or a ridiculous view of the matter” . . . Philosophically speaking, the “images” (German: Bilder) of natural language represent for Hamann “objects”, which may be defined as uncritically perceived entities of ordinary experience, principally visual in nature. Abstract or discursive reason has the power, however, to eliminate such objects and to replace them with terms which actually stand for relations . . . “Existence [ i.e., concrete existence in a world of real objects] is realism, and must be believed; relations are idealism and rest upon connective and discriminatory procedures” . . . Metaphysics misuses “all the word-songs and figures of speech of our empirical knowledge” by transforming them into “nothing but hieroglyphs and types of ideal relations” . . . Another fundamental aspect of imagery is, of course, its strong appeal to the emotions, a quality which is lacking in the case of abstract terminology. FW: In Hamann’s reference here to concrete objects of experience disappearing into abstract verbal relationships no longer in touch with their initial concrete reality, we recognize the terminology of 14th century Nominalism as articulated in those days by William of Ockham. See my essay on “Nominalism: the Here and Now, There and Then”, for more about this. (b) ANALOGY VS. LOGICAL SYLLOGISMS O 87. The second characteristic of Hamann’s use of reason is his preference for analogical, as opposed to purely logical, thinking. Whereas the rationalist establishes a principle, whether deductively or inductively, and thereupon proceeds to draw inferences from it, the intuitive thinker establishes a model on nonrational grounds, as, for example, instinct or faith, and thereupon proceeds to draw parallels to the model. This latter procedure accords, in Hamann’s view, with the proper use of reason, despite the fact that reasoning from analogy does not yield the certainty one might desire. Thus, he writes that “reason cannot grasp anything but analogies in order to obtain a very ambiguous light” . . . Following the lead of Francis Bacon, Hamann maintains that man, in his original state, thought analogically rather than logically. This idea is clearly stated in the famous passage at the beginning of the Aesthetica In Nuce: “Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race” . . . Hamann places analogical thinking, as opposed to the later development of discursive thinking, within the framework of his general anthropology with its emphasis on man’s retrograde development away from his primordial state. It is more natural for man to think in metaphors or parables, which involve analogical thinking, than to arrive at deductions based on rational principles . . . “All mortal creatures are able to see the truth and essence of things only in parables”. For Hamann to metaschematize means to substitute one set of objective relationships for another, analogous set of subjective, personal, or existential relationships, in order to throw some light on their meaning. FW: Hamann here is saying what Nachman says when he says “My Torah is all behinot (Hebrew: aspects, interpretations, associations, analogies)”. The notion of “man’s retrograde development away from his primordial state” stems from the Platonic theory of anamnesis, “not forgetting” that primordial state by groping in the void for primordial ideas. Anamnesis entails immersing oneself in a chaotic sea of fragments and using Platonic collection or kabbalistic tsimtsum in the cognitive void of “not knowing” to discover/remember the primordial ideas by means of a series of associations, behinot. The obvious illustration in Nachman’s LM 4 text is the endless string of associations, behinot, which lead Nachman from concrete particulars towards his final grand conclusions. “A” is an aspect of “B”, and “B” is an aspect of “C”, etc., etc. In the section which follows, for example, the string of behinot leads on and on, apparently endlessly, from (a) the lust of Nevatt to (b) fire to (c) purging via fire to (d) the fire of sin to (e) sins themselves to (f) crossing over to bundles of fragments being collected into a new idea (Platonic collection), and then on to (f) the wrath of God as fire negating all the negations of the One Without A Second, which itself leads on by means of tsimtsum to (g) nothingness, which is analogous to (h) humility as an aspect of (i) wisdom, leading to (j) the elevation of language, which itself is analogous to (k) the kingdom of God and refers by contrast to (l) the secular government, which needs to be brought back to its source by means of (m) the intervention of Moses, who is aspect of (n) Mashiach himself! All this in two pages. Note how Nachman gives Moses the Mashiach function of pulling all the fragments together, in exactly the same manner that Hamann gives that messianic function of Platonic collection to Jesus. For both Hamann and Nachman what is lost in logical precision is more than compensated for by the vast range of insightful sparks generated in the process of induction – provided, of course, that the spiritual pilgrim and the audience are receptive to this sort of pietist, Romantic, poetry. What makes this word salad “poetry” in the profound Gestalt and Aristotelian sense of committed personal action is Nachman’s own biography, i.e., his self-proclaimed role of Tsaddik of the generation and messianic savior of the world. Whether we take him seriously or not, we at least know that Nachman is not just writing a book. He also is living the role he has carved out for himself in his own pained existence. FW: As Hegel in his “Aesthetics” points out, one major characteristic of Romantic art that distinguishes it from Classical art is that Romanticism allows emotional content to flood and overwhelm the forms in which it is packaged, leaving an audience gasping for breath. Hegel was less than appreciative of this form of expression, and he regarded the Absolute or God to which it all finally associates as “the night in which all cows are black”. That is to say, most people, like the rationalist Hegel, prefer to let words mean what they do mean rather than have them all end up being symbols for the same thing: the Void of all-knowing and all not-knowing. Here, then, is Nachman’s version of Platonic collection or tsimtsum in the void, from (a) to (n), from the lust of Nevatt to Mashiach himself! See if you can find your way through the maze, and at the same time see how many insightful associations are stimulated in your mind as you follow the creative mind of Nachman along his chosen trajectory. LM 4:6 This is the aspect of returning Malkhut to its source. For the source of Malkhut is fire, as our “Sages taught: ‘why did Nevatt err? because he saw fire escape from his member (Sanhedrin 101b). And the Torah is called fire, because it is from there that Malkhut originates. As it is written (Jeremiah 23:29) “Behold, My Word is like fire,” and (Proverbs 8:15), “Through me kings rule.” And the essence of Torah is the Torah scholar, as our Sages taught (Makkot 222b): How foolish are those who stand up before a Torah scroll and yet do not stand before a rabbinical scholar! This is: “Every davar (thing) that was used in fire must go through fire ” (Numbers 31:23). “Davar corresponds to Malkhut, which has been into the realm of impurity the heat of the evil inclination, as in “the fire of Amram” (Kiddusin 81a). “. . . must go through the fire” – its rectification is by means of fire, i.e., spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham. And this is the connotation of aveyrah (transgression): the AVeyRah letter combination OVeR (crosses) within his bones, from AyVeR to AyVeR (side to side). The word mitzvah, however, connotes joining together. When a person performs bundles of commandments, he binds together the shattered fragments of his bones, as is written (Psalms 34:21), “[God] safeguards all his bones, [not one of them is broken].” FW: Note: not one bone is broken; not one fragment of the symbolic collage is lost or damaged in the process of Platonic collection. All the antitheses, one after the other, are encompassed in the higher inductive synthesis. But there’s more to come . . . LM 4:7. [“The King’s wrath is a messenger of death, but a wise man can pacify it.” (Proverbs 16:14)] And this is the explanation of the verse: “The King’s wrath is a messenger of death.” For the wrath of the Holy One is on account of Makhut , ” . . . but a wise man can pacify it” – i.e., the aspect of Talmid Chakham/Moshe who will atone for [the sinner]. As it is written (Micah 7:18), “[The Lord] forgives the transgression for the remnant ” – for the sake of the one who considers himself as remnants (Rosh HaShanah 17a). We find, then, that when he comes before a Torah scholar and expresses all his letter combinations in a Talmid Chakham’s presence . . . The Torah scholar is an aspect of Moshe who considered himself as remnants, as is written (Numbers 12:3), “The man Moshe, however, was very humble.” This is the reason he is called a wise man, as is written (Job 28:12), “Wisdom comes from Ayin (Nothingness).” Through this the wise man has the power to appease, as is written, “but a wise man can pacify it.” This is why when Moshe prayed that the sin of the Golden Calf [be pardoned], he said (Exodus 32:32), “If You would, forgive their sin. But if not, please blot me out [ from the book that You have written]!” It is impossible for a person not to feel some pride when he hears himself being praised. All the more so, when a great king praises and lauds the person; then it is certainly impossible that he would not be moved to some feelings of self-importance. However, this necessitates the negation of all one’s emotions and corporeality. Then, a person can hear himself being praised and not come to any pride. This was the case with Moshe Rabbeinu, who saw it written in the Torah: “God spoke to Moshe,” [and] “God said to Moshe.” Each day the Jewish people read in the Torah [God’s] praise of Moshe. What’s more, he himself related his praise to them. Yet Moshe had no feelings of haughtiness or pride from this, as is written, “The man Moshe, however, was very humble.” And certainly, by means of his humility Moshe had the power to atone for the sin of the Golden Calf, as is written, “. . . but a wise man can pacify it.” FW: The mashiach function that Moses or Jesus fulfils here is that of identifying with all the fragments, one after another, and then, by means of consumate humility, negating all of those fragments by negating himself. He then is the true servant, serving God as the negation of all negations. Each fragment is an extreme antithesis of the others, and the messiah manages to negate all of these negations of the One Without A Second. Also here, once again, not one bone is broken; not one fragment is lost or damaged in the process of Platonic collection. All the antitheses are encompassed in the higher synthesis by means of the Platonic messiah/poet/artist that Nachman or Hamann is embodying in his writing. What Plato labels a “poetic frenzy” of artistic interpretation, based on passionate personal involvement in a process of committed action, Nachman relates to the state of humility he sees Moses attaining in the biblical text. Nachman concludes his series of behinot by stressing the humility of Moses as the quality which qualifies him for the messiah function. LM 4:7 This was Moshe’s argument: “But if not” – i.e., if You do not forgive their sin, You are demonstrating that I do not posses the humility needed to atone for the sin of the Golden Calf. This is why I requested, “please blot me out,” so as not to be tripped up by pride. For I constantly see and hear the recounting of my name and praise in the Torah. Who can stand up to this – hearing his praise recounted and not become haughty – if not a very humble person? And if I am humble, You must pardon their sin, as is written, “[The Lord] forgives the transgression for the remnant . . .” This is (Deuteronomy 33:5) “There was a MeLeKh (king) in Yeshurun” – indicating that MaLKhut had risen to its source, as it is written (Psalms 37:11), “But the humble will inherit the earth.” “Earth” is dina d’malkhuta (the law of the government) as is written (Job 20:27), “Earth rises up against him.” FW: Moses with his messianic degree of humility has here re-elevated language (Malkhut d’kedushah, the kingdom of God) back to its primordial holistic power. This is anamnesis, “not forgetting” that the primordial idea of language as The Word has emerged from the void of nonbeing. Looking back at the entire journey of inductive logic through which Nachman just has led us, and with just a bit more analogical thinking, the parallel to Gestalt dreamwork ought to be clear. (a) First, Nachman expects you to find the inner idea of each thing by identifying with each image of the series. In Gestalt dreamwork you do that by play acting each dream image and attempt to say it with your whole body. In Nachman’s poetic style Torah exegesis you, as Orthodox Jew, are expected to identify totally with each nuance since it all is God’s word, right out of the Torah with chapter and verse included. How can it possibly not be the truth? (b) The second part of the process, in Gestalt dreamwork, is to commit your whole being to the project as a whole and negate your ego totally by the “rhythm of contact and withdrawal”, which is the Gestalt version of tsimtsum. This death of ego is the negation of negations that translates you inductively up beyond your own existence, as you serve as a vessel for the existential message of that particular dream. The dream itself was only 1/60th of prophecy, while the dreamwork provides the other 59/60. The dreamwork is the Platonic collection or kabbalistic tsimtsum which accesses the messianic idea which was implicit from the primordial beginning of the dream itself when in the middle of the night you dreamed it. Again we have Platonic anamnesis of primordial ideas by means of tsimtsum, as the Gestalt therapy protagonist contracts his ego down to zero in order to embody the intuitive dialectical logic of induction, in order to serve as the messiah capable of redeeming his own fallen state. FW: And what is the equivalent to this “rhythm of contact and withdrawal” in a Torah lesson being given by Nachman or one of his disciples? The answer is, likewise, to commit yourself totally to the quest for truth. In your daily life you are to embodying as many Torah commandments as you can find the time and resources to accomplish, and also you are to commit your will completely to following the guidance of your Torah teachers, whether they make much sense to your rational mind or not! Along with that you are to assimilate each and every word of the mind boggling Torah lessons. You are not, God forbid, to try to understand it all using deductive logic, since most of it is inductively written and admittedly too lofty for your rational understanding. Rather, accept it all on faith as absolute truth. If you find yourself bewildered, get advice from your Torah teachers (who, unfortunately, also are forbidden to understand it), and then go talk to God out in the woods if there are any loose ends. FW: Nachman taught that the messianic soul of Moses is re-embodied to some extent in the tsaddik ha-dor, the righteous man of each generation. But, Nachman maintains, only in certain key historical figures, especially Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and Nachman himself, is the embodiment totalized. Fritz Perls begs to differ, and encourages each of his clients to do fulfill the mashiach function himself. Fritz was Jewish, but not religious. Neither did he know Yiddish. But if someone had asked him why he gave his clients that option, and if indeed he had spoken Yiddish, perhaps he would have given the famous Yiddish retort, “Far vus nit?” (English: “Why not?”) Now, my own suggestion is to meld the two approaches, that of Nachman and that of Fritz, which brings the caricature of Nachman’s teachings which I just have presented back to the source that Nachman intended in the beginning. That is to say, begin with hitbod’dut, with the verbalized monologue. Do it rigorously, according to the system of Fritz, so you do get the results you need. Then, from that foundation go about dealing with the commandments and the Torah exegesis. This puts Tevye’s “Fiddler On The Roof” horse back in front of Tevye’s cart, with the proper Kantian stress on conscience as a liberation from the closed system of everyday habits, groupiness and chit-chat. This also puts Nachman very close to the position of Fichte, and historically exactly where he belongs as an heir to Kant’s theory of the moral autonomy of the practical reason. See my essays on Fichte and Nachman for more of this. Doing hitbod’dut intelligently clarifies most of Nachman’s enigmatic texts and helps balance the conflicting demands of 613 different commandments. Having discovered your own built in Moses function, you will not be flying blind and you will less vulnerable to demagoguery. This inner gyroscope was lacking when Hitler’s Nazis adapted the teachings of Fichte as the basis of national socialism. They made a travesty of the teachings of Fichte. Hopefully you will not make a similar travesty of the teachings of Nachman of Breslav. (c) PARATAXIS FW: O’Flaherty makes a distinction between parataxic and hypotaxic sentence structure, a distinction which is as relevant to the work of Nachman as it is to the work of Hamann. O: The roots of the terms are “para” (by the side) + “tassein” (to place). “Parataxis” is the placing of clauses or phrases one after the other, without coordinating or subordinating connectives. On the other hand, from “hypo” (under) we get “hypotaxis”, which is arranging clauses with a conjunction that subordinates one to the other. Paratactic sentences are characterized by brevity and the absence of long involved dependent clauses; the word order tends to be natural or to follow elementary logic in that the subject and predicate are expressed at or near the beginning of the sentence, with the other elements following generally in the order of their importance. Aphorisms, epigrams, etc., because of their laconic nature, are necessarily paratactic in structure. Hypotactic sentences, on the other hand, are characterized by greater length, involving, as they do, longer dependent clauses . . . Because of its frequent use of dependent clauses, hypotaxis involves the subordination of certain elements within a sentence, whereas parataxis involves their coordination. Both styles do occur in Hamann’s writings . . . In his most characteristic and influential writings the aphoristic mode dominates . . . It is precisely in these works that we find him employing intuitive, as opposed to abstract, reason. FW: The following sections from Nachman’s LM 4 illustrate nicely this contrast between parataxic and hypotaxic use of language. Nachman begins with an introductory fable in the style of parataxic language. PARATAXIS: TYPE 1 A SIMPLE FABLE LM 4:8. This is the meaning of what the Sages said: It is comparable to someone who was walking along a path in the utter darkness of night. He was afraid of the thorns and the ditches, of wild beasts and bandits, not knowing which path he was on. When he happened upon a lit torch he was saved from the thorns and the ditches but he was still afraid of wild beasts and bandits, not knowing which path he was on. When dawn broke, he was saved from wild beasts and bandits, yet still did not know which path he was on. What is this crossroads? Rabbi Chisda said: It is a Talmid Chakhkam and the day of death (Sotah 21a). PARATAXIS:TYPE 2 SIMPLE SENTENCES LIST FOUR ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS FW: Next we learn of the four alchemical elements, mineral, vegetable, animal and human, which are variants of the usual water, earth, air, fire sequence. Here the presentation also is in the parataxic style, though a bit more complex. LM 4:8 It is known that all evil character traits and their derivatives stem from the four yesodot (fundamental elements), the four humors. As is brought in Mishnat Chassidim: Melancholy and its derivatives stem from the mineral life form; evil passions and their derivatives stem from the vegetable life form; idle chatter and its derivatives stem from the animal life form; pride and its derivatives stem from the human life form. Anyone who would take the path of must break all of the vices in the presence of a Talmid Chakham – i.e., spoken confession. The Torah scholar will then define and clarify a path in line with the roots of his soul. PARATAXIS: TYPE 3 COMPLEX SENTENCES, WITH BEHINOT FW: Also presented parataxically are three steps for attachment to a tzaddik, which also are a code for three stages of human action in general. Since Nachman’s version will get a bit murky, I’ll do the dissection as a preface, in my own inimitable Fallen, deductive, hypotaxic manner. If this were a Gestalt session, Fritz no doubt would have me examine my own need to insert prefaces and dissections into the flow of life. Anyway, concerning the tsaddik, (a) first, perceive him properly, (b) second, give him charity and (c) third, accept his advice at the moment of crucial existential choices in your life. To each of these simple instructions, Nachman adds subordinate and related ideas. (a) For the first instruction, more generally establish contact with the situation, (b) for the second instruction, undergo death of ego by giving it away charitably, and (c) for the third instruction, choose a new idea in the void of not knowing. But these corollaries are not appended to the initial three ideas deductively using hypotaxic sentence structure, the way I just have taken pains to do it. That is to say, Nachman’s stress is not on making sure we “understand” it all by laying out his ideas in a series of primary and subordinate clauses. Rather, to the first three ideas he appends a series of only tangentially related ideas, parataxically by simply laying them down, one after the other. Then he leaves it up to us, the readers, to open our minds and hearts to discover the higher level encompassing experiences. For Nachman wants us inductively to “grasp” macrocosmic Platonic ideas, and not merely deductively to “understand” microcosmic concepts. LM 4 is not just a textbook of clinical psychology, it is also inductive science and Platonically inspired Romantic poetry. Hence, Nachman injects into the basic flow of the hypotaxic framework quite a bit of parataxic embellishment. Nachman begins with the three themes, in the manner in which a Beethoven or Mozart might begin a symphony with three simple themes. Then, in the manner of a fugue or stretto, more and more interlocking variations and distantly related motifs pile up as a magical information overload. Schopenhauer, a 19th century philosopher who shared this Romantic aesthetic, held that music is the highest form of art, since it embodies ideas purely without needing to incorporate naturalistic content. Nachman’s prose in his stretto sections approaches the level of musical art, as kaleidoscopic ideas overload their reference to the deductive framework and leap up inductively from our Fallen microcosmic world to the liberated macrocosm of pure Platonic/Torah ideas. When Nachman does it, it works fine. Of course, when an Adolf uses a media blitz inductively to peddle an overgrown Idea of the Third Reich we may have second thoughts about “inductive science”. LM 4:8 Now, there are three steps in attachment to the tzaddikim. Through these three steps everything is rectified. The three steps are as follows: The first step entails seeing the tzaddik, as in (Isaiah 30:20), “your eyes will see your teacher,” This step negates the vices that stem from the two yedodot, mineral and vegetable – namely, melancholy with its derivatives, and evil passions. For the tzaddik of the generation is called “Mother” because he nurses the Jewish people with the light of his Torah. And the Torah is called “milk”, as is written (Song of Songs 4:11). “Honey and milk under your tongue.” We have empirical validation for this: Even when a child is sad and lethargic, if he sees his mother, he very quickly stirs toward her – i.e., toward his source. We also see clearly that when a child is absorbed in his own nonsense, even through he has a great desire for this, if he sees his mother, he throws away all of his desires and draws close to her. We find, then, that the vices stemming from the two yesodot, mineral and vegetable, are negated by gazing at the countenance of the tzaddik. This is: He was afraid of the thorns, the aspect of the vegetable life form; and the ditches, the aspect of the mineral life for. When he happened upon a lit torch – this is a Talmid Chakham, who with the light of the Torah. Through him he is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, mineral and vegetable; and then he is saved form the thorns and the ditches. LM 4:8 The second step is the charity one gives to a Talmid Chakham . Through this he is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, animal and human – the aspects of wild beasts and bandits, which are idle chatter and pride and their derivatives. This is because idle chatter and slanderous gossip engender poverty, as is written (Exodus 4:19), “All the men have died” – this is poverty (Nedarim 64b). Also concerning pride it is taught: Poverty is a sign of a haughty spirit (Kiddushin 49b). But by giving charity a person becomes wealthy. As the Sages taught: “Though they were united and likewise many, even so they are over and gone; I have afflicted you, but will afflict you no more” (Nahum 1:12) – he is never again made to experience the markings of poverty (Gitten 7b). And this is: When dawn broke, he was saved from wild beasts and bandits. The break of dawn is an allusion to charity, as is written (Isaiah 58 7-8), “When you see the naked, and you clothe him . . . Then your light shall burst forth like the dawn.” We find, then, that through charity one is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, animal and human, corresponding to wild beasts and bandits. LM 4:8 The third step is when one makes a spoken confession in a Torah scholar’s presence. Through this the Talmid Chakham guides him on a proper path in line with the root of his soul. This is: When he came to a crossroads. And Sages comment, It is a Talmid Chakham and the day of death. This is the step of spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham. The day of death is an allusion to confesson, as the Sages taught: All those about to be put to death confess (Sanhedrin 43b). This is called PaRaShat DeRaKhim (a crossroads), because the Torah scholar maPhRiSh lo DeReKh (defines his path ) in line with the root of his soul. Then, he was saved from all of them. Because, before he confessed, even through he was close to the Torah scholar and had given him money, he still does not know which path he was on. For “A path may seem right to a man, but its end leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). But when he comes to “a crossroads,” which is a Talmid Chakham and the day of death – i.e., spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham – then, he was saved from all of them. PARATAXIS: TYPE 4 COMPLEX SENTENCES, WITH BEHINOT AND ALSO WITH PARALLELS OF FORM AND CONTENT FW: Later, as the style of the text approaches pure poetry, content joins form in telling the tale, which in this case is the tale of a completed action. The actor/poet Moses/ messiah undergoes death of ego at the crossroads of his life, the moment of committed choice during an action. At that moment, according to Aristotle, the knower, the known and the knowing all are one. Ego is minimal in the midst of an action. The theological context of an action for Nachman here is “the word of God”, and for him, like for Hamann, that means language in the sense of The Word as the Kingdom of God, Malkhut. Language and action here are parallel concepts, grounded in the dialectical framework of deduction/induction, the descending and ascending sides of the tree of life, the kabbalistic sefirot. Each counterclockwise cycle around the complete tree of life is one “beat” of the dialectic, one cycle of the rhythm of contact and withdrawal, one moment of running and returning, one moment of action. If the process works properly we have induction, intuitive reason, positive letter combinations, poetry, If the process does not work properly we are stuck in deduction, abstract aboutism, negative letter combinations, verbalizing. After completing the action, the protagonist retains a sense of what is was all about. In the context of a Gestalt Therapy session he can tell us what was the existential message of the dreamwork, what he got from the session. He can see the details of his present life situation (Elohim, the left pillar of the tree of life) in the context of the Oneness of authentic action (YHVH, the right pillar of the tree of life), and at that moment he has a sense that the One and the Many are One Without A Second. A parallel in the aesthetics of Romanticism and the work of an actor in the Brechtian theater is the notion of “the performer on top of his material” creating “live form”. When, in this style of work, an actor prepares his material, he works deductively and assembles a junk collage of forms into a complex poetic image which is his “character”. Then, at the moment of presentation for an audience, he relies upon his here and now reactions to images that flash in his imagination to give him macrocosmic ideas with which to illuminate that microcosmic junk collage of forms. The result, when it works properly, is “live form”, a meld of content (ideas discovered inductively) and form (the junk collage which was derived deductively), which is, theologically speaking, the macrocosm in the microcosm, the One in the Many. LM 4:9 This applies each time a Torah scholar. The Talmid Chakham is an aspect of Moshe, who is an aspect of Ayin, as is written, “Wisdom comes from Ayin.” And in this way you become encompassed in Ein Sof (Infinite One). This is the concept of Zarka: it is thrown back to the place from which it was taken (Tikkuney Zohar #21). This is return Malkhut to Ein Sof, which is the will in all the wills. For Malkhut corresponds to the letters of speech, with the will of God clothed in each and every letter. It was God’s will that one letter have such and such a shape, and another letter have a different shape. We find, then, that [God’s] wills – i.e., the forms of the letters – serve to reveal His Malkhut, And all these wills, the forms, stem from the will of Ein Sof – which has no form . And all the objects and material existence in the world originate from the letters, i.e., from Malkhut. This is because material existence is a consequence of Malkhut, of the Holy One’s desire that His Malkhut be revealed in the world. Through this He created the world ex nihilo. All the wills – the forms and all material existence corresponding to Malkhut – receive their vitality from the will of Ein Sof. As is taught (Migillah 31a): “In every place that you find the greatness of the Holy One – i.e., His Malkhut wills – “There you find His humility” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. And this is an aspect of stripping oneself of corporeality. For when a person wants to be encompassed in the will of Ein Sof, he must negate his material being. This is what is written in the Zohar (II 88b), that Moshe passed away on Shabbat, at the time of Minchah. For that is when raava d’raaven (Will of Wills) is revealed. This is the will of Ein Sof, from whom all wills receive their vitality. This was because Moshe had totally negated his material being, as is written, “After all, nachnu mah (what are we)?” (Exodus 16:7). “So Moshe, the servant of God, died there, in the land of Moav, by the kiss of God. [God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moav, opposite Beit Pe’or. No man knows his burial place to this day” (Deuteronomy 34: 5-7). This is the meaning of “[God] buried him in the valley” – it alludes to as is written (Isaiah 40:4), “Every valley shall be elevated.” “In the land of Moav” – this alludes to Malkhut, for King David descended from Moav. Moshe ascended into Ein Sof, into Will of Wills, raava d’raaven. This corresponds to the will of Ein Sof, which is clothed in the wills/forms of the letters, the aspect of Malkhut. As explained, “In every place that you find His greatness” – i.e., Malkhut, the aspect of – “there you find ” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. FW: For the kabbalistic tradition, the metaphor of “running and returning” tells this story, in the sense that we first run away from ego and later return to ego. The jargon of Gestalt Therapy here overlaps that of Romanticism. Gestalt speaks of the rhythm of contact and withdrawal. During action we move from contact, from awareness of the contact boundary, to withdrawal, withdrawal from the contact boundary. Withdrawal from the contact boundary, by means of tsimtsum, puts us in the void of not knowing, the messianic now, and then we return to awareness of the contact boundary as the action comes to an end. Nachman describes running and returning by invoking the notion of “da’at” (Hebrew: knowing, knowledge). But “da’at” is a slippery term, used by many authors in many ways. Here is reference is knowing in the sense of the Gestalt process of establishing contact by means of awareness. Da’at here is awareness. Awareness establishes a bubble contactful experience, a “world” that the protagonist “knows”, in the sense that Adam knows Eve during an orgasm. When the contact boundary becomes clouded by neurotic games, by self-interruptions of the life force, and the Gestalt client finds himself deductively at an impasse of polarized cloudy ideas, he needs to withdraw from that contact boundary into the realm of inductive, intuitive experience by closing his eyes and going into his body awareness and fantasies. This is the moment of withdrawal and tsimtsum, contraction of ego. And this also is “running” from his ego and the microcosm in general into the void, where hopefully new macrocosmic ideas await him. After his moment of gnostic enlightenment, then he “returns” to his ego in its new form. But he brings with him a vague trace or “reshimu” (Hebrew: remainder) of his other worldly experience. Overall, then, he runs from deduction to induction, and then he returns from induction to deduction bringing with him the results of the induction. LM 4:9 This is “opposite Beit Pe’or”. As the Sages taught: Why was [the idol] called Pe’or? Because it opens its mouth wide. For when one blemishes Malkhut, [Pe’or} then has the power to open its mouth wide with negative letter combinations. But Moshe rectified the aspect of Malkhut, and as a result Pe’or could not open its mouth wide (Sotah 14a), This is “No man knows [his burial place]” – even Moshe did not know (ibid.). For he was negated in Ein Sof. All this was at his death. However, also during his lifetime [Moshe] certainly stripped away all corporeality and attached himself to the Light of Ein Sof. But then, this stripping was in an aspect of “the living creatures ran and returned”. (Ezekial 1:14). This is because the Holy One desires our service, as is written (Yom Kippur Liturgy), “You desire praise from mounds of dust, from lumps of clay.” Therefore, it is imperative not to remain [in this state of negation] until such a time that the Holy One Himself comes and takes one’s soul. LM 4:9 This is why we see that now and then a person becomes inspired while praying and he recites several words with tremendous fervor. This is due to God’s compassion for him; the Light of Ein Sof has been opened to him and shines for him. When a person sees this radiance – and even though he might not see, his mazal sees (Megillah 3a) – his soul is instantly ignited in great devotion, so that he attaches himself to the Light of Ein Sof. And to the degree that Ein Sof is revealed – commensurate with the number of words that have been opened and begun to radiate – he recites all these words with great devotion, with a surrender of self, and with a negation of all his senses. Then, during the time he is negated in Ein Sof, he is in a state of “and no man knows” so that he himself is unaware of his own existence. But this must be in the aspect of “running and returning” in order to preserve . We find then that when he is in a state of “returning” he must also disclose to his daat. For at the beginning, at the time of devotion, his daat was nullified, as in, “and no man knows”. But when he is in a state of “returning”, returning to his material being, then he returns to his daat. And when he returns to his daat, he knows the oneness and beneficence of Ein Sof. Then there is no difference between YHVH and Elohim, between the divine attribute of judgment and the divine attribute of compassion. For a change of will is not applicable to Ein Sof, Heaven forbid. Changes only occur in the changing of the forms. Nevertheless, by virtue of a person’s attachment to Ein Sof – where there is no change of will, for there the will is uniform – afterwards an imprint of this oneness remains within him. Then later, when he is in a state of “returning”, this imprint illuminates , so that he knows that all is good and all is one. This is what Moshe said to his generation: “It has been clearly demonstrated to your daat that YHVH (God) is the Elohim (Lord)”. (Deuteronomy 4: 35). For Moshe corresponds to Thus it was fitting for his generation, who were attached to him, to [have] daat – i.e., to illuminate the daat with an awareness of Ein Sof/raava d/raaven, the aspect of “YHVH is the Elohim.” (d) PARADOX O: An important aspect of Hamann’s conception of reason as it emerges from his use of language is his acceptance of the paradox as a vehicle for the expression of spiritual truth. His reason for such a positive view of the paradox is, in the last resort, theological. Since God has condescended to reveal Himself in lowly, even contemptible form – as the Scriptures everywhere attest – the paradox possesses the highest possible legitimation. “One must view with astonishment how God accomodates Himself to all small circumstances, and prefers to reveal His government through the everyday event of human life rather than the singular and extraordinary events.” The supreme paradox of Christianity is, to be sure, the incarnation in Christ, the appearance of the Creator of heaven and earth in the form of a servant. FW: To appreciate the relevance of paradox in this sense to the work of Nachman of Breslav, let us backtrack a bit now and zero in on the last section of LM 4 which we just cited under the heading of “parataxis”. These six techniques of Romantic poetic language certainly overlap, and there is no reason why we may not find all six of them at work in a single passage from Nachman’s “Likutei Moharan”. In this last section we found an obvious parallel between the messianic function Christ serves for the Christians and the same messianic function the soul Moses serves for the Jews. As is the case for Christ in the work of Hamann, Moses for Jews is a supreme example of paradox, the apparent contradiction that the pure idea of Moses/Mashiach – Moses as symbolic code for the messianic idea – embodies on the one hand the most encompassing notion of all-reality and on the other hand the idea of absolute nothingness, total self-obliterating humility. This rudimentary example of dialectical thinking, a thesis and an antithesis encompassed in a higher synthesis, is basic to kabbalistic metaphysics. In this respect, then, the parallel between Hamann and Nachman is clear. However, in what follows, as we decode the jargon to get to the philosophical foundation, we find that this clear conceptual parallel is fogged over by the work of the official Breslaver translators. We unearth one more example of what happens when the sorcerer’s apprentice, ignorant of the dialectical powers of his master, grabs his master’s broom and makes a big mess the laboratory! Once again we will see the dangers of preaching dialectical religion rather than teaching dialectical religion. I repeat, a preacher aims at propagating the sect, primarily by glorifying his colleagues, while a teacher has other objectives, especially ferreting out the truth of his subject matter. Watch, now, how the translators of LM 4 muddle the dialectical message of Nachman in this passage, and shift the focus from the individual’s search for God towards the direction of creating a herd of sheep following other sheep following other sheep, just as lemmings might follow other lemmings right off a cliff into the sea! Here once is LM 4:9. LM 4:9 This applies each time a Torah scholar. The Talmid Chakham is an aspect of Moshe, who is an aspect of Ayin, as is written, “Wisdom comes from Ayin.” And in this way you become encompassed in Ein Sof (Infinite One). FW: Nachman begins with the pshat, the superficial code. This is step one in creating the paradox, the apparent contradiction that this Torah scholar you meet in the street is at the same time an aspect of Moses and the Jewish version of the messiah. LM 4:9 This is the concept of Zarka: it is thrown back to the place from which it was taken (Tikkuney Zohar #21). This is returning Malkhut to Ein Sof, which is the will in all the wills. For Malkhut corresponds to the letters of speech, with the will of God clothed in each and every letter. It was God’s will that one letter have such and such a shape, and another letter have a different shape. We find, then, that [God’s] wills – i.e., the forms of the letters – serve to reveal His Malkhut, FW: Another paradox, then, is that the all encompassing Kingdom God corresponds to the tiny individual letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each letter has its particular form and message. LM 4:9 And all these wills, the forms, stem from the will of Ein Sof – which has no form . And all the objects and material existence in the world originate from the letters, i.e., from Malkhut. This is because material existence is a consequence of Malkhut, of the Holy One’s desire that His Malkhut be revealed in the world. Through this He created the world ex nihilo. All the wills – the forms and all material existence corresponding to Malkhut – receive their vitality from the will of Ein Sof. As is taught (Migillah 31a): “In every place that you find the greatness of the Holy One – i.e., His Malkhut wills – “There you find His humility” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. And this is an aspect of stripping oneself of corporeality. For when a person wants to be encompassed in the will of Ein Sof, he must negate his material being. FW: Here is the paradox cited by Hamann above, that the messiah (Christ or Moses) embodies the apparent contradiction that what is the All is also Nothingness, abject humility and the will of God. LM 4:9 For a change of will is not applicable to Ein Sof, Heaven forbid. Changes only occur in the changing of the forms. Nevertheless, by virtue of a person’s attachment to Ein Sof – where there is no change of will, for there the will is uniform – afterwards an imprint of this oneness remains within him. Then later, when he is in a state of “returning”, this imprint illuminates Likes: 11 Viewed:
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Observing Women In Photography
This International Women's Day, is commending ladies in wedding photography. We are so amped up for this extraordinary day for ladies. So we might want to grandstand the top ladies picture takers recorded with us-their fruitful adventure and impact on society.
From specialist to enthusiastic and proficient picture takers, every one of these ladies' voyage was with high energy. What's more, their adventure was of defeating the obstructions they had on their way. Being said that, we feel that every one of their work demonstrates feelings inside and out. They talk about unmistakable life minutes astoundingly.
1) Congratulations on being one of the top Women Photographers recorded with. Would you be able to reveal to us a little about yourself and how you began doing photography?
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I have dependably been an energetic picture taker since I was a young person. I used to adore road representations, scenes, design photography and so on. Be that as it may, my genuine expert photography venture began after my girl was conceived. I was filling in as a UI creator at that point yet I was drawn more towards photography. It developed rapidly at a similar speed as my little girl was growing up. Catching her youth days influenced me to understand that I need to take this up expertly. I needed to report the delight of parenthood which I was getting a charge out of through my viewpoint, and through my innovative point of view, for different guardians.
I was 13 when I was given my first camera, at first, the enjoyment was tied in with getting it before my sibling. Be that as it may, soon I adored taking pictures and staying them up on my dividers ( which likewise implied setting aside a great deal of pocket cash). With time, life took me to various ways however along every one of these ways I had a camera convenient asked, obtained or stolen (not by any stretch of the imagination).
All I recall about a camera is that it was enrapturing. The inclination hasn't changed. Despite everything I cherish investigating, learning and catching and being the person who has "that photo" which brings back an entire sea of recollections.
Genuinely, photography was an energy that I found amid my structure considers. It turned out to be such a critical device of each articulation and experience of my reality. That life would possibly be a full circle just in the event that I pursued my enthusiasm at life and work. That devotion and love directed me towards a Masters in Art Photography and Video graphy at the University of London. With reliable work and backing, I was then ready to show my Company-Photo Alchemy Photo Video Productions.
Much obliged to You. I began my innovative voyage with photography with a dream of recording the affection and miracle of the human experience. In the wake of graduating in Media Studies, I considered photography expertly and not long after I began The Looking Glass, which later fan out to incorporate The Looking Glass – Maternity, Newborn and Kids Photography. A year ago, I chose to enjoy a reprieve from the city for some time. So now, I'm as of now voyaging everywhere throughout the world, to wherever my adventure takes me to learn.
2) What were the significant difficulties you looked toward the beginning of your vocation as the photography business has customarily supported men?
I for one never felt the weight of the business that being supportive of men picture takers around me. Or maybe being a 'children and family picture taker' I discovered mothers are progressively OK with me similar to a female and a mother photographic artist. All things considered, I generally had that individual association with my customers as I could identify with their lives.
It isn't consistent with trust that an imaginative field of photography does not carry with it the customary difficulties that ladies face in different circles of work. By conventional difficulties I mean,
a) my wellbeing: thinking about the odd timings and travel.
b) candid wedding photography opened up a universe of individuals that I was communicating with face to face. Managing them as a Team Lead and being self-assured accompanied involvement.
c) I am a mother-photography is anything but an 'arranged' employment and adjusting being a picture taker and mother is something that I am as yet finding out about.
Having said that, as a lady, I feel that there is so much I convey to the playing field that makes me need to endeavor forward and handle these issues each one in turn.
Ten years back, I entered the wedding business that to a great extent and maybe just charged men to do photograph video creations. That was a genuine test, to get myself customers being a lady. Individuals had not seen ladies holding up cameras at weddings and taking on such vigorous and physically requesting callings. It took a great deal of work to persuade customers that I can do this!
The greatest test I confronted was figuring out how to function by tenets that didn't impact me. Being the manner in which the business in Mumbai is, I thought that it was' pointless aggressive nature just as the glorification of an exhausted and vigorously come up short on condition extremely debilitating. To me, the nature of substance being delivered did not legitimize the methods being utilized to make it.
Additionally, nonexclusive specializations like Fashion and Product Photography were exaggerated and guides for whatever else was near unimportant. I would not ascribe every last bit of it to the way that it was a male-ruled industry. In any case, being a male-overwhelmed industry, it was trying to cut out space for myself where I could focus on photography dependent on my vision of it. This is what The Looking like Glass – Maternity, Newborn and Kids came to fruition.
I needed to work with genuine individuals and catch the affection and miracle of life that I couldn't generally appear to discover a great deal of in the conventional business space. I should include however, things are entirely different today and keeping in mind that I do trust there's far to go, photography as an artistic expression – a method for articulation has picked up a ton of significant worth in a city like Mumbai today. It's reviving to see a considerably more shifted accumulation of work being created.
3) What might be the best counsel you would provide for hopeful ladies picture takers?
I was constantly focussed on the fantasy I saw to turn into a picture taker who gives guardians photos as well as the most great recollections of their life which they can appreciate for eternity. I think whatever class of photography you are doing, your adoration for it is increasingly critical. Instead of getting under the weight of rivalry around you simply center around your own style of photography. Also, I am certain you will accomplish unquestionably more than what you wanted.
Picture Credits: A Click In Time
Learn constantly, continue investigating and make a style and character in your photos which shouts "YOU".
Unquestionably, it's the most superb time to enter the universe of photography. Innovation has progressed such a great amount inside ten years. From massive substantial enormous cameras, we have a lot lighter and very strong cameras which are a large portion of the size and weight. Making it such a great amount of simpler for us ladies to go with all our hardware and shoot easily!
Promoting your image is additionally such a great amount of simpler than previously and the internet based life devices are strong past creative ability! There is a probability for every last one of us to develop dynamically during circumstances such as the present!
Initially, center around acing your specialized information. The most essential thing is to be excellent at your expertise. It's at exactly that point you can explore different avenues regarding how you might want to inventively convey what needs be utilizing that expertise. Furthermore, the voyage should be a harmony between your inward and outer world. Set aside the effort to organize getting yourself – your vision, your encounters, your feelings. Eventually, your craft is a physical appearance of your inward experience. Understanding that experience can enable you to show it in an increasingly natural and fair way.
4) Photography insightful, where might you want to see yourself in 5-10 years?
Hahaaa. That is a dubious inquiry. I think 5-10yrs is too long to even think about thinking about, considering the innovation is developing quickly. Nowadays, cell phones are truly catching the market. In any case, I am secure with one thing that I will at present be accomplishing something that I cherish and appreciate doing photography and still, after all that.
I see myself instructing and coaching youthful kids. I passed up having a ladies coach, I might want to fill that hole. Likewise, I might want to instruct on the grounds that I comprehend that a camera can bring out from inside you what words can't.
The following couple of years, I envision an entire group of ladies working over the globe from Photo Alchemy shooting weddings all things considered!
Always learning and exploring different avenues regarding new structures and procedures to more readily express my cognizant experience.
5) How has Canvera added to your adventure as a picture taker?
I learned photography on a film camera alongside creating rolls and prints. So I have dependably been an enthusiast of physical prints, photo books and so forth. In the present advanced camera world, we neglect to have physical duplicates yet  made it simpler for me and my customers. Additionally, items are something which I profoundly prescribe to every one of my customers. The primary explanation for that is I for one adore their item quality and their first rate bundling.  has picture takers' index and I got leads through them a few times. It assumed a major job in my adventure.
0 notes
aavvkk11-blog · 5 years
Text
Observing Women In Photography
Tumblr media
This International Women's Day, is commending ladies in photography. We are so amped up for this extraordinary day for ladies. So we might want to grandstand the top ladies picture takers recorded with us-their fruitful adventure and impact on society.
From specialist to enthusiastic and wedding photography, every one of these ladies' voyage was with high energy. What's more, their adventure was of defeating the obstructions they had on their way. Being said that, we feel that every one of their work demonstrates feelings inside and out. They talk about unmistakable life minutes astoundingly.
I have dependably been an energetic picture taker since I was a young person. I used to adore road representations, scenes, design photography and so on. Be that as it may, my genuine expert photography venture began after my girl was conceived. I was filling in as a UI creator at that point yet I was drawn more towards photography. It developed rapidly at a similar speed as my little girl was growing up. Catching her youth days influenced me to understand that I need to take this up expertly. I needed to report the delight of parenthood which I was getting a charge out of through my viewpoint, and through my innovative point of view, for different guardians.
I was 13 when I was given my first camera, at first, the enjoyment was tied in with getting it before my sibling. Be that as it may, soon I adored taking pictures and staying them up on my dividers ( which likewise implied setting aside a great deal of pocket cash). With time, life took me to various ways however along every one of these ways I had a camera convenient asked, obtained or stolen (not by any stretch of the imagination).
All I recall about a camera is that it was enrapturing. The inclination hasn't changed. Despite everything I cherish investigating, learning and catching and being the person who has "that photo" which brings back an entire sea of recollections.
Genuinely, photography was an energy that I found amid my structure considers. It turned out to be such a critical device of each articulation and experience of my reality. That life would possibly be a full circle just in the event that I pursued my enthusiasm at life and work. That devotion and love directed me towards a Masters in Art Photography and Video graphy at the University of London. With reliable work and backing, I was then ready to show my Company-PhotoAlchemy Photo Video Productions.
Much obliged to You. I began my innovative voyage with photography with a dream of recording the affection and miracle of the human experience. In the wake of graduating in Media Studies, I considered photography expertly and not long after I began The Looking Glass, which later fan out to incorporate The Looking Glass – Maternity, Newborn and Kids Photography. A year ago, I chose to enjoy a reprieve from the city for some time. So now, I'm as of now voyaging everywhere throughout the world, to wherever my adventure takes me to learn.
2) What were the significant difficulties you looked toward the beginning of your vocation as the photography business has customarily supported men?
I for one never felt the weight of the business that being supportive of men picture takers around me. Or maybe being a 'children and family picture taker' I discovered mothers are progressively OK with me similar to a female and a mother photographic artist. All things considered, I generally had that individual association with my customers as I could identify with their lives.
It isn't consistent with trust that an imaginative field of photography does not carry with it the customary difficulties that ladies face in different circles of work. By conventional difficulties I mean,
a) my well being: thinking about the odd timings and travel.
b) wedding photography opened up a universe of individuals that I was communicating with face to face. Managing them as a Team Lead and being self-assured accompanied involvement.
c) I am a mother-photography is anything but an 'arranged' employment and adjusting being a picture taker and mother is something that I am as yet finding out about.
Having said that, as a lady, I feel that there is so much I convey to the playing field that makes me need to endeavor forward and handle these issues each one in turn.
Ten years back, I entered the candid  wedding  photography that to a great extent and maybe just charged men to do photograph video creations. That was a genuine test, to get myself customers being a lady. Individuals had not seen ladies holding up cameras at weddings and taking on such vigorous and physically requesting callings. It took a great deal of work to persuade customers that I can do this!
The greatest test I confronted was figuring out how to function by tenets that didn't impact me. Being the manner in which the business in Mumbai is, I thought that it was' pointless aggressive nature just as the glorification of an exhausted and vigorously come up short on condition extremely debilitating. To me, the nature of substance being delivered did not legitimize the methods being utilized to make it.
Additionally, nonexclusive specializations like Fashion and Product Photography were exaggerated and guides for whatever else was near unimportant. I would not ascribe every last bit of it to the way that it was a male-ruled industry. In any case, being a male-overwhelmed industry, it was trying to cut out space for myself where I could focus on photography dependent on my vision of it. This is what The Looking like Glass – Maternity, Newborn and Kids came to fruition.
I needed to work with genuine individuals and catch the affection and miracle of life that I couldn't generally appear to discover a great deal of in the conventional business space. I should include however, things are entirely different today and keeping in mind that I do trust there's far to go, photography as an artistic expression – a method for articulation has picked up a ton of significant worth in a city like Mumbai today. It's reviving to see a considerably more shifted accumulation of work being created.
3) What might be the best counsel you would provide for hopeful ladies picture takers?
I was constantly focussed on the fantasy I saw to turn into a picture taker who gives guardians photos as well as the most great recollections of their life which they can appreciate for eternity. I think whatever class of photography you are doing, your adoration for it is increasingly critical. Instead of getting under the weight of rivalry around you simply center around your own style of photography. Also, I am certain you will accomplish unquestionably more than what you wanted.
