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What would your grandmother say, Mr. Cheeseburger?
Does the benefit of pointing out outrageous behavior outweigh the cost of rewarding outrageous behavior by pointing it out? It’s hard to know anymore.
Nevertheless, the recent report of a man in Britain who changed his name to Bacon Double Cheeseburger demands brief mention — not only for its idiocy but for its insidious banality.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking: that this kind of no-news-news isn’t worth the time it takes to read about it. But trivial symptoms can offer an early warning to life-threatening conditions; and, with our culture already in dire need of life-support, the passive acceptance of every “new normal” may soon lead us into the category of DNR — Do Not Resuscitate.
So, yes, the obvious question is, “who cares”? People do all kinds of dopey things and, if they aren’t violating any laws or committing immoral acts, we might as well just shrug our collective shoulders and get on with our collective lives — especially when we can’t stop them in any case. Compared with multiple body piercings and blanket-tattoos, adopting a silly name seems downright pedestrian.
But it’s worth asking ourselves this: why did it never occur to our grandparents to alter their appearances or their appellations?
Caravan to Midnight with John B. Wells
Listen to my recent interview with John B. Wells on Caravan to Midnight:
Ancient wisdom for modern times (interview starts at about 1:40:00).
Spitting Image 2:2 — When sacrifice is for the birds
Would you sacrifice one of your children to save the other?
That was the unthinkable dilemma revealed at the climax of the Meryl Streep classic Sophie’s Choice, which left the heroine emotionally scarred for the rest of her life.
The poignancy of that final scene tears at the insides of anyone who’s ever seen it. Some things are too hideous even to contemplate, and we simultaneously rage against the evil of the Nazi tormentor and ache for the mother who had to choose and could never forgive herself for choosing.
But reality can be just as disturbing as fiction. A recent study by University of Florida scientists describes how herons, egrets, and storks living in the Everglades willingly sacrifice some of their young to alligators living below their nests so that the alligators will protect the remaining chicks from raccoon and possums.
The deal makes perfect sense for the alligators: they get a steady diet of baby birds falling from the sky almost straight into their mouths. And it makes perfect sense for the mothers as well: since birds typically have more young than they can care for, so giving up a few who wouldn’t survive anyway to protect the rest is practical, logical and, arguably, moral.
Except that it isn’t. What separates human beings from animals is conscience. When our moral compass is functioning as it should, simple pragmatism isn’t enough to govern our decision-making. And if the cost of cold, hard logic, no matter how sound, requires us to sacrifice our humanity, then it is our willingness to embrace the full measure of devotion to a higher moral standard that serves the greater good, even when no one else is watching and no one else will ever know.
Sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of others is the most noble quality of humankind. Sacrificing others for our own benefit shows us to be lower than the lowest animal. Because, unlike animals, we know better.
Or, at least, we should.
Willful Ignorance: the new normal
Maybe we really are living in the Matrix.
Day by day, even hour hour by, the headlines become more surreal and the actions of our leaders become more incomprehensible. Who could have imagined that all the conspiracy theories of extraterrestrial mind-control and computer-generated mass-delusion would start to seem like the most reasonable explanations for where we are and how we got here.
The most recent administration scandal over the United States Central Command (CentCom) deleting military intelligence brings to a crescendo the chorus of claims of the White House stifling inconvenient truths about the Islamic State to avoid dealing with the real threat of terrorism. Last year, the Pentagon’s inspector general began investigating after CentCom analysts protested that their findings had been manipulated to whitewash their conclusions. Now it appears that files and emails were not only misrepresented but actually erased.
As we pass the 30th anniversary of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, it’s beyond mind-boggling that the culture of denial has grown worse than ever. Back then, NASA administrators ignored warnings that O rings lose resilience at low temperatures and might fail on takeoff — which is exactly what happened.
But as irresponsible as it seems to disregard objections as insubstantial or unfounded, by what conceivable logic does one erase information because it supports an undesirable conclusion? Can we make pneumonia vanish from a patient’s lungs by shredding x-ray images? Can we make a brain tumor disappear by dragging the MRI results across the desktop and into the trash file?
Come to think of it, maybe this was the original strategy intended to make Obamacare viable: destroying evidence of disease would certainly keep medical costs to a minimum.
WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY…
It’s not just the government. As a society, we have become increasingly disinterested in a pesky little problem once known as reality. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of fantasy movies and fantasy football, of virtual images and virtual messaging, of games that have become more compelling than reality, and of reality that has become more mind-bending than science fiction. All this aided and abetted by the undo and reset buttons that instantaneously restore our make-believe worlds to perfection when things go wrong.
The rejection of reality cuts across every major issue of our times and infects every corner of political and social ideology. Climate change advocates and skeptics alike exaggerate their claims and malign objectors. Pro-choice zealots dismiss the horrors of late-term abortions, while pro-life zealots often refuse to even consider the complex issues of rape and incest, and sometimes even the life of the mother. Supply-side Republicans continue to trumpet the effectiveness of a trickle-down tax structure despite the widening gap between rich and poor, while tax-and-spend Democrats cry out for fairness despite empirical and historical evidence that everyone loses.
In our information age, we are less concerned with facts than ever. With a single click of the mouse, anyone can find legions of pundits asserting preconceived half-truths and countless articles defending outright falsehoods. We are all adrift on a sea of misinformation, carried along by the winds of self-validation. Had Samuel Coleridge imagined this, he might have written, experts, experts, everywhere, nor anyone to think.
Unsurprisingly, in the field of politics it’s even worse. The most brazenly untruthful political figure in the history of the country calls for her opponents to take a lie-detector test, and a master of reality-television who has reversed himself on almost every substantive issue is winning hearts (if not minds) by branding himself as the candidate who “tells it like it is.”
If Laurence Fishburne appeared to offer us a choice between the red pill and the blue pill, which would we choose? Have we so lost our interest in reality that we would happily opt for a world of illusion, or are we still capable of recognizing that a life of illusion is no life at all?
And again, it’s even worse in the world of politics, where neither red nor blue is likely to offer us any escape from our waking nightmare.
THE CHOICE
But we really don’t need a pill at all.
King Solomon said, “The wise man’s eyes are in his head.” Closer to the brain than to the heart. Looking outward, seeing inward.
What we really need to do is ask ourselves a few hard questions, then follow them up with a few honest answers.
We need to ask ourselves why we no longer value our word the way our parents and our grandparents did. We need to ask why they felt more connected to one another corresponding through written letters than we do through face time. We need to ask why they were willing to sacrifice for higher values when we have forgotten what higher values are.
First we have to be willing to ask ourselves these questions. Then we might be ready to face the universal truths that are self-evident from the answers: that trusting others and being trustworthy go hand in hand; that relationships are only worth as much as the effort that we put into maintaining them; that commitment to something greater than ourselves is the only thing that makes life worth living.
True, the world seems to be spinning toward its own destruction. But even if we can’t save the world, we can stand strong and not allow the world to pull us down with it. Keeping our word, showing respect to those we disagree with, offering a kind word to a stranger or a smile to a passerby — these few faint beatings of a butterfly’s wings might be enough to stir the winds of change, blowing away the clouds of chaos to let the light of reason shine once again.
Behind the Hero on the Screen
In the aftermath of this weekend’s Academy Awards Ceremony, I’m revisiting these thoughts from 2009. If you didn’t follow the link when I posted it a few weeks ago, now you have another chance.
Which of the following quotes does not belong with the others:
It is not what I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.
With great power comes great responsibility.
It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before.
Literary mavens will quickly identify the third quote as different from the first two for several reasons. First, it was written in the 19th century, where the others were written in the 21st. Second, it is a line from novel, where the others are lines from motion pictures. And third, it is the only one of the three not spoken by a Marvel Comic superhero.
On a more substantive level, however, all three have very much in common.
The first of the three is spoken by Bruce Wayne in his guise as Batman, explaining away his public playboy persona as a device to conceal his secret identity. The second is spoken by Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, explaining why he is walking away from the woman he loves in order to protect her from the enemies that would try to strike at him through the people closest to him.
The third quote is the closing line of Charles Dickens’s classic A Tale of Two Cities, in which the heretofore-undistinguished Sydney Carton expresses his love for Lucie Darnay by taking the place of her husband, Charles, and suffering death by guillotine so that Charles might live.
