Being a good person internally doesn’t mean wanting to be a good person – Transcript

Chassidish vs. Litvish Styles and the Nature of Choice: An Introduction to Internal vs. External Goodness

Opening: Chassidish and Litvish Styles in Art

Instructor: Since this sheet is mostly about bashing Litvaks, just one of our gags that go on. So I saw in Rabbi Tzadon, over there, has a book about some Chagall paintings. You know Chagall? Mark Chagall was a painter?

Student: An artist, no?

Instructor: Yeah, an artist. I used to have his picture of a Jew here. I told my wife this other doesn’t work in my new design. We should throw it out. Anyways, and he was a very, I don’t know how you call it, imaginative, very like, what’s that book? Let’s see. It’s a blue book. It’s called The Kabbalah of Relation.

Student: Oh, this one.

Instructor: You could look at one of his pictures that you see already that his paintings are fantasy. They’re not realistic. They’re not based on anything in the world. They’re based on things that are in the imagination. More abstract, I guess.

Student: So what? More abstract.

Instructor: Yeah, I don’t know what it’s called, impressionistic, fantasy, something.

Student: Oh, this is odd.

Instructor: Yeah, they’re very odd. They’re not, some of them are really odd, and some of them are not very odd. Yeah. So you understand what I’m talking about?

Student: Yeah, bring the book.

Instructor: Oh, okay. So it says in this book, Reb Tzalel [Rabbi Bezalel Naor] quotes, I’m saying, that he [Chagall] was comparing himself to another painter, but more, it’s a bizarre, with more structure. And he said, ah, so I’m a Chassidismist. He says, paint a little stuff, see them at Litzbach’s [Litvak’s]. It’s a Chassidic painting, and that guy’s at Litzbach’s. So from here, we see it’s very, very Chassidic and Litzbach emotional for him. Like a style. See, it’s these Chassidic and Litzbach painting styles. Now, like this.

Introduction to the Topic of Choice

Instructor: Now we’re going to learn a little bit about choice. We’re going to try. Right, we hear about, I talked about free choice and free will and—

Student: Yeah, yeah.

Instructor: So we’re off to continue a little bit. I’ll tell you why. And no such thing as free will. I didn’t say this is just a thing. I said it’s not important. There’s a lot to talk about this, but let’s talk a little bit. Let’s clarify one or two points to be more than enough that make sense.

Why Are We Talking About Choice?

Instructor: So we discussed that why are we talking about free will entirely? No, I’m sorry. Why are we talking about choice, not free will? Okay, why are we talking about choice to begin with? We’re talking about it because choice is one of the things that makes what we are into something that we are responsible for. That is the really interesting paradox. I don’t know if we said it this way in the last class. I said it in the barback [Yiddish: in the other class] in this way.

Two Approaches: Actions vs. Internal Character

The Actions-Based Approach

Instructor: In other words, there’s these two things, okay. We could talk about actions just actions, things that the person does. That’s one thing, lit facts [literal facts], right? Let’s talk about actions, right?

You read the, for example, I was really, it’s very interesting because for example I was reading the level of tattoo muscles insurance [Mesillat Yesharim] and here there’s a version with a dialogue in the beginning, you know?

Student: Yeah, that you know that, you know that.

Instructor: Yeah, that black book.

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: The week after [Ramchal/Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto] was a Renaissance guy and he was after the Renaissance, but in their times it was fashionable to write dialogues in the manner of Plato and so on, not only to write treatises. And many of his books he wrote in both of these ways. Dialogue form, have you ever—and I recently bought in Judeca Plaza [Judaica Plaza], it’s called a dialogue. Well, it’s called—

Student: Yeah, that’s so weird. I tried, I didn’t get very far, but he was a lot more, he’s a lot more, he’s a Platonist, kind of a Platonist. I found the beginning a bit tedious, so I didn’t get too far. Probably the translation is not so nice. It was so, it’s hard to translate this kind of English.

Instructor: There’s a University of Toronto one.

Student: They had a Hebrew one, I saw.

Instructor: Yeah, I have the Hebrew one. It was done by Mohamed Bialik [Chaim Nachman Bialik] or something.

Student: Yeah.

The Purpose of Dialogue Form

Instructor: So it was a thing to do this dialogue form. And dialogue form is useful at least because it shows you what someone is really up against sometimes. Like who he’s trying to argue. Sometimes you write an article and it’s not clear who you’re fighting with. So in a dialogue, you need to have an opponent.

The best dialogue I saw was Shadal’s [Shmuel David Luzzatto’s]. Okay.

Student: Yeah, because it’s not just strong to be knocked down, it’s a full-throated emotional, you know—

Instructor: Yeah, then how do you call it, is like partners in the dialogue, interlocutors, are not very advanced usually. They’re not very good representatives of the other side.

Ramchal’s Opponent: The Talmudist

Instructor: But in any case, if you use, I will noticing there and with the more reading of that because it’s related to all the subjects that we’re talking about, but his big thing in the beginning, he is, he’s up against something he calls someone he calls a Talmudist. It’s a nigleh [revealed Torah/Talmudic] person, a Litvak. And he tells the Litvak that he doesn’t know there’s naled [hidden/esoteric Torah], right? It’s a big thing, which is something we agree with very much, right? But we don’t agree with the way Mesillat Yesharim [Mesillat Yesharim] frames it. I’m not, this is not a Mesillat Yesharim bashing class either. We’re not here to—I’m just trying to use them to illustrate a point.

So what he’s up against over there is very clearly someone who thinks that actions are enough. He’s like, what do we have to do in life? Well, we have to do what the law says. And of course, you have to have kavanah [intention], but that’s not the major thing. The thing is actions. So it’s an externalized version, more like we say sometimes it’s making people into machines, which are things that are judged by their products, not by what they are or what they produce. You produce mitzvot [commandments], you’re a good guy. You produce aveirot [transgressions], you’re a bad guy. That’s actions, right?

The Internal Approach and Its Challenges

Instructor: Now, actions for the most part are there. That’s the theory of actions. Now contrary to that, there’s this theory of something more internal, right? Something we say what you’re on the inside, things like that. And now that theory is something that needs a lot of explanation, a lot of differentiation within it. What do we really mean by being something on the inside, what you are, not only what you do? That’s something very, I think that’s given to very many simplifications and many nonsense that people say and believe based on that, right?

So as an example of clarifying that, we’ve got a lot of clarification on that point in our discussions of actions and character and middot [character traits], which is not something external but—and I think that there’s both kind of mistakes. There’s many kinds of mistakes in this.

The Key Distinction: Good Person vs. Self-Controlled Bad Person

Instructor: But to be very clear, when we talk about, when we talk about middot, right, having good middot, we are not talking about some active actions, right? Because the whole point, to make this point very sharp, the whole point of being a good person in our style world, the number [Rambam/Maimonides] world, is that a good person is someone who doesn’t necessarily do something different than a bad person who is self-controlled. That’s the important difference. There’s good people and there’s bad people who have self-control.

Student: That sounds very Tanya.

Comparison with Tanya

Instructor: Yes, I agree. I agree, and this is another thing. I think that the Tanya makes some of the mistakes that are placed from the Raman’s [Rambam’s] point of view. The Tanya agrees very much that it’s not enough to do the good things. I think that’s why the time—just to be very clear, because he says that in rasha [wicked person] could be someone or a benoni [intermediate person]—

Student: Exactly.

Instructor: So I think that, right, the Tanya breathes into very sharp relief with that statement. Although I’m not, I think that what the Tanya calls that tzadik [righteous person], what he calls eternal, is not the same thing we’re calling alternative. The beginning of perek [chapter] says—

Student: Yes, no, just like this. Why does he compare the two though?

Instructor: Yeah, because I’m—and we’re going to get the perek and discuss it at some point in the next 20 years. Very case explicitly about this, but it was a hand-in-hand, maaseh [actions] and then middot, all you, me, emunah [faith]. I don’t know if that’s what I remember.

Student: No, why do you think goes hand-in-hand in there? It says just like you have to be good at middot and this, right?

Instructor: No, no, I know what you mean. I don’t think that’s what it means, that word, that line. But let’s stay here. We’ll get to that. Yeah, I don’t think, I don’t think, I think the second thing is also not, also internal there. I’ll explain. In other words, it’s still middot, it’s not maaseh. Of course there’s maaseh that go with the middot, but what he’s trying to say about deot [opinions/beliefs] over there means opinions, not middot. Deot over there doesn’t mean middot anymore. The change is meaningless.

Student: Oh, really?

Instructor: I think.

Student: I’ll have to read it outside.

Instructor: Wait, let me come back.

Tanya’s Approach: Agreement and Disagreement

Instructor: In this sense, so yes, to be very clear, in this sense, the Tanya, and I think this is why the Tanya gets into this all. And the Tanya, as the good Litvak, ties himself in the knots by trying to explain this and working it out with the gemaras [Talmudic passages] and so on. And I’m pretty sure that Tanya’s gemara is the wrong one for this subject. It’s not. It’s how they come, but of course, doesn’t mean that it’s ever. And maybe it means like that in the [Raya Mehemna, a section of the Zohar] that he quotes, another thing that there needs to be research needed.

Broad Agreement Across Traditions

Instructor: But Netanyahu [likely: Ramchal/the author] is trying very hard to establish this thing like Chassidus in the same, in the very broad sense, right? In the very broad sense, Chassidus and Mussar and Kabbalah and philosophy, they all agree with this statement that actions are not enough. They’re not only enough, they’re not the main thing.

The Unresolved Question

Instructor: But how to spell this out, to spell out what it means, this internal thing, what does that consist of, that is something where people get very confused. And what I want to do today is to give some clarification of that based on Rambam, based on Aristotle’s understanding of this. I think that that’s the thing. So it seems to me that today that it’s a different—

The Nature of Internal Virtue: Character Traits vs. Mere Actions

Completing the Mesillat Yesharim Discussion

Ramchal’s Opponent: The “Bad Scholar”

Instructor: So we’re saying that it’s agreed by… So wait, I was starting to talk about Ms. Schurman [Mesillat Yesharim], I didn’t finish my sentence, so let’s try to finish that sentence and then get to this one. Ms. Schurman, as an example, is very clearly against someone who will say that, but, for example, he pretends that that person is a scholar, and that his opponent, Luzzatto’s opponent, is like a scholar who reads philosophy and science and so on, but of course that scholar is a very bad scholar because he didn’t read the Ethics. And he’s saying that about his…

Student: Yeah, well he doesn’t say this, I’m saying this.

Instructor: He’s telling him how, his main point is how there is a wisdom, there is something to be studied in Ethics. That’s really Ramchal’s point in his hakdamah [introduction], in both versions, but here you see it clearer in the dialogue. Because according to the opinion of the people who are into action, everyone agrees that they need some level of kavanah [intention] or some kind of internal, otherwise it’s not you doing it and so on, but they think all that is simple because that’s basic. And then his descriptions, like the Chassidim—Ramchal talks about Chassidim—the Chassidim, the pious, the super pious people who are busy all day purifying their internality, like it looks sometimes as if you’re wasting your time, what are you even talking about by all your mussar [ethical teachings] and you’re just repeating simple stuff over and over, and Luzzatto is trying to answer that charge.

The Baal HaTanya’s Position

Student: Well then you have the Baal HaTanya [Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi] who says it’s good stuff but it’s not ma’akiv [essential/indispensable], you know, it’s not…

Instructor: Right, right. So I think that I don’t know very well what the Baal HaTanya thinks precisely about this. I have a feeling that he’s, at least from my standpoint, also somewhat confused, but I can’t really show it right now. But what I think is that we need to distinguish a whole bunch of things in this internal levels of things.

The Core Distinction: Having a Middah vs. Doing the Action

The Philosopher’s Internalism

Instructor: So let me—there’s one thing that I already said many times. Does Mesillat Yesharim put at the beginning action because it’s like zahir [careful observance] is the reason?

Student: Yeah yes, but we have to, I don’t know how we understand it.

Instructor: I also think that he misunderstands zahir. There’s a lot to talk about. I’m just using that as a way to talk about this thing. I was saying that his opponent is not really a philosopher. He pretends like, oh, we need mussar, we need whatever this story, Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism], whatever it is exactly that he’s putting in against that. It’s not really true because philosophers are the ones that invented this kind of internalism, and of course they don’t—Aristotle at least—doesn’t understand it in the way that he understands it. I think there’s a big difference here which we have to get to.

What Does It Mean to Have a Middah?

Instructor: For example, one thing that we’ve talked about many times, maybe we’ll be able to make it clear today, is that internal, we say middah [character trait], so what does that mean to have a middah versus to just do the action, right? Someone can do the action not by having it, not by being—right, someone can, for example, act in a courageous way, do a courageous act without being courageous, without having courage.

Student: And what will it be doing it by?

Instructor: Well, by imitation you could say, or doing it by some kind of spur of the moment decision. Remember that a character trait is something that’s not spur-of-the-moment, it’s something settled that has a more long-term existence in a person. Or you can do it by self-control, right? Like say I’m afraid—well it’s not like the courageous person is not afraid, but again to that—but I don’t really have this motivation which courage is, but I somehow do, I have it and… okay, we can talk about that separately because self-control is not very complicated, but those are the—that’s why maybe when we’re talking about now, maybe self-control isn’t the best place to split, although it’s also split there. But it’s more complicated.

Acting Without the Character Trait

Instructor: So we could see people acting, we could say, let’s say now, by imitation or by just spur-of-the-moment decisions, which doesn’t mean that they’re acting from that habit, from that character. He’s not a courageous person. He did some courageous things in his life, or he did a courageous thing today. Maybe by doing that many times, he’ll become courageous, like that, but he’s not courageous yet, right?

The Rambam’s Position on Internal vs. External

Instructor: That’s the important distinction in the Rambam [Maimonides] between the internal and the external. He doesn’t call it internal-external, he just calls it having them in there, not having them in there. This is very important—that he discounts that completely. No, those must come to complete this, right? It’s just not a good person. Because the reason, and the reason for this is obvious, right? Because as he says, for example, nobody would call a good person someone who hates being good, right?

The Christian Contrast

Instructor: This is a very Christian thing, because Christians say, if you ask them, how could someone go to hell if they were a righteous person? And they say, well, they could be internally wicked.

Student: So wait, I think that this is a different interpretation of that, in some sense. Because let me—because I think that that’s, I mean, what would it mean to be internally wicked, although you’re good? I’m not sure.

Instructor: I think that they always say that you have the potential to be wicked, that you’re tainted by the original sin. Even if it looks like someone’s righteous, they’re not really righteous because they’re tainted by original sin.

Student: Okay, so then this would be something based off a similar way of thinking, but again the question is, what does this really require? What does it mean to be internally righteous, to be really righteous?

Defining Internal Righteousness

Two Components: Liking It and Having a Stable Disposition

Instructor: Now, like I said, firstly, all it means is to like it. Or to have a stable disposition to do it. Something like, we say, he’s that kind of person, not he’s a person that did it. The difference between colored people and people of color. Something like that.

The Critical Point: Internal Doesn’t Mean Inward-Focused

Instructor: So that’s the thing, but one—so now I want to—there’s one thing that we already did many times, which is to explain that these internal parts of this, so it’s having a middah, having a character trait, having a virtue, right, having a virtue, and we call it a malakah [Arabic-derived term for settled disposition/virtue], which is a translation from Arabic. Having a virtue isn’t equal to doing everything correct, it’s something more than that, it’s being that kind of person. But something very important to notice is that unlike an extreme internal version of this, that does not mean that the internal liking or the internal part of it is turned internally, right? So it’s still about something in action. Does this make sense?

The Example of Anavah (Humility)

Humility as Other-Regarding

Instructor: So, for example, we talked about the example of… Which example do we talk about? Like a middah that Chassidim like to talk about, anavah [humility], right? Humility. Humility, and it’s mentioned here in the list of middot [character traits]. Humility for Aristotle and for the Rambam is a way of relating to other people. That means speaking to people in the appropriate… with the appropriate level of… How do you call it? Being equal to them, or not putting yourself above them, not looking down at people, in the appropriate amount. Because to some extent you need to match your station in life. If you’re a talmid chacham [Torah scholar] there’s all these discussions—what is the appropriate level? But like every middah, it’s just in the appropriate amount. It’s not like to be a shifchah [servant] to everyone, that’s not the idea. But that’s a different discussion.

The Key Point About Anavah

Instructor: What I’m trying to get at is that anavah, humility, is an other-regarding middah. It’s about how you act, it’s about how you act, right? It’s not about how you feel internally. Of course now there is an internal part, but the internal part is not what I think of myself, it’s how I like acting to other people. You get the difference? Most people when you talk about anavah they think that it’s internal, totally internally focused, like what I think about myself when I sleep in my bed. Nobody cares—I mean at least for middot.

Middot Are All Other-Regarding

Instructor: Middot are all other-regarding, besides for some, which is complicated, but in general, middot are all other-regarding. In other words, they’re all about actions. They’re about how you like. Now, the difference between someone who has internal anavah, someone who just acts the part, is that the person who just acts the part doesn’t like it, it hurts them to some extent, to be in an equal relationship with other people. It hurts them, or even below them. But how do you like acting equal to people when you internally…

Student: That’s a question for…

The Nature of Internal Virtue: Distinguishing True Middot from Fantasy

The Primary Distinction: Middot Are Externally-Focused Even When Internal

That’s the number one distinction, and this is a very important distinction, because I don’t think you will find, at least for these middot—there are some middot that are, I mean, you could talk about middot between the person and God, or between—we discussed this over here, I think, already, that even a middah like perishut [temperance], which is what people think is a middah about how you relate to yourself, to pleasure, is really about, has a social function. So it’s really about how you act. It’s not really about how you feel. It’s not about how much you like food. It’s about you eating in the appropriate amount, and so on. So it’s at least an action. There’s another level, but it’s not our conversation now. What determines the correct amount of liking physical pleasures is what is conducive to society, and not what is—that’s a different discussion. There’s other levels of this, but that’s the meaning over there.

So that’s one thing. That would be one important distinction. I don’t know what the Tanya thinks. I don’t know what Mussar Seforim think—all of these people, all these things are research needed. But what is important is that this internal version of internal internality is not an internally-focused internality. It’s still externally focused because what the middah is, is the settled liking of the action. It’s not something entirely disconnected from action.

In other words, and what’s the big difference is, that it doesn’t really make sense—somewhat makes sense, but doesn’t make sense as much—to say, “I’m really a good person, but I don’t act well. I end up fighting with everyone, but really I love them.” Because what do you mean? Why do you fight with them if you like not fighting? But you’re saying “I love them”—you mean to say, you don’t mean “I love them in my heart,” you mean “I don’t like fighting with them.” And that ain’t just a contradiction. Now that happens too, but then it’s a real contradiction. It’s different, right?

Internal Conflict: Akrasia and the Lack of Self-Control

You’ll notice now I can go back to talk about what we call internal conflict, right? Not being self-controlled—in Greek, akrasia [ἀκρασία: lack of self-control], not being self-controlled. Or in Rambam’s language—Rambam only has a self-controlled person, but the opposite of that, not a self-controlled person.

Then we can understand something interesting here, that this is not me—this is the important thing—it does not mean acting not in sync with what I feel internally when it’s self-focused, right?

The Middah of Friendship: A Case Study

For example, let’s talk about something like the correct amount of loving your friends, of being good to your friends, right? Which is the middah of friendship. Friendship is a very important middah, right? We have to be friendly to other people. Middah tovah [good character trait]. Very important. Much neglected.

Now, the middah of friendship—well, the activities of friendship, you know what they are. You hang out with them and you help them and you do business with them and there’s levels of that and so on. But what is the internal thing? It’s being the kind of person who is a good friend, right? So we could say he likes—there’s more to it than liking, there’s more to it than liking as we’ll get to today or next time—but at least liking.

Now sometimes people say, “I love my friends, but somehow every time I get together we end up fighting, so I end up becoming or being the worst friend, right? I’m not so—” Some people talk about this as the conflict, right, the Tanya’s conflict.

Digression: The Tanya’s Unique Focus

By the way, the Tanya doesn’t talk about other human beings at all. That’s one big difference between Tanya and every other Mussar book and so on. They’re just focused on internal—the Tanya is only focused on between you and God. He’s never focused on human beings. So it’s a different discussion.

But the Tanya’s version of this is, I think, also similar to this in some sense. Because the Tanya says things like this: “I love God internally, but I end up fighting with him all the time.” Well, what does that mean? It’s not the same. At least it doesn’t—you see that by him, the internal thing, it means something different than what it means here.

False Conflict vs. True Conflict

What it means here is to say that I have someone that would say, “Well, I love my friends”—in other words, when I’m self-regarding, when I’m thinking to myself, I say, “Well, I like them,” but then I’m not a friend to them. So you don’t have the middah of friendship. You might have some other middah, I don’t know, or some other—yes, something else—but the middah of friendship is not something you have.

The middah of friendship is the being a good friend, stably, the somehow automatically—we could say, not a good word, but—being the kind of person who is a good friend, and not having to look up your friendship book, “How to Win Friends”—you don’t have to look up that book every time you go out with your friends because you’re already that kind of person. That’s what having the virtue of friendship is.

And now we could see that the conflict people often talk about is very similar to that weird person that would say, “I like my friends, but I’m not a friend to them.” That’s not a conflict between the internal and the external in the Aristotelian sense. That’s a conflict between some fantasy you have or some other thing—you could find the word for it—and what you really are. It’s a different level conflict. Does that make sense? Clear?

When Real Conflict Exists: The Need for Self-Control

If there is a conflict, then now there is conflict like that. There are conflicts. There are people who would say, in some sense, “I am a good friend, but I don’t—” Sometimes someone says, “Well, I’m a good friend, but sometimes I get mad easily. And then I don’t act like a good friend.” That would be a better example of someone having the real conflict, which then he needs self-control.

Before that, you don’t even need self-control. You need something else. You need to learn what the middah is at all, or to start having it in some sense.

Student: Saying he could be good at the middah but some outside other middah is conflicting with that something, or right, or somebody something like something like you forget something like—

Instructor: Well, of course part of the middah is not to get mad at your friend. It’s another thing. It could be—we are just, I mean, you could call it that way, but it just works. A good friend is not someone who gets mad at his friend all the time. In some sense, maybe. At least not too much.

So you could say something like, “Well, yeah, my problem, my anger problems are getting in the way of my friendship.” Now you have, “I am a friend, but I’m somehow not—it’s not coming, it’s not being actualized correctly.” Now you have a problem. It’s a different level problem.

You understand the difference between these two versions of internality?

The Fantasy Problem: Those Who Think They Have Virtue But Don’t

There’s someone who just thinks that he likes his friends because when he thinks by himself that he likes them, but he doesn’t actually have any virtue, any internal virtue of friendship. That person for sure goes to hell. Understand? Because it’s not—you think I’m saying you’re really a bad person who fantasizes himself a good person? This is actually something that happens. People fantasize themselves—the other people, because their fantasies are not about other people, are not about living in the world, they’re not about acting in the world, right?

The Talmid Chacham Example

My fantasy is that I’m a big talmid chacham [Torah scholar], because—not talmid chacham, a lamdan [one who learns intensively]—because something like I would have wanted to be the kind of guy that learns a lot or something like that. But I don’t. That’s not what you could—you can’t come and say, “Well, I’m internally a lamdan and just have some external hindrance, something that’s blocking me to actualize it.” That’s not what’s going on.

Because someone like that, that’s someone who loves to actually learn. But sometimes he gets angry, or sometimes he gets distracted. Then we can talk about that. But you’re not someone that loves to learn. You love the idea of being that person. That’s another level.

Or my example of friendship would be even clearer. You understand what I’m saying?

So this is important. So that’s one important clarification. It’s true that these middot are internal.

The Hierarchy of Levels: It Can Always Be Worse

Student: Is there a lower level than that?

Instructor: There’s lower levels than everything. You can always go lower. Never be mashiach-ish [messianic/overly optimistic]. It’s always worse. It can always be worse. And you can not even have the fantasy, right? That’s what I’m saying.

Student: Yeah, it’s very nice, but what I’m getting at is this thing—when people say, every year there’s a good—

[Chunk ends]

The Social Necessity of Internal Virtue and the High-Trust Society

The Purpose of Internal Virtue: Social Function, Not Pure Spirituality

Student: What is that for?

Instructor: All right, I think it’s a real thing. It’s a whole different level of discussion. So that’s one thing. That’s a very important distinction here. What did I say? Something I forgot. Oh, now there are other—

Student: No, just to answer you more clearly.

Instructor: What we’re talking about here is that even the internal part we’re talking about is still not for yourself. Rambam [Maimonides] would say this clearly in the last chapter—it still affects the quality of the heart. Yes, for example, the clear version of something like this: someone who is—I don’t know how you call the correct middah [character trait] regarding others’ money, right? Something like the opposite of a thief, right? Or someone—I don’t remember what it’s called—something like a honest person, this is a just person, a trustworthy person, right?

Now the shelo lishma [not for its own sake] version, or the external version of that, which is he doesn’t like it, right? He’s just afraid of going to jail, right? That would be someone who does—now he does everything correctly. We call it shelo lishma, does everything correctly. He’s trustworthy as long as the police is looking. But since many situations, the police are not looking, or it’s hard, right? When there’s something that—and social circumstances have many such circumstances. It’s not really true that society only cares, can only care about the level of shelo lishma. Because we do need, for social purposes, we also need good people who have what we call a moral backbone, right? They have to be really good. And that means he likes being trustworthy for its own sake, right? He thinks that it’s good for him. I mean, he’s the trustworthy person, not he’s an untrustworthy person who acts within the bounds of society, doesn’t want to go to jail, and so on. He’s a really good person, and that’s the kind of internality that is needed for social work, right?

We don’t really want the world where everyone is only acting out of external fears or things like that. We do need, even for social reasons—or the same thing for all methods, I think, at least—because the law is not the only external thing that forces people, right? You know, like honor and you’re going to be embarrassed and other things, but it still doesn’t cover enough. There’s many human situations in which what stands between a bad society and a good society—people talk about high-trust societies. I forgot the sociologist who invented that term, I forgot who, in the 70s, like recently.

High-Trust Societies vs. Low-Trust Societies

There’s a concept of high-trust society versus a low-trust society. And the high-trust societies, it’s not like it’s disconnected from the enforcement of laws and so on, but it’s also really an educational thing. At least that’s what Aristotle and Plato and all these people would say. It means that people are educated to act mostly in trustworthy ways.

