Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 164
“Let us labor under no illusions There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal.Technological progress creates more problems than it solves. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity. Important as their contributions may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 372)
Since these words were written, “technological progress” has skyrocketed and exponentially made life more difficult and ‘easier’, more connected and disconnected, more aware and more mendacious. When whomever said “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” in the 1910’s, imagine how prolific it is now. This is one of the great issues of our time: the loss of truth as a value and a moral imperative. When Trump, Putin, Orban, Netanyahu use social media to promote lies and deceptions that touch the “victimhood” of people, when they and their minions use their ‘bully pulpits’ to deny what is front of people’s eyes and continue with their assault on the truth through social media, through misuse of the Justice System, through the PAGANISM of the ‘religious’ establishment, We the People are at a grave disadvantage and herein lies the demise of not just democracy but freedom, and the spiritual and moral corpus colosseum that makes us human!
Our “efficiency experts” and “social engineering” have been hailed over the years by the educational elites and scientists as the “end all, be all” and they have failed us. Just as the ‘prosperity gospel’ idolators have failed us, so too have the progressive far left have failed by their going too far. Losing our ability to discern truth from lie, fact from fiction, has made us to change the Golden Rule from “do unto others as you would want them to do unto you” to, as Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern, “suspect your neighbor as your neighbor suspects you”! This epidemic of suspicion has infiltrated the halls of government, the halls of Justice, the Temples, Churches, Mosques around the globe and the result is the Chaos, the Authoritarianism, the PAGANISM we witness and experience all around us. We the People have been inundated with so many lies and so much chaos we feel impotent in their presentations. We the People have become so overwhelmed with trying to rationally prove the falsehoods of the autocrats and theocrats, we have lost our own sense of grounding and being blind to the trap laid for us by responding to the individual chaos of the moment rather than asserting the TRUTH of what truly is. Because We the People refused to seriously live into Einstein’s “intuitive mind” and fell for worshiping the “rational mind”, we are ill-equipped to stand up for truth, to stand against the lies, idol worship, and cruelty that is being perpetrated in this moment. Rather than “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” we are instead experiencing the “proclaim lies and subterfuge throughout the land, proclaim ‘the other’ as the enemy of the people throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. The reason this works so well is that our “social engineering” and our “efficiency experts” set the stage for us to be like guppies, to live into our prejudices and our fears, our bias’ and need to blame rather than help us be responsible for our part and do our T’Shuvah, our inventory, so we can repent, return, and have new responses to what used to baffle us.
True, the ways the PAGANS have used “social engineering” and the wisdom of “efficiency experts” is a bastardization of what they were trying to accomplish, true, the “technological progress” has resulted in the saving of millions of lives. Yet, because they were promoted as ‘the path forward’ without realizing that “the greatest hinderance to knowledge is the adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches” as Rabbi Heschel says, the spiritual maturity needed has been lacking and/or non-existent. Which makes the hijacking of good, the hijacking of truth, the hijacking of morality, the hijacking of humane deeds so very easy by people who are grifters, cons, and cruel at their core.
We the People are being called to account in this moment. There is a demand being put upon us. The voice from Sinai is reminding us that we are more than our basest feelings and impulses, that like Cain, “sin desires us much and we can master it”. Rather than continue to have “the bloods of your brother cry out to me”, our souls are being spoken to, touched and motivated to stop “standing idly by the blood of our neighbor”, to end our obliviousness to the harms being perpetrated upon the stranger and “love the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt”. The voice from Sinai is railing against our inaction, our indifference, and our compliance, We the People are in desperate need of lifting one another up from the pit of adjustment, from the pit of ‘going along to get along’ and the pit of prejudice and injustice. This can only happen when We the People see how much more in common we have than our smaller differences, when We the People become willing to use our ability to nurture and enhance the spiritual growth of ourselves and one another, when We the People become “maladjusted to notions and ideas” so we can “have an authentic awareness of that which is” as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We the People have to awaken from our slumber and our fear, from our obtuseness and our indifference, from our acceptance of lies and our self-deceptions right now, otherwise we may repeat what happened in Egypt when “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph” because we have new Pharaoh’s who do not know Jesus, the Prophets, God.
I have had an inner war between what my mind, my emotions tell me and what I know in my kishkas, my gut intuition for as long as I can remember. This war is never-ending and for a while I just gave up wrestling and engaging in this inner struggle which led to harming people, harming myself, prison, etc. Since that day in December of 1986, I have engaged in this inner battle, not always winning the moment and making BIG errors and always engaging, hearing all the disparate voices and making the ‘best’ decision in the moment-‘best’ meaning doing the best I could given all the circumstances and NOT having to be right, being able to admit my errors, and make my amends/T’Shuvah for them. Much more often than not, however, my “spiritual knowing” won out and I have been able to be of service to another(s) and to self in ways I would have never dreamed possible. My way is not ‘efficient’, it is not ‘politically correct’ and it is deeply personal, caring, seeking truth and fighting for what is right, good, just, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark