Response — Elul 5783 — Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• Two types of penitents and the problem between them
• Dieting, smoking, coercion, and the binary nature of responsibility
• The demand to repent as a demand to change one’s worldview
• The paradox of intuition versus calculation, and the need to point out the flaw
• Peter van Inwagen’s argument and the new division of “no cause”
• The topographical model, the little ball, and the human being
• Prediction in large numbers: Facebook, dice, and psychology
• Maimonides in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance, and the collective versus the individual
• Genetics as tendency rather than determination
• Three models of “choice”: Syria, Switzerland, and Israel
• The rabbinic person and the sovereign person, and the limits of autonomy
• Weakness of will as “letting go of the reins” and shutting off control
• Elijah at Mount Carmel and the preference for decision over indecision
• Tanya chapter 9: the divine soul and the animal soul as a struggle over control
• A culture of despair about reason, and moving the center of decision down to emotion

Summary

General overview

The text defines two meanings of a “penitent” as opposed to someone who “becomes religious,” and shows that the distinction between them gets blurred because of the problem of weakness of will. In that problem, a person seemingly always does what he really wants unless he was coerced, and if he was coerced, then there is no sin. Out of that difficulty comes the question of what it means to demand of a person that he “repent,” if in the end his actions reflect his judgments. An alternative framework is then proposed, one that brings the discussion back to free choice through a distinction between cause, randomness, and purpose. Later, a model is built of a “topographical layout” in which circumstances and genetics influence but do not determine. It also explains how one can predict patterns in large numbers without denying individual choice. Finally, a possible answer is proposed to the problem of weakness of will through the idea of “letting go of the reins” and the distinction between control and lack of control, including a reading of Tanya that turns the struggle between good and evil into a struggle between a mind that leads and a heart that leads, along with a critique of a culture that lowers the center of decision from reason to emotion.

Two types of penitents and the problem between them

The text distinguishes between someone who “becomes religious” in the modern sense—someone who changes his worldview from secular to religious—and a “penitent” in the sense used by the Sages, namely someone who always knew what was right but did not behave accordingly, and now returns to alignment between knowledge and action. The text argues that this difference only appears sharp, because in order to say that someone “thinks X,” you have to factor in the totality of considerations, values, impulses, and interests; and then “what he thinks” is simply the bottom line of what he wants to do. The text presents the philosophical claim that weakness of will is impossible: if a person did Y, then apparently at that moment he wanted Y more than X; and if he did not want it, then he was coerced, and coercion is not something one repents for.

Dieting, smoking, coercion, and the binary nature of responsibility

The text uses the example of a diet and a cream cake to argue that “weak will” either means coercion, or else it means that the person’s real desire was pleasure rather than the diet. The text sets up a binary dilemma: either a person is coerced, in which case there is no sin, or he is not coerced, in which case that is what he wanted. It rejects the idea of a “scale” here as undefined. The text adds the example of smokers who say, “I’m addicted, so I’m coerced,” and sets that against the argument that if there is no actual compulsion, then at that moment the pleasure is preferable to health for them.

The demand to repent as a demand to change one’s worldview

The text concludes that because of the problem of weakness of will, a “penitent” and someone who “becomes religious” come out as the same thing, because even from a penitent we are expecting a change of desire and not merely “a return to behaving according to what he always thought.” The text argues that demanding that a person deliberately change his worldview is not really intelligible. You can persuade someone to change his outlook, but you cannot demand of him that he “repent” when he sincerely thinks the path he is on is the right one. The text illustrates that even a person who has never opened a Humash needs clarification about what is permitted and what is forbidden, but that is a change of views, not “repentance” in the sense of re-aligning with prior knowledge.

The paradox of intuition versus calculation, and the need to point out the flaw

The text argues that citing sources or appealing to feelings does not solve a paradox, because even if intuitively it is obvious that there is free choice, “the calculation” may still lead to the opposite conclusion, and therefore one has to show what is wrong in the calculation. The text compares this to the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, where it is not enough to say that the conclusion is wrong; you have to identify the mistake in the analysis. The text presents the problem of weakness of will and free choice as a case where intuition is strong but the philosophical argument undermines it.

Peter van Inwagen’s argument and the new division of “no cause”

The text presents Peter van Inwagen’s argument: either an act has a cause, in which case it is deterministic, or it has no cause, in which case it is arbitrary; therefore there is no free will. The text argues that the problem lies in identifying “no cause” with randomness, and it divides “no cause” into two possibilities: sheer randomness, as opposed to action for the sake of a purpose and out of deliberation. The text defines “purpose” as a reason or target that is not a prior compelling cause, and illustrates this with a person acting in order to bring about democracy or in order to set a meeting, while describing the human ability to “turn a purpose into a cause” and set a chain of actions in motion by the force of a future goal.

The topographical model, the little ball, and the human being

The text proposes a parable of a topographical layout representing genetics, environment, education, drives, and values, in which a “mountain” is difficulty and a “valley” is ease and natural tendency. The text explains that a little ball in such a layout will roll to the point of minimum energy, and therefore the layout determines its path, whereas a human being can decide to invest energy and climb the mountain, so the layout influences but does not determine. The text defines the libertarian view as the claim that influences exist but are not deterministic, in contrast to the deterministic view, which claims that the influences determine behavior.

Prediction in large numbers: Facebook, dice, and psychology

The text tells a story about a son who works at Facebook and describes an ability to predict consumer behavior at the population level as if humanity were “a colony of ants,” and it presents the response that collective prediction does not negate personal choice. The text explains this through the law of large numbers in rolling a die, where each roll is open and independent, but the big picture can still be predicted very accurately. The text states that psychology too can describe group patterns and divide populations according to education and tendencies, without being able to predict with certainty what a specific individual will do, because individual choice is not derived from the layout even if it is influenced by it.

Maimonides in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance, and the collective versus the individual

The text connects this model to Maimonides’ words in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance about the Egyptians, according to which the decree was collective and not aimed at any particular Egyptian, and therefore each individual still had free choice. The text notes that the Raavad says about Maimonides, “These are the words of a youth,” and formulates in modern language the difficulty of how the individual has choice if the overall outcome is fixed. The text argues that the answer is that the tilt of the layout affects many people statistically, but does not cancel each person’s ability to climb the mountain, and therefore personal responsibility remains intact—similar to mitigating considerations in criminal punishment that do not exempt one from responsibility.

Genetics as tendency rather than determination

The text describes discoveries about genes associated with traits such as violence, faith, atheism, and stinginess, and presents the mistaken conclusion that therefore there is no free choice. The text argues that genetics may establish a tendency but cannot determine with certainty what a given individual will do, and therefore a person can still “climb the mountain” even if it is hard for him. The text explains that influence on a person works by shaping the topographical layout, not by controlling the choice itself.

Three models of “choice”: Syria, Switzerland, and Israel

The text presents the image of “free choice in Syria” as a façade in which there is only one ballot slip and therefore no real choice, and the image of “Switzerland” where there are options but no price, so the choice can be almost like a lottery. The text presents a model in which choice gets its meaning when there are real costs to each option and a person has to exercise judgment within constraints that are not in his control. The text adds the image of a post office in the Burmese jungle where all the boxes fall into the same sack, as a metaphor for how in Israel there are supposedly different options, but in the end you get the same thing.

The rabbinic person and the sovereign person, and the limits of autonomy

The text brings Ari Elon, who distinguishes between “the rabbinic person,” whose laws are dictated to him, and “the sovereign person,” who legislates values for himself. The text argues that this identification is ridiculous, and illustrates the point with a hired murderer who legislates bad values for himself; from that it follows that values are not determined simply by “self-legislation.” The text states that the religious/secular distinction is orthogonal to the rabbinic/sovereign distinction, and that in both camps there are people who act out of decision and people who act out of their comfort zone.

Weakness of will as “letting go of the reins” and shutting off control

The text proposes a solution to weakness of will in which the person does not directly decide to perform an act he knows is bad, but rather “switches off the control mechanism” and lets go of the reins so that circumstances will carry him along. The text illustrates this with a drunk driver: although in the state of drunkenness he has no control over the wheel, responsibility for the outcome is still attributed to him because the initial decision to drink is the letting go of the reins for which he is responsible. The text argues that the responsibility is primarily for giving up being “a chooser,” and therefore the repentance required is for the decision not to be a chooser and not only for the result itself—while also recognizing that even about the decision not to be a chooser, one can again ask why it was chosen, and the matter remains for him in a kind of back-and-forth between acceptance and doubt.