I saw a study once where they say the high-trust societies are the most, the biggest ancient—if you—

Student: Yeah, because—and you’ve never seen crime in those societies because you’re constantly afraid of your life.

Instructor: Certain kinds of crime, except for your life. More like if you have to kill someone, you’re probably already past the level of having a high-trust society. But so things like, yeah, people say things like this.

The Tax System Example: America vs. Europe/Israel

Things like in the United States, if you lie—I don’t know to what extent it works anymore, but it used to be like this thing in America—the taxes mostly run on the honor system. The IRS believes you when you tell them how much money you make, and they expect you to say the truth. Maybe they don’t, but that’s—the American ideal is something like this, that they expect you to say the truth. And because they expect you to say the truth, if they catch you lying, they’re going to be really, really mad at you.

In a different system, the European system for the most part, if you go to Israel, you’ll see they don’t expect you to say the truth. And therefore, they don’t believe you for what—you can’t write anything out of taxes return without a receipt, without the state already knowing about it beforehand, because they’re assuming that everyone is lying. And therefore, when someone is caught with a lie, it’s like, okay, we’ll put you in jail for a month, whatever, move on. In the sense that’s something like what you’re describing.

But in any case, for my purpose the important thing would be that high-trust society, which is a useful society to live in, even begashmius [in material terms], it’s not only like berdokhne [spiritually], it’s also pretty useful. It cannot work only by people acting that way. People have to create a certain kind of human being, so we need schools and education. Of course culture educates, the TV educates you and so on, right?

Why Forms and Rules Alone Are Insufficient

Because there’s the variety—I think this is one of the reasons at least—because the variety of human situations is so varied that you can’t rely on there’s a form for everything. There’s never going to be a form for everything. Therefore, if you rely on forms, there’s always going to be people that find the loopholes. If you rely on people to have their judgment and to be more or less honest, decent people, you will end up with a lot more stable society, something that’s a lot more reliable.

The Murder Example: Why We Need People Who Don’t Want to Kill

In that way, this internal thing that we’re looking for—this is why we don’t call a person—for example, last week I talked about murder. Nobody would call someone—even the people that are all about from zachar agra [remembering reward] and the bigger zachar [reward] you have the more schar [reward] you have—none of them would be friends with someone who goes around saying, “You know, really I would be a murderer. I would kill everyone that cuts me off in traffic. I’m scared because—I’m not even—I’m scared. I recognize that it would be bad for me, therefore I overcome my urges to murder everyone.”

Don’t be that guy’s friend, right? He’s a bad guy. I mean, he’s a bad guy.

Student: Yeah, that’s rather—he’s a sho’ah bits rise [a completely wicked person]. It’s how the key should get the most high of everyone.

Instructor: Well, no, he’s a bad guy because he’s sick. A normal person, a good person—which means just a person that was well educated, it’s not like this is natural, this is something that was worked on for since Hashem came—and has seen and said, it’s a whole working on getting people to not want to kill people. It’s not enough to get people to recognize that they shouldn’t kill people, or to kill everyone that kills other people and have them be scared of killing people. We need people to not want to kill people, because that’s the only way that we get less murder in the long run.

Internalist Ethics for Social Purposes

And that is why we say that it’s not enough to be externally good—internally good. This is contrary to what you get—that’s what you’re saying. The other versions are different. Contrary to what you’re getting, say this. And in the more extremely internalist versions of ethics where it seems that internalist ethics are antisocial—these are internalist ethics for the purpose of being social. Because what they’re about is still the social activity. They’re not about—when I say I don’t want to murder, I don’t mean I have a pure soul. Maybe it’s true that it’s a pure soul. That’s a different discussion. That would be caring about different criteria. But I don’t care about, well, my soul is pure, it doesn’t want to murder anyone. We could do this interpretation, but that would be a whole different class. What I care about is something like, this guy, you can pretty much rely on him to not murder anyone, unless it will be very important.

Student: For the existentialists, you know, the internal, there’s something about the Western ad society, you know, that’s—

Instructor: Right, very good. We’re going to talk about the existentialists now in a sec. Did we talk about that yet?

Transition: Another Reason for Valuing the Internal

Now, this is one thing. Another thing, which we have to distinguish, is another reason—and that’s a more tricky reason. Now, a more tricky thing is to distinguish another reason that you were trying to mention about why people value the internal or something to do with will, volition, wanting, choosing, things like that. And that has to do with an interesting thought, which I don’t know how much I could…

The Paradox of Virtue and Choice: What Makes Actions Truly “Mine”?

The Foundational Agreement: Actions Must Come From You

We all agree that something that is not about what comes—we all agree that an action or a habit that doesn’t come from you doesn’t count as a good human thing, right? This is really why we get this whole discussion of will and choice and all of that, right? That’s the first assumption that’s agreed on, at the most simple level, by everyone, right?

If someone—let’s say, was born is not entirely the correct thing—country, even, for example. Also being forced to do something. If we’re forced, that’s for sure—that would be one extreme example. Or if it’s something entirely natural. Let’s say, I’m not sure about this, let’s say if something’s entirely natural, something like someone who’s beautiful, right? Someone’s just physically beautiful doesn’t get a lot of moral credit for that. It’s not a moral thing at all, right? If you can praise him, but you will just be praising God for creating beautiful people. You will not be praising the person as a person.

So this is agreed on. We agree that we need some ingredient, something in the vicinity of choice and will and so on, that makes what I am, what I do, mine—what makes me as a human being, it makes me responsible for it. Otherwise, it doesn’t have a moral value. It just might be good. I’m not saying it’s bad. It looks like it’s not good to be beautiful and tall and all those nice things, but it’s not good in the human sense, not good in the virtues, in the human virtue sense. It’s good in a different sense.

The Central Question: What Makes Me “Me” Most?

Now there’s really a question there. There’s really a question of what the human being is, what makes me me most. And here you’ll see two almost contrary opinions—not contrary things, one opinion and one correct knowledge.

The Aristotelian Position: Stable Character Over Momentary Choice

One is the thought that we discussed, for example, last time from Aristotle, is that something is more about you, it belongs more to you—and this may be the question I’m asking, that’s why I said that there’s some kind of paradox here, right? Because we say that something that you do because you have that virtue, because you have that middah [character trait], is more about you than something you do because you chose it in the moment, or because—we don’t even call that choice—it’s something like spur of the moment, right?

So for example, if someone acts in a—courage is a complicated thing because it has all these emergency situations, which is something that makes it hard to think about. It’s something like someone who has the—how do you call it—the middah of being a person that gives, gives, right? What? Generous, yeah. Liberality and generosity, things like that.

Someone who’s correctly generous—we would understand that he is—if we’re looking, right, you could be generous in all these ways. You could be generous out of forcing yourself to give. You could be generous because I don’t know, I was in the mood, something like that. I gave you a million dollars for no reason, and the rest of tomorrow I don’t. And I could be too generous also. That’s a different discussion.

We say that the person who is stably generous—in other words, he is a generous person, is not only doing generous things—that that is more about him than the one who chooses it.

The Apparent Paradox: Do Automatic Actions Belong Less to Us?

And this is where there’s somewhat of a paradox, because we understand that—the paradox here is the question that people often ask, and we discussed here—that if the goal of life is be a good person, good people, we say, sometimes do the good things automatically. Now, language is from these—have virtues follow good actions. They follow in an almost necessary sense. Not really necessary—human beings, not like a table—but it follows somehow, comes out of that automatically. It’s not something you have—there’s no step in between. That’s important. There’s no step in between of having the virtue to handling the actions, like they have to choose it afterwards.

Then people ask, “Okay, so then it turns out that those actions are less of you because they become automatic, so to speak,” right?

The True Aristotelian Response: What We Are vs. What We Choose in the Moment

Now the true thought, or the opposite thought, which is Aristotle’s thought, which is the Rambam’s [Maimonides’] thought, is that it’s not true. Why? Because what they are looking for is not something that is most determined by your will in the moment and could have been otherwise. That’s not what they see as most human in us, as what mostly binds things, makes things ours.

What they think is most human in us is the things that tell us about what we are. Now, in order to be something, you have to have a stable character. Someone who is, when we say, one day a malach [angel], one day a galach [priest/shaven one]—is not anything. So really, that person is not human at all, because he doesn’t have any—what we call internal—he doesn’t have anything that we can say, “This is him.”

But the person that has the stably good characters, or vice versa, his bad characters, that is the person whose actions follow mostly from what he is. And that is something very different from something, for example, that the existentialists, some of them in extreme cases, are after. And also very different from what many people are after nowadays when they say things need to be by choice.

The Test Case: Good Education and Authentic Selfhood

This is, for example, the very clear place where this will make a difference: in the value of things done because you have a good education.

How Education Works

Someone who had a good education, which means that he was taught to like certain things—a good education, of course, education works mostly by external things. It works by promising reward and punishment. It works by getting you to do things. It can’t really get you to like something. You have to somehow see that for yourself. You do learn that from someone, but it’s very hard to give that to someone automatically, easily. But it’s still because of that education that you become a good person.

The Modern Objection: “This Isn’t Me, It’s Just My Conditioning”

And according—many people nowadays seem to think that that is less about me. So this—”I’m doing this because I was taught to do it. I’m doing this, this is not me because it’s not my choice,” right?

And when they say it’s not my choice, what they don’t mean—they don’t mean choice in the Aristotelian sense. They don’t mean that I don’t have, we can say later, a considered opinion, a considered drive towards this, that I think this is the correct way to act, and I like it also, and therefore I choose to act it. That’s not what I mean, because that’s actually what their education gave you.

If it’s a good education, it’s not only an external education, right? Education starts with a lo lishma [not for its own sake], but it somehow gets you a lishma [for its own sake] somehow, by some magic. It’s a different discussion, right?

The Reality of Educational Formation

If you went—we discussed this many times—if you went through certain systems, you get certain virtues. Not only—you don’t only get—it’s a very bad—I don’t think it ever happens, really. It would be a very weird education where you would stay at the level of reward and punishment. Like the moment a mashgiach [supervisor/spiritual guide] leaves the room, you’re left with nothing. That’s not really how life works. You are always left with something. Slightly less than what you did for the reward and punishment, but you were left with something about yourself.

Now, of course, everyone agrees that when you’re only acting for fear of punishment or for hope of reward, that you’re not acting out of yourself. But I’m talking about the next step, right?

Once I went to yeshiva [Torah academy], they got me to learn, I don’t know, an hour a week, whatever, how long. When you’re afraid, you learn two hours a day. But when you’re not afraid, you learn an hour a week. That’s the amount of middah they got into you, right?

The Absurdity of Rejecting Educated Character as “Not Me”

Now I’m showing you something very simple. And now, people might think—I don’t think anyone really thinks this. I don’t think people think it through. But people sometimes would make the claim that, “Okay, the fact that you like to learn, that’s just my conditioning. That’s just my education. That’s not me.”

What are the things that are you? When you jump into the pool in the middle of the night for no reason? When you’re drunk? That’s you? What is this “you”? What is this free choice that people are after all the time?

The Chassidic Example Revisited

The same, like the Chassidim who are looking—I mean, I’m pretty sure that they’re not really confused, that we can interpret it in the correct way, but sometimes people understand it this way. Like the person that we discussed over here last time also, the Chassidim, who said that if you daven [pray] because you davened yesterday, that’s not a good reason. And nobody really does that, right? Let me discuss that.

But what I’m getting at is, if we interpret that as “because my education made me a person that once a week, once a day, whatever it is”—that is not less me.

The False Conception of Free Will

It would be very weird—we have to think what would be the other option. What is more “me”?

It seems, and this is true, if you take this to the extreme, or you make it very clear, you’ll see that there’s this different version of what choice is, very different version of what will is. And it has a history and has a reason why it came to be. And that is something like things that are done for no reason—not because that’s what I am. Because that’s a reason. Because what I am just means that the fullness of what I am sees this as a good thing and likes that. There’s reasons in that. It’s not like—now you might not be able to articulate that, but that’s a different problem. But there are reasons.

And people seem to think that free will—and this is—people think that that’s what makes human beings human, mostly. Something, some kind of free will, like we said, free-floating will. Something like, “I can choose to be anything I want.”

And then if you’re the person that you were taught to be, then you’re not authentic.

The Incoherence of “Authenticity”

Remember the word “authentic”? Now, authenticity is actually a fake thing, in this sense, because it’s authentic to what? What does it mean to be authentic?

Remember “authentic”? There’s fake people that are doing what their education told them, and there’s real people.

Authenticity, Trained Habits, and the Persistence of Education

The Problem of Authenticity

Instructor: Opposite. Okay. And they’re real to what? Like authentic is like authentic watch is what that was really made by that watchmaker and not the guy in Chinatown that made it. Okay. And what is an authentic person? How is it really the person? There needs to be some real person.

Student: Yeah, but who is this you?

Instructor: There needs to be an ideal you. What you like.

Student: What is this like? What does that mean?

Instructor: What you like to do.

Student: What did you get to like?

Instructor: The guy that’s following his education also really likes the things. Again, unless you’re talking about the really early stages of education where people are really just acting out of fear and hope for rewards and punishment, or maybe there’s some people that, I really wonder about this, like most of us have this habit of attacking everyone for living in the other side, is that true?

