Morals, or Some Such Nonsense
May. 24th, 2007 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillThe story goes thusly:
Once upon a time, during the lifetime of Rabbi Hillel, there was this dude. He was what, in later times, would be the kind of person who just gets up one day and drives away and doesn't come back until he's "found himself." As if you could ever lose yourself. But anyway, he'd gone of seeking The Truth and was annoyed by the fact that nobody seemed to know it.
So he made a bet with various religious orders: if they could teach him their entire religion while standing on one foot, he'd convert.
As the story goes, the winner was the one who stood on one foot and said, "Treat others as you would like to be treated. Everything else is commentary." The winner was Jewish, but that is not the point, because in real history there's no way that anyone in pre-modern Europe would have converted to Judaism. The point is: if you can't say everything you need to say while standing on one foot (blindfolded to boot), then it's not a good religion.
One day, I decided to come up with my own set of rules to live by. And, I decided, they would have to be short and simple, so that I could say them while standing on one foot.
Sin is treating other people like things. Don't do it.
And that is short and simple and not really a very good set of rules at all until you realize all the other things it means. It means that acting like a human, which are by nature selfish (billions of years of evolution has taught us that selfishness is the only way to get ahead) is not something that I'm allowed to do. Or rather, I'm only allowed to do it to the point where it impinges on other people. I can take my own time and use it how I like, but making someone do something that they don't want to do is not allowed.
In the most extreme case, it means that I can give my life as I want, but only if it doesn't hurt other people. That means suicide is out, as is homicide, but if I were to die for someone else's sake, it would be acceptable. Not fine, because premature death is never fine, but acceptable. But I can give my life as I choose. Currently, I give it one day at a time.
But it's more than that, too. It means that I am not allowed to use other people. There is no such thing, for me, as a casual relationship. Either I know you and love you or I know you and hate you. But you are never just a thing. You are a person.
It means that, in my head, I never have a right to judge. I don't live in your head, I don't have a right to decide for you who you are. I haven't lived your life, how would I know? However, I am a human person and human people judge each other, whether or not we have that right, so the closest I can get is to always try to empathize. Even if I hate you, I will try to see it from your point of view. And your enemy's point of view. And a totally neutral third party, at the same time. I won't claim to do it perfectly, because I'm human and will always have biases. People have called me sanguine for it, but it's not that at all; it's that I find it very hard to take sides when I am always on both sides at once.
(F'rexample: Fighting between Israel and Middle Eastern Arab countries. On the one hand, as a Jew, I "should" automatically be against Arab countries. I'm not. They raised good points, like "Why should the fact that some of the people who live in our countries are insane enough to blow themselves up in crowded streets mean that you get to close the borders to us? It is our Holy Land too." And it is. And I can even see where the insane ones, the ones who blow themselves up, are coming from, and it has to do with the fact that eight hundred years ago they were the seat of knowledge while Europe was stuck in the dark ages, and now the greater part of their populations generally live below the poverty level while a rich elite gun them down in the streets and Israel doesn't life a finger aside from keeping everyone outside its borders and making sure the tourists are happy. Oh, and the fact that the British gave the Jews Israel for successfully carrying out guerrilla, terrorist-type attacks? Doesn't help.)
It means that everyone deserves a future. And I mean everyone. Mas-murdering psychopaths have as much right to a future as their victims. People can change, it is what makes them people. I oppose the death penalty for this reason. Would I want them taking care of my kids? No. But there are only two situations in which a person has the right to kill another: self-defense, and in defense of another person. Yes, I agree that in practicality keeping them alive is dangerous. But murdering them, which is what execution comes out to, puts you as a society at the same level. You don't get a moral high horse just because you hold trials.
(This may be because the first and strongest and totally unwritten law of Judaism is: if following the rules will hurt somebody, screw the rules.)
It means that I help people. I help people even if I don't want to help them and even if they don't want my help. I can give myself as I choose, and I choose to give myself. If you don't want my help, that's fine, but I'm not going to stop trying. People can change. And if you change your mind, I'll be there for you.
It means a lot of things about me, also. I tend to withhold judgment on a subject until I know all the details, which means that on a lot of things I never make decisions, since all the details aren't known. When I make a decision, it will take a lot to get me to change my mind. When I decide that something is important, I will pursue with a single-minded devotion that my own family have called frightening. When I decide that something is not important, I expect that to be the end of it.
What other people think of me isn't often important. I know what I believe, after all.
And before you ask, yes, I have a very pessimistic worldview. If you want me to give my opinion of humanity, I have thirteen pages of poetry on what I think about humanity, and it's not flattering. But I find that I'm not often surprised by what people do, and almost never pleasantly. So I'm not a real pessimist, just pessimistic.