All three quotes issue from heroes who not only do great things at personal risk, but who sacrifice life, love, and reputation for a higher ideal. From a brooding moralizer like Dickens, we expect nothing less. From Hollywood scriptwriters and producers, however, we expect anything else.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
As the Oscar season descends upon us, its worth reflecting that Hollywood is known as Tinsel Town for good reason. Glitz, superficiality, and immediate gratification have become synonymous with the land responsible for most of today’s entertainment industry. Revolving door marriages and divorces, infidelity, and recreational drugs are only the most obvious symptoms of a culture that glorifies the pursuit of pleasure and the deification of personal autonomy.
Predictably, the film industry can be counted on to turn out major motion pictures that are thinly veiled propaganda pieces. Such unmemorable productions as Brokeback Mountain, Lions for Lambs, and The Good Shepherd may have curried favor with Hollywood politicos eager to promote alternative lifestyles or government conspiracy theories, but the movie-going public has shown considerably more enthusiasm for traditional good versus-evil-stories in which good triumphs in the end. (For the record, haven’t seen either Brokeback Mountain or Lions for Lambs.)
If box office receipts are any indication, there can be no doubt that audiences will choose classic heroism every time. The musings of a couple of culturally conflicted cowboys on the open plain can hardly compete with such memorable moments as the President of the United States (played by Harrison Ford) throwing an international terrorist out the cargo hold of his plane in Air Force One or Kevin Kline’s presidential impersonator cutting government pork at a cabinet meeting to save funding for an orphanage in Dave.
That Hollywood did in fact release such movies as Batman Begins, Spiderman, and Air Force One, however, reveals an insight into Left Coast Culture that is at once obvious and surprising.
What is obvious is that money trumps ideology. When all is said and done, filmmakers would rather see increased revenues than the spread of counter-culture ideology. Fair enough. But what is truly remarkable is how well they understand the nobility, the selflessness, and the heroism of personal sacrifice that are so often at the heart of successful moviemaking.
MANKIND’S INNER HERO
Once upon a time, heroism in Hollywood was the norm. But we don’t have to go all the way back to Humphrey Bogart’s “the problems of three little people don’t add up to hill of beans” speech in Casablanca when he gives up Ingrid Bergman. When Helen Hunt refused to abandon her family for Tom Hanks in Cast Away, when Kelly McGillis refused to abandon her Amish community for Harrison Ford in Witness, when Robert Redford emptied out of his life’s savings to rescue Brad Pitt in Spy Games, the positive resolution of their inner conflicts provided some of the most powerful emotional climaxes in modern cinema. And let’s not forget this year’s biggest hit, The Dark Knight, in which Batman takes the blame for murder to allow Gotham City to keep its illusion of hope.
Perhaps the culture of make-believe that turns out movies of heroism is incapable of believing in either real heroism or the values that turn ordinary people into heroes. Why else would they persist in churning out so many ideological flops in between traditionalist blockbusters? One almost feels sorry for the creative geniuses that can portray such compelling drama on the screen but seem incapable of applying it to the reality of their lives.
The classical philosopher Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato describes the human condition thus:
And so [man] finds himself truly in the midst of a raging battle, in which all the matters of the material world, whether good or evil, serve as trials for man. Poverty confronts him on the one side and wealth on the other… comfort on the one side, and suffering on the other, until he faces a battlefront before him and behind. But if he will be valiant and prevail against his adversaries on every side, then he will become a Complete Man.
Movies can remind us of the moral battles we face constantly in our own lives between what we know and what we feel, between what is right and what is pleasing, between rising to each new challenge or abdicating struggle for the line of least resistance. We rejoice when silver screen heroes emerge triumphant from their inner struggles, for they remind us that we too can emerge triumphant. But we despair when they fail, for they remind us how easily we too can fall prey to our inner demons.
It’s ironic that Hollywood filmmakers can describe the human condition so vividly with so little understanding of it. Perhaps they should watch their own movies – the ones that audiences go to see.
Sage Advice from Eeyore
I came across this on Candid Market Networking. Definitely worth the time.
“Eeyore is a very misunderstood character. Everyone thinks he is just the sad, depressed character. We can learn a lot from him though. He goes out of his way to help his friends. When Owl loses his house, he searches high and low for a new house. He really thinks about all living things around him, and treats them how he would want to be treated. He loves unconditionally, and finds beauty in everything, including weeds.