The Gehenna Thought Experiment

The Pessimistic View

Instructor: Do you really think that if, I think not, I’m more positive about this, I have a friend that told me that he thinks that if you would convince their entire Lakewood that there’s no Gehenna [hell/punishment in the afterlife] they would all stop coming to Shul [synagogue]. I don’t think that’s true. I think they’ll come less to Shul but they should come less anyway like they’re coming too much. That would be a good thing but I don’t think they will stop. He told me take the biggest talmid chacham [Torah scholar] that you know, the Amshon HaVarev [unclear reference], but you come in and there’s no Gehenna and he becomes a Goy [non-Jew] the next day. That’s what my friend told me.

Student: I think there’ll be a lot more people than you think.

Instructor: I think so.

Student: So I think there’ll be more than you think but I’m taking the other bet. Let’s try. I’ve actually seen it tried and I’ve seen it laid out. It’s true that people stop doing certain things but there’s at some point there’s no process to ask and I’m gonna ask him who he doesn’t believe that there’s no—

Instructor: No, no, no, no, no, that if he would, whatever, it’s fine. My bet is I agree that there will be like a shack [shock/reduction] because there’s other reasons like for people beliefs are very important to their personality and so on. But okay, but that’s a side problem. We’re not that, that’s a cycle, that that’s the answer to the question.

The Muslim Critique

Instructor: No, but we’re trying to get at something else. We’re trying to get it, is it true that like the Muslims from have this really funny Muslim say that sometimes have this like really funny blame of everyone that’s not them and say that you’re all acting for external reasons, you don’t, none of you like what you’re doing, right? You’re all fakers, right? That’s basic, not fakers, you’re all not authentic, right? You’re all not. Now I think my bet is because of this are still an understanding of education, I think that most, like I said, most people that I’ve seen this have played out actually in people personally, I have seen it played out, it’s true that they haven’t less but they don’t stop the daven [praying] and that’s fine.

The Mechanism: How Training Creates Authenticity

The Core Argument

Instructor: I think that most people, they will take away their reward and punishment and they will mostly do the same thing that they’ve been doing before.

Student: Why do you think that is?

Instructor: Because the reward and punishment trained them to be that kind of people.

Student: Because of that, because if you live, if you if you don’t have that education that’s—

Instructor: That’s now they are authentic. Yeah, because now they’re, they don’t realize they’re authentic because they keep on adding this again and again but if you take it away it won’t change much or it would actually make things better and they’d like much much life’s much better. It’s so hard to wrap my head around. You see what I’m saying?

The Learning Example

Instructor: Because let’s say, take my example of learning. That’s a good example. You go to yeshiva, they tell you you have to live [learn] for 10 hours a day. And some people manage to do it by extreme reward and punishment and living in this cult situation. Okay. Then you leave the yeshiva. And now, of course, for the two weeks of Bein Zman [break between study sessions], you don’t learn for one second because you’ve got to get out all the steam from the system. Okay. But then, after a few months pass, you won’t be the same person that you were before. You will be the kind of person that needs to learn at least data number, like at least an hour a week.

And how do I know? Because they’re coming to my shiurim [classes], people, they’re going to the YouTube. I follow those people. They wouldn’t have done it otherwise. There’s many people that don’t learn even an hour a year because they didn’t have that reward and punishment ever applied to them. And the same thing for all the other mitzvos [commandments]. Now what they do, details can be discussed, but I do think that—

Distinguishing Training from Constitution

The Muslim Argument Revisited

Instructor: But therefore, I think that the Muslim argument that says everyone is just Yerushalayim [unclear reference] is a little weird. You don’t really like, you don’t really believe, you don’t really care for things that you’re doing, you’re doing it for external reasons, for side reasons. I don’t know, you don’t agree with me?

Student: Let’s try to explain. We’re going to put a pill in liquid that takes away everyone’s belief in Gehenna. Let’s see what happens.

Instructor: People spend a lot of time telling themselves that this is what will happen. Maybe that’s what itself she got.

Student: Well, if what you’re saying is true, maybe it’s because they never believed it in the first place.

Instructor: No, because the belief—

Student: Maybe they never believed that there was a Gehenna in the first place.

The Key Distinction

Instructor: No, what I’m saying is, you’re not really taking anything away from them. Well, the person who said you should do Al-Tiqa [unclear reference] with them, it’s not because they didn’t believe in Gehenna, right? It’s because that is still a reward and punishment. Okay, forget about the deeper meaning of all the ghanim [unclear: possibly Gan Eden/paradise] and stuff. It’s because being a good person is its own reward, right? And of course, we cannot train you on that because you cannot see that before you start doing it.

You know what, let’s say take the other way around. Let’s say there’s no such thing as ghanim. How many people are going to be shot [shul]? Same thing.

Student: I think it’s different.

Instructor: No, why? When I say ghanim, just scare your side.

The Truth About Structure

Instructor: Let’s say it like this. First let’s say the truth. The truth is that even if there’s no, it makes you a better, it’s better to go to school. Fear is structure. Like people have a hard time doing things without structure. Let’s say like if I don’t have a job to go to I’m not going to get up in the morning. So that’s what the study was saying.

Student: The perfect society is the one that’s constantly in fear.

Instructor: No, but I don’t think that’s what the study was saying.

Student: I think too much fear has diminishing returns though.

Instructor: Right, but what I’d say, see, that’s a different thing. You might say, is that structure a good thing by itself? Does the structure consist of, maybe the question here is, does the structure consist of these beliefs? I don’t think it consists of these beliefs. I think that those beliefs, rewards, punishment, things like that. I don’t think it consists of that.

The High-Trust Society Example

Instructor: Even if you talk about like a high-trust society, forget about the religious things, right? Their trustworthiness with the people doesn’t consist of them knowing that the government will put them in jail for 30 years if they lie. That’s what trains them to be that kind of people. That’s what we’re calling internality here, right? It’s true that if the government would not have put anyone in jail, nobody would have been getting that training. Therefore, it’s true that the side would become worse because rewards and punishments are trainings, they’re chinuch [education]. But it’s not true that it consists of that. You know what I’m saying?

Returning to Authenticity

Structure and Belief

Student: In the same sense, you say, it’s a good structure to have, like you have to have a share [unclear: possibly davening/prayer] every day, you have to go to school, that’s a structure and you only have that structure because of the beliefs that you’re going to go to hell if you don’t, okay. But it’s those, after there’s those beliefs create something besides themselves.

Instructor: Should we be saying forced habits create good habits?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: That’s the basic theory of habituation here. I don’t know, where did I get to all of this?

Can Forced Structure Be Authentic?

Student: It could be authentic, though, no?

Instructor: Oh, so what is authentic? Very good.

Student: Like, if I have a job, I feel this is authentic. And so that’s like, you know, it’s something I want to do, but it’s hard to do without a structure. You know what I’m saying?

Instructor: It’s hard to do well because you don’t really believe in your job. And maybe you shouldn’t because there’s nothing to believe. It’s only a way to make money. That’s really the question. I mean, there’s some things that you shouldn’t believe in. Like, why would someone believe in their job? That’s a weird thing to do.

