I noticed the self esteem thing got deeply into the Western psyche. But that was a little bit after I had been cloistered in a Musar yeshiva in NY. Musar means ethical works written during the Middle Ages. In Musar pride in oneself and abilities are universally considered the primary sin and the cause of all other sins. Mainly I think they derive this from Proverbs. So when people around me started talking about the importance of self esteem internally I always translated that to mean the importance of being wicked. It did not seem to make sense. I am not sure from where it comes from but I don't think they are getting it from Proverbs.


[Actually I do have an idea of where the self esteem thing came from [Eric Fromm], but I am not sure if that was the original source. I seem to recall some previous source. Nietzsche? I just can't put my finger on it this second.]
Nietzsche: Das Kriterium der Wahrheit liegt in der Steigerung des Machtgefühls. "The criterion of truth resides in the heightening of the feeling of power." The psychologists picked it up from him. That is not rare. Most of their ideas come from Nietzsche.




Later I started noticing even Musar books that were distorting the message of Musar and insisting just like the psychologists that self esteem was a good thing.

Recently more serious psychologists have noticed that they were mistaken and rather that self esteem being a good thing it is the cause of violence and evil.

So Musar really had this right from the beginning. This shows that the idea of Israel Salanter about the importance of learning Musar is really correct.

Appendix: Each one of the major Musar books talks about the evil of Pride with no exception. חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים מסילת ישרים שערי תשובה מעלות המידות ספר היראה המיוחס לרבינו תם.
And furthermore all the disciples of Israel Salanter said the same thing. Isaac Blazzer, Yoseph Yozel Horvitz, etc.

The self esteem thing as the of cause of evil

The major question which came up when I was in high school was "What is the good life?" This was not phrased in that way. The way people around me put it was in terms of the "search for the truth."

But it was this question that I felt was answered when I got to yeshiva in NY. That is a life of service towards God along with a vocation. Service towards God was largely understood to mean learning Torah along with a life of mitzvot.




This might seem like a trivial question. But that would be wrong. Many places that at least present themselves as promoting the good life in exactly this way--Torah and mitzvot - are highly destructive of the the exact goal they are claiming to advance. What they say and what they do are not in correspondence. The life they advocate is a life of cursing secular Jews (when they are not asking them for charity) and spending their days in  chatting and gossip.

The question of the good life is not an abstract question. It is question that concerns our very souls.
And what is happening before our eyes is a battle for our souls. The movements geared to suck people into them are as pernicious as the Gra foresaw long ago.





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השאלה המרכזית שעלתה כשהייתי בתיכון היתה "מהם החיים הטובים?" זה לא היה מנוסח ככה. האופן שבו אנשים סביבי שמו אותה היה במונחים של "החיפוש אחר האמת." אבל זה היתה השאלה שהרגשתי שנענתה כשהגעתי לישיבה בניו יורק. כי הם חיים של שירות כלפי אלוהים . שירות כלפי אלוהים במובן של ללמוד תורה יחד עם חיים של מצוות. זה אולי נראה כמו שאלה טריוויאלית. יש מקומות רבים  שמציגים את עצמם  כקידום בחיים הטובים בדרך זו בדיוק, תורה ומצוות  אבל מאוד הרסניים של המטרה הזאת.  מה הם אומרים ומה הם עושים הם לא בהתכתבות. החיים שלהם בם חיים לקלל חילונים בזמן שהם לא שואלים אותם לצדקה ולבלות ימיהם מפטפטים ורכילות

Can virtue be taught? This is the underlying assumption of the Lithuanian yeshiva
That is the idea of learning Torah for its own sake and not in order for it to be  source of money . The idea is that by learning Torah for its own sake one will be taught and influenced to be virtuous and also he will be living the good life.The life of men as men were meant to be.
The Boy Scouts was also founded on this idea that virtue could be taught. [Within the context of outdoor skills.] Nowadays the boy-scouts is not an option but still the basic idea is valid. Perhaps something similar could be done as part of  a yeshiva program. For example to set aside a few hours per week and to bring in some Eagle Scout to teach the students a few skills.]



