The Devil Of Detail Boulevard

This picture is not the Devil. This is Benedict (or Baruch) Spinoza. Please. Let us have some silence in the hall! Getting back to my presentation:

The world has infinite detail. This detail is hardly grasped by our understanding. This is my way of saying that we, the American public, is grossly uninformed. How does the greatest democracy in the world make a decision, when their information is the dregs of the vats of reality? I give you the following story from Israel. It is written by Israelis, about other Israelis. Not an Arab in sight. This shows you the detail of life in the Middle East is much more wide and varied than cramped minds conceive. The Struggle for Hegemony in Jerusalem: Secular and Ultra-Orthodox Urban Politics An excerpt from a pamphlet written by Shlomo Hasson, The Floersheimer Institute For Policy Studies (2001),Jerusalem, in which the author describes how Jerusalem became a Haredi city while democracy was being lessened in the city. The main causes were secular and Haredi (combined) -- the secular by power of authority and the Haredi for ideological and economic reasons. Jerusalem, just like the entire country, serves as an example of the gradual degeneration of democracy (in the widest sense) which should make all those who love freedom and liberty quake. http://www.daatemet.org.il/ I am afraid this is one item I have never forgiven the Neocons for: their incredible lack of depth, their inability to see detail. They were rather good, in fact, better than most, when it came to talking up a storm, telling tall tales, and yammering about twisting the nose of old Saddam. However, they viewed their studies much like Dr. Peter Venkmann did, thereby leaving the heavy thinking to Ray and Egon.

The old expression "The Devil is in the details." does not mean that if you look closely and study something, this is inherently an evil act and Old Nick will pop up and grab your soul, although our elected representatives have believed this recently. It is not a demonic address. It just mean detail work is a lot of work, plain and simple.

picture: daatemet.org.il