The most important step in retirement planning is simply getting started, one financial expert shared in a conversation with Yahoo Finance.

The key to long-term retirement savings is just starting with any amount and signing up for your employers program, said Harry Dalessio, head of institutional retirement plan services at Prudential Financial. So you potentially have the opportunity to get a match.

Dalessios comments come when nearly a quarter of Americans dont have any retirement savings, according to the Federal Reserve. But even among those who do, 3 in 5 have little or no comfort managing their investments.

Confusion over the differences among retirement accounts is also relatively common, Dalessio said. But an adviser or financial firm should have educational materials to help guide you, he said.

Read more: 401k plan and how it works: The full breakdown

That means new retirement savers shouldnt get hung up on the differences between traditional 401(k)s that require pre-tax contributions and Roth 401(k)s that are funded by post-tax dollars.

The first step to retirement saving is to just start, according to one financial expert. (Photo: Getty Creative)

The first part is just to save, Dalessio said, pre or post tax.

One of the two most common questions, according to Dalessio, is just how do I get started?

So, life gets in the way of savings, said Dalessio who noted that Americans are juggling not just saving for retirement but other financial goals and challenges as well, such as coming up with a budget, paying down student debt, and creating an emergency fund.

Read more: Retirement planning: Everything you need to know

Thats why many employers are turning to financial wellness programs to help Americans get a handle on all their money concerns and not just saving for retirement.

Start with a bigger financial picture rather than taking a more siloed approach, Dalessio said.

The other popular question is: What do I do?

A financial advisor or firm can help you figure out how much to save for retirement and how to invest, one expert said. (Photo: Getty Creative)

Dalessio said people want to know where they should put their money and how much do they need to save for an adequate retirement. Fortunately, there are many more resources and tools available to guide people along the way.

Because most people are savers, not investors, he said.

Dhara is a writer for Yahoo Money and Cashay, a new personal finance website. She can be reached at dhara.singh@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @dsinghx.

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Expert details the 'key to long-term retirement savings' - Yahoo Money

WESTON, W.Va. Long-time Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital employee Robert Thomas was honored with a retirement reception on Thursday, February 27. Thomas began his tenure at Stonewall Jackson Memorial in July 1959.

Thomas was surprised by several announcements made at the celebration. SJMH CEO, Avah Stalnaker, declared the hospital Laboratory would be renamed the Robert R. Thomas Laboratory. Stalnaker also announced that Mon Health President and CEO, David Goldberg, and his wife donated a scholarship in Thomas name for SJMH Laboratory employees.

Stalnaker noted, Any retirement is special, but a retirement from the same organization for 60 years of service is extraordinary. I dont think this milestone will be reached by any other employee.

Thomas five children and families surprised Bob and wife Jackie with their attendance. Other former and current SJMH employees were also present to honor Thomas, who was the first employee and department head of the SJMH Laboratory.

During the reception SJMH Laboratory Director, Angela Cedeno, provided a decade-by-decade timeline of the changes in the Laboratory during Thomas tenure.

In her final tribute Cedeno explained, Most important Bob was always there for all of us. He was a confidant, leader, stern dad or just someone to joke with. He means more than he will ever know, and he is loved.

Former SJMH Administrator, David Shaffer, shared stories and former SJMH Pharmacist, Gerald Wood, spoke of working with Bob at the original City Hospital in Weston before SJMH was built in 1972.

Bob explained at the old Hospital he even filled in as a radiology technician when necessary. Unfortunately, not always with expertise.

A dentist brought in X-rays for me to develop and there were three bottles for me to use a developer, a fixer, and a wash, I think. I didnt know which was which, so I thought I developed the film and they came out completely gone, Thomas laughed.

In addition to renaming the SJMH Laboratory in honor of Thomas, Stonewall Jackson Memorial will also have a wall display with Bobs contributions to the hospital in the Laboratory waiting area.

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SJMH employee Bob Thomas honored for 60 years of service at retirement reception - My Buckhannon

Mark Christman resented being thought of as a wimp.

As a kid growing up in Indiana Township, hed always felt more like a tough guy, with the inner tenacity, drive and work ethic of a competitive athlete. Christman loved playing sports, but getting picked last on nearly every team was frustrating.

Around age 14, tasks like running laps and picking up a shovel to clean up after the family horse became unnervingly difficult. Hed lift weights for months and gain little to no muscle. And despite being relatively skinny, he had a small pot belly protruding from one side of his stomach.

In 10th grade, Christman joined the wrestling team at Fox Chapel Area High School. He got bigger but not stronger. He couldnt keep up.

He wondered what could be wrong with him.

Several months later, Christman rode the family horse without a saddle. The horse darted off at full speed, knocking him off while tangling his arm in the reins. He told his doctor about other issues the worsening weakness in his arms and legs, his lopsided belly and winged shoulder blade. The doctor sent him to a neurologist.

At age 16, Christman got a diagnosis he didnt know hed been waiting for.

Christman had been born with facioscapulohumeral disease, or FSHD, a rare form of muscular dystrophy that affects about 1 in 8,000 people. A genetic defect causes the overproduction of a protein that kills muscle cells.

The diseases severity can vary widely, from causing total blindness, hearing loss and leg and arm immobility, to people who show few to no symptoms. It has no known cure.

My parents had a really tough time with it, recalled Christman, now a 59-year-old retired business attorney, Whitehall zoning board member and board member of Trib Total Media. For me, I was almost relieved to know: OK, now I know what this is.

I grew up thinking I was a wimp, and I know Im not.

A disease with no cure yet

Christman didnt let the progressive disease get in the way of cultivating a successful professional and personal life.

After marrying his college sweetheart and passing the bar exam, he embarked on a decades-long career in business law while adapting to overcome challenges along the way, from getting around the office and climbing stairs to opening drawers and filing paperwork.

He appreciated the support of his wife, Renee, an elementary school ESL teacher, along with colleagues and strangers who stopped to help him get on the elevator, reach an item on a shelf or get up from a fall. After he opted for a wheelchair, his father drove him from the South Hills to his law firms office every day from 2002 until his retirement in 2015.

But Christman couldnt help feeling misunderstood.

Hed smile politely but felt irked when even close friends asked him, Hows your MS? in reference to an entirely different, nerve-related disease, multiple sclerosis.

A room full of strangers, a room full of friends

For 41 years, Christman never met anyone else who had the same disease as he did. A 2014 event in Boston changed that. At the FSHD Societys Connect Conference, he recalled feeling overcome with emotions when he encountered hundreds of people with varying levels of the FSHD.

The FSHD Society is a nonprofit advocacy and research grant-making group based in Lexington, Mass.

Christman, whos typically an introvert at large gatherings, still gets teary-eyed remembering it.

It was a room full of strangers, and I felt like they were my friends, he said.

Until that cathartic moment, Christman said hes not sure even he realized how isolated hed felt.

My wife is just the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, and I love her dearly but I still felt alone, he said. Everyones experience of the disease is different. But having someone whos shared some of your experiences is a really special thing.

Christman is on a mission to share that gift of connection and empowerment to others across Western Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Last year, he formed Western Pennsylvanias first chapter of the rapidly burgeoning FSHD Society. The organization hopes to accelerate getting promising treatments that could halt the diseases progression to market in as soon as five years.

Christman is searching for more participants and their loved ones to join the group, with at least four dozen believed to be living in the Pittsburgh area.

I want to maybe help other people have that same experience that I had meeting people, said Christman, but also do something to raise money and push this along to find a treatment and a cure.

Christman held the chapters first meeting in June at the National Aviary in Pittsburghs North Side. Seven people attended, including two people with FSHD and their spouses. He expected everyone to want to know the latest research and tips for practical things to make life easier, like how to get an insurance company to approve a more sophisticated, joystick-controlled scooter like his.

Instead, a former coal miner told the group how hard it was for him when he was diagnosed, and a former Aviary employee lamented that her condition forced her to stop working.

All anyone wanted was to talk, Christman said. It was all about sharing.

If you really loved her, you wouldnt marry her

Christman sees the group as a chance for people to discuss things that those who dont know of the disease cant relate to, including its emotional and psychological toll.

Like how his wifes parents reacted when he proposed.

They went on a campaign to stop her, Christman said. They were worried that I wasnt going to be able to support her, and that she was going to have a terrible life. They got me aside and said if I really loved her, I wouldnt marry her.

The week of the wedding, Renees parents called and asked to attend, and did.

They never said anything again, and theyve since apologized, said Christman, adding hes gotten along well with his in-laws ever since. They know they were wrong.

At a recent FSHD event, Christman met a man who feared his children would think less of him for having the disease. Christmans now-adult son reassured the man that wouldnt be the case, that to his kids hed just be dad.

Christman said he may not have been able to play catch, but he made plenty of time to be actively involved in the lives of his three children and never felt like he let them down because of his condition. One of his daughters is a registered nurse, the second is a Hasbro engineer. His son is a teacher.

Theres a 50/50 chance of passing on the gene to a child. But some people have the disease and show few or no symptoms. Christman hasnt identified anyone in his family known to have it.

As a lawyer, Christman sometimes wondered whether his visible physical handicap impacted his clients perception of his mental capabilities.

He wasnt sure whether colleagues thought of him as overly grumpy because of partial facial muscle loss that gives him a half-frown resting face and slightly crooked smile. Hes grateful he hasnt lost his ability to smile, like many people with FSHD do.

Finding patients, expediting treatments

Once the disease gets too far along, the muscles disappear, and theyre replaced by, essentially, scar tissue, said Dr. Paula Clemens, Christmans UPMC neurologist. Once that happens, theres not really a lot of hope in treatments, unless you were to come up with a treatment that would make new muscle, such as by using stem cells an idea thats still a long way from materializing.

The FSHD Society is hoping to expedite the approval of a pill that could stop the disease from getting worse. Formed in 1991 by two patients who have FSH muscular dystrophy, the FSHD Society has focused primarily on raising money for research.

In 2014, newly hired CEO Mark Stone decided that to help expedite the development and approval of newly emerging treatment options, they needed to form local chapters in as many places as possible and get more patients involved and aware of clinical trials.

An estimated 40,000 Americans live with FSHD. But the society is only aware of about 3,500 of them. People may be living with it and not have a formal diagnosis, either because they havent sought one or their doctors havent recognized it.

This is a disease where youve got to also have a very active community, branch coordinator Beth Johnston said, so that if treatments do come to light, they do get to people and you have a disease community who can support it.

The society now has 48 local chapters in 24 states. Its goal is to raise $5 million toward treatment efforts this year.

In addition to providing education and support groups, the society is working directly with medical researchers and officials at the Food and Drug Administration to lobby for expediting clinical trials that appear promising.

Theyre helping us to understand how to accelerate the process that they have in order to get the drugs on the market, Johnston said. Weve got to activate our community. This is such a critical time in therapy development, its super important.

You just adapt

Christman continues to struggle with some tasks on a daily basis, but he has managed to work around his limitations.

You just adapt, he said.

These days, his wife helps him shower and get dressed.

His dad, 85, still drives him to Giant Eagle.

He loves using his iPad and other devices that are operated via voice control, since he has trouble punching keyboards or touch screens with more than one finger. He has a hard time lifting his hands, so hell lean in to do so instead. He can move his right leg to the side, but cant extend it forward.

Alexa, tell Delta to pour one cup water, hell say to the Amazon device beside the kitchen sink that controls the hard-to-reach faucet.

Hes thankful for the work of Carnegie Mellon University students who helped to build him a special tool to use the oven.

A few months ago, Christman and his wife completed a full kitchen renovation that includes an oven with a door that opens sideways as opposed to outward, plenty of reachable cupboard space and a special pull-out feature for him to use his Kitchen Aid mixer.

He has a passion for cooking, especially baking bread. His Whitehall homes bookshelves are stocked with titles like The Bread Bakers Guide, Baking with Julia, Bernard Claytons New Complete Book of Breads and, for meals with an extra kick, The Sriracha Cookbook.

I love it when he cooks dinner with me, said Renee Christman, recalling a recent meal featuring her husbands homemade pizza crust.

In addition to his municipal and board roles, Christman enjoys taking courses through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CMU. Some of his favorites so far include the masters of architecture, the role of food in history, psychology of decision-making and a course on cybercurrency. Hes participating in a CMU pilot project to build more accessible video games.

Even though its getting tougher, hes determined to do tasks like putting on his own coat for as long as he can.

My theory is, if I just let someone else do it all the time, Im not going to be able to do it anymore, Christman said.

But Christman said hes also getting better at accepting help when he needs it. He regrets delaying getting a wheelchair for years, only to realize how much more freedom it gave him.

I want to empower patients, because a lot of people dont know a lot about their disease and whats happening to them, he said. They want to learn and be with people who have gone through similar things. They want to tell their story.

The next meeting of the FSHD Societys Western Pennsylvania chapter is scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. April 5 at the Carnegie Library branch in Pittsburghs Squirrel Hill neighborhood. For more information, go to FSHDSociety.org, email WesternPAChapter@fshdsociety.org or visit the group on Facebook.

Natasha Lindstrom is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Natasha at 412-380-8514, nlindstrom@tribweb.com or via Twitter .

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Retired attorney with rare muscular disease FHSD connects with others and accelerates search for cure - TribLIVE

3/5/2020 As promised in the announcement of the release of Fat Fritz, the first update to the neural network has been released, stronger and more mature, and with it comes the brand new smaller and faster Fat Fritz for CPU neural network which will produce quality play even on a pure CPU setup. If you leave it analyzing the start position, it will say it likes the Sicilian Najdorf, which says a lot about its natural style. Read on to find out more!

If you havent yet updated your copy of Fat Fritz, now is the time to do it as it brings more thanminor enhancements or a few bug fixes. This update will bring the first major update to the Fat Fritz neural network, stronger than ever, as well as a new smaller one that is quite strong on a GPU, but also shines on even a plain CPU setup.

When you open Fritz 17, presuming you have Fat Fritz installed, you will be greeted with a message in the bottom right corner of your screen advising you there is an update available for Fat Fritz.

When you see this click on 'Update Fat Fritz'

Then you will be greeted with the update pane, and just need to click Next to get to it

When Fat Fritz was released with Fritz 17, updates were promised with the assurance it was still improving. Internally the version number of the release was v226, while this newest one is v471.

While thorough testing is always a challenge since resources are limited, a match against Leela 42850 at 1600 nodes per move over 1000 games yielded a positive result:

Score of Fat Fritz 471k vs Leela 42850: +260 -153 =587 [0.553] Elo difference: 37.32 +/- 13.79

1000 of 1000 games finished.

Also, in a match of 254 games at 3m +1s against Stockfish 11 in AlphaZero ratio conditions, this new version also came ahead by roughly 10 Elo.

Still, it isnt about Elo and never was, and the result is merely to say that you should enjoy strong competitive analysis. For one thing, it is eminently clear that while both Leela and Fat Fritz enjoy much of the same AlphaZero heritage,there are also distinct differences in style.

Perhaps one of the most obvious ways to highlight this is just the start position. If you let the engine run for a couple of minutes on decent hardware, it will tell you what it thinks is the best line of play for both White and Black based on its understanding of chess.

As such, I ran Leela 42850 with its core settings to see what it thought. After 2 million nodes it was adamant that perfect chess should take both players down the highly respected Berlin Defence of the Ruy Lopez.

Leela 42850 analysis:

info depth 19 seldepth 56 time 32675 nodes 2181544 score cp 23 hashfull 210 nps 75740 tbhits 0 pv e2e4 e7e5 g1f3 b8c6 f1b5 g8f6 e1g1 f6e4 d2d4 e4d6 b5c6 d7c6 d4e5 d6f5 d1d8 e8d8 h2h3

This is fine, but it is also very much a matter of taste.

Fat Fritz has a different outlook on chess as has already been pointed out in the past. At first it too will show a preference for the Ruy Lopez, though not the Berlin, but given a bit more time by 2.6 million nodes it will declare the best opening per its understanding of chess and calculations is the Sicillian Najdorf.

Within a couple of minutes this is its mainline:

info depth 16 seldepth 59 time 143945 nodes 7673855 score cp 28 wdl 380 336 284 hashfull 508 nps 54227 tbhits 0 pv e2e4 c7c5 g1f3 d7d6 b1c3 g8f6 d2d4 c5d4 f3d4 a7a6 f1e2 e7e5 d4b3 f8e7 e1g1 c8e6 c1e3 e8g8 f1e1 b8c6 h2h3 h7h6 e2f3 a8c8 d1d2 c6b8 a2a4 f6h7 a1d1 b8d7 f3e2 h7f6

From a purely analytical point of view it is quite interesting that it found 10.Re1! in the mainline. In a position where white scores 52.5% on average it picks a move that scores 58.3% / 58.9%.

Remember there is no right or wrong here, but it does help show the natural inclinations of each of these neural networks.

Even if chess is ultimately a draw, that doesnt mean there is only onepath, so while all roads may lead to Rome, they dont all need to pass through New Jersey.

Trying to find the ideal recipe of parameters for an engine can be daunting, and previously multiple attempts had been made with the well-know tuner called CLOP by Remi Coulom. Very recently a completely new tuner 'Bayes-Skopt' was designed byKarlson Pfannschmidt, a PhD student in Machine Learning in Paderborn University inGermany, who goes by the online nickname "Kiudee" (pronounced like the letters Q-D). It was used to find new improved values for Leela, which are now the new defaults.

His tuner is described as "A fully Bayesian implementation of sequential model-based optimization", a mouthful I know, and was set up with his kind help as it ran for over a week. It produces quite fascinating graphical imagery with its updated values. Here is what the final version looked like:

These values, slightly rounded, have been added as the new de facto defaults for Fat Fritz.

This is a completely new neural network trained from Fat Fritz games, but in a much smaller frame. Objectively it is not as strong as Fat Fritz, but it will run much faster, and above all it has the virtue of being quite decent on even a pure CPU machine. It wont challenge the likes of Stockfish, so lets get that out of the way, but in testing on quad-core machines (i.e. my i7 laptop) it defeats Fritz 16 by a healthy margin.

Note that this is not in the product description, soneedless to say, it is more nor less a gift to Fritz 17 owners.

Enjoy it!

