January 02, 2005
Optimism about the Future
There are quite a few recurring themes within Jewish thought and ritual. Since this is a time of thinking about the future for much of the world, I thought it might be appropriate to mention one of them. It goes something like this: The Jews are a weak and despised people. Our lives are exceedingly precarious. Everyone wants to either kill us or convert us. Life is full of pain and suffering. Yet, we are optimistic.
I'm optimistic about the coming year.
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Comment:I hope you are right. I do feel the Moshiach is right around the corner; and I feel we each need to do just a push more to bring the Moshiach here. Take care.
Posted by: Rachel Ann at January 2, 2005 10:59 PM Permalink
I do not want to kill you or convert you-- I like you the way you are. And there are many more like me. :)
Posted by: jinnderella at January 3, 2005 05:18 AM Permalink
Stamp Tax to be abolished by 2008
Raised in Boston, USA, I think I learned about the American Revolution every year of elementary school, and one more year in High School. Featured prominently among its instigators was the hated Stamp Tax:
Also established was the Stamp Act, the first direct levy on the Colonies and passed to generate funds for the British. Newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards were taxed by this act. Stamps, issued by the British, were attached to the taxed items to indicate that the tax had been paid.
How surprised I was, on coming to Israel, to find the infamous Stamp Tax alive and well in another corner of the former British Empire: The Jewish State. Thankfully, Binyamin Netanyahu is getting around to repealing it, only 243 years late:
The Knesset Finance Committee today approved a gradual abolition of stamp taxes by 2008. The committee fully approved the Ministry of Finance’s proposal to eliminate stamp taxes in stages in 2005-2008.
In the initial stage, which will begin this Sunday, the tax will be abolished for mortgage and other loan agreements, residential leases, and other documents directly linked to these agreements (e.g. guarantees and liens).
Taxes on these documents will be the first to be eliminated, because they usually place a tax burden on the average citizen. Canceling this tax will cost NIS 300 million in the coming year.
That is, NIS 300 million saved by the citizens.
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Amen to that!
Actually, what's really stupid is that they could tax cable TV instead. Payments would just be part of people's monthly bill and would hardly be noticed... not that I'm suggesting it! I don't think TV should be supported by any taxes at all.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 3, 2005 09:08 AM Permalink
The economic program is working
Here's a good economic review of the past year. Exerpt:
Netanyahu's fundamental assumption is that Israel can achieve 4-5% growth by carrying out several measures:
- Cutting public spending and taxes, in order to free up resources for the business sector and boost growth, by increased entrepreneurship and incentives to work.
- Increasing the proportion of the population in the labor force, in order to accelerate growth, by expelling illegal foreign workers.
- Slashing welfare allocations to groups that could join the labor force.
- Gradually implementing the Wisconsin plan, adapted for Israel.
Market liberalization and rapid privatization will boost growth, as has happened in other countries. Countries undergoing liberalization can boost GDP by 1-1.5% a year.
I only hope it will continue:
The new government, especially its Mapai members, must recognize that Netanyahu's policy has achieved most of its goals, and should be pursued, with adjustments to meet national needs in 2005 and 2006.
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January 03, 2005
Jewish / Israeli Blog Awards
Israelly Cool is hosting the 2004 Jewish / Israeli Blog Awards:
Nominations are being accepted in the following categories:Best Overall Blog
Best New Blog 2004
Best Group Blog
Best Humor Blog
Best Designed Blog
Best "Life in Israel" Blog
Best Israel Advocacy Blog
Best Politics, Current Affairs, and Academia Blog
Best Personal Blog
Best Jewish Religion Blog
Best Jewish Culture Blog
Best Post by a Jewish Blogger
Best "Series" by a Jewish Blogger
Feel free to nominate Rishon Rishon for any suitable category. Remember, it's just a nomination, you don't have to vote for me! (Do I have to remind you that this is a new blog? It's my only chance in this particular category...)