A true pessimist, after all, is always pleasantly surprised.
Once upon a time, during the lifetime of Rabbi Hillel, there was this dude. He was what, in later times, would be the kind of person who just gets up one day and drives away and doesn't come back until he's "found himself." As if you could ever lose yourself. But anyway, he'd gone of seeking The Truth and was annoyed by the fact that nobody seemed to know it.
So he made a bet with various religious orders: if they could teach him their entire religion while standing on one foot, he'd convert.
As the story goes, the winner was the one who stood on one foot and said, "Treat others as you would like to be treated. Everything else is commentary." The winner was Jewish, but that is not the point, because in real history there's no way that anyone in pre-modern Europe would have converted to Judaism. The point is: if you can't say everything you need to say while standing on one foot (blindfolded to boot), then it's not a good religion.
One day, I decided to come up with my own set of rules to live by. And, I decided, they would have to be short and simple, so that I could say them while standing on one foot.
Sin is treating other people like things. Don't do it.
And that is short and simple and not really a very good set of rules at all until you realize all the other things it means. It means that acting like a human, which are by nature selfish (billions of years of evolution has taught us that selfishness is the only way to get ahead) is not something that I'm allowed to do. Or rather, I'm only allowed to do it to the point where it impinges on other people. I can take my own time and use it how I like, but making someone do something that they don't want to do is not allowed.
In the most extreme case, it means that I can give my life as I want, but only if it doesn't hurt other people. That means suicide is out, as is homicide, but if I were to die for someone else's sake, it would be acceptable. Not fine, because premature death is never fine, but acceptable. But I can give my life as I choose. Currently, I give it one day at a time.
But it's more than that, too. It means that I am not allowed to use other people. There is no such thing, for me, as a casual relationship. Either I know you and love you or I know you and hate you. But you are never just a thing. You are a person.
It means that, in my head, I never have a right to judge. I don't live in your head, I don't have a right to decide for you who you are. I haven't lived your life, how would I know? However, I am a human person and human people judge each other, whether or not we have that right, so the closest I can get is to always try to empathize. Even if I hate you, I will try to see it from your point of view. And your enemy's point of view. And a totally neutral third party, at the same time. I won't claim to do it perfectly, because I'm human and will always have biases. People have called me sanguine for it, but it's not that at all; it's that I find it very hard to take sides when I am always on both sides at once.
(F'rexample: Fighting between Israel and Middle Eastern Arab countries. On the one hand, as a Jew, I "should" automatically be against Arab countries. I'm not. They raised good points, like "Why should the fact that some of the people who live in our countries are insane enough to blow themselves up in crowded streets mean that you get to close the borders to us? It is our Holy Land too." And it is. And I can even see where the insane ones, the ones who blow themselves up, are coming from, and it has to do with the fact that eight hundred years ago they were the seat of knowledge while Europe was stuck in the dark ages, and now the greater part of their populations generally live below the poverty level while a rich elite gun them down in the streets and Israel doesn't life a finger aside from keeping everyone outside its borders and making sure the tourists are happy. Oh, and the fact that the British gave the Jews Israel for successfully carrying out guerrilla, terrorist-type attacks? Doesn't help.)
It means that everyone deserves a future. And I mean everyone. Mas-murdering psychopaths have as much right to a future as their victims. People can change, it is what makes them people. I oppose the death penalty for this reason. Would I want them taking care of my kids? No. But there are only two situations in which a person has the right to kill another: self-defense, and in defense of another person. Yes, I agree that in practicality keeping them alive is dangerous. But murdering them, which is what execution comes out to, puts you as a society at the same level. You don't get a moral high horse just because you hold trials.
(This may be because the first and strongest and totally unwritten law of Judaism is: if following the rules will hurt somebody, screw the rules.)
It means that I help people. I help people even if I don't want to help them and even if they don't want my help. I can give myself as I choose, and I choose to give myself. If you don't want my help, that's fine, but I'm not going to stop trying. People can change. And if you change your mind, I'll be there for you.
It means a lot of things about me, also. I tend to withhold judgment on a subject until I know all the details, which means that on a lot of things I never make decisions, since all the details aren't known. When I make a decision, it will take a lot to get me to change my mind. When I decide that something is important, I will pursue with a single-minded devotion that my own family have called frightening. When I decide that something is not important, I expect that to be the end of it.
What other people think of me isn't often important. I know what I believe, after all.
And before you ask, yes, I have a very pessimistic worldview. If you want me to give my opinion of humanity, I have thirteen pages of poetry on what I think about humanity, and it's not flattering. But I find that I'm not often surprised by what people do, and almost never pleasantly. So I'm not a real pessimist, just pessimistic.
A true pessimist, after all, is always pleasantly surprised.
