Everyone believes they have things to say

Everyone needs something for the soul

In the past, someone thought that only one, ten or thirty-six people per generation had something to say. Today, driven by the technology, everyone believes that they have a valuable contribution. This current climate is distasteful. For example, I am having trouble finding things to read on Substack, even though everyone and their dog suddenly has one.

But the habit of empathy, thinking and feeling what the other person thinks and feels, is an unhealthy one. On the other hand, like ping pong, the game only works if the plastic ball flies both ways. Which corresponds to my grand theory of the world, where everything is an exchange, trading emotions, trading goods, ideas, bodily fluids, historical information, etc. Any exchange is a mutual exchange of value, it flows both ways. This trade includes feelings and thoughts. The funda-mental commodity.

Which also explains why it is impossible to trade value with someone who is ideologically possessed, stingy, incurious, stupid or emotionally stunted. So Substack has this promise, even when the exchange is broken and the flow of the natural love is restricted, the money is paid (not that anyone is paying here) to give legitimacy to the prostitution. But prostitution still is a lonely trade. It takes the discipline or the desperation that I don’t have. I also hate pimping and advertisement.

mentalblog 1.0 collapsed for this reason, there were many people commenting there, but because everyone spoke under and assumed name it didn’t feel like a healthy or human connection. So I stopped it (there is more to the story). I was also getting sick of the frum, insufferable mentality. Now we know that the upper crust of Chabad, Scheersons and others with a heart, and an education became secular. Peasants formed today’s movement. Add to this traumatized post Soviet mix the unhealthy cult of personalty of the leader, who as we know now, was an odd ball from the start, and it’s a toxic mix.

I have more Schneerson posts in the works. I am sick of writing them, but I feel I have to complete the task of painting the missing portrait. But missing for whom?

I do not know the new Chabad. However, it seems like a moonie-like network centered on the business of selling God and mythology about the past leader. The new generation has no idea who was Rashag, heck, they don’t even know Ramash unless it is part of the promotional PR package they were handed at the Shlichus office. Why the hell they would even know about Barry Gourary. Why would they even care for any history unless it can be translated to the bottom line? mentalblog 1.0 started 18 years ago, back then there were people for whom many of these conversations were not an irrelevant abstraction. People knew the Rebbe, Rashag, personally knew many other characters. It was also before Facebook, Twitter, etc. when the early blogs had a tremendous energy as the only places online to interact about a niche subject. Now this energy is dispersed times a thousand(s).

Lubavitch today is moonie-like operation, except they don’t sell flowers on the intersections, but they go into your own living room and sell you back your own nostalgia. Or they open a neighborhood laundry. They also run bed and breakfast franchise all over the world. For the growing frum population, this is an important business facility.

You tell me how Chabad history, curiosity, or contemplation comes into this picture? Yeah, I know, silence…