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The Virginia Shooting: Nihilism and the Culture of Anarchy

August 28, 2015 2:53 pm / Leave a comment

“What has happened to us as a society that we now devalue life to such a level? What has happened in our society that people have become so violent? That’s the fundamental question we need to confront… We have a societal problem in our country. It reminds us of the most important job any of us will ever have … the job of a mother, a father or a parent.”

Senator Marco Rubio summed it up nicely… or tragically. But the deeper question is this: How do we stop the cultural inertia that is driving our society ever further into nihilism and moral anarchy?

Senator Rubio gets the answer perfect: If it doesn’t start in the home, then there really is no hope for the future. Without respect for traditional values, without recovering the lost ideals of civility, selflessness, modesty, and integrity, then the tide of history will sweep us away as it did the Roman Empire and leave behind a new Age of Darkness.

Bill O’Reilly makes the same point with his usual brass-knuckled pithiness here.

Channeling Anger and Solving our Common Problems

August 19, 2015 2:49 pm / Leave a comment

My thanks to Dan Mason of KKOH in Reno for inviting me to be a guest on his show. We talked about the anger driving voters, resolving conflict, and transforming negatives into positives.

Email of the Week — Making “Friends”

August 18, 2015 2:10 pm / Leave a comment

Presently, I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the principles of Facebook.

So every day I walk down on the street and tell the passers-by what I have eaten, how I feel, what I did yesterday and what I will do tomorrow.

Then I give them pictures of my family, of my dog, and of me gardening and spending time in my pool. I also listen to their conversations and I tell them I love them.

And it works. I already have 3 persons following me:

2 police officers and a psychiatrist.

Acquire the Gift of Giving

August 10, 2015 2:27 pm / Leave a comment

When she was 8 years old, Lara Aknin convinced her little brother to trade his dimes for her nickels. It was an easy sell… after all, nickels are bigger and must therefore be worth more.

Now a psychologist at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, Dr. Aknin has discovered a mistake more profound than youthful embezzlement: in truth, her motivation itself was built on a misunderstanding of human nature.

In an interview with NPR’s Shankar Vendatam, Dr. Aknin describes the experiment in which her team asked toddlers to feed candies to hand-puppets which, they were told, would really enjoy the treats. Considering that these children were still too young to have absorbed any cultural awareness of giving as a value, the results produced two surprises. Explains Dr. Aknin:

“Children smiled significantly more when they were giving treats away than when they received the treats themselves. But what we thought was particularly exciting was that children actually smiled significantly more when they gave away one of their own treats than an identical treat provided by the experimenter.”

In other words, the greatest feelings of joy may come from giving up that which we treasure the most.

But does the impulse remain as we grow into adulthood?

Read the whole article here.

No one is so strong…

July 16, 2015 2:36 pm / Leave a comment

Back in college, when everyone’s goal was “self-actualization,” we used to joke that the curse of actually becoming self-actualized would be having to live in a world where no one else was.

Strength doesn’t mean not needing anyone else. It means not being a slave to internal or external forces.

“Who is mighty?” asks the Talmud. “The one who masters his impulses and inclinations.”

But we still need other people, and the downside of being strong is the presumption by others that everything is always okay.

So don’t forget to ask the people close to you how they’re doing, even when they seem to be on top of the world. Sometimes strength is a burden that we can’t carry alone.

Elbowing God Out

July 3, 2015 1:51 pm / Leave a comment

Back when I possessed the charming innocence of a twelve-year-old, I took offense at the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance. Why, I wondered, was I expected to pledge my allegiance to a flag? Proclaiming loyalty to my country I could understand, but to a piece of fabric?

Moreover, as I had concluded with unshakable, preadolescent self-confidence that human existence was nothing more than a cosmic accident, I found the phrase “under God” equally offensive.

So while my classmates were loudly reciting the full text of the Pledge of Allegiance, I was quietly editing my own recitation: I pledge allegiance… to the United States of America… one nation… indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

By my final year in high school, however, having acquired a sufficient measure of sophistication to appreciate the importance of symbolism, I no longer resented being asked to swear loyalty to a flag. But we weren’t reciting the Pledge of Allegiance any more, so I had no chance to mend my ways.

I was also less certain concerning the existence of a Creator. Six years of secondary education had opened my eyes to a universe so enormously complex that to embrace any world view as extreme as atheism seemed the height of arrogance. The phrase “under God,” therefore, struck me as a comforting expression of humility, that we as a nation recognized the grandeur of our universe and conceded its unfathomability.

Perhaps the circuit court judges who ruled the phrase “under God” unconstitutional might have interpreted the law with more humility if they had familiarized themselves not only with the letter, but with the spirit of the Constitution. Perhaps they might have better understood the intent of the Framers if they had read, or remembered, the words of Alexander Hamilton: “The sacred rights of mankind… are written, as with a sun beam in the whole of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Considering the many references to the Almighty among the writings of the Framers of the Constitution, it’s astonishing how often we hear the Constitution invoked as the basis for expurgating every reference to God from the public arena. If the founding fathers weren’t afraid of mentioning God in the Declaration of Independence, why should we fear the utterance of His name in our courthouses or schools? But many among us are afraid, afraid with a fear born of insecurity.

Indeed, what is more terrifying than the unknown, and what is less known than what awaits us when we depart this mortal coil? As Prince Hamlet pondered: “To sleep? Perchance to dream! Ay, there’s the rub.” For the devout atheist, there is no greater dread than the haunting suspicion that he might be wrong, that there might truly be a Creator and an accounting before Him upon arrival in the hereafter. To the atheist, every reference to God is an unwelcome reminder that the rest of the world is not so certain that our existence is random and without purpose.

The great Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik summed it up like this: “All extremism, fanaticism and obscurantism come from a lack of security. A person who is secure cannot be an extremist.” And, indeed, extremism in the form of radical religion or radical nihilism is one and the same. The 19th century anarchist used techniques not unlike the suicide bomber of today to advance his own variety of jihad. The modern anarchist uses manipulation of the law to advance his cause, supremely confidant that he understands the Constitution better than its authors.

The Talmud describes how, during the last days of the second Temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish people observed the law of the Torah meticulously according to its letter. But they failed to look beyond the letter of the law, to strive for understanding and fulfilling of the spirit of the law, to labor in applying the essence of the law toward the transformation of their character. This failure, together with a senseless hatred born of mutual suspicion, mutual contempt and, ultimately, the uncompromising assertion of their own egos, resulted in the destruction of the Temple, the deaths of millions of Jews, and the beginning of our long, dark exile scattered among the nations of the earth.

It has been observed that the word ego is in fact an acronym for Elbow God Out. A daily reminder that we should receive our national freedoms with humility is among the surest means of preserving those freedoms for our children. Close to two thousand years ago, instead of subduing their egos before the Highest Authority, instead of subjugating their ideological differences to the pursuit of shalom, peace, the Jews distorted Divine law to serve their own agendas, thereby sealing their fate and the fate of the Temple.

The sages teach that any generation that does not rebuild the Temple is considered to have destroyed it. But if we return to the law with humility and reverence, then we can truly hope to rebuild that which for so long has been lost.

Adapted from an article previously published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Baltimore Sun, and Aish.com.

Why Marriage Matters

July 1, 2015 1:24 pm / Leave a comment

From the United States Constitution to the French Revolution, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the 19th Amendment, from the Civil Rights Act to last week’s Supreme Court decision affirming the right to gay marriage, the world has taken (by a vote of 5 to 4) another great step forward on the road to universal equality and justice.

That’s what the pundits would like us to think. Except that it wasn’t a step forward.

And, more important, it was never about the right to marry…

As an institution, marriage created a moral structure upon which all other moral structures found purchase: Partnership, self-sacrifice and, perhaps most critically, respect for the natural boundaries and limits imposed by the design of the universe in which we live. Human beings took for granted the imperative to conform to nature’s laws and nature’s plan. Individual desire and ambition learned to submit to a higher reality and universal truths. Personal gratification was not the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in a society that required cooperative spirit and collective commitment to ideals that extended beyond oneself.

Click here to read the whole article.

Proverbial Beauty: Read now at Amazon.com

Unforgivable

June 24, 2015 1:24 pm / 1 Comment on Unforgivable

Should Dylann Roof be Forgiven for the South Carolina Massacre?

In an extraordinary example of human nobility, relatives of those killed in the Charleston, South Carolina, massacre expressed their forgiveness for Dylann Roof, the domestic terrorist who opened fire and took nine lives from the historic Emanuel A.M.E. church community. The mourners’ refusal to indulge their natural human impulse for revenge and to return love for hatred shows us all how it is possible to heal our fractured society.

Proverbial Beauty: Read now at Amazon.com

On a deeper level, however, the question of forgiveness is vastly more complicated.

One of the most compelling works of Holocaust literature is The Sunflower, an anthology built around the experience of survivor Simon Wiesenthal in the Lemberg Concentration Camp. In 1943, Mr. Wiesenthal was summoned to the deathbed of Karl Seidl, a Nazi soldier haunted by the atrocities he had committed, who wanted desperately to receive forgiveness from a Jew before he died.

Mr. Wiesenthal describes how he could find nothing to say and left the soldier without uttering a word. He then grapples with the question of whether he should have offered forgiveness, ultimately offering his answer by reframing the question:

ONE FOR ALL?

The crimes committed by the Nazis were not directed against individual Jews but against the Jewish people as a whole. Consequently, the torture and torment inflicted upon any Jew was in fact a crime against every Jew. Each individual victim was not a person but one of a people — the perpetrators didn’t care who he was but what he was — and therefore no individual had the power to grant forgiveness since an entire nation was targeted through each act of individual violence.

In other words, it wasn’t a matter of whether Mr. Wiesenthal should forgive, but whether forgiveness was his to give at all.

The same reasoning applies to all hate crimes. Whether the victim is black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Jew or Gentile, citizen or immigrant, rich or poor, any act of violence motivated by identity is not merely a crime against one person but a crime against mankind. As such, it transcends mere brutality or wickedness and rises to the level of gross inhumanity. By doing so, it becomes unforgivable.

So how can an act of forgiveness be both noble and impossible? Part of the confusion stems from a lack of clear definition. What is forgiveness? And why should forgiving evil ever be considered noble?

In the best-case scenario, forgiveness is a response to contrition. When a perpetrator recognizes the evil of his own actions, sincerely regrets them, and seeks to repair or atone for the harm he caused, then to withhold forgiveness becomes an act of evil itself. In such a case, to grant forgiveness becomes not merely noble but a moral obligation.

Proverbial Beauty: Read now at Amazon.com

But what if the perpetrator feels no remorse? Or what if he has no intention of righting the wrongs he has caused?

Even in that case, if one can understand, or even imagine, what motivated an act of evil, then it might be possible to forgive the offender for his own human weakness, whether it was a momentary lapse in temper or judgment, an innate lack of moral clarity or, as may or may not be the case with Dylann Roof, demonstrable psychological instability. To be able to see past one’s own pain and find a mitigating factor to excuse violence is truly noble… even saintly.

WITHOUT REMORSE

However, in the case of conscious, calculated evil, forgiveness may actually be a perversion of morality. Moral values should be so deeply rooted within that we can’t help responding to any violation of them with indignation and outrage. If we are truly committed to the values of good, how can we possibly tolerate evil, or those who do evil, especially when they do it in the name of good?

This is what the sages of the Talmud meant when they said, Be discerning in judgment. Look for every possible means of explaining away bad behavior. But after all is said and done, evil remains evil. Nonjudgmentalism is an empty slogan that allows evil to proliferate unchecked.

What often gets lost in the discussion of forgiveness is the matter of accountability. If I break your window, my apology means nothing unless I’m willing to pay for the window. And if I’ve caused damage that can’t be repaired, punitive restitution may be the only means through which society as a whole can preserve respect for the rule of law and confidence in the institutions of justice.

The particulars are open to debate. There are legitimate grounds to oppose the death penalty, mostly based in the real concern that an imperfect legal system cannot guarantee the guilt of those sentenced to death.

But to oppose capital punishment on the grounds that the state has no right to take a life misses a larger point. One who takes the life of another member of society forfeits his own place in that society; moreover, a society will retain its respect for the sanctity of life only with the recognition that by taking a life one forfeits his own right to life as well.

To take the life of any one person is, on some level, to take the life of every person. Justice must be served. Only then may it be possible to forgive.

Proverbial Beauty: Read now at Amazon.com

Click here to read this article and more from Yonason Goldson at Jewish World Review

The Power to Change the World

June 22, 2015 2:52 pm / Leave a comment

With so much senseless violence dominating the headlines, from Charleston, South Carolina, to Syria and beyond, it’s worth revisiting this story of heroism and the power of the individual to change the world.

On the afternoon of September 18th, 2014, a teenage driver lost control of his SUV as he sped down Salt Lake City’s Indiana Avenue. The GMC Yukon tore through the safety barrier, went airborne into a ravine, and landed upside down in three feet of water and the bottom of the gully. Dazed or unconscious, strapped in by their seat belts, the driver and his two passengers had minutes before they would drown.

What happened next offers a welcome relief from the relentless litany of strife and suffering that fills the headlines. Moments after the crash, nearly a dozen bystanders waded into the waist-high water and, working in unison, flipped the massive vehicle over onto its wheels, lifting the crash victims out from under the water and saving their lives.

But it might never have happened. As horrified onlookers stood frozen and stared at the capsized SUV, Leo Montoya, Jr., an out-of-work locksmith, overcame the Bystander Effect, plunged into the current and dove under the water in an effort to save the occupants. Unable to free them from their seat belts, only one option presented itself.

Turning toward the crowd, Mr. Montoya shouted, “We have to get this vehicle back on its wheels. Now, now, now!” Prompted by his commands, some of the men standing on the roadside began following him into the water. With so many pairs of hands and shoulders at work together, the Yukon rolled up and over until it was back on all four wheels and the passengers were clear of the water. When firefighters arrived, they freed the occupants and rushed them to the hospital.

The collective effort of bystanders saved three lives. But only because one person showed them the way and convinced them to follow.

The incident calls to mind another scene that happened 3,326 years ago after the exodus from Egypt at the splitting of the Sea. Faced with Pharaoh’s chariots bearing down on them from behind and the imposing expanse of water ahead, the Jewish people’s faith in God wavered. “Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die?” they railed against Moses. The situation was impossible; there was no hope.

Until one man spoke up. Nachshon ben Aminadav, the prince of the tribe of Yehudah, cried out to the people: “If the only way to escape the Egyptian army is to go forward, then forward we must go. Let us do what we can and trust God to do the rest.” And with that, he waded out into the sea.

Inspired by his words, the people followed him. Deeper and deeper they advanced into the waters until, as the water reached Nachshon’s chin, the sea split before and around them, offering both the means of the Jews’ escape and the method of the Egyptians’ destruction.

What kind of person marches into the sea assuming that a path will open up to make way for a desperate nation? The same type of person who would charge forth and rally a dozen men to overturn a ton of steel, the type of person who understands that no matter how daunting the odds, there is no way to know the limit of human potential until we have pushed human potential to the limit.

What’s more, the potential of the many may remain unrealized until a singular individual shows that he has no interest in probabilities and, through sheer determination, awakens the collective spirit through which the impossible becomes reality.

We all want to be good and do good, and change the world for the better. But we lack confidence in ourselves, we lack the conviction to act, we lack the courage to risk failure. So we miss opportunities for greatness – not just by failing to charge into the breach, but by not expecting more from ourselves, by not setting the bar of human achievement and human integrity a little higher.

In one heroic moment, one man can inspire a world of others to change themselves. And the more we change ourselves, the more we change the world.

Just ask Leo Montoya. “As far as I know, a couple of kids get to live because of my actions,” Mr. Montoya told reporters. “I feel like I’m somebody.”

Originally published at Aish.com.

9 Ways to Keep your Integrity

June 11, 2015 4:16 pm / 1 Comment on 9 Ways to Keep your Integrity

Everyone likes a good story.

I have my share to tell, having spent my prodigal youth hitchhiking cross country and circling the globe, living abroad for a decade, and teaching high school for over 20 years.

But it still happens that friends and neighbors occasionally respond to my recollections by asking: “Did that really happen?”

Read the intro to Proverbial Beauty at Amazon.

Are my tales so truly unbelievable? After all, I never claim to have flown to the sun with Icarus, to have crossed the Rubicon with Julius Caesar, or to have followed Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill.

No, I’ve merely sought to pluck insights from slightly quirky encounters and offer a bit wisdom from my observations on the human condition.

“I loved your article,” someone will say. And then, almost predictably: “Did that really happen?”

I even get it from my mother.

The new normal?

To be honest, it comes as no surprise. After all, honesty has seen its market value tumble over the years with countless reports of plagiarism, factual carelessness, and blatant fabrication.

But as troubling as such prevarication may be from the media, it’s far more disheartening when it becomes the norm among our political leaders.

The sad truth is that we expect our politicians to lie. But the brazenness with which they conjure up easily verifiable falsehoods grows ever more astonishing.

Once integrity disappears, the only motive not to lie is fear of not getting away with it — and get away with politicians have, in a society that has grown indifferent to lying.

But there is something we can do. Here are 9 ways we can prevent the erosion of our own integrity:

Read the full article here.

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Should Dylann Roof be Forgiven for the South Carolina Massacre?

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