Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 202
“The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-product of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense of significant being.” (Who is Man pg. 114-5)
Continuing on from yesterday’s writing, we are witnessing an extreme of banality and triteness, in my opinion, right now. It is happening in our political world, our social world, our religious/faith communities and our family life. I am understanding Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” in the light of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom to mean anything that strangles or corrodes one’s sense of significant being and/or the sense of significant being of every human being that masquerades as normal, righteous, legal is a neon sign of this “banality of evil” that so many of us go along with. Rabbi Heschel’s “indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin”(God in Search of Man) is another path to this triteness and banality.
In our political world we see this practice of triteness/rubbing the same tropes again and again along with the ‘call to arms’ by one group or another against either ‘the man’ or ‘the rebel/thug/immigrant’. We are seeing the use of hate speech innuendos to “rally the base”, as a way to remind this base of what is ‘common to all of us’, the us being anyone like me and the ‘them’ being anyone not like me. We are witnessing a decimation of the freedoms that are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, that are the basis of the American Revolution of 1776 and have been at the core of our moral growth as a nation, as a people, as a society. These freedoms have been won through much hard work, many mini-revolutions in the past 160 years since the Civil War and we must not fall into the “banality of evil” being practiced by the elected clerks of our government who, like Eichmann, are just taking orders from their Furhrer’s like The Family, Moscow Mitch, etc. They are engaging in the strangulation of everyone’s sense of significant being while conning their base to believe they care about them, they will take care of them, ‘white is right’ and ‘the hordes are coming for us’ along with ‘we are the injured and discriminated against minority’ etc. It is high time for all of us to stop going along with these lies, stop being indifferent to the evil these Eichmann-like people are spreading and say NO to their phony elections, NO to their control of a woman’s body and choices, NO to their false claims of doing it for God, NO to their hatred and discrimination of people of color, people who are not WASP’s in their image, NO to Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, et al for their stoking the fires of slavery, stoking the flames of injustice and pouring gasoline and lighting the match of burning the Constitution of the United States of America! These “fine upstanding Christian White Males” rail against the burning of the flag and praise the burning of the constitution while their followers and the politicians who do their bidding are saluting and goose-stepping in front of them in good parade fashion.
What our politicians have been somewhat successful in attacking is our “sense of significant being” and this is the greatest theft anyone can commit. By attacking the sense of significant being of a nation, of an idea, of a person’s identity, spirit, etc we attack the core of what makes us human, the Divine Image we all have within us, the need we were created to fill, the infinite value and dignity we each possess and deny the Godliness inherent in every human being by saying only we have these things and you don’t! The attack on the freedoms of our Constitution, of our Declaration of Independence are the harbingers of a “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know…” as quoted from Exodus, Chapter 1, and we all know what that Pharaoh did-enslave a people through cunning and guile-sound familiar?
In recovery we are obligated to leave the triteness and banality we have perpetrated upon people and upon ourselves. With help from others in recovery, family, friends, a power greater than ourselves, we are able to get pulled out of the quicksand we found ourselves in, the banality we engaged in, the indifference we lived, the evil we committed and the little import we gave to the call of our soul and the call of pain, neediness and loneliness we heard from another soul. In recovery, we commit to continue to pull ourselves out of the muck and the mire, out of the quicksand of banality and triteness through paying attention, asking for help and acting on the advice given.
I find myself thinking back to the 1960’s and my awakening to prejudice and hatred based on the unoriginal thoughts and ways of ‘the base’ at that time. Because my father paid Black Men the same wages as White Men, he and we were called “N….lovers” and being Jewish was just the cherry on the cake! Even Jews thought he was wrong, by the way, because they were worried about the backlash on them. Without realizing it, I was witnessing how banality and triteness continued to strangle the sense of significant being while masquerading as the concern for significant beingness! I also gave into the ‘way of the world’ at that time and engaged in the triteness and banality of “getting mine” by hook or crook. I fell into the quicksand of banality, the quicksand of evil and it took me 20+ years to pull myself and be pulled by God and many others out of this quicksand and regain a sense of significant being. Hearing the “Ayecha” of God, of my daughter, of my family and responding was the beginning and the journey continues today, my sense of significant being is returning after being strangled and corroded for a bit. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark