A Conversation with a Leading Radical Political Thinker from the Netanya School

On the occasion of the elections, we sat with the thinker in his living room, as he watched the television news, ate bananas, and cursed in fluent philosophy. What are the goals of political technology? How does game theory explain the political stalemate in the West? Why is Trump the best thing that could have happened to culture? And which feminist myth could replace Christianity? Everything the Netanya School has to say about the news and weather

The School of Athens - a competitor of the Netanya School  (Source)

(Question)
Answer: Leaders tend to be problematic assholes because it requires an exceptional drive, and politically involved people tend to be extreme, so it's actually indifference that is the secret of democracy and indicates its health. Have you ever asked yourself why political stalemate is so common in the West? Why does it happen in so many countries that the results are often on a knife's edge, and therefore seem random? It's actually because the results are the least random - because there's spontaneous regulation. The phenomenon of the almost equal political stalemate indicates balancing mechanisms, because from a game theory perspective, the difference between candidates (assuming there are two realistic contenders) should be minimal on every issue and tends to converge in the middle to the center of the population on the axis of different positions. Because each one already gets the voters to their right or left, so they compete for those in between. The fact that there's no difference between candidates actually indicates that the system converges to the center on its own, and that's the main thing, that it no longer matters who will be elected, because candidates move according to popular positions. In such a game, the distance between candidates narrows, and therefore society is less torn apart. A tie means the success of the system - not its failure.

(Question)
Answer: In the US, there are places where a judge is not allowed to compromise between the positions of the two sides in a legal dispute, but only to choose one of them. The moment a judge averages between positions, both sides' positions become more extreme to pull the map in their direction, and the conflict intensifies. On the other hand, when the judge's (i.e., the public's) choice is limited (to two candidates), the positions get closer and each wants to be more reasonable, because it's clear that the judge won't choose a position too extreme for either side, and it turns out that the conflict is much smaller, creating peace in society. The less a system sharpens differences and the more it blurs them - the better it is.

(Question)
Answer: Only the dysfunction of one political side allows for a large majority, like with our left. But because of the shitty nature of leaders, what's needed is a system of government without leaders but rather grayer, non-personalized mechanisms of weighting, and this should be the goal of political technology, removing representatives from democracy - creating a government without leadership. As an intermediate stage, the publication of candidates' names and faces should be prohibited (despite being known to all), and move to an anonymous democracy, under aliases, thereby placing a significant barrier to charismatic narcissism, which is disastrous, and leading to a textual democratic narrative instead of the current video narrative. The medium of the story affects its level, and I wish we could return to an ugly leader like Lincoln. This may seem like a trivial detail, but just as it's forbidden to photograph and record in the judiciary, any recordings and photographs of the executive and legislative branches should be prohibited. If there were only newspapers and no radio - fascism wouldn't have risen. All of our most problematic and dangerous neurological biases disappear when I answer you in text, and you don't see me, don't hear me, don't know who I am, and don't even read the questions. Everything becomes much more matter-of-fact. For example, if I were a monkey, you wouldn't pay attention to me even if I'm the most important philosopher in Netanya.

(Question)
Answer: The fact that it doesn't matter if the US president, the most powerful person in the world, is black or racist, smart or stupid, right or left - that it doesn't matter at all even if you put Trump there - is the best thing that could have happened. Because it will sober up the masses from the idea that politics is important as the world's story, which is the most harmful narrative in history. For example, how many lost brain hours of great thinkers went into the stupid political story of their time, which today who knows? All this is due to jungle instincts, where intrigues in the monkey group are important, so the brain is neurologically vulnerable to addiction to some meta-story of super-monkeys. And why are intellectuals the most vulnerable to current affairs - which is the enemy of intellect? The moment there's a monkey-like desire to deal with what's "up" in the treetop, but lacking depth and roots, a person can confuse formal hierarchy, where the president is at the top, with essential hierarchy, where the most important philosopher in Netanya is at the very top.

(Question)
Answer: Democracy is not the rule of the people but the story of politics, in which even the politicians themselves believe, that they are elected according to popularity and public love, and therefore in the past they tried to please it and now try to manipulate it - the two most forceful strategies in love. But if they didn't believe in this, the whole system would behave differently. Let's say everyone believed they were chosen according to God's will (which is only expressed in the ceremony of elections), or that politics isn't the center and in the headlines at all, but rather the economy or scientific progress, and that's what everyone would be interested in. That it's more important who the Chief of Staff or Google CEO or Admor [Hasidic leader] is than the head of state. Any such story would create a completely different system, and the masses would cooperate with it too. Then that's what would be in the top news, and that's what they would argue about in empty salon conversations. And now they'll quote me in those same conversations while name-dropping the Netanya School ridiculously. After all, why do people talk about the weather in air conversations? Because it's in the news, that's why. And if it wasn't in the news, it wouldn't be a topic of conversation! So here, because of you, the Netanya School is news.

(Question)
Answer: The media is the one telling the story. It's the bad writer who writes reality as trash, and then intellectuals come (of the kind you won't find in the Netanya School) and find deep interpretations in it. And since this telenovela-like story has taken over people's minds through the news, and they don't understand what are the important and changing things in the world, then it's best to reduce its power. And to tell, for example, that the government is powerless against technology. Or against changes in culture (which is the narrative that the history of ideas tries to sell). To retell a valuable story (and therefore a valuable civilization), one needs to look at reality from a perspective where the real story of the world is the story of science and culture and art. And the political story is becoming less and less relevant, the decline of democracy is the decline of the story. Even Caligula's horse can be the US president and nothing will change. The individual person is no longer important, even if he's at the head of the system. And the best thing is a system that has no head, that has no face, and therefore has no story. The news is the enemy of culture, because culture always faces the past (tradition, classics), and it's also the enemy of science, because research always faces the future. The news is the takeover of the present over the horizon of consciousness.

(Question)
Answer: Christianity succeeded because it presented a person who is the head, who is the drama, unlike Judaism. It's much easier to identify with such a figure. And the new religion is ripe for such a figure who is a woman. And her role of suffering and murder, like with Jesus, will be replaced today by pleasure and sex, and a figure will be created whose worship will be by virtue of her total realization of sex. Let's say a new Christian-pornographic story about someone who had sex with God, a flesh and blood woman who was chosen to be his partner, and was taken to heaven, thereby redeeming sex and making it holy, an act of religious significance. Because the Caligula era, of a mad emperor in Rome, led to a story of Christianity that was more convincing and motivating than the story of government and politics in Rome. Therefore, when a story becomes ridiculous and incoherent, room is made for a new story. The yawn that exists in the world today from all the small news plots is the empty space for a new big story - for a new religion. Today we are close to year zero AD. Because a new count will begin.

(Question)
Answer: What is The Degeneration of the Nation? Didn't you say you're from Haaretz [The Land, a major Israeli newspaper]?

(Question)
Answer: Get out of my living room!