“The reason he appears so depressed to all of us, is that he expects the same attitude from everyone around him, and is consistently let down. He would do anything for his friends, yet they can’t even seem to remember when his birthday is. Owl didn’t even recognize his tail when he found it. It became an accessory for his new door bell. Eeyore, like all of us, wants to be noticed. He wants to be loved. When Pooh and Christopher Robin think of him, and then help him, he is so happy, he frolics around the forest, waving his tail as he goes.”
In other words, we should moderate our expectations of others while expecting everything from ourselves, focus on our responsibilities to those around us instead of fixating on what we think others should do for us, and try persistently to bring joy to others, which will make us far happier than indulging in the pursuit of our own happiness.
Spitting Image 1:2 — The Soldier and the Soul
My son told me this morning that, as he was just beginning his training in the IDF special forces, he met a soldier who was just finishing his service in the same unit, the Gadsar Reconnaissance Division of the Nahal Brigade.
“I envy you, ” said the retiring warrior. “And I feel sorry for you. I envy you for the incredible experience you’re about to have. And I feel sorry for you because it will be harder than you can imagine.”
I immediately imagined two souls passing as one descends from on high to take its place inside a newborn child and the other departs this world on its way to receive its eternal reward.
“I envy you,” says the ascending soul to the one about to enter the material world. “And I feel sorry for you. I envy you for the joy you will find serving the Master of the Universe, a joy that I will never know again now that my time on earth is over. And I feel sorry for you, for you have no idea how difficult it will be for you to remember who you are and what your purpose is amidst so much pain and confusion.”
The more we seek to avoid pain, the more we deprive ourselves of the inner pleasure that is the source of true happiness. The more we rise to meet the obstacles and challenges that confront us, the more we find joy in this world and make ourselves deserving of the pleasure that awaits us once our time here has passed.
Spitting Image 1:1 — Long Island Iced Tea
Looking at ourselves reflected in the mirror of headline news
An Egyptian military court sentenced a 3 1/2 year-old boy to life in prison for murdering three people — two years ago, at age one. Apparently, the court confused the boy with his 51 year old uncle.
A 16 year-old Swedish girl was rescued from ISIS, where she had been held captive after she traveled to Syria with a boyfriend she met online. ” I don’t know anything about Islam or ISIS or something,” the girl explained, “so I didn’t know what he meant. Then he said he want(ed) to go to ISIS, and I said OK, no problem.”
Republican party voters are poised to nominate a cartoon caricature of a candidate who has no chance of winning the general election… or, even worse, might actually win.
Star Trek fans are all abuzz with excitement over the prospect of the forthcoming movie including the character of Demora, daughter of Hikaru Sulu from the original series.
According to Amnesty International, human rights deteriorated globally over the course of 2015, much to nobody’s surprise.
I’ll date myself here, as I imagine these headline stories read by Chevy Chase of the original Saturday Night Live cast, along with the perennial breaking news that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Equal parts of the surreal, the maddening, the farcical, the tragic, and the inane mix together in a cocktail akin to Long Island Iced Tea, blending five toxic shots into an innocent-tasting libation of bizarre banality that leaves your head spinning before you get to the end.
The inability of our culture to discern reality from illusion is what allows evil free rein. And the problem grows more acute, literally from day to day.
If we want to reclaim clarity, we have to start by wanting it a lot more urgently.
The Devil can’t make you do it
Hey, mom. Post-partum depression got you down? Thinking of leaving your husband? Don’t fight it; just let him go. After all, it’s not your fault.
It’s your hormones. That’s the latest from the world of science. According to psychologist Jennifer Bartz of McGill University, researchers have identified a link between new parents divorcing and low levels of oxytocin.
Whatever the explanation, there seems to be a familiar eagerness by researchers to impose a chemical, as opposed to a psychological, explanation upon human behavior. Scientists often appear to prefer a model that links our choices to biological and evolutionary causes, further disassociating human decision-making from that most obvious explanation — free will.
Article of Faith: Victims and Survivors in Kalamazoo
Last Saturday evening, according to CNN, the Michigan shooter drove through the streets of Kalamazoo for seven hours, firing at eight people in different neighborhoods and killing six of them. In between attacks, he picked up and dropped of Uber passengers without incident.
“There isn’t a connection that we’ve been able to establish between any of the three victim groups with each other, any of the three victim groups with the defendant,” said Michigan prosecutor Jeffrey Getting.
