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| JOURNAL FOR GOOD AND EVIL BY MARTIN BUBER Once again Buber has managed to peek into the heart and soul of man to shed light on a difficult subject. This is really a compilation of two works. One is entitled Right And Wrong. The emphasis here is an interpretation of five Psalms. In the forward, Buber explains that this work deals with the relationship of man to the world while the second work, Images Of Good And Evil, has to do with our relationship to ourselves. Buber concludes his forward by stating, “Taken together, the two books are to be regarded as a contribution to the foundation of an ontological ethics.” Since life for Buber represents man’s dialogic relationship with one another, I believe it will be easy to see the connection between Buber’s ethics and the main thrust of this class which is ethics in human communication. PSALM 12 In the first interpretation, Buber looks at Psalm 12. He begins with the comment that man is the only one of creation that can lie because in order to do that we must first “conceive the truth.” Buber labels this as a prophetic psalm which does not just concern the generation it was written in but any “generation of the lie.” The idea of this kind of a generation is also spoken of in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the world before the flood. This is a world that eliminates any possibility of truly ethical living by watering down ethics so much that just about anything can be seen as ethical depending on the situation. As the Psalmists says, “When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.” And according to Buber, “More precisely, the subject is the disintegration of human speech as a result of this influence.” Buber further goes on to explain, “The lie has taken the place...of human truth....” I think Buber believed he lived in that generation in the 50’s and I have no doubt the generation of the lie continues to grow as we approach a new Millennium. PSALM 14 In this Psalm, Buber again sees prophecy. The difference between the evildoers of the previous Psalm and this one seems to be clear. This one refers to those within the midst of Israel rather than “outsiders.” There is clearly a rift between these two groups. Buber broadens the interpretation to include the rift between the righteous and unrighteous of all nations and groups of people. But in so doing he seems to be making the two Psalms equal in message. I would humbly propose a simpler message and that is that anyone who believes that they have the only right interpretation or “truth” and therefore are somehow superior to others will be in for a rude awakening. PSALM 82 This Psalm is not so much a Psalm about ethics in communication as it is about ethics in judging. This might speak more to how nations are to be set up and those that rule over them are to judge ethically. There seems to be an indication in this Psalm that over every nation there are angels or little “g” gods whose job it is to judge and preside over their nations. This is a notion that can also be found in Christianity where Paul speaks about the angels over cities and churches. According to this Psalmist, these “gods” have gone astray and not judged or ruled their peoples wisely and their will be a reckoning for them. Whether you believe this or not there are some basics that I have found important to my concept of ethics and the importance of community, and that is that the most important position for any community or nation should be its judges. Perhaps rather than spending so much time and energy electing one president who appoints judges, we should instead elect our judges who would appoint a president. The bottom line is the same, however, the criteria for these judges should not be the amount of money they can spend or how much charisma they have, but rather do they hold themselves and their beliefs to the highest standards possible. Buber concludes this section by alluding to the remarks of Franz Kafka who described the world as “given over to the intermediary beings, with which they play their confused game.” Kafka offered no hope, but Buber pointed out that the Psalmist did and that there is a Judge over the judges. Of course there is also precedent to a society of judges being the ideal society. As I mentioned in the previous class, Israel was originally set up this way. PSALM 73 Buber spends the most time with this Psalm. Most likely because it attempts to answer one of the most basic questions that we have in this life and that is , why do the wicked prosper? It is not an easy answer and the psalmist admits that he almost lost it before coming to the right realization. That realization is concerned with the relationship between God and man. Those who are pure in heart can always feel a relationship with God and a closeness to God regardless of the situation that they are in. It is that relationship that keeps them going, but for the “wicked,” they are only close to their possessions. It reminds me of the idea that you never hear from someone on his deathbed, “Gee, I wish I had spent more time at the office.” But rather, “ I wish I had spent more time with my family,” or “with myself.” There is a realization that there is more to who we are than can be contained in one lifetime. There is a Midrash, a story, that when the Messiah comes and the world is restored to the purity that it had at the beginning, that there is one emotion which God will eliminate from man. That is the emotion of envy. The implication is that this can only fully be removed by God, and the second implication is that this emotion is the primary cause of evil in the world. As I was thinking about how this emotion could be removed, I thought of one possible way, and that is that we would at that time have full knowledge of our lifetimes as well as the lifetimes of those around us. If we could see how through it all God’s justice was perfect, and that we were given every opportunity to trade our impure heart for a pure one, then it would be easier to accept what we have versus what our neighbor has. The conclusion that Buber makes is this: “In this Psalm two kinds of men seem to be contrasted with one another, the ‘pure in heart,’ and ‘the wicked.’ But that is not so. The ‘wicked,’ it is true, are clearly one kind of men, but the others are not....Purity is a state of being.” We must become pure in heart and only be reducing the feelings of jealousy and envy can we do that. And how can we do that very difficult task? If we lived in a country where the king was the most powerful man there, and if we knew that we could at any time have an audience with that king and that he would hear us, how concerned would we be with what our neighbor, who didn’t have that kind of access said about us? And if we knew that this same king had sent us on a mission for him where we were to be disguised as a beggar and withstand the treatment given to us in exchange for a great deal of wealth and power when we had completed that mission, how much could we endure and how much envy would we feel for the pathetic people who were being judged by the way we were treated. This seems to be the attitude that saved the psalmist and that Buber sees as our salvation. We cannot play the game according to the rules of ethics set down by this world, this generation, but by the ethics of the world to come which says, “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to others.” PSALM 1 This psalm introduces a new problem which Buber does not address, but rather ends with it, perhaps to be discussed later. That problem is, how can the wicked exist in a world that is permeated by God. To put it another way, which I was thinking about the other day, how can you have a place where the wicked go that is described as being a place far from God. How can anyplace be far from God? I think I know one answer, but I too will wait to see what Buber comes up with. Ironically, however this psalm starts with a very different theme: happiness--great happiness. This happiness of course belongs to those that follow in the path of God, but there are other paths mentioned, and here we see, as we did before what may be conceived as a different “class” of men, but Buber maintains that this is not so. He sees that there is only one “class” of men, and that is “the wicked.” Contrast with this the “sinner,” and the “pure in heart.” Both of these, Buber maintains are conditions brought about by choices that are made by the individual. He cites as proof that it is only the “wicked” who seem to have no hope of changing, because they choose not to, but a sinner can repent. According to Buber: “Since the wicked man has negated his existence he ends in nothing, his way is his judgement. But with sinners, it is different: their ‘not standing’ does not refer to the supreme judgement, it is only a human community which is unable to offer them any stability if it is not to make its own stability questionable. But entry into this community is not closed to them. They need only to carry out that turning into God’ s way....Is the way then closed to the wicked? It is not closed from God’s side...but it is closed from the side of the wicked themselves.” We shall look more at the individual way in the next section, “Images Of Good And Evil.” In this next section, Buber takes several Israelitic and Persian myths and draws from their interpretation an image that enable us to see how these two forces have controlled us in the past and how they continue to do so in the present. He divides this section into two pieces , one Israelitic and the other Persian myths which look separately at the ideas of “good” and “evil.” THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE Here Buber begins with the introduction of “good and evil,” although it could also be seen as simply the introduction of “evil” since we presume the world was “good” before this incident. But there may be an interesting question even in that. Buber points out some interesting aspects of this narrative. One is that it is very dreamlike. Two is the difference between the knowledge of good and evil and what existed prior. And three, the punishment. The dreamlike quality is something that is especially evident in the temptation and fall narratives, but could probably be felt throughout this section. Buber does very little with this observation other than to draw it in distinction to the pathos of the Persian stories of the fall. I wonder though if there isn’t something even more significant about this message to us than Buber refers to. If you are familiar with dream research, you understand that dreams play a far larger role in our lives than most people realize. They not only provide a “pressure valve” to the cares and worries of the day, but they can also enable us to creatively problem solve and to escape from this world and its troubles to a paradise of our own making. This is the key concept for me. We are the creators in this world. For those fortunate few who have learned the secrets of creative dreaming, there is the realization that no matter what horrors your dreams may begin with, there is the power within you to transform those places and events and literally “make the desert bloom” as was promised would happen when the Messiah rules in Jerusalem. What if our dreams are a glimpse, a reminder of what life was like in Gan Eden, (the Garden of Eden), and what we yet have to look forward to. This may seem horrible to those who are plagued with nightmares, but the true abilities that each and every one of us possess to change those dreams is what I would refer to as the image of the Garden times. The second concept is much more elaborated on by Buber and that is the “knowledge of good and evil.” Here we see not only the idea of opposites, but that there must be a clear distinction drawn between the past and present of the narrative. Surely we are not to believe that prior to eating that which was forbidden, Adam did not contain any spiritual knowledge. We see Adam making many choices prior to this. For instance, the naming of the animals. And yet there is an awakening that happens at this time. Buber discards the three most common assumptions being a sexual awakening, a moral consciousness awakening and a general cognizant awakening, and instead draws a wonderful conclusion that it is at this point that man realizes that it is possible to be distant from God through his actions. Man realizes that he is naked, not because he has no clothes on so much as that he is lacking something that he used to have--God closeness. It is for this reason that God seems to be looking for Adam, not because he doesn’t know where he is, but because He acknowledges Adam’s perceived distance from God and that it is evil that causes that distance. Here is where Adam’s knowledge of good and evil differs from God, and in spite of the serpents promise and God’s acknowledgment that this will make man godlike, it instead makes man miserable. The difference is that God embraces both good and evil, “God knows the opposites of being, which stem from His own act of creation; He encompasses them, untouched by them; He is as absolutely familiar with them as he is absolutely superior to them....” Man could not come to that understanding at this point in his growth and it devastated him. Out of pity then God numbered our days so that we would not have to live forever in this ignorance, but like waking up from a bad dream, he has given us opportunities to grow and learn and begin again. So here is the third portion of this section--the punishment. But Buber sees it as more of a blessing then a curse. And future narratives will prove that the danger in long life is a real one for man, and we will find God limiting the life span of those after the flood even more, but Buber will get to that later, and so I’ll wait also. KAIN We now see the progression of evil into the lives of men. As Buber points out this is really the first “iniquity,” as opposed to the Garden story. Here we have an act of knowing evil, of pre-meditated evil. And once again we see a conversation that God attempts to have that bears some similarities to the events of the Garden. God tries to show Kain a way out, the same way out we each have, “...a beast lying in wait, unto thee his desire, but prevail thou over him.” It is not evil to acknowledge your humanity, to have good and bad times, but to indulge those appetites and not move on from them, that is where evil enters. There is a knowing of evil that is intimate, just as we heard the phrase earlier in this narrative that “Adam knew Eve, and she conceived and brought forth a son.” This is the knowledge of evil that brings forth sin, it is an intimate acquaintance not a casual encounter. God’s curse to Kain can also be seen as a continuation of the curse in the Garden. Just as I talked about the purpose of death being a blessing, here we may draw another analogy from Kain’s being a “fugitive and a vagabond on earth from the literal curse to the cost of our sins requiring us to come back several times to make them right. This is the same idea as Karma in Eastern philosophies, and it is also found in Kabalistic Judaism. IMAGINATION AND IMPULSE This is the “wow” section. Here Buber shows us, or at least Buber interprets what God shows us, in regards to what we should have realized from the beginning. This is the section of the flood, and Buber points out that prior to this section God had pronounced all of the creation as “very good.” Was God deceived? Did God overlook the creation of evil when God said “very good?” Neither Buber nor I think so. Man was created with two “very good” urges, the yetser hara and the yetser hatov. It is the word yetser that Buber translates as imagery or imagination. The above terms come from the Talmudic Rabbis and are generally translated as the evil inclination and the good inclination respectively. Both are an essential part of man’s nature and God’s creation. Buber uses a wonderful analogy in that the yetser hara is the yeast added to the dough of the yetser hatov. The problem is that if you add too much yeast the dough is ruined, but if you add none, the bread never rises, never grows. It becomes plain, flat matso. Now it may be argued that too little or even none is better than too much, but the ideal is just the right mixture. God realizes that, and once again the question could be asked, did God who knows all miss this fact at first and only later come to realize it? Again, I don’t think so. Rather, I think that this is an example for us to see that even anger is not evil, but it must be controlled. God gives us the image of one who is angry. At the beginning of this section, Genesis 6:5, God pronounces that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth , and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Therefore, God repented of having made man and would destroy him. This is anger, but he does not act on it immediately. As a matter of fact a midrash tells us that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark, and all of that time was to enable man to repent and therefore change God’s mind. And at the end of that time God shows that he has given more thought to the original anger and has seen that his first conclusion was hasty. So too should we examine our anger and always realize that there are two sides to every story and that we should always temper our anger with mercy. After the flood God promises never again to destroy man. Why? “For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” (Genesis 8: 21) Now wait a minute. Isn’t that the very same reason God destroyed the world? Not exactly. Look at the difference. It is no longer “every imagination,” or “continually,” or “the thoughts.” And something was added-- “from his youth.” God’s original pronouncement was in anger and full of hasty generalizations, but allowing time to temper the anger pointed out the real truth of the matter and that is that not all imaginings are bad and the ones that are generally are a result of youth. The truth is that none of our urges are evil in themselves. It is only what we do with them. I once heard an analogy used of the