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Surfing the Tsunami
I think I was avoiding news of the Tsunami. The way I avoid reading about terrorist attacks. I've read enough of them. How many variations of tragedy to I need to read? It's all the same, only the details change. The dead, the maimed. The ones that almost died by a stroke of bad luck that turn good - or the opposite. But every once in a while I stumble over a story by accident, and then, of course, I am engulfed in the magnitude of it.
Back in September, I met Lisa of On The Face. So when I read this post about her friends in Sri Lanka, I felt as if they were mine too. They were surfing when when the Tsunami hit! It's all described in this harrowing comment thread. Before, during, and after. It leaves me speechless. Excerpt:
Basically we rode out the first huge wave on our boards and stayed above the water/wave while everyone else was being swept away and everything was being destroyed. Then the water pulled back out of the bay we were in and we barely managed to avoid being swept out to sea with the current. We landed on the beach after the first surge, but couldn't go ashore because another wave was coming, our surf instructor told us that it was a matter of life and death that we stay away from the shore so we started heading back towards the water before it surged back in. We really didn't know what to do. Unfortunately we had to cross some flood waters as they ran back from the inland to the sea - it was filled with mud, sand and debris. We were still attached to our surf boards and I was swept under the mud by my board in the middle of the river. I have to say that I did almost drown - I had the thought in my head that this was such a stupid way to die. Luckily, because I was still attached to my board (even though it had sucked me under in the first place) I was eventually pulled up to the surface with it before I blacked out. I managed to pull my board to me and flopped on top of it until I could breathe again, then started trying to look for Ran. He had jumped in after me and had taken off his surf leash so I was worried that he'd drowned. I couldn't find him, the second big wave came in and I was pushed on to the shore because I was too exhausted to fight the surge. I was able to catch some branches before hitting very much, then got off of my board and starting screaming for help. Some Sinhalese man ran up to me and led me to a 3-storey building where there were about 20 people on the roof. The waves came in and out for almost 2 hours and every time there were people being caught in it - I can't really describe the sounds and what it was like. I couldn't find Ran - though I thought I saw him about 1 km out in the bay being swept by the current out to sea. Then I couldn't see him (or what I thought was him) anymore. No one could really help me - the other people I was with were gone and all the boats had either been smashed on the shore or pulled out to sea. After some time the surf instructor (Yannick) came up the road during one of the times the water surged out of the bay and he was thrilled to see that I was alive. I was pretty hysterical by that time though and was trying to get back to the beach to find Ran. Yannick went out on his surf board to look for Ran three times - one time bringing in a body that all these Sinhalese assholes were telling me was my lost husband. I spent at least 2 hours pacing the shore with the water coming in and out destroying things every time, looking for Ran or his surf board (but I knew if I just saw his surf board that would mean that he wasn't attached to it so he would be dead) - I think I know a little bit about what hell must be like. I kept feeling that I was waiting so long and that I couldn't wait any longer, but then I thought if he was dead I would be waiting forever. I have never been so afraid or for so long in my life. Finally Yannick and this other woman we were surfing with pulled me away from the spot I'd last seen Ran and tried to get me up the road toward higher ground - and after about 5 min. we spotted Ran walking down the road towards us. It was probably one of those really cheesy Hallmark moments where a couple runs crying towards each other. I have never been so happy to see anyone before - I really did think he had died.
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January 04, 2005
Brookliner Landsman
A 'landsman', in Yiddish, is someone from the same country, or especially the same town as you. In my grandparents' time, it was common for Jewish immigrants from the same shtetl (hamlet) to form a landsmanschaft - a landsman's association, once they got to the Goldene Medina (Golden Country, i.e. the US). Yesterday I discovered a landsman of mine in the blogosphere: Daniel in Brookline. Brookline, Massachusetts was my hometown for the first 25 years of my life. Not just a geographical landsman, he appears to be an ideological landsman as well. An unusual thing for that part of the world. If you missed it, check out this comment that he left here on Rishon Rishon.
UPDATE: I just realized that Solomon of Solomonia is from Boston, a landsman in only a slightly wider sense of the word.
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Hey neighbor!
Well, I never lived there, but spent plenty of time around your environs - attended BU - crossed the highway many a time for food and party (and still do!)...used up a lot of shoe rubber walking up and down Harvard and Beacon. Ah for the days when I had time to take walks from place to place!
Posted by: Solomon at January 5, 2005 01:53 AM Permalink
Benjamin, I didn't know! The hometown you described once seemed so far left that I didn't recognize as the leftish town I grew up in. I guess times change.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 12, 2005 09:02 AM Permalink
How about that! A small world, indeed...
Many thanks for the reference, David!
For the record, I only recently moved to Brookline (Sept. 2004), just before my fiancee and I got married. So if my opinions seem out-of-step for the Boston area, it might be that I'm not truly a Bostonian myself.
(On the other hand, my opinions don't seem all that unusual. As I noted in one of my posts a while back, a lot of people around here didn't buy into the John-Kerry-is-my-personal-savior business... and had the bumper stickers to prove it.)
My wedding was in Brookline -- Temple Beth Zion on Beacon Street, if that rings bells for anyone...
kol tuv,
Posted by: Daniel in Brookline at January 12, 2005 06:27 PM Permalink
Daniel
January 05, 2005
The Western Wall
Hakotel Hama`aravi (הכותל המערבי) - the Western Wall is often described as the last surviving relic of the the Temple in Jerusalem. This is inaccurate on two counts. First, the Kotel (wall) is not actually a wall of the Temple, but part of a retaining wall built around the summit of the Temple Mount in order to increase the area on top. Second, all four retaining walls of the Temple Mount survive. So what's so special about the western wall? The Talmud explains:
אמר רבי יוסי ברבי חנינא
הנה זה עומד אחר כתלנו
זה כותל מערבי של בית המקדש
שאינו חרב לעולם למה
שהשכינה במערב משגיח מן החלונות בזכות אבות
מציץ מן החרכים בזכות אמהות
Amar rabi yosey b'rabi hanina
Hine ze `omed ahar kotlenu
Ze kotel ma`aravi shel beyt hamiqdash
She'eyno harev l`olam lama
Shehash'khina b'ma`arav mashgiah min hahalonot bizkhut avot
Mesis min haharkim bizkhut imahot
Rabbi Yosey said in the name of Rabbi Hanina
Behold, this is what will remain standing after our walls (are destroyed)
It is the western wall of the House of the Sanctuary (the Temple)
That will never be destroyed ever, why?
For the Divine Presence in the west watches over us from from the windows because of the merits of the fathers
Peeks from the cracks because of the merits of the mothers
Bamidbar Raba 11:63
But there's another reason too:
כאשר נבנה בית המקדש, חולקה העבודה בין חלקי האוכלוסייה השונים. בניין הכותל המערבי עלה בחלקם של העניים, שלא יכלו להרשות לעצמם לשכור פועלים ובעלי מלאכה על מנת שהללו יעבדו בשבילם ולכן טרחו ועמלו על בנייתו במו ידיהם.
כאשר השמיד האויב את בית המקדש, מסופר ש"ירדו" המלאכים ממרומים ופרשו את כנפיהם על הכותל כשהם אומרים: "כותל זה, עבודתם של העניים, לעולם לא יחרב." (ע"פ אגדות ארץ ישראל).When the Holy Sanctuary was built, the labor was divided among all the different sectors of the population. Building of the western wall turned out to be the portion of the poor, who couldn't permit themselves to hire workers or builders who would work for them, and thus went to the trouble and effort of building with their own hands.
When the enemy destroyed the Holy Sanctuary, it is told that angles "came down" from on high and spread their wings over the wall while saying: "this wall, it is the work of the poor it will never be destroyed." (According to Legends of the Land of Israel).
The Western Wall is often called Judaism's holiest site - but that's not true. Judaism's holiest site is the Temple Mount itself, especially the site of the Holy of Holies, roughly at its center, which is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock (not the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's 3rd holiest site, which is nearby, also on the Temple Mount). Though the western wall is quite long, Jews usually pray in a particular place - the place along the wall which is closest to Judaism's holiest site.