Elijah at Mount Carmel and the preference for decision over indecision

The text reads literally עד מתי אתם פוסחים על שתי הסעיפים? אם השם האלוקים לכו אחריו ואם הבעל לכו אחריו (“How long will you keep limping between the two sides? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him”) as a demand to be a chooser, even if the choice turns out to be bad, because “not choosing” is the state of a nonentity, like a little ball carried by the wind. The text argues that an educator should not measure success only by commandment-observance, but also by whether he has produced a person who decides on his path. It presents as partially preferable a situation in which someone leaves by decision, rather than one in which he stays only by force of comfort and indecision.

Tanya chapter 9: the divine soul and the animal soul as a struggle over control

The text cites a passage from Tanya chapter 9: והנה מקום משכן נפש הבהמית שמקליפת נוגה בכל איש ישראל הוא בלב, בחלל שמאלי שהוא מלא דם… אך מקום משכן נפש האלוקית הוא במוחין שבראש… וגם בלב בחלל הימני שאין בו דם, כמו שכתוב לב חכם לימינו… (“The dwelling place of the animal soul, which stems from kelipat nogah, in every Jew is in the heart, in the left chamber, which is full of blood… But the dwelling place of the divine soul is in the brain in the head… and also in the heart, in the right chamber where there is no blood, as it is written: ‘A wise man’s heart is at his right…’”). The text interprets this to mean that the struggle is not between good and evil but between control and lack of control: in the divine soul the mind leads and the heart is harnessed, while in the animal soul the heart leads and the mind serves by building theories that justify the direction of desire. The text connects this to the pattern of constructing inner justifications and to the description of a “small city” and two kings fighting over it, identifying the animal soul with surrender to impulses and the divine soul with holding the reins and directing the powers of the soul.

A culture of despair about reason, and moving the center of decision down to emotion

The text brings a joke attributed to Dov Sadan about a sequence of Jewish revolutions that move the center from the head to the heart, then to the stomach, and finally “below the belt,” and argues that this reflects a modern process of distrust in reason. The text criticizes a discourse that puts “moving” or “emotionally powerful” in place of an intelligent argument, and describes how political propaganda on both sides uses heartbreaking stories in order to harness the mind to justify a conclusion that the heart has already marked out. The text gives the example of Shlomi Shabbat saying, “My head says one thing, but my heart…” as pointing to a norm in which it is obvious that the heart decides. It concludes by linking the phenomenon to the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul, and to a global trend of transferring control from reason to emotion.

