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The Boundaries of the World
This week, the world observed the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein publishing his General Theory of Relativity. The effects of his revelation extend far beyond what most of us imagine, as I outline in this excerpt from my book Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages.
Do not remove the boundaries of eternity, which were set in place by your forefathers (Proverbs 22:28).
Writing for Environmental Health Perspectives, Ron Chepesiuk cites research that exposure to artificial light can prevent trees from adjusting to seasonal variation, affecting the behaviors, foraging areas, and breeding cycles of insects, bats, turtles, birds, fish, rodents, and reptiles even in rural settings. Urban light has caused disorientation in migrating birds, accounting for avian deaths estimated between 98 million and one billion each year.
The 24-hour day/night cycle, known as the circadian clock, affects physiologic processes in almost all organisms. These processes include brain wave patterns, hormone production, cell regulation, and other biologic activities. Disruption of the circadian clock is linked to several medical disorders in humans, including depression, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, says Paolo Sassone-Corsi, chairman of the Pharmacology Department at the University of California, Irvine, who has done extensive research on the circadian clock. “Studies show that the circadian cycle controls from ten to fifteen percent of our genes,” he explains. “So the disruption of the circadian cycle can cause a lot of health problems.”
A meeting sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) concluded that, although there is still no conclusive evidence, the correlation between altered patterns of light and dark in the modern world and dramatic increases in the risk of breast and prostate cancers, obesity, and early-onset diabetes appears more than coincidental.
And, of course, we can no longer see the stars.
Breaches in natural boundaries have taken many other forms as well:
- In 1884, a farmer visiting the Cotton States Exposition in Louisiana brought back a few Venezuelan water hyacinths to decorate the fountain outside his home in Florida. Today, the aggressive purple flowers choke 126,000 acres of waterways.
- Kudzu, a Japanese vine imported in 1876 to prevent erosion, is currently spreading through the southern United States and expanding at a rate of 150,000 acres a year.
- The European rabbit, introduced to Australia in 1859, has reached a population of over 200 million, necessitating the construction of a 2000 mile long rabbit-proof-fence to prevent the wholesale destruction of farmlands.
- In 1956, African bees brought over by Brazilian scientists to breed for honey production escaped their quarantine and gave rise to the noted “killer bee” scare.
The list goes on and on. In the United States alone, containment costs of invasive species are estimated at $138 billion annually.
But the violation of natural boundaries has even more broad-reaching consequences, affecting not only the stability of our physical world but the integrity of the moral universe as well. In his book Modern Times: the world from the twenties to the nineties, historian Paul Johnson analyzes the impact of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity upon the way Western society began to look at the established values of the ages:
All at once, nothing seemed certain in the movements of the spheres… It was as though the spinning globe had been taken off its axis and cast adrift in a universe which no longer conformed to accustomed standards and measurement. At the beginning of the 1920s the belief began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level, that there were no longer any absolutes: of time and space, of good and evil, of knowledge, above all of value. Mistakenly but perhaps inevitably, relativity became confused with relativism.
No one was more distressed than Einstein by this public misapprehension. He was bewildered by the relentless publicity and error which his work seemed to promote…
Einstein was not a practicing Jew, but he acknowledged a God. He believed passionately in absolute standards of right and wrong… He wrote to [colleague Max] Born: “You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find.”
But Einstein failed to produce a unified theory, either in the 1920s or thereafter. He lived to see moral relativism, to him a disease, become a social pandemic, just as he lived to see his fatal equation bring into existence nuclear warfare. There were times, he said at the end of his life, when he wished he had been a simple watchmaker…
[T]he public response to relativity was one of the principal formative influences on the course of twentieth-century history. It formed a knife, inadvertently wielded by its author, to help cut society adrift from its traditional moorings in the faith and morals of Judeo-Christian culture.
It’s hard not to be impressed by the prescience of King Solomon. When civilization depended upon candlelight to hold back the darkness, the inexorable cycle of day and night forced us to conform to the natural order. True, our lives have become more convenient and more comfortable, but once electric lighting pushes away the darkness of night, once central air conditioning and heating insulate us from the changing of the seasons, once cars and planes shrink the distance between faraway places, once electronic communication eliminates all delay in correspondence and information and, indeed, once science itself seems to provide justification that all boundaries are negotiable, is it not inevitable that society will begin to challenge moral boundaries as well?
There are no absolutes when every established norm is threatened by the inertia of change for the sake of change and an idealized vision of unrestricted freedom. Once change becomes the new normal, human society has little hope of curbing the headlong rush into chaos and social disintegration into moral anarchy.
In the same way that we have to defend the integrity of natural and moral boundaries as a society, we have to guard the boundaries between ourselves and those around us when the order of society begins to crumble. But no matter how much we try, we can never completely seal ourselves off from the influences of the culture in which we live.
I discovered this frightening truth on a trip to southern Asia, where a popular joke is repeated only half-jokingly:
In America people drive on the right side of the road.
In England, people drive on the left side of the road.
In India, it’s optional.
Only when society as a whole preserves its respect for the traditions that have been handed down through the ages will the structure of that society endure. But if each generation believes that it can reject the standards of its forbears from a position of moral superiority, the next age of darkness can be found lurking right around the corner.
Terrorism Close to Home
This morning’s terrorist attack by a Palestinian who rammed his car into Israeli soldiers at a bus station struck a little closer to home. Both of the injured soldiers had just drafted into the army and were friends of my son from the same Lone Soldier group. They were released on leave a day before my son was, or he probably would have been standing right beside them.
At least one of them will be disabled for months: the Guardian reports this as “light to moderate” injury.
The story in the Guardian led by stating that the attack took place in the “occupied West Bank,” implying a John-Kerryesque legitimacy, then went on to report that the “incident raises the number of Palestinians killed since 1 October to 98, including an Israeli Arab.” In the interest of balance, the story did concede that, “More than half of them have been alleged perpetrators of stabbing, shooting and car ramming attacks aimed at Israeli civilians and security forces.”
However, the story neglected to mention that after ramming his car into the crowd, the Arab attacker was shot as he tried to stab one of his victims.
Allegedly.
Not the worst example of media bias by far, but shoddy journalism by any account. Our children who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others from violence deserve much better.
The Heroism of Giving Thanks
Originally published in 2002 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Baltimore Sun.
Will Rogers couldn’t have said it better: No nation has ever had more, yet no nation has ever had less. And it’s easy to understand why the two go together.
The Talmud observes that the moment a person acquires $100, he immediately wants $200. The more we have, the more we want. And the more we believe in our own entitlement, the more likely we are to forget both our humble origins and our obligations to others.
It’s somewhat heartening, therefore, that Thanksgiving has retained so prominent a place in American culture, even if most of us rarely give a passing thought to the Puritan ideals that gave birth to the first Thanksgiving.
Who were the Pilgrims? The settlers who stepped off the Mayflower in 1620 were not adventurers or opportunists. They were devout Protestants seeking a pure, uncorrupted expression of the Christian values they had found wanting in their native England.
They paid a high price for their idealism: Half of them died during that first, brutal, Massachusetts winter. But summer brought hope, and out of hope they declared a festival to thank their Creator for their survival and for their hard-won religious freedom.
Political freedom was still a novel idea in Europe then, although the concept had existed for nearly 3,000 years, since the Jewish exodus from Egypt. The notion of religious freedom, introduced to the world somewhat later, was already 17 centuries old when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Back then, the Jewish nation had been at war not only with the Selucid Greeks, which controlled Israel, but also with itself. The Hellenist Jews found much in Greek culture that they admired and eagerly sought to incorporate into Jewish practice, while the majority of the Jews recognized the inherent incompatibility of Judaism, with its focus on the perfection of the soul, and Grecianism, with its self-worship of body and intellect. Behind the Hellenists, however, towered the full power of the Selucid Empire, before which the ideal of Jewish cultural purity seemed to have little hope of survival.
But the weak rose up against the strong and the many were vanquished by the few. Shouts of freedom echoed through the streets of Jerusalem as the Maccabees rekindled the lights of the Temple in purity, and the festival of Chanukah was established as “days of thanksgiving and praise to [the Almighty’s] great name.”
“This year we’re having goose instead. It was flaunting its wealth and showing off its golden eggs.”
The complacency of the Jews and their unwillingness to toil in the preservation of their own cultural values put them in danger of cultural extinction. The complacency of Christian Europe, in the eyes of the Puritans, led to a dilution and a depreciation of Christian values. And the ultimate realization of the Jews, like the realization of the Puritans centuries later, was that ideals not fought for and defended cease to remain ideals.
The true heroes in any society are those prepared to struggle for their ideals, those ready to sacrifice for a greater good, those who understand that nothing of value ever comes cheap or easy. When we take freedom for granted, we stand in danger of losing it. And the surest way of taking anything for granted is by failing to express appreciation.
Life begins with struggle. And when struggle ends, life ends with it. Indeed, it is that very struggle that makes life worth living. Both Thanksgiving and Chanukah remind us to be grateful not just for the success, but even for the struggle.
Especially for the struggle.
A Message to my Son
My oldest son enters the Israeli army this week, motivated by nothing other than a sense of commitment to the security of his people.
It seems fitting to revisit these thoughts, written on the occasion of his bar mitzvah ten years ago.
It’s not difficult to sympathize with the skeptics who questioned the ability of Avrohom Mordechai Altar, then still a teenager, to succeed his father as leader of the Gerrer Chassidim, possibly the most influential Torah community in Poland at the end of the 19th century. But the young scholar, who would grow up to become a great rabbi and author of the Imrei Emes, answered his critics with the following parable.
A small town in an isolated land rested at the foot of a great mountain, a peak so high and steep that all reasonable people considered it unconquerable. From time to time, however, some impetuous youth would set out to climb the mountain. Some of these returned admitting defeat. The rest were never heard from again.
Despite the warnings and prophesies of doom, a certain young man decided to challenge the mountain. Many times he nearly turned back, and many times he nearly met his end, but through sheer persistence he finally reached the mountain top. But he was utterly unprepared for what he found there.
A thriving city of people lived upon a great plateau at the mountain¹s summit. There were houses and farms — an entire community living where everyone believed that no one had ever set foot.
The inhabitants of the mountain top laughed at him when he expressed his astonishment. “Do you think you¹re the first one to climb the mountain?” they chided. “We also reached the top and, having done so, chose to build this town and make our lives here.”
Not yet recovered from his dismay, the young man noticed a small boy, only six or seven years old. This was more than he could believe. “Did you climb all the way up here, too?!” the young man exclaimed.
“No,” replied the boy. “I was born here.”
The youthful rabbi explained to his followers that indeed he was young. But he had been born into a dynasty of great Torah leaders, raised by and taught by the greatest sages of his generation who had in turn been taught and raised by the greatest sages of their generation. True, he was young; but he had been born on a mountain, and from his place atop the shoulders of the spiritual giants who preceded him he would build upon their greatness. In this way would he succeed as a leader of his people.
And so he did.
Every year, on the sixth day of the Jewish month of Sivan, Jews around the world celebrate the revelation at Sinai, over 3300 years ago, when the Almighty gave us the Torah. It was the Torah that provided the moral and legal foundation that has enabled the Jewish people to build a nation devoted to spiritual ideals, a nation that endured for nearly 1,500 years in its land and nearly 2,000 years scattered across the globe. It was the Torah that introduced the concepts of peace, of charity, of justice, and of collective responsibility to a world that knew no value other than “might makes right.” It was the Torah that formed the basis of Christianity and Islam, spreading monotheism throughout the world and fashioning the attitudes of modern progressivism.
It all began on that mountain called Sinai, and from that point on the Jewish people have labored to climb the mountain of morality and virtue, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, sometimes wondering whether our efforts are worthwhile, but always persevering in our mission to attain the summit of spiritual and moral perfection.
Had our mission demanded completion within a single generation, we would never have held out hope of success. But every generation climbs a little higher, building on the accomplishments of their parents and grandparents, fighting for every handhold, struggling for every foothold, occasionally slipping back but never surrendering.
The mission that defines us as a people began 33 centuries ago; it continues today as we recommit ourselves to the study and observance of Torah, and celebrate it on the holiday of Shavuos.
And it was two weeks after Shavuos that I celebrated what happens only once in a lifetime — the bar mitzvah of my eldest son. In his first 13 years of life I did my utmost to teach him that he was born on the mountain, that he has the accomplishments of generations beneath his feet to support him, and that future generations will depend upon him for their support just as he depends on those who went before.
And so it is with every Jewish child. Each has his own contribution to make in the eternal mission of our eternal people. It is the Torah that defines us, the Torah that guides us, the Torah that sustains us, and the Torah that will ultimately bring us to the fulfillment of the spiritual goals for which the Almighty created us.
Climb, my son. Climb and keep climbing toward the top of the mountain.
Originally published by Aish.com.
The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson
Once Iowa Democrats decided to rename the venerated event known as the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, it was only a matter of time before PC zealots would start demanding the purge of historical icons all across America. After all, how in good conscience can a country continue to commemorate its most influential leaders if they failed to anticipate that the legal and universally-accepted institutions of their times would eventually be regarded as immoral by their great-grandchildren?
Now it’s Woodrow Wilson’s turn, as students at Princeton demand that the memory of their university’s former president be expunged from under the heavens because he supported segregation, a policy viewed by many as progressive a century ago, no matter what we may think of it now.
There is a deeper irony in their campaign, however. In terms of political acumen, Woodrow Wilson has quite a bit in common with a much more contemporary figure, one who is revered by the very people who are protesting President Wilson’s racism and misogyny: Barack Obama.
Pollard and Nuremberg
The case of Jonathan Pollard was more complicated than most people understood. His actions may have placed others in danger, and may have contributed to the death of agents he compromised. But almost everyone agrees that his punishment was disproportionate to his crime, and the sense of joy upon his release is more than justified.
The real take-away is this: whether one agrees with or disagrees with what Mr. Pollard did, he followed his conscience, and he was prepared to accept the consequences of his actions. If only more of our fellow citizens and more of our political leaders demonstrated the same courage and conviction.
