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3 Tips to Program your Internal GPS
To drive in Israel can be described as a near-death experience.
In some ways it’s better than it used to be. Traffic has gotten so dense that drivers simply cannot indulge the reckless habits that once prevailed. It’s hard to bob and weave when your car is stuck in gridlock.
But when the traffic starts moving, the experience can be harrowing, made all the more stressful as you try to find your way along unfamiliar boulevards and position yourself to make quick turns with little notice.
Thank heaven for Waze. Just plug in your destination, follow the directions, and voila!
Then something strange happened.
Let the truth set you free
“James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
@realDonaldTrump 12 May 2017
This was one of President Trump’s tamer tweets, although you wouldn’t know it by the ensuing chorus of condemnation from the media.
“There’s no good motive for saying this except to intimidate James Comey,” said news anchor Greta Van Susteren in an interview with Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who emphatically echoed her indictment.
Unpresidential? Possibly. But intimidating?
ALL A-TWITTER
No reasonable person can deny that Donald Trump has made a mockery of himself and his office with his litany of derisive, degrading, and delusional tweets. There is no excuse for any public figure, much less the President of the United States, to whine that he is the victim of the “single greatest WITCH HUNT in American history,” to assert that a distinguished senator from his own party is an “embarrassment” to his home state, or to spew adolescent invectives regarding the physical appearance or psychological stability of media personalities, no matter how slanted and unprofessional their reporting might be.
There should be a code of ethics — whether implicit or explicit — governing the use of social media, which relentlessly eats away the foundations of civil society. But the misuse of modern communication in general, and of Twitter in particular, does not make it all bad all the time.
In a world where the media has grown increasingly untrustworthy, unfair, and unbalanced, the power of social media to circumvent inaccurate or misleading reporting should be warmly welcomed. But that power is so easily abused that it routinely invalidates its own effectiveness as an alternative information source.
Which brings us back to Mr. Trump’s tweet warning that James Comey’s own words might be subject to verification.
Was that intimidation? Was it coercion?
FOR THE RECORD
Well, let’s see. Mr. Trump did not say that he had any tapes. He did not even say that he might have tapes. He did not threaten Mr. Comey with reprisal or retribution of any kind. He did not suggest that Mr. Comey should in any way distort or omit the truth.
What he did do was raise the specter that Mr. Comey’s statements might come back to haunt him if found to contradict anything Mr. Comey himself had previously said.
Come to think of it, this might be the most cogent message Donald Trump has tweeted since he launched his campaign to run for president. By what twisted logic can it now be suggested that confronting public figures with the truth is a form of intimidation?
Has our moral compass spun completely off its axis?
The humorist Charles Marshall wrote, seriously, that, “Integrity is doing the right thing when you don’t have to — when no one else is looking or will ever know — when there will be no congratulations or recognition for having done so.”
That is a universal truth. But it’s all the more relevant in an age when everyone carries a camera, when anything and everything we do could end up on YouTube or the evening news. If there is any upside to the ubiquitous presence of recording devices lurking in every shadow, it is that we have to consider the very real possibility that someone is always watching, and that anything we say or do might be used against us.
King Solomon said, Curse not the king even in your thoughts, and curse not the rich in your bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry your voice, and that which has wings shall make the matter known.
More than ever, there are flies on the walls, and the walls have ears. Rather than worrying that we might be overheard, wouldn’t we be better off making sure that nothing leaves our mouths that we wouldn’t want repeated or retweeted?
The Fool in the Mirror
The Green Generation has arrived! We recycle; we favor alternative energy; we’re environmentally conscious. Clearly, we are on our way to saving our planet.
Or maybe we’re not.
But at least we feel really good about ourselves.
That’s what Remi Trudel discovered. The Boston University marketing professor ran a study in which subjects were asked to sample four different beverages. With a recycling bin placed nearby, people more often took a new cup for each beverage; when there was no bin, more people reused the same cup.
Paradoxically, the opportunity to recycle increased the production of waste. In other words, environmental consciousness increases environmental carelessness.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that people who buy hybrid cars typically increase their driving miles. From the perspective of human psychology, it seems that conservation is a zero sum game: if I save here, I’m permitted to indulge there.
Professor Trudel suggests that, for most of us, recycling is more about making ourselves feel good than about being responsible custodians of the environment. If I save a plastic bottle or aluminum can from the county landfill, I can go on consuming with less guilt. The result is that we become like the dieter who justifies an extra helping of dessert because he used Sweet’N Low in his coffee.
HOW GREEN IS YOUR VALLEY?
Mike Adams of Natural News takes it a step further. If you sift through a recycling bin, you’re likely to find all kinds of containers for chemical products that potentially do more harm to the environment than the boxes and bottles in which they are sold. We don’t mind releasing pollutants into the ecosystem in the form of scented laundry detergent, antibacterial soap, and perfume. Why? Because we assuage our collective conscience with the knowledge that those plastic and cardboard containers will be turned into packaging for more toxic products.
For decades we’ve been warned about the evils of polystyrene cups. But many paper cups are not biodegradable; they may cost more to produce, while requiring more raw materials, use more energy, and produce more greenhouse gases. But, hey, paper feels more eco-friendly.
All this is the natural, if maddeningly irrational, consequence of our national obsessions with feelings. Motives are important. Fairness is important. Perception is important. Results are largely irrelevant.
That may explain why Al Gore, at the time he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize for chiding the American people for their environmental irresponsibility, was simultaneously living in a mansion that guzzled 12 times as much energy as an average American home. Presumably, he reasoned that the benefit to the world from his advocacy far outweighed his own environmental rapaciousness.
This kind of inconsistency is not limited to environmentalism. Repeatedly during his campaign and presidency, Barack Obama promoted increasing capital gains taxes in the name of fairness, even though empirical evidence showed that such increases actually decrease tax revenue rather than raise it. For decades, California lawmakers relentlessly raised corporate taxes on the most successful businesses, eventually driving many of them out of the state and plunging the economy into chaos.
But at least they can sleep at night.
IF WISHES WERE FORCES
The worldview that values feelings and good intentions over results inevitably fosters a terrifying ideology of utopianism. On October 11, 2002, former President Jimmy Carter received his own Nobel Peace Prize, in large part for his role negotiating a treaty in which North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear weapons program. On October 16, just five days later, the United States announced that North Korea admitted to having a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Many observers continue to wonder how anyone could have believed that the North Korean leaders could be trusted to honor their commitments. But the idea of peace was just too good to let go.
Social conscience, environmental awareness, world peace — these are all noble ideals. But the mere desire to make our planet a better place will not make it so. Indeed, lofty dreams untethered from reality typically produce much more harm than good.
And yet the dreamers continue to dream, unperturbed by either logic or history.
King Solomon ponders: What use is wealth in the hands of a fool when his heart has no desire to purchase wisdom?
The real challenge is to get the fool to recognize the self-destructive consequences of his folly. In literature, the Knight of Mirrors forces Don Quixote to see his own madness, but the tragic hero quickly returns to the comfort of his delusions once the looking glass is taken away.
So how do we speak truth to power, when power shows such persistent disdain for truth?
The Curse of Cowardice
“The implications for our country are so serious that I feel a responsibility to my constituents… as well as to my conscience, to voice my concerns forthrightly and publicly. And I can think of no more appropriate place to do that than on this great Senate floor.”
~Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, September 1998
It takes courage to stand up to our enemies, but even greater courage to stand up to our friends. And that’s precisely what is missing in modern political culture:
Courage.
In today’s world of groupthink, challenging the party line can be socially and professionally self-destructive. Friends and allies turn into assailants at the first whisper of dissent, at even the suggestion that there may be more than one side to any issue.