The Wake-Up Early Example

Student: Well, let’s say without the job, I think it’s a good thing to get up early, but it’s just like if there’s no one forcing me, like laziness is going to get the better of me.

Instructor: I’m somewhat skeptical of if it’s a good thing to wake up early. Like why is it good? What’s so good about it?

Student: It’s good because you’ve got to get to your job.

Instructor: You have to have a clear head when you get up.

Student: Oh, okay. That’s a good reason.

Instructor: No, I get it. I’m not disagreeing. I’m saying sometimes we say these kind of things, like I believe it’s good to wake up early, but if you think about why it’s good, like what’s wrong with waking up at 1 a.m.? Oh, because you’re going to miss your… Okay, very good. Why then do I schedule everything I want anyways? Oh, because you’ve got to… Whatever. Sometimes it’s not… Sometimes these things are not really…

Defining Authenticity

Authentic to What?

Instructor: No, but let’s get back to what we’re saying. So that’s like authenticity has to be authentic to something. So to what is authentic? Right? If there’s an idea of what is a real… Like, in my version that I was describing here, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about authenticity. Only to the extent that, again, like the self-controlled person or the person that’s forcing himself or that’s training himself, it doesn’t have any self. It doesn’t, or his self doesn’t match with his internal, that’s in some sense inauthentic.

Degrees of Caring

Instructor: Sometimes you’re being forced to do things that you don’t think have any benefit to you, and sometimes you are being forced to do things that you think are of benefit to you. That’s fine. Benefit also can be like external benefit. We’re like I need money therefore I gotta go to my job but I don’t really care about that thing I’m doing. I care about its result so it’s like a side, the real, the job did, the work is a side thing to the to the thing I care about. And it could be something that I do care about like like we can go up if you really care about being the kind of person that wakes up—

The Existentialist Illusion of Radical Freedom and the Reality of Educated Character

The Problem with Existentialist Authenticity

So this is what we have to understand: some modern versions, existential versions of this thing called ethnicity—of course, the existentialists have noticed that authenticity doesn’t really make sense, because by their version of it, people want to be what they are, what they chose. And sometimes it’s just defined by not what you told me—that’s very babyish, like a teenager: “I’m gonna do everything my parents told me not,” because that feels like I’m doing it. Okay, I get it, that’s that feeling I get, but it’s not real.

Because who is this you in any case? That you is going to be the product of your education, or if you’re educating yourself, okay, so still. I think the version that says that what you choose purely, most freely, is most you—is a version that really, in some sense, doesn’t believe, or thinks that the most primary part of a person is some kind of free ability to choose between options. And they don’t really think that there’s such a thing as a personality. Well, at least there might be such a thing as a personality, but what makes a human human is mostly not his personality, not what kind of person he is, because that’s just your nature. That’s—we ascribe that to education, we ascribe that to culture, we ascribe that to conditioning, things like that.

What the Existentialists Think Makes Humans Human

So what makes a human human, and what makes an act morally worth talking about, or humanly worth talking about, is some very weird thing—something that I said no, I don’t think anyone ever experienced that thing, because it does not really how life works for the most part. But some kind of free choosing of a life, or free choosing of a meaning between from possibilities, or even from possibilities—maybe it’s too limited—so from infinity.

Intuitively, a lot of us think this way, because we’re intuitively taught to think about choice as choosing between possibilities. Then we say, “Well, I was given education to be a certain kind of person, I was made into a certain kind of person by education, and therefore I don’t really have options. I don’t have optionality, I can’t be a different kind of person. I could be a little here, a little there.”

The Chassidish Hat Store: An Analogy for False Originality

And then I say, “Oh, so that’s the little word.” I have a friend—I had a friend that makes Chassidish hats, and he told me he had a store which is a Chassidish hat store. He told me that in his store there’s 375 different kinds of hats. I was like, “You know, you’re still having one kind of hat.”

And he explained, “You know, you have to understand that everyone wants to be very individual. But since you’re only allowed to wear one kind of hat, so there’s 370 variations, because there’s—it’s a combinatorics, right? There’s a little wider, a little thinner, a little taller than this piece, a little bigger than the ribbon, a little more high than everything.” And there’s—turns out that everyone knows exactly which of those 375 combinations they want, because that’s what makes them special and different from other people.

So that’s a very weird—how do we call it—very weird consolation for the kind of person that says—and that’s where all of life is. That’s just a very clear emotional for how the world is. At the end of the day we’re all just choosing one of those 375 constellations of the ribbon size plus the brim size plus the height of the hat. That’s what choice is.

Maybe you think that choice is something that you yourself made up, right, from the—I originate, I’m original, I’m original, I’m not a copy, I’m an original guy. Oh, you mean to say that you’ve put that hat—I know, and that guy that has the hat still never has to go to China to the factory and tell them to make—and they realize that you need a microscope to know what’s different. A normal person looks at the same hat, I don’t know. No, if you live in that community, you notice all these tiny differences, okay.

But it’s fake. There’s nothing so original about anyone. There’s so many ways to be a human being, there isn’t any original ways.

Why People Value This False Originality

The reason people think that this kind of originality is important is because they identify what’s most human about a human is some very tiny little thing, which is supposed to be very free, which is the choice of what you are. Choose what you want to be. That’s one—some people end up with that.

The Speaker’s Alternative: Being Human Means All of This

But if you think like me, that being a human means all of this, then being authentic would just mean, like I said, not being forced, not acting only out of compulsion or out of fear, things like that. But it’s not really correct to say that what you’re educated into, for example, is not you. That is who you are. There isn’t another—there isn’t another you. There isn’t this chooser that’s abstract chooser that’s besides for all of that.

Therefore, for example, if I say that someone acts because of the kind of person he is, because of the kind of habits he has, whether he got it from education, he got it by educating himself, and I said that that’s the person who lives out from choice—I’m not saying that there’s this, after having the middah [character trait], you still have choice. You don’t have choice. The choice consists of being that kind of person.

Clarifying What “Choice” Means

And choice just means the recognition that this is good. We have to get more clear about this recognition—why we call this choice. Is it a preference we call it, a preference or a choice? There’s something—where I think this is the correct way versus other ways, there’s some choosing of that over others, otherwise it’s not a choice. But it’s not choosing to do this by this very abstract kind of choice.

Implications: What Doesn’t Count as Real Choice

And this is why all of those things are not—all of the kind of—again, so this is why all of those ideas of doing what the opposite of my parents taught me don’t make that more choice.

And this is also why, going back to what I said in the beginning, this is also why wanting to do something is not what we’re talking about. This internality is not something about what I wish, what is in my head that I am. It’s what you really are, is what you really like, okay?

And we have to continue with this, but that’s enough.