If you have suffered from a certain person the tendency is to find blame in that person's world view. One tends to think that if the system was different evil would be eradicated.
People that have suffered from people that are theists tend to say theism is the problem. If one has suffered from people that believe in a different system, the tendency will be to blame that system. Another example is if people have suffered under the Nazis, then the tendency is to say the belief system of Nazism is the trouble. And this kind of thinking is sometimes justified. After all blaming Nazism for the Holocaust does not seem like much of a stretch. But there are other times that it seems to me that building ones world view on what he sees as negative influences is a dumb way of going about thinking about these things.
Human evil is the type of thing that even people believing in a good system will get the virus of evil. No system is immune. But that does not mean all systems are alike. Nor are all social memes alike. You find one social meme you think is bad and try to eradicate it you will probably find two that have grown in its stead.
But like Nazism there are certain social memes which are pernicious.
Sometimes one has just found a bad group inside a decent system.
Personally I go with my parents system, Judaism, but I modify that with a good dose of traditional learning Talmud and keeping Jewish Law. But the basic structure of belief--the world view of my parents of what makes a man into a "mensch" I think they knew more about that than anyone I have ever met.
But their beliefs were not really in accord with Reform even though we went to a Reform Shul in Hollywood.--a great place--Temple Israel of Hollywood. But teh belif system of my parents was a lot more traditional that official Reform.
To get an idea of what my parents thought and what I think is the proper approach to life I recommend learning Musar. That is the basic set of medieval books חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים מסילת ישרים etc. there are about thirty in all. This is hard reading. The ideas are not hard. It is rather that by reading these books and saying them out loud as you read you get fear of God. And that is hard work. It is not supposed to be light reading.
People that have suffered from people that are theists tend to say theism is the problem. If one has suffered from people that believe in a different system, the tendency will be to blame that system. Another example is if people have suffered under the Nazis, then the tendency is to say the belief system of Nazism is the trouble. And this kind of thinking is sometimes justified. After all blaming Nazism for the Holocaust does not seem like much of a stretch. But there are other times that it seems to me that building ones world view on what he sees as negative influences is a dumb way of going about thinking about these things.
Human evil is the type of thing that even people believing in a good system will get the virus of evil. No system is immune. But that does not mean all systems are alike. Nor are all social memes alike. You find one social meme you think is bad and try to eradicate it you will probably find two that have grown in its stead.
But like Nazism there are certain social memes which are pernicious.
Sometimes one has just found a bad group inside a decent system.
Personally I go with my parents system, Judaism, but I modify that with a good dose of traditional learning Talmud and keeping Jewish Law. But the basic structure of belief--the world view of my parents of what makes a man into a "mensch" I think they knew more about that than anyone I have ever met.
But their beliefs were not really in accord with Reform even though we went to a Reform Shul in Hollywood.--a great place--Temple Israel of Hollywood. But teh belif system of my parents was a lot more traditional that official Reform.
To get an idea of what my parents thought and what I think is the proper approach to life I recommend learning Musar. That is the basic set of medieval books חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים מסילת ישרים etc. there are about thirty in all. This is hard reading. The ideas are not hard. It is rather that by reading these books and saying them out loud as you read you get fear of God. And that is hard work. It is not supposed to be light reading.
