frank

I don't think he's trying to let each "epoche" speak for itself. He's myth making to explain why we have directly opposing conceptions of goodness. Hi...

:grin:

I think we'll find reason to be at odds with each other one way or another.

That might be painful.

If you don't let go of the past, your heart won't have any room for the present Waking from a dream. Rising to the surface as a sun, exhaling streams ...

I'm a big fan of Nietzsche. I feel a connection to his writing that goes deep, like into the realm of dreams. He was the forerunner of people like Fre...

Yea, but that was by someone who's not all that bright himself. :razz:

He didn't know anything about the Bronze age because little was known about it at the time. I remember overlooking a fair amount of false conclusions ...

I would just say it's important to take Nietzsche's history with a grain of salt, not just because of his own attitude regarding the mythical nature o...

Do you mean the west should be antagonistic toward countries that don't value rights and liberal principles?

Exactly. Where there are multiple cultures in competition, there are two primary survival tactics: military prowess and intolerance of foreign ways. I...

What we know is that there was no religious intolerance throughout most of the ancient world. That changed when monotheism and the concept of false go...

@"Jamal" True. Around the turn of the 20th Century, the Germans tried mandatory education for Jewish children to force assimilation. It didn't work. T...

But by the 1500s the Italians provided Europe with banking to finance wars and what not. I think the stereotype of the money-minded Jew comes from the...

I read about him. Fascinating guy.

Cool! Thanks.

Maybe it comes from an analysis of what we do. Where does the framework for that analysis come from? Not sure.

It is. There's just no fact about whether you've ever followed it.

It's not rule following. It's probably something innate.

Sure. I was trying to explain earlier that anti-Semitism has to be understood with reference to the problems and stressors of the times in which indiv...

I know. Likewise, progressive American Christianity is fairly interfaith.

Was there something specific you disagreed with?

I can easily imagine that. But remember: the topic is the origin of anti-Semitism. You're going to have to dig into history to dredge that up. To stat...

That does sound concerning. But you said you'd never even heard of the idea that Jews think they're superior to Gentiles. That's actually why they've ...

I think this question is kin to how do we know what's real? That distinction is a function of rationality. It's a way of dividing experience up into d...

It was both. They weren't welcome in the court of the Czar, but they also abhorred the possibility of adulteration of their communities with foreign w...

You don't think I could have come across the idea from historians?

Nobody wants to entertain parts of their heritage that aren't attractive.

It's in the Talmud. The rabbis would debate exactly how long a Gentile needs to be tortured to make up for being a Gentile. In the World to Come, God ...

Do you have any concerns about the future of Judaism? Do you think that integration will cause you to become the end of the lineage? Would it bother y...

Like what?

No, they believe they have a special relationship with God, the gentiles will suffer when they die, and God will eventually put the Jews in charge of ...

But when the British gave up trying to govern Palestine, it was pretty much up to the US to settle Israel's status. If the US had been opposed to reco...

The USA is kind of like Cyrus. I don't think Israel would be there without US support.

The NY Times gives the impression that Hamas fighters may be experiencing an intelligence black-out. Israel didn't give any notice that they were goin...

Isaac Asimov said the Jews invented religious intolerance and then went on to profoundly influence the rest of the world, setting the stage for becomi...

Javi, the Sino-Japanese war was 1937-1945. If you file away the deaths of 20 million people with which nation never had a bloody bellicose past?, then...

Yes. 20,000,000 Chinese civilians died during their war with Japan. The Japanese put themselves at the top of the list of the most destructive nations...

I also love Japanese culture, particularly the wabi sabi aesthetic. My love of it is in evidence throughout my house and garden. I have about 7 bonsai...

True. There was once a quiet little village in the middle of nowhere. One day the blacksmith said it had come to him that he owned the moon. Startled ...

I agree. The bombing of Dresden was also a war crime. It killed more civilians than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't think anyone would hold Germany up...

Yea. We all see the world through myths, I think. There's the Muslim terrorist myth, which shows up sometimes. The America-bad myth is ever-present. W...

Yep

China and the US became allies immediately after Pearl Harbor. China provided the US Navy with intelligence throughout the war. Americans knew.

There were civilians who died at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, but worse, when the Japanese invaded China, around 20 million Chinese civili...

Javi, Japan attacked first. It was all-out war. Stop with the bullshit about how Japan was unfairly targeted.

That's weird.

You prefer the 1950s jargon. :up:

This is an example of the problems caused by weather volatility. It's not just a matter of destructive storms. It's that agriculture as we know it can...

These days we talk about core countries and developing ones. We talk about regional influence versus global influence.