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
In June of last year, Maya Dillard Smith, head of the Georgia ACLU, came under attack for suggesting that the topic of transgender bathrooms warranted deeper discussion. To her credit, Ms. Smith resigned her position rather than remain part of an organization so fervently opposed to the principle of civil discourse.
The previous November, Professor Erika Christakis (together with her husband) lost her job at Yale after sending an email suggesting that students should be treated as adults, then compounding her transgression by attempting to engage demonstrators in reasoned debate.
And for years, moderate Republicans, disparaged as RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – have been hunted and attacked as traitors to their party.
In this age of polarization and partisanship, it’s much safer to attack the other party, whether from the right or the left. Republicans and Democrats alike circle the wagons to defend those among them who hurl even the most outrageous verbal projectiles across the aisle. To stand alone as the voice of reason by suggesting temperance, moderation, or compromise means taking your life in your hands.
After last week’s horrific shooting spree, which targeted Republican lawmakers as they practiced for the annual congressional baseball game, the obligatory expressions of unity and civility poured forth from both Democrats and Republicans. But it didn’t last long. By week’s end the rhetoric was already ratcheting up again, with each side blaming the other for creating a cultural atmosphere of toxic hate and violence.
Both sides are right. Yet neither is willing to offer more than lip service toward solving the problem.
SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE
So who will be today’s Joe Lieberman? Who will speak out against entrenched power and political pressure to risk the slings and arrows of reprimand and reprisal? Who will show the courage to call out his or her own colleagues for their inflammatory excesses instead of taking the coward’s way out by indicting the other side while claiming the high moral ground from amidst the morass?
Where are the mavericks, the lone wolves, and the white knights who fear the sting of their own conscience more than lash of their own party, who will bet their own future on the long odds that their example might spur others to join them in building a coalition of responsible statesmen to right the ship of state?
When Senator Lieberman took to the senate floor two decades ago, he directed his censure not only against his president and the leader of his party, but against his personal friend. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t safe. But loyalty to truth and responsibility to country outweighed emotional comfort or potential fallout. Abuse of power could not be tolerated. Corruption of office could not be sanctioned. Silence was not an option:
“The president is a role model and, because of his prominence in the moral authority that emanates from his office, sets standards of behavior for the people he serves.
“His duty… is nothing less than the stewardship of our values. So no matter how much the president or others may wish to compartmentalize the different spheres of his life, the inescapable truth is that the president’s private conduct can and often does have profound public consequences.”
If so, how much more so his public demeanor.
King Solomon teaches: When a ruler indulges falsehood, all his ministers disdain the law.
Herein lies the awesome responsibility of all who wield power. Every elected official, every appointed judge, every journalist and news anchor and editorialist has a moral obligation to ensure that his words are accurate, that his positions are based in fact and reason, and that his language is respectful.
And it is the moral obligation of We The People to hold our leaders accountable, and to support those among them who demand accountability.
Reclaiming Civility
A child’s brain is like a sponge, absorbing everything with which it comes in contact. As the brain gets older it learns to process, to analyze, to interpret. And eventually it begins to slow, begins to forget, begins to lose function.
Few prospects are as forbidding as mental decline, the specter of which haunts us as we advance toward old age. And so the experts tell us to keep our minds active, that using the brain is the surest way to stave off mental deterioration.
- Crossword puzzles
- Sudoku
- Word games
- Logic problems
These are common recipes from the diet books for the mind. But don’t stop there; the more creative and more challenging, the better for your brain.
- Go traveling
- Take up knitting or gardening
- Learn Italian
- Drive a different way to work
- Get an advanced degree
Anything and everything that piques cognitive activity belongs in our catalogue of mental health activities.
“That’s all good,” says Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind and New York Times health and medical science editor. But the most intriguing advice Ms. Strauch has heard is this:
A day like no other, a place like no other
June 7, 1967, is a date planted forever in my memory. It was on that day my family moved into the house I grew up in.
