An Infinite Path

One must begin by refusing the usual grunt and eye roll worthy tired blackmail: that any criticism of Israeli Zionism is antisemitic, being a prejudice or hatred toward all Jews. That vulgar conflation is not only so disingenuous, but has done immense intellectual and moral damage.Zionism, in its political form, is a 19th-century nationalist project, born in the age of ethnic romanticism and imperial cartography. It proposed, quite explicitly, that people of Jewish faith were not merely adherents of a religion or participants in a rich, diasporic civilization, but a singular nation that required territorial consolidation in historic Palestine. That proposition, even before one examines its consequences, is already a narrowing of Jewish identity. It reduces a vast, plural, diasporic tradition into something closer to a flag and a border. Now, how does this harm Jews?These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

Endless economic growth is one of the great pieces of modern mythology. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the divine right of scumbag egomaniacal kings. It is a story we tell ourselves, and like all powerful stories, it shapes the architecture of our civilization.But let us slow down and look at it carefully. The idea of endless economic growth rests on a very peculiar assumption: that a finite planet can sustain infinite extraction, infinite production, infinite consumption. It is, at its core, a metaphysical claim disguised as an economic one. It says that matter and energy can be reorganized without limit, that the Earth is a kind of bottomless pantry and simultaneously an infinite sewer.These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

Now what we're about to say can be ported into all Abrahamic Religions, but for the sake of this one, we'll use the mental operating system that is American Christianity — A carnival of faith, commerce, redemption, and far too often - lunacy. Like most grand human enterprises, it contains both admirable moral courage and breathtaking hypocrisy. One might say it has produced both saints and salesmen. Let us take the good, the bad, the ugly, and the psychotic in turn.These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

The 24/7 lies of the MAGA cult are not an American novelty, nor a partisan curiosity. It is a structural feature of any fascist brain drain. Projection is not a bug of the system; it is the system.If you examine the anatomy of fascism, whether in Benito Mussolini’s Italy or Adolf Hitler’s Germany, you will find the same ritual choreography:Accuse the enemy of precisely what you intend to do.Declare yourself the sole guardian of the nation.Frame any resistance as treason.Insist that extraordinary powers are required to combat the very threat you have invented.These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos

Gaming can of course be an addiction. Like all things in life, balance is important and we ourselves are not above playing the occasional computer game as we all need a little escape here and there. In spirts and not letting it take over our life of course. Amongst other more creative things, one of our rituals we do for fun with our daughter is watch anime or game together. And recently we did an extremely rare acquisition and bought a new but used off Craigslist graphics card. By the way, we highly recommend the book "Chip War" on the subject of microchips and the massive importance of two companies on the planet, one of which is called ASML (Advanced Semiconductor Materials) which does extreme ultraviolet photolithography, creating the world's only machines that are required to manufacture the most advanced microchips, and the other is called TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) and is the company that manufactures the majority of the world's microchips using ASML hardware in Taiwan and is why that is such a crucial small country in the Earth realm currently. Right around the time of this new GPU acquisition a new game had recently been released which caught our eye and was an excuse to try out the new hardware. ———An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.comSpotify | iTunes | YouTube | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM

“Be kind to people, but ruthless to systems” is one of those deceptively gentle aphorisms that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a hand grenade wrapped in a thank-you note.What it insists upon, quite rightly, is a moral distinction that our age finds unbearably difficult to maintain. People are fallible, frightened, often doing the best they can with the intellectual furniture available to them. Systems, by contrast, are not frightened, not confused, and not deserving of sympathy. Systems are designed. They embody incentives, hierarchies, exclusions, and often cruelties, all carefully engineered and then defended with a priesthood of jargon.These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos