Essays and Other Pieces of Literature

[Tails82]

it’s early stages

[Mastery]

*not proofread

[Tails82]

sentence fragment.

[Vinyl the Rebel ᵘᶰᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ🚫]

I dun wroted a poem and I actually kinda liked this one. Lemme know what y'all think. Any suggestions y'all may have for improving it would be appreciated. Opinions too, 'cause why not, I'll hear 'em.

Streetlamp
Some watch television,
And some arrange candles
To read their books by.
But I only need the light
Of the streetlamp on the corner.

Its complexities are infinite.
As darkness settles it springs to life,
A nocturnal beast
Waiting to prey on the lost.
Or a stalwart defender,
Keeping the night at bay.
It burns like a cold star,
A piercing orange; unlike its neighbors,
Old and flickering, blue.

The cars pass below, the birds above,
And the light of day laughs at it,
A lifeless hunk of metal and a bulb.
But when it rains, (oh, how it rains),
I lay watching through the glass
And I glimpse them, dancing,
In the blurry lights refracted in the droplets;
Quiet angels.

[Chromeo]

got a 2:1 for the essay on two media documentaries I submitted over the holidays, coulda been worse

[Jordan Ω]

Can I post something religious oriented?

[Chromeo]

sure why not, as long as it's not... ugghggh... ZIONISM.

[Jordan Ω]

Do you not like israel?

'קלמן בנימין  מיטשל
Jordan
Choose Life!

"הכל צפוי, והרשות נתונה, ובטוב העולם נדון. והכל לפי רב המעשה" (אבות פ"ג)
"Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given. The world is judged with goodness, and everything depends upon the abundance of good deeds." (Avos 3)
 