So why am I talking about this now? There's a webcam at the Western Wall. I looked at it once a long time ago, and it was so slow and blurry that I never looked again - until yesterday. Now it's beautiful, clear and fast, at least if you have a broadband connection. I just looked now, and I see that it's raining. It's raining outside my window too, which makes it seem very real.
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January 06, 2005
Angels
To our modern way of thinking, the universe is governed by forces of nature. Not that forces of nature are independent of one another: centrifugal force derives from the laws of motion, gravity derives from General Relativity, and presumably all forces derive from a Universal Field Theory not yet discovered. Traditionally, Judaism has a similar understanding of the governance of the universe. God, of course, is the ultimate governor of everything. And what are the forces of nature? In the language of Judaism, they are called angels. Angels are forces of nature: there are angels of wind and rain and angels that guard over people and nations, and of course there are spiritual angels.
Hebrew has several words meaning 'angel': mal'akh (מלאך), k'ruv (כרוב), saraf (שרף), ar'el (אראל), and probably some more that don't come to mind at the moment. The most generic word is mal'akh, which is related to the word m'la'kha (מלאכה) - fabrication, work. Angels are workers. In Judaism, they are specifically agents of God - they have no free will, and thus have a lower status than human beings. (Though, being without free will, they can't sin.) When an angel does something, it is as if God did it directly - only its appearances are indirect, as with any force of nature.
Angels, like forces of nature, are arranged hierarchically. Below God are Mikha'el (מיכאל) - Michael, and Gavri'el (גבריאל) - Gabriel. Which represent the forces of Hesed (חסד) and G'vura (גבורה), grace and might (i.e. the taking-in force, and the going-out force, explained in more detail here). According to the Talmud, Michael is made of snow and Gabriel is made of fire, but though they work side by side, neither damages the other. In other words, though they are opposites, both are forces of good - they work together:
אמר רבי שמעון בן לקיש
מיכאל כולו שלג וגבריאל כולו אש
ועומדין זה אצל זה ואינם מזיקים
Amar rabi shim`on ben laqish
Mikha'el kulo sheleg v'gavri'el kulo esh
v`omdin ze esel ze v'eynam m'ziqim
Rabbi Shim`on son of Laqish said
Michael is all snow and Gabriel is all fire
And they stand next to one another and are not damaged
D'varim Raba 5:11
Widening the hierarchy a little, we get the angels represented by the acronym, Argaman (ארגמן) - royal purple: Uri'el (אוריאל) - Uriel, R'fa'el (רפאל) - Rafael, Gavri'el (גבריאל) - Gabriel, Mikha'el (מיכאל) - Michael, and Nuri'el (נוריאל) - Nuriel. They appear in this line from the bedtime prayer:
מִימִינִי מִיכָאֵל
וּמִשְּׂמֹאלִי גַּבְרִיאֵל
וּמִלְּפָנַי אוּרִיאֵל
וּמֵאֲחוֹרַי רְפָאֵל
וְעַל רֹאשִׁי שְׁכִינַת אֵל
Mimini mikha'el
Umismoli gavri'el
Umilfanay uri'el
Ume'ahoray r'fa'el
V`al roshi sh'khinat el
On my right Michael
And on my left Gabriel
And before me Uriel
And behind me Rafael
And above my head the Divine presence of God
In fact, there are a myriad of angels. Most of the angels (not all of them) found on this page, for example, are of Hebraic origin. However, they play no part in Jewish theology: They are not worshiped, or prayed to - having no free will, that would make as much sense as praying to gravity, or to the wind. This, despite the fact that they are everywhere in the rhetoric of prayer. For example, every Shabat begins by welcoming mal'akhey hasharet (מלאכי השרת) - the ministering angels (of God), based on the following passage from the Talmud:
רבי יוסי בר יהודה אומר
שני מלאכי השרת מלוין לו לאדם
בערב שבת מבית הכנסת לביתו
אחד טוב ואחד רע
וכשבא לביתו ומצא נר דלוק ושלחן ערוך ומטתו מוצעת