But we know that it is not possible to teach virtue. There are children of righteous people that are not righteous. If virtue could be taught the righteous person would have tried and succeeded in teaching it to his own children. But it is not innate either. If it was it would be seen when children are young. But many times children turn out very differently than they seem to be when young.

On the other hand we see that  wickedness can be taught. We see people born into a belief system in which evil is condoned. And they follow that path.

From what we know from Howard Bloom [the Lucifer Principle] it is the society the super-organism that is the most determinate.  So if we go with the super-organism idea of Howard Bloom we can see the idea of  a Lithuanian yeshiva is a correct idea. Something that society and one's own family can't do often a good immediate environment can do.

But by the same idea we can see how yeshivas are in general damaging because of the same idea. Most are not authentic and are not good environments where people learn virtue. Most yeshivas are chatter boxs that contrive and scheme all day how to extract money form secular Jews during the short time periods that they're not cursing them.
Yeshivas are  factories of chatter. It is rare to find the real authentic place that learns Torah for its own sake.
 And I showed above one needs a real place of Torah. It is not enough to learn on one's own. But if there is no place around that is authentic what you need to do is to get your own Shas and go through it. [Actually I mean the whole Oral Law. That is the two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifrei and the Midrash Raba. That should not need more than about 40 minutes per day to go through one "Amud" [half a "daf"] with Rashi and Tosphot. [The thing is when you have finished the Babylonian Talmud you go on to the Jerusalem Talmud.]

learning Talmud

My essay on how to learn Talmud deals with learning in depth.
I want to say that there also needs to be a session of fast learning Gemara. The way to do this is word for word with Rashi. That is you keep one finger on the Gemara and the other on the Rashi and read the words of the Gemara and then the words of Rashi that go on those exact same word. It is hard to explain but you probably can get the idea. Then you do Tosphot, Maharsha and Maharam on that 1/2 a page [i.e. an "Amud"] This whole process should take about 40 minutues if you do all teh Maharasha and Maharam.

Music

n99   [n99 in midi]

Letter of law of rituals while doing as much violence as possible to the spirit of the Law.

Hanging around with ugly stupid and insane people must have an effect on one eventually. No one is immune to the group they hang around with.

There are promises of improvement in all kinds of areas. But you never see someone improve in character or in learning. The effect is always negative. The result of coming close and connected with any of the groups is to take  a person that was kind, generous, and smart and make him rude, cruel, and stupid.
The defense that  heard given is that it is like an emergency room. Who comes to an emergency room of a hospital? Only sick people. But I can object to this analogy. People come to an emergency room to get better. Here people come with intention to get better from what is possible to see the get worse.

This can only be known by experience. Their words and writings all seem impressive. The only way to know something is deeply wrong is by observation. So based on the Chafetz Chaim Vol I:4 I have to warn people of the dangers. This is the same reason the Gra put that entire movement into excommunication. The reason is sometimes you need to warn someone of a danger they are walking into unawares.

There are plenty of ugly stories. But I do not need to go into them because everyone has their own experiences. But they choose to ignore the negative aspects because of the entertainment  and emotional value of the movement. It is fun and deep and has luminosity. The only problem is the luminous aspect comes from worship of human beings. It is not Torah. But it is dressed in the garments of Torah in order to entice people.

1. How close one is to God according to the Torah is not dependent on how close they are to a tzadik.
2. "Everything is godliness," is not what the Torah says. That is pantheism. The view of the Torah is Monotheism.
3. The Torah holds everything was created, something from nothing. Not from God's substance. In the Torah, God has no substance.

But these issues are not as obvious as the problem that the books themselves are filled with errors and distortions and promises that they can't keep and promises that they don't keep. That is there is no objective reality behind the promises.

