Occupy Wall Street: Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots and the Wedge

“Dear Mr. Hammet:
And here I thought that you were a detective and a brilliant one, because The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite mystery stories. Don’t you know who I am? This is not to say that everyone should, but I think you should. And if you do, you ought to know better than to send me an invitation like this. Well, you’re half right, at that. I do welcome anyone fighting against "Coughlin’s “Social Justice.” But when you give a party to fight both “Social Justice” and “The Daily Worker”, count me in, and I’ll give you $7.00 per ticket, let alone $3.50. Not until then, Comrade, not until then.”

--Ayn Rand, Letter to Dashiell Hammet, August 1, 1940; Letters of Ayn Rand, Google E-book edition. 

 

 

During the last two weeks I have experienced two or three moments of surprise and dismay in conversation or in reading Facebook posts and comments, because people I thought should know better have excused and supported the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Wherever (OWS) actions and agenda.

I have heard self-identified conservatives (Chris Christie comes to mind) compare OWS to the Tea Parties, saying that we have the same goals (?) but wish to use different means. I have read comments by purported libertarians who defend OWS, stating that if the protesters want to end the Fed and destroy “Jewish control of the money”, they are all for it.  I have had conversations with Jews who excuse the anti-Semitism displayed at OWS gatherings across the nation, saying that because Jews are taking part in the demonstrations, it is meaningless; and anyway “there is anti-Semitism on the right, too.” As if that makes it unnecessary to confront it.

Even the President of the United States and the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress are saying that the OWS agenda reflects the concern and anger brewing among all Americans due to the stagnant economy.  And almost everybody in the MSM seems to be telling everybody else there that this “movement” is broad-based and grass roots, our very own Tahrir Square. I don’t what they’ve been smoking but there is no comparison between people who have been living under an Islamic dictatorship for more than 30 years and going hungry, with entitled individuals decrying the evils of corporations and demanding “free” stuff while texting on their i-Phones and ducking into Starbucks for a Venti Carmel Macchiato.

None of this is true, as even the casual observer can surmise just by identifying the organizers, watching the You Tube, and reading the various signs, manifestos and lists of demands coming from the OWS crowd. It has been known since last Spring, when Stephen Lerner (who is too radical even for the very left-leaning SEIU) was caught on digital stating the plan and purpose for OWS, that this movement is not grassroots. And since the protests started last month, such paragons of collectivism and unreason as the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, the teachers unions and SEIU have provided material and/or moral support for the movement. Oh, and so has the Democratic Party. Now there are hard numbers to back up what the casual observer already knew. On Tuesday, October 18, Pollster Douglas Schoen wrote this in the Wall Street Journal:  

. . .the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people . . .

“The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

“Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence.

 

Schoen goes on to give numbers. According to his analysis of the data compiled by Ms. Confino, 98% of her sample “support civil disobedience to achieve their goals.” (Since their actions are civil disobedience, and they are using force by “occupying” property, one has to wonder what--if anything--is going on in the minds of the other 2%). Further, 52% of them have protested before, and 31% would use violence to achieve their goals. 65% agree that “the government” is obliged to provide entitlements (free health care, college educations, retirement security) regardless of the bill, and to pay for it all, 77% support taxing the rich, but 58% do not support taxing everybody. Schoen continues:

 

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas. . . .

Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal.

 

What is curious is that if even the casual observer can qualitatively know what the hard data now tells us, then why would Democratic Party leaders, and worse, conservatives and libertarians lend support to this movement, which after all is not large, and is completely out of step with the general public. After all, according to Schoen’s analysis, one quarter of the OWS crowd do not even plan to vote. However, the older and more conservative members of the general public do vote, and the independent registered voters tend to be moving away from supporting the Democrats in any case.

What would cause politically astute people to lend support of any kind to such a movement? And why in the world would libertarians, conservatives, and moderates  excuse, defend and even support the OWS crowd? Liberty-minded people support individual rights, economic freedom and personal responsibility, after all; whereas it is clear from Schoen’s analysis that the OWS crowd does not.

Certainly, there are those among the OWS supporters whose ideology is of the same hard-left, activist variety as that of the protesters themselves. They can be expected to proudly stand by them. And then there are those who agree with certain aspects of the OWS agenda, although they are not willing to go as far as joining in the movement itself. Nor do they wish to publically align themselves with socialism, fascism or communism and the overt supporters of these ideologies in the CPUSA, the American Nazi Party, or other variants. These are Fellow Travelers who end up serving a cause even if they do not wish to be seen as doing so, or with which they do not wholly agree. I suspect that most of the MSM are Fellow Travelers with one or another of the various collectivist ideologies.

