the rumblings of future triumph

When Mosheh Rabbeinu recalls HaShem's commands regarding entering the Holy Land, he speaks of the nations Amon and Moav as well as Edom. In the discussion he states some points that seem important only as historical trivia. Details like which nation dwelled in the land before Amon, Moav, or Edom inherited them, and what their various names were.

The Noam Elimelech says that the Torah is the furthest thing from a history lesson, and so these passages carry within them deep lessons. What kind of lessons? Mosheh Rabbeinu is showing us how to overcome our enemies. Even enemies such as Amon and Moav who had a connection with and the protection of Avraham Avinu, as well as Edom, who had the merit of the honor he showed his father Yitzhak Avinu. Because of their merits, we weren't permitted to war with them, so Mosheh Rabbeinu, in recounting their histories, tied them to the Sarim (the angelic rulers) of the nations they had defeated. In doing so, he uprooted their merits and opened the door to their ultimate destruction. Just as the Sarim had been defeated, so too would those who were tied to them be defeated.

This is a valuable lesson for us to understand the infinitely subtle and farsighted True Kindness of HaShem that is the driving force behind all of history. Our enemies today take on a name for themselves, not just any name, but the name of the nation who once inhabited our land. We don't have Mosheh Rabbeinu nowadays to tie our enemies to the fallen Sarim, so HaShem allows history to play out in such a way that it is done for us.

Just as the Plishtim, the Philistines fell before HaShem's first born, Yisrael, so too God-willing will the Palestinians (who chose to tie themselves to the name of a long dead idolatrous people, rather than to the merits of Yishmael) fall before HaShem's first born, Yisrael. Right now it seems like their name is a source of strength (a flag behind which many people may unite and gain recognition) but the time is approaching when it will become their undoing.

Speedily and in our days. Amen. Netzah. Selah. va'Ed.

[this is post #702 on this blog, gematria Shabbath שבת - may this post be an indication of the endless Shabbat to come, and may we all merit to experience it in HaShem's infinite mercy in our immediate future.]

self promotion

I have a new blog Apocalex - Cereal Fiction for my fiction, well, i've had it for a long time, but i've just posted my first story there: Waking Adam

For anyone who might be interested. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.

scifi as a vehicle for revellation

I'd hate to be pegged as a scifi nerd, but I have a lot of respect for Science Fiction, or as actual scifi nerds would say speculative fiction. Why respect scifi? Because it can get people to think about many things that they would otherwise be able to rationally examine.

This is actually a more general strength of stories, but scifi has a way of harnessing it much more powerfully than most other fiction. I think it is mainly because it is unbounded in its creative latitude, while at the same time, it tries to provide a logical (scientific) framework with which the reader can (theoretically) explore the created world. In example, in a world where they've introduced force-fields, the reader is free to imagine all manner of uses of force-fields some of which might or might not pop up in the progress of the story. However, if a particular plot line fails to make use of a force-field-available mindset the reader would become dis-illusioned with the author's created world. (and rightfully so.)

Of course I'm describing good scifi, why measure anything by a poor representation of that thing?

Let's look at a few examples to better understand my point:
There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which the crew of the Enterprise came upon a planet of androgynous/hermaphroditic people. Some of the planet's inhabitants felt a certain leaning to be either male or female. The crew identified with these people--being either male or female themselves, and started to interfere with the planet's own legal system. In the end they had to learn to respect that planet's culture and allow their new friends to be re-educated back to androgyny in keeping with the planet's accepted culture.

This episode was obviously addressing the gay/lesbian issue that our current culture is having such a hard time with. But, the scifi aspect of it allowed the issue to be approached in a vaccuum in which we actually more naturally identify with those who are stand-ins for gays and lesbians. I'm not going to get into my personal beliefs or Judaism's status quo regarding this issue, I simply wanted to point to a good example of how scifi allows a good author the means to represent current problems in a audience-neutral way. In this manner scifi gets people to actually think about all manner of old problems in a new light.

Similarly during my recent sick-leave from work, I watched about half of the first season of the popular SciFi Channel TV series Battlestar Galactica. I marvelled at the number of huge issues they tackle in novel and interesting ways. Many vs. One God. Do created beings have souls? Could humanity be wiped out? God will redeem you if you put your faith in Him. God is a construct created by those with power to control those without. Will our technology be our undoing? After a while you get the drift that almost all of these have been dealt with endless times before, in the Matrix, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Machine, etc. (virtually ad infinitum)

All of this leads me to marvel at the magnitude of deep secrets of Torah that are just shouting out of all known media at the common man and going mostly unheard. Still, because all these secrets are clothed in a story nature, they are penetrating deep into the human psyche. They will have profound and lasting affects, so that when God does reveal the reality of his presence, in a lasting and open fashion, these things will be recognized as the truth that they are. We will finally see and intimately understand how the truth was around us, embracing us all along. We will have had to be zombies not to have woken up to its reality, just as Pharoah had to exert total will-power to avoid giving in to the unleashed power of God.

synchronicity in science

Here's a Live Science article about hippocampus damage preventing imagining the future:

"We found that the role played by the hippocampus in processing memory was far broader than merely reliving past experiences," said Eleanor Maguire of the University College London. "It also seems to support the ability to imagine any kind of experience including possible future events. In that sense, people with damage to the hippocampus are forced to live in the present

How did they not tie it to the article in Science Blog I quoted in this post on the future behind us?:

Now, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have used advanced brain imaging techniques to show that remembering the past and envisioning the future may go hand-in-hand, with each process sparking strikingly similar patterns of activity within precisely the same broad network of brain regions.

Interesting all the same. These researchers probably could have gained a lot from networking.

short-sighted pronouncements - mine or others? the future will tell

From wikipedia by way of boingBoing:

There have been some amazing projects in recent years which have matured now to the point that a new alternative is possible. Wikia is funding and supporting the development of something radically new.

Nutch and Lucene and some other projects now provide the background infrastructure that we need to generate a new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot. Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.

(the blue is my emphasis.)
People don't so much grasp the idea that the emphasized statement is very short-sighted. It really isn't going to be very long at all before software and algorithms will be way better at sorting (even images) than they are currently. We're talking maximum maximum ten years tops. I'm willing to bet, in less than five years computing technology will powerful enough that we won't be able to justify having to deal with the complicated matter of human bias in place of using machines to sort and organize all our data.

This should really only scare you if you think that all we are is walking meat pattern-recognition machines. More importantly, it should make you realize how many things that might right now seem really important and really special will very shortly be irrelevant. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. We will still be human, social, in need of companionship, food and air.

Hopefully we will all have developed our direct high-bandwidth connection with HaShem further. I think it will still be a long time before a computer can perform mesirat nefesh ;)