Making a Difference

Really making a difference means changing people's behavior.  For example, founding a new religion, starting a new trend, or introducing a new idea that changes how people think.  So let's take an extreme example of trying to make a difference.  Suppose God appeared in the sky, told people that modern culture is evil, and dropped down on earth books that scientifically proved this to be the case.  In my opinion, this would make no difference.  Modern people would cling to being evil, they would call the sighting of God a mass hallucination, and they would ridicule the books dropped by God as being ridiculous antiquated reasoning.  And they would go on being evil just as before.

I recently read an interesting book on the history of Zionism called The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul.  The interesting part wasn't who is right or wrong, but rather how well different approaches to promoting an idea worked.  The battle over Zionism was a battle over changing the behavior of Jews.  Zionism was started by Theodor Herzl at a time when Jews didn't take the idea of forming a country seriously at all.  Herzl's approach was pushing big ideas.  The author clearly admired Herzl, but Herzl clearly failed.  After Herzl came the practical approach of men like David Ben-Gurion.  They moved to Israel and tried to form a country in small incremental steps.  They were also failures until the Holocaust shocked Jews enough to make Jews take Israel seriously and this made Zionism successful.  And finally we have the anti-Zionists like Martin Buber who were liberals (in the absolute worst sense).  Their view was mainstream and dominant until the Holocaust.  The Holocaust could be considered like my God example above with the addition that God kills a few million people to show that it isn't a hallucination and that God isn't kidding.  The Holocaust managed to briefly knock some sense into the Jews and so they rejected Buber's liberalism and founded Israel.  But Buber survived the Holocaust and became influential in a university in Israel, and in another generation non-Orthodox Jews returned to their demented liberal ways.  The author's conclusion is that this is all about a battle of ideas, and that Herzl was ultimately successful in promoting Zionism because he pushed the idea, and that Buber was successful because he also pushed his ideas at a time when Zionists weren't focused ideas.  My conclusion is rather different.  My conclusion is that there are two ways to make a difference.  One is you can really hit people hard, so hard that they have to change behavior.  This basically requires killing a few million people to make people wake up.  In other words, I credit the success of Zionism to the Holocaust, not to Herzl.  And the second way to make a difference is to raise children with different values.  This is what Buber did at his university.

There is another battle within Judaism which is also worth looking at.  This is the battle between religiously liberal Jews and Orthodox Jews.  The movie A Life Apart: Hasidism in America describes how Hasidic rabbis came to America after WW2 and established Hasidic Judaism in America when there was virtually no Orthodox Judaism in America.  When the Hasidic rabbis came, they saw that American rabbis focused on synagogues.  But the Hasidic rabbis realized this did no good.  Instead they focused on schools.  Rather than trying to convert the adults, the rabbis raised a new generation of Hasidic Jews in their schools, and this produced the Hasidic Jewish movement in America.

So now I will present my conclusion.  The only really effective way to make a difference is to raise children with different values.  Adults are basically hopeless.  To convince a liberal adult to give up liberalism, you would have to find a group of liberals willing to physically beat up that liberal adult continuously for a year.  Maybe after this experience he would give up liberalism.  But anything less, whether logic, facts, stories, or minor personal experiences, will have no effect on an adult.

Let's look at some more examples from my favorite source, the Old Testament.  The case of Jeremiah is almost identical to the case of Herzl.  Jeremiah presented sound arguments but no one listened.  In the end, the only reason that people listened was because Judah was utterly destroyed by Babylon, this being the holocaust of that time.  This knocked enough sense into the surviving Jews to take Jeremiah seriously and return to the Torah.

Another example is King Josiah.  About him, the Old Testament says:

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Before him there was no king like him who turned to Yehovah with all his mind and with all his heart and with all his strength according to all the teaching of Moses, and no one like him arose after him.
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2 Kings 23:25

In other words, he was the most virtuous king in the history of Judah/Israel, and yet he made no difference at all.  Right after his death, Judah returned to immorality, and shortly thereafter it fell to Babylon.  Why was King Josiah a failure?  Because he focused on eliminating the sins of his time, meaning that he focused on adults.  There isn't a single mention of children in the sections of the Old Testament about King Josiah.  And this is why he failed.

So far I have been talking about failures.  This is because most attempts at establishing morality are failures.  So who got it right?  The wisest man in history got it right, Moses.  Moses took a worthless bunch of slaves out of Egypt and tried to instill morality in them.  But he saw that it was hopeless.  So he used force and terror to make these people behave.  Even with that, when he took them to take Israel, he saw that they didn't have what it takes.  Then he realized that adults are totally hopeless and so he banned all those who didn't grow up under his guidance from even entering the land of Israel.  Moses talks more about the importance of teaching children than any other famous person in history, and today Jews repeat this message in the Shema Yisrael prayer, even if they don't understand its significance.  Moses repeatedly emphasizes the importance of teaching children in Deuteronomy.

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“Only be on your guard and diligently watch yourselves, so that you don’t forget the things your eyes have seen and so that they don’t slip from your mind as long as you live. Teach them to your children and your grandchildren. The day you stood before Yehovah your God at Horeb, Yehovah said to me, ‘Assemble the people before Me, and I will let them hear My words, so that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth and may instruct their children.’
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Deuteronomy 4:9-10

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“Listen, Israel: Yehovah is our God, Yehovah is One. Love Yehovah your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
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Deuteronomy 6:4-9

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“Imprint these words of mine on your hearts and minds, bind them as a sign on your hands, and let them be a symbol on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the heavens are above the earth, your days and those of your children may be many in the land Yehovah swore to give your fathers.
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Deuteronomy 11:18-21

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Gather the people—men, women, children, and foreigners living within your gates—so that they may listen and learn to fear Yehovah your God and be careful to follow all the words of this teaching. Then their children who do not know the teaching will listen and learn to fear Yehovah your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
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Deuteronomy 31:12-13

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After Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all these words I am giving as a warning to you today, so that you may command your children to carefully follow all the words of this teaching. For they are not meaningless words to you but they are your life, and by them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
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Deuteronomy 32:45-47

How to raise children depends on how one wants them to turn out.  Let's start with raising liberal children.  The best strategy to produce liberal children is to first make them stupid and then brainwash them to believe that evil is good.  This is exactly what the modern educational system does.  The key formative years for intelligence are the teen years, when kids are in high school.  This is why high school gets the least attention in America.  The kids' brains are just allowed to rot.  What little is taught is to do mindless repetitive work to numb the mind.  By the time an American graduates from high school, he has been transformed into a complete idiot, and so he is ready for university.  In university, immorality is taught and immoral behavior is encouraged.  Because the students have lost any ability to think clearly, they just accept this and this becomes their system of values.  Since this is the ideal process for raising liberals, university education is emphasized in America.

How does one raise virtuous children?  By the opposite of the process of raising liberal children.  One focuses on the teen years and teaches morality and encourages intellectual growth during these years.  The basic subjects like math and science should be taught based on understanding, so that the kids learn that the world can be understood and so that their minds develop analytical skills.  History should be taught from original sources and kids should be encouraged to debate historical issues and consider all sides of each issue.  And morality should be taught.  The best way to do this is by studying the Old Testament and discussing the morality of cases it raises.  A child raised in this way will be a moral independent thinker and will not be susceptible to any kind of brainwashing.

I have tried to apply the principles of raising virtuous children when I homeschooled my kids.  I think this worked out well.  But at the same time I looked for moral adults or communities that might encourage morality among adults.  This was a complete failure.  The lesson that I gained from personal experience is the message of this article, that adults are hopeless, worthless, and a waste of time.  To make a difference, one must focus on children.