There’s been a question that’s plagued me since the first time I learned about the basic principles of G-d. G-d knows everything: "אני מאמין באמונה שלמה. שהבורא יתברך שמו יודע כל מעשה בני אדם וכל מחשבותם. שנאמר היצר יחד לבם המבין אל כל מעשיהם". – 'Hashem knows all the deeds of human beings and their thoughts.' So why does He test us at all? He knows all our good points, bad points, and everything in between. That means He knows everything that ever was or will be, including what we would do in any given situation. Therefore, if He knows that we would pass whichever test we were given, He could avoid giving us the test in the first place and just heap reward on us as we deserve. Conversely, why give us a test that we will necessarily fail?
This question brings up some very difficult points. First of all, all humans are born with free will as the Torah states (Devarim 30:19) "החיים והמות נתתי לפניך, הברכה והקללה, ובחרת בחיים" וגו' – "Life and death I have placed before you, the blessing and the curse, and you should choose life!" Doesn't saying that G-d is omniscient and knows all of our actions, past, present and future point to some sort of deficiency in our ability to make our own decisions?
​To fully understand these questions, one first must understand what is meant free will and omniscience. Free will is generally accepted to be the ability (and freedom) to do whatever one wants, as long as there aren’t physical constraints (i.e. chains, physical disabilities, or physics). Omniscient means ‘knowing all things’. Seemingly that includes matters that will be, in addition to what was and is.
​Accepting these definitions, it’s simple to see a contradiction. A person is only doing something out of his own free will if (and only if) he is able to choose any amount of alternate outcomes. However, if Hashem knows exactly what a person’s result will be, the person, from the beginning of the situation, only has one option.
Here’s an example: Reuven enters a garden through one path, walks for a few minutes, and encounters a fork in the road. If G-d with His infinite foreknowledge (awareness of something before it occurs) knows which choice Reuven will make and when he makes it, then, from before Reuven even steps into the garden, G-d knows if he’ll turn right or left. So, in essence, he really can only have one possible future available: the same one that G-d knew about beforehand. For that reason, if G-d knows precisely what Reuven will do in the future, he has no free will.
In fact, the Rambam asks this very question (Mishnah Torah, Hilchos Teshuva 5:5) "One might ask: Since The Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything that will occur before it comes to pass, does He or does He not know whether a person will be righteous or wicked? If He knows that he will be righteous, [it appears] impossible for him not to be righteous. However, if one would say that despite His knowledge that he would be righteous, it is possible for him to be wicked, then His knowledge would be incomplete." Evidently, either G-d's knowledge is flawed (chas vishalom) or our free will is.
​This poses a major problem. How can we be held accountable to our actions, either good or bad, if we don’t have complete and unadulterated free will? After all, if there’s only one possible conclusion, we didn’t really have a choice in getting there. In the words of Rambam in Shemonah Perakim, "All learning, teaching, and effort of all kinds would be useless if man’s actions, knowledge, and characteristics, were determined by an outside power. If such were the case, reward and punishment would be unjust; for no matter how much a man would try to do a certain deed, if it were predetermined that he should not do it, he would be unable to perform it." Judaism does not subscribe to such a claim -"אני מאמין באמונה שלמה שהבורא יתברך שמו גומל טוב לשומרי מצותיו, ומעניש לעוברי מצותיו" – "Hashem rewards with good those who observe his commandments and punishes those who violate them."
​The solution to this incompatibility of free will and complete omniscience logically cannot be found, assuming the aforementioned definitions for them are the correct ones. For that reason, philosophers choose to ‘change the rules’ somehow.
​There are a few possibilities to find compatibility, but they aren’t all exactly the most satisfying ones, nor do they answer the original question. For example, according to Thomas Hobbes, who writes in Leviathan that free will merely entails “no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do.” Which purports that free will means that no One or Being coerces anyone to actually do anything, not by force, pressure or any other discernible means.
But this doesn’t really answer the original question; it's simply a change in definition. It still seems that G-d knows what we will do; therefore when someone performs an action, he has no alternative route to take.
Another way to find an answer is to attribute divine omniscience with less power, such as claiming that G-d can only know everything that is and was, but not what will be. A different response could be that G-d chooses what He knows, and decides, in order to avoid this conflict, not to know the future. But all these go against the truth of the Torah.
Now, how exactly, do we solve this problem? Well, the Rambam prefaces by saying that the resolution has ‘measure longer than the earth and wider than the sea.’ So don’t feel too bad if you haven’t thought of it yourself. Moshe, speaking to Hashem, asks Him to show him His ‘glory’. Hashem says "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of Hashem before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." And then He says, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see My face and live." ( Shemos 33:18-20) Rambam explains this to mean that it is impossible to understand the complete scope and reasoning of Hashem’s knowledge. (It’s also written in Yeshaya 55:8, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways, My ways.")
Rashi comments that this pasuk in Shemos seems unrelated to the pesukim before it. Moshe asked to see Hashem’s Kavod, so why is Hashem mentioning His face? He answers that Hashem said ‘Even when I will pass all of My goodness before you, I do not give you permission to see My face.' The Be’er Mayim Chaim explains what is meant by "Hashem’s face". He clarifies that by Hashem shielding His face, what He’s really doing is guarding the full extent of His goodness from mankind. That’s why (in the following pesukim) even Moshe, the greatest prophet who ever was or will be, could only see Hashem’s ‘back’ so to speak.
Without a doubt, there are just some things that man is not meant to know. We can’t comprehend the reason for anything that Hashem does. The Rambam, after asserting this, concludes by saying that even though G-d knows everything that everyone will do, man’s actions are his own to control. Hashem doesn’t lead people in a specific direction, or make anyone do anything. These concepts may seem contradictory to the human mind but not in G-d's domain. 
Rav Elchanon Wasserman suggests if Hashem only knew our past and present, and we would act as we normally did, we would get rewarded or punished as we deserve. The fact that Hashem knows our future is not a reason for us to be judged any differently. We would have made the exact same chose even if, hypothetically, G-d wouldn't have foresight of what that choice would be! So the fact that he does indeed have foresight is no reason whatsoever to remove our liability for punishment or our merit for reward.  
It’s pretty obvious what Hashem wants us to do. Tanach is replete with pesukim that tell us to be/do good, and the reward we will incur for doing so. "I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse; and you should choose life." (Devarim 30:19), "Thus said Hashem, 'Behold, I place before you the path of life and the path of death.'" (Yermiah 21:8) And "Trust in Hashem and do good… for he will grant you the desires of your heart." (Tehillim 37). These are just a few pesukim among the many that speaks on this subject.
The path to a good life, both in this world and the next world, may not be an easy one. It will certainly contain pitfalls, trials, and tribulations. But make no excuses; despite Hashem's foreknowledge you have the right to do whatever you please and no One will make you do otherwise. The choice is yours.
Choose wisely, choose well, choose life!'

[Chromeo]

I'm not crazy about it, no.

[Tails82]

If I know what I did yesterday, does it mean I didn't have free will then but I do now?

[Jordan Ω]

What's your beef with israel?

Tails, Aristotle thought so. Google 'Aristotle's sea battle paradox' if you wanna.

[Chromeo]

no offense but I gotta stand w/ my palestine niggas

[Jordan Ω]

As long as you're not against me in particular, and you're not going to join a terrorist organization, I'm fine with that.

[Chromeo]

I wasn't planning to, no.

I'm sure some Israelis are alright but I dislike the nation's imperialistic and hawkish culture, and their actions, obviously.

[Tails82]

Under the deportation plan would you separate the "alright" ones?