Okay, last time I basically closed a certain circle in our discussion. I talked about two kinds of people who return, and I said there’s what today is called “becoming religious,” meaning someone who changes his worldview. In other words, he thought X, and at some point changed his view to Y. He was secular and became religious. A person of repentance in the literature of the Sages, as in Torah literature, is not that. A person of repentance in Torah literature is someone who always knew that X was right, and still today thinks that X is right, only in the past he didn’t do what he thought. There was no synchronization between how he behaved and what he thought, and now he is actually repenting, returning to behave the way he himself thinks one ought to behave. I said that these two types are really different, at least seemingly very different from one another. Because the one who becomes religious—what he did in the past wasn’t really a sin. He simply thought differently. And now he thinks differently, so for example you couldn’t have demanded of him at the earlier stage that he repent. Why not? Because he thinks X and that’s what he does. What do you want? How could you demand that he repent? Repent from what? You have to speak to him in his own language, from his own starting point, and from his starting point he thinks that’s what should be done. So you can’t talk to him about repentance. What can happen is that he may change his worldview, become persuaded one way or another, but that’s not called repenting. To repent is to return to some place where you once were. It means returning to a place, or restoring my behavior to the place where I always thought it ought to be. Okay, so here you can seemingly say to a person: listen, you yourself understand that X is true, you’re not behaving that way, you have to return and behave the way you yourself understand one ought to behave. There are a lot of people today who fit this definition too. Fine, I don’t care, that’s not important to me—I’m only using this to define the concepts. The problem—and last time I tried to sharpen this—is that the difference between these two types isn’t as sharp as it looks, because that’s where we got into the problem of weakness of will. Suppose we think about a person who thinks X but behaves Y, even though he thinks X. Now how can such a thing happen? So I said that first of all we have to define what it means to think X. By “think X” I don’t mean what values he believes one ought to act by. I mean: if you take into account all the considerations—interests, values, urges, influences, whatever you like—all of that together, the bottom line tells him: do X. And then he did Y. We tell him: repent, you need to do X, after all you also think you should do X, you need to repent. But the claim philosophers have made for years is that in fact such a state is impossible. There can’t be such a state—a state of weakness of will, a state in which you don’t do what you want. Why? Let’s try to think of someone who, after all the considerations—let’s talk about dieting, not repentance or sin in the religious or moral sense, let’s talk about dieting, it’s easier to think about. Okay, someone decided to go on a diet. Now he sees a shiny whipped-cream cake before his eyes, he can’t restrain himself, and he eats it. Okay, and after he eats it—that’s usually what happens—he suddenly remembers that he’s actually opposed to eating whipped-cream cakes. You always remember after you do it. And then he says to himself: wait, how did I fall for that? What happened here? Why did I do that? I was weak. Right? That’s what such a person says to himself: I was weak. Meaning, I wanted not to eat the cake, I wanted to keep the diet, but my will was weak, and therefore I didn’t do what I wanted. Now either way: if you say that your will was really not to eat, and yet you ate, what does it mean that you were weak? It means you were coerced. Something overpowered you. Even though you wanted not to eat, something overpowered you and made you eat. That’s not a transgression. You don’t need to repent for that. You were forced. But if you weren’t forced, then you actually decided to do it, even though you could have withstood the test and not eaten it. So why did you really do it? The claim there is: you did it because you wanted the pleasure more than the diet. So don’t tell me that you wanted to diet but your will was weak. It’s simply that your will wasn’t really for the diet; your will was to eat, to enjoy. True, you also want to diet, of course. But the desire to enjoy was stronger than the desire to diet. Therefore, if you take all the considerations into account—not only the value-considerations, or just some of the considerations, but all the considerations and values and urges and whatever else you want—in the final analysis, what did you want to do? What you wanted to do is what you did. If you did it, apparently that’s what you wanted. If you didn’t want it, why did you do it? Unless you were forced. And if you were forced, then it’s not a sin. So either way, I’m saying: if you were forced, then it’s not a sin. And if you weren’t forced, then why did you really do it? Apparently because you wanted it more than its opposite. Except what happens is that now, when you explain it, you suddenly put some emphasis somewhere: no, no, but the diet is much more important to me than the pleasure. Then apparently you didn’t think that, because the fact is you ate. Now you’ve calmed down, there’s already פת בסלו or הנאה דהא, right? You already have your bread in your basket, so you say okay, now the diet is terribly important to me—until the next time I run into a whipped-cream cake. So really it’s just a game. Because when you ate the cake, you really wanted to eat it. Now you’re in a different state, now you no longer want it—or think you no longer want it, whatever. You see why this suddenly goes back to being the first type, the person who becomes religious? You’re actually expecting a person to change what he thinks, because what he did really is what he thinks. There is no one who thinks X but does Y. If he did Y, then he thought Y. So what follows? Let me go back for a second, back again to the same question: if that’s what he thought—he thought Y—then how can you expect him to return and think X? To change his worldview? The same question I asked about the person who becomes religious really also arises with regard to the person repenting. Because in the end, he did what he thinks. And if you want him to repent, then you actually want him to change his worldview—not just behave differently, not just behave in sync with what he thinks. Okay, next. You might say that’s simply not true; there is cognitive dissonance—you believe something, but for some momentary reason you don’t behave accordingly, and then you look for excuses and tell yourself it’s okay, otherwise people would also commit suicide. Cognitive dissonance is the opposite phenomenon. Cognitive dissonance is when you always justify to yourself what you did. Meaning, if you did something, you justify to yourself that really it was the right thing to do. Here I’m talking about the opposite phenomenon. I’m talking about a state in which you think X and do Y. After you did it, maybe you’ll tell yourself no, no, really I thought Y. Fine, that doesn’t interest me—that’s afterward. I’m asking what happened when you acted. Say with smokers, a lot of times they’ll say it’s bad, a lot of times they’ll say it’s wrong to smoke, and they’ll say they don’t want their children to smoke, and they regret it. But they claim—what they’re saying is nonsense—I’m terribly addicted, so I’m forced. Exactly, that’s it, there’s apparently only two possibilities. Who is forcing him to smoke? Nobody is forcing him. He says he smokes? Then either he is truly forced, or he’s terribly addicted and then he’s forced, or he’s not so forced… he wants the pleasure more than the health, that’s all. Or he’s forced. But if he’s forced, then it’s not a sin. Yes, I’m saying either way: either he’s forced, and then it’s not a sin, or he’s not forced, and then that’s what he wants. What do you mean a scale? It’s binary. Either he’s forced or he’s not forced. I know the notion of “close to coercion,” but in this context what does “close to coercion” mean? Could he have resisted it? If he could have resisted it, then why didn’t he? Was his ability limited? What does that mean, his ability was limited? Meaning he couldn’t have resisted it? You have to decide—there’s no middle here, it’s binary. And that’s all. If he could have, and he did it, and he didn’t resist it, then apparently that’s what he wanted. That’s the claim. Okay, now we need to understand: that is the problem of weakness of will. And as a result of the problem of weakness of will, it turns out that these two models—the penitent, let’s call him the person of repentance, and the one who becomes religious—are actually the same thing. They aren’t really two different things. Because even from the penitent, what you’re expecting is that he change what he wants, not that he return to behaving the way he thought and has always thought. Because if that’s what he thought, that’s also what he would have done. In effect, the claim of weakness of will says there is no second type of penitent; everyone is of the first type, according to that claim. But as I said before, that’s problematic. So what does the demand that a person repent, that he do repentance, actually mean? You can’t demand that a person change his worldview—not just behave differently, but behave in sync with what he thinks. What he himself thinks—that is what he thinks. If it changes, it changes. But to demand that he change it proactively is something you cannot demand; it’s completely unintelligible. So can we say that one has conflicting desires and the other has only one desire? No problem. But with those conflicting desires, you have to decide which one is stronger from your point of view, and from my point of view the bottom line is what you want. Of course there are always conflicting desires. I talked about the cake, right? Or the chocolate, sorry, the chocolate—why eat chocolate? One consideration says eat it because it’s tasty. Another says don’t eat it because it’s fattening. Who is right? Both are right. It is both tasty and fattening. So why does one person eat it and another not? Because the one who eats thinks the taste is more important than the weight gain, than keeping the figure. And the other thinks the opposite. So both agree; both have the two desires. The difference between them is the ranking: which of the two is stronger. So if I look now at the bottom line, after you’ve weighted the stronger and weaker and everything, that is what you want. And if you did it, that’s what you wanted, and all the rest is apparently just nonsense you’re selling yourself. Rabbi, why is it that a person who thinks wrong things can’t be persuaded? No, he can be persuaded, of course he can be persuaded. But you can’t demand of him to repent while he is in that situation. When he thinks X, you can’t say to him: you must think Y. I don’t have to; I think X. You can try to persuade him, and that’s perfectly fine. So why not say that at this point, okay, then you need to make the demand in two stages: first stage, that you undergo the reversal… Why would you persuade me first that what I’m doing is wrong? Why would I even examine that? It seems excellent to me, everything is fine. If you persuade me, no problem. So you persuaded me—that’s the classic case of someone becoming religious: you persuade him and change his worldview. Fine. But when you come with a demand to someone, our way of looking at it is not that you’re saying to him: come change your worldview. No. Your worldview is that you know you mustn’t commit transgressions and you must perform commandments; all that is true, and you knew it then