More stories on Fat Fritz and Fritz 17...

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Fat Fritz 1.1 update and a small gift - Chessbase News

Coronavirus could make remote work the norm, something companies need to know COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak could be the catalyst for a dramatic increase in telecommuting. Businesses should be preparing for the rise of remote work and the long-term effects on marketing budgets, corporate travel and commercial real estate.

Sixty years ago, research was underway to understand the structure of proteins, since Nobel Laureates Max Perutz and John Kendrew in the 1950s gave the world the first glimpse into what a protein looks like.

It was that pioneering work and decades of research that followed, which made Googles DeepMind announcement Thursday that an idea of the structure of a handful of proteins associated with respiratory disease known as COVID-19. which is spreading all over the world.

Proteins do a great deal of work for organisms, and understanding the three-dimensional shape of proteins in COVID-19 could possibly conceive of a type of virus behind the disease, which could be a vaccine. Efforts are being made around the world to determine the structure of these viral proteins, of which DeepMinds is merely an effort.

There is always a little self-promotion about DeepMinds AI accomplishments, so it helps to remember the context in which science was created. The DeepMind Protein Polling Program reflects decades of work by chemists, physicists and biologists, computer scientists and data scientists, and would not be possible without this intense global effort.

Since the 1960s, scientists have been fascinated by the difficult problem of protein structure. Proteins are amino acids, and the forces that pull them in a certain way are fairly straightforward because some amino acids are attracted or repelled by positive or negative charges, and some amino acids are hydrophobic that is, they hold further away. away from water molecules.

However, these forces, so basic and so easy to understand, lead to amazing protein forms that are difficult to predict only from the acids themselves. And so decades have passed, trying to guess what a given amino acid sequence will look like, usually developing increasingly sophisticated computer models to simulate the process of folding a protein, the interaction of forces that make a protein take it. whatever shape it ends up taking.

An illustration of the possible structure of a coronavirus-associated membrane protein, according to a model created by DeepMinds AlphaFold program.

DeepMind

Twenty-six years ago, a bi-annual competition, called Critical Evaluation of Predicting Protein Structure, or CASP, was held. Scientists are challenged to submit their best computer simulated predictions of a given protein after telling them only the amino acid sequence. The judges know the structure, which is determined by a lab experiment, so its a test of how you can guess what is in a lab.

DeepMind honored the latest CASP, CASP13, which took place throughout 2018.To grab gold, DeepMind developed a computer model, AlphaFold, which shares a naming convention with the DeepMind model that won. chess and Gos game. AlphaZero. In one of those trophy moments similar to other DeepMind headlines, the company found its closest competitor to the CASP13 competition in 2018, producing high-precision structures for 24 of the 43 domains of proteins, with the highest single effort. producing 14 models of this type.

Writing in Nature this January, Mohammed AlQuraishi with the Systems Pharmacology Lab at Harvard Medical School, called the development of AlphaFold a watershed moment for the science of protein folding. His essay accompanies DeepMinds formal AlphaFold scientific work in this issue, entitled Predicting Enhanced Protein Structure with Deep Learning Potentials.

AlphaFold is a union of AIs work with DeepMind, a product of decades of machine learning progress, but also decades of publicly-acquired protein knowledge. The deep neural network developed by DeepMind consists of a mechanism for measuring the local set of atoms in a convolutional filter-like protein perfected by Turing Yann LeCun winner and used in ubiquitous convolutive neural networks to determine structure local of an image. To that, DeepMind added the so-called waste blocks of the type developed a few years ago by Kaiming He and his colleagues at Microsoft.

DeepMind calls the resulting structure a deep two-dimensional diluted convolutive residual network. The purpose of this mouth is to predict the amino acid pairs distance given their sequence. AlphaFold does this by optimizing their convolutions and residual connections using the stochastic gradient descent learning rule developed in the 1980s, which powers all deep learning today.

This AlphaFold network would not be possible without decades of knowledge of proteins built into publicly accessible databases. The deep network takes in the known amino acid sequence, in a form called multiple sequence alignment, or MSA. These are the pixel equivalent of an image operated by a CNN when image recognition. These MSAs are only available for decades because scientists have been mounting them in databases, in particular the UniProt or Universal Protein Resource database, which is maintained by a consortium of research centers around the world. funded by a group of governments. offices, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The six DeepMind protein structures published this week for COVID-19 began by taking the freely available amino acid sequences at UniProt, making UniProt the raw material for DeepMinds science.

In addition, on the road to his impressive results, AlphaFold had to be trained. The deep web of convolutions and residual blocks had to take their form, giving examples of structures known as labeled examples. This was made possible by another 49-year-old organization called NSF-funded Protein Data Bank, the U.S. Department of Energy and others. The basic PDB database is managed by a consortium of Rutgers University, the San Diego Supercomputer Center / University of California San Diego, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. These institutions have the impressive task of retaining what you might consider as the huge data available to AlphaFold and other efforts. More than 144,000 protein structures have been gathered and can be downloaded and downloaded almost half a million times a year, according to the PDB. PDB also runs the CASP challenge.

The DeepMind structure predictions are published in a format called the PDB of the consortium. This means that even the language in which DeepMind can express its scientific findings is possible by the consortium.

The fact that dedicated teams have spent decades painstakingly assembling knowledge stores from which researchers can freely extract is a striking achievement in the history of science and, in fact, humanity.

DeepMinds publication of the protein files was praised by other scientists, such as the Francis Crick Institute. In their blog post about their work COVID-19, DeepMind scientists recognize a lot of work on the virus by other institutions. We are indebted to the work of many other laboratories, they write, this work would not be possible without the efforts of researchers around the world who have responded to the COVID-19 outbreak with incredible agility.

It is a responsible and worthy recognition. It can be added that it is not only the current laboratories that have made the AlphaFold files possible, but also that generations of work carried out by public and private suits have made it possible for the collective understanding of which AlphaFold is only the latest interesting wrinkle.

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Google's DeepMind effort for COVID-19 coronavirus is based on the shoulders of giants - Mashviral News - Mash Viral

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Frederick Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, transformed the fields of science and philosophy. His revolutionary ideas have drastically altered the history of modern intellectual thought, but during his lifetime, he amassed countless enemies with his antithetical beliefs toward religion and morality.

Following his renouncement of religion, he wrote a letter to his sister, explaining why he felt the need to leave the church. Nietzsche wrote, Hence the ways of men part: if you want to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. Here are five ways that Nietzsches ideals can be applied to your own life.

Nietzsches search for moral truth in his life led him to question why humans feel the need to discover truth. He began his critique of truth by emphasizing that all life is perspective. He thought that because everyones life is different, their beliefs, judgments and actions will also differ. As our interpretations and judgments change, our perspective shifts, leading individuals to have different perceptions of morality.

This realization led Nietzsche to question why people feel the yearning for immutable laws to govern morality. Nietzsche asked himself the questions, Why truth rather than perspective? Why certainty rather than more interpretation? He postulated that our will to truth was not a natural desire.

Instead, Nietzsche believed that the human demand for rigid morality was a choice that we make out of fear, in order to convince ourselves that there is order in the universe. Nietzsche claimed that, because our will to truth forces us to base our beliefs in the perspectives of others, it glorifies the least creative parts of ourselves.

In these times of political uncertainty, we could all benefit from the wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche. If we sought to understand others perspectives, instead of screaming at those we disagree with, we could move past our party differences.

Nietzsche realized that everyones values are different because they have distinctive perspectives. Everyone has different perceptions of life, so the truth is never black or white. People engaging in confirmation bias are obeying their will to truth, and subscribing themselves to a particular ideology, while ignoring other possible principles. Nietzsche teaches us that our beliefs should naturally change over time, as our judgments and perceptions of life change.

Instead of engaging in confirmation bias and believing only the facts that fit your narrative, attempt to gather facts from different perspectives. Nietzsche wants you to recognize that your will to truth is not a natural desire. Next time you think your beliefs are right and someone elses are wrong, remember that your values may not coincide with theirs, but that doesnt mean you cant understand their perspective. Instead of judging their beliefs, interpret them, and try to figure out what led them to that way of thinking.

If you think someones beliefs are wrong, silencing them will only push them further away. The only way for us to come to a mutual understanding is by creating a more open discussion, focused on respecting varied perspectives.

What weve called universal values, what we have called truth, has always only ever been the personal expressions of those who promoted them. Nietzsche

Nietzsche believed that universal morality is merely personal maxims that have been universalized for everyone to follow. He explains that the real values we hold are not based on the perspectives of others, but are expressions of who we are, and what feels powerful or life-giving to us. Nietzsche believed a rigid religious code creates what he called the herd mentality. Like a herd of animals, a herd mentality aims towards sameness, comfort and the preservation of its population.

The herd mentality puts the community over the individual, and limits creativity and independence. Nietzsche realized the universal codes he previously followed were nothing more than tools for enforcement, used by the herd to limit his free choices and individuality. Because universal morality requires us to adopt our beliefs from others perspectives, it limits our free expression and appeals to the least creative part of ourselves: the part that craves inflexible moral truth.

Rainer Maria Rilke was a poet during the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose writing was fueled by his fluctuating beliefs concerning an increasingly secular, war-torn Europe. Prominent Nietzsche themes appear in his poetry and, like Nietzsche, much of his work was not appreciated during his lifetime.