Of course, not everyone’s moral compass is adequately calibrated. Edward Snowden also believed that he was following his conscience, and the morality of his actions is far more questionable for his having caused more damage by far than did Jonathan Pollard.
The Nuremberg trials after WW II changed forever the interrelationship between civil and moral law. No longer would it be legitimate to claim “I was only following orders” as a defense for crimes against man. A soldier has an obligation to refuse to carry out an immoral order, even if by doing so he puts himself in danger of court martial.
We should all consider ourselves foot-soldiers in the culture wars that threaten our society. But moral obligation implies more than just following our conscience. It means investing the effort, energy, and thought necessary to understand the decisions we will have to make and their consequences. Otherwise, our claim to the moral high ground can become a smokescreen to hide our moral irresponsibility.
That’s what makes Jonathan Pollard a hero in the eyes of so many, and Edward Snowden, perhaps, something very different indeed.
The Ostrich Mentality
More unprovoked murders today in Israel: this time the victims included men in the act of prayer.
The approach taken by the Obama administration and much of European leadership, differentiating between terrorism and Islam so not to further alienate the Muslim world, might sound plausible. But the incontrovertible evidence from Paris, Beirut, and Tel Aviv is that it’s not working. Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes a case no thinking person can refute.
But, of course, that’s the point: people aren’t thinking; they’re feeling. If only the rich and powerful Western nations would humble themselves before the oppressed peoples of the third world, then there would be peace. If only the intransigent Israelis would stop their illegal occupation, then there would be peace. If only the culture of white supremacy in America would confess and atone for its evil ways, then there would be peace.
From the United Nations to the European Union to the White House to many of the elite universities around the country, Utopian ideologues bury their heads in the sand and ignore reality so they can persist in their chants of kumbaya and we are the world, reaching out to embrace people who want nothing but to watch the world burn.
In every aspect of our lives we are becoming more confused: we alienate our friends while we appease enemies who want to kill us; we disdain the blessings we have while chasing shadows in pursuit of happiness; we preach tolerance while attempting to silence all who disagree with us; we dream of a perfect world while we stand idly by and let madmen tear down the world our fathers and grandfathers worked so hard to build.
The chaos of our times didn’t start this week in Paris. It won’t end there, either, unless we open our eyes and start confronting the moral anarchy that is eating away at the heart of civilization.
Are you Smarter than a Pigeon?
In the name of science, I’d like to propose a new study to investigate how researchers choose the topics they study. If my proposal finds acceptance, Jessica Stagner of the University of Florida will almost certainly figure prominently in the investigation.
Professor Stagner and her colleagues hoped to find support for evidence indicating that gamblers feel the same thrill of excitement when they almost win as they do when they actually win. To do so, they created an experiment in which pigeons had to peck at colored markers in order to receive hidden rewards.
That’s right: Pigeons.
And what was their conclusion? Pigeons are smarter than people.
The Cost of Voyeurism
Where were you on Tuesday, August 19th, 2014? That’s the day ISIS terrorists beheaded American journalist James Foley. Or, to be more accurate, that was when they posted the video of their atrocity on YouTube
Did you watch it? If you did, you had plenty of company. According to one poll, an estimated 1.2 million people in Great Britain watched the beheading in just the first few days after the video appeared online. In the United States, pollsters found that 9% of those surveyed had watched the brutal execution, suggesting that about 30 million Americans had witnessed the spectacle by mid-November.
And back in 2004, the video of Islamists beheading freelance repairman Nick Berg was the most popular search topic for a solid week; the al-Qaeda-linked website hosting the video received so much traffic it had to temporarily shut down.
According to Oxford anthropologist Frances Larson, this fascination with violent images is nothing new.
Read more at: http://www.learning-mind.com/voyeurism-violent-images/
The Great Divide: Ignorance and Insecurity
Conor Friedersdorf writes in the Atlantic:
[At Yale University, one] resident declared in a campus publication, “I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.” One feels for these students. But if an email about Halloween costumes has them skipping class and suffering breakdowns, either they need help from mental-health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.
This is the reaction of Ivy League students, the best and the brightest, the cream of the crop, the hope for the future, the movers and shakers of the next generation, the political, social, and economic leaders of tomorrow. Their entire world collapses because someone, somewhere disagrees with them.
The depressing irony of the episode is that Erika Christakis’ noble attempt to accord students a greater measure of personal and moral responsibility resulted in the students themselves protesting for — and thereby demonstrating — their own incapacity to take responsibility for their actions on any level at all. Without a trace of embarrassment, academe’s most elite sons and daughters dissolved into a collective hissy-fit because one of their instructors suggested they should be treated as adults.
Yonason Goldson 