What could these victims have done to protect themselves? Why were the survivors chosen for life and not for death? The natural conclusion is that the world is a place of randomness, where we are left to the hands of fate without rhyme or reason.
Amidst all the pain and confusion, is there any way for us to confront the presence of evil in our world and the persistent appearance of disorder without retreating into bitterness and despair?
As we mourn and look for answers, I’d like to offer these thoughts from 2009.
Every night, most of us go to bed without questioning whether we’ll wake up the next morning or whether the sun will rise in the east. Every morning, most of us go to our front doors confident that our cars will start, that the trains will run, that our coworkers and customers will be respectively friendly, or sour, or aloof, each according to our expectation based upon experience.
Is this faith? Or is it rather the reasoned projection of logical extrapolation? Or is there a difference?
Over the past two decades, 50% more tornadoes have swept through the state of Illinois than the state of Alabama. Nevertheless, Alabama has suffered many more fatalities. An article in the journal Science has suggested the following explanation: Because people in Alabama tend to share the religious conviction that their destiny is in the hands of G-d, they resign themselves to the inevitability of Divine Providence. In contrast, people in Illinois more commonly believe that they are in control of their own destiny and masters of their own fate; consequently, they are more inclined to take action toward ensuring their own safety and welfare.
If correct, this analysis might imply that faith is vastly over-rated. If dependence upon the Almighty increases the likelihood of an early demise, perhaps we should all reject the notion of faith and conclude that God really does help those who help themselves.
Alternatively, we might re-evaluate our understanding of faith.
The Hebrew word emunah — commonly translated as faith — is more accurately translated at faithfulness. It is less descriptive of our internal beliefs and more descriptive of our external behaviors. It describes not our feelings but the degree to which our commitment translates into concrete actions. Most significantly, it expresses our conviction that the Almighty keeps faith with us, even when we may fail to keep faith with Him.
Consider the husband on a business trip a thousand miles from home who resists the overtures of an attractive young woman in the hotel lounge, the teenager away at college who leaves a party when hard drugs start passing around, the lowly private who doggedly advances according to orders even when he is cut off from the rest of his company — all these are examples of faithfulness that endures even when human logic and fear of consequences offer no objection, even when peer-pressure urges us to abandon duty and loyalty. These are the truly unsung heroes, who set aside the relentless calling of self-interest and immediate gratification for nothing but the commitment to another person, to a code of honor, or to an ideal.
According to Jewish philosophy, our trust in the Almighty is not the “leap of faith” that comes from believing without logic or reason, but the confidence that comes from knowing that the Almighty has proven His faithfulness again and again over 3,300 years of uniquely supernatural history. It derives not from our faith that everything will turn out the way we want all of the time, but our certainty that everything is guided by Providence, and that the logic behind every divine edict is true and just — even when it is unfathomable to human understanding.
Finally, faithfulness does not require us, nor even advise us, to sit by passively and await the Divine Will to reveal itself before us. Rather, it requires us to act in our own best interest while adhering to the moral laws of God and man.
Almost everyone has heard the story of the clergyman forced to seek refuge on his rooftop by the rising waters of a flood. One boat comes and offers to save him, but he replies, “I have faith in God.” Another boat comes,and then another, but he refuses to accept help. Finally, a helicopter drops down a ladder and warns that they are the last of the rescuers. But the man of the cloth declares, “I have faith in God.”
The floodwaters continue to rise, and the clergyman drowns.
Upon arriving in the next world, he asks why, in spite of his devout faith, the Almighty did not save him. And God replies: “What did you want from Me? I sent you three boats and a helicopter.”
G-d does indeed help those who help themselves. But He ultimately rewards those who remain faithful, who recognize that there is both a time for taking matters into our own hands and a way to do so without compromising our faithfulness to the Master of the Universe. There is a time to live — through determined effort, with honor and dignity and self-respect. There is also a time to die — either when the cost of personal integrity becomes too great, or when one’s time is simply up, no matter how random the events that end a life may appear.
Learning to strike the perfect balance between determined effort and principled resignation is the work of a lifetime. It is also the key to achieving true faithfulness to God while taking comfort in the promise that, despite the illusion of chaos and the very real pain of loss, everything happens for a reason.
Originally published in Jewish World Review
Yonason Goldson 