The Gush Etzion Regional Council has acknowledged ritualistic child abuse allegations within its communities following investigations and survivor testimonies, shaking Israel's religious-Zionist sector.
First of all thank you for taking the time. I really enjoyed reading your answer. I know I’m very abrasive sometimes and usually at this point people start calling me antisemite or bot, so I appreciate it.
Or to put it another way, if they are not shoving their personal elitist self-belief in my face via shows of entitlement or shitty behaviour, I don’t care what faith they hold.
Absolutely. I couldn’t said that better.
But now that you’ve responded, I’m pretty sure our difference lies in your willingness (or my unwillingness, take your pick) to extrapolate outwards from the personal identity of the perpetrators of those great evils to tar vast swathes of humans with the same brush by simple virtue of membership.
No, I’m not willing to bundle everyone by virtue of membership, no. But I recognise these evils are the symptoms of a root cause that, perhaps doesn’t encompass everyone, but it’s very close to power and touches so many organisations and entities, I’m not sure what would be left if we throw away the rotten part.
In general I would advocate for much much more stringent regulation over religions, cults, sects, faiths, lodges etc…
I agree with pretty much everything you said but I would like to answer the last bit.
So honestly, if I were to ask you one thing it would be this: look at your position, what you’ve written, and ask yourself what the end result is in terms of lifting yourself and your inner world up in such a way that you are no longer crushed by the evils you see around you, and which you may have even suffered yourself. Or to put it another way, “If I decide this is how I want my worldview to be, will the way in which I am viewing the vast evil around me advance my well-being or improve my life in any way?”
No, it doesn’t, it absolutely does not advance my well-being or improve my life in any way. Actually the opposite.
But it just doesn’t matter, perhaps we should stop focusing and acting solely on the base of what benefits ourselves, this is a delusional egocentric system. We learned that, regardless of what it is true or false, right or wrong, if it benefits us we should do it and if it harms us we should refuse it. Nothing else really matter.
I don’t agree. Perhaps if we keep pointing at stuff and see evil we should ask if we are in hell not if we are wrong. It’s a bummer, a party pooper, I know, but sometimes I like to remind everyone that we do are in extreme danger, actual code red, alarm alarm stuff. Shit is not going well at all and we are NOT doing anything about it.
To conclude on the topic of Talmudic Judaism, think about this: Jesus in the Talmud is boiling in excrements. The Jewish Passover celebration is the celebration of the death of Jesus. This is why you can see on YouTube israeli (even kids) spitting and abusing Christians going to Israel. Believe what they say.
Ah, what was Jesus’s sin? Saying we are all the same.
Thanks for the chat
P.S. This may also contribute. It’s something by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I read probably forty years ago, and it put into words what I had been suspecting anyway, that organizations are NOT inscrutable entities made of their own special something but merely groups of individual humans.
Thus, when an organization does something shitty, it’s because some shitty individuals inside it think it’s a grand idea and the head shit signs off on it and then at that point, all the individuals inside that organization are then faced with a choice to either ride along or get off altogether, because there are rarely any choices in between those two poles. But there’s always a subset who would gladly throw a wrench in the works if they thought it would make any difference, because they think it’s ass and they resent it all, never having wanted it to begin with.
So I don’t believe in organizations anymore, only the individuals within it. And the line between good and evil crosses not between people, but across the heart of every person. That’s what I got from Solzhenitsyn.
"It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good…
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil. "
No, it doesn’t, it absolutely does not advance my well-being or improve my life in any way. Actually the opposite. But it just doesn’t matter, perhaps we should stop focusing and acting solely on the base of what benefits ourselves, this is a delusional egocentric system. We learned that, regardless of what it is true or false, right or wrong, if it benefits us we should do it and if it harms us we should refuse it. Nothing else really matter.
I don’t agree.
No, you’re right, and it’s a failure on my part to frame the concept better. For myself, I believe that actions follow thoughts. So if I want to make or be part of positive change, first I have to lift my own thoughts. And how can I truly see someone else in their reality, as they really are, if I won’t even see myself as I really am?
What I found for myself was that I can’t wallow in thoughts that involve huge, vast conspiracies of evil because 1) it’s factually not true that every person in any given org supports everything that org does, especially if that org is doing evil shit because evil always involves coercion; and 2) it’s a thought structure that is overwhelming to the point of personal paralysis.
So when I wrote that, I was speaking solely of the inner world, of examining and even changing the way you hold your beliefs about evil if that current belief system doesn’t lift you up in a way that makes you a better person, NOT tangible externals and looking away from them because hey, fuck you I got mine. You’re right, that’s shit. If we have a conscience, we’re either using it OR we are deluding ourselves about having one.
Shit is not going well at all and we are NOT doing anything about it.
That’s one of the things that changing my own inner world got me to see and understand differently. There are a LOT of people doing something about it, in every little way they know how. Look around: it’s chaos. If everyone were cooperating with the powers-that-be it would not now be chaotic. But chaos is the kitchen of change.