But what about those who defend or excuse OWS even while claiming values and principles in opposition to those held by the protesters, the organizers and their overt supporters? The ones who claim to be conservatives or libertarians, or even moderates and traditionally “liberal” Democrats?

Some of them, especially the politicians among them, are likely not being totally honest about their most deeply held values and are taking on certain labels in order to woo voters. This dishonesty leads to the kind of corruption among the powerful we have come to almost expect. But I think the majority of these OWS excusers and defenders are confused about the labels they apply to themselves, or they have mixed premises, believing in liberty, but accepting certain anti-liberty premises as “practical” and “necessary.” Or they may be liberty-minded people who have not overtly examined the philosophy of liberty and therefore do not inform their positions on policy from liberty’s values and principles. These are the ones most likely to be duped into lending support to, or excusing movements like OWS, that are based on values and principles in contradiction to their own. In so doing, they become Useful Idiots.

Useful Idiots are people who make common cause with individuals and groups whose values are in opposition to their own out of  naiveté, either in an attempt to do good or to oppose some common enemy who is perceived to be more dangerous than the opposition with whom they cooperate. Unlike Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots are cynically used by ideologues, and are induced to it by a covert strategy called the Wedge.

The Wedge works by introducing a concrete issue or policy into the discussion upon which each of two sides agree, even though each side holds principles contradictory to the other. Duping someone with the Wedge depends upon the individual not noticing that although he agrees with the particular policy or issue as framed by the ideologue, he does so for different reasons and/or may identify different solutions . (For a thorough review of the Wedge Strategy and its uses, see the four part series on Adam Reed’s blog, Born to Identify, beginning here).

For example, both the OWS activists and various liberty-minded groups agree that the Federal Reserve Bank and the banking system it controls is responsible for the housing bubble and the stock market crash and credit crunch of 2008. Therefore, members of both groups may wish to “End the Fed.” However, the OWS activists want to do so in order to increase direct government control over the economy, thus forcing private banks and other businesses to pay for the “free” stuff to which they believe they are entitled. On the other hand, conservative or libertarian individuals see ending the Fed as part of a larger strategy to set the economy free and re-establish Capitalism, an economic system in which all property is private and individuals are free to choose with whom they will do business and what they will do with their money. Ending the Fed is a Wedge that is conducive to the strategy of the statist organizers of OWS, who are far more interested in further collectivizing the United States than they are in ending the Fed. The Fed, after all, is a useful instrument for exerting more control over the economy, and with it, the lives of ordinary Americans.

Ending the Fed is one of several Wedges in play in the political discourse of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They are all useful in refocusing the opposition to their ultimate goal, seeking to make those of us who hold to the principles of liberty believe that we should, as one Useful Idiot puts it, “Unite against the 1% for Liberty and Freedom.” As Adam Reed points out in his blog series (referenced above):

 . . . if we agree with them on issue after issue, then there seems to be no contradiction between their ideals and ours. They might even be the good guys, and their ideas may deserve to be heard, and to be included in the national consensus on legislation and public policy.

 

In using terms like—“unity” and “freedom”--as a hook, the OWS organizers and their fellow travelers seek to conflate the goals and values of OWS with our own and thereby covertly get our cooperation with them. This can lead to them making converts to their cause, or at least confuse us enough to stop us from opposing their agenda, or from pointing out the characteristics that differentiate them from us.

This is why some Jews, for example, make excuses for the overt and unopposed anti-Semitism in evidence at OWS rallies across the nation. They buy the Wedge, even though it is false, and ignore the reality that anti-Semitism is a racist ideology opposed to individual liberty. This characteristic rhetoric ought to demonstrate that our principles and values are different than theirs, and that there can be no compromise, no “popular front” between us.

In order not to be taken in by the Wedge Strategy, liberty-minded individuals must be conscious our values and principles and consistently and deliberately apply them to the goals and strategies expressed by those who wish to make common cause with them. When our values and principles are not aligned with theirs, we can recognize when a Wedge is being used against us. In order not to serve, defend or excuse a cause that violates our principles, we then must not participate in the organizations and activities of those who promoting such a cause.

Further, once the Wedge is in play in the shared political discourse of a community or country, we ought to point it out because sunshine is the best disinfectant. In our own discussions of the issue or policy being used as a wedge, we need to promote our view from the standpoint of our values, and point out the difference between our reason and theirs. In so doing, the consequences of our line of reasoning will differentiate implications to our advocacy of the issue that our opposition will disagree with, making it clear that we do not have common cause or a “popular front.”

In this way, we remain true to our own values, come what may, and we keep our principles ever before us so that we can create the future that we plan to live. One of liberty and respect for each individual’s rights.

A Different Perspective

On Facebook, people seem to while away quite a bit of time playing at quizzes. They have imaginitive titles such as What Dead White Girl Poet Are You? Or at least something like that. Which brings me to a Disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER: A Facebook friend has warned me that when you take those quizzes on Facebook you are giving away any personal information you have on the program. I am not, therefore, recommending that anyone actually take these quizzes. After all, some quiz-maker at Facebook might find out your religion. That would be far worse than the federal government knowing your genome and your retinal prints, and the fact that you saw a psychiatrist after that really bad breakup in high school. ;)

Anyway, this entry could be entitled something like What P-Word am I?
A few days rest and fielding comments on my last post brings me to one p-word. It is PERSPECTIVE. As I wrote at the end of that post:

My unique mind often causes me to see the glass as not only just half-full, but dusty and cracked as well. I must remind myself that things are likely not nearly as bad as I think they are.

That post was about how I responded badly to an unexpected situation--that of being misjudged by someone, or rather, since the person was basing her judgment on incomplete information, perhaps the word should be pre-judged. (But perhaps not since the PC lexicon would tell us that only disadvantaged minorities can actually experience prejudice). That the situation was unexpected by itself tells you a great deal about the extent of my Aspergian tendencies.

Two interesting things came out of that post. The first was that, although my purpose was simply to tell the story, and thus feel better, I got responses that suggested that I needed to take one or another kind of action in order to fix myself so that I can better conform to this collectivist society's narrowing definition of normal. The second was that, finally having owned my Aspie ways, I realized that I actually like the way I am, and that despite the problems it causes me, I would not have it any other way. I am stubbornly refusing to pretend to be normal. As I read some undoubtedly good and true advice from an undoubtedly concerned friend, I felt myself digging my heels into my Aspie turf and shouting: No! If that is normal, then I don't even want to be normal!

In fact, my reaction reminded me a great deal of the beginning of an essay by a good friend of mine, someone who has as much difficulty pretending to be normal as I do. (Although he shared it on a discussion board, we actually know each other personally, and he's another East Mountain type. Naturally). His essay is called: Don't Be Mad at Me Because I am Sovereign and he begins by saying:

"Don’t be mad at me because I am sovereign. I do not recognize your authority. Your attempt at authority over me is false. I do not recognize false authority. There is only one authority. That is the natural law of God. . .

Man did not create gravity. That is a natural law of God. If you choose not to recognize the natural authority of gravity as you fall from a high place, I suggest that you are missing something important. The flesh on our bodies is considered to be food to a great percentage of the life on this planet. That is the natural law of God. If you choose not to recognize the natural authority of a lion as it eats your flesh, I suggest that you are missing something important.

On the other hand, if you do chose to recognize the authority of another man or woman or group of men or women as they attempt to coerce you into the recognition of some non-natural law that they have fabricated, I suggest again, that you are missing something important.

If you are missing some of those important things, please don’t be mad at me about it! I am just a simple, sovereign man . . .

. . . Is it my problem or yours?

That answer is easy. If we come into conflict over your recognition of false authority, and my lack of recognition of it, the problem lies with you, not me. Don’t expect me to bend. However, you should expect a loss of trust, and potential inability to communicate effectively about meaningful tasks.

Many people believe that life operates as a democracy; that since I, as a minority in my recognition of these seemingly simple concepts, am therefore wrong. I do not accept that. That, in itself, is a belief in the false authority of the majority. Whereas, the natural law of God does not require belief; it just is."
(Raymond Powell, writing as The Rayzer at http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=206241&page=3).

I have already come to the conclusion that this narrowing of normal is a dangerous illusion that flies in the face of the natural law that requires "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful . . ." to work its evolutionary magic, as Charles Darwin wrote more than 150 years ago.

But Darwin lived in a different world; one still based on reason and individualism.Whereas this current narrow concept of normal as the be all and end all of life is a collectivist myth that will only make it easier for those who would rule over us to do so. It denies freedom of thought, freedom of action, and the freedom to learn and grow uniquely from the consequences of independent thought and action. It makes it difficult to develop and share new ideas, because "normal" means acceptance of the way things are without thought. Thus, the indoctrination of a narrow normal that has replaced education has taught people only to talk over and shout down, rather than listen and think.

This is not my problem.
My problem has been to refuse to recognize that my differently-wired brain does fit in that narrow range of normal.
Which P-word am I? I am not a Politician. Those social games played in that narrow range of what is normal and acceptable are boringly incomprehensible to me.

When I was in high school, the guidance counselor called me in to discuss my future. She asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Eyes on the floor, I asked her a question in return. "How," I asked, "Does a person become a philosopher?"

I think that was the only time I saw her speechless.
But my peers had already let me know that I was far from normal.

As I think about what P-word am I, I realize that the operative word in my question was not how; it was become.
I am still becoming that other P-word. Philosopher.

I like to think about things outside that narrow range of normal.
I suppose that will get me into more and more trouble as the collectivist dreams of the current crop of politicians narrow normal down until most of us will not be able think or breathe within it.

But that's not my problem. With the Rayzer, I say: Well, don't be mad at me because I'm sovereign.

And I have a new P-word: Perspective.
I need not worry about those who dismiss me or underestimate me or otherwise cannot hear what I have to say or listen long enough to find out who I am.
That's their problem.

I will go on living my life as a free human being. As a sovereign only over myself.

Life from the Outside: Reflecting on Aspie Tendencies

Today I got a message from Amazon in my e-mail, apprising me of a new book coming out in a few weeks. I get these messages all of the time, and sometimes I order one. This book is called Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger's by Tim Page, and after reading John Elder Robinson's review of it (on the Amazon page linked above) I ordered it.

In part, Robinson said:

"Tim says he’s lived life as an outsider, and that’s exactly how I feel too. As a result, even though I’ve grown up to find commercial success, happiness often eludes me. Within minutes of meeting Tim, it was clear he felt the same. Neurotypical people try to welcome us into their world, but Asperger’s blinds us to the olive branches of friendship they proffer. They even shake the leaves in front of our faces, but we just gaze, impassive and oblivious. People assume we’ve rejected them, but in truth we want their friendship and acceptance with every fiber of our being. That’s the heartbreak of it." (From the review linked above).

That's the heartbreak of it.

As some of my readers know, I am raising a son with diagnosed AS.
AS is primarily genetic in origin, although there most likely are environmental triggers that influence the severity of the disorder and the particular symptoms manifested.
So the Boychick's AS had to come from somewhere, and although I believe his biological father also has AS, I have also come to understand that I manifest the characteristics also. I have taken Simon Baron-Cohen's AQ Test several times, and I have always scored above 32, and usually around 40 points. And although I have no formal diagnosis, I believe that if the diagnosis had existed when I was a child, I would have met the criteria.

Though as an adult I function reasonably well in some social situations, they take a lot of internal energy. I am well aware of my own internal awkwardness, and missed social cues. I spend many hours in bed at night reviewing the social gaffs of the day.

Last night was one of those nights. At a meeting of a 9-12 group I am part of, my intention was to ask for the group's support and involvment in the Continental Congress, because I want to go as a delegate. I have been working on this since March, but as soon as I brought it up to the group, one of the more dominant female members immediately decided that "we should send" one of the other members. She had it all planned out while I was still talking about the history of the Continental Congress of 1774 and how it relates to what we are doing.
I had not clearly communicated with the group, probably because for me, the whole history is more fascinating and I wanted to work up to what I was asking.

My immediate reaction was disappointment.
I've been working hard on this and I wanted the group's support.
I heard this more dominant woman saying "you should go, C." because C. could speak well and knew a lot.
And these things are true.

I thought of all my education, all my reading. All the ideas I would like to share. I thought of Thomas Jefferson*, who was also an awkward speaker, although he was a good writer. I, too, am a better writer than speaker.I thought of a lot of things, and my social awkwardness was that while I was trying to frame how to respond, I blurted out something just to keep myself in the conversation. Since my mind was elsewhere, I can't even remember the words I blurted out. But I did realize that it was the wrong thing to say.

*Jefferson is an example of a historical figure who demonstrated most of the symptoms of AS. Others who are thought to have had AS include Albert Einstein, Motzart, and the pianist Glenn Gould.