Unquestionably, it's the most superb time to enter the universe of photography. Innovation has progressed such a great amount inside ten years. From massive substantial enormous cameras, we have a lot lighter and very strong cameras which are a large portion of the size and weight. Making it such a great amount of simpler for us ladies to go with all our hardware and shoot easily!
Tumblr media
Promoting your image is additionally such a great amount of simpler than previously and the internet based life devices are strong past creative ability! There is a probability for every last one of us to develop dynamically during circumstances such as the present!
Initially, center around acing your specialized information. The most essential thing is to be excellent at your expertise. It's at exactly that point you can explore different avenues regarding how you might want to inventively convey what needs be utilizing that expertise. Furthermore, the voyage should be a harmony between your inward and outer world. Set aside the effort to organize getting yourself – your vision, your encounters, your feelings. Eventually, your craft is a physical appearance of your inward experience. Understanding that experience can enable you to show it in an increasingly natural and fair way.
4) Photography insightful, where might you want to see yourself in 5-10 years?
Hahaaa. That is a dubious inquiry. I think 5-10yrs is too long to even think about thinking about, considering the innovation is developing quickly. Nowadays, cell phones are truly catching the market. In any case, I am secure with one thing that I will at present be accomplishing something that I cherish and appreciate doing photography and still, after all that.
I see myself instructing and coaching youthful kids. I passed up having a ladies coach, I might want to fill that hole. Likewise, I might want to instruct on the grounds that I comprehend that a camera can bring out from inside you what words can't.
The following couple of years, I envision an entire group of ladies working over the globe from Photo Alchemy shooting weddings all things considered!Always learning and exploring different avenues regarding new structures and procedures to more readily express my cognizant experience.
5) How has  added to your adventure as a picture taker?
I learned photography on a film camera alongside creating rolls and prints. So I have dependably been an enthusiast of physical prints, photo books and so forth. In the present advanced camera world, we neglect to have physical duplicates yet made it simpler for me and my customers. Additionally, items are something which I profoundly prescribe to every one of my customers. The primary explanation for that is I for one adore their item quality and their first rate bundling.picture takers' index and I got leads through them a few times. It assumed a major job in my adventure.
0 notes
digitalyogesh · 3 years
Text
Home remedies for height growth
Instructions to Increase Your Height
by Top10HomeRemedies Team July 3, 2019Home remedies for height growth
221
The individuals who are of normal or short stature regularly wish they were taller. Being tall can improve how an individual feels about oneself. Individuals with diminutive tallness, especially men, might act naturally cognizant about it and feel less sure. Home remedies for height growth
An individual’s stature is resolved generally by hereditary qualities, however it isn’t really the lone determinant. There is a chemical in the body known as Human Growth Hormone (HGH) that directs stature. HGH is created by the pituitary organ and is profoundly fundamental for the development of long bones and ligament. Home remedies for height growth
A few different elements assume a vital part in deciding stature, like smoking during pregnancy, helpless post-natal consideration, low birth weight and chronic frailty during adolescence.
Frequently individuals believe that they quit developing when they enter adulthood. In any case, an individual can grow a couple of inches taller even in the wake of turning 18. This should be possible by fusing some solid propensities into your way of life. Home remedies for height growth
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the most effective method to expand your stature normally
Here are the main 10 different ways to expand your stature.
Substance
Take Ashwagandha
As per Ayurveda, ashwagandha (logical name: Withania somnifera), otherwise called Indian ginseng, helps increment tallness.
ashwagandha to expand stature Home remedies for height growth
Ashwagandha contains different minerals that widen the bone skeleton just as its thickness. This, thus, expands your stature. You can undoubtedly discover ashwagandha in a natural store.
Blend two tablespoons of ashwagandha powder in a glass of warm cow’s milk.
Add sugar or jaggery as indicated by your taste and blend well.
Drink it consistently prior to heading to sleep, at any rate for 45 days to build your tallness.
Note: For this solution for work, you should stay away from cheap food totally.
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Drink Milk
Milk is plentiful in calcium, a significant mineral for bone development. Calcium likewise goes about as a tallness sponsor. Other than calcium, milk has nutrient An and protein that are fundamental for generally speaking advancement of the body, including stature.
To build your stature by a couple of inches, drink at any rate a few glasses of milk every day. Moreover, eating dairy food sources like cheddar, curds, yogurt, and cream can affect stature. Home remedies for height growth
Enjoy Yoga
You can likewise do some yoga to expand your stature normally. Certain yoga practices work with the arrival of development prompting chemicals in the body. Yoga likewise assists discharge with focusing on that causes pressure in the back muscles, which thusly prepares for greatest development. Home remedies for height growth
The best yoga posture to expand stature is the ‘Surya Namaskar’, in which there are 12 unique stances acted in a specific sequential request. To find out about ‘Surya Namaskar’, look at this video.
Stretch Your Body
Extending is one more viable approach to improve stature at whatever stage in life. Attempt to extend your body by remaining on your toes for a couple of moments day by day, a few times each day. Other extending practices that you can attempt at home incorporate vehicle stretch, very stretch, cobra stretch, kn Home remedies for height growth eel, turns and essential leg extends.
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To find out about some simple and viable extending works out, you can watch this video.
With ordinary extending, you can add a couple of crawls to your stature. Furthermore, it will help improve your stance.
Participate in Exercise and Sports
participate in exercise to build tallness
Exercise and sports animate the arrival of development chemical that adds to your stature. To appreciate great stature, you should practice routinely and participate in sports exercises.
One great exercise to expand stature is skipping where you need to bounce a ton. Do skipping for at any rate 30 minutes every day in an open region. Home remedies for height growth
Clutching an even bar and hanging with your spine loosened up is another viable exercise to work with tallness acquire. Stay in the situation for 10 seconds and rehash in any event multiple times day by day. Home remedies for height growth
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Also, mess around like tennis and b-ball that expect you to bounce a ton. This will help increment your tallness and furthermore help in keeping up ideal body weight.
Likewise enjoy open air exercises, such as cycling and swimming, consistently to appreciate great tallness and a conditioned body.
Get Proper Sleep
At the point when you rest, the body develops and recovers tissues. Indeed, the Human Growth Hormone (HGH) liable for expanding stature is delivered normally in the body when you have a sound and profound rest. Home remedies for height growth
legitimate rest to build stature
During sound rest, the cerebrum is loose and delivers more development chemicals. Then again, a drained mind shows the low arrival of development chemicals. When in doubt, during the developing stage, an individual should have in any event eight to 11 hours of legitimate rest each night to appreciate greatest tallness.
Eat a Balanced Diet
adjusted eating routine
It has been discovered that absence of legitimate supplements is one of the main sources behind individuals neglecting to arrive at their most extreme stature. To get appropriate nourishment, follow a decent eating regimen. Fundamental supplements like zinc, manganese, nutrient C, protein, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus give the necessary improvement to expanding tallness. Home remedies for height growth
An every day diet ought to contain new mixed greens and hued vegetables, natural products, nuts, seeds, entire grains, and low-fat dairy items, all in their appropriate extents.
Appreciate Sunlight
appreciate daylight
Daylight is the best characteristic wellspring of nutrient D, a key supplement required for by and large development, including most extreme tallness. At the point when your body doesn’t get sufficient nutrient D, you can have frail bones just as less tallness. To ensure your body gets the necessary measure of this nutrient, go through 20 to 30 minutes every day in the daylight.
Go out in the sun during early morning or evening hours to give your body nutrient D with insignificant openness to unsafe bright beams.
Alongside daylight, you can get nutrient D from milk, cheddar, eggs, slick fish, and invigorated food varieties.
Practice Good Posture
great stance
A decent stance assumes a vital part in the improvement of your stature. A decent stance is one where the head and neck are adjusted with no indication of twisting or slumping.
This sort of stance fixes your spine, loosens up your muscles and improves your stature. Then again, an awful stance makes your spinal string twist, which thusly smothers your typical tallness. Home remedies for height growth
Along these lines, try to sit straight on a seat and keep your shoulders straight and jawline high. At the point when you stand or walk, keep your body straight and tight.
Drink Plenty of Water
drinking water
Attempt to drink abundant measures of water for the duration of the day. Water flushes out unsafe poisons from your body and improves absorption. Furthermore, it will improve your digestion rate, which will straightforwardly affect your tallness. Home remedies for height growth
For in general wellbeing, drink at any rate eight glasses of water each day. Alongside drinking water, eat water-based products of the soil like cucumbers and watermelon.
Extra Tips:
Attempt to keep up ideal body weight as corpulence can adversely affect your stature.
Quit smoking as it behaves like a development inhibitor.
Try not to drink as it smothers your development level.
Try not to eat quick food sources. Home remedies for height growth
0 notes
trippinglynet · 4 years
Text
Trial by Fire: A Burning Man Experience by Robert B. Gelman
Trial         by Fire
a Burning Man Experience
by Robert B. Gelman Photos by Leo Nash and Jay Bain
I don't go to the Burning Man festival seeking spiritual enlightenment.  I go because I like to revel in fire, dance and music. Nor do I go to Burning Man because I'm a student of anthropology and civilization, but rather because it's one of the few places on Earth where you can escape the constraints of modern civilization. And I certainly haven't made the pilgrimage to Burning Man these past eight years because I like driving seven hours to immerse myself in a hot, dry, hostile environment.  Yet, I am always amazed at how my experience transcends all of these issues.
I know I must be there, and that I will come away profoundly affected. You might hear something like that from thousands who attend this event, yet each would be talking about an experience that is completely different and unique to them alone. Over the years I've read so many journalistic accounts of this festival, many by brilliant writers, and for the most part, they fail to convey the essence of Burning Man.
My own experience at last year's (1997) event was so intense, it has motivated me to join those before me who have attempted to share in words, this shared experience which defies literal communication. After reading, if you're so inclined, please drop me a note to let me know if I succeeded or not.
Labor Day Weekend 1997
As usual, there were wondrous works of art and performance that enveloped me and elicited my participation (I'm a drummer and part of the drumming collective that leads the procession to the man for his immolation). But even after eight years as part of this project, I was caught off guard and forced to once again re-examine my fundamental belief system, and view of creative expression in particular. I had a life-changing experience as a reaction-to and in interaction with a performance that on the face of it, was just a bunch of aggressive men and women bent on intimidating everyone in their path and burning everything they possibly could possibly get to. I had just met the "Vegematic."
The one fact no-one will dispute about the Burning Man festival is that things explode and burn there. What some might not want you to know is how dangerous these events actually are. Sure, the people designing the big pyrotechnic installations are skilled, but not necessarily professionals (at least in the pyro profession). I happen to know that some of the folks who prepare these displays for the festival enjoy putting their lives at risk in the pursuit of intense experience. I've been guilty of that myself from time to time, as it helps to remind me that I'm  ALIVE.
The point is that this is not a sanitized, safety-bound event in which you need not be concerned for your well-being. You are putting yourself in danger by attending Burning Man. If you forget to drink enough water,  you could die. Not watching where you are walking could make you an unwitting part of a fire-performance, getting injured or worse.
This situation presents an undeniable reality-shift from the world in which most of us live, where we expect governments and businesses to be our surrogate parents, to take care of our needs. We rely on courts to litigate our civil suits when we seek to make others responsible for what happens to us. It would be a much better world in which people would routinely take responsibility for their own well-being and the effects of their actions, in my opinion. That world exists at Burning Man.
The outrageous and absurd costumes, performances, theme camps and behaviors you observe only serve to enhance this shift of perceived reality to the extent that you begin to wonder what is real and what is not. Is that person truly a disgruntled postal worker, or just a stand-up comedian?  Do they really know how big an explosion that contraption will create?  Do I really need to worry whether they will burn down my tent?
Personally, I have no great attachment to everyday reality. I view it like a computer operating system that is useful mostly because it allows me to run the same software as most other people. We have no way of knowing whether there is such a thing as objective reality anyway, so why not enjoy the variety of a new one every now and then?   Burning Man is nothing if not a smorgasbord of alternate realities. This then, is the frame of mind I found myself in on the festival's final day last year.
The anticipation of the "burn" builds the intensity of expression from the moment you arrive. You can feel it in the air. Sexual energy is intensified, primitive instincts usually dormant become shockingly prevalent. You are cro-magnon man, your life is a struggle, but you survive by your will, your wits, and your urge to evolve. And just how do you evolve?   You express yourself.
I choose to express through ritual at this event. The drums I play hearken primitive aspects from within. The fire before me is the altar upon which I must make an offering. I select a treasured instrument, a drum which I have loved and played over time, and designate this physical thing as my sacrifice. Raising the drum above my head, I whirl in dizzying dervish-style until my fingers release their grasp and a thousand eyes bear witness to the short arc of flight. Landing amidst the white-hot embers of the now-fallen Burning Man, the sacrificial drum is vaporized in seconds. My catharsis achieved, I am now free to roam the desert playa, a character reborn to engage in human drama.
That's where I was when I encountered the Vegematic. It's straight out of hell, suggesting engineering from the industrial revolution transported to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.  Part vehicle, part flame-thrower, part earth drilling device, I envision this machine being used to battle creatures in a 1950's monster movie, or to torture souls of the damned in the realm of Satan. I'm immediately fascinated.
Sitting atop the thing,  its creator Jim Mason invokes the motor which rotates the intimidating giant drill-bit head.  A pressurized gas-charger   propels a massive flame as much as seventy feet from the barrel at its center. A hand-crank allows Jim to raise the angle of the barrel to about 45 degrees so that it is now pointing at a large helium balloon about forty feet away.
I notice that there is a now a crowd gathered around this scene, made up of others who like me, find something about this spectacle compelling, at least for the moment. They may well be gentle loving people in another reality, but this is an angry mob, bent on destruction, preferably by fire. "Burn it!" the shout goes up as I hear the ominous groan of the Vegematic's motor for the first time.
A man with a bullhorn, known in the performance world as "Chicken John," offers a warning to the owners of the camp with the helium balloon: "step aside." Faced with this machine and the angry mob, that's exactly what they do. Then in an instant,  a very loud, very hot, very bright arm of flame reaches out for the balloon, clenching it in a heated grasp. The explosion it creates is awesome enough to quiet the mob. Just a little, and for just a little while.
The visual appeal of the helium blast has swelled the ranks of the mob following the trail of the Vegematic. The ignition of the first target seemed to simply feed their hunger for more fire. Like medieval villagers, we migrate on to the next camp.
Here, a young artist (whose name I did not get) is sitting around a camp fire with his friends at the foot of a sculptural masterpiece he had created and called "The Agony of Man." [Note: the art was Future Primitive by Steel Neal. The piece survives today.] I had heard that this fellow did not consider himself to be a "real" artist, and he was just building something to burn, in the spirit of the festival. I admit this is hearsay, but I understand that seeing how his work affected attendees at the festival changed his perception of himself as an artist, and of this work. Perhaps it should not be burned after all.
The Vegematic wheels into position directly in front of the 20-foot high wood and metal sculpture. Mason is revving the the drill-motor as if it were a race car. The  ominous whine it omits is the cue for Chicken John on the bullhorn.  "Step aside!" he warns the bystanders.
Three of the four people who were seated in the path of the fire cannon were safely behind it in about two seconds after that warning. One was not. The artist, rising slowly from his seat before the campfire, folds his arms and shakes his head to tell the confronting horde that he will not step aside and allow his work to be destroyed by them.
Chicken John repeats his instructions, more insistently now. Jim releases a small blast of fire, sort of a warning shot to indicate the verity of his intention. All of a sudden I find myself overcome with emotions of all kinds flooding in from the darkest corners of my psyche.
"What is going on here?" I ponder. "What am I doing here?" Is this newly transformed artist ready to die ablaze to protect his work? Will these "performers" make good on their threat? What is really being played out here? I am worried about the behavior of this mob. If the Vegematic does not destroy this thing, will the crowd accept that, or will they take control of the machine and destroy it themselves?
All these questions and not an answer in sight. I knew though, that I was engaged in direct interaction with some of the ugliest aspects of our human nature, and I was afraid. I did not know exactly where the line was to be drawn on the violent destruction of property (people?), and I knew that the behavior of the mob was real and based on suspension of disbelief. The most frightening aspect of this scene is a crowd being whipped into an increasingly destructive mood. A crowd for whom all of this is not performance, but immersive reality.
My mind was reeling with "what-ifs." What if they actually  injured this man? What if the uncivilized mob overpowered the rational "audience?" What would I do? What could I do? Am I responsible for this by simply being here? Again, the answers are more elusive, yet I am unable to simply turn away.
It must have been only a few seconds, but they were some of the tensest I've ever felt, as the showdown reached its climax. The artist is still standing his ground, and finally the Vegematic disengages and begins to move on. This failure to destroy the work and the man sends a wave of visible (and audible) discontent through the mob...and a new bubble of fear to my chest.
Even as I am questioning my reasons for following this spectacle, I know I have to continue. This has now become much more than performance art with fire. This is the confrontation of good and evil in a cosmic allegory, revealing the truth of our nature in the process of unfolding before me.
I notice that we've been on this destructive quest for nearly an hour, the steadily growing crowd around the Vegematic cheering madly as all manner of flammable material meets its end before the machine. Shelter structures, miscellaneous sculptures and other property have become fuel for the flames. Each time Chicken John would shout "step aside!" (and eventually the mob joined-in on this chant), then Jim would rev the motor and let the jet-propelled fire out into the night.
Inevitably,  the field of available targets had just about been exhausted. That is, all but one very big one. We are now headed straight for the festival's main stage. This large A-frame structure had been host to numerous music and dance performances over the course of the festival, and in the hours following the burn, it was home to the DJ's spinning techno and trance rhythms for the "community dance" (spelled r-a-v-e). The tool of devastation on wheels cut a path through the crowd of dancers to a position directly in front of the DJ console on stage. The surrealism of this vision has me cursing the fact that I am out of film.
As if to underscore the difference in mindset between the trance-dancers and the mob, instead of issuing his usual warning, Chicken John jumps onstage and insists to the DJ, "Play some Led Zeppelin!" The Vegematic lets out a motorized groan and a flaming belch in response.  The overgrown drill-bit nose is now dripping gasoline in flames like the devil with a wet cold. A scene from Hieronymous Bosch's painting of "Hell" flashes across my mind.
The DJ is Goa Gil, and perhaps due to his nature, or perhaps the fact that he has come all the way from India, he is hardly reacting to the implied threat. In fact, he is turning up the volume in peaceful defiance of the metal invasion in front of him. With all due respect for the views of others, I've had my doubts about the professed spiritual nature of these dances. I do however, believe that intent is well more than half of the journey. I wondered if these frenetic dancing kids knew how their faith was about to be tested.
I didn't have to wait long to find out… The crew of the machine is tilting the flamethrower's barrel up at the console.  Gil is staring down the 12-foot barrel of this jet powered char-broiler. I had to remind myself that this is theatre, or is it? I'm still not sure. "Burn it!" the mob chants, "Burn THEM!" in a mantra of destructive abandon that causes me to feel a mix of shame and fear and apprehension (fuel for enlightenment).
Like an opposing pacifist army, the ravers are standing their ground, some shouting in defiance of the threat, some in disbelief that this could really be happening. Chicken John, like the demented circus ringmaster that he is, issues his now-familiar warning over the bullhorn. We seem to have traveled back centuries in time. I don't remember ever feeling farther from home than this.
For only the second time among at least a dozen confrontations, the Vegematic is backing down, leading one to feel that there may indeed be hope for these humans, and perhaps there is something that purifies and bonds us together in the music and dance.
Final Showdown
This story is not quite over. There is one more challenge that we've been waiting to see the Vegematic meet. Jim had envisioned this encounter from the start, and has gone to great expense and effort to make it real. He has created a 15-foot high ball of solid ice in the middle of what is known as Black Rock City. Using a giant Fiberglas mold, Styrofoam and hay bales for insulation, a refrigeration unit had been employed onsite for days to freeze water that was poured into the mold. On Saturday (one full day prior to this encounter), the casing was removed and the glory of this work was revealed.
There it stood, in utter defiance of the desert heat and all the fire that was to surround it over the next 24 hours. A snowball in hell. I was surprised at how little it had melted in the day's sun, but was certain that a giant ice ball would become a giant puddle after the onslaught of the Vegematic's fire gun and drill. The drama continued to unfold.
The nose of the Vegematic is aimed for the center of the frozen sphere. It will bury its drilling blade in the outer surface of the ball. It will then drill its way into the center of the ice. From there, the flamethrower's power will be maximized, melting the chilly sculpture from the inside out.
The crowd is larger than ever, and shouting for violence against the target. As far as I can tell, there are no cheerleaders for the ice. As the monster machine moves into place against the ice, the familiar sound of the motor is drowned by mob-noise. The drill turns, but the ice is apparently tougher than expected. Jim resorts to using the fire to soften her up. Whoosh, whoosh, again and again the fire spews forward, the drill bit revolves and the battle of the elements plays itself out. This continues for some time, until the remaining fuel is spent.
The Morning After
The ultimate truth of this journey (internal and external) was evident the next morning for all to see.  In a way, I half-expected to return here and find no evidence of the previous night's experience whatsoever. Instead, right where we left it during our night of fire was the Vegematic, it's rusting drill-nose buried just a few inches in the ice ball, out of fuel and out of luck.
I'm not sure whether the great truth I was seeking was actually embodied in this tableau, but I was satisfied with the outcome. It's easy to make poetic comparisons about fire and ice, but for me the intensity of the experience came from those unanswerable questions and what  they told me about myself and my fellow man. Something ugly. Something beautiful. I am grateful for the mirror.
The ice had won - this time. Next time, who knows?
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deniscollins · 6 years
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U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials
A government report from 13 federal agencies says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization, and over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, contributing to weather catastrophes from floods to hurricanes to heat waves that have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980. If you were on a business/industry committee, what can the business community do in response to this information? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?
Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.
Over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes, the report says. The global, long-term warming trend is “unambiguous,” it says, and there is “no convincing alternative explanation” that anything other than humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame.
The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies. The United Nations convenes its annual climate change conference next week in Bonn, Germany, and the American delegation is expected to face harsh criticism over President Trump’s decision to walk away from the 195-nation Paris climate accord and top administration officials’ stated doubts about the causes and impacts of a warming planet.
“This report has some very powerful, hard-hitting statements that are totally at odds with senior administration folks and at odds with their policies,” said Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. “It begs the question, where are members of the administration getting their information from? They’re obviously not getting it from their own scientists.”
While there were pockets of resistance to the report in the Trump administration, according to climate scientists involved in drafting the report, there was little appetite for a knockdown fight over climate change among Mr. Trump’s top advisers, who are intensely focused on passing a tax reform bill — an effort they think could determine the fate of his presidency.
The climate science report is part of a congressionally mandated review conducted every four years known as the National Climate Assessment. The product of hundreds of experts within the government and academia and peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, it is considered the United States’ most definitive statement on climate change science.
The White House put out a statement Friday that seemed to undercut the high level of confidence of the report’s findings.
“The climate has changed and is always changing,” Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said in the statement. “As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on ‘remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate’” to greenhouse gas emissions, he added.
Despite the scientific consensus presented in the report, the Environmental Protection Agency has scrubbed references to climate change from its website and barred its scientists from presenting scientific reports on the subject.
The E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, has said carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to warming. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, asserted Wednesday that “the science is out” on whether humans cause climate change.
Their agencies referred questions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversaw the research.
The report has provoked consternation in scientific circles for months. Though the study has been in the works since 2015, several scientists said the election of Mr. Trump, who has labeled climate change a “canard” and appointed cabinet members who disputed the scientific consensus, caused them to worry the report would be blocked or buried.
That did not happen. Scientists who worked on the report said none of the 13 agencies that reviewed it tried to undermine its findings or change its wording.