All who seek you test you. And those who find you, bind you to image and gesture. I would rather sense you, as the earth senses you. In my ripening, ripens what you are. Rilke

This is because they adopt the perspectives of others, who see God rigidly in image and gesture. They refrain from seeing God in different ways, thus restricting Gods influence on their lives. Rilke, like Nietzsche, believed that spiritual enlightenment could never be synonymous with conformity because enlightenment comes from the unknown, something you can sense but not conform to.

Instead of keeping your spiritual beliefs stagnant, try to evolve your spirituality and change it for the better when an opportunity presents itself. It is the changing perception of God, Rilke suggests, that changes people for the better.

Nietzsche suggested that we can move past our will to truth, and free ourselves from the entrapment of the herd mentality, by becoming beyond good and evil. Instead of falling victim to our will to truth and borrowing the values of others, we should awaken our will to power, which is our passion and drive to create our life in the image of what we value.

Nietzsches philosophy proposes that we say yes to whatever gives us meaning in our own lives the things we find value in personally. Many critics believe Nietzsche to be a promoter of anarchism because of his hatred of government and religion but, although his work has been frequently associated with anarchists, Nietzsche denied these claims.

I dont think his goal was to demonize the values of those organizations. He was merely pointing out problems in the structures of government and religion. His philosophy doesnt condemn specific values; instead, it condemns values that are adopted from others. Nietzsche maintained his criticism of organized religion throughout his life, but he also recognized that spirituality can grant immense value to some peoples lives.

Although some religious scholars see Nietzsche as an enemy to be disproved, I see him as someone who exposed obvious problems in religion because he wished for people to autonomously discover their own spirituality. His attacks on organized religion lead many spiritual folks to reject his insights, but his intention wasnt for people to abandon spirituality. His philosophy was a renouncement of his faith, not an attack on the faith of others.

Although many religious individuals find his work repulsive, I believe you can appreciate Nietzsche and still find meaning in religion. Nietzsche preached individual freedom of belief, whatever that belief may be.

Nietzsches ethics ask us to take a bold step. Eliminating our sources of truth in the world will most likely lead to nihilism, which is the belief that nothing has value or meaning. Many perceive nihilism as a negative or destructive perspective, but in contrast to the common view, Nietzsche believed nihilism is a prompting, or an opportunity that can enable us to reevaluate what gives value to our lives. Nietzsche believed that if we destroy our previous set of beliefs, and suffer the initial existential angst of nihilism, we can discover where our true values lie.

Many misinterpret his view as an endorsement of pessimism, but they couldnt be further from the truth. His view enables someone to experience the full depth of their character. Nietzsche advises a revision of self but doesnt require us to get rid of all of our past herd-built values. He is asking us to consider our existing values, as well as all other possibilities.

Nietzsche is not advising you to adopt a nihilistic outlook on life. He is saying that to find your own truths in life, you must first reject the truths given to you by the herd. To find value in your life, you cannot blindly follow the values of others. Next time you feel a loss of meaning in your life, interpret that depressed state as an opportunity for change. Instead of sulking in your perceived loss of self, realize that you feel that way because you avoided your true values. Look at nihilism as a gift that enables you to find true value by cleaning your slate of its narrow imitative beliefs.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?

The greatest weight is a metaphorical situation put forth by Nietzsche. His goal was to make you think about what gives value to your life. Nietzsches hypothetical makes us ask ourselves if we would want to live eternally as we have been living. He proposes that most of us would curse the demon. The greatest weight is the feeling that crushes you into repeating past mistakes, and it is built from the unevaluated values you adopt from your herd.

Nietzsche suggests that in every little thing ask yourself, do you desire this once more and innumerable times over? If you change yourself and reevaluate your values, the weight can be lifted. However, if you remain under the same influences of the herd-prescribed guilt, you will become crushed under the weight, and submit to your unoriginal repetitive ways.

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone. Rilke

In Rilkes poem The Panther, he observed a panther behind the bars at a zoo, insightfully comparing the panthers will to live with that of mankinds. This poem examines how the greatest weight confines humankind to a subservient state. Like the panther, mankind lives behind bars. The panther is held captive in a cell made from human ingenuity, while mankinds personal jail cells are blandly pre-subscribed by social beliefs that captivate the wildness and individualism of the human spirit.

Humanitys confinement is built from its defined limitations. The social norms and beliefs of an individuals herd composes the bars of their prison, restricting that persons actions, and inhibiting their freedom of original self-expression. Rilke, like Nietzsche, recognized that we can escape our enclosure of forced beliefs and awaken ourselves to what we value personally. But, upon realizing all the bars that stand in the way of our dreams, many of us submit to the comfortability of our cage.

When you feel overtaken by the greatest weight, dont hide your wild aspirations in fear of them once again resurfacing. Break out of your self-made, herd-based enclosure and chase after the dreams that give meaning to your life.

Link:
5 Themes of Nietzsche That You Can Apply to Your Life - Study Breaks

On February 11th, Professor Curtis Dozier (Class of 00) spoke to a packed room about The Big One: The Fall of Rome and Contemporary Hate Groups. As the director of the Pharos Project out of Vassar College, Dozier seeks to combat the appropriation of the classical tradition by hate groups online through documenting appropriations, correcting the errors, omissions, and distortions that underpin these groupss interpretations, and to articulate a politically progressive approach to the study of Greco-Roman antiquity. While the stated purpose of his presentation was to discuss the appropriation of the fall of the Western Roman Empire by these groups, the discussion quickly took a broader focus.

Professor Doziers work with the Pharos Project falls into the domain of classical reception: the study of how antiquity and its relics have been portrayed, interpreted, and represented since. To introduce us to his work, he began with the case of The Colleges own Hovey Murals. Previously located in the basement of the Class of 53 Commons, the murals depict Eleazer Wheelock setting out into the wilderness to teach the Abenaki. Dozier asserts that implicit in these murals is the presentation of classical education as a civilizing influence: from the recurring presence of a Latin textbook Gradus ad Parnassum, to the Latin inscriptions, to the explicit reference to the Department of Classics on the panel of the first image. While the Hovey Murals are products of the early 20th century, Dozier sees the ideas represented as not just an artifact but emblematic of how white supremacists groups talk about a classical education todaya tool to preserve their warped understanding of Western Civilization.

At its most basic, this appropriation of the classical tradition is an appeal to authority. While they will often falsify the historical record, when they do use legitimate sources, they attempt to draw parallels from antiquity to inform our present behavior; our forefathers did this, and thus so should we. The fall of Rome occupies a special place in their thought as the Roman Empire is paradoxically something great and worthy of emulation, yet, something we need to account for the collapse of. Dozier asserts that this has led to the appropriation of scholarship to support whatever political agenda these groups wish to advance: Rome falls because of the barbarians at the gates; Rome falls because of the sexual liberation of women. Such claims pose a particular challenge to academics as, while these hate groups present simplified narratives with absolute certainty, to do so in response would be intellectually dishonest to the complexity of the scholarship. However, Dozier asserts that all of this debate only matters so long as we continue to view the fall of Rome as something that mattersone of the few assumptions that both those published in peer-reviewed journals and Reddit seem to agree. Why do we need it to matter? Why do the classics matter at all?

Dozier finds his answer in the re-appropriation of the classical tradition to advance his politically progressive agenda. Due to antiquities central place in academia, there is apossibly undeservedcache of authority in the classical tradition. Those who reference Greece and Rome sound intelligent. Thus contemporary scholars have an obligation to positively politicize the classical tradition such that it advances progressive narratives and creates new methodologies that place the consideration and advancement of the historically marginalized as central.

An example of this ideology in practice is Vassar College renaming its Department of Classics, the Department of Greek and Roman Studies. He asserts that no other disciplines name includes an implicit endorsement of the subject contained. We use the term classic to denote that which is essential to study, and thus the name classics implies antiquity is worthy of our study. Here is where Doziers argument begins to fall apart; etymological evidence shows that we should flip this causal chain. We use the term classic to denote something of value as the culture of antiquity was so universally considered vital that we borrowed its name. Classic comes from the Latin classicus, an adjective describing that which pertains to the patrician class. The use of the term to refer to those standard texts of exemplary quality emerges during the 6th century AD to refer to the products and pursuits of this patrician class. The classical predates the word classic.

I further object to Doziers deviation from the accepted methodology in his work rebutting the hate groups. While he asserts that the classics have always been secretly politicized in favor of a conservative agenda, and, he only wishes to do the same openly in a left-leaning manner, he is arguing for a false dichotomy. It may be true that the accepted scholarship contains biased actors and positions, but methodologically we should strive for apolitical accuracy. In deviating from the accepted methodology to arrive at a desired end, that which we create is equally erroneous as hate groups using the classics to further hateful ends. Regardless of the moral message, its still a case of motivated reasoning.