מלאך טוב אומר יהי רצון שתהא לשבת אחרת כך
ומלאך רע עונה אמן בעל כרחו
ואם לאו מלאך רע אומר יהי
רצון שתהא לשבת אחרת כך
ומלאך טוב עונה אמן בעל כרחו
Rabi yosey bar y'huda omer
Shney mal'akhey hasharet m'lavin lo la'adam
B`erev shabat mibeyt hakneset l'veyto
Ehad tov v'ehad ra`
Ukhsheba' l'veyto umasa' ner daluq v'shulhan `arukh umitato musa`at
Mal'akh tov omer y'hi rason shet'he l'shabat aheret kakh
Umal'akh ra` `one amen b`al karho
V'im lav mal'akh ra` omer y'hi rason shet'he l'shabat aheret kakh
Umal'akh tov `one amen b`al karho
Rabbi Yosey son of Yehuda says
Two ministering angels accompany a person
On the Sabbath eve from the synagogue to his house
One good and one bad
And when he comes to his house and finds a lit candle and a set table and his bed
made
The good angel says: May there be another Sabbath like this!
And the bad angel answers: Amen - against his will
And if not, the bad angel says: May there be another Sabbath like this!
And the good angel answers: Amen - against his will
Shabat 119-B
In other words, it is a force of nature that things generally continue as they were. Nevertheless, we welcome the angels. Other examples: When you do a misva (comandment), an angel is born, when you say a blessing an angel is born, i.e. doing a misva or saying a blessing is a force (of good) in the world. I say this to my kids every day when they go to sleep:
הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגּוֹאֵל אוֹתִי מִכָּל רָע
יְבָרֵךְ אֶת הַנְּעָרִים
וְיִקָּרֵא בָהֶם שְׁמִי וְשֵׁם אֲבוֹתַי
אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק
וְיִדְגּוּ לָרוֹב בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ
Hamal'akh hago'el oti mikol ra`
Y'varekh et han`arim
V'yiqare' vahem sh'mi v'shem avotay
Avraham v'yishaq
V'yidgu larov b'qerev ha'ares
May the angel that redeems me from all evil
Bless the children
And may they be called by my name and the name of my fathers
Abraham and Issac
And may they grow to a multitude in the midst of the earth
This is the blessing that Jacob gave to Joseph's children, Ephraim and Manasseh, before he died.
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I sing it to the tune of Lullaby and Goodnight, it fits perfectly. Though I have to break it up like this:
Hamal'akh hago'el oti mikol ra`
Y'varekh et han`arim
V'yiqare' vahem sh'mi
V'shem avotay Avraham v'yishaq
V'yidgu larov b'qerev ha'aresInstead of the way I broke it up above.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 7, 2005 07:56 AM Permalink
Thanks, Smooth. I like your site too. Are you located in Israel? (I'm asking, because I'd like to add you to my blogroll the next time I do an update, and I want to know if you are in the Israeli category.)
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 8, 2005 08:30 PM Permalink
What I believe but cannot prove
Edge.org (via GNXP Sci-Fi) asks 120 intellectuals: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? I read only a small fraction of the answers (I'm sorry, I have a life) but what I read was interesting. Of course it begs the question, what do I believe but cannot prove? It's late, and I have a cold. I don't have much time or energy at the moment to put into it, so I'll answer more briefly than the subject requires.
As I've said before, my most basic belief is logoism (that existence has meaning). But I guess I believe in some other things too, like hashgaha pratit (השגחה פרטית) - that God is watching over me, and in hishtadlut (השתדלות) - that if I try to do the right thing, God will help me out. I suppose that anyone who's been reading my blog can come up with a lot more things too.
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Trackback from Willow Tree, Touring the Blog World:
Here's a quick glimpse at what old friends have been saying. Rishon Rishon talks about believing the unprovable--linking to a series of articles by other great thinkers on the same topic. Lex of Neptune Lex, has a pic and post...