maze. When you are inside of the maze all the paths look alike, but some lead nowhere while others lead you to freedom. The only way to overcome the need for trial and error is to somehow connect with someone who is somewhere on a level that overlooks the maze and can see all the paths and direct you, or to find someone who has been there before and knows the way out. Buber points out that there is only one who can successfully combine the two urges. I want to quote a portion of the final paragraph here because I can’t think of a better way to put it: This important doctrine cannot be understood as long as good and evil are conceived...as two diametrically opposite forces or directions. Its meaning is not revealed to us until we recognize them as similar in nature, the ‘evil urge’ as passion, that is the power peculiar to man, without which he can neither beget nor bring forth, but which, left to itself, remains without direction and leads astray, and the ‘good urge’ as pure direction, in other words, as unconditional direction, that towards God. To unite the two urges implies:: to equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders I capable of great love and great service. Thus and not otherwise can man become whole.” (97) This is pure Cabalistic understanding. PART TWO THE PRIMAL PRINCIPLES The main point that Buber brings out in this section is the similar idea that from one source is born good and evil. However, in polytheistic beliefs these players all become gods. There also seems to be some strands of the myth that imply a similar concept as we looked at previously. That being the necessity of merging the opposites, although the most popular beliefs call for a distinct choice to be made and battles fought to make that choice between the two. The distinctive element seems to lead to what Buber calls the “psychological problem of evil,” in that we do good consciously but evil unconsciously which had its greatest evolution in early Christendom. THE LIE AGAINST BEING Herein is discussed the story of the primeval king Yima also known in some stories as Yama. Buber doesn’t mention this, but I wonder if there is any relationship here to the idea of Yin and Yang? This story, however, does not deal so much with opposites, but what may be the first sin with very limited parallels to Kain. Yima begins as a wise ruler who prays for and is given a perfect world with no death and no evil. Hundreds of years later we have a world overrun and no real solution so the god Ahura Mazda chooses to cover the world with ice and then with the water of the thaw. Yima is to take the seed of the best in the world into a citadel to be saved from this. Somehow Yima changes in all of this and believes “the lie.” This is apparently a reference to pride. He believes himself to be more important than god, he releases the demons that he had hitherto contained and ultimately they kill Yima making him the first to die, but also the beginning of death for everyone. This theme is picked up by Augustine, according to Bub These two sections are not as clear to me as the previous ones, but Buber will use his next section to try and tie it all together, so I’ll withhold comment until we’re through with that or at least into it. PART THREE THE TRUTH OF THE MYTHS In this section, Buber tries to compare the two traditions and the basic comparison he draws is that in both we see the draw towards “evil” being a desire to be God-like. Looking at it this way it is easy to see just how closely related are “good” and “evil.” For the goal of good is also to be like God. The difference, just as with the leaven or yeast example is one of mixture. If we understand that God must always temper his power with mercy and compassion then we realize that power without these attributes is unbalanced and leads us to that “slippery slope.” There is really not much more that is added in this section. Buber talks a little about the idea of affirmation being another aspect of this choosing to be God-like. He points out that animals don’t need affirmation to feel good about what they do, but humans need this often. The problem arises when insecurity becomes intense and brings self-affirmation to the point where the individual sees no need for anyone else and soon elevates himself or herself to a level equal to God. This was the Yima story. This then is the crux of it. Where we generally find that ethics and communication don’t mix is where the communicator pictures him/herself as being above or separate from those receiving the communication. Once again we cannot follow the simple rule of Hillel to do nothing you find hateful to another unless we consider that another is just as worthy as you are to be treated this way. Ethical communication may certainly be passionate as long as the direction of the passion is towards establishing a connection between I and You. The moment our direction moves towards I and It where I the speaker view my audience as things to manipulate, no matter how good my intentions, I have failed. I have increased the yeast and the dough is spoiling. I am reading another book by Chaim Luzzatto, a rabbi of the 18th century, called The Path Of The Just. It is entirely a book of ethics, and in it he discusses Loshen Hara which is speaking evil about another person. This includes not only lies, but even truths that could embarrass someone, and much more. The concept really encompasses the whole concept of unethical communication. The amazing thing is the view that Luzzatto and all Rabbinical authority since him take on the consequences of this. Luzzatto clearly states that there are only three “cardinal sins” in Judaism. These are things which if you are told either do this or I’ll kill you, you must choose death. Every other commandment but these three can be broken if your life can be saved by doing so. These three are idolatry, adultery, and murder and Luzzatto says that Loshen Hara is equal to all three of these. If we truly believed that what a different world we’d live in. |
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