Similarly, Dozier presents the narratives constructed by these groups as problematic, but not why they are flawed beyond failing to compart with a progressive viewpoint. One example that was brought up during the talk is the case of Doziers attempt to debunk an interpretation of Juvenal the Satirist as sexists. When Dozier reached out to the experts in his field on Roman satire, to his surprise, they confirmed that the interpretation of the hate groups is historically accurate. This example demonstrates an intellectual dishonesty both in committing the logical fallacy of discrediting an argument because of the associated speaker and in his motivation to simply oppose these groups, not accurately document the history.

While these critiques are responses to Doziers answer to the question of the value of classics, if we dismiss his answer as fallacious, there is still the question of why do the classics matter? Why does the study of history matter at all beyond just existing as an appeal to tradition? Nietzsche provides an answer to this question in his essay On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life (1874); history is useful in so far as it serves life. The beasts of nature live unhistorically, acting in each moment before immediately forgetting. Man lives historically; his actions bound by the ever-increasing burden of the past, which weights against his ability to act. This burden finds its extreme in the superhistorical man, who knows so much that he is rendered entirely impotent. To put this point more colloquially: the man who knows everything fears everything. A person must know just enough to keep them safe, but not too much as to be paralyzed by fear. While we desire the bliss of an unhistorical existence, we, too, want the products of historicism. The obligation of the intellect is to mediate between these extremes. We must both be able to learn from the past but not be made useless by our knowledge of it. Thus, if knowledge breeds inaction, we must distinguish not only what we save but what we discardsacrificed as it has become unproductive to our ends.

Nietzsche continues that there are three types of history that each inspires different actions and dangers. Monumental History is that which preserves and motivates greatness yet can breed resentment if that greatness becomes mythical and unachievable. Antiquarian History is that which seeks to protect the tradition of our civilization yet can become fetishistic if too removed from its content and dangerous if in lieu we substitute in our own. Critical History is that which condemns the past for its failures yet can become so broad as to make one believes nothing matters lest it all be problematic. Much like how the quest of man is to mediate between the extremes of the unhistorical and superhistorical, so too must you navigate between the poles of history itself. Nietzsche saw his period as defined by the overabundance of knowledge that exclusively exists for its own sake. Those who generated this knowledge never asked why or reflected upon its value. Put succinctly, Nietzsche studied the classics because to do so served his life. It motivated greater action.

The hate groups Dozier discusses represent the extreme form of Antiquarian History, attempting to apply the past to the present without any regard for its context. As Nietzsche explains to these groups, it seems presumptuous or even criminal to replace such an antiquity with something new and to set up in opposition to such a numerous cluster of revered and admired things the single fact of what is coming into being and what is present. Hate groups have become so thoroughly invested in this unchanging conception of the past as to render all action which incites change impossible. As even the most celebrated scholars have an incomplete knowledge of the context of antiquity, those without this formal education dangerously substitute their own. Worse, they attempt to do this with falsification generated through unsound methodologies. This inability to make the present look like the past is what breeds their defining featureresentment.

Dozier himself, however, represents the extreme form of critical history. In so thoroughly condemning both antiquity and the tradition of studying it for its failures, he has concluded that it is of no inherent value. Thus, he can use it most cynically to advance his agenda. In the words of Nietzsche through this excess an age attains the dangerous mood of irony about itself and, from that, an even more dangerous mood of cynicism. He made this view clear to the audience when asked by Professor Michael Lurie of the Classics Department why it would not be philosophically consistent for him to resign his position. Tragically, Dozier concurred.

While there are valid conversations about the accessibility of Ivory Towers, the excess of critical history has led Oxford to consider removing Homer and Virgil as required reading in attempt to make classics more accessible. This is not unique to Oxfordseemingly the last refuge of classical educationbut the culmination of a process that has gone for the past century. Dartmouth does not require I read Homer for Classics or Shakespeare for English. However, in attempting to concede to the critical historian and in making things too available, we sacrifice the very value they contain.

I didnt come to Dartmouth to be a Classics major. I came here to learn; I came here to engage in the liberal arts; I came here to engage in an intellectual community. I thought I wanted to be a Government major but those people I most enjoyed talking with, who seemed the most shaped and inspired by what they studied, were the Classicists. Everything I found valuable about the classics does not relate at all to the criticisms Dozier madehe missed the point of classical education and history entirely.

Read more:
Dr. Schliemann or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Classics - Dartmouth Review

The Enabler

This is a video interview from our podcast Tech Startups Germany. All the recordings on this channel are made possible by Invest in Hessen (learn more herehttps://www.invest-in-hessen.com/home).

We will post this interview and all others as podcast(s) next Tuesday night Central European Time. Subscribe here and have them on our device when you wake up:

Audio only Tech Startups Germany by Startuprad.io iTuneshttps://apple.co/2Z17bfl Deezerhttp://bit.ly/2Qbh1rl TuneInhttp://bit.ly/2M8vpzn Stitcherhttp://bit.ly/34xTANO Video Tech Startups Germany by Startuprad.io iTuneshttps://apple.co/2M8ZxKJ

We come to love the work ethics here. Frankfurt is a work minded city. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

In this interview for Invest-in-hessen.com we are talking to Peter Hart (https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hart-94373435/), a serial entrepreneur, based in Frankfurt. Despite being just 28 years old, Peter already launched 12 ventures. He started out back in 2015 with his consumer product brand Dr. Severin (https://drseverin.com/). During his first venture launch, Joe interviewed Peter in German back in 2015. We talk to him about his newest venture Pythia AI (https://www.pythia-ai.com/)

I dont divide between business books and private books. If you grow personally, you grow as a leader. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

We talk to him to learn more about his 12thventure, called Pythia AI (https://www.pythia-ai.de/). Pythia was started when Peter followed his data-driven approach to launch new consumer products and he got approached by Rossmann (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossmann_(company)), Germanys 2ndlargest chain of drug stores. The drug store chain invested in the startup (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pythia#section-funding-rounds) to help them with forecasting trends for product development.

In case you are wondering: The venture is named after the priest, founding and serving the Oracle of Delphi in Greek mythology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia).

Peter looks a bit tired in the interview, since he just returned from opening an office in Sunny Vale, in the Silicon Valley.

We are very happy with the talent pool here (in Frankfurt), especially the engineers. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

During his time in Silicon Valley, Peter wanted to reach out to venture capital investors. He went along the two main streets where they are headquartered and knocked on their doors. Surprisingly this was very successful, and it appears no one has done this before.

Despite knocking on many doors in Silicon Valley, Pythia is not done with their fundraising and they are looking for additional investors for their Series A fundraising.

I think philosophy goes really well with business. You formulate a more concrete business philosophy. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

Pythia forecasts the next trend in consumer products

Principles by Ray Daliohttps://amzn.to/38ZgmB7

The man who solved the markethttps://amzn.to/2SZ6Jgw

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culturehttps://amzn.to/2SYi00x

The little princehttps://amzn.to/3c6hWDm

Friedrich Nietzsches Books:

Herman Hesses Books

Before the Top Book List we talked about The hard thing about hard thingshttps://amzn.to/32symSb

Herman Hessehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse

Friedrich Nietzschehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Arthur Schopenhauerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

And maybe you want to have a look at the often quoted VC Ben Horowitzhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz

This is a video interview from our podcast Tech Startups Germany. All the recordings on this channel are made possible by Invest in Hessen (learn more here https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/home).

We will post this interview and all others as podcast(s) next Tuesday night Central European Time. Subscribe here and have them on our device when you wake up:

Audio only Tech Startups Germany by Startuprad.io iTunes https://apple.co/2Z17bfl Deezer http://bit.ly/2Qbh1rl TuneIn http://bit.ly/2M8vpzn Stitcher http://bit.ly/34xTANO Video Tech Startups Germany by Startuprad.io iTunes https://apple.co/2M8ZxKJ

We come to love the work ethics here. Frankfurt is a work minded city. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

In this interview for Invest-in-hessen.com we are talking to Peter Hart (https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hart-94373435/), a serial entrepreneur, based in Frankfurt. Despite being just 28 years old, Peter already launched 12 ventures. He started out back in 2015 with his consumer product brand Dr. Severin (https://drseverin.com/). During his first venture launch, Joe interviewed Peter in German back in 2015. We talk to him about his newest venture Pythia AI (https://www.pythia-ai.com/)

I dont divide between business books and private books. If you grow personally, you grow as a leader. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

We talk to him to learn more about his 12th venture, called Pythia AI (https://www.pythia-ai.de/). Pythia was started when Peter followed his data driven approach to launch new consumer products and he got approached by Rossmann (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossmann_(company)), Germanys 2nd largest chain of drug stores. The drug store chain invested in the startup (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pythia#section-funding-rounds) to help them with forecasting trends for product development.

In case you are wondering: The venture is named after the priest, founding and serving the Oracle of Delphi in Greek mythology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia).

Peter looks a bit tired in the interview, since he just returned from opening an office in Sunny Vale, in the Silicon Valley.

We are very happy with the talent pool here (in Frankfurt), especially the engineers. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

During his time in the Silicon Valley, Peter wanted to reach out to venture capital investors. He went along the two main streets where they are headquartered and knocked on their doors. Surprisingly this was very successful, and it appears no one has done this before.

Despite knocking on many doors in the Silicon Valley, Pythia is not done with their fundraising and they are looking for additional investors for their Series A fundraising.

I think philosophy goes really well with business. You formulate a more concrete business philosophy. Peter Hart during his Startuprad.io interview

Principles by Ray Dalio https://amzn.to/38ZgmB7

The man who solved the market https://amzn.to/2SZ6Jgw

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture https://amzn.to/2SYi00x

The little prince https://amzn.to/3c6hWDm

Friedrich Nietzsches Books:

Herman Hesses Books

Before the Top Book List we talked about The hard thing about hard things https://amzn.to/32symSb

Herman Hesse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse

Friedrich Nietzsche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Arthur Schopenhauer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

And maybe you want to have a look at the often quoted VC Ben Horowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz

Follow this link:
(Audio) Pythia forecasts the next trend in consumer products - Startuprad.io

Jennifer Lawrence makes the secret agent of Russian are in Red Sparrow by Francis Lawrence (not related to work, by the second Chapter of the trilogy the Hunger Games). Charlize Theron the secret agent of the British Atomic Blonde by David Leitch had. Woe, to think that the films have something in common. Has forbidden, one interview after the other, Jennifer Lawrence. In the course of time released, of course, who wanted to put him a coat, as he on the terrace, in london, moved out Versace. You answered that with a dress an hour or so of frost, other that the five minutes are required, the photos would be it. And in the rest of the no woman has ever taken a cold, owing to which it is a backless dress (Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted him Ennio Flaiano in language guide is important to not go unnoticed in the society; whether true or well invented, hits the point).

Red Sparrow is not Atomic Blonde, says Jennifer, for this thing called the female gaze, the last category of criticism received in the course of the harassment, and the movement #metoo. In the meantime, in terms of the Oscars, two of the artists, which was sitting not far away from the Dolby theatre is a statue of Harvey Weinstein in a Bathrobe on the sofa, a statuette in hand as bait. The Female gaze in contrast to male gaze, the previously imperato. View of women against the male gaze. Always, that it is impossible to distinguish, without trust, only intentions are. After you have read and approved the screenplay, Jennifer Lawrence is the veto has on the result. If a scene has not mentioned it, or he felt uncomfortable, the Director would have the cut in the Assembly. The film version of the agreement, ribadirsi step-by-step. A kind of final cut in sex (the other final cut not even the filmmakers, because then the dvd with the directors cut is usually longer and boring; with the gender of the trend could be reversed, who would not want to see the cutscenes from Jennifer?).

To see the movie two hours and twenty for a history of spies, you should access the whole not see a big difference just. Naked there and it seems the same to many others. We hope it served at least as Jennifer explained undressed the control over his body after the hack photo private use, in the year 2014. Very well, we are satisfied that the healing has worked. Now Jennifer is a little bit of control over his films again. The Oscars, the risk at a young age, the career, the power of the statuette as best actress in a receipt in the year of 2013 for The positive side there is no exception. Two games for the ex-ballerina of the Bolshoi theatre, after the accident is taken up as a spy (in order to ensure that hospitals are decent mother sick) are a big step in the right direction.

Read the original here:
Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence, and the movement #metoo - Play Crazy Game

In 2004, political scientist Francis Fukuyama visited Israel and found himself at an unusual event. The author of The End of History and the Last Man shared a stage with Labor Party leader Shimon Peres and with Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then finance minister in the government of Ariel Sharon. At that time, several years after the attack of the World Trade Center and while the second intifada raged, the idea that the only political model still relevant in modernity was a combination of liberal-democratic regimes and capitalist-global economies, seemed dubious.

In the discussion, Peres tried to press his own concept of the New Middle East, whose spirit is compatible with Fukuyamas theory. He argued that in conditions of economic prosperity, based on free trade and cooperation between states, regional terrorism would be defeated. Netanyahu offered a far grimmer picture of the Middle East, focusing almost entirely on terrorism. He talked about Palestinian and Islamic fanaticism, about the terrorism they spawn and about the need to fight them determinedly in the foreseeable future. That future, from his point of view, looked like more of the same of what Israel was then going through.

As I left the event, in honor of Fukuyama and his work, I saw a somewhat stunned look on the American who organized the evening. Whats wrong? I asked him. I dont know what to think, he confessed, and explained: Nowhere in the world would I be able to persuade two former prime ministers, both well-known internationally, to come and talk about a philosophical book and polemicize about it. On the other hand, nowhere in the world would serious people speak publicly about a book which they obviously havent read. Did you see how embarrassed Fukuyama looked?

Indeed, neither Peres, nor, in particular, Netanyahu, addressed the important part of Fukuyamas analysis. His thesis had an empirical dimension, which was proved wrong. Around the time of his visit, the democracy indices, such as those measured by the American democracy watchdog Freedom House, started to indicate that a global recession of liberal democracy was underway. That tendency has only become stronger in recent years.

But Fukuyama didnt only address a historical reality at a given moment; his argument was also based on political imagination and how it mobilizes people. In that regard he was less mistaken. The liberal model has indeed weakened, but no alternative model has arisen, certainly not in global terms. Despite demands for reforms of various sorts, there is at present no new ideology or vision for regime, society and individuals parallel to communism in its day, for example in whose name masses of people are taking to the streets against democracy, against human rights and against capitalism (certainly not in its restrained form). It is not as if we see people demonstrating in the town square in favor of authoritarianism as an ideology, or urging the government to reduce their rights as individuals.

What we do see, rather, is primarily the erosion of the existing liberal model, for a variety of reasons (inequality, loss of community identity, migration, terrorism and more). We do not see political eros an energy, a passion around a model that creates a better future. Neither nationalism nor religion and tradition constitute a new and sweeping alternative; they are, rather, a replay of faith systems that proved disappointing in the past hence their limited strength.

In 2004, when Netanyahu stood on the stage at Tel Aviv University, it wasnt yet clear that he would become a key player, at the world level, in the conceptual vacuum that was emerging with the recession of the liberal-democratic model. It was equally impossible to know that he would be among those who would try to exploit that vacuum in order to transform democracy into a faade, behind which in fact exists a regime with soft authoritarian characteristics. That regime sanctifies one goal above all: power.

Immunity no matter what

For years, the prime minister has hardly spoken about the state of the nation and about the challenges it faces at least not in Israel, not to its citizens. This highly articulate person confines himself largely to calculated messages on Facebook, tweets and relatively brief statements in internal Likud meetings. Until his proposal late in the recent election campaign to engage in a debate with Benny Gantz, he had refrained for a decade from confronting his rivals head-on, and he has been stingy with press conferences. He was careful to be interviewed only by outlets convenient to him, particularly ahead of elections, and was apprehensive about appearing in the central media outlets, which for him constitute a dangerous realm rife with potential pitfalls.

The surprising television interview the premier gave to journalist Keren Marciano last March continues to haunt him, regarding the issue of parliamentary immunity against indictment: He denied then the possibility that he would seek such immunity from the Knesset, although he did just that later in the year and thus demonstrated his lack of credibility. Whereas his friend, U.S. President Donald Trump, talks for hours on end without choosing his words, Netanyahu adopts the opposite approach: making a conscientious effort to control his words and messages, avoiding an open dialogue with ordinary citizens. The absence of a policy platform in Likud is also consistent with this approach, which holds that words can constitute a danger, a limitation on power and its elasticity.

Netanyahus growing flight from certain uses of language raises a fundamental question: Does he have, or has he ever had, basic beliefs? A case in point is journalist Amit Segals fascinating series on Channel 12, Yemei Binyamin (Days of Benjamin), in which a lively, multi-participant debate was held on the question of whether Netanyahu believes in Greater Israel that is, incorporating the entire West Bank into sovereign Israel. Was his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, in which he endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, merely a tactical device that didnt reflect a true intention to forgo territories? Or could it be that the Wye agreement and the Hebron agreement at the end of the 1990s, by means of which he committed to continuing implementation of the withdrawals required of Israel by the Oslo Accords, show that his only considerations are his and his partys political survival?

Its the same with economic issues, the relationship between religion and state, the status of the High Court of Justice in fact, on almost every subject, Netanyahu can be interpreted in several different ways: ambiguity is his middle name. But in regard to one supreme goal, he is not in the least ambiguous, and his flexibility on other issues serves this. Surprisingly, that goal is not getting the attention it deserves.

The accumulation of power in its various forms was always a goal of Zionist ideology (as it was in other countries). Leaders such as David Ben-Gurion and Zeev Jabotinsky understood that well. But in their rhetoric, power was to be wielded in order to fulfill other values of the Jewish peoples state. The components of a normative worldview, in this context, include, for Ben-Gurion, a social-democratic, republican society founded on solidarity, one that would be, a light unto the nations; and, according to Jabotinsky, a democratic state (behind an iron wall) based on individual rights and equal citizenship, including a recognition of the collective rights of the minority. The conceptual revolution of the past decade, of which Netanyahu is the principal fomenter and its embodiment, maintains that the power of the nation-state has for the first time become the primary and organizing goal of the whole; it stands on its own and is no longer part of a future vision of human goodness.