Decades later, I discovered that it was also the day when the Jewish people reclaimed sovereignty over their eternal capital after 2000 years of foreign rule.
I didn’t just grow up in the house that became my home. I saw it built, literally from the ground up. My father was the contractor, so I watched as trenches were dug for water and sewage pipes, as concrete was poured for the foundation, as wooden framing gave it shape and stucco exterior transformed it into a dwelling.
I was six years old the day we moved in. For the next eleven years, that house was the place that sheltered me from the uncertainties of life and gave me refuge from all the scrapes and traumas of childhood and adolescence.
But then something unexpected happened. I went away to college. I made new friends. I experienced the thrill of new ideas and the passion of intellectual exchange. And when summer arrived and I returned to visit my parents, the place they lived was just a house, just a way-station for waiting out the days until I went back to where I belonged.
The following year my parents sold the house. I never missed it.
But college didn’t remain home, either. Even before graduation, I felt something pulling at me, calling me to search somewhere else for home.
THE END OF THE LINE
I remember the day before I first arrived in Israel. The ship that carried me cut across a Mediterranean Sea as still and clear as a sheet of glass, utterly surreal as it reflected the color of the sky. Night descended, and the lights of Haifa glittered on the water. Israel was not my first port of call, but an inexplicable feeling of anticipation stirred inside me, a feeling that could only be described with one word:
Homecoming.
The next afternoon I was in Jerusalem; by an unlikely turn of events, I found myself being led through the stone labyrinth that is the Old City. As dusk fell on that Friday evening, I turned a corner and found myself face-to-face with the ancient stones drenched by generations of tears.
In that instant, everything stopped.
I knew nothing about my own heritage, nothing about Jewish tradition or Jewish history. I’d heard of the Western Wall, heard it called the Wailing Wall, but that was all I knew. I’d heard of the Sabbath, but the word meant nothing to me except as a holy anachronism. I wasn’t even sure if I believed in God.
But right then, as the last rays of the sun caught the top of those living stones and the mingled voices of hundreds of faithful wafted up from the courtyard, I felt an irrefutable connection to the three thousand years of tradition, devotion, and moral freedom that has kept my people alive while the countless empires that tried to destroy us have all vanished from the earth.
I had no memory of the iconic picture of the Israeli soldiers looking up in awe and wonder at the moment they liberated the Wall. But in a single moment, 14 years later, I felt what they must have felt: the vastness of infinity and the echo of destiny. I couldn’t imagine how I had lived my life without knowing what this was or what it meant. And my life has never been the same.
THE BEGINNING OF TIME
50 years ago today, according to the Hebrew calendar, on the 28th day of the month of Iyar, a small company of Israeli soldiers charged through Lion’s Gate and into the Old City of Jerusalem. Winding their way through the narrow passageways, they emerged at the epicenter of world history, at the last surviving remnant of the physical Temple from which the light of divine wisdom illuminated the world so many lifetimes ago.
The battle was over. But the war would go on.
The war goes on still: the war against self-serving leaders who oppress their own people, turning victimhood into a weapon against the tiny Jewish nation that wants only to live in peace; the war against irresponsible journalists who fabricate monoliths of falsehood from splinters of fractured truth; the war against well-meaning fools who enable the purveyors of hatred and bloodshed by legitimizing their cause; and the war against ignorance of history, which permits the loudest voices to rewrite the past.
But these are battles we will win. Because ultimately, Jerusalem is our capital and Israel is our true home, our only home. We built her from the ground up; we gave our lives for her and placed our souls under her protection. We will never abandon her; and she will never abandon us.
As long as we remember all Jerusalem stands for, we will carry her in our hearts and in our minds wherever we go, wherever we are. We will never stop fighting against ignorance and injustice, and we will never doubt the inevitable and undeniable truth of the words we cry out again and again, Next year in Jerusalem!
Yonason Goldson 