The Degeneration of the Nation
List of 100 Most Desirable Bachelor Philosophers
How did the transition occur from the era of God speaking to the era of speaking to God? Why were aesthetics and art the central driving force in history? What ethos can save culture from digital barbarism? Why don't painters get married? And why is there an overrepresentation of homosexuals in all fields of humanities, arts, and science? Could it be related to bananas?
By: The Most Desirable Philosopher in Netanya
Women prefer bananas over philosophers - and philosophers prefer bananas over women. Conclusion? (Source)

Stereo-theism

What created the Bible was the perception that God speaks. Then there was competition over God's texts, laws, prophecies, stories in which He intervenes through speech, and the institution of the prophet as a power was formed. God's speech was meaningful and aesthetic, and the desire to preserve and consume God's speech became literature. When there are many gods, they influence through nature, each with a different power, and the relationship with them is mechanical, natural. But when there is one God, the contradictory forces do not express Him, because a personal, human relationship is formed, which is a system of speech. Only this can bridge contradictions in behavior and explain good and evil as reward and punishment. Therefore, all these developments were not different stages in the evolution of religion, but developed all at once. The innovation was not the unity (of God), but the development of the relationship with God as a human system (and ultimately a spousal one) rather than a natural one, from which everything stemmed, including unity, out of loyalty. God was no longer a force of nature or an animal, but a person. Until He became pure speech, without a body. And finally, a text. He was created in man's image, and in the end, when He disappeared, only the relationship with Him remained. God's houses became houses where God's speech was - houses of study - and houses where man speaks to God - houses of prayer. In Christianity, God's speech as exegesis and law disappeared, and only man's speech remained, in confession and prayer. The relationship became one-sided, which is the strongest type of love, which is a one-sided relationship, as opposed to couplehood. But today, when communication has become visual, God can speak through art. And man can speak to Him through painting.


The Exodus from the Pyramids in Egypt to Mount Sinai as a Meta-Poetic Story of Transition Between Artistic Mediums

Ancient religiosity was born out of art, from music. In the period before the Common Era, people had no way to consume art outside of a religious framework, so the sense of sublimity that art provided created the religious feeling. In the Biblical period, people didn't read any book other than the Bible; it was the only work of art they were exposed to. The statue in the temple was the most impressive plastic art piece they saw in their lives; the temple was the only museum in the city. What Judaism did was replace plastic art with the art of literature, that's all. Christianity made a synthesis and used both the plastic art of the pagan world and the literary art of the Jewish world, and therefore triumphed over both. Islam, on the other hand, was built on the art of poetry and music, and therefore was also sweeping, but did not leave a cultural legacy like Christianity, because music is not preserved. The eruption of Classical Greece is an artistic eruption; art came before science and philosophy, and so did the Renaissance. People always ask what led to the scientific revolution, and don't understand that it was the artistic revolution. This artistic revolution replaced religion with art, a role reversal, and the museum became a temple; this was the root of secularization. And today, when we are flooded with art, this is the information revolution, the flood of images, texts, and music. Egyptian culture was an architectural culture, and whoever had an architectural culture, like Rome, became an empire, not the other way around. Sophistication in the art of sculpture and architecture created the gods and temples, and caused the agricultural revolution, while cinema and photography created the twentieth century, the spectacle of world wars. Meanwhile, the internet has not created an art form, but only shortened existing forms. But when computer games and virtual reality become available technology for art, a new medium like cinema, then a real revolution will take place. In other words, the virtual world, which today is inferior to the real world, will become, through a process of sublimation, a higher and more real world, thanks to its artistic form. Homo sapiens defeated the Neanderthals because they created art and the Neanderthals didn't. This is not just perceived as the highest ability because art can mobilize people in a way that is not otherwise possible. And until artificial intelligence has an artistic sense, people will not recognize it as intelligence, because art is the ability that uses all the skills of the brain, and therefore it is so high. It activates both the lower perceptions, the sensory ones, as well as emotion-pleasure-motivation, and also the higher abilities, so it was created from consciousness, the highest organizing ability that includes all other abilities. If we want to know when humans achieved consciousness, we need to see when they started engaging in art, and we see this in children, and also in [Translator's note: "arsim" is Israeli slang for low-class, uncultured individuals] arsim. People without an artistic side are a kind of intelligent animals. The sense of aesthetics is what attracts us to open spaces, to landscapes, to migration, and brought humans out of Africa and caused their spread, while art as artificial beauty is what attracts us to culture, because sexual beauty that attracts combines physical beauty with spiritual beauty - we are programmed to want intelligence and social ability, not just breasts. Therefore, this was the engine for the evolutionary development of humans from apes, and art specifically was the engine for the development of tools. Aesthetics is responsible for the success of Homo sapiens more than previous hominids and more than other animals. And also for the success of Western culture more than other cultures. There is a direct relationship between the level of aesthetics of a culture and its success - more than geographical location - and see Japan.