too. You don’t need to change anything in your worldview. All you need is to go back to behaving according to your worldview. And here I’m saying that seemingly that’s impossible; such a state doesn’t really exist. Let’s imagine a person who never in his life opened a Pentateuch, and in his own thinking he has thoughts about what is right and what isn’t. Okay. So as part of repentance, would you tell him: open a Pentateuch, come see what is permitted and what is forbidden? That’s not repentance. You’re telling him: examine your path. If you come to a different conclusion, then of course you’ll behave differently. You don’t need to change the deeds; the practical change is not relevant. When he reaches a different conclusion, he will of course behave differently, because he always behaves according to his conclusions. No problem. But that whole story is changing views, not repentance. I didn’t understand why that isn’t part of it. I think there are just two stages here. The first stage is only the means that lets you repent at all. But what am I—let’s say I’m now entering the Ten Days of Repentance, and I say to myself: I have to repent. Why do I have to repent? After all, what I did is what I think. So what does it mean that I say to myself, I have to repent? If I examine my path and reach the conclusion that I was mistaken until now and I change my outlook—fine, that can happen. It can also happen that you persuade me and that changes my outlook; that can happen too. Everything is fine. But this demand to repent proactively is an undefined demand. Maybe this repentance is simply a return—this is how I, as a less religious person, look at it. Personally I may not agree with it, and can you force me to change my desires and my outlook? It seems to me the Torah’s assumption is not to force you, to ask of you even, that doesn’t matter. Yes, but you can demand it, because you are a person who is, as it were, inside the Torah. It’s fairly objective at that level, in that we are inside it. We are a people who returned into the stream, received Torah from God, God took us out of the land of Egypt and gave us the land and obligated us—obligated us. Okay, now what I think about it, that’s all… Because we deviated, we deviated. We deviated, yes. So we deviated because we thought it was right to deviate, or not right to deviate? These are words. In the end, why did we deviate? Because we worshiped the Baal and we drifted away. Because we thought that was right. Both and both. There’s God too. Both and both, but the second “both” is stronger than the first. So that’s what we thought. Everything else doesn’t help. In the end you remain at that point. In the end that’s what we thought, that’s what we did. Yes—no, when I say “we thought,” I don’t mean in the sense of what is right. I mean after taking all the considerations into account, what matters more to me—to enjoy, to give in to my urges—or maybe I was forced. That’s another possibility, but you don’t repent for coercion either. Right. Fine, I’d be happy to hear any suggestion; so far I haven’t heard one. Why is there a story in the Talmud about Ahab, where Elchanan HaMorai said? Rava. Menashe. Rava. Menashe. Menashe heard this and said: if you had been in my place, you would have lifted the hem of your… Bringing me sources and Talmudic passages won’t help me; I also live with that feeling. I don’t need the Talmud for that. But when you do the analysis, you reach the conclusion that this feeling is an illusion, that it isn’t true. That’s the question. Whenever there’s a paradox—take Achilles and the tortoise, okay? The calculation in Achilles and the tortoise says that Achilles will never catch the tortoise, right? But Achilles does catch the tortoise; we know that. Okay? So what do you say? Therefore there is no paradox, because Achilles catches the tortoise? No. Since I have an argument that says Achilles won’t catch the tortoise, I have to point out what in the argument is wrong. It’s always like that with a paradox. I have an argument that seems correct, but its conclusion is prima facie problematic. I know clearly that it isn’t right, but that isn’t enough to solve the problem. I have to point out what in the argument is incorrect. Now when you bring me sources or my own intuitions, all of that is true. I understand those intuitions; I live them too. I very definitely live with the sense that there is such a thing as free will, absolutely—it is completely obvious to me. But when you do the calculation, you arrive at the conclusion that it’s just an illusion, that it can’t exist. So if you don’t show me what in the calculation is wrong, then you haven’t solved the problem. Understand? It doesn’t help me to point out that obviously the result is not right. I know that too. The question is: so what in the argument here is wrong? That’s the question. Look, I’ll try to propose something. Maybe a person decides to believe—not that we received faith as merely psychological, that everything is psychological—but it starts with choice, with a decision, and that’s what many philosophers don’t accept. I don’t know what “choice” means. Do you think there is a Holy One, blessed be He? Do you think there is a Holy One, blessed be He? That’s all. So where is the choice? That’s what you think. What, you don’t think there is a Holy One, blessed be He, but you choose nevertheless to serve Him? But because we live in this world, one can arrive at two conclusions. So decide which conclusion seems truer to you. It’s not a matter of choice in the arbitrary sense. One has to decide which conclusion seems more correct. Fine, okay. The parallel to choice—choice is in the sphere of value. The parallel to it in the intellectual sphere is judgment. And there is a difference between judgment and choice in that with judgment, ostensibly you come to some conclusion that in the end appears truer to you; it isn’t a free decision. Okay, good. So look, I’ll try to suggest something, and I’m already saying: in the final analysis I’m somewhat uncertain whether it really solves the problem or not. But I’ll explain what I mean. Look, I’ll start perhaps with—we’re returning after all to free choice; in the end that’s what underlies everything. There is an American philosopher of Dutch origin, Peter van Inwagen. He makes an argument against the existence of free will, that is, an argument in favor of determinism or against the existence of free will, and it comes up in almost every discussion of free will. He basically proposes the following argument. He says: look, there are two possibilities. Either my act has a cause, or my act has no cause. There is no third possibility, right? Either there is a cause or there is no cause. If there is a cause, then the result is essentially a deterministic consequence of the prior circumstances, right? The moment there is a cause that brought about the result, that’s determinism, not free choice. If there is no cause, then that’s indeterminism—then it’s just arbitrary, random, accidental, whatever you want to call it. Again, that’s not free choice. And since there is no third possibility, either there is a cause or there is no cause, therefore the concept of free will is an illusion. There is no such thing. That is his argument. Now this appears everywhere people discuss free will; they immediately start with this argument. It’s a very common argument. On the face of it, it maybe sounds strong, because really, what else could there be? Either you have a cause or you don’t have a cause. So where is the problem? The problem is in the analysis of the “no cause” option. Suppose there is no cause. He automatically identifies that with indeterminism—arbitrary, random, chance behavior, however you call it. But that isn’t correct. “No cause” breaks down into two sub-options. One possibility is random, just something that happens for no reason. The second possibility is something done for the sake of some purpose—not because of a cause, not due to a cause, but for the sake of a purpose, from judgment if you want to call it that. Both are behaviors without a cause, but they are two… So when you say either there is a cause or there is no cause, that is true; there is no third possibility. But he identifies “no cause” with indeterminism, and that’s wrong. Under the heading “no cause” there are two possibilities, not one. Does “for the sake of a purpose” mean there is a cause? No. There is a purpose. I decided that I aspire to some value, and I take… no, no, there may be a reason, but not a cause. Meaning, I want to achieve—I don’t know—bringing democracy to the State of Israel. So I take various actions whose purpose is to bring democracy to the State of Israel. Now there is no cause that compels me to do this or that caused me to do this. I have a purpose I aspire to, and that’s what I want to do. Incidentally, I think one of the unique features—maybe the most unique feature—of human will is the reversal of the time axis. We spoke earlier about reversing the time axis. Human will actually turns the purpose into the cause. Suppose I want tomorrow morning to meet a friend. And in order to achieve that purpose, I now extend my hand to the phone, call him, and arrange to meet. It turns out that the future event, which has not yet occurred, has actually become the cause that now generates a chain of events that will eventually also bring about that future event. And that reversal happens in the will. Our will has the ability to turn a purpose into a cause. And then a new chain begins. But there is no prior cause that caused this chain, because I decided that I want to meet my friend. Just like that. If there were a cause, maybe there would be a cause for that too, but I’m talking about a decision without a cause, a decision I made because of some value or something of that sort. Okay? So what this means, in other words, what I want to say, is that when there is no cause, that doesn’t mean the action is arbitrary. When there is no cause, it can be an arbitrary random action, and it can be an action without a cause but with a purpose, or arising from judgment. Okay? And that too is action without a cause. Why? Because there is nothing prior that generated that action, that dictated that action, or caused that action. Maybe could you give an example of a case where there is a cause? I kicked the ball and the ball flew—what do you mean? The ball has no choice; we do have choice. Obviously. No, I’m asking what example there is of a cause where we’re deterministic. I didn’t understand the question. We said that if there is a cause then there is no choice, right? The Rabbi just gave the example that the ball has no choice, but a person does. Right. So if there is something—I don’t know—fire burns me and I run away, okay, for instance, or something like that. Now you can—I could weigh the fact that I don’t want to be burned and therefore decide to run away. A lot of times I don’t do that; I just run away, that’s all. I don’t make the calculation. Then indeed the fire simply caused my fleeing; it didn’t pass through some stage of decision. It just happens. So between “there is” and “there isn’t” a cause, there are two possibilities, or actually we’ve just moved to three. Meaning every action we do stems from one of three. Right. My claim is that there can be three modes of behavior—not one and not two, but three. That is basically the claim, okay? Van Inwagen assumes there are only two, so of course he says there is no third. He begs the question. The moment you say there are only two, then of course you’ve proved there isn’t a third. But that is exactly what is under dispute. The dispute is whether there are only two. That is precisely the discussion. Now what is the difference between an act of judgment and a deterministic act? I’ll illustrate it through a parable—a parable I’ve written about in several places—about a topographical map within which we operate. Let’s try