So, in my social blindness, I immediately started in to make it worse for myself. I said that well, maybe I was not going to be elected to go, but that I would happily go as somebody's assistant, just to be part of this great historical endevour. But I mentioned the name of a certain somebody who will most likely be elected.

This provoked two negative responses. The woman who had taken over the conversation said:
"I don't even know this __________." She seemed angry. (I thought, "Well, no. You haven't been involved in this, even though I have brought it up before.")

The other woman, the one who had been directed to go by the first, said something to the effect of:
"You mean we are just shills for the people who have already been determined to go?!" (I thought, "she didn't listen to what I said about the election.").

Oy.
If only I had been allowed to tell it all my own way, without the interrogation or interruptions, she might have understood what I was trying to communicate about the upcoming election.

The group leader said nothing, though later he allowed as to how he would be happy to vote for me.

This is one illustration in the frustrations I encounter because I forget that I tend to think about communications as words that are put together in a particular order for a particular purpose; words that must be heard all the way through before one can get the sense of them. Words that have no particular meta-content. And I forget that, in the scheme of things, I have a uniquely wired mind.

I forget that neurotypicals (NTs), tend to see the same words as imminently interruptible, and full of emotional content and other (possible nefarious) implications that I am blind to, that I did not intend. They seldom listen to the whole communication before jumping in, and thus miss a great deal of my meaning. This is probably because I have the Aspie tendency to go on and on, and in every particular, in order to be most thorough about the details. I am fascinated by the parts, and in this way I get to the big picture,and it is all fleshed out. NTs skip the parts and jump right to the whole.

It is not that I cannot see the big picture, though. I can. I can see it in all of its detail, whole and complete; a picture in my mind. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And to translate that into words requires all of my attention. NTs often claim that we who think in pictures lack attention. They say we have ADD.

IMHO, it is they who lack attention. They jump too quickly, thus missing the richness of the picture altogether. It is they that have difficulty listening, becoming impatient after a few sentences. They have already jumped to what they think is the big picture the speaker is describing, and often miss what is really being said.

The neuroscience work I did this spring bears this out. There is a great deal of evidence from imaging studies combined with neurobehavioral tests, that those of us on the Autism Spectrum naturally and easily remember all of the details as we process auditory and visual information from "the bottom up" (actually, in the brain, it is from back to front). We can also remember the big picture once it is assembled in our minds. We can do top-down processing as well, although that is not our preference. And when we do it, we can still remember all of the details. But NTs cannot remember the details, and they get cluttered up with all the emotional reading into the message that they do. Thus, at least as it appears to me, they can't think through the whole idea.

It is like we live in two different worlds.
It is true that Aspies do not see the olive branches. But it is equally true that he NTs do not see the beauty of our minds. They are too impatient to be able to see it. They cannot see that the bush burns but is not consumed.
Think about it.
A person would have to stop and observe for some time to see the detail of nonconsumption.

When we do not come across immediately with what they want, they dismiss us.
Thus, the dominant female described above dismissed me, even though she knows nothing about the Continental Congress except what I described, and she does not know what I know about the Constitution, or what I know about the enlightenment philosophy upon which it is founded.

NTs seem to narrow normal down to match that incomplete big picture they construct immediately. Lacking the memory for the detail that Aspies and others with different minds retain in our peculiar way of processing, they often miss the infinite diversity in infinite combinations that is ever before them. NTs walk "sightless among miracles."

That's the heartbreak of it. That's every bit as much of the heartbreak as is our Aspie blindness to the olive branches the NTs extend. In some ways, I think, NTs are just as blind to us as we are to them. But since our diverse minds are invisible to them, Aspies are the ones that are labeled with a disorder, with being different. We are the ones "pretending to be normal."

As Robinson, himself an Aspergian, writes about Tim Page's encounter with the heartbreak:

"Tim’s story illustrates that reality with clear and moving prose. Even when he’s been with people, much of his life has been spent alone. He was always smart, but like me, I wonder what it’s been for. His book shows that genius has its benefits but it’s not a formula for happiness or even general life success. You’ll wonder if his extraordinary abilities are a cause or a result of his isolation. Or are they just more facets of a unique mind?"

NOTE: My unique mind often causes me to see the glass as not only just half-full, but dusty and cracked as well. I must remind myself that things are likely not nearly as bad as I think they are.

The Problem with Progressivism is Messianism

Evolutionary biologists take pains to teach students that evolution has no direction; it has no preferred path precisely because it has no specific end. As Steven J. Gould used to say, if you rewind the evolution of life on earth and set it back to the beginning, there is no guarantee that it would play out the same way again.