January 10, 2005
Halaqa
Most life transitions happen rather abruptly, though they may be building up for some time. Probably a tipping-point phenomenon, where small quantitative changes suddenly add up to something qualitatively different. The first such transition comes about the age of three months. This is when babies start to smile, but smiling is really just one aspect of a much wider phenomenon. It is at this stage that babies begin to interact with their environment (other than the reflexive nursing instinct) - it's at this point that parenting starts being fun. (My wife disagrees with me on this point, but agrees that there's an order-of-magnitude change at three months.) It's no coincidence that Yokheved waited three months before sending her son Moses into Pharaoh's daughter's arms.
וַתַּהַר הָאִשָּׁה וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן
וַתֵּרֶא אֹתוֹ כִּי טוֹב הוּא וַתִּצְפְּנֵהוּ שְׁלשָׁה יְרָחִים:
וְלֹא יָכְלָה עוֹד הַצְּפִינוֹ וַתִּקַּח לוֹ תֵּבַת גֹּמֶא
וַתַּחְמְרָה בַחֵמָר וּבַזָּפֶת וַתָּשֶׂם בָּהּ אֶת הַיֶּלֶד
וַתָּשֶׂם בַּסּוּף עַל שְׂפַת הַיְאֹר:
Vatahar ha'isha vateled ben
Vatere' oto ki tov hu vatisp'nehu shlosha y'rahim
V'lo' yakhla `od haspino vatiqah lo tevat gome'
Vatahm'ra vahemar uvazafet vatasem bah et hayeled
Vatasem basuf `al sfat hay'or
And the woman conceived and gave birth to a son
And she saw that he was good and she hid him for three months
And when she couldn't hide him any longer she took for him a box of rushes
And she daubed it with clay and tar and put the child in it
And put it in the reeds at the edge of the river
Exodus 2:2-3
The next transition occurs at about one year, when the child begins walking and talking. Suddenly he begins not only interacting with the environment, but doing that most human of all activities: communicating. The third transition occurs at about three years, when the child begins to understand the passage of time, and not unrelated: begins to be able to reason. And that, in the Jewish way of thinking, means it's time to start to formal learning.
There is a tradition followed by many Jews not to cut the hair of their sons until they are three years old. Some time on or shortly after their third birthday they get their first haircut. Israelis and Sephardic Jews call this a halaqa (חלקה), from the word halaq (חלק) - smooth, unadorned. Ashkenazi Jews often use the Yiddish word: upsherin - cognate/translation: shear off.
My son's halaqa was last night. It wasn't that big a deal, we mostly invited neighbors, with only a very few friends and relatives coming from outside a 5-minute-walk radius. Nevertheless they filled the house. The men took turns giving my son a brakha (ברכה) - blessing, and snipping off a lock of his hair. We intended to finish off the job then and there, but our designated barber wasn't feeling well and the boy of honor was falling asleep (serving of the cake woke him up pretty fast), so we put it off until this morning.
Today they made a birthday party for my son in school, and admired his haircut. At 12 o'clock I went in and the school rabbi (not his usual teacher) came down and gave him is first "official" lesson. The rabbi showed my son a plaque of the Hebrew alphabet on which the letters had been traced over in honey. One by one he introduced each of the letters and had my son pronounce it. As he introduced them, he pointed out their distinguishing features ("see, the gimel has legs and she's walking", "the lamed holds her head high up", "the mem has a sister mem-sofit"). Then he let him lick off the honey.
I think that my son really connected with this rite of passage. There's a way in which the formative experience of a boy is dramatically different from that of a girl. Babies are born to identify with their mothers. The feeling of "I am my mother and my mother is me" is our first feeling of identification: it is from this point that our tribal identity expands outward. In a girl this process, under normal circumstances, proceeds smoothly from birth throughout her life. But a boy switches his most fundamental sense of identification from his mother to his father. My observation is that it's a gradual process beginning at about the age of one, and finishing by the age of three. From here may it expand outward!
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Another Mystic
Razib of Gene Expression reveals himself to be a mystic at Hot Needle of Inquiry. I always suspected him of it:
there is perhaps an order(s), truth(s), beyond our conception because of the cognitive limitations of our reality as an evolution-shaped mammal which somehow managed to slip over the hill which hides various insights from the rest of the animal kingdom.
i believe there are many other hills which hide many other truths. i don't think we have the equipment to really scale those hills...so i have hope in transhumanism and other such developments with which we might transcend the limitations of our minds. as wittgenstein said, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." speech is a constraint on insight, but we are too dumb to figure out ways around these constraints. for now. i believe the day might come when "man" might take wing and lift himself above the hills which hide the full expanse of all that is from our sight and take in the fullness of it all in one fell swoop.
perhaps.
Beautiful, really. He is saying that just as our cognitive abilities enable us to perceive much more than other animals, so too another being might perceive that much more than we. It is a non-theist (not necessarily atheist) variation on the child-parent paradigm: just as we do things that make sense, which our children can't understand, so too our Heavenly Father does things that make sense, which we can't understand.
(BTW I don't believe that "speech is a constraint on insight" - I think that if our intellect is able to understand it, our speech is capable of expressing it. On the other hand, there are many things that we understand not with our intellect, but by other means. It is that which we find difficult to express: states of being, for example, or even such a simple thing as the taste of an apple.)
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The human brain, considered as a computer, seems to be a classical computer - an approximation to the Universal Turing Machine. Theory suggests therefore that what one human mind can learn, another mind can learn also (given sufficient resources such as time, food and memory).
So I think Razib is mistaken, although it's true that future knowledge may enhance our perception in interesting new ways.
Animals can't create new knowledge (they never seek explanations), so the animal/human divide is fundamentally different from the parent/child divide (which is merely a matter of learning).
As for the man/G-d divide, well...
Posted by: Tom Robinson at January 11, 2005 04:42 AM Permalink
Tom: The parent/child divide isn't merely a matter of learning, at least when they are small. There are things small children are not capable of understanding no matter how much they know.
And as I said, there are things that we know, but not with the intellect. The intellect builds on these things much more than we appreciate.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 11, 2005 08:37 AM Permalink
Alan Turing himself believed in non-computable process.
Posted by: jinnderella at January 11, 2005 03:46 PM Permalink
Of course, that never stopped him from postulating the Turing Heresy.
Posted by: jinnderella at January 11, 2005 06:22 PM Permalink
David: can you give an example for either case?
Jinnderella: do you claim that our minds depend upon non-computable processes occurring in the host brain?
Posted by: Tom Robinson at January 12, 2005 02:25 AM Permalink
I, too, tripped over "speech is a constraint on insight".
But, I think that what he meant is that language constrains our understanding of our own insights. We form arguements with words, but sometimes -- when a new idea comes along -- words can't meet the task at hand.
We don't need to explain the taste of apple to ourselves because we're familiar with it and remember it abstractly. No words required. Insight, revelation, isn't so easy to deal with because it's new, not familiar. And, when language fails to give form to our insight, we tend to dismiss the idea as strange and, in (and without) a word, unformable. Frustrated by inadequate language to express it, we doubt our new insight.
And so, "Speech (language in the head) is a constraint on insight."
At least I think that's what he meant... :)
Posted by: Tuning Spork at January 12, 2005 07:35 AM Permalink
Ooopsie. Should read: Frustrated by inadequate language to express it, even to ourselves, we doubt our new insight.
Posted by: Tuning Spork at January 12, 2005 07:45 AM Permalink
But you get the drift...
Tom: Small children don't understand the concept of time, and won't understand it no matter how much you try to explain. Though they are completely capable of mastering the language of time, and so can fool you, e.g. they can say, "tomorrow it's my birthday" but they really have no idea what tomorrow is.