The thrust for power has made inroads all across life in Israel, so its perhaps only fitting that it also receives a dual expression in the shaping of the most important law promulgated in the Netanyahu era a Basic Law that defines the character of the state itself. On the one hand, the 2018 Nation-State Law enshrines the absolute ownership of the Jews over the state, and hence proclaims their superiority vis--vis the Arab citizens in the country. On the other hand, this law does not restrict the content of Jewish nationalism by way of values beyond it (with the exception of land settlement). Such a normative limitation of nationalism, as well as a future moral vision, existed in the Declaration of Independence, with its well-known commitment to civil and political equality of individual rights, as well as to freedom, justice and peace in the spirit of the prophets of Israel. The frightening meaning of the Nation-State Law, in contrast, is that it renders nationalism autonomous of both the Jewish and liberal universes of values, and forsakes any desire to shape the future in these terms. It cultivates a collective consciousness rife with a sense of power, one unshackled by anything that lies beyond it and this precisely in an era in which the state, as an institution that serves the potent nation, has become much more formidable than ever before.

To a certain degree, choosing the path of power is a response to the Jewish exilic past. In his 1997 book Rubber Bullets, the late political theorist Yaron Ezrahi argued that in Israel, the craving for power stems not only from the conflictual circumstances in which the state exists that is, by force of reality but also from the collective memory of a people that for the most of its history was a helpless, humiliated victim, and now wants to ensure that it will never be vulnerable again in any situation, even if this entails shutting its eyes to the suffering of others because of its own deeds. Part of Netanyahus political art lies in his ability to evoke that formative, traumatic memory, which is one of the main things that Menachem Mendel from the shtetl and Saadia from the Moroccan mellah have in common. He encourages the fusion of the historical experience of fear with the present-day anxieties of life in the brutal Middle East, and sells himself as the only figure who can fulfill the collective fantasies of Israelis for immunity under any condition.

Vertices of strength

One of the rare occasions in which Netanyahu spoke more comprehensively about his worldview was the conference of the business newspaper Globes, held in Jerusalem in December 2018. It was semi-formal, unpolished, but still an exceptional opportunity to understand Netanyahus worldview.

He began by asserting the primary insight that guides him. The weak do not survive, he said (echoing Jabotinskys well-known essay, Man is wolf to man). Nations find the strength to grow and develop, or they disappear. An ancient people like the Jews needs to learn from other ancient peoples who maintained continuity over time and whose survival is the key to their strength and their growth: for example, China and India. For Netanyahu, political action, certainly in the Middle East, must focus on one supreme goal: a constant cultivation of power in its full range. We are forging three tremendous dimensions of power, he said, and then enumerated: Military power, economic power and diplomatic power. In other words, power as a defensive and offensive ability through the use of violence; power as the accumulation of riches, assets and knowledge; and power as the ability to influence and shape actions of others.

The most important of these is military power, Netanyahu said the same point he has made on other occasions because without it, life itself would be unfeasible. Warplanes, submarines, a superb intelligence community, cyberwarfare capabilities and so forth are its foundations. Afterward comes economic power and economic growth, underlying which are a free market, privatization, competition, entrepreneurship, reduction of taxes and diminishment of regulation. Israeli technology, which focuses on the world of computers, on artificial intelligence and on big-data processing, is in the forefront of this policy, particularly through large companies and corporations. In third place is diplomatic power, manifested in strategic military alliances and in economic cooperation, including ties with countries in Africa, Asia and South America, and increasingly also with Arab states. This global influence and sway, he emphasized, derives primarily from the first two elements, and in fact the three nourish each other and constitute a single totality.

Toward the end of his speech at the conference, he was interviewed by Globes publisher Alona Bar-On. In reply to her question about the status of Israels Arab citizens, he said, We are currently fomenting something tremendous. What you see here, the tremendous revolution that minuscule Israel is becoming a rising world power, bursting out, forging ties with everyone and able to bring all our citizens Jews and non-Jews into this process. That is my vision, and I believe that in the end we will unite around this vision.

Indeed, as part of the attempt to build up Israeli power, Netanyahu and his successive governments have made a significant effort to integrate the Arab population at both the economic-productive and individual levels, while at the same time excluding them from partnership as a community with a distinct identity and inciting against them at the civil and political levels. Most recently, this includes a new threat to change the countrys border in the central Triangle area and thereby deprive many Arabs of their citizenship.

Netanyahus remarks at the Globes conference about the essence of his policy as augmenting power was not a one-time event: It is his worldview. Only recently, in a December 25 interview with the popular Army Radio, ahead of the Likud leadership contest, he listed Israels economic achievements and added, Israel has never been stronger, neither economically, nor in security, nor diplomatically, and that did not happen by chance. It happened because I am leading the country on a path of power. The premier also boasts that Israel under his leadership has become a power.

It is undeniable that Netanyahu and the governments hes headed have chalked up significant achievements in all three aspects of the strength he is referring to. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, from his perspective, is Trumps peace plan. It is based on the existing reality in the West Bank, which was forged under the auspices of a military regime. The plan assumes a priori that at the end of the process the Palestinians will accept Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, the rejection of the right of return, Israels status as a Jewish state, Hamas disarmament and also their own hollow sovereignty.

But the most blatant translation of the existing relations of power into the shaping of the American plan lies in the fact that it makes possible unilateral annexation of 30 percent of the West Bank, without the signing of a peace treaty and without dependence on Palestinian consent. In the old world of Oslo, there was still talk of a peace agreement in terms of justice and (limited) fairness, of the memory of past injustices and responsibility for rectifying them, of the dignity of both sides and an absence of humiliation, of recognition of the interests of each people as it defines them itself, and of an avoidance of one-sided measures. In the Trump-Netanyahu plan, by contrast, all the cruelty of the existing situation as understood solely from the perspective of relations of power and dominance is presented in all its intensity. Reciting past narratives about the conflict is unproductive, the plan states theres no point rehashing narratives about who did what to whom and why.

The Trump blueprint is indeed a fresh start. It completely transforms the language and the terms in which we think about a solution to the conflict: In place of a peace agreement that is understood as a dialogue between parties that respect each other and with hard work strive to create long-term mutual trust an arrangement is proposed in which one dominant side shapes the other side in its own image and solely according to its interests and needs.

Israelis disagree about Netanyahus actual achievements or their absence. But the important issue here is the worldview that he is imparting and that some of his followers are promoting. We can assume that its not by chance that when he talks about the sources of Israels power, he doesnt mention democracy. That is nothing less than astonishing. From Pericles in Athens to Churchill in World War II, the democratic regime and the free way of life were considered the countrys most crucial source of power. For Netanyahu, however, the states resilience and status are due primarily to the fact that he personally is leading Israel on a path of power and that he is safeguarding life itself with his exceptional abilities and by the might of his hand.

What governance conceals

If human reality is grasped through the prism of power, its only natural for that notion to shape political life not only in foreign relations, but also domestically as well. In the Netanyahu era, a link that did not previously exist in Israel has been created: the imperative of safeguarding the states strength has been linked to the necessity of promoting the personal power of the leader, and the latter has been linked to the notion of efficient governance and dominance of the executive branch.

As far back as ancient Athens, democracy was depicted by its detractors as a regime that encourages factionalism, inefficiency and rule wielded by amateurs who lack experience or talent. This viewpoint occasionally led to coups in a city-state and to the adoption of a tyrannical, one-man regime. In our era, there are very few coups of that kind, but there are attempts to void democracy of most of its content. The result is the emergence of hybrid regimes, in which democracy is maintained as a faade that allows power to be wielded in practice by an authoritarian leader who uses the law and institutions to promote his or her personal sway.

Emergency situations, certainly if theyre chronic, provide a good excuse for leaders to create a regime of this kind. In Israel of 2020, journalists arent thrown into jail the way they are in Turkey, universities arent shut down as happens in Hungary, and the election process itself remains relatively untainted but the mistrust of and contempt for democracy run deep. For example, a great many parties have adopted the principle of concentrating power in the hands of a single leader, and lack internal democracy and elections. As a result, there arent 120 independent MKs in Israel (as it is, the Knesset is a small parliament relative to the size of the population); instead, the whole system is controlled by a few individuals, and to justify their status, a culture of personality cult is taking root, something that demeans both the MKs and the public.

Likud does have internal elections, but its well-known DNA, as the norms by which it operates are often called, actually exist from the end of the Menachem Begin era until the second Netanyahu era) means that the leaders status is not at risk.

In fact, in adopting power as the dominant and organizing principle, the prime minister is completely circumventing democratic politics, which is based on discussion, on an exchange of views and of course on disputes over ideas both within the parties and outside them. Citizens can disagree over whether to view those who came from Eritrea to Israel as labor migrants or as refugees entitled to protection, and over whether to expand the welfare state or shrink it. But Netanyahu hardly engages in such concrete issues of policy: He focuses on the necessity of extending the states power and what sort of political debate can take place about such an overarching goal when it is presented as stemming from the need to preserve citizens very existence?

Whereas Netanyahus rhetoric is, on the one hand, engaged in incitement against the left and the elites, on the other hand, it hammers into the collective consciousness an interest that is seemingly shared by the entire public an interest we can call existential and pre-political which places him outside and above every concrete political dispute: In a different league. Below, in the dregs of democracy, there are still people who are occupied with shifting ideological disputes, whereas the prime minister without a platform is the only one who has the ability to identify the deep and stable will of the entire nation and all of its segments: power for the sake of survival. And with such a reduction and flattening of democratic politics, who really needs a house of representatives that possesses significance and importance of its own? The prime minister doesnt even need the party as a mediator and as a pluralistic body he is in direct communication with the public via Facebook.