But the thing that bugs me the most is not whether any doctrines are true or not. What bothers me is lying about what the Torah says. If someone wants to disagree with the Torah that is not as bad as disagreeing with it and then claiming that that is what the Torah says. That takes a kind of immunity to truth. And as fascinating as their books are they still filled with errors.


The fault is a kind of lack of concern by people that could have thought about this problem by instead buried their heads in the sand. This shows I think a kind of judgement--as if these issues are irrelevant. It is almost as if the people that did not speak out had some overriding interest to be silent. It can't be there were unaware of the problems. What I think is at least some people are afraid. They don't want to say what they think because of a good reason. They think that some invisible hand might punish them. They are not thinking whether this invisible hand if from the realm of good or the realm of evil. They just don't want to deal with this.


People need to be extremely careful whenever they submit themselves to a religious service. Research has to be done beforehand, for after all, whatever the sect or religion is we are opening our spirits in such places, opening them to all kinds of influences.  The teachers are currently just as damaged and broken as the  people, and so just as we choose our friends carefully, we must also choose our religious guides carefully. (Too many, many false teachers).


In any case this should not be taken as critique on the Baal Shem Tov of Reb Nachman, Heaven forbid. But rather the movement which went into something that the Gra knew was idolatry.

I should mention that the purpose of this blog is to ask hard questions. It is not to win a popularity contest.



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הדבר העיקרי שהוא  לא בסדר עם חסידות הוא העבודה זרה. אבל יש דברים נסתרים שנראים רצינים יותר. זה חייב להיות משהו יותר פנימי. להסתובב עם אנשי טיפשים ומטורפים מכוערים חייב להיות השפעה על אחד בסופו של דבר. אף אחד לא חסין לקבוצה הוא להסתובב בה. ישנם הבטחות של שיפור בכל מיני התחומים. אבל אתה אף פעם לא רואה מישהו משתפר במידות או בלמידה. התוצאה היא תמיד שלילית. התוצאה של מתקרבים ומחוברים עם כל אחת מן הקבוצות היא לקחת אותו אדם שהיה נדיב  ולגרום לו גסות, וטיפשות. ההגנה  הנתונה היא שזה כמו חדר מיון. מי מגיע לחדר מיון של בית החולים? רק אנשים חולים. אבל  האנלוגיה הזו לא מדוייקת. אנשים באים לחדר מיון כדי להשתפר. כאן אנשים באים עם כוונה להשתפר והמצב מחמיר. זה יכול להיות ידוע רק על ידי ניסיון. המילות שלהם וכתביהם  נראים מרשימים. הדרך היחידה לדעת משהו הוא  לא בסדר היא על ידי נסיון. לדברי חפץ החיים מחוייבים להזהיר אנשים מפני הסכנות. זהו מאותה סיבה שהגר''א שם התנועה כולה לתוך נידוי וכרם. הסיבה היא  אתה צריך להזהיר מישהו של סכנה שהם הולכים לתוכה במפתיע.

 כמה קרוב אחד הוא לאלוהים על פי התורה אינו תלוי  בכמה הוא קרוב לצדיק. "הכל אלוקות," הוא לא מה שהתורה אומרת. כלומר הפנתאיזם. ההשקפה של התורה היא המונותאיזם. התורה מחזיקה הכל נברא, יש מאין. לא מן החומר של אלוהים. בתורה, אלוהים אין בו חומר. אפילו חומר רוחני

The 10,000 hour rule.

The 10,000 hour rule. That is to gain expertise in any subject one needs 10,00 hours.

{This rule I saw on some blog.}

When I think about it I can see this is right. You have the normal four year program in a Lithuanian yeshiva. That means 10 hours per day at minimum of learning Torah. 10* 365*4 minus Friday and Shabat.

But I wanted to add the idea of critical mass. That is the hours can't be spread apart too far. That is it is not the same thing doing 10 hours per day four years in yeshiva as doing a few hours per day over a longer period of time. [Critical mass is the idea that not just you need a certain amount of mass but that the mass needs to be close together.]