The age of לופט געשעפטן
The business of dreams, the change we can believe in.
The world is divided into two groups, people who by necessity or choice manipulate physical matter and people who operate לופט געשעפטן (luft gesheften in Yiddish or “air business”) or dreams.
In the past few months, as DOGE uncovered billion dollars of grift, I realized that broadly speaking, I lived in the wrong century, as if I didn’t know that already.
It seems many around me latched on to some profitable grift. Enter the age of deindustrialization to devalue people who do things. Enter the age of shluchim, politicians, priests of the climate and utopian Marxist religions. Consider Clinton, Obama, Biden, even to some degree Bush, who never had a “real job”. Less contact with the “real world”, more grift and religious indoctrination start to look like a promising career. You start to almost believe it deeply. The ubiquitous religious worship of the messianic “change”.
On one hand, is the world of Soros, a destructive Marxist arbitrageur with no connection to matter on the other, Elon Musk, who heroically and profitably pushes atoms. That’s why antisemitic tropes about Soros make so much sense, even though in reality he is an anti-Jew.
Broadly speaking, Zionism was/is an attempt to get Jews out לופט געשעפט business. It was a last ditch effort, and it was already too late, the resistance of the grifters too strong. Dreams are like a sugar dessert, if you eat it all day it will kill you. But temptation and seduction is so overwhelming. The life of a poet seems ideal, I can’t help it. Does manipulation of letters count as a real job? Only if you think letters are part of the physical matter. Doubt it. There is joy and pride in manipulation of matter and, as AI strips us of human pride, is the world of total grift upon us? I want to live in that world, even less than the grift world of today…
We live in a Platonic world, where physical change is driven by change in the realms of the ideal.
Heroic atom pusher Musk started off by the supreme luftgescheft of Paypal, is pushing those atoms to go to Mars-what is that if not a luftgescheft? Along the way, he wishes to develop Neuralink, a more direct way to impact material reality with your thoughts.
As for shluchim-no schluchim, no baalei teshuva. No baalei teshuva, no Jewish babies. No Jewish babies, no heroic material achievements. The breakdown of society, the family, the self-Nietzche's Last Men-has spiritual roots and spiritual remedies, but these remedies must have a strong material component. No flour, no Torah-no Torah, no flour.
גוט געזאגט; Agree. This inspired by Thiel's "bits vs. atoms"? Even scholarly authorship is frowned upon now in Chabad. Very sad state of affairs. A rapid brain-drain from the internal "group-meaning" council; i.e. from an era David Riesman called "other-directed" socialization.
Moot though. Age of e-life has made us individualistic and inner-directed (and to your point, demand for blue collar work is skyrocketing). So the pendulum has swung. AI will reveal the cloud-people who are ignorant. Crisis ensues. "If I am not for myself, who will be?" Hillel.