Unlike social Darwinists, who tend to believe that their preferred form of being human is the pinnacle of creation (note the conceptual contradiction here), evolutionary biologists understand that 'fitness' in the Darwinian sense does not imply a more 'perfect' member of a species, rather it defines individuals who can live long enough in certain environment to reproduce. Thus the measure of individual fitness is not wealth or a certain definition of perfection, rather it is the number of offspring one successfully brings into the world.

As a scientist trained in ecology (the science not the social movement) and evolution, it is rather amusing to observe how much the cultural elite really does not understand the theory of evolution; nor do they grasp its principles nor accept the consequences of its reality. To them, as to their creationist opponents, it is a political tool used to force their ideology on others, rather than a scientific idea that serves to illuminate reality.

Less amusing is the use of the theory of evolution as an excuse for the early 20th century Progressive push for eugenics, which appeared first here in the United States. (See for example Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' opinion, when writing for the majority in Buck v. Bell, which enshrined forced sterilization into law in the United States). It was the Progressive movement's goal to build a more compliant, less independent citizen; one who would be willing to subsume his will to that of the State, in order to fit like a cog in the all-powerful and all-knowing State.

The problem with the Progressives is twofold. The first is that they believed that the term "fitness", as used in evolution, implies some quality other than differential reproduction. They believed that they could redefine fitness to mean whatever they wanted it to mean in order to direct human evolution toward what they conceived to be its proper end. And this leads to the second problem, namely, that they believed that evolution has a direction and a goal, and further, that they, by virtue of their vision were privileged to define that goal and direct humanity towards it.

In short, Progressives were (and are) Messianists. They believe that human beings are not good as they are, and should not be allowed to pursue their own ends, but that they must be perfected in some way in order to be made to conform to better ends. The only difference between the Progressives and religious Messianists, is that Progressives proclaim that they themselves are qualified to define the end of evolution and the perfection of the human being, whereas the religious Messianists rely on scripture and tradition, ultimately blaming their own desire to restrict human freedom on their various gods. But both religious Messianists and Progressives believe in some form of original sin--the concept that human beings are inherently evil and that they must be fundamentally changed to accomodate a perfect world. That this unchanging and perfect world would not be a human world is left unstated.

The particular form of Messianism that plagues Western culture began during the time when the tribal Israelite religion was evolving into modern Judaism. The Rabbis of the Talmud were, for the most part, suspicious of the apocalyptic nature of the Messianic goal. Those who espoused it (e.g. R. Akiba), learned the hard way of the danger of it during the third war with Rome (the Bar Kochba Revolt--132-135 C.E.). The Rabbis came to realize that fervent messianism was not compatible with the survival of the Jewish people. Knowing that they could not eradicate it from the minds of the people, they enshrined it as a distant hope in an unattainable future (e.g. Pirke Avot: the Messiah will come when all of [the people] Israel keeps the Sabbath perfectly). They also created a system of law and custom that kept people's focus firmly on their own lives, not on some future immortality. Thus the average Jew was taught to pray for the coming of the Messiah three times a day, but to value his life and the goodness thereof in the here and now. To this day, one notable quality of most Jews is that they have their feet firmly planted on the ground, and do not accept the idea that death is the gateway to a better world.

It helped that Judaism never accepted the concept of original sin. The Hebrew version of the story of creation uses a play on words to make the point that the material world is good, and that the presence of human beings makes it very good. (The play is on the Hebrew word for human being--Adam--which has three Hebrew letters, alef-dalet-mem; rearranged these letters become--meod--mem-alef-dalet, which means very; so with the presence of human beings the universe, which was called tov--good, is called tov meod--very good.) When confronted with the Christian notion of original sin, the Rabbis added this statement to the morning service: "The spirit that you have created within me is a good one, O G-d . . ." Every morning, a religious Jew thus affirms his own goodness.

In Judaism, morality rests on the notion that human beings have free will, and because of their knowledge of good and evil, are constantly required to make choices. No one, neither human nor divine, can save another from the necessity of choice and the consequences that follow. A human being, by his nature, must go through life asking himself: "Right or wrong? Good? Or evil?"

However, Jews, just like other human beings can become lazy and wish to avoid the consequences of free will, though this is quite impossible. Choices must be made and the consequences of those choices follow like night follows day. Nevertheless, people often desire to avoid the painful consequences of their wrong choices, and try to evade their reality.