to think of all the things acting on us: genetics and environment and education and all the social influences and everything, okay? Everything acting on us, and urges and values and all that. And let’s describe it metaphorically as some topographical map within which I operate. Okay? What does this topographical map mean? Say I want to go in this direction: if there’s a mountain there, it’s hard for me to go in that direction. If there’s a valley here, then it’s easy, almost natural, right? I roll downward. Now in the parable, “mountain” means it is hard for me to do that; “valley” means it is natural to do it, easy to do it; that is what I will do if I don’t decide otherwise—in a moment we’ll see. Okay? Now that difficulty or ease can be the result of many, many causes. Suppose someone is provoked. Then the question is whether he reacts violently or not. That depends on his personality structure, his education, various influences, and so on. There are people who have a mountain in the direction of violence. For them it will be easy not to be violent; it will be hard to be violent, because there is a mountain in the direction of violence. Okay? Other people who don’t have those barriers will react more violently. For them there is a plain there, or even a valley, and therefore it’s very easy for them—very natural for them—to react violently. So the directions on this topographical map are really my behavioral options. And the map describes how hard or easy or natural it is to do each one. Okay, that is the example of the topographical map. Now think what happens when there is such a topographical map and a little ball is placed there. The ball will roll to minimum energy, right? The topographical map will take the ball and determine where it will go—or a stream of water, it doesn’t matter. So the topographical map will determine the path of the ball and the stream of water, where they go, how they move, and so on. It determines everything. What happens when there is a person in such a topographical map at some point, and say there is a mountain here and a valley there, and he decides to climb the mountain? Suppose. If he can, then he will climb the mountain. Now he is a physical creature, meaning obviously this costs him energy. Right? It’s not that he can do it without energy. No—the laws of physics apply to him. But unlike the little ball, he can decide to climb the mountain. The little ball cannot. If there is a mountain here and a valley there, the little ball goes down to the valley. So what is the difference really? The difference is that for the little ball, the topographical map determines its behavior. With regard to a person, the topographical map influences his behavior but does not determine it. Meaning there are prices, there are drives, there are urges, everything is clear, everything acts on me, I do not live in a vacuum. But in the final analysis I can decide to invest the energy required and climb the mountain, to pay whatever prices need to be paid because I am a physical creature, but I can decide to do that and climb the mountain. So if I believe in free will, then basically what that means is that a person on a given topographical map does not behave like a little ball on that topographical map. Maybe on average yes, in large numbers—perhaps I’ll comment on that in a moment—but basically he does not behave the same way. He can decide to expend energy, okay? Or potential energy, if you prefer. Fine? He can decide; the little ball cannot decide. What does that actually mean? Look, many times—I’ll tell you—my son works at Facebook. So one day he comes to me and says, listen, all this humanity is just—what do you call it?—a bunch of ants. How do you say “a bunch of ants”? A flock of ants? Anyway, I don’t know what to call it, a collection of ants. He says: you turn some little knob this way, and suddenly you see how these people move. I’ll tell you what percentage will buy this product on which day, when, where—and it works, he says, like a Swiss watch. Of course there is some distribution, but the averages are maintained in a very, very impressive way. When you look at it from the upper floors of Facebook, the world really looks like an anthill. He can push a button and in Australia on Sunday at two o’clock there will be a ten-percent increase in the consumption of some product. And he knows in advance that this is what will happen, and he knows that in Belgium, for example, it will happen two hours later and it will be only eight percent and not ten percent, because there the mentality is different, there it works differently—I don’t know exactly, something like that. He says it’s really depressing to see such a thing. You basically see that people who think of themselves as—I don’t know what—the crown of creation, in the end behave like a bunch of ants. So I told him I think that’s a huge mistake, this way of looking at it. Take, for example, rolling a die. The law of large numbers in rolling a die. We roll a die, and say it is a fair die, so each face has a one-sixth chance. Okay? If I rolled it twelve times, there is no chance in the world that each face came up exactly twice, right? It won’t happen. Even though that is the average, that is the expectation, but it won’t happen in twelve rolls. But in twelve billion rolls, then it will be roughly two billion for each face. Plus or minus a bit, but roughly two billion for each face. Meaning I can predict in advance with great precision—precision—what will happen on the large scale, what will happen in large numbers. Now this happens even though in each individual roll every result is possible; everything is open. More than that, there is no dependence from one roll to the next. And not only is there no dependence—it’s not despite the lack of dependence; it is because of the lack of dependence. If there were dependence, you couldn’t predict. That’s very strange to our first intuition, because it basically means that when there is no dependence between events, precisely then I know exactly what the large picture will be. I would have expected the opposite. In other words, when there is no dependence between events, that is exactly when I know what will happen. Why? Do they know that two has already come up two billion times, so now we have to fill the two billion for three and seven and six—sorry? They don’t know about one another; each roll is something else. But exactly because of that—not despite the independence are we able to predict, but because of the independence we can predict. Now the law of large numbers, surprisingly, works not only on random events, natural events, whatever—not random, it doesn’t matter—but events we call random, like rolling dice. It also works on human behavior. Psychology rests on that. A psychological law is essentially a statistical statement about human behavior and tries to predict how people will behave. Now with regard to one individual person, you probably won’t really manage to predict what he will do. But if you take a large group of people, then the psychological law describes fairly well what will more or less happen in the big picture. There too you have the law of large numbers, even though each individual person—this is not a random process; it is a process of choice or judgment or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Each one decides what he decides. But in the end the big picture is a picture about which you can say fairly precise things, even though about each separate case you can say nothing. Just like in die-rolling you can’t say anything about one individual case, about one individual person in a given situation you can’t say anything about what he will do. But if you put there a thousand people who underwent education against violence at that point where they are being provoked and the question is what they will do, and then put another thousand people in exactly that same point who did not undergo education against violence, you can see very clearly that in the first thousand there will be a less violent response than in the second thousand, significantly less violent. Okay, and maybe you can even try to quantify it. I don’t know exactly to what extent, insofar as you can establish uniform circumstances for everyone—which is a bit difficult—but on the principled level, in large numbers it works. I told him that this too, in Facebook’s operation, in this terrible algorithm, the fact that you can control and even predict what will happen in large numbers does not mean that people have no choice, nor does it mean they do not use it. They do use it, and you control none of them in anything. Each one chooses freely. But in large numbers, in the end, what comes out is what the circumstances dictate, what the topographical map dictates. You determine the environment within which people operate; you do not influence the people themselves. You determine the environment in which people operate, and given that environment, if each one chooses freely, then over a million people you suddenly see a pattern that can be predicted in advance. Exactly. That is Maimonides in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance. There Maimonides asks: why did the Holy One, blessed be He, punish the Egyptians? After all, already in the Covenant Between the Pieces He said to Abraham our father, “your seed shall be strangers,” and “they shall enslave them and oppress them four hundred years.” So what does He want from them? Maimonides says: because the Holy One, blessed be He, did not decree it upon any individual Egyptian; He decreed it upon the Egyptians in general. The Raavad says about this: these are childish words. What do you mean? In our language: if there are a hundred Egyptians, and ninety-nine choose the good—not to enslave Israel—and the hundredth Egyptian has a choice? After all, in the end they have to enslave Israel; the Holy One, blessed be He, already determined that in advance. And Maimonides there assumes, incidentally, that the Holy One, blessed be He, not only knew it in advance but brought it about. Therefore this is not the question of knowledge and choice from chapter 5; it is the question of determination and choice in chapter 6. He created this situation, He caused them to do it—which is much more difficult. So what do you want from them? Why are you punishing them? So Maimonides says no. He caused it on the collective level, but each individual Egyptian has free choice. And that is an excellent answer. An excellent answer. What does that mean? It means that when you determine—say I had control over the topographical map within which people operate, and suppose I tilt the map in a certain way in favor of enslaving the people of Israel, against choosing the good and not enslaving the Israelites. I make a mountain in the direction of good conduct and a valley in the direction of bad conduct. Every individual can decide to climb the mountain; he does not have to roll into the valley. But overall, obviously in large numbers more people will go down into the valley than climb the mountain, and therefore I can… To be ants in the collective sense does not mean that each individual has no choice. And not just a few ants. Yes. Every person has choice and is responsible for his deeds, and if he acted wrongly he has to answer for it. It’s true that statistically that is the direction. Someone who had a difficult childhood will more easily arrive at theft, say. Do you exempt him from responsibility in court because of that? Absolutely not, because he has free choice. In sentencing arguments, yes. In sentencing arguments that can play a role. You say, listen, it was very difficult for him to cope. Fine, so he’ll get only one year in prison and not five years. In sentencing arguments, yes. But responsibility itself certainly remains. The same thing: every day or two we hear about some new genetic discovery. Once they discover a gene responsible for violence, a gene responsible for belief in God, for atheism, for stinginess, for cowardice—for everything under the sun there are all kinds of—usually it isn’t one gene, never mind—some set of genes responsible for certain traits. And again people arrive at the same conclusion: that basically we are nothing but the landscape of our genetics and nothing more than that; we have no free choice. And again this is the same mistake. Because no genetic structure so far—certainly not what has been discovered so far, and I believe even if everything is discovered—but certainly what has been discovered so far, no genetic structure can determine with certainty what one individual person will do. Whether he will believe or not believe, be stingy or not be stingy. No. It can determine a tendency. A person has a tendency to believe, a tendency to be stingy, a tendency to be violent. All true. But what he actually does in the end depends on what he decides. He can decide. Maybe it will be hard for him to believe, and then he will decide to climb the mountain and nevertheless pay the price and nevertheless believe. So it can determine the tendency, but not what he will do. Now when I want to influence a person, I cannot influence his free choice. I can shape the topographical map within which he operates. Then statistically this may tilt the weights in his choice, but still he can always decide what he decides. In large numbers, I will see the implications of that tuning. Okay? That is the claim. Meaning when I talk about a libertarian picture, a picture of free choice, I do not mean—contrary to what people often think—the caricature of free choice as though I operate in a vacuum. People who attack the libertarian view say: look, there is genetics, there is education, there is this and that. They are really assuming that libertarianism means acting in a vacuum, with no influences at all, and I choose freely. But that is not correct. No sane libertarian thinks we act in a vacuum. Everyone understands that our genetics, our education, our environment influence us, obviously. But the question is whether these influences affect what I do or determine what I do. And those are two completely different things. They certainly affect what I do, and therefore statistically, in large numbers, I will find that. But the libertarian claim is that they do not determine what I do; they only affect what I do. Okay? So what does determine it? My choice. And choice has costs. Of course—you know a nice example of this—you can give three or four models of free choice. There is free choice in Syria. A person enters the polling station, chooses completely freely the only slip that is there, Assad, puts it in the ballot box, and the one elected is the one who got the majority of the votes—that is, Assad. It always comes out 99.7 percent, by the way. I don’t know where that 0.3 percent always disappears. But anyway, that’s free choice in Syria. This free choice is of course a sham. Right? There is no free choice there. Nobody influences you in anything, you do whatever you want, except that only one option is placed before you. Now you can decide freely—but between what and what? Okay? The second kind of free or democratic elections is Switzerland. Metaphorical Switzerland, yes? What happens in Switzerland? You approach the ballot box, there are several candidates, each person freely chooses the candidate he wants, and whoever gets the majority becomes president of Switzerland. Okay? Wonderful. Except that in our Switzerland there are no problems. So who cares who becomes president? Draw lots. In other words, if there are problems then you need to know how to deal with them. This one proposes one way, that one another way, there are prices to pay, so we need to see who is more suitable and who less suitable—that is a real choice. But in a place where there are no problems, just draw lots. I choose freely. My choice has meaning when there are fateful considerations this way and that way, and costs this way and that way. Therefore the real choices that have value-significance are when I have free choice between several options, but there are costs to each of the choices, and these costs also do not depend on me; they are often dictated to me. They do not depend on me, and what I do is try to find the optimal way to neutralize them or operate within the framework of those constraints imposed upon me. That is basically—it has, of course, a fourth model. This model says: you have costs, you have several options, but all those options converge to the same place. That is basically the case of the State of Israel, I think. Once a friend of mine told me that a friend of his was traveling in Burma, Myanmar, and there in the jungles—there are these crazy jungles there—he came in the middle of the jungle to some local village of huts, something very primitive. Suddenly he sees there a post office. He said, wow, let’s send a letter. This was before telephones and all that. Let’s send a letter home. He gets there and is amazed: on the wall of the post office there are lots of boxes sorted by continents and countries. In the middle of the jungle—who passes through here at all? Unbelievable. Anyway he stands there, there was a line, and there is a little window where you approach, and the wall with the boxes is here. You have to buy a stamp or something and then drop it into the relevant box. Okay? Now when he gets to the window, he sees the back side of these boxes, and on the back side there was one big sack collecting all the letters. In other words, you can drop it wherever you want, but everything falls into the same sack. So that’s more or less what happens here. There are different options, you can choose freely among the people, and you always get the same thing. What is the third option? The third option is a place where there are costs and you have to decide on an option that deals correctly with those costs. If you chose correctly, excellent. If not, bear the consequences. There too there is freedom, and there too there is freedom. In Syria it’s a sham, not really freedom, because there is only—nobody forces you, but there is only one option; that is determinism. In Switzerland that is indeterminism. You can hold a lottery for who the next president will be; it’s not interesting. That is basically indeterminism, random selection, right? When is it a choice? It is neither determinism nor indeterminism. It is a situation where you choose, but there are costs. The surrounding topography is not chosen by you; it is given. The question is how you conduct yourself within that given topography. Yes, there is Ari Elon—you know who that is? He’s the son of Justice Elon. He’s a kind of secular preacher, secular homilist, formerly religious, and he wrote several times about a distinction between the rabbinic man and the sovereign man. He likes wordplay, like Hasidic preachers. So the rabbinic man is supposedly the religious person, who has the rules dictated to him—what is right and what is not right to do, and so on—and the sovereign man is the person who legislates the rules for himself, an autonomous person, and so forth. Very stirring. So you understand that this identification is ridiculous. Try to think, for example, of someone who legislates for himself the rule to be a hired murderer. Fine, he legislated it completely autonomously, chose a lucrative career—they say they pay not badly in that profession—to be a hired murderer, and devotes his whole life to that lofty goal. In Ari Elon’s eyes, is that a role model? A noble figure? I assume not. Why not? He chose freely; he legislated his own values. Because he legislated bad values for himself. Right? So wait—what determines what is bad and what is good? Not your legislation? No. Meaning, what is bad and what is good is given. Now the question is exactly which one you choose, among the bad and the good. In other words, you also do not legislate values for yourself. What you decide is whether to go with the values—weakness of will, yes?—whether to do what I think is right or not do what I think is right. That is really the choice before you. No one legislates values for himself. There are cases where one can be uncertain about what the right value is, and then there are arguments. That is at the margins. But in general, in the basic matters, no one legislates values for himself. The question is whether you live up to what is right or do not live up to what is right. That is your choice. Therefore there are rabbinic and sovereign types among secular people too, and there are rabbinic and sovereign types among religious people too. This division is not orthogonal at all. Yes, the difference between religious and secular is perpendicular to the difference between rabbinic and sovereign. There are both kinds on both sides. So here too I am saying basically the same thing. Even when you act freely, you act within a framework of constraints, values, costs, givens that are not in your control. And even so, that is still called choosing freely. Not only that, but precisely because of this your choice has value or meaning, because there are costs. Not everything is the same. You can’t draw lots. It is judgment, and you will also bear the consequences if you choose rightly or wrongly. Precisely then your freedom to choose has some kind of meaning. Therefore, when we speak of free choice, we are not speaking of activity in a vacuum. There are many things that influence a person, and even in the libertarian picture these things influence him. But in the libertarian picture they influence and do not determine a person’s behavior. In the deterministic picture they determine his behavior. Therefore, for example, a determinist thinks that psychology still doesn’t manage to predict human behavior only because things are too complex. That is the answer he gives. We don’t know, we don’t have enough psychological knowledge, it’s too complicated. The libertarian claims it’s not because of complexity. Even if I knew all of psychology, finished the research, had complete mastery, knew the exact map of this specific person, everything, and had the full psychological knowledge, I still would not be able to know what he will do, because he has free choice. Now psychology deals with describing the topography within which we act. Psychology does not describe us. We are the ones acting within that map; we are not the map. The map is the environment within which we act, in the libertarian picture. In the deterministic picture, we are the environment—or not the environment, rather, we are the topographical map. Yes, and then basically that determines what the ball will do. There is nothing in the ball beyond that topographical map. Now what this really means is that the person’s fundamental choice is mainly whether to choose—whether to be a little ball or to be a person. A person can behave like a little ball, and then he lets the environment—the environment meaning both inner and outer, the psychological environment or the physical environment, all the things influencing him—lead him and steer him wherever it takes him. But if he works in human mode, then the environment does not determine. It influences, but it does not determine. Okay? And in fact I think that in most cases, the person’s dilemma is whether to be a chooser or not, and not what to choose. You can compare it to someone riding as a driver, holding the reins of horses. If he holds the reins, then he guides the horses where he wants. If he drops the reins, then the horses take him where they take him. Okay? A person’s choice is whether to drop the reins or to hold them. Whether to keep control in his own hands, to be a chooser. And again, there are costs; the horses will resist. You won’t easily take them where you want, but you can still choose to take them even if they don’t want to go there, and there is a good chance you will succeed. Okay? Not always, but