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Clean up your act and become a better person
Counting your change as you exit the local supermarket, you discover that the cashier accidentally handed you back a ten dollar bill instead of a five. You pause, debating whether to go back and correct the error or pocket your modest windfall.
What you do next may depend on how fresh the fruit smelled in the produce section. If the tomatoes were over-ripe enough to emit an unpleasant odor, that might be all it takes to set your moral compass spinning.
In a series of social science experiments, researchers observed how exposure to disgusting smells or images can influence our attitudes and behavior: the same self-protective reflex that makes us back away from an assault upon our senses can also make us recoil from offensive behavior. Needless to say, rotten tomatoes have nothing to do with personal character; but once our feelings of disgust have been activated toward repugnant pictures or noxious odors we are more likely to feel aversion toward objectionable conduct and become increasingly repelled by unethical behavior.
That’s the good news. What’s really ironic, however, is that the same stimuli that make us less tolerant of improper actions by others make us more likely to engage in those same kinds of actions ourselves.
Napoleon’s Wisdom
According to legend, Napoleon was riding through the streets of Paris one evening when he ordered his carriage driver to stop. Passing by a synagogue and glancing in the window, he had witnessed an entire congregation of Jews sitting on the floor by candlelight and raising their voices in cries of sorrow.
Napoleon sent his aide to investigate, and was informed that it was the ninth day of the month of Av, when the Jews were mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
“How long ago was it destroyed?” asked the Emperor.
“Over 1700 years ago,” he was told.
“1700 years and they’re still mourning!” exclaimed Napoleon. “Such a nation will endure forever and will rise to power again.”
Is Anyone Still Wild About Harry?
As a boy in junior high school, I bought the soundtrack of “Give ’em Hell, Harry” at a school book and record sale. I have no idea what prompted me to spend a dollar on that particular piece of vinyl — I wasn’t living in Missouri then, but in Los Angeles, California.
Whatever the reason, it proved one of the best investments of my life. By the time I reached high school, I had practically committed James Whitmore’s entire 90-minute monologue to memory, and Harry Truman had become my hero.
I found the video on YouTube recently and, just last week, returned to the beloved performance. With my recent essay on honesty and integrity so freshly pressed, the following words jumped out and seized hold of me:
“Dictatorship? No, it’ll never happen. The Constitution will stop ‘em every time.
“I’ll tell you, there’s only one way that could happen, and that’s if we had a liar in public office. There’s nothing more dangerous on this earth than a liar in public office, because the people might believe him.
“But if the people every found a fellow like that they ought to show him the same amount of compassion that he showed the constitution. No more, no less.”
What would Harry Truman say about a president like Barack Obama who, according to the Washington Post, claims three of the twelve most egregious lies of 2014 and three of the ten biggest lies of 2013? What would Harry say about a candidate like Hillary Clinton, the “congenital liar” who seems emboldened to tell ever-inflating whoppers without a shred of shame or contrition?
And what would Mr. Truman have to say about an American electorate willing to overlook the brazen dishonesty of politicians willing to say and do anything to get into office and push through their self-serving agendas?
As the song says: Harry, where are you, now that we need you?
No one is so strong…
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.
Can we Stay Honest in a Dishonest World?
The biggest tragedy of the Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage was not the decisions themselves. It was the perception, by both winners and losers, that these decisions were not reached based on legal principle but upon political ideology and personal bias.
Which means that, regardless of which side won, the country as a whole lost.
Honesty has seen its market value tumble over the years with countless reports of plagiarism, factual carelessness, and blatant fabrication. It’s bad enough when such prevarication comes from the media. But what’s really cause for alarm when it becomes the norm among our political leaders.
The sad truth is that truth from our politicians has become far more the exception than the rule. 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 they have, in a society that has grown indifferent to lying.
We may not be able to stop the lying in politics. But here are ten ways we can prevent the erosion of our own integrity.
Expanded and updated from an article published earlier this year. Click here to read the whole article.
How to Survive the Age of Advertising
After the Stone Age came the Iron Age, then the Industrial Age, and now the Age of Advertising. Regardless of what the experts say, we are not living in the age of a consumer economy, but of an advertising economy.
With companies trading for billions without producing proportional revenue — or any at all — we can only imagine how far things can go and how far the markets will climb before this latest bubble bursts, exposed for the pyramid scheme that it is. Indeed, the inability to distinguish between reality and illusion is precisely the goal of modern advertising.
Nevertheless, there is some small hope that escape from its influence might still be possible, no matter how far its tendrils have reached. That evidence comes in the person of Julian Keonig, perhaps the greatest legend in advertising history, who passed away last year at age 93.
Readers of a certain age will remember the classic Timex slogan, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” and the self-validating tagline for the Volkswagen Beetle — think small — voted the most successful ad of the last century. Both were the creations of Julian Keonig; but neither was what he considered his most inspired brainstorm.
And neither provides us with an insight into his most important legacy.
What do you mean, “You don’t have a cellphone”?
I’ve always known this day would arrive. But it lay too far off in the future to worry about.
I sat safely atop my own personal promontory, even as the tide surged forward to swallow lesser souls who tested the waters and were lost.
But you can’t stop a tsunami. The Day of Reckoning is at hand. And even if I can hold out a little longer, after all these years of holding out now I feel like I’m selling out. It’s hard to even articulate the words.
Still… here it goes. It may finally be time to get a cellphone.
Click here to read the whole article.
Proverbial Beauty at Amazon.com
Elbowing God Out
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
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.
Success in Failure
A righteous man falls seven times.
~Proverbs
But failure only leads to success if we learn the lessons it tries to teach us. Otherwise we prove the wisdom not of Solomon or Churchill but of Einstein and Hegel:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Yonason Goldson 