Or to put it another (very hypothetical) way, if all you can see are the vast hordes of wrongdoers marching in lockstep, you will never see the less-noticeable individuals like me (hypothetically) flattening their tires and (hypothetically) sugaring their gas tanks behind their backs while they march.
We can all do something. I genuinely believe that. Even if it’s only getting in the way. There’s only one guy that gets to be editor of the NY Times and it’s not me, so they’re never going to tell the truth about full-spectrum resistance or direct action: I should stop waiting for public acknowledgement.
But if I see my thing I can do, and I do it, that lifts me and it lifts my world. Gotta see it first, though, and that requires a belief system that allows for seeing it. And that’s why I asked you the question I did. Thank you as well for a bracing chat. You’re a good person. Don’t stop.
First of all thank you for taking the time. I really enjoyed reading your answer. I know I’m very abrasive sometimes and usually at this point people start calling me antisemite or bot, so I appreciate it.
Absolutely. I couldn’t said that better.
No, I’m not willing to bundle everyone by virtue of membership, no. But I recognise these evils are the symptoms of a root cause that, perhaps doesn’t encompass everyone, but it’s very close to power and touches so many organisations and entities, I’m not sure what would be left if we throw away the rotten part.
In general I would advocate for much much more stringent regulation over religions, cults, sects, faiths, lodges etc… I agree with pretty much everything you said but I would like to answer the last bit.
No, it doesn’t, it absolutely does not advance my well-being or improve my life in any way. Actually the opposite. But it just doesn’t matter, perhaps we should stop focusing and acting solely on the base of what benefits ourselves, this is a delusional egocentric system. We learned that, regardless of what it is true or false, right or wrong, if it benefits us we should do it and if it harms us we should refuse it. Nothing else really matter.
I don’t agree. Perhaps if we keep pointing at stuff and see evil we should ask if we are in hell not if we are wrong. It’s a bummer, a party pooper, I know, but sometimes I like to remind everyone that we do are in extreme danger, actual code red, alarm alarm stuff. Shit is not going well at all and we are NOT doing anything about it.
To conclude on the topic of Talmudic Judaism, think about this: Jesus in the Talmud is boiling in excrements. The Jewish Passover celebration is the celebration of the death of Jesus. This is why you can see on YouTube israeli (even kids) spitting and abusing Christians going to Israel. Believe what they say.
Ah, what was Jesus’s sin? Saying we are all the same. Thanks for the chat
P.S. This may also contribute. It’s something by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I read probably forty years ago, and it put into words what I had been suspecting anyway, that organizations are NOT inscrutable entities made of their own special something but merely groups of individual humans.
Thus, when an organization does something shitty, it’s because some shitty individuals inside it think it’s a grand idea and the head shit signs off on it and then at that point, all the individuals inside that organization are then faced with a choice to either ride along or get off altogether, because there are rarely any choices in between those two poles. But there’s always a subset who would gladly throw a wrench in the works if they thought it would make any difference, because they think it’s ass and they resent it all, never having wanted it to begin with.
So I don’t believe in organizations anymore, only the individuals within it. And the line between good and evil crosses not between people, but across the heart of every person. That’s what I got from Solzhenitsyn.
From The Gulag Archipelago, Part 4, Chapter 1, “The Ascent”:
Lol, I need to self-correct here just a hair.
No, you’re right, and it’s a failure on my part to frame the concept better. For myself, I believe that actions follow thoughts. So if I want to make or be part of positive change, first I have to lift my own thoughts. And how can I truly see someone else in their reality, as they really are, if I won’t even see myself as I really am?
What I found for myself was that I can’t wallow in thoughts that involve huge, vast conspiracies of evil because 1) it’s factually not true that every person in any given org supports everything that org does, especially if that org is doing evil shit because evil always involves coercion; and 2) it’s a thought structure that is overwhelming to the point of personal paralysis.
So when I wrote that, I was speaking solely of the inner world, of examining and even changing the way you hold your beliefs about evil if that current belief system doesn’t lift you up in a way that makes you a better person, NOT tangible externals and looking away from them because hey, fuck you I got mine. You’re right, that’s shit. If we have a conscience, we’re either using it OR we are deluding ourselves about having one.
That’s one of the things that changing my own inner world got me to see and understand differently. There are a LOT of people doing something about it, in every little way they know how. Look around: it’s chaos. If everyone were cooperating with the powers-that-be it would not now be chaotic. But chaos is the kitchen of change.
Or to put it another (very hypothetical) way, if all you can see are the vast hordes of wrongdoers marching in lockstep, you will never see the less-noticeable individuals like me (hypothetically) flattening their tires and (hypothetically) sugaring their gas tanks behind their backs while they march.
We can all do something. I genuinely believe that. Even if it’s only getting in the way. There’s only one guy that gets to be editor of the NY Times and it’s not me, so they’re never going to tell the truth about full-spectrum resistance or direct action: I should stop waiting for public acknowledgement.
But if I see my thing I can do, and I do it, that lifts me and it lifts my world. Gotta see it first, though, and that requires a belief system that allows for seeing it. And that’s why I asked you the question I did. Thank you as well for a bracing chat. You’re a good person. Don’t stop.