often you will succeed. The horses do not determine what you do; they influence what you do. But in the end, you decide. If you drop the reins, then you are basically saying: okay, I choose to be a little ball, and the circumstances will take me where they take me. In this context, I think this picture basically says that when we demand that people conduct themselves properly, we really need to demand of them a double demand: first, be a chooser; second, choose correctly. You can choose wrongly and then make a mistake. You can also fail to choose, become a little ball, drop the reins, and then the circumstances will take you into doing something wrong. Okay? And what is demanded of a person is precisely not to be a little ball but to be a person, and also to choose correctly—within your topographical map, to choose correctly. There is Elijah on Mount Carmel, yes? The verse there says that Elijah says to the people: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if the Baal, follow him.” Usually we understand this as some rhetorical trick, trying to push them into a corner and say: be men, be consistent, decide what you’re doing and go with it. And he doesn’t really mean that they should follow the Baal. It’s just a trick to get them back to the Holy One, blessed be He. I read it literally. You really believe in the Baal? Then go with it. Otherwise you’re just nobodies. You’re not even heretics; you’re just nobodies. You go each time—as the comic troupe says—I didn’t go with Dad, I didn’t go with Mom, I went with the crowd. Okay? Meaning, what? With the crowd. Every time wherever the wind took me. I don’t have this direction or that direction; wherever the wind blows—sitting on the fence. Okay? What Elijah is really saying to them is: look, choosing the Baal and serving the Baal is very bad, but not choosing is even worse. Be choosers. And choose the Baal? Fine, you chose the Baal because that is what you think. But be choosers. Not choosing is just being a nobody; it’s being a little ball. Right, but isn’t there a passage in Maimonides that says a prophet may not say to worship idolatry? What? He is not encouraging idolatry. He’s telling them to do what they think. Continue with that law? Fine—go and worship. Right. No, he’s saying to them: if that’s what you think, then go with it. But you’re nobodies, because you don’t even do that. You don’t even worship the Baal consistently. Why not? On the contrary, I think he has to say that to them—and an educator to his students too. I think that when a person—you know, many times we feel that if my child, my student, whatever, remains observant of Torah and commandments, then I succeeded, and if he left, then I failed. But the picture is not so simple. In my view, if someone left because he decided that he doesn’t believe in it, there is a measure of success in that. I don’t agree with his decision, but he decided. A person was created here who decides his own path—that is a partial success. It isn’t complete success, but he passed the first floor. He is not a little ball. True, on the second floor, as a person, he chose wrongly in my view. Okay. But there is someone who remains committed to Torah and commandments just because—because that is his comfort zone. Meaning he doesn’t really—he is a little ball, and in his case it just happens that the truth points in the direction of Torah and commandments, and the mountain points in the direction of… because sometimes making that change is hard. In my eyes, that is not such a great success. Not at all. I think—I think that whether you choose or not is even more significant than what you choose. Because if you don’t choose, then who cares what you do? What you do is utterly insignificant either way. So this point really says that before the person faces the dilemma of what to choose, he first faces the dilemma of whether to be a chooser. Whether to hold the reins in his hands, and only afterward to see where to take the horses—but first of all whether to hold the reins in my own hands at all. Now why am I saying this? Because maybe it gives us a direction for understanding the problem of weakness of will. And here I said: I’m a bit uncertain. It always goes back and forth for me, so think about it—I don’t know, you decide. My claim is as follows. Do you remember the turkey? I think I talked about the turkey last time—the person who lives in two levels of consciousness. He supposedly thinks he is a turkey, but deep down he knows he is really a human being. Okay? Now the claim—what I explained there—is that a person builds for himself all kinds of theories that, from his own point of view, justify what he is doing, even though deep down he understands those theories are not true. But that’s what we’re like. We won’t do something that is obviously evil on the face of it; we will explain to ourselves in a thousand ways why it is really the right thing, and we’ll build ourselves theories. I was reminded exactly of—when I was in Yeshivat Har Etzion, I didn’t study anything. Did I tell this story? Okay, so in exactly this context it always accompanies me, this whole thing with that theory, because today I look at it and say: what happened to you? Did you really think that was true? No. Even then I knew it wasn’t true, but it was a wonderful theory, and it was nice to torment the guys a bit too, and beyond that I needed some justification for doing what I was doing. A person does not just do something that is clearly wrong even in his own eyes. You build yourself some kind of justification. Okay? So the claim in the end—and I said then, yes, “we compel him until he says ‘I want to,’” we spoke about that. What I want to claim is this: if a person is about to sin, if a person sins—how does weakness of will happen? That’s what I asked at the beginning of the class. The answer I’m proposing is that the person actually builds himself a theory according to which this really is what he thinks. Now inwardly he understands that it isn’t true, but he lives within some consciousness, and gradually he really convinces himself: this is my theory, yes, this is what I think, clearly, and so on and so forth. What this means is that… dropping the reins from my hands. I don’t decide to murder. I decide to stop controlling. I no longer take control. The circumstances will take me to murder or steal or I don’t know what, to do all kinds of things that I myself think are wrong. And then what happens is that when I do that act, you can’t say I did something that I myself think is wrong. You can say it, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s something that deep down somewhere I know is wrong. But I built for myself some kind of theory that says it is right, and therefore really everything is fine. This is the way I drop the reins. Think of a person who decides to get drunk and then drives. Okay? Now we consider that person responsible for everything that happens afterward, even though when he was drunk he of course had no control over the wheel. Right? And other drunk people for whom nothing happened—they didn’t run anyone over, they were lucky and they didn’t run anyone over. No one sues them if they weren’t caught; no one charges them, everything is fine. But if he ran someone over, he is not charged because he was drunk. He is charged with murder. Why? Because when you drank, you should have foreseen and been responsible for the results liable to follow from that. All the results that happen afterward are considered something for which you are responsible. Now you can’t say that I decided to murder. No such person decided to murder; that’s clear. So what did he decide? To drop the reins. Here, okay, I’m drinking, whatever happens, happens. I very much hope nothing will happen. If he were sober and without the urges, I’d say to him: listen, but there is a chance something will happen—you’re taking a crazy risk here. Yes, so exactly, that is switching off the control center in his head, becoming a little ball, dropping the reins, and whatever comes out comes out—and it came out that I killed someone. So what do I gain from this description? In the discussion of weakness of will, we were moving between two poles, both of which are impossible. On the one hand, it can’t be that I did something that was not what I thought. Why did I do it if I thought that wasn’t the right thing to do? On the other hand, what will you say? Maybe something forced me to do it, I was coerced? But then you don’t need to repent for that. I have no responsibility for what I do because I was compelled. Right? I’m trying to propose a model where I can do something that I myself think is wrong, and I am not coerced—I am responsible for it, and yet I did it. How does that happen? I did not decide to murder. A person does not decide to murder if he thinks murder is forbidden. Certainly not in horrors like murder. Maybe in small things, but in horrors like that a person doesn’t do something when it’s clear to him that it is very evil and not fit to do. Okay, but what he can do is decide to drink before driving. That we plainly see many people decide to do. They know there may be such consequences, but they repress it: it won’t happen to me, theories like that, other theories. Deep down they know very well that this can happen, but the way they move forward is really to say: okay, I’m drinking now; what happens later—I’m hoping nothing happens. But something did happen. In the end something did happen. So on the one hand you can’t say that you murdered even though you thought murder was forbidden. You didn’t perform an act of murder; you only drank wine, you only dropped the reins. The horses took you, not you. So you can’t say you did something you didn’t want. Okay, but on the other hand I said: wait, if you did something you didn’t want, then you’re not responsible. No, not true. Because I was not coerced, since in the end responsibility for dropping the reins is mine. I decided to drop the reins—or to drink wine, exactly. Meaning the first act is only to drink. That is not an act that I think is forbidden in itself. It may have problematic consequences, but as far as I’m concerned I only intended to drink. Now that drinking means dropping the reins. Do you understand that the moment you drop the reins, the horses may take you to murder? Yes, but I’m only dropping the reins; I’m not thinking about the next stage. And that can indeed happen. I think in our own experience we know this can happen, and therefore I’m saying that the process by which a person sins—or I think usually this is the situation—is not a process in which he very clearly does something that he himself thinks is wrong to do. That’s not what happens. Rather, he turns off the control switch. That is, he says: okay, now I’ll sleep, I don’t know, I’m drunk or I’m drinking wine now and so on. I understand what may happen as a result, but somehow I ignore it. I build myself some theory that it won’t happen—or no, I ignore it. So I turned off control, turned myself into a little ball, from here on the topographical map says murder. Not me—I’m just a little ball, okay? The topographical map dictated what I would do. So on the one hand, I didn’t do what I don’t think, the map took me. But on the other hand, I am responsible. It isn’t true that what took me means I was coerced, and therefore I’m not responsible and don’t need to repent. I need to repent for deciding not to be a chooser, not for the murder. It’s for deciding not to be a chooser that I need to repent. Because usually when I murder, it’s because I gave up my option to choose, my ability to choose. Yes. How do you compare drinking and driving to shooting someone in the head? Obviously shooting someone in the head. Okay, so how could I tell myself—actively decide not to be active, to decide actively like that… No, I didn’t say “decide.” If that’s really what you think, then what does “decide” mean? If that’s really what