Adults have a little-realized sense of Proprioception - the knowledge of where all the parts of our body are at all times. We use this same sense to drive a car, plus many other activities. Without it we would understand much less of the world.
It's not hard to imagine senses which would make us aware of things now invisible to us: a 4th spatial dimension, the wave-packets of matter, and maybe others not part of our knowable universe.
Spork: I think you are agreeing with me. We tend to doubt that which we can't understand cognitively, i.e. put into words.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 12, 2005 10:12 AM Permalink
Tom, i don't know. I can't make that claim, as i am yet unsure if non-computable processes exist myself. I'm just parroting Turing.
Posted by: jinnderella at January 12, 2005 04:01 PM Permalink
Umm, "speech is a constraint on insight" only until we can get over the local hill we're working on in razib's topology. For example, Einstein originally thought entanglement too absurd to occur in nature, and that quantum theory had to be incomplete-- it is difficult for even geniuses to "think outside the box". We've had to derive a new language to think about quantum theory. But that's just one example, there are many other hills.
January 11, 2005
Amritas lives
At least that's what he says:
I live. I'm working. Can't blog. No time. But I can still write a sentence longer than two words. Just one. That one. Good night. More later.
He's "zai Xin Zexi". That's Chinese for, "in New Jersey".
I can't wait to hear what that's all about.
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Thank you David. I was beginning to worry. :(
Posted by: jinnderella at January 11, 2005 03:37 PM Permalink
I hope The Immortal is back soon.
Umm, does anyone else find it suspicious that Den Beste and Amritas HAVE DISAPPEARED AT THE SAME TIME AND THEY ARE STILL GONE????
sorry for yelling, but they are co-conspiritors, after all. :)
Posted by: jinnderella at January 11, 2005 06:21 PM Permalink
Well, you know, it's the holiday season...
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 13, 2005 03:46 PM Permalink
Marc got hired by a high tech company in NJ, to act as a translator.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 14, 2005 05:59 AM Permalink
January 12, 2005
A Godly life
Jinnderella has opened up comments on her blog, and it's become quite the happening place! I expecially liked this comment by Dymphna. Exerpt:
During my formative years I lived in an orphanage run by nuns. My whole day was punctuated with religious language (even at the age of six, I thought it strange to recite daily the prayer to St. Joseph for a happy death), but in addition there were religious icons everywhere. In other words, it wasn't just thought and language: there were compelling visual images as far as the eye could see. There were statues, crucifixes, holy cards with saints' images to contemplate; each element in the visual image had a deeper meaning, just as it did for those in the 13th century.
We prayed when we got up, we went to Mass before breakfast, we said grace before and after meals, we said the Angelus at noon. We prayed in class, after class and before going out to play. After supper we gathered in the chapel to say the rosary. And after our Recreation Hour we knelt down one last time before going off to bed. Our rewards often consisted of holy cards: images of saints whose lives we knew as well as we knew our own. The day was punctuated with vocalized prayer in the midst of an otherwise silent time. Even in silence we were supposed to pray. We learned to pray in the midst of any exigency. Lose your pencil? Pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.
The months were punctuated with feast days: I know the saint for my birthday. The year was described within the confines of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, and Pentecost. Each season had its color and that color represented something. Lent, for example, was penitentially purple. Every moment was accounted for.
And God's language was, of course, Latin. "Ora pro nobis" responsively repeated in an endless litany left one's mind free to wander. Sometimes the words come back, unbidden but here anyway..."like a song on the radio."
What that experience taught me was that life had a deeper, higher and wider meaning than anything I could assign to it. From the outside it sounds harsh (btw, there are no horror stories to relate. The nuns were mostly kind, if a bit rigid) but as a lived experience it brought order out of chaos and I was grateful even while I longed for my mother. As Erikson said, children can survive anything as long as it has meaning.
Even more God-suffused than the average observant Jewish life (and that's saying a lot)! Though there are Jews who attain this level - just make the appropriate substitutions (and don't pray to anyone but God). I especially liked the last sentence, "children can survive anything as long as it has meaning" - it's true of adults too.