The Real Engine of History

The Renaissance in Italy grew out of a culture that was obsessive about painting, sculpture, and architecture, as the focus of prestige in society, out of competition between patrons for prestige through art. In other words, power expresses itself through plastic art, and so does the flourishing of classical music in Germany, or drama and philosophy in Greece, and poetry in Archaic Greece. It's like the blossoming of peacock feathers; when power competes with itself through aesthetics, a period of artistic flourishing is created, and most of the time it competes through other means such as trade, money, wars, and conquests. Every society and its obsession, and in this obsession it usually succeeds gloriously. In China it's development, in Israel it was the security field, and now it's start-ups. Judaism competed for two thousand years through the Talmud, which became the most magnificent intellectual structure in human history, which interests no one except the ultra-Orthodox, while in the last two centuries Jews competed through intellectual achievements and media, and there was a tremendous flourishing of them in the field, just as in Russia in the 19th century the competition was through literature, and the flourishing of Russian literature was created. That's how every society and its obsession, like Silicon Valley society whose obsession is high technology, and that's how they compete. In other words, the ability to transfer the struggle between alpha males to different fields is the main engine of humanity, and the flexibility of defining the field is what allows us to drive this engine in different directions. But to achieve cultural achievements in a certain field, first of all, that's where the obsession of power needs to be, and then cultural flourishing is created. And there are weak cultures that don't have a project, or their project is messed up, like terrorism, or outdated, like Islam, or have lost their obsession, like parts of Europe, whose obsession is leftist righteous ideals, or large parts of the world whose obsession is right-wing forceful ideals full of self-pride. In Israel, the Arabs' obsession is the Jews and the Jews' obsession is the Arabs, and therefore both the left and the right are defined by approaches to Arabs, and are motivated in relation to someone else, which is a messed up motivation, like in a relationship, because the other is autonomous. Therefore, what's important is not the economy, or technology, but the ethos of society, its obsession, and that's where the achievements will be. The ethos in the Middle Ages was religion and therefore great achievements were made there, the Roman ethos was imperial and therefore achieved great achievements, the Pharaohs achieved great achievements in attaining eternal life, according to their religion, and so on. The absurdity of these achievements is because they are far from our ethos, just as the Pharaohs would look at the ethos of classical music in the German countries as absurd. Therefore, a fundamental change in the achievements of a society cannot come from the allocation of resources, but from the allocation of values and ethos. And this is very little, like attention, you can't split too much and it's a resource limited to 1, there's only 1 attention and you can't get more of it, and if you divide it to everything you won't reach any exceptional achievement. Therefore, you have to choose. Maximum two or three goals, and preferably one. If you're a start-up and security power, you're not a painting power. Therefore, culture does not stem from the talent of individuals, but from the social competition that recruits its prestige to one field. What the individual can do is only enlist in an existing ethos in his society. No one can be a scientist without science, or an artist without art. America's obsession is the future, and Japan's obsession is success, and China's obsession is control, and Russia's obsession is forcefulness, and Europe's obsession is society, and India's obsession is Hinduism, and the Islamic world's obsession is its feelings of inferiority, and Iran's obsession is pride, and Africa's obsession is survival, and changes in ethos are slower than technological changes. To create flourishing, you don't need many people, but a subculture whose ethos is in the direction of flourishing, and this is difficult, because the ethos of subcultures is conquered by the big and strong ethos of society. It's hard to create a subculture whose ethos is painting, without it being conquered by other dominant ethos in the world, because prestige tends to concentrate, what is precious in the eyes of others is contagious to what is precious in your eyes. Only the fundamentalist model like the ultra-Orthodox manages to maintain prestige that is not dependent on the world, and it does so with all its might. The United States rules the world because it controls the images of prestige, and the Far East and all the rest are just imitating them for now. Therefore, the way to progress in painting is to connect to the ethos of painting, and to be even an ethos of one person, against all the barbarians around.


Check the Marriage Percentages of the Top Hundred in Various Fields

Painters are bachelors, homosexuals, and childless, at a significantly higher rate than the population, not because they are poor, but because it's an art whose practice is so isolated, but also very rewarding, neurologically, because success is before your eyes, the reward is immediate (not like a word or a note, which are not right or wrong in themselves), and continuous, it's always before your eyes. And the same goes for philosophers, because it's very isolated work, and the intellectual reward is addictive. You're in a cage - but they pay in bananas. So I don't know why no one wanted me, but it's a fact. And it's a fact that the marriage rates of philosophers are significantly lower than those of monkeys.
Philosophy of the Future