This is also the most important context in which the discourse about governance in Israel arose by the right, in recent years a discourse that was not necessarily intended to solve the problems of the countrys citizens by improving effectiveness. (Whats the connection between governance and the unwillingness of leaders to confront frequent rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, overcrowding in hospitals, traffic jams and air pollution?) Rather, the main purpose of this discourse is to buttress the standing of a muscular executive branch vis--vis the legislative branch and especially the judicial branch; it seeks to justify the concentration of power in the hands of the government and the person who heads it.

Absolute supremacy

In Israel, a discussion about power cannot take place in disassociation from the military regime in the West Bank (which operates at different levels of involvement in Palestinians lives). If the backsliding of democracy in Israel is part of a global phenomenon, it also has very local causes. The military regime running the occupation has existed for 53 years, and most Israelis were born into it. It exists adjacent to Israel and in practice as part of the country. The Palestinians in the territories are subordinate to it, but so are the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live there (at least as long as the settlements havent been formally annexed to Israel), and it is maintained by successive generations of soldiers. Within the Israeli elite are senior figures who were responsible over many years for managing the regime, which has proven to be highly effective as a model for controlling a population. Its not surprising, then, that the rationale of that regime has penetrated that of Israel proper, in a process that runs deeper than political views of one sort or another.

Although a military regime that is formed after an occupation of a foreign territory is subject to international law, it embodies a type of primary sovereignty in which there is no separation of branches and power has one center only. In this regime, there is dominance of the executive branch: It is the very embodiment of unhindered governance. The supreme law in this administration is promulgated by the military commander in the form of generals orders, and the military judges, though they do not operate according to orders from their superiors, do act to ensure the rulers preservation and security. The act of governing is thus carried out on the basis of a centralist conception of sovereignty as embodied in one person (the military commander responsible for the territory); in silence and without any need for a public sphere, for explanation or discussion; by promulgation of laws (orders) that serve above all the continuity and stability of the regime, not necessarily the needs of the residents; and with the commander-sovereigns absolute supremacy over those who are subject to his authority, as though they were different types of human beings.

For many years, Israeli democracy succeeded in separating this method of military rule, which is based wholly on the use of power (military, in this case), from developments inside Israel itself but apparently no longer. It would be mainly the representatives of the Israeli citizens who are subordinate to the military regime and know it first-hand the various settlers parties who would adopt elements of this regime model and rationale, contribute to their integration into Israeli democracy, and who would help Netanyahu justify his vision of himself as the authentic embodiment of Israeli sovereignty.

Sanctifying strength, scorning democracy

An increasing focus on the crucial role of power in politics has yet another important advantage for the criminally accused Benjamin Netanyahu, who is set to face trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and acceptance of bribes beginning March 17. Contemplating political life in terms of power and strength alone makes it possible for him to belittle the gravity of the offenses hes charged with.

Institutions and norms, which are the fruit of generations of work, place restraints on those who rule; in a functioning democracy, there is an attempt to decentralize power and authority and to critique them. Netanyahus attacks on the institution of the press and his desire to control media outlets like Walla News are part of his attempt to avoid public critiques. Whereas the media is external and independent, Netanyahu has even called into question the integrity and motivations of actors and institutions representing part of the state. Indeed, he has gone so far as to allege that the police and the state prosecution have attempted to foment a governmental coup against him, as though he were an outsider and not a person who has embodied the state establishment for decades and who achieved his status through it. Instead of the prime minister acting according to the public-institutional interest, which of course includes respecting the Israeli legal and judicial system, he began defining this interest as mandating first and foremost his continued rule.

Even more depressing is the damage he is causing to the public ethic: The prime minister is the No. 1 educator in the country, a subject of emulation and a figure who influences our childrens concept of a desirable personality. Although anyone familiar with the Bible doesnt expect a leader to be a saint, the text of the indictment obligatory reading for every citizen of Israel does not paint a picture of a person who tripped up once, exceptionally. Rather, the picture that emerges is of a serial liar who assails even facts, an uninhibited hedonist whose sense of entitlement puts him above the law, a person who is driven by a notion of whats good for him and who uses the states resources as though they were his personal property. Its difficult to quantify the long-term damage that Netanyahu has caused to Israels ethical infrastructure: Can a democratic society, one based on mutual trust and faith in peoples ability for self-rule, be based on values like these?

Its doubtful that Netanyahus deeds would have taken place with the brazenness that characterizes them without the broader separation between power and ethics in Israel, one that gradually formed primarily in the wake of the occupation. If the human condition is by its nature a relentless struggle for survival between the weak and the strong as Netanyahu professes, and if states are measured by their concrete strength and not by the excellence of the character and virtues of their citizens then an ethical discussion in public life becomes a luxury. On the one hand, how can one complain about the plunder of land, the prevention of freedom of movement, the unjustified death of a demonstrator, the deprivation of the right to self-determination and more, if the way of the world is to have conquerors and conquered? On the other hand, why criticize a prime minister for his personal criminal offenses and his lack of brakes if he is a magician when it comes to wielding the power and influence needed to preserve the occupation, promote annexation in the West Bank and bolster Israels international standing? Reality, as noted, cannot be judged in moral terms of good and evil, of justice and wrongdoing, but according to the implementation or non-implementation of power politics at the national and personal levels.

The path to this line of thought in modernity was carved out by Friedrich Nietzsche. Hand in hand with our recognition of the death of God, he said, we must also liberate ourselves from the Judeo-Christian perception of the good and the just vs. evil and sin. Nietzsche was particularly critical of the slave morality in that tradition, which openly advocates empathy for the other, modesty, decency, a vigilant conscience, a sense of guilt and the encouragement of atonement and the like. That morality must be rejected, he maintained, because man is fundamentally driven by a desire for power, an urge to shape himself and the world around him, including his moral codes. The innermost essence of being is will to power, Nietzsche says, and, It is part of the concept of the living that it must grow that it must extend its power. Nietzsche does not usually draw a connection between power and ruling over others, nor does he identify it with violence. Power in his eyes requires primarily an ability to sublimate, meaning that a person translates natural energy and free will into an ability to act in the world and to shape himself creatively and authentically.

But at times Nietzsche attributes a darker import to the will to power. For example, in his book The Will to Power (a controversial work), as it was edited by his sister after his death), he writes, At least a people might just as well designate as a right its need to conquer, its lust for power, whether by means of arms or by trade, commerce and colonization the right to growth, perhaps. A society that definitely and instinctively gives up war and conquest is in decline: It is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. The sanctity of the power of a nation (not necessarily the German nation) thus involves not only legitimization to seize control of others and of their land, but also entails scorn for democracy and liberalism, which introduce anti-bellicose tendencies and universal elements into the political culture.

Nietzsche influenced many and diverse thinkers and writers of early Zionism, among them Martin Buber, Yosef Haim Brenner, the writer Gershon Shofman and Uri Nissan Gnessin. They were drawn to the radicalism, the individualism and the freedom from conventions they found in him. More than anyone else, Nietzsche influenced the writer Micha Josef Berdyczewski (the favorite author of the young Ben-Gurion). Whereas Ahad Haam spoke about a strict Jewish national morality that included reluctance to use violence, Berdyczewski wrote, in the spirit of Nietzsche, that conquest of the land is certainly a national endeavor and it also rests on a certain national morality, but it stands in major conflict with human morality. The core of national morality is simple: self-love of the people .... In contrast, the purist national morality of Ahad Haam, Berdyczewski added, is founded on the immorality of conquering lands, expanding their borders, doing away with the faltering and inheriting their place.

These intellectual connections between Nietzsche and Zionist figures are too complex to be delineated here. They are well described and analyzed by David Ohana in his Hebrew-language book Zarathustra in Jerusalem, which includes a discussion of Nietzsches influence on the Revisionist movement as well as on the pre-state Lehi organization and on one of its members, the thinker Israel Eldad, Nietzsches translator into Hebrew. Suffice it say here that the concept of power that the German philosopher articulated intertwined well with the rebellion of some Zionists against the dominance of the discourse of commandment and transgression, of good and evil in Judaism, and with the understanding that Zionism would succeed only if it recognized that relations between nations are founded (also) on force.

Thus, until recently, the worship and role of power in Israeli politics remained constrained by various faith systems socialism, liberalism, the Jewish tradition and, some would say, even currents in religious Zionism. However, these limiting ideologies and ideas are increasingly crumbling in Israel. The discourse of power trickled down steadily, and in order to confront Netanyahu, three former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff gathered together at the head of one slate in the hope that their reservoirs of symbolic power would suffice to defeat him; their slate, it should be noted, is composed of three parties, none of which has free internal elections. The legacy of the Netanyahu era is above all the transformation of power into an end in and of itself, and into an autonomous entity. Israeli democracy will be coping the implications of this legacy long after he is gone.

Eyal Chowers teaches political philosophy at Tel Aviv University. His book The Political Philosophy of Zionism: Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.

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Netanyahu's worldview? All means sanctify the pursuit of power - Haaretz