The primary reason is to focus on completing my first draft of “Why Isn’t The Universe Convinced?” my first full-length play. The play deals with similar issues to the topics I write about here.

As there is crossover in the subject matter, creatively, I prefer to not engage in the topic elsewhere publicly.

I’m working on several essays on topics other than religion, or specifically my experiences in Orthodox Judaism, but I put myself into situations I know aren’t healthy for me and it changes the direction I intended.

I’ve identified some specific things in connection to religion and deities that are triggering to me and I want to adjust to this and find ways to disengage from the discussion instead of going deeper.

As I wrote about in these posts1, I’m trying to stay away from some conversations. My view is that we’re too far apart to engage in conversation on these matters.

It’s not a judgement on anyone, it’s just the reality of it. I respect your humanity, some of us I’m sure can benefit from conversations just on unrelated topics.

The topic I’d like to discuss is how we can live together and at least tolerate each other. I want to share more of those thoughts and do less fighting with people that neither of us are going to change our minds.

This is something I’ve been doing with all social platforms for the last ten years. Sometimes I just do it, sometimes I say it.

I say it to hold myself accountable. If I do it in my head, excuses can come. The public commitment for these things can be important to me.

I’m going to turn off comments on this post for the obvious reasons. Feel free to reach out via email if you feel there’s something we should discuss. It’s specifically Substack and a few other sites.

There may be some updates to these pages:

My Philosophy

House Rules

As those are the types of things I think about when on breaks like these.

Interactions on here led me to new insights and realizations that I’d like to process before engaging further.

I’ll leave you with some quotes I’ll be thinking about:

“We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered.” —Thomas Henry Huxley

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe." —Carl Sagan

“Since men are really interested in nothing but their own opinions, every one who puts forward an opinion looks about him right and left for means of strengthening himself and others in it. A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it; whether it be to dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or to employ it as a stopgap for effecting an apparent union between things that have been disjointed. This experience at first caused me annoyance, and then sorrow; and now it is a source of mischievous satisfaction. I have pledged myself never again to expose a proceeding of this kind.”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I had more sense than to contest with him, since there is no possibility of convincing an enthusiast.” — Voltaire

“No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.”― Denis Diderot