(This is especially true in times of great difficulty, such as those Jews encountered during the Reformation and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was actually an en-dark-enment for Jews in Europe, as Christian anti-Judaism mutated into the race-theory of modern antisemitism culminating in the European genocide by the National Socialists).

In modern Europe, socialists and fascists took the Messianic idea out of the religious context, where it was dangerous enough, and decided that certain "enlightened" individuals have the wisdom to determine what the good life and the perfect person ought to be, and to force others (for their own good) toward this goal. They determined that goodness means that individuals must give up their lives and aspirations for the "public good" as Holmes stated in Buck v. Bell:

"In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind." (Emphasis added).

The emphasized words demonstrate that to the Progressive, individuals exist to serve the interests of a few, who call themselves 'the State' and 'Society'. These terms are really a mask for tyranny.

The real engine of American progress has been liberty. Our founders understood that human beings are endowed by their very nature with individual rights, and that governments exist to protect these rights. That people have the right to their own life, and thus must have the liberty to make their own choices, in order to pursue their own ends. The founders put these ideas forth in Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (1776)


But Messianists tend to have little regard for the lives and happiness of individuals because their vision of perfection is collective. As the consequences of their evasions of reality pile up, they tend to blame it on everyone and everything but their mistaken ideals, as F. A. Hayek astutely pointed out in The Road to Serfdom. Thus they blame it on the inherent wrongness of human nature (original sin), which they believe requires them to force goodness on their victims. Finally, they come to a place of such embittered hatred of human existence that they'd rather see the whole world enslaved or dead than give up their Vision of the Anointed.

And yet the whole reason that their visions don't work, and that they cause such death and suffering, is because their visions do not conform to reality; it is the realness of matter and the consequences to mortal beings that require individual choice. It is the Progressive vision of humanity that is wrong, and their imposition of it upon others that is evil, not the nature of the human being.

Human beings evolved with all of the aspects of human nature because this enables humans to go on living and reproducing in this environment, on this earth. There is not some teleological perfection that we are missing, no ideal end that we must sacrifice our lives to attain. We are here now. We live now. Our pursuit of the good is the pursuit of our own lives in our own time.

An evolutionary biologist knows that evolution has no direction, no goal.
And she knows that it is the diversity of individual choices and personal ends that can vouchsafe a future for the species on this ever-evolving planet. For a while.

Of course, evolution is not moral. It is an idea, and thus cannot make choices. But people who understand the idea that evolution has no direction and no preferred end can infer from it that life itself is the goal of living, and what is good will always be those choices that maintain life.

Human life on this earth is tov meod. This is very good.

The Baby and the Bathwater Part I: Pseudo-community

It is no secret that the Engineering Geek and I have been questioning the value of our temple synagogue membership in the past two years. There are many issues, some of which are big on their own, and some of which are niggling little problems that annoy--like an itch that no amount of scratching will relieve. For us, the list of concerns spans numerous areas of temple synagogue life, including education, religious practices, and communication. I had thought that the overall issue was our loss of a sense of ownership in the institution; the experience of being discounted as decisions are made that affect the quality of our membership with little regard to our concerns. I still think this is true. However, I also has a moment of clarity last week during Rosh Hashanah. The dawning of clarity began with the rabbi's Rosh Hashanah sermon.

The rabbi used Martin Buber's I and Thou psychology to posit that most of us were coming at our membership from the standpoint of commerce; that is, our approach is to pay our dues as if we are paying for services, and we are disappointed if we do not get quality for our money. This he said, is equvalent to Buber's I - It relationship, in which we enter into a fleeting relationship (?) with another person for the purpose of the transaction. Such a relationship does not require any sharing of the self at all, and no energy is expended by either party on more than a formal and passing recognition of the personhood of the other.

The rabbi then jumped to Buber's I - Thou relationship, suggesting that this most intimate and holy of ways of relating is appropriate to the relationship of a Jew to her religious institution. According to Buber, the I - Thou relationship requires each person to view the other's unity of being; that is as a whole and complete individual; as a subject rather than an object. And it was at this point in the sermon that the whole metaphor began to fall apart for me.

Perhaps I am flawed in some way, but I really have difficulty imagining myself relating to an institution as if it were a dear friend or lover. And, try as I might, I do not see this particular institution operating as a community. I think such an equation as this is a great example of Mark Twain's aphorism, "saying so don't make it so."


The politically correct notion is that if you change the name of something, you change it's nature. Thus we have had a whole string of politically correct name changes at our Temple Congregation. Starting with the name of the organization. We also no longer have rabbis and cantors, we have clergy. We no longer have a Director of Education, we have a Director of Life-Long Learning. But the changes must go deeper than the cosmetic name change if they are to be taken seriously by the membership. Buy-in requires a more intimate and closely argued discussion in which all members have a voice and consensus is reached at the grass-roots level. As it stands, the politically correct changes do not even scratch the surface of what has become a monument to certain egos to which the membership is expected to acquiesce without question or complaint.


One example: Reform Judaism has a well-developed set of traditions. (I will discuss this issue more thoroughly in a future post). One is that the religious services require a certain formality. But that formality is balanced by brevity. Adults are expected to sit through the entire service, something that is not true for other expressions of Judaism. However, at the High Holy Day evening services in recent years, the stark beauty of the anthem following the sermon has been tampered with, and schlock rock songs, an additional sermon by the president of the congregation, and a 'kum-ba-ya' hand-holding encounter have been added. These additions of questionable taste add at least half-an-hour to an already long (for Reform) service. But the membership, many of whom have already worked a full day prior to services, is expected to remain awake and in their seats. When too many people either take a break, bail-out completely, or go to sleep, we are subjected to much finger-shaking from the bimah (pulpit). (This temple synagogue seems to have problems allowing people to meet the most basic need of a bathroom).

Even in the most holy and intimate of I - Thou relationships, marriage, a contract is made and it is expected that something of value is exchanged. The covenant--the brit--requires the participation of both "thou's." Such a covenant involves the exchange of both material and spiritual goods and services between and among the parties. Commerce-in the form of material value such as money--is not foreign to such a relationship; it is simply not the exclusive form of value exchanged. A contract is considered null and void if one of the parties reneges on such an exchange. (For example, a marriage is not a marriage if there is no intimacy between the partners and lack of such is grounds for divorce). Thus, it seems entirely proper for the membership to withhold money if they feel that the institution is not returning something of value in the exchange. It seems to me that the rabbi's scolding is an attempt to distract the membership from the institutional side of the bargain. It is an evasion of the contractual responsibility of the temple congregation towards the membership.

And this is where the metaphor completely falls apart for me. The I - Thou relationship requires a deep level of responsibility from both (or all) parties. There must be give-and-take happening at all levels. I - Thou is not a completely different way of relating to another, rather, it adds additional layers of complexity to the relationship.

I do not, and cannot imagine something of this nature happening between an institution and an individual. And this is one, but only one, of my objections to the rabbi's attack on what he calls "radical" individualism. I will discuss this more another time, but I find it rather frightening that he equates Jewish identity with the subsuming of one's individual identity into a collective. Certainly, the Israelite religion of the Bible was based on such an ideology, but modern Judaism, and especially Reform, recognizes the voluntary nature of the relationship between the Jew, Torah and the people Israel. It is a contradiction of the concept of intimacy, and of the I - Thou nature of intimacy, to demand that individuality be lost. (I am NOT talking about ecstasy. In ecstacy, the temporary nature of the loss of boundaries is necessary to the experience).

Rather, I once heard a teacher who suggested that an intermediary form of relationship be added to Buber's construct: I - You. Such a relationship is more like an acquaintanceship; the individuals acknowledge one another's humanity on a deeper level than in the fleeting moments of a commercial encounter, but the kind of intimacy required for the I - Thou relationship is not expected. Encounters with others in this intermediary relationship do require a commonality of purpose for particular endeavors, but it does not extend to all areas of each individual's life. Such a relationship sets limits on expectations from all involved.

I believe that such a relationship is possible between individuals and their respective institutions, precisely because the limitations stress the voluntary nature of the association. Everyone expects to receive something of value from the association and understands that demands among the parties cannot be infinite or unqualified. The powers that govern such an institution understand that they have a responsibility towards all members that is equal to that demanded of the members towards the institution. The members of the board of directors understand that they are to represent not only their own wants and needs, but also those of different individuals in the institution.

Frankly, Rabbi, I am not about to give up the "I" in the I - Thou relationship you propose. And I am not even sure I want to deal with the temple synagogue in this manner. At this point in the history of this congregation, I would be happy overjoyed to see an evolution towards an equal exchange of goods and services in a more bounded I - You relationship.

Maybe this would work better if we go at it step-by-step. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I am not at all comfortable drowning the little darling, either.