“I’m quite confident to say there has been no political interference on the message,” said David Fahey, a NOAA scientist and a lead author of the report. “Whatever fears we had weren’t realized.”
Responsibility for approving the report fell to Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, who generally believes in the validity of climate science and thought the issue would have been a distraction from the tax push, according to an administration official with knowledge of the situation.
One of Mr. Cohn’s top policy deputies, Michael Catanzaro, had the authority to block, delay or change the report. But Mr. Catanzaro, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush and former Speaker John A. Boehner, chose instead to follow the lead of the Obama administration by referring the report back to more than a dozen federal agencies for feedback.
That review, according to two people familiar with the process, went relatively smoothly, surprising some scientists who worked on the report who had expected more resistance.
The only significant turbulence, according to one person familiar with the process, came from a midlevel political appointee at the Department of Energy who grilled the report’s authors on changes that had been made to temperature and other climate data over the years. The authors responded by adding a more detailed explanation of their methodology and all of the agencies then gave their approval, the person said.
Mr. Trump was barely aware of the report’s existence, several White House officials said.
Some critics of climate change science attacked the report as the product of holdovers from the Obama administration and chastised the Trump administration for allowing it to be published.
“I’m saddened that they have decided they will let the permanent government, the civil servants, continue down this road without supervision,” said Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group.
We know. Global warming is daunting. So here’s a place to start: 17 often-asked questions with some straightforward answers.
Scientists said the report’s findings were clear.
“This new report simply confirms what we already knew. Human-caused climate change isn’t just a theory, it’s reality,” said Michael E. Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. “Whether we’re talking about unprecedented heat waves, increasingly destructive hurricanes, epic drought and inundation of our coastal cities, the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are upon us. That’s the consensus of our best scientists, as laid bare by this latest report.”
The report says the Earth has set temperature highs for three years running, and six of the last 17 years are the warmest years on record for the globe. Weather catastrophes from floods to hurricanes to heat waves have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980, and the report warns that such phenomena may become common.
“The frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase in the future as global temperature increases,” the report notes. “Extreme precipitation events will very likely continue to increase in frequency and intensity throughout most of the world.”
In the United States, the report finds that every part of the country has been touched by warming, from droughts in the Southeast to flooding in the Midwest to a worrying rise in air and ground temperatures in Alaska, and conditions will continue to worsen.
“This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report states. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
The findings, other researchers said, create an unusual situation in which the government’s policies are in direct opposition to the science it is producing.
“This profoundly affects our ability to be leaders in developing new technologies and understanding how to build successful communities and businesses in the 21st century,” said Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Choosing to be dumb about our relationship with the natural world is choosing to be behind the eight ball.”
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thespearnews-blog · 7 years
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Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
New Post has been published on http://thespearnews.com/2017/08/09/uncertainty-looms-over-kenya-as-raila-tables-evidence-of-vote-rigging-2/
Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
The NASA team secretariat has issued a full statement on their position of the ongoing tallying of votes pinning the electoral body of fraud. Rails Odinga’s camp alleges that while Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017 and that hackers gained entry into the election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson. SpearNews brings you the full statement;
Fellow Kenyans, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1. This election was not always about me. Throughout my travels across the country, I have felt the conviction that it was about the deepest values, which bind us as a nation. I therefore would not be motivated to find in these elections, anything that puts us a part. Elections have a core nation building purpose.
2. I have called you today to have a deep reflection on what I regard as a historic moment. Yesterday, 8th August 2017 Kenyans held the second Election under the Constitution 2010. I bring to you this information, not just as a candidate in the election, but as a citizen who has made some contribution in building this nation. I do this out of an obligation to Kenyans and out of a deep conviction to highest values that ought to bind us.
3. Democratic elections are based on the basic principle that the sovereign are the people. It is not a show for those who stand for election or those who run it. Some persons have taken an audacious attempt to overrule the power of Kenyans to choose their leaders.
4. Out of a scheme organized over apparently longer period, some persons conspired and executed a scheme to deny Kenyans their democratic right to elect their leaders. From the information in our possession, some persons gained entry into the IEBC Election Management Database and assumed the role of our collective sovereign.
5. While Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017, hackers gained entry into our election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson (this is highlighted at page 52 of the document annexed to this statement) .
6. They gained full entry into the IEBC systems, acquired powers to write their will and dwarf the peoples’ voice. They created errors into the IEBC Core Server (as highlighted at Page 2 of the document annexed to this statement) that allowed them to turn a democratic process into a function of a formula.
a. At 12.38pm they introduced several programmes (xpstar.dll version 2009) to execute stored procedures in the library and the memory of the IEBC database intended to manipulate data.
b. At 12.38 pm they loaded an algorithm which is a formula to create a percentage gap of 11 percent between our numbers in the presidential race.
c. At 12.41 pm they switched on the read and write, option on the IEBC 2017 Presidential Election Database giving them power to add or delete anything in the IEBC database. At the same time, they set the Date Correlation Optimization to off. In doing this, they effectively disabled the system from detecting date and time.
d. Again, at 12.41pm they set Auto Update Statistics Async to off for database option IEBC Presidential 2017 (as highlighted at Page 4). In doing, this made sure that records sent from the field would not be reflecting on the system. At 12.41 also the DATABASE OPTION DISABLE BROKER was switched to ON. This was disable the database from tracking the events happening in the database.
e. At 12.41pm they set the RECRUSIVE TRIGGERS to OFF for database IEBC PRESIDENTIAL_2017 (highlighted at page 4 of the attachment). Switching those off ensures that the database would not keep record of anything. Then the QOTED IDENTIFIER was switched to off to easily manipulate the database. Then at the same time they switched the NUMERIC ROUNDABORD to off FOR DATABASE IEBC Presidential 2017 to maintain a fixed figure and avoid rounding off values.
f. At 12.41 pm they set the CONCAT NULL YIELDS NULL to OFF for IEBC_PRESIDENTAIL 2017. This prevents populating the database with null values.
g. The AUTO UPDATES STATISTICS was switched to on to enable updating of values in tandem with their programme.
h. They switched AUTO CREATE STATISTICS on to enable their programme traverse the database updating it with their set and desired values to avoid trace.
7. Within just over twelve hours, this attack on our democracy affected the Presidential Elections in all the 47 Counties both in the live process and the back up: 1. Mombasa (Highllighted at page 5) 2. Kwale (Highlighted at page 7) 3. Kilifi (Highlighted at Page 😎 4. Tana River (Highlighted at Page 9) 5. Lamu (Highlighted at Page 10) 6. Taita Taveta (page 11) 7. Garisa (Page 12) 8. Wajir (Page 13) 9. Marsabi (Page 13/14) 10. Isiolo (Page 14/15) 11. Meru (Page 15/16) 12. Tharaka Nithi County (Pg. 16/17) 13. Embu (Pg. 17&18) 14. Kitui (Pg. 18 & 19) 15. Machakos (Page 19 & 20) 16. Makueni (Page 20 & 21) 17. Nyandarua (Page 21 & 22) 18. Nyeri (Page 22 & 23) 19. Kirinyaga (Page 23 & 24) 20. Muranga (Page 24 & 25) 21. Kiambu (Page 25 & 26) 22. Turkana (Page 26 &27) 23. West Pokot (Page 27 & 28) 24. Samburu (Page 28 & 29) 25. Trans Zoia (Pg. 29 & 30) 26. Uasin Gishu (Pg. 31 & 32) 27. Elgeyo Marakwet (Pg. 32 & 33) 28. Nandi (Pg. 33 & 34) 29. Baringo (Pg. 34 & 35) 30. Laikipia (Pg. 35 & 36) 31. Nakuru (Pg. 36 & 37) 32. Narok (Pg. 37 & 38) 33. Kajiado (Pg. 38 & 39) 34. Kericho (Page 39 & 40) 35. Bomet (Page 40) 36. Kakamega County (Pg. 41 & 42) 37. Bomet County (Pg. 40 & 41) 38. Vihiga (Pg. 42 & 43) 39. Bungoma (Pg. 43 & 44) 40. Busia (Pg. 44 & 45) 41. Siaya (Pg. 44 & 46) 42. Kisumu (Pg. 46 & 47) 43. Homa Bay (47 & 48) 44. Migori (Pg. 48 & 49) 45. Kisii (Pg. 49 & 50) 46. Nyamira (Pg. 50 & 51) 47. Nairobi (Pg. 51).
8. My Countrymen, It has always been common knowledge that Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime was a fraud. This takes Mr. Kenyatta and William Ruto’s fraud on our morality to another level. But you can only cheat a people for so long.
9. This information gives Kenyans the trail of the hacker. How he arrogantly walked into the IEBC database, took control of the entire electoral process, manipulated data, and published façade for a result while we all just wanted to celebrate our democracy.
10. What the IEBC has posted as results of the Presidential Elections is a complete fraud based on a multiplier that fraudulently gave Uhuru Kenyatta votes that were not cast. The electoral fraud and fabrication of results was massive and extensive to the extent that the results of the 47 Counties were manipulated.
11. We have uncovered the fraud. Uhuru must go home. The IEBC must be fully accountable. The will of the people is unstoppable. We had a superior one in the Clouds.
12. Most profoundly, a Kenyan with excellence career in public service had to die. Chris Msando’s blood has been shed on the altar of the thirst for absolute power. As the Officer responsible for elections, Mr. Msando had access as the Super User who has all access and can edit other users or alter data. His logins were used to gain access into the IEBC Core Server and freely alter election data as they pleased forgetting one key element, turning off logging.
13. The 2017 General Election was a fraud. In his words, Uhuru said that he did not need voters to win an election. The hacking has definitely affected the results of the 2017 General Elections is a tragedy of monumental proportions and total disaster. We do not need him as our leader.
GOD BLESS, YOU GOD BLESS KENYA
RAILA AMOLLO ODINGA, EGH NASA COALITION PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
International, News
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Text
Nevada, United States
Interviewee Demographics
Gender:                               Female
Age:                                       Over 21 and less than 90; alternatively, old enough to know better
Marital Status:                  Married on paper; WINO (Wife In Name Only)
Race/Ethnicity:                  Caucasian
General Location:             Las Vegas, Nevada
 1.       What area did you grow up in and did that have an impact on your sexual education?
I was born in Nebraska, but moved to Las Vegas, Nevada for second grade, and have lived here since.
I don’t believe my Midwestern birth had anything to do with my level of sexual education or my beliefs (my parents were not from the area, I left before any of the social mores could be ingrained), but I strongly believe that enduring decades of the Clark County School District’s abysmal excuse for sex ed (starting during the AIDS onslaught, no less!) profoundly shaped my views.
Some people might claim that growing up in Sin City affected my values, but, if anything, I am more conservative/prudish than some people from rural/not-so-sexually-advertised areas. Since I was always exposed to Crazy Girls ads and such from a young age, I grew to ignore them.
2.       What were your family’s beliefs regarding sex?
Polar opposites: sex basically didn’t exist and was never talked about  .  .  . except for catcalls and lewd remarks when some hot broad appeared on the TV, or vague whispered censure or loud guffawing when somebody in the news got pregnant.
Sex was NEVER mentioned, nor was puberty or any form of human development; in fact, I had absolutely no idea what menstruation was until my menarche happened at the age of 7.
I had to investigate the phenomenon on my own (and with no Internet), since the extent of my mother’s involvement was to pull me into her bedroom, close and lock the bedroom door dramatically, back me into the door, put her hands on my shoulders, then demand, “Has anybody been messing with you?!”
Cue clueless-yet-terrified-and-stammering-response.
My mother was in utter denial of the idea that I could be menstruating and continued with that approach for at least five years; after all, only teenagers went through that, and no one ever talked about it.
We were never told about male and female anatomy, either; I guess we were just supposed to figure that out from all of the (sometimes) veiled comments that (mostly) the males in the house made.
Here’s something that will date me: I clearly remember watching The Blue Lagoon on HBO with my father in the room (and he was making crude remarks about Brooke Shields) when the pond/swimming scene came on.  I, being unable to see the screen much in the dark room, asked my father what was going on.  He refused to answer, got offended and just shut up.  I had to figure it out for myself.
You should conclude that parts of the rest of that movie didn’t go over too well, either, and that I didn’t exactly try to watch ANY movies with my father after that.
I learned from several different sources (often from exchanges during arguments or from filed paperwork) that my mother had had a hysterectomy after I was born, ostensibly so she wouldn’t have any more children.  My father almost constantly referred to my mother as “being on the rag” when she was being disagreeable or would not do what he wanted, and he would tell her during almost every argument (when he wasn’t dumping a pot of hot spaghetti water on her head) that she should “shove your rag in your mouth” to gross her out and shut her up.
There was a very definite gender divide, and the level of misogyny was incalculable.
While not strictly related to sex, the following anecdote is related to gender and sexual expectations. I had a sister who was 11 years older than I was; she had just started college when I was 7.  My parents did not want her to go to school, even though she had excellent grades and seemed reasonably intelligent, so they dissuaded her in every way they could think of (e.g., they didn’t pay for her to go, she had to have at least one job to pay her own way, they refused to fill out scholarship or other aid forms, they made her pay significant rent, she never had a car and had to pay to take a bus three hours each way to school, they berated her whenever possible, etc. ) The only reason they eventually “permitted” her to go was because a relative told them that my sister would have a much better chance of catching a husband if she had a year or two of college under her belt, and given her looks, she really needed the help.
Hyeah.
Of course, she was told to avoid all young men for any reason, though, because she’d get a reputation. As what, I was never told.
The boys, on the other hand, were encouraged to do anything or anyone they wanted (as long as it was a female), including the 30-ish bar singer who apparently gave my teenage brother (why the hell was he in a bar???) some form of VD.
Males (married, somewhat less so) could “play around” (or at least leer) at will, but girls (especially wives) could not; bad things (like pregnancy or death) happened to bad girls, and listening to raunchy songs or reading dirty books was bad.
For girls.  Your father having “nudy” magazines is just fine, because, you know, we never talk about those, and, no, that wasn’t a violent screaming match you heard when your mother found your brother’s porn stash and he objected.
I clearly remember an incident with my mother yelling and then muttering at me while Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do With It? was on the radio. She was incensed at me for listening to that trash, as it advocated women having sex without love/women having casual sexual relationships/a woman refusing a man’s honorable advances.  I pointed out to her that the lyrics actually were about a woman in denial that she was deeply in love, trying to convince herself that it was just a physical thing, when it clearly meant a great deal more. Mom didn’t care.
In general, no information about sex, girls do not have sex before marriage but must somehow lure husbands without getting a reputation and then they dutifully have sex as their procreational duty while the husbands’ eyes and other parts wander, and mothers do not talk to their daughters or interfere with their sons.
3.       What are your current family’s beliefs on sex?
Wow, there’s no single or suitable answer for that, particularly as the question is phrased. Do you mean, a) the family that consisted of my husband, me, and our children, at the present time, or, b) what values did my husband and I have or do we have now, or c) what did we, as parents, try to do to educate our children about, or d) did my birth family’s beliefs change?  I think you actually ask parts of those questions later, so I’ll answer them there.
4.       How would you describe your personal stance on sex or sex education?
What are you trying to ask?
I do not personally desire or need to have sex.  I don’t see people as sexually attractive to me personally, although I can appreciate their allure objectively, for others.  My greatest desire is for sleep, and that’s not sexual in nature; if you want something I seem to have an almost-sexual desire for, I’d say a yarn hoard or a mantled black leather Inverness coat (don’t ask for further details, trust me).
I believe that sex should not normally be a casual act; there should be a positive relationship first, and that no one should ever feel forced into it.  There should be open communication and consent by all involved. All parties should be of the legal age of consent, all should use appropriate methods of birth control and disease prevention, no one should be permanently physically damaged, and no animals should be involved, unless they are stuffed versions or Furries, I guess – other than those requirements, I’m pretty laissez faire: what consenting adults or similar do in private quarters without harming anyone is fine by me.
5.       Are you a parent or guardian? If so, how many children do you have?
Yes, I have four or five children, depending on if you count the husband.
To somewhat answer a possible question from above: my husband really had no involvement with the sexual education of our children, unless you count them laughing or screaming when they saw him naked.  Everything was left to me, as, beyond his family’s and his personal discomfort with sexual topics, my husband saw it as not his business to educate four daughters about girl things.
Anecdote about husband’s sexual education: He did not know what the word “virgin” meant until he was 15. And his parents were Catholic. Think about that.
Second anecdote about husband’s sexual education: He “attended” me (that’s a VERY generous term) during the birth of my fourth daughter.  An elder girl (also present) and I clearly remember him saying, “There’s something coming out . . . but it’s not a baby!”  To this day, the sibling remarks that a father of four of his age should have at least known the different orifices by then.
6.       What kind of area do you currently live in and how has it affected access to your or your children’s sexual education? Are there any specific limitations preventing you from getting the sex education you or your children need?
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which means that the Clark County School District’s personnel (all of whom have different opinions/excuses) are supposedly in charge of formal sex ed.
These people have done their damnedest to block all attempts at education, in all areas, but especially anything regarding sex.  See some of the most notable anecdotes below.
7.       Do you believe anything in media shaped your children’s perspectives about sex, gender roles, or body image?
I can’t point to anything specific that had an overwhelming affect in itself, but the widespread use of internet and social media sites in the past decade has really changed what is available, both information and disinformation.
Regarding the CCSD: there was a national news story about a local biddy who didn’t want students to learn anything about sex in their sex ed course, because they should either go to their parents or learn about it online. Great logical response, there.
8.       Do you believe your children are in any way influenced or affected by politics concerning, sex, gender, or body image? If so, what concerns might you have?
I feel that it is very important for all people, but especially females, to be aware of the political and practical ramifications of what is going on, locally, nationally, and globally.
I’ve always tried to have my children see more than one viewpoint on major issues, usually by discussing current events with them and/or making them read online and print stories from sources with different agendas/biases. They could then form their own opinions, which don’t necessarily have to (publicly or privately) agree with mine.
The conflicting images of beauty, morality, gender roles, stereotypes, and many other issues are being brought up as the United States struggles through the Trump Period.  I could write a tome on issues from the last year, but those wouldn’t all be associated with sex ed.
9.       How old do you believe a person should be when they begin their sex education?
That depends on what you define as sex education (maybe you should have asked that or defined what you mean by “sexual education” or “comprehensive sexual education,” so you and the respondents could frame/classify the answers better).
Babies in utero, particularly boys, experience sex education without any intervention at all.
If you want to ask about what point after birth people should start sex education,  consider that everyone gets some sex education from supposedly unrelated topics and from all of the sources around them, including media, spoken words, family attitudes (many times, what is NOT said is more powerful than wat IS said), religion, clothing, housing, everything around them.
I believe that relatives should begin the basics when or even before a child is capable of understanding the terms/concepts (and these may not involve written words at all).  You don’t need to go into excessive detail, but even toddlers can see that diapers or PullUps (indeed, probably everything around them!) are gender-segregated (why?) or that there are parts of their bodies that are acceptably viewed in public or can be touched by other people, and others that are not (e.g., “Do NOT strip in the McDonald’s PlayPlace tube maze!!!”)  The idea of self-respect and consent can be absorbed without mentioning sexual intercourse, religion, morality, or disease.  Proper anatomical terms should be used from the beginning; even though family members may use nicknames in private, they should know the real terms, and not be made to think that they are intrinsically dirty.
I think that the biological and at least legal aspects of sex (since some people get up-in-arms about anyone other than parents teaching morality) need to be taught in schools/semi-neutral ground, particularly since many parents have no idea what they’re talking (or not!) about.
The actual SEX education can also be absorbed from everyday lessons, and this is where the family’s values come in, for better or worse.
Sex is a biological process that should be explained like any other; why would you factually-but-simply explain to a toddler with a skinned knee what blood is and why a cut bleeds, but not mention to a tween girl why (and from where else) she might bleed, or make that natural process seem mysterious and shameful? Should sex be something anyone should have whenever they want, or should the topic of sex and even the entire body and face of females be covered, lest they tempt men?  Well, if you’re going to advocate the latter, then at least inform BOTH genders about the biological facts, THEN add on your values, and tell children WHY you believe that.
As for terminology: I wouldn’t try to explain to a toddler about estrogen and the menstrual cycle or why human chorionic gonadotrophin is important, but I would use age-appropriate language to explain what is happening to their elder sisters or mother and why most of the sixth-grade boys are shorter than girls and tend to carry their books in front of them.
Many of the modern physical/psychological problems of adolescence could be cleared up with a little open, honest communication, and that habit should have started at birth.
10.   Have you, a family member, or a friend broached sexual education to a member of the younger generation? If so, what methods did you use and what was the person’s reaction?
As mentioned, my husband wanted nothing to do with the topic, which was probably for the best, as his giving any explanations probably would have scarred my daughters more.
I tried different approaches, with varying success, for my four daughters.  I don’t think anything really worked, and they’re all going to end up learning (if at all) on their own.
Since I endured menarche at 7 and puberty in a house which shunned information, with no forewarning and no assistance, I was determined that would not happen to my children.  All of them knew the basics of what was going to happen to them before they were 7.
I used books, videos, personal stories, and even trips through the grocery store.  Daily life is an opportunity to learn, and learning should not occur in only one location.
The elder two were within two years of each other, so I basically went through the semi-formal information/lessons once or more with them.  They were generally disinterested and probably don’t remember much, but it was apparently significantly more informative than anything the CCSD provided.
For the younger girls, who were within three years of each other but years separated from the elders, I was more concerned with the problems of the elder girls and was more lazy about the subject; it was easier to get books and internet sources for them, and they grew up hearing the lessons the elder ones endured, so their knowledge was more from osmosis and self-taught than lectured.
Depending on the topic and the mood, the girls could be deathly bored or start screaming for brain bleach.  It depends on how you present the subject.  Humor helps.
11.   If you, or someone else, has provided a sex education to your children, how do you believe it has affected them?
See brain bleach note above.
I think the factual presentation of information, integrated throughout daily life and through ad hoc and specific lessons, has made my daughters generally blasé about sex, which could be good or bad.  They still have adolescent worries (which is bad, considering two of them are now old enough to see Thunder from Down Under), but the mystery (the bad/addictive kind) is not so alluring.
Then again, I had my eldest read some “romance” novels when she was 14, to counteract a popular teen book series of the time, so she now has some very weird ideas about male vampires.  And other things.  I think I’m more worried than she is.
12.   Do you believe that comprehensive sex education should be taught in schools? If so, who or what kind of person do you believe would be most qualified?
“Comprehensive” means very different things to different people.
The biological and legal aspects, consent, physical and emotional protection, yes, those are the absolute minimum that should be taught, as any other biological or civics subjects needed to be a functioning adult should be.
Different viewpoints, different attitudes, LGBT+ issues, absolutely.
The problem is, HOW comprehensive do you mean, and when?
What I’ve just mentioned is far beyond what the vocal people in this area would accept, particularly for elementary school children.
A school nurse, a health teacher, or someone with factual knowledge (not the long-term sub who’s supposedly teaching English but says “aks” all the time) would best be qualified, but the CCSD requires “qualification” now to teach middle school sex ed, and the local teacher has no clue what he’s doing and keeps being absent for the lectures on sex, so …
13.   If your child attends a public, private, or charter school that provides a sexual education, what has your and their experience been like with the institution(s) involved?
I could genuinely write a book on this topic.
In general, the CCSD does not want students to learn, they want them to proceed through 13 years of cattle-car daycare, and they sure as Hell don’t want them to learn anything about sex.  Even mentioning the topic obliquely results in pregnant (ha!) pauses, political stammering, stonewalling, and denial.
Some of the more notable anecdotes:
My CCSD sex ed experiences began in the middle school PE orientation, when the gym teacher stage-whispered in front of the whole gym (with the boys in the next bleacher section) about what to do when we were “being M” (dramatic pause, eyes skittering about) and how to get out of the required showers in that case.   Of course, she couldn’t explain what she meant, because the boys might hear.  ???
Tenth grade health required ONE DAY (one class period, less than one hour) to be on sex ed.  It was “taught” by an assistant football coach/driver ed coach with no degree or even formal training on the subject; he also didn’t speak English well.  He was clearly uncomfortable and couldn’t even pronounce medical terms; he resorted to (incorrectly) using slang, and ended up telling us to read the photocopied information for ourselves.  I missed one question on the test, even though I had to wade through factual errors and slang on the test to guess what the answers were supposed to be, because I didn’t know the street number of the address of the Health District VD Testing Office on Shadow Lane.  Yup, that’s what was emphasized.  And we STILL weren’t told what sex was; we were in tenth grade, didn’t we know already??
In my senior year, all of the seniors (because, of course, younger students weren’t having sex!) were required to endure a day-long seminar on HIV/AIDS/VD.  However, anyone who was 18 or over, or anyone whose parent objected, could get the day off. As I was the first person in the State of Nevada to be emancipated from my parents, I signed myself out of the class, and purposely walked by the window-walled classroom and waved at the miserable occupants.
First daughter: Near the end of 5th Grade, for weeks, she was morose, depressed, closed down.  I finally pulled her aside and asked what the problem was. At length, she told me about how she heard (only parts of the lecture, as it was almost whispered by the school nurse, and no one could hear anything) that she would suddenly start bleeding when she got to 6th Grade, and she would have to wear a badge on her pants to tell everyone.  No one explained why she would be bleeding, or why she’d have to tell everyone, or what she would have to do; she was terrified and confused.  When I explained that she had probably heard “pad” instead of “badge”, and I reminded her about the menstrual cycle, she looked up, shocked, and asked, “Why couldn’t they just have used the words you’ve been telling me for years?  Why make such a big deal out of it, keep it a secret?”
She was supposed to have comprehensive sex ed in 8th Grade Health, mandated to be taught by a state-certified teacher.  The teacher was notably absent four times that year – all on the scheduled days the sex ed curriculum was supposed to have been taught (and it was only one day long!)  He always left the substitute teacher with dittoes on other topics, with replicative fade and factual and spelling errors; the sex talk was never given.
I was the only parent in a high school of 2500 students to ask to see the sex ed materials before the material was given to my child.  I was impressed that the nurse had a breast self-exam fake chest, but dismayed that it was kept away from boys and not used in the class (hey, if the girls are squeamish about examining themselves, the boys aren’t; teach them!  And, yes, men do get breast cancer).  The textbook never mentioned sex or how sperm met egg, yet the photocopied packets for class had pictures of opened-to-camera diseased crotches that so grossed out students that I guess the abstinence-only approach was somewhat successful – for a few minutes.  They sickened and scarred my daughter.
On the first day of one health class, my daughter was told that, since the students were in high school, they all knew what sex was, so the teacher wouldn’t have to go over that.
Funny thing was, the girls started whispering and chatting when the topic of the age of consent came up – they had no idea there was a minimum legal age, what consent was, or even that they could say no.
Second daughter:  Online health course also never mentioned sex, but at least didn’t have diseased pictures; however, it focused on shaming those who had sex, and the main topic/project was about the costs of having a baby/setting up a nursery (without mentioning how the baby was made), probably as a deterrent.  There was also no discussion of breastfeeding, and the project made some extremely outdated and dangerous assumptions.
Third daughter:  In her 5th Grade, I was the only parent who asked to see the corporation-sponsored videos being shown; I was questioned about why I would possibly want to see the boys’ or combined-gender versions of the films, as my daughter would never see them.
The volunteers who photocopied the gender-limited, color-coded (pink = girl, blue = boy) information packets switched the information, so girls took home advice that they should wash their scrotum every day.  I still want to know what the boys got.  Principal unhappy.
She wanted to take the high school health class early, but, after over six months of delay and excuses and numerous rounds of phone tag, I was given the (not written anywhere) rule that students can’t take the class early, and that, despite her previous high school credits and interactions with high school and college students, the class was not suitable for someone her age.  After all, she might get into a chat with an older teenager, and discuss some adult themes.  How dare she!
Fourth daughter:  5th Grade highlight was a video/animation about how HIV was rolling onto a beach from the ocean, and the lifeguards were T-cells.  The video never mentioned how a person gets HIV, how to prevent it, nothing that stuck, at least – everyone was just staring at the cartoons.  There was also a video with something about some part of the body called an ovary, that it was the size of some nut, and it did something, but the girls weren’t taught what or why.  Sex and reproduction were never mentioned.  However, they did get the corporate pack of pads/supplies from Always, and that had a pamphlet.
She was thrilled to learn that 6th Grade biology had a module on sexual vs. asexual reproduction, but was again disappointed that the unit never mentioned what sex was or what the sex cells were or what that had to do with reproduction.
The stonewalling continued with this child, with the principal of Nevada Learning Academy/Virtual High School claiming that it was inappropriate for my daughter to take Health early, for various excuses that lasted for months, and finally culminated in the excuse that the class talked about human trafficking, which was inappropriate for a 10-year-old girl.  Funny, the local media ran a story THAT week about an 11-year-old girl being forced to prostitute herself on the streets – why would you NOT want a 10-year-old to know about human trafficking, and how to avoid it??? I also talked about the lessons I’d given her on female genital mutilation, circumcision, birth control, and abortion, but that was irrelevant, as was the fact that I had signed the permission form – the principal was personally uncomfortable with those topics and the political ramifications of letting my daughter into the class, so my daughter couldn’t hear about them.
Meanwhile, she has two college-aged sisters taking sex-related courses, a 14-year old sister exploring her sexuality/orientation, and a mother who lets her read anything she can comprehend, which, since her reading level is Level 13/College and Career, is pretty much anything she wants.  We’re considering having her bring in the PBH 429 textbook (Public Health 429, a senior-level course on Education for Human Sexuality) to her reading class, just for fun.
14.   If there was anything you would like to add or remove to your children’s sex education, what would it, or they, be?
I would have wanted to add a great deal more information, but life got in the way.
I will never feel that I did an adequate job, but I hope that my daughters continue to learn and be open to learning, rather than ignoring the world and living in their own little bubbles, however permeable they are.
15.   BONUS QUESTION: Is there anything else you would like to add or address about sex education or on this interview?
You really need to learn how to better construct a survey or a list of interview questions.  It would be helpful to have at least demographic questions and topic/project information at the beginning, along with a very neutral explanation of what the project is about and what the information will be used for (keep in mind that how you phrase that could heavily skew respondents’ answers).  The type and composition of your questions results in confusion, repetition, omission, and frustration.  I was reminded of several things I would have liked to mention that were extremely on-topic (to what I THOUGHT, before I got the questions, the topic was supposed to be), but I was never asked about them, and I forgot about them as I went on. The topics of the questions do not proceed logically.  There was a major emphasis on being a parent, making most of the questions irrelevant to those without children.  If this was even a semi-formal project, with more than a few respondents or a need to tabulate or classify results, these questions would be unusable, unless all of your respondents added in responses about the same issues without communicating with each other.  You could have chosen to include ranged-answer or other types of questions to help make the answers more usable (e.g., “At what age did you have your first formal sex ed course/session in a school (if any)?)  Overall, EVERY question needs to be reworked for this to be usable as anything other than very initial social research.
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skinnyloves-blog · 4 years
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MOSHIACH COMES TO TOWN (HQ)
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the vilna gaon dons beggar’s clothes and goes out of town to do penance. on the way home there are some strange happenings. original music & images added to a retelling of the traditional jewish story. TO VIEW OR DOWNLOAD ALL OF MY VIDEOS, PLUS 1500 PAGES OF MY EXPLANATORY ESSAYS (ALL AT NO CHARGE) PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE: franklynwepner.com. ALSO PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH ME ANY COMMENTS ABOUT MY WORK: [email protected]. IN THE LISTING OF VIDEOS THE LETTERS (HQ) REFER TO A HIGHER QUALITY VERSION OF THE VIDEO, WHICH IS AVAILABLE TO YOU IF YOUR COMPUTER CAN HANDLE IT. How can I justify the wild associative leaps that I make in this video? For example, by substituting Netanyahu for the Vilna Gaon, and Barak Obama for Moshiach? The answer is that I am following the formula of Nachman of Breslav, when he writes, “my Torah is completely behinot (hebrew: “associations”). A string of intuitive associations that generates a work salad, such as Nachman’s “Likutei Moharan” (hebrew: “collected essays”) is based on inductive rather than deductive logic. Inductive logic was taught by Francis Bacon and Georg Hamann within the Christian tradition, and no doubt Nachman found similar sources within the Jewish tradition he studied. What follows is my own essay about how inductive thinking is the key to understanding Nachman of Breslav. Since most of my videos also are constructed inductively, it is an important essay to read if you wish to make sense of what I am trying to do in the videos you have here on the net. ……………………………………. ….
FRANKLYN WEPNER [email protected] June 5, 2009 LM 4: BACON, HAMANN AND NACHMAN CONTENTS (1) INTRODUCTION (2) BACON TO HAMANN TO NACHMAN (3) BACON AND PERLS (4) LM 4 (5) HAMANN ON LANGUAGE: (a) imagery (“bilder”) (b) analogy (c) parataxis (d) paradox (e) multiple levels of language (f) affective terminology (6) CONCLUSION REFERENCE: “JOHANN GEORG HAMANN, BY JAMES O’FLAHERTY (1) INTRODUCTION FW: The Breslaver Hassidic movement as it is set up and operates today is an introverted sect, in contrast to the Chabad Hassidic movement which is set up and operates today as an extroverted sect. Breslavers tend to keep to themselves, while Chabadniks drive around town in Mitzvah Tanks seeking wayward Jews as potential recruits. But opposite as the two sects are in that respect, one thing they have in common is an aversion to “philosophy” in its traditional academic sense. Both sects condemn “philosophy” as “chochmot chizoniot” (external wisdom) or “avodah zorah” (strange work). even through ironically they both embody philosophy in the most profound manner possible. Breslav is largely Jewish neo-Platonism, while Chabad is largely Jewish rationalist Aristotelianism. However, since, of course, their educational curriculums contain no Philosophy 101 course. they pay the price of ignorance and intolerance as a result. The Chabad press, for example, once published Nissan Mindel’s excellent “The Philosophy of Chabad”, but today that book is almost impossible to find, and Chabad has no plans to republish it. The book is being supressed most likely because in that book Mindel contends that Chabad is ideologically within the tradition of Moses Maimonides’ “Guide For The Perplexed”, which, as everybody except Chabadniks themselves know, is ideologically within the tradition of Aristotle. Breslavers are even more anti-rational than Chabadniks, since their theory base is primarily neo-Platonic mysticism. Merely mention the word Plato at a Breslaver shul on the Sabbath, and you can be sure nobody will invite you to dinner! Or go to a Breslaver mikvah after demonstrating your philosophical insights concerning the writings of Nachman, and there is a good chance that after you emerge from the holy waters you will not find the clothes you hung up! FW: Another price that Hasidic sects pay for ignoring their intellectual roots is mistranslating the writings of their own originators. The originators, fortunately, were profound philosophers, but much of what they are philosophizing is wasted on their disciples, who are preachers of the sect rather than teachers of the Word. Preachers of a sect aim at building up the sect by glorifying their colleagues, in this case the “tzaddikim” (Hebrew: pius ones) or “talmid chachams” (Hebrew: wise students, students of wisdom) of the local congregation. Teachers, on the other hand, have a primary loyalty to the subject matter they teach, i.e., to the truth. By translating the phrase “talmid chacham” as “wise student” or “Torah scholar” rather than as “student of wisdom”, the deeper reference of the word “chochmah” (wisdom) to the right pillar of the tree of life, or inductive logic, goes into the trash can, and we end up with the notion that anybody who sect leaders designate as “wise student” or “Torah scholar” is thereby empowered to serve as a spiritual guide. But preachers are not necessarily teachers, and so most talmid chacham’s today are serving the needs of the sect rather than propagating the message of the sect founder. Thus, for example, Nachman’s emphasis on the individual’s search for God by “hitbod’dut” (being alone with God) is these days transformed into a typical cult emphasis on groupie gatherings, mob hysteria, guru adoration, nonsense “bubbeh maysehs” (Yiddish: grandmother stories), 18th century sect uniforms and scribbling the name of Nachman of Breslav on public buildings. Have you heard, for example, the bubbeh mayseh about how Nachman himself is sitting up there somewhere near God’s footstool sending letters or emails to the chosen few?! What ever happened to the basic belief of Judaism that God is One, not two or three or whatever? FW: But fools step in where angels fear to tread, as the saying goes, and so this essay is all about the roots of the Breslaver Hasidism in the neo-Platonic tradition as this was modified by Francis Bacon in the scientific renaissance of the 16th century. As if this topic is not heretical enough, I will in this work find much of the support for my contentions in the writings of a Christian theologian whose writings appeared in Europe not far from the doorstep of Nachman, fifty years or so before Nachman wrote his main work, his “Collected Essays” (Hebrew: Likutei Moharan). Now, I am not at all claiming here that Nachman plagiarised Johann Georg Hamann, since it is extremely unlikely that a person growing up in the communities that Nachman did had direct contact with the work of Hamann. But the mere historical fact that the two authors published books dealing with similar topics in a similar manner in the same historical period certainly suggests that they both were tapping parallel Christian and Jewish threads of the religious world that flourished in 18th and 19th century Eastern Europe. One can muse that perhaps Nachman during his occasional trips to Lemburg for medical treatment or to dialogue with members of the Haskalah movement thriving there did come upon a Yiddish translation of something by Hamann or by one of the followers of Hamann, but to date there is little basis for such fantasies. FW: My goals in this essay are modest. I will make use of an excellent commentary upon the work of Hamann by James O’Flaherty, his “Johann Georg Hamann”, Twayne Publishers, and merely demonstrate how the same six key ideas which, he maintains, underlie the work of Hamann can be used as a royal highway to quickly penetrate what appears to be in the writings of Nachman of Breslav an impenetrable hermeneutic jungle. As a prelude to my interweaving of Hamann and Nachman, I will tap a bit of the philosophical tradition which underlies both authors, in particular the work of Francis Bacon who lived in the 16th century. Why Francis Bacon? Because even though Hamann and Nachman are often cited as the epitome of anti-rationalism, yet at the heart of both authors is a sort of logic which is quite profoundly rational. We will contrast inductive logic, what Bacon calls concrete, analogical logic based upon juxtaposing ideas, with deductive logic, which is abstract, mathematical, systematic, and based upon arranging ideas in syllogisms. Once we grasp this distinction between the two types of logic, we will understand why in essays that embody reasoning of the inductive sort, Hamann and Nachman can tell us – without fibbing – to avoid like the plague “philosophy” or “reason” and rely upon faith. The two theologians simply are splitting hairs between induction (which they like) and deduction (which they do not like). They mystify us, however, by calling deduction “philosophy” and induction “kabbalah” or “Judaism or “the Word of God”. But obviously any philosophy or theology worth the name must incorporate both sorts of thinking. So let’s stop mixing up apples and pears and recognize both of them as fruit! The Word of God is smart enough to encompass both the left pillar of sefirot (deduction, differentiation, creation, the downward path), and the right pillar of sefirot (induction, integration, redemption, the upward path back to God). We are dealing, after all, with the dialectical tradition of mainstream Judaism, within which Chabad appeals to folks that stress the left pillar, while Breslav appeals to folks that stress the right pillar. For the Catholics analogous slots are occupied by the Dominicans (rationalists) and the Franciscans (pietists), respectively. O’Flaherty says it well: O 87. A superficial analysis of Hamann’s prose may result in the conclusion that its all too frequent obscurity is rooted in sheer irrationalism. This is, however, by no means the case. Its obscurity derives for the most part from an excessive use of intuitive reason rather than from true irrationalism – quite a different matter. Having seen to what extent Hamann is committed to intuitive or analogical reasoning, while at the same time rejecting the abstractions of the Enlightenment, we can more readily understand why he alternates between praise and vilification in his references to reason. Thus, when he makes such statements as “Faith has need of reason just as much as reason needs faith”, “Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion,” As soon as one knows what reason is, all conflict with revelation ceases, since Hamann is obviously referring to what he considers the legitimate use of reason.” FW: Most of the essays that constitute Nachman’s Likutei Moharan anthology would serve as examples of Nachman’s use of intuitive reason, of induction, and I have here merely selected LM 4 arbitrarily from the list. Like the others, the overall structure of LM 4 consists of a Houdini magical demonstration of how just about anything can be seen as an aspect of anything else, without losing the encompassing subordination of particulars to emerging generalities. The longer the process of finding associations and aspects (Hebrew: “behinot”) goes on, the more the series of particular items coalesces into higher and higher levels of integration and encompassing general ideas. But let’s now zoom in and be specific. On the side of the particulars Nachman cites at the outset a Talmudic yarn calculated to boggle any deductively oriented mind and delight the imagination of most 5 year olds. Here is the Talmudic fable. LM 4:10 Rabbah bar bar Chanah recounted: One time we were traveling on a ship and we saw this fish in whose nostrils was sitting a mudeater. The fish died and the water tossed it about and cast it ashore. It destroyed sixty cities. Sixty cities then ate from it. Sixty cities salted its flesh. And from one eyeball they filled three hundred kegs with oil. When we returned after twelve months time, we saw them sawing planks from its bones with which to rebuild those cities. (Bava Batra 73b) FW: And on the other end of the chain of exegesis in LM 4 Nachman presents his final inductively derived generalization. LM 4:11. This (the above Talmudic story) is the explanation of the opening verse: “I am God your Lord Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” FW: The entire essay LM 4 is a string of associations and analogies that begins with the ship, the fish, the mudeater, the cities, the oil and the bones and gradually arrives at a level of intuitive wisdom sufficiently profound to qualify as an important contribution to our grasp of the meaning of God’s role in the Exodus saga. You will see, of course, that during this intuitive, inductive process of “behinot” there are very few abstract, deductive syllogisms of the sort “if A and B, therefore C”. The process is mostly intuitive leaps of the sort, “this is an aspect of that, and that is an aspect of something else”. My project, then, outrageous as it might appear to be at the outset, is to apply an account of the methodology of Christian theologian Johann Georg Hamann, in an effort to decode the compositional procedure which Nachman has followed in this LM 4 essay. First I will set out some simple logical rules that Francis Bacon gave us in the 16th century, and then I will present a grid of six linguistic techniques which, according to O’Flaherty, 18th century Romanticism overlaid on Bacon’s framework. In a word, 16th century Bacon plus 18th century Romanticism together give us a key to decode much of the vast, profound, Scriptural and kabbalistic tapestry which is the work of either Hamann or Nachman of Breslav. I am grateful to O’Flaherty for making these connections clear to me and encourage you also to profit from the work of an excellent teacher by reading his book. Just substitute Moses for Jesus as you read and your Jewish ego will be immune to indoctrination! (2) FROM BACON TO HAMANN TO NACHMAN Here then, to start off, is a brief chapter summarizing the contribution of Francis Bacon concerning these matters. My text is simply a presentation of the succinct summary given us by Vatican priest Frederick Copleston in his “History of Philosophy”, Volume III. But Hamann and Nachman of Breslav are figures of the late18th century, and so in their work a tradition of Romantic style exegesis and poetry overlays and masks the underlying rigorous logical foundation provided by Bacon. Bacon’s theory of induction is the philosophical seed of which Hamann and Nachman are glorious flowerings. For what appears in their work to be the exact opposite of scientific rigor is indeed, as I shall demonstrate here, a meticulously devised associative network of the most profound logical interconnections. Let us begin, therefore, with the basic logical principles of Francis Bacon, which are spelled out quite clearly by Copleston in his presentation of the influence of the new Renaissance sciences on philosophy. C 289. As a preliminary, one may remind oneself of the two elements of scientific method, namely the observational and inductive side and the deductive and mathematical side. The first aspect of scientific method, namely observation of the empirical data as a basis for induction and for discovering causes, was stressed by Francis Bacon. C 300. [According to Bacon] the purpose of science is the extension of the dominion of the human race over nature; but this can be achieved only by a real knowledge of nature; we cannot obtain effects without an accurate knowledge of causes . . . The syllogism (deduction) consists of propositions; and propositions consist of words; and words express concepts. Thus, if the concepts are confused and if they are the result of over hasty abstraction, nothing which is built upon them is secure. Our only hope lies in true induction. . . finding the truth may proceed from sense and the perception of particulars to immediately attainable axioms and thence gradually and patiently, to more general axioms. . . this is the true way. The mind proceeds from a careful and patient examination of particulars to the interpretation of nature. . . . Induction starts with the operation of the senses; but it requires the co-operation of mind, though the mind’s activity must be controlled by observation . . . Bacon rejects the syllogism on the ground that induction must take its rise in the observation of things, of particular facts or events, and must stick to them as closely as possible. The logicians wing their way at once to the most general principles and deduce conclusions syllogistically . . . In induction we proceed in the opposite direction to that in which we proceed in deduction. C 302. But to attain a certain knowledge of nature is not so easy or simple as it may sound at first hearing, for the human mind is influenced by preconceptions and prejudices which bear upon our interpretation of experience and distort our judgments. It is necessary, then, to draw attention to “the idols and false notions” which inevitably influence the human mind and render science difficult of attainment unless one is aware of them and warned against them. Hence Bacon’s famous doctrine of “the idols”. There are four main types, the idols of the tribe, the idols of the cave or den, the idols of the market place and the idols of the theater . . . (a) The “idols of the tribe” are those errors, the tendency to which is inherent in human nature and which hinder objective judgment. For example, man is prone to rest content with that aspect of things which strikes the senses . . .”for what a man would like to be true, to that he tends to give credence”. Further the human mind is prone to indulge in abstractions, and it tends to conceive as constant what is really changing or in flux. (b) The “idols of the den” are the errors peculiar to each individual, arising from his temperament, education, reading and the special influences which have weighed with him as an individual. These factors lead him to interpret phenomena according to the viewpoint of his own den or cave. (See Plato’s metaphor of the cave.) (c) The “idols of the market place” are errors due to the influence of language . . . Sometimes words are employed when there are no corresponding things. (d) The “idols of the theater” are the philosophical systems of the past, which are nothing better than stage plays representing unreal worlds of man’s own creation. C 305. The best demonstration is experience. But it is necessary to make a distinction. Mere experience is not enough . . . True experience is planned, . . . proceeding by an orderly and methodically inductive process. What, then, is true induction, positively considered? Human power is directed to or consists in being able to generate a new form in a given nature. (Read: a new gestalt in a new situation, here and now.) From this it follows that human science is directed to the discovery of the forms of things. Form does not refer to the final cause; the form or formal cause of a given nature is such that “given the form, the nature infallibly follows”. It is the law which constitutes a nature. . . . the primary task is to prepare a “sufficient and good natural and “experimental history” based on the facts (Read: what Hegel labels an “objective history” in contrast to our subjective illusions.) . . . These tables having been constructed, the work of induction really begins (Read: what Nachman is referring to when he says, “my Torah is entirely behinot”, i.e., a string of associations and interpretations.) . . . which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at. (For example, the “existential message of the dream”, which emerges at the end of a three hour gestalt dreamwork session, which is what Maimonides labels the unripe fruit of prophecy now ripened into a Word of God.) (3) BACON AND PERLS FW: But before we jump into the great ocean, the turbid waters of inductive interpretations and Romantic theological poetry that is the work of Hamann and Nachman, let us stop at the banks of the ocean and examine a rather clearcut version of the same process, a contemporary example cut from the same cloth. I refer to the Gestalt Therapy lore of Frederick Perls, which while it makes no pretense of being the basis of a religious sect, probably has attracted more devotees worldwide than the opus of either Hamann or Nachman of Breslav. Perls gives the seeker after truth a rather simple task to explore. He tells me, his gestalt therapy client, to talk about what pops into my awareness and to stay in the here and now. Focusing this process on a dream raises the efficiency level, but just shooting the breeze also will yield useful results. Now, if I accept Fritz’s invitation and set out on this verbal monologue, a mysterious sequence of events is likely to unfold. As I listen to what comes out of my mouth and respond to those sounds, a sort of instantaneous feedback system is generated. In fact, it is genesis in the most profound biblical sense. For lo and behold, I begin to create a world. I am operating, as says Maimonides in his “Guide For The Perplexed”, “in the image of God”. For I am copying the manner in which God does His creating. We need to distinguish the path of Fritz Perls from the path of Sigmund Freud in these matters. For if the therapist has me lie down while I do my dreamwork monologue, and if he hides behind me and limits much of his function to being a tape recorder documenting my output, then the setting is Freudian. But if, on the other hand, the therapist takes an active role, helping me to take responsibility for my actions and deal actively with the impediments to truth which come up along the way, then we have the Gestalt approach. From the theological point of view, the crucial element that Perls and Freud share here is that language is the medium for a truth search, and that man speaking is paralleling God creating His world. FW: Entering even further into theological analogies to psychological processes, do we not have here also the unfolding of the love affair of Adam and Eve, as I, the subject, the kabbalistic First Adam, emanate language, the object, Eve from my own being and then precede to constantly impregnate it/her with my ideas as my dreamwork monologue goes on and on? Just label me, as Nachman does, the Talmid Chacham, wise student learning as I go along, and label my verbal output “my world”, and we have the makings of a kabbalistic mystical system, with chochmah (Hebrew: wisdom) impregnating binah (Hebrew: building a world) with ideas. In the neo-Platonic version of the kabbalistic tradition, all this is unfolds on the level of pure Platonic ideas, known as “sefirot”. The Hebrew word “sefirah” means “number”, as in the use of numbers by Pythagoras in Greek philosophy to relate theological truth. In terms of the Romanticism of the 18th century I am, furthermore, during the course of my Gestalt monologue generating “poetry”, in the sense of an emotionally grounded form of linguistic action. Returning to Francis Bacon, let me repeat the previous quote and we will explore what else we may learn from it. C: Human science is directed to the discovery of the forms of things. Form does not refer to the final cause; the form or formal cause of a given nature is such that “given the form, the nature infallibly follows”. It is the law which constitutes a nature. . . . The primary task is to prepare a “sufficient and good natural and “experimental history” based on the facts. . . These tables having been constructed, the work of induction really begins . . which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at. FW: Let us interweave these words of Bacon with the Gestalt therapy monologue. The monologue of here and now verbal expression is part of the flow of here and now contact experiences. These experiences constitute what Bacon labels an objectively real “experimental history based on the facts”, and what Hegel labels an “objective history” of real experiences. Then, “these tables having been constructed the work of induction really begins, which is not completed until a positive affirmation is arrived at”. The positive affirmation that is the result of the work of induction is a new idea which is the result of “Platonic collection”, i.e., gestalt formation or a figure emerging from a ground here and now. In Gestalt dreamwork, this could be, for example, the “existential message of the dream” that might occur to the protagonist after three hours of exploring his objective history in the here and now dreamwork process. The protagonist is working his way up from specific concrete contact moments, weak gestalts (Perls), low level monads (Leibniz), some would say angels (Maimonides), towards more and more encompassing strong gestalts, monadologies, some would say archangels. Maimonides labels them “cherubim”, since the Hebrew root is “karov” (near), and cherubim are closer to the oneness that is God than are ordinary angels. The new idea emerging from the void of not knowing the answer is what Bacon labels “the form of things”, the “law which constitutes its nature”. He is referring to the distinction between matter and form, the form being the idea which is the gestalt or pattern which man imposes upon the items of his sensory and motor experience. Nachman says in LM 1:1, “The Jew must always focus on the inner intelligence/idea of every thing, and bind himself to the wisdom and inner idea that is to be found in each thing. This so that the idea which is in each thing may enlighten him, that he may draw closer to God through that thing.” We already have here the logical seed upon which Nachman built his LM 4, but as a transition into the text of Nachman let us see what his contemporary Hamann has to say concerning similar matters. Hamann is a convenient bridge here, linking Francis Bacon with Nachman of Breslav. O: While it is correct to say that Hamann stands in the empirical tradition of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Hume, the important qualification must be added that for him experience is always crystalized in language. There exists, of course, an inner correlate of the objective facts of language, the invisible essence of our soul which is conjoined with the outer correlate by an “incomprehensible bond”, which he describes, invoking religious terminology, as a “sacrament”. But whatever the nature of the inner correlate, it is the evidence of the objective facts of language to which Hamann appeals, and from which he draws inferences as to the nature of mind and of reality. “I concern myself with the letter and with what is visible and material” . . . In his view God is above all a speaking God, indeed an Author: “God reveals Himself; the Creator of the World is a Writer”. It is always God’s Word which evokes our rational powers in the first place. Hamann employs a sexual metaphor in this connection, stating that our reason must be “impregnated” by the “seed of the divine Word”. FW: It is this mysterious freely associating monologue in the here and now, this mix of thinking and speaking unimpeded by the distractions of everyday cause and effect logic, which is the open sesame which for inductive “science” (from the Latin, “scire”, to know) unleashes something analogous to The Word. C: Such unity as man possesses is mysterious in its origins, and derives from a source which lies outside of himself. Only through the individual positive response to the Logos can man’s collective powers of faith, passion, and reason be brought into harmony. Otherwise they fall all too easily into strife with one another. For Hamann God is the One in whom all opposites coincide, and it is this principle of the coincidentia oppositorum which, embodied in the Logos and manifested above all in the “form of a servant” in which Christ appeared, which succeeds in reconciling the opposites within the human psyche. . . . “Here on this earth there is no possibility of a metamorphosis or transfiguration into the divine nature, but only the old message of rebirth”. FW: Jews do not need the allusion to Jesus as “the form of a servant”. In LM 4, which we are considering here, Nachman attributes to Moses the same function. LM 4:9. This is: “No man knows [the burial place of Moses] – even Moses did not know. For he was negated in Ein Sof (Hebrew: God as Endless). All this was at his death. However, also during his lifetime Moses certainly stripped away all corporeality and attached himself to the Light of Ein Sof. But then, this stripping was in an aspect of “the living creatures ran [from being an ego] and returned [to being an ego](Ezekiel 1:14). This is because the Holy One desires our service, as is written (Yom Kippur Liturgy), “You desire praise from mounds of dust, from lumps of clay.” FW: Hamann, writing only a few years before Nachman, created his own theology by portraying language as a powerful creative or destructive force in the world. We need not now grope further back into the history of religion to find other predecessors of Hamann and Nachman. It is sufficient to recognize that the two authors here under scrutiny are drinking from the same fountain, with some minor variations. One of these is the question whether we are to label the holistic embodiment of language the Jesus function or the Moses function. We will ignore that battle, but now we are ready to appreciate Nachman’s contribution in LM 4 to this linguistically inspired tradition of the theology of The Word. As we read, we will keep in mind (a) that YHVH and the Talmid Chakham (wise student, Torah Scholar) are standing in for the subject, the Divine Author learning as he creates His world, and (b) that Elohim is standing in for the object, the world being created, and (c) that the Kingdom of God, Malkhut d’Kedushah, is standing in for the language of the dreamwork monologue on the material level. The problem, for Nachman in particular and for Romanticism in general, is that language in its pure, primordial form of “poetry” has been co-opted by the system of deductive logic and lost its original roots in inductive logic. For Nachman, as for Hamann, it is only the complete system encompassing deduction and induction in a higher synthesis which will give us a “foretaste of the World to Come”, the messianic idea, and get us out of Egyptland. This is a longing, paradoxically, on the one hand for the messianic future and on the other hand for the pre-Industrial middle ages of shtetl life. Nachman is talking primarily about a Gestalt or hitbod’dut (being alone with myself and talking to God) monologue here, even though he provides a second level of meaning for those not privy to philosophy and linguistics, and for those who need an excuse to follow Torah Scholars and other gurus blindly. For as a matter of fact, (a) hitbod’dut and (b) confessing in front of a Torah Scholar, and (c) doing a Gestalt Therapy monologue, all mean the same thing, given the manner in which the concepts are used in Breslav theology. FW: Confessing in front of a Wise Student means doing my Gestalt Therapy monologue in the manner of a feedback loop and carefully (as the “subject”) paying attention myself to what comes out of my mouth (the “object”). Just substitute “God is listening” for “I am listening” or “the wise student is listening” and this will be clear. Basically, it is The Author, the Creator, the Gestalt client, who is listening to Him creating, and this feedback loop by itself re-animates the dead forms, the selfinterrupting non-creative speech habits and manipulations, which man in his Fallen state tends to spew forth. In the down-to-earth jargon of Fritz Perls, instead of verbalizing my usual elephantshit in defense of my ego games, I need to emanate poetry, sacred truth from my true source. What clearly distinguishes Breslav pietism from Chabad rationalism is the emphasis on being alone before God, me being immersed in my monologue and relying on faith, rather than me being part of a vast pyramid of scholars and relying on guidance from a Jewish pope on the top of the pyramid. The Catholic parallel here is the Dominican sect versus the Franciscan sect, or more generally the Catholics versus the Protestants. (4) LM 4 FW: Here, then, is the beginning of Nachman’s LM 4, as it is published by the official Breslaver translators. Let’s immerse ourselves in Nachman’s poetically inspired prose for a few moments, to get a sense of the overwhelming assault to which our rational, deductive faculties is subjected in such an experience. PROLOGUE. I am God your Lord, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. (Exodus 20:2) LM 4:1. When a person knows that everything that happens to him is for his benefit, this perception is a foretaste of the World to Come. As said, “When He is YHVH, I will praise His word; when He is Elohim, I will praise His word” (Psalms 56:11). And this perception is a foretaste of the World to Come, as our Sages taught: “On that day God shall be one and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9). They asked: Is He now not one? And our Sages answered: At present the blessing “Who is good and beneficent” is recited over good, whereas “the truthful Judge” is recited over bad. But in the Future it will be entirely “Who is good and beneficent”(Pesachim 50a). The holy name YHVH and the holy name Elohim will be totally one. LM 4:2. Now it is impossible for a person to grasp this perception except when he uplifts Malkhut d’Kedushah (Kingdom of Holiness) from its exile among the nations. For presently, malkhut and rule the nations. This is the reason . They nurse from the aspect of Malkhut, which is called Elohim, as is written (Psalms 74:122) “Elohim is my King from long ago”. But when a person raises Malkhut from among the nations, it is the fulfillment of the verse (Psalms 47:8) “For Elohim is King of all the earth.” LM 4:3 Yet it is impossible to return the kingdom to the Holy One, except by means of spoken confession in the presence of a Talmid Chakham (Torah scholar). Through this one rectifies the aspect of Malkhut and raises it to its source. [Take d’varim (words) with you and return to YHVH (God) (Hosea 14:3)] This is the meaning of “Take D’VaRim with you . . .” – i.e., spoken confession. This is the aspect of Malkhut, as in, “one DaBoR (spokesman) to a generation” (Sanhedrin 8a) – dabor connotes and ruler. ” . . . and return to YHVH – so that they rectify and elevate the aspect of d’varim/Malkhut/Elohim to [the level of] YHVH. As mentioned above, “When He is YHVH I will praise His word; when He is Elohim, I will praise His word.” This is, to know that everything that happens to him is all for his good, and to recite the blessing “Who is good and beneficent” over everything. LM 4:4 Knowing all this is called complete awareness. For the essence of awareness is the union of . This is called daat. In other words, he does not differentiate between lovingkindness and judgment, but blesses “Who is good and beneficent” over everything. This is called “YHVH is one and His Name is one”. As our Sages taught: In the Future there will be total oneness and it will be entirely “Who is good and Beneficent”. This is: YHVH is echod (one) [and His Name is echod].” “His Name corresponds to Elohim/Malkhut, as is written (2 Samuel 8:13) “David made a name for himself” – . Echod has the same numerical value as ahavah (love). Therefore, whether it be YHVH – which is compassion – or whether it be “His Name” – which corresponds to Elohim judgment – all is for your benefit and a result of the love which the Holy One has for you. As it is written, “For those whom God loves He rebukes (Proverbs 3:12); and “Of all the families of th earth I knew only you [Israel}]. That is why I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2). (5) HAMANN ON LANGUAGE FW: Rather than a crystal clear Torah message graspable by deductive logic, the above word salad strikes us as a murky bowl of borsht or shabbat cholent. Therefore, we will turn now to Bacon and to Hamann to help us get our bearings in decoding Nachman’s Torah offering. The allusion to goyishkeit suggested by the names “Bacon” and “Ham” need not, I hope, deter us! I stated above that aside from the philosophy of language, much of Hamann (and Nachman) is an update on the philosophy of Francis Bacon, in the context of an 18th century aesthetics of Romanticism. In support of that contention, here are six specific techniques of Romantic style poetic expression which, according to O’Flaherty, lend themselves to the purposes of intuitive (inductive) rather than abstract (deductive) reason. but to start off here is Hamann’s version of Francis Bacon. O 83. In order to comprehend Hamann’s understanding of reason it is necessary to distinguish between two modes of cognition, namely, the intuitive and the abstract . . . Abstract reason affects language in precisely the opposite ways from intuitive reason . . . “Human living seems to consist of a series of symbolic actions by means of which our soul is capable of revealing its invisible nature, and produces and communicates beyond itself an intuitive knowledge of its effective existence” FW: And now comes Hamann’s list of the six Romantic techniques for poetic expression, which in the sequel we will illustrate using the text of Nachman’s LM 4. In my essay our focus is to illustrate these six techniques. Therefore, we will not give as much attention as perhaps we should to other important aspects of Nachman’s text. Most of what Nachman has to say he says again and again, we surely will run into these other themes in the sequel. Here, then, is a preliminary listing of Hamann’s six techniques of language expression. O 83. Since in Hamann’s view there is no thought apart from language, it seems quite appropriate that we should look to language for the earmarks of reason. It will be seen that there are six salient features which characterize the language of intuitive reason, i.e., reason functioning within its appropriate limits. To be specific, we may say that intuitive reason manifests itself in language by the following: (a) the abundance of concrete images (Bilder); (b) the employment of analogical reasoning; (c) the frequent recourse to paradoxes; (d) the presence of multiple levels of meaning; (e) paratactic sentence structure; and (f) the presence of affective terminology. O83 FW: We will examine how Hamann explains these six poetic tools, and at the same time we will illustrate how Nachman of Breslav brings over each technique into the realm of Hasidic Torah commentary. (a) CONCRETE IMAGERY OF EXPERIENCE VS. ABSTRACT RELATIONSHIPS OF WORDS O 84. Hamann maintains that natural language is, to adopt Henri Bergson’s phrase, “molded on reality”. Ordinary language or “the language of nature” is for him the historically developed vernacular of a people, which has been “unimproved” by grammarians or the creators of technical jargon. It is this kind of language which can be raised to the level of poetic expression . . . Wrote Hamann, “The sphere of poetry does not lie outside of the world as a fantastic possibility conceived by the brain of a poet; it strives to be precisely the opposite, the unadorned expression of truth, and must for just that reason reject the deceptive finery of the alleged reality of the man of culture” . . . Hamann’s conviction is grounded in the essential nature of both God and man. Hence, God, “the Poet at the beginning of days”, always speaks to man in poetic language. “The Scriptures cannot speak with us as human beings otherwise than in parables because all our knowledge is sensory, figurative; and because understanding and reason transform the images of external things everywhere into allegories and signs of more abstract, more intellectual, more lofty concepts.” FW: Analogous to Hamann’s theory of poetic expression is that of today’s Gestalt therapists, as laid out by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman in their text, “Gestalt Therapy”. For Gestaltists poetic speech refers to contactful speech, supported by man in action, rather than man stuck at an impasse and brooding abstractly about his life. The choice is between a concrete reality and mere aboutism. If I see a fly buzzing over there and I say, “I am aware of that fly buzzing over there”, that is “language molded to reality”, even more so if I identify with that fly and say “I am a fly buzzing over here, hoping that my buzzing will get you interested in my ideas.” By identifying with the fly, finding the inner idea of that fly as Nachman puts it in LM 1:1, I am concretely at this moment in touch with my existence. But if I am an entomologist and I say “flies are arthropods”, that particular fly out there has disappeared from my life into abstract jargon. Verbalizing has replaced poetry. The fly buzzing out there had the potential to be part of my existence, say, my tragic death as one day it may buzz around my rotting corpse, while the “arthropod” of an entomologist is cut off from my existential experience by being locked into a grid of dead, abstract terminology concerning, for example, information about how many legs it has. Likewise God, the “poet at the beginning of days” is engaged in a living action of creating His world, while a geologist who lists the layers of rocks making up a particular mountain range is cut off from the real experience of creating that mountain range. How does Nachman of Breslav deal with this requirement that expression be poetic? That is to say, how do Nachman’s Torah commentaries serve as a symbolic overlay for human action? First of all, he is assuming he, Nachman, the writer, and we, his readers, and also the protagonist he is describing all are spiritual pilgrims, seeking to return to God. All three personnas therefore share a common grounding in concrete here and now experience. Let us see how all this works in the continuation of Nachman’s LM 4 text. LM 4:5 And a person’s iniquities are on his bones, as is written (Ezekiel 32:27), “And their iniquities will be etched upon their bones”. Each sin has its own combination of letters. When a person commits a particular sin, a negative letter combination is etched upon his bones. This brings the spoken aspect of the prohibition which he has transgressed into the realm of impurity. In other words, he brings the aspect of Malkhut among the nations, giving them the power to rule. For example: If he transgressed the utterance of the prohibition “You shall have no [other gods besides Me]” (Exodus 20:3), then he destroys the utterance’s positive letter combination and forms a negative letter combination. This letter combination is etched upon his bones “It is your iniquities that have turned away these things (Jeremiah 5:25). And it is written, “Evil is the deathblow of the wicked” (Psalms 34:22). By means of spoken confession, however, the letters disappear from the bones into which they have been etched and are transformed into the words of confession. For speech emanates from one’s bone, as is written (Psalms 35:10), “All my bones will say”. He tears down the negative structure and combinations, and from [the letters] builds Makhut d’Kedushah. This is what the Sages said: During the time the Israelites traveled in the desert, Yehudah’s bones rolled about [in his coffin] until Moshe said (Deuteronomy 33:7) “Hear, O God, the voice of Yehudah” (Sotah 7b). Moshe requested that the Holy One remember for Yehudah’s sake the confession he had made. And this is just what happened. Thus it was specifically “his bones rolled about”, as is written, “and their iniquities will be etched upon their bones.” But by means of the confession they were rectified and each one went into its place. And Yehudah corresponds to Malkhut – an allusion that the aspect of Malkhut is rectified through spoken confession. This was accomplished with the aid of Moshe, who recalled the confession. For it is necessary that the confession take place in the presence of a Talmid Chakham. And every Torah scholar is an aspect of Moshe “Moshe, you said it well” (Shabbat 101b). By Moshe’s mentioning the confession, it was considered as if [Yehudah] had now confessed . This caused the aspect of Malkhut to be rectified and the negative letter combination, which had been etched upon [Yehudah’s ] bones to be torn down. FW: There is a real life struggle going on here in Nachman’s text, involving bones, Yehuda and Moshe, as though the story has been told around a campfire or dreamed by a Gestalt client. Nachman is not merely “talking literature”, but is presenting an epic human action being carried out by a protagonist, and by implication also by a reader who is struggling with the iniquities etched in his own bones. Moses first identifies with the needs of the bones of Yehudah. Then the confession, hitbod’dut, mini-Gestalt session that Moses expresses in language brings those needs of Yehudah into the midst of a committed authentic action by Moses. Moses as strong gestalt and encompassing messianic monad here fulfills the logical function of induction, Platonic collection, in relation to the bones and essences of the existence of Yehudah. The parallel to Gestalt dreamwork is very clear here. According to Perls, we must identify with each of the different images and aspects of the dream we are exploring, in order to grasp the overall existential message of the dream. We move from ordinary everyday objects, like trees and clouds and bones, more and more in the direction of encompassing ideas, encompassing essences of our existence, as we move inductively upwards towards the final encompassing existential idea and message of our work on this particular dream. And yet in this dreamwork process everything must remain concrete, articulated, eventually, in terms of the unfinished business of important childhood relationships. The inductive ascent is not at the same time a flight to abstractions. That is to say, the three personnas involved in the ongoing storytelling process are active readers. They (we) maintain their (our) identification with the story which is unfolding. Here is an analogous message from the work of Hamann, with the messianic role shifted from Moses to Jesus. O 86. The abstract language of the philosophers fails, according to Hamann, to take into account the fact that God’s infinite love for man is revealed precisely in His willingness to condescend to man’s estate. God has humbled himself to the extent of speaking in the everyday idiom of the people by means of “little contemptible events” and “humanly foolish, indeed sinful actions . . . For Hamann does not subscribe to any form of the double-truth theory; spiritual truth does not require two forms, one for the philosopher, another for the masses. “To say that Moses wrote only for the common people is either meaningless or a ridiculous view of the matter” . . . Philosophically speaking, the “images” (German: Bilder) of natural language represent for Hamann “objects”, which may be defined as uncritically perceived entities of ordinary experience, principally visual in nature. Abstract or discursive reason has the power, however, to eliminate such objects and to replace them with terms which actually stand for relations . . . “Existence [ i.e., concrete existence in a world of real objects] is realism, and must be believed; relations are idealism and rest upon connective and discriminatory procedures” . . . Metaphysics misuses “all the word-songs and figures of speech of our empirical knowledge” by transforming them into “nothing but hieroglyphs and types of ideal relations” . . . Another fundamental aspect of imagery is, of course, its strong appeal to the emotions, a quality which is lacking in the case of abstract terminology. FW: In Hamann’s reference here to concrete objects of experience disappearing into abstract verbal relationships no longer in touch with their initial concrete reality, we recognize the terminology of 14th century Nominalism as articulated in those days by William of Ockham. See my essay on “Nominalism: the Here and Now, There and Then”, for more about this. (b) ANALOGY VS. LOGICAL SYLLOGISMS O 87. The second characteristic of Hamann’s use of reason is his preference for analogical, as opposed to purely logical, thinking. Whereas the rationalist establishes a principle, whether deductively or inductively, and thereupon proceeds to draw inferences from it, the intuitive thinker establishes a model on nonrational grounds, as, for example, instinct or faith, and thereupon proceeds to draw parallels to the model. This latter procedure accords, in Hamann’s view, with the proper use of reason, despite the fact that reasoning from analogy does not yield the certainty one might desire. Thus, he writes that “reason cannot grasp anything but analogies in order to obtain a very ambiguous light” . . . Following the lead of Francis Bacon, Hamann maintains that man, in his original state, thought analogically rather than logically. This idea is clearly stated in the famous passage at the beginning of the Aesthetica In Nuce: “Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race” . . . Hamann places analogical thinking, as opposed to the later development of discursive thinking, within the framework of his general anthropology with its emphasis on man’s retrograde development away from his primordial state. It is more natural for man to think in metaphors or parables, which involve analogical thinking, than to arrive at deductions based on rational principles . . . “All mortal creatures are able to see the truth and essence of things only in parables”. For Hamann to metaschematize means to substitute one set of objective relationships for another, analogous set of subjective, personal, or existential relationships, in order to throw some light on their meaning. FW: Hamann here is saying what Nachman says when he says “My Torah is all behinot (Hebrew: aspects, interpretations, associations, analogies)”. The notion of “man’s retrograde development away from his primordial state” stems from the Platonic theory of anamnesis, “not forgetting” that primordial state by groping in the void for primordial ideas. Anamnesis entails immersing oneself in a chaotic sea of fragments and using Platonic collection or kabbalistic tsimtsum in the cognitive void of “not knowing” to discover/remember the primordial ideas by means of a series of associations, behinot. The obvious illustration in Nachman’s LM 4 text is the endless string of associations, behinot, which lead Nachman from concrete particulars towards his final grand conclusions. “A” is an aspect of “B”, and “B” is an aspect of “C”, etc., etc. In the section which follows, for example, the string of behinot leads on and on, apparently endlessly, from (a) the lust of Nevatt to (b) fire to (c) purging via fire to (d) the fire of sin to (e) sins themselves to (f) crossing over to bundles of fragments being collected into a new idea (Platonic collection), and then on to (f) the wrath of God as fire negating all the negations of the One Without A Second, which itself leads on by means of tsimtsum to (g) nothingness, which is analogous to (h) humility as an aspect of (i) wisdom, leading to (j) the elevation of language, which itself is analogous to (k) the kingdom of God and refers by contrast to (l) the secular government, which needs to be brought back to its source by means of (m) the intervention of Moses, who is aspect of (n) Mashiach himself! All this in two pages. Note how Nachman gives Moses the Mashiach function of pulling all the fragments together, in exactly the same manner that Hamann gives that messianic function of Platonic collection to Jesus. For both Hamann and Nachman what is lost in logical precision is more than compensated for by the vast range of insightful sparks generated in the process of induction – provided, of course, that the spiritual pilgrim and the audience are receptive to this sort of pietist, Romantic, poetry. What makes this word salad “poetry” in the profound Gestalt and Aristotelian sense of committed personal action is Nachman’s own biography, i.e., his self-proclaimed role of Tsaddik of the generation and messianic savior of the world. Whether we take him seriously or not, we at least know that Nachman is not just writing a book. He also is living the role he has carved out for himself in his own pained existence. FW: As Hegel in his “Aesthetics” points out, one major characteristic of Romantic art that distinguishes it from Classical art is that Romanticism allows emotional content to flood and overwhelm the forms in which it is packaged, leaving an audience gasping for breath. Hegel was less than appreciative of this form of expression, and he regarded the Absolute or God to which it all finally associates as “the night in which all cows are black”. That is to say, most people, like the rationalist Hegel, prefer to let words mean what they do mean rather than have them all end up being symbols for the same thing: the Void of all-knowing and all not-knowing. Here, then, is Nachman’s version of Platonic collection or tsimtsum in the void, from (a) to (n), from the lust of Nevatt to Mashiach himself! See if you can find your way through the maze, and at the same time see how many insightful associations are stimulated in your mind as you follow the creative mind of Nachman along his chosen trajectory. LM 4:6 This is the aspect of returning Malkhut to its source. For the source of Malkhut is fire, as our “Sages taught: ‘why did Nevatt err? because he saw fire escape from his member (Sanhedrin 101b). And the Torah is called fire, because it is from there that Malkhut originates. As it is written (Jeremiah 23:29) “Behold, My Word is like fire,” and (Proverbs 8:15), “Through me kings rule.” And the essence of Torah is the Torah scholar, as our Sages taught (Makkot 222b): How foolish are those who stand up before a Torah scroll and yet do not stand before a rabbinical scholar! This is: “Every davar (thing) that was used in fire must go through fire ” (Numbers 31:23). “Davar corresponds to Malkhut, which has been into the realm of impurity the heat of the evil inclination, as in “the fire of Amram” (Kiddusin 81a). “. . . must go through the fire” – its rectification is by means of fire, i.e., spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham. And this is the connotation of aveyrah (transgression): the AVeyRah letter combination OVeR (crosses) within his bones, from AyVeR to AyVeR (side to side). The word mitzvah, however, connotes joining together. When a person performs bundles of commandments, he binds together the shattered fragments of his bones, as is written (Psalms 34:21), “[God] safeguards all his bones, [not one of them is broken].” FW: Note: not one bone is broken; not one fragment of the symbolic collage is lost or damaged in the process of Platonic collection. All the antitheses, one after the other, are encompassed in the higher inductive synthesis. But there’s more to come . . . LM 4:7. [“The King’s wrath is a messenger of death, but a wise man can pacify it.” (Proverbs 16:14)] And this is the explanation of the verse: “The King’s wrath is a messenger of death.” For the wrath of the Holy One is on account of Makhut , ” . . . but a wise man can pacify it” – i.e., the aspect of Talmid Chakham/Moshe who will atone for [the sinner]. As it is written (Micah 7:18), “[The Lord] forgives the transgression for the remnant ” – for the sake of the one who considers himself as remnants (Rosh HaShanah 17a). We find, then, that when he comes before a Torah scholar and expresses all his letter combinations in a Talmid Chakham’s presence . . . The Torah scholar is an aspect of Moshe who considered himself as remnants, as is written (Numbers 12:3), “The man Moshe, however, was very humble.” This is the reason he is called a wise man, as is written (Job 28:12), “Wisdom comes from Ayin (Nothingness).” Through this the wise man has the power to appease, as is written, “but a wise man can pacify it.” This is why when Moshe prayed that the sin of the Golden Calf [be pardoned], he said (Exodus 32:32), “If You would, forgive their sin. But if not, please blot me out [ from the book that You have written]!” It is impossible for a person not to feel some pride when he hears himself being praised. All the more so, when a great king praises and lauds the person; then it is certainly impossible that he would not be moved to some feelings of self-importance. However, this necessitates the negation of all one’s emotions and corporeality. Then, a person can hear himself being praised and not come to any pride. This was the case with Moshe Rabbeinu, who saw it written in the Torah: “God spoke to Moshe,” [and] “God said to Moshe.” Each day the Jewish people read in the Torah [God’s] praise of Moshe. What’s more, he himself related his praise to them. Yet Moshe had no feelings of haughtiness or pride from this, as is written, “The man Moshe, however, was very humble.” And certainly, by means of his humility Moshe had the power to atone for the sin of the Golden Calf, as is written, “. . . but a wise man can pacify it.” FW: The mashiach function that Moses or Jesus fulfils here is that of identifying with all the fragments, one after another, and then, by means of consumate humility, negating all of those fragments by negating himself. He then is the true servant, serving God as the negation of all negations. Each fragment is an extreme antithesis of the others, and the messiah manages to negate all of these negations of the One Without A Second. Also here, once again, not one bone is broken; not one fragment is lost or damaged in the process of Platonic collection. All the antitheses are encompassed in the higher synthesis by means of the Platonic messiah/poet/artist that Nachman or Hamann is embodying in his writing. What Plato labels a “poetic frenzy” of artistic interpretation, based on passionate personal involvement in a process of committed action, Nachman relates to the state of humility he sees Moses attaining in the biblical text. Nachman concludes his series of behinot by stressing the humility of Moses as the quality which qualifies him for the messiah function. LM 4:7 This was Moshe’s argument: “But if not” – i.e., if You do not forgive their sin, You are demonstrating that I do not posses the humility needed to atone for the sin of the Golden Calf. This is why I requested, “please blot me out,” so as not to be tripped up by pride. For I constantly see and hear the recounting of my name and praise in the Torah. Who can stand up to this – hearing his praise recounted and not become haughty – if not a very humble person? And if I am humble, You must pardon their sin, as is written, “[The Lord] forgives the transgression for the remnant . . .” This is (Deuteronomy 33:5) “There was a MeLeKh (king) in Yeshurun” – indicating that MaLKhut had risen to its source, as it is written (Psalms 37:11), “But the humble will inherit the earth.” “Earth” is dina d’malkhuta (the law of the government) as is written (Job 20:27), “Earth rises up against him.” FW: Moses with his messianic degree of humility has here re-elevated language (Malkhut d’kedushah, the kingdom of God) back to its primordial holistic power. This is anamnesis, “not forgetting” that the primordial idea of language as The Word has emerged from the void of nonbeing. Looking back at the entire journey of inductive logic through which Nachman just has led us, and with just a bit more analogical thinking, the parallel to Gestalt dreamwork ought to be clear. (a) First, Nachman expects you to find the inner idea of each thing by identifying with each image of the series. In Gestalt dreamwork you do that by play acting each dream image and attempt to say it with your whole body. In Nachman’s poetic style Torah exegesis you, as Orthodox Jew, are expected to identify totally with each nuance since it all is God’s word, right out of the Torah with chapter and verse included. How can it possibly not be the truth? (b) The second part of the process, in Gestalt dreamwork, is to commit your whole being to the project as a whole and negate your ego totally by the “rhythm of contact and withdrawal”, which is the Gestalt version of tsimtsum. This death of ego is the negation of negations that translates you inductively up beyond your own existence, as you serve as a vessel for the existential message of that particular dream. The dream itself was only 1/60th of prophecy, while the dreamwork provides the other 59/60. The dreamwork is the Platonic collection or kabbalistic tsimtsum which accesses the messianic idea which was implicit from the primordial beginning of the dream itself when in the middle of the night you dreamed it. Again we have Platonic anamnesis of primordial ideas by means of tsimtsum, as the Gestalt therapy protagonist contracts his ego down to zero in order to embody the intuitive dialectical logic of induction, in order to serve as the messiah capable of redeeming his own fallen state. FW: And what is the equivalent to this “rhythm of contact and withdrawal” in a Torah lesson being given by Nachman or one of his disciples? The answer is, likewise, to commit yourself totally to the quest for truth. In your daily life you are to embodying as many Torah commandments as you can find the time and resources to accomplish, and also you are to commit your will completely to following the guidance of your Torah teachers, whether they make much sense to your rational mind or not! Along with that you are to assimilate each and every word of the mind boggling Torah lessons. You are not, God forbid, to try to understand it all using deductive logic, since most of it is inductively written and admittedly too lofty for your rational understanding. Rather, accept it all on faith as absolute truth. If you find yourself bewildered, get advice from your Torah teachers (who, unfortunately, also are forbidden to understand it), and then go talk to God out in the woods if there are any loose ends. FW: Nachman taught that the messianic soul of Moses is re-embodied to some extent in the tsaddik ha-dor, the righteous man of each generation. But, Nachman maintains, only in certain key historical figures, especially Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and Nachman himself, is the embodiment totalized. Fritz Perls begs to differ, and encourages each of his clients to do fulfill the mashiach function himself. Fritz was Jewish, but not religious. Neither did he know Yiddish. But if someone had asked him why he gave his clients that option, and if indeed he had spoken Yiddish, perhaps he would have given the famous Yiddish retort, “Far vus nit?” (English: “Why not?”) Now, my own suggestion is to meld the two approaches, that of Nachman and that of Fritz, which brings the caricature of Nachman’s teachings which I just have presented back to the source that Nachman intended in the beginning. That is to say, begin with hitbod’dut, with the verbalized monologue. Do it rigorously, according to the system of Fritz, so you do get the results you need. Then, from that foundation go about dealing with the commandments and the Torah exegesis. This puts Tevye’s “Fiddler On The Roof” horse back in front of Tevye’s cart, with the proper Kantian stress on conscience as a liberation from the closed system of everyday habits, groupiness and chit-chat. This also puts Nachman very close to the position of Fichte, and historically exactly where he belongs as an heir to Kant’s theory of the moral autonomy of the practical reason. See my essays on Fichte and Nachman for more of this. Doing hitbod’dut intelligently clarifies most of Nachman’s enigmatic texts and helps balance the conflicting demands of 613 different commandments. Having discovered your own built in Moses function, you will not be flying blind and you will less vulnerable to demagoguery. This inner gyroscope was lacking when Hitler’s Nazis adapted the teachings of Fichte as the basis of national socialism. They made a travesty of the teachings of Fichte. Hopefully you will not make a similar travesty of the teachings of Nachman of Breslav. (c) PARATAXIS FW: O’Flaherty makes a distinction between parataxic and hypotaxic sentence structure, a distinction which is as relevant to the work of Nachman as it is to the work of Hamann. O: The roots of the terms are “para” (by the side) + “tassein” (to place). “Parataxis” is the placing of clauses or phrases one after the other, without coordinating or subordinating connectives. On the other hand, from “hypo” (under) we get “hypotaxis”, which is arranging clauses with a conjunction that subordinates one to the other. Paratactic sentences are characterized by brevity and the absence of long involved dependent clauses; the word order tends to be natural or to follow elementary logic in that the subject and predicate are expressed at or near the beginning of the sentence, with the other elements following generally in the order of their importance. Aphorisms, epigrams, etc., because of their laconic nature, are necessarily paratactic in structure. Hypotactic sentences, on the other hand, are characterized by greater length, involving, as they do, longer dependent clauses . . . Because of its frequent use of dependent clauses, hypotaxis involves the subordination of certain elements within a sentence, whereas parataxis involves their coordination. Both styles do occur in Hamann’s writings . . . In his most characteristic and influential writings the aphoristic mode dominates . . . It is precisely in these works that we find him employing intuitive, as opposed to abstract, reason. FW: The following sections from Nachman’s LM 4 illustrate nicely this contrast between parataxic and hypotaxic use of language. Nachman begins with an introductory fable in the style of parataxic language. PARATAXIS: TYPE 1 A SIMPLE FABLE LM 4:8. This is the meaning of what the Sages said: It is comparable to someone who was walking along a path in the utter darkness of night. He was afraid of the thorns and the ditches, of wild beasts and bandits, not knowing which path he was on. When he happened upon a lit torch he was saved from the thorns and the ditches but he was still afraid of wild beasts and bandits, not knowing which path he was on. When dawn broke, he was saved from wild beasts and bandits, yet still did not know which path he was on. What is this crossroads? Rabbi Chisda said: It is a Talmid Chakhkam and the day of death (Sotah 21a). PARATAXIS:TYPE 2 SIMPLE SENTENCES LIST FOUR ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS FW: Next we learn of the four alchemical elements, mineral, vegetable, animal and human, which are variants of the usual water, earth, air, fire sequence. Here the presentation also is in the parataxic style, though a bit more complex. LM 4:8 It is known that all evil character traits and their derivatives stem from the four yesodot (fundamental elements), the four humors. As is brought in Mishnat Chassidim: Melancholy and its derivatives stem from the mineral life form; evil passions and their derivatives stem from the vegetable life form; idle chatter and its derivatives stem from the animal life form; pride and its derivatives stem from the human life form. Anyone who would take the path of must break all of the vices in the presence of a Talmid Chakham – i.e., spoken confession. The Torah scholar will then define and clarify a path in line with the roots of his soul. PARATAXIS: TYPE 3 COMPLEX SENTENCES, WITH BEHINOT FW: Also presented parataxically are three steps for attachment to a tzaddik, which also are a code for three stages of human action in general. Since Nachman’s version will get a bit murky, I’ll do the dissection as a preface, in my own inimitable Fallen, deductive, hypotaxic manner. If this were a Gestalt session, Fritz no doubt would have me examine my own need to insert prefaces and dissections into the flow of life. Anyway, concerning the tsaddik, (a) first, perceive him properly, (b) second, give him charity and (c) third, accept his advice at the moment of crucial existential choices in your life. To each of these simple instructions, Nachman adds subordinate and related ideas. (a) For the first instruction, more generally establish contact with the situation, (b) for the second instruction, undergo death of ego by giving it away charitably, and (c) for the third instruction, choose a new idea in the void of not knowing. But these corollaries are not appended to the initial three ideas deductively using hypotaxic sentence structure, the way I just have taken pains to do it. That is to say, Nachman’s stress is not on making sure we “understand” it all by laying out his ideas in a series of primary and subordinate clauses. Rather, to the first three ideas he appends a series of only tangentially related ideas, parataxically by simply laying them down, one after the other. Then he leaves it up to us, the readers, to open our minds and hearts to discover the higher level encompassing experiences. For Nachman wants us inductively to “grasp” macrocosmic Platonic ideas, and not merely deductively to “understand” microcosmic concepts. LM 4 is not just a textbook of clinical psychology, it is also inductive science and Platonically inspired Romantic poetry. Hence, Nachman injects into the basic flow of the hypotaxic framework quite a bit of parataxic embellishment. Nachman begins with the three themes, in the manner in which a Beethoven or Mozart might begin a symphony with three simple themes. Then, in the manner of a fugue or stretto, more and more interlocking variations and distantly related motifs pile up as a magical information overload. Schopenhauer, a 19th century philosopher who shared this Romantic aesthetic, held that music is the highest form of art, since it embodies ideas purely without needing to incorporate naturalistic content. Nachman’s prose in his stretto sections approaches the level of musical art, as kaleidoscopic ideas overload their reference to the deductive framework and leap up inductively from our Fallen microcosmic world to the liberated macrocosm of pure Platonic/Torah ideas. When Nachman does it, it works fine. Of course, when an Adolf uses a media blitz inductively to peddle an overgrown Idea of the Third Reich we may have second thoughts about “inductive science”. LM 4:8 Now, there are three steps in attachment to the tzaddikim. Through these three steps everything is rectified. The three steps are as follows: The first step entails seeing the tzaddik, as in (Isaiah 30:20), “your eyes will see your teacher,” This step negates the vices that stem from the two yedodot, mineral and vegetable – namely, melancholy with its derivatives, and evil passions. For the tzaddik of the generation is called “Mother” because he nurses the Jewish people with the light of his Torah. And the Torah is called “milk”, as is written (Song of Songs 4:11). “Honey and milk under your tongue.” We have empirical validation for this: Even when a child is sad and lethargic, if he sees his mother, he very quickly stirs toward her – i.e., toward his source. We also see clearly that when a child is absorbed in his own nonsense, even through he has a great desire for this, if he sees his mother, he throws away all of his desires and draws close to her. We find, then, that the vices stemming from the two yesodot, mineral and vegetable, are negated by gazing at the countenance of the tzaddik. This is: He was afraid of the thorns, the aspect of the vegetable life form; and the ditches, the aspect of the mineral life for. When he happened upon a lit torch – this is a Talmid Chakham, who with the light of the Torah. Through him he is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, mineral and vegetable; and then he is saved form the thorns and the ditches. LM 4:8 The second step is the charity one gives to a Talmid Chakham . Through this he is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, animal and human – the aspects of wild beasts and bandits, which are idle chatter and pride and their derivatives. This is because idle chatter and slanderous gossip engender poverty, as is written (Exodus 4:19), “All the men have died” – this is poverty (Nedarim 64b). Also concerning pride it is taught: Poverty is a sign of a haughty spirit (Kiddushin 49b). But by giving charity a person becomes wealthy. As the Sages taught: “Though they were united and likewise many, even so they are over and gone; I have afflicted you, but will afflict you no more” (Nahum 1:12) – he is never again made to experience the markings of poverty (Gitten 7b). And this is: When dawn broke, he was saved from wild beasts and bandits. The break of dawn is an allusion to charity, as is written (Isaiah 58 7-8), “When you see the naked, and you clothe him . . . Then your light shall burst forth like the dawn.” We find, then, that through charity one is saved from the vices that stem from the two yesodot, animal and human, corresponding to wild beasts and bandits. LM 4:8 The third step is when one makes a spoken confession in a Torah scholar’s presence. Through this the Talmid Chakham guides him on a proper path in line with the root of his soul. This is: When he came to a crossroads. And Sages comment, It is a Talmid Chakham and the day of death. This is the step of spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham. The day of death is an allusion to confesson, as the Sages taught: All those about to be put to death confess (Sanhedrin 43b). This is called PaRaShat DeRaKhim (a crossroads), because the Torah scholar maPhRiSh lo DeReKh (defines his path ) in line with the root of his soul. Then, he was saved from all of them. Because, before he confessed, even through he was close to the Torah scholar and had given him money, he still does not know which path he was on. For “A path may seem right to a man, but its end leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). But when he comes to “a crossroads,” which is a Talmid Chakham and the day of death – i.e., spoken confession before a Talmid Chakham – then, he was saved from all of them. PARATAXIS: TYPE 4 COMPLEX SENTENCES, WITH BEHINOT AND ALSO WITH PARALLELS OF FORM AND CONTENT FW: Later, as the style of the text approaches pure poetry, content joins form in telling the tale, which in this case is the tale of a completed action. The actor/poet Moses/ messiah undergoes death of ego at the crossroads of his life, the moment of committed choice during an action. At that moment, according to Aristotle, the knower, the known and the knowing all are one. Ego is minimal in the midst of an action. The theological context of an action for Nachman here is “the word of God”, and for him, like for Hamann, that means language in the sense of The Word as the Kingdom of God, Malkhut. Language and action here are parallel concepts, grounded in the dialectical framework of deduction/induction, the descending and ascending sides of the tree of life, the kabbalistic sefirot. Each counterclockwise cycle around the complete tree of life is one “beat” of the dialectic, one cycle of the rhythm of contact and withdrawal, one moment of running and returning, one moment of action. If the process works properly we have induction, intuitive reason, positive letter combinations, poetry, If the process does not work properly we are stuck in deduction, abstract aboutism, negative letter combinations, verbalizing. After completing the action, the protagonist retains a sense of what is was all about. In the context of a Gestalt Therapy session he can tell us what was the existential message of the dreamwork, what he got from the session. He can see the details of his present life situation (Elohim, the left pillar of the tree of life) in the context of the Oneness of authentic action (YHVH, the right pillar of the tree of life), and at that moment he has a sense that the One and the Many are One Without A Second. A parallel in the aesthetics of Romanticism and the work of an actor in the Brechtian theater is the notion of “the performer on top of his material” creating “live form”. When, in this style of work, an actor prepares his material, he works deductively and assembles a junk collage of forms into a complex poetic image which is his “character”. Then, at the moment of presentation for an audience, he relies upon his here and now reactions to images that flash in his imagination to give him macrocosmic ideas with which to illuminate that microcosmic junk collage of forms. The result, when it works properly, is “live form”, a meld of content (ideas discovered inductively) and form (the junk collage which was derived deductively), which is, theologically speaking, the macrocosm in the microcosm, the One in the Many. LM 4:9 This applies each time a Torah scholar. The Talmid Chakham is an aspect of Moshe, who is an aspect of Ayin, as is written, “Wisdom comes from Ayin.” And in this way you become encompassed in Ein Sof (Infinite One). This is the concept of Zarka: it is thrown back to the place from which it was taken (Tikkuney Zohar #21). This is return Malkhut to Ein Sof, which is the will in all the wills. For Malkhut corresponds to the letters of speech, with the will of God clothed in each and every letter. It was God’s will that one letter have such and such a shape, and another letter have a different shape. We find, then, that [God’s] wills – i.e., the forms of the letters – serve to reveal His Malkhut, And all these wills, the forms, stem from the will of Ein Sof – which has no form . And all the objects and material existence in the world originate from the letters, i.e., from Malkhut. This is because material existence is a consequence of Malkhut, of the Holy One’s desire that His Malkhut be revealed in the world. Through this He created the world ex nihilo. All the wills – the forms and all material existence corresponding to Malkhut – receive their vitality from the will of Ein Sof. As is taught (Migillah 31a): “In every place that you find the greatness of the Holy One – i.e., His Malkhut wills – “There you find His humility” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. And this is an aspect of stripping oneself of corporeality. For when a person wants to be encompassed in the will of Ein Sof, he must negate his material being. This is what is written in the Zohar (II 88b), that Moshe passed away on Shabbat, at the time of Minchah. For that is when raava d’raaven (Will of Wills) is revealed. This is the will of Ein Sof, from whom all wills receive their vitality. This was because Moshe had totally negated his material being, as is written, “After all, nachnu mah (what are we)?” (Exodus 16:7). “So Moshe, the servant of God, died there, in the land of Moav, by the kiss of God. [God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moav, opposite Beit Pe’or. No man knows his burial place to this day” (Deuteronomy 34: 5-7). This is the meaning of “[God] buried him in the valley” – it alludes to as is written (Isaiah 40:4), “Every valley shall be elevated.” “In the land of Moav” – this alludes to Malkhut, for King David descended from Moav. Moshe ascended into Ein Sof, into Will of Wills, raava d’raaven. This corresponds to the will of Ein Sof, which is clothed in the wills/forms of the letters, the aspect of Malkhut. As explained, “In every place that you find His greatness” – i.e., Malkhut, the aspect of – “there you find ” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. FW: For the kabbalistic tradition, the metaphor of “running and returning” tells this story, in the sense that we first run away from ego and later return to ego. The jargon of Gestalt Therapy here overlaps that of Romanticism. Gestalt speaks of the rhythm of contact and withdrawal. During action we move from contact, from awareness of the contact boundary, to withdrawal, withdrawal from the contact boundary. Withdrawal from the contact boundary, by means of tsimtsum, puts us in the void of not knowing, the messianic now, and then we return to awareness of the contact boundary as the action comes to an end. Nachman describes running and returning by invoking the notion of “da’at” (Hebrew: knowing, knowledge). But “da’at” is a slippery term, used by many authors in many ways. Here is reference is knowing in the sense of the Gestalt process of establishing contact by means of awareness. Da’at here is awareness. Awareness establishes a bubble contactful experience, a “world” that the protagonist “knows”, in the sense that Adam knows Eve during an orgasm. When the contact boundary becomes clouded by neurotic games, by self-interruptions of the life force, and the Gestalt client finds himself deductively at an impasse of polarized cloudy ideas, he needs to withdraw from that contact boundary into the realm of inductive, intuitive experience by closing his eyes and going into his body awareness and fantasies. This is the moment of withdrawal and tsimtsum, contraction of ego. And this also is “running” from his ego and the microcosm in general into the void, where hopefully new macrocosmic ideas await him. After his moment of gnostic enlightenment, then he “returns” to his ego in its new form. But he brings with him a vague trace or “reshimu” (Hebrew: remainder) of his other worldly experience. Overall, then, he runs from deduction to induction, and then he returns from induction to deduction bringing with him the results of the induction. LM 4:9 This is “opposite Beit Pe’or”. As the Sages taught: Why was [the idol] called Pe’or? Because it opens its mouth wide. For when one blemishes Malkhut, [Pe’or} then has the power to open its mouth wide with negative letter combinations. But Moshe rectified the aspect of Malkhut, and as a result Pe’or could not open its mouth wide (Sotah 14a), This is “No man knows [his burial place]” – even Moshe did not know (ibid.). For he was negated in Ein Sof. All this was at his death. However, also during his lifetime [Moshe] certainly stripped away all corporeality and attached himself to the Light of Ein Sof. But then, this stripping was in an aspect of “the living creatures ran and returned”. (Ezekial 1:14). This is because the Holy One desires our service, as is written (Yom Kippur Liturgy), “You desire praise from mounds of dust, from lumps of clay.” Therefore, it is imperative not to remain [in this state of negation] until such a time that the Holy One Himself comes and takes one’s soul. LM 4:9 This is why we see that now and then a person becomes inspired while praying and he recites several words with tremendous fervor. This is due to God’s compassion for him; the Light of Ein Sof has been opened to him and shines for him. When a person sees this radiance – and even though he might not see, his mazal sees (Megillah 3a) – his soul is instantly ignited in great devotion, so that he attaches himself to the Light of Ein Sof. And to the degree that Ein Sof is revealed – commensurate with the number of words that have been opened and begun to radiate – he recites all these words with great devotion, with a surrender of self, and with a negation of all his senses. Then, during the time he is negated in Ein Sof, he is in a state of “and no man knows” so that he himself is unaware of his own existence. But this must be in the aspect of “running and returning” in order to preserve . We find then that when he is in a state of “returning” he must also disclose to his daat. For at the beginning, at the time of devotion, his daat was nullified, as in, “and no man knows”. But when he is in a state of “returning”, returning to his material being, then he returns to his daat. And when he returns to his daat, he knows the oneness and beneficence of Ein Sof. Then there is no difference between YHVH and Elohim, between the divine attribute of judgment and the divine attribute of compassion. For a change of will is not applicable to Ein Sof, Heaven forbid. Changes only occur in the changing of the forms. Nevertheless, by virtue of a person’s attachment to Ein Sof – where there is no change of will, for there the will is uniform – afterwards an imprint of this oneness remains within him. Then later, when he is in a state of “returning”, this imprint illuminates , so that he knows that all is good and all is one. This is what Moshe said to his generation: “It has been clearly demonstrated to your daat that YHVH (God) is the Elohim (Lord)”. (Deuteronomy 4: 35). For Moshe corresponds to Thus it was fitting for his generation, who were attached to him, to [have] daat – i.e., to illuminate the daat with an awareness of Ein Sof/raava d/raaven, the aspect of “YHVH is the Elohim.” (d) PARADOX O: An important aspect of Hamann’s conception of reason as it emerges from his use of language is his acceptance of the paradox as a vehicle for the expression of spiritual truth. His reason for such a positive view of the paradox is, in the last resort, theological. Since God has condescended to reveal Himself in lowly, even contemptible form – as the Scriptures everywhere attest – the paradox possesses the highest possible legitimation. “One must view with astonishment how God accomodates Himself to all small circumstances, and prefers to reveal His government through the everyday event of human life rather than the singular and extraordinary events.” The supreme paradox of Christianity is, to be sure, the incarnation in Christ, the appearance of the Creator of heaven and earth in the form of a servant. FW: To appreciate the relevance of paradox in this sense to the work of Nachman of Breslav, let us backtrack a bit now and zero in on the last section of LM 4 which we just cited under the heading of “parataxis”. These six techniques of Romantic poetic language certainly overlap, and there is no reason why we may not find all six of them at work in a single passage from Nachman’s “Likutei Moharan”. In this last section we found an obvious parallel between the messianic function Christ serves for the Christians and the same messianic function the soul Moses serves for the Jews. As is the case for Christ in the work of Hamann, Moses for Jews is a supreme example of paradox, the apparent contradiction that the pure idea of Moses/Mashiach – Moses as symbolic code for the messianic idea – embodies on the one hand the most encompassing notion of all-reality and on the other hand the idea of absolute nothingness, total self-obliterating humility. This rudimentary example of dialectical thinking, a thesis and an antithesis encompassed in a higher synthesis, is basic to kabbalistic metaphysics. In this respect, then, the parallel between Hamann and Nachman is clear. However, in what follows, as we decode the jargon to get to the philosophical foundation, we find that this clear conceptual parallel is fogged over by the work of the official Breslaver translators. We unearth one more example of what happens when the sorcerer’s apprentice, ignorant of the dialectical powers of his master, grabs his master’s broom and makes a big mess the laboratory! Once again we will see the dangers of preaching dialectical religion rather than teaching dialectical religion. I repeat, a preacher aims at propagating the sect, primarily by glorifying his colleagues, while a teacher has other objectives, especially ferreting out the truth of his subject matter. Watch, now, how the translators of LM 4 muddle the dialectical message of Nachman in this passage, and shift the focus from the individual’s search for God towards the direction of creating a herd of sheep following other sheep following other sheep, just as lemmings might follow other lemmings right off a cliff into the sea! Here once is LM 4:9. LM 4:9 This applies each time a Torah scholar. The Talmid Chakham is an aspect of Moshe, who is an aspect of Ayin, as is written, “Wisdom comes from Ayin.” And in this way you become encompassed in Ein Sof (Infinite One). FW: Nachman begins with the pshat, the superficial code. This is step one in creating the paradox, the apparent contradiction that this Torah scholar you meet in the street is at the same time an aspect of Moses and the Jewish version of the messiah. LM 4:9 This is the concept of Zarka: it is thrown back to the place from which it was taken (Tikkuney Zohar #21). This is returning Malkhut to Ein Sof, which is the will in all the wills. For Malkhut corresponds to the letters of speech, with the will of God clothed in each and every letter. It was God’s will that one letter have such and such a shape, and another letter have a different shape. We find, then, that [God’s] wills – i.e., the forms of the letters – serve to reveal His Malkhut, FW: Another paradox, then, is that the all encompassing Kingdom God corresponds to the tiny individual letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each letter has its particular form and message. LM 4:9 And all these wills, the forms, stem from the will of Ein Sof – which has no form . And all the objects and material existence in the world originate from the letters, i.e., from Malkhut. This is because material existence is a consequence of Malkhut, of the Holy One’s desire that His Malkhut be revealed in the world. Through this He created the world ex nihilo. All the wills – the forms and all material existence corresponding to Malkhut – receive their vitality from the will of Ein Sof. As is taught (Migillah 31a): “In every place that you find the greatness of the Holy One – i.e., His Malkhut wills – “There you find His humility” – i.e., the will of Ein Sof. And this is an aspect of stripping oneself of corporeality. For when a person wants to be encompassed in the will of Ein Sof, he must negate his material being. FW: Here is the paradox cited by Hamann above, that the messiah (Christ or Moses) embodies the apparent contradiction that what is the All is also Nothingness, abject humility and the will of God. LM 4:9 For a change of will is not applicable to Ein Sof, Heaven forbid. Changes only occur in the changing of the forms. Nevertheless, by virtue of a person’s attachment to Ein Sof – where there is no change of will, for there the will is uniform – afterwards an imprint of this oneness remains within him. Then later, when he is in a state of “returning”, this imprint illuminates Likes: 11 Viewed:
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thespearnews-blog · 7 years
Text
Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
New Post has been published on http://thespearnews.com/2017/08/09/uncertainty-looms-over-kenya-as-raila-tables-evidence-of-vote-rigging/
Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
The NASA team secretariat has issued a full statement on their position of the ongoing tallying of votes pinning the electoral body of fraud. Rails Odinga’s camp alleges that while Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017 and that hackers gained entry into the election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson. SpearNews brings you the full statement;
Fellow Kenyans, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1. This election was not always about me. Throughout my travels across the country, I have felt the conviction that it was about the deepest values, which bind us as a nation. I therefore would not be motivated to find in these elections, anything that puts us a part. Elections have a core nation building purpose.
2. I have called you today to have a deep reflection on what I regard as a historic moment. Yesterday, 8th August 2017 Kenyans held the second Election under the Constitution 2010. I bring to you this information, not just as a candidate in the election, but as a citizen who has made some contribution in building this nation. I do this out of an obligation to Kenyans and out of a deep conviction to highest values that ought to bind us.
3. Democratic elections are based on the basic principle that the sovereign are the people. It is not a show for those who stand for election or those who run it. Some persons have taken an audacious attempt to overrule the power of Kenyans to choose their leaders.
4. Out of a scheme organized over apparently longer period, some persons conspired and executed a scheme to deny Kenyans their democratic right to elect their leaders. From the information in our possession, some persons gained entry into the IEBC Election Management Database and assumed the role of our collective sovereign.
5. While Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017, hackers gained entry into our election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson (this is highlighted at page 52 of the document annexed to this statement) .
6. They gained full entry into the IEBC systems, acquired powers to write their will and dwarf the peoples’ voice. They created errors into the IEBC Core Server (as highlighted at Page 2 of the document annexed to this statement) that allowed them to turn a democratic process into a function of a formula.
a. At 12.38pm they introduced several programmes (xpstar.dll version 2009) to execute stored procedures in the library and the memory of the IEBC database intended to manipulate data.
b. At 12.38 pm they loaded an algorithm which is a formula to create a percentage gap of 11 percent between our numbers in the presidential race.
c. At 12.41 pm they switched on the read and write, option on the IEBC 2017 Presidential Election Database giving them power to add or delete anything in the IEBC database. At the same time, they set the Date Correlation Optimization to off. In doing this, they effectively disabled the system from detecting date and time.
d. Again, at 12.41pm they set Auto Update Statistics Async to off for database option IEBC Presidential 2017 (as highlighted at Page 4). In doing, this made sure that records sent from the field would not be reflecting on the system. At 12.41 also the DATABASE OPTION DISABLE BROKER was switched to ON. This was disable the database from tracking the events happening in the database.
e. At 12.41pm they set the RECRUSIVE TRIGGERS to OFF for database IEBC PRESIDENTIAL_2017 (highlighted at page 4 of the attachment). Switching those off ensures that the database would not keep record of anything. Then the QOTED IDENTIFIER was switched to off to easily manipulate the database. Then at the same time they switched the NUMERIC ROUNDABORD to off FOR DATABASE IEBC Presidential 2017 to maintain a fixed figure and avoid rounding off values.
f. At 12.41 pm they set the CONCAT NULL YIELDS NULL to OFF for IEBC_PRESIDENTAIL 2017. This prevents populating the database with null values.
g. The AUTO UPDATES STATISTICS was switched to on to enable updating of values in tandem with their programme.
h. They switched AUTO CREATE STATISTICS on to enable their programme traverse the database updating it with their set and desired values to avoid trace.
7. Within just over twelve hours, this attack on our democracy affected the Presidential Elections in all the 47 Counties both in the live process and the back up: 1. Mombasa (Highllighted at page 5) 2. Kwale (Highlighted at page 7) 3. Kilifi (Highlighted at Page 😎 4. Tana River (Highlighted at Page 9) 5. Lamu (Highlighted at Page 10) 6. Taita Taveta (page 11) 7. Garisa (Page 12) 8. Wajir (Page 13) 9. Marsabi (Page 13/14) 10. Isiolo (Page 14/15) 11. Meru (Page 15/16) 12. Tharaka Nithi County (Pg. 16/17) 13. Embu (Pg. 17&18) 14. Kitui (Pg. 18 & 19) 15. Machakos (Page 19 & 20) 16. Makueni (Page 20 & 21) 17. Nyandarua (Page 21 & 22) 18. Nyeri (Page 22 & 23) 19. Kirinyaga (Page 23 & 24) 20. Muranga (Page 24 & 25) 21. Kiambu (Page 25 & 26) 22. Turkana (Page 26 &27) 23. West Pokot (Page 27 & 28) 24. Samburu (Page 28 & 29) 25. Trans Zoia (Pg. 29 & 30) 26. Uasin Gishu (Pg. 31 & 32) 27. Elgeyo Marakwet (Pg. 32 & 33) 28. Nandi (Pg. 33 & 34) 29. Baringo (Pg. 34 & 35) 30. Laikipia (Pg. 35 & 36) 31. Nakuru (Pg. 36 & 37) 32. Narok (Pg. 37 & 38) 33. Kajiado (Pg. 38 & 39) 34. Kericho (Page 39 & 40) 35. Bomet (Page 40) 36. Kakamega County (Pg. 41 & 42) 37. Bomet County (Pg. 40 & 41) 38. Vihiga (Pg. 42 & 43) 39. Bungoma (Pg. 43 & 44) 40. Busia (Pg. 44 & 45) 41. Siaya (Pg. 44 & 46) 42. Kisumu (Pg. 46 & 47) 43. Homa Bay (47 & 48) 44. Migori (Pg. 48 & 49) 45. Kisii (Pg. 49 & 50) 46. Nyamira (Pg. 50 & 51) 47. Nairobi (Pg. 51).
8. My Countrymen, It has always been common knowledge that Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime was a fraud. This takes Mr. Kenyatta and William Ruto’s fraud on our morality to another level. But you can only cheat a people for so long.
9. This information gives Kenyans the trail of the hacker. How he arrogantly walked into the IEBC database, took control of the entire electoral process, manipulated data, and published façade for a result while we all just wanted to celebrate our democracy.
10. What the IEBC has posted as results of the Presidential Elections is a complete fraud based on a multiplier that fraudulently gave Uhuru Kenyatta votes that were not cast. The electoral fraud and fabrication of results was massive and extensive to the extent that the results of the 47 Counties were manipulated.
11. We have uncovered the fraud. Uhuru must go home. The IEBC must be fully accountable. The will of the people is unstoppable. We had a superior one in the Clouds.
12. Most profoundly, a Kenyan with excellence career in public service had to die. Chris Msando’s blood has been shed on the altar of the thirst for absolute power. As the Officer responsible for elections, Mr. Msando had access as the Super User who has all access and can edit other users or alter data. His logins were used to gain access into the IEBC Core Server and freely alter election data as they pleased forgetting one key element, turning off logging.
13. The 2017 General Election was a fraud. In his words, Uhuru said that he did not need voters to win an election. The hacking has definitely affected the results of the 2017 General Elections is a tragedy of monumental proportions and total disaster. We do not need him as our leader.
GOD BLESS, YOU GOD BLESS KENYA
RAILA AMOLLO ODINGA, EGH NASA COALITION PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
News
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thespearnews-blog · 7 years
Text
Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
New Post has been published on https://thespearnews.com/2017/08/09/uncertainty-looms-kenya-raila-tables-evidence-vote-rigging/
Uncertainty looms over Kenya as Raila tables evidence of vote rigging
The NASA team secretariat has issued a full statement on their position of the ongoing tallying of votes pinning the electoral body of fraud. Rails Odinga’s camp alleges that while Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017 and that hackers gained entry into the election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson. SpearNews brings you the full statement;
Fellow Kenyans, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1. This election was not always about me. Throughout my travels across the country, I have felt the conviction that it was about the deepest values, which bind us as a nation. I therefore would not be motivated to find in these elections, anything that puts us a part. Elections have a core nation building purpose.
2. I have called you today to have a deep reflection on what I regard as a historic moment. Yesterday, 8th August 2017 Kenyans held the second Election under the Constitution 2010. I bring to you this information, not just as a candidate in the election, but as a citizen who has made some contribution in building this nation. I do this out of an obligation to Kenyans and out of a deep conviction to highest values that ought to bind us.
3. Democratic elections are based on the basic principle that the sovereign are the people. It is not a show for those who stand for election or those who run it. Some persons have taken an audacious attempt to overrule the power of Kenyans to choose their leaders.
4. Out of a scheme organized over apparently longer period, some persons conspired and executed a scheme to deny Kenyans their democratic right to elect their leaders. From the information in our possession, some persons gained entry into the IEBC Election Management Database and assumed the role of our collective sovereign.
5. While Kenyans were bearing the long queues to determine their destiny, the conspirators begun the execution of their plan. At about 12.37 pm on the 8th August 2017, hackers gained entry into our election database through the identity of Chris Msando who was executed barely a week ago into the account of the Mr. Chebukati Chairperson (this is highlighted at page 52 of the document annexed to this statement) .
6. They gained full entry into the IEBC systems, acquired powers to write their will and dwarf the peoples’ voice. They created errors into the IEBC Core Server (as highlighted at Page 2 of the document annexed to this statement) that allowed them to turn a democratic process into a function of a formula.
a. At 12.38pm they introduced several programmes (xpstar.dll version 2009) to execute stored procedures in the library and the memory of the IEBC database intended to manipulate data.
b. At 12.38 pm they loaded an algorithm which is a formula to create a percentage gap of 11 percent between our numbers in the presidential race.
c. At 12.41 pm they switched on the read and write, option on the IEBC 2017 Presidential Election Database giving them power to add or delete anything in the IEBC database. At the same time, they set the Date Correlation Optimization to off. In doing this, they effectively disabled the system from detecting date and time.
d. Again, at 12.41pm they set Auto Update Statistics Async to off for database option IEBC Presidential 2017 (as highlighted at Page 4). In doing, this made sure that records sent from the field would not be reflecting on the system. At 12.41 also the DATABASE OPTION DISABLE BROKER was switched to ON. This was disable the database from tracking the events happening in the database.
e. At 12.41pm they set the RECRUSIVE TRIGGERS to OFF for database IEBC PRESIDENTIAL_2017 (highlighted at page 4 of the attachment). Switching those off ensures that the database would not keep record of anything. Then the QOTED IDENTIFIER was switched to off to easily manipulate the database. Then at the same time they switched the NUMERIC ROUNDABORD to off FOR DATABASE IEBC Presidential 2017 to maintain a fixed figure and avoid rounding off values.
f. At 12.41 pm they set the CONCAT NULL YIELDS NULL to OFF for IEBC_PRESIDENTAIL 2017. This prevents populating the database with null values.
g. The AUTO UPDATES STATISTICS was switched to on to enable updating of values in tandem with their programme.
h. They switched AUTO CREATE STATISTICS on to enable their programme traverse the database updating it with their set and desired values to avoid trace.
7. Within just over twelve hours, this attack on our democracy affected the Presidential Elections in all the 47 Counties both in the live process and the back up: 1. Mombasa (Highllighted at page 5) 2. Kwale (Highlighted at page 7) 3. Kilifi (Highlighted at Page 😎 4. Tana River (Highlighted at Page 9) 5. Lamu (Highlighted at Page 10) 6. Taita Taveta (page 11) 7. Garisa (Page 12) 8. Wajir (Page 13) 9. Marsabi (Page 13/14) 10. Isiolo (Page 14/15) 11. Meru (Page 15/16) 12. Tharaka Nithi County (Pg. 16/17) 13. Embu (Pg. 17&18) 14. Kitui (Pg. 18 & 19) 15. Machakos (Page 19 & 20) 16. Makueni (Page 20 & 21) 17. Nyandarua (Page 21 & 22) 18. Nyeri (Page 22 & 23) 19. Kirinyaga (Page 23 & 24) 20. Muranga (Page 24 & 25) 21. Kiambu (Page 25 & 26) 22. Turkana (Page 26 &27) 23. West Pokot (Page 27 & 28) 24. Samburu (Page 28 & 29) 25. Trans Zoia (Pg. 29 & 30) 26. Uasin Gishu (Pg. 31 & 32) 27. Elgeyo Marakwet (Pg. 32 & 33) 28. Nandi (Pg. 33 & 34) 29. Baringo (Pg. 34 & 35) 30. Laikipia (Pg. 35 & 36) 31. Nakuru (Pg. 36 & 37) 32. Narok (Pg. 37 & 38) 33. Kajiado (Pg. 38 & 39) 34. Kericho (Page 39 & 40) 35. Bomet (Page 40) 36. Kakamega County (Pg. 41 & 42) 37. Bomet County (Pg. 40 & 41) 38. Vihiga (Pg. 42 & 43) 39. Bungoma (Pg. 43 & 44) 40. Busia (Pg. 44 & 45) 41. Siaya (Pg. 44 & 46) 42. Kisumu (Pg. 46 & 47) 43. Homa Bay (47 & 48) 44. Migori (Pg. 48 & 49) 45. Kisii (Pg. 49 & 50) 46. Nyamira (Pg. 50 & 51) 47. Nairobi (Pg. 51).
8. My Countrymen, It has always been common knowledge that Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime was a fraud. This takes Mr. Kenyatta and William Ruto’s fraud on our morality to another level. But you can only cheat a people for so long.
9. This information gives Kenyans the trail of the hacker. How he arrogantly walked into the IEBC database, took control of the entire electoral process, manipulated data, and published façade for a result while we all just wanted to celebrate our democracy.
10. What the IEBC has posted as results of the Presidential Elections is a complete fraud based on a multiplier that fraudulently gave Uhuru Kenyatta votes that were not cast. The electoral fraud and fabrication of results was massive and extensive to the extent that the results of the 47 Counties were manipulated.
11. We have uncovered the fraud. Uhuru must go home. The IEBC must be fully accountable. The will of the people is unstoppable. We had a superior one in the Clouds.
12. Most profoundly, a Kenyan with excellence career in public service had to die. Chris Msando’s blood has been shed on the altar of the thirst for absolute power. As the Officer responsible for elections, Mr. Msando had access as the Super User who has all access and can edit other users or alter data. His logins were used to gain access into the IEBC Core Server and freely alter election data as they pleased forgetting one key element, turning off logging.
13. The 2017 General Election was a fraud. In his words, Uhuru said that he did not need voters to win an election. The hacking has definitely affected the results of the 2017 General Elections is a tragedy of monumental proportions and total disaster. We do not need him as our leader.
GOD BLESS, YOU GOD BLESS KENYA
RAILA AMOLLO ODINGA, EGH NASA COALITION PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
0 notes