you think, then you do what you think. That is to the person’s credit—that he does what he thinks. He is a sovereign person. You said murder… He could simply drink and drive. He didn’t have to murder. But he thinks it’s right. But that’s not… He thinks it’s right. In the context of what we discussed… No. If he thinks murder is right, then fine, he thinks that. I think it’s a horrific act, but that is his view—what can I do? So you agree that from his standpoint it is more okay? What does “more okay” mean? When I judge a person, I always judge him according to his own standpoint, not mine. To judge a person by my standpoint is a mistake. I always judge him by his own standpoint. Now whether he really believes this or not, I can’t always know, because I don’t know what is in a person’s heart. But suppose Elijah the prophet came and told me: this man genuinely, sincerely believes that murder is right. I have no problem with him, except that one has to protect oneself from him. I would put him in prison defensively, but I would have no issue with his conduct. He did what he thinks. Is there objective truth? There is objective truth. But judgment is not determined by objective truth. Judgment is supposed to be subjective. Because when you judge the person, you have to judge him by what he did through his own glasses at that moment. I am not saying he is right; I am saying he is not evil. Okay? I’m not saying he is right. He is very much not right. Fine? So in short, why did I say I’m uncertain about this solution to weakness of will? Because of course one can now ask the same question about the decision whether to be a chooser. About the decision whether to be a chooser, I can ask the same question. Why did you decide not to be a chooser? Because you preferred not to be a chooser, right? Ah, no, you were just weak, and therefore you weren’t a chooser? Again the problem of weakness of will, only this time not about the act but about the decision whether to be a chooser. So ostensibly I gained nothing. But it’s not true that I gained nothing. I said, this is my coming and going on the matter. I keep wavering. Because when I decided not to be a chooser, that in itself is not something problematic. So it can indeed happen. Meaning, here I really can decide not to be a chooser, while counting on the fact that nothing will happen, deceiving myself somehow. It is not the same as deciding to murder when I think murder is a horror. I decide not to be a chooser. And indeed, not being a chooser is not itself a horror. The horror is what may happen as a consequence of it. But that I did not think about. If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done it—that’s clear. I repressed it, I didn’t… I sold myself some line that it can’t happen, or won’t happen, or something like that, or I’m taking the risk that it may happen, or something like that. Therefore, I say again, in principle the question also exists with regard to the decision whether to choose or not to choose. But I think that because not choosing is not a bad decision in itself—it’s bad because of the consequences that will come from it, but not bad in itself—there can indeed be a situation where a person decides not to choose without noticing the things that will happen afterward, and then things do happen, and he is responsible—responsible for those acts. So again, this is my proposal for the problem of weakness of will. I don’t know another solution to this problem, and on the other hand I am convinced that there is such a thing as weakness of will. I’m not prepared to give up the assumption that there is such a thing as weakness of will. It seems to me that each of us experiences it very intimately, this fact that sometimes we did what we did not want. And I think that this usually happens when we hide from ourselves that we don’t want it. We build ourselves some theory that masks this. We basically switch off control. We don’t let… we let the whole business… It reminds me—once when I was a child, my father took me to the Technion to play with some chess master. I used to play chess. So he took me to play with some master who was there. Of course he crushed me blindfolded. But he recommended that I play against myself as practice. Play against yourself. Because when you play against yourself, you… you know exactly what the opponent’s plans are. It’s very interesting. So you can’t rely on his mistakes. You have to make a plan that can force him, that ought to force him to lose, right? Because if you’re relying on him making a mistake, he knows your plan and he won’t make the mistake. Yes, people always asked me afterward who won. But if there’s a forced line, then he’ll know not to get into that forced line in the first place. Because you know how many moves ahead you can think, but fair enough. No, but if you can think five moves ahead, then your other self can also think five moves ahead, so he’ll know not to enter it. No—the question is whether you can force him, so that in any case he can’t avoid getting into that position. That’s the beautiful plan. Suppose we can think five moves ahead. Can I now build a plan such that no matter what, within five moves you arrive at a position where you’ll lose? But again, that’s not something you can plan. It’s something you simply have to reach. No, why? I do plan it. I know that if I go here, you have several options, none of which will help you because I have an answer. But didn’t we say that a trap in chess means I’m hoping very much that next move he’ll do that, because if he does that he falls into the trap? No, no, no. A trap is built on the other side making a mistake. I mean something else. I mean forcing him into the trap. He has no other option. It’s a tactic so brilliant that he has no answer at all. For every reply I have another reply that will in the end force him into this trap or that one. But it is dictated. This is a bit related to Zermelo’s theorem in game theory—you know there is a theorem in game theory that every game similar to chess, games with a certain property like chess, then either White wins or Black wins or it’s a draw. That’s the theorem. Now that sounds trivial, but it’s really not trivial. The point is that in the game there is a built-in win for Black or a built-in win for White. There is a structure, there is a result. If you play with an optimal strategy, there is one result dictated in advance. We don’t know what it is because it’s too complex, but there is only one of them. That’s a nontrivial theorem. It’s not that in every game, obviously either Black wins or White wins or there’s a draw. The claim is that there exists a strategy that can force a result in advance. What is the result? One of those three, though I don’t know which one. But in every game, no matter who my opponent is, there is such a strategy—say the answer is White wins—then in every game, if I use that strategy, I will beat Black. Or the opposite, or Black, it doesn’t matter against whom. Fine. A war is a kind of that. War? The card game War? I don’t know it. The children’s game. A card game where each one flips and the higher one wins in the end. Okay, that’s luck there, not—fine, I’m talking about something else. So that’s a bit related to what you said before. Here you see that the theorem basically says there is a strategy—for example, if I am White—such that no matter what you do, in the end you lose. I’m only talking about a five-move range, not the whole game, because nobody has yet found the full strategy, only that there is a theorem saying it exists. That’s all: a non-constructive theorem. How did we get into all this? I don’t even remember. So in short, the claim I want to make is that weakness—yes, there can be a state of weakness of will, and it is a state in which the person basically turns himself temporarily into a little ball. That’s all. And therefore “I was weak” means that I didn’t maintain full control all the time. I didn’t keep the reins in my hand all the time; I allowed myself from time to time to drop them. Okay? So becoming like a little ball for a moment? Yes. Okay? So the fact that different people in identical situations, if they all drop the reins, each one will arrive somewhere else—if the circumstances in which they are operating are different. No, if the circumstances are the same and you’re without reins, little balls, all the little balls get to every place because the tendency is more to… Yes, so what? Because the map is different, yes. No, obviously even without choice not all human beings behave the same way, that’s obvious, because each one has different influences, a different environment in which he operates. With choice, obviously not everyone behaves the same way—that’s all the more so. Okay, I just want to see this. There is an interesting chapter in the Tanya, chapter 9. Look here in the Tanya. He says as follows: “Now the place of residence of the animal soul, which is from kelipat nogah, in every Jew is in the heart, in the left chamber, which is full of blood. And it is written, ‘for the blood is the soul.’ Therefore all desires and boastfulness and anger and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the body, and they also rise to the brain in the head to think and meditate upon them and devise means for them, just as the blood has its source in the heart and from the heart spreads to all the limbs and also rises to the brain in the head. But the place of residence of the divine soul is in the brains in the head, and from there it spreads to all the limbs, and also in the heart, in the right chamber where there is no blood, as it is written, ‘the heart of the wise inclines to his right.’ And it is the love of God like flaming fiery sparks, blazing in the hearts of the intelligent who understand and contemplate with the knowledge in their brains matters that arouse love.” What is he really describing here? In the picture of the author of the Tanya there is a divine soul and an animal soul. The animal soul, which comes from kelipat nogah—in a moment I’ll explain what that is—its center is in the heart, in the left chamber, and from there it spreads throughout the body including the brain. The divine soul has its source in the brain, and from there it spreads to all the limbs, including the heart, in this case in the right chamber. So it turns out that both the animal soul and the divine soul are in the whole body, in the whole astral body, as it were, yes? The whole soul, not the physical body. Okay. So what really is the difference between them? The question is where the center lies. In the divine soul, its center is in the head and from there it spreads to the heart. In the animal soul, its center is in the heart and from there it spreads to the head. What does that actually mean? Look, when we look—when the kindergarten teacher tells us about the choice between good and evil, she basically says we have a good inclination and an evil inclination, and they fight each other and the question is which one will win. But that is an absurd description. It is absurd because the question is where I am in this whole story. The inclinations fight each other and one of them wins—what does that have to do with me? The good inclination and the evil inclination are names for things moving around inside me; they are apparently not under my control. If one of them wins or the other wins, that seems like something that happens by itself—deterministically, I would even say. What does that have to do with me? Why if my good inclination is larger am I a good person? It’s just how I am; that’s how I was created. The inclinations cannot determine my spiritual standing or the judgment I deserve. Therefore the author of the Tanya says it works the other way around. The struggle is not, let us say, between right and left, between good and evil, but between above and below. What does he mean? He says the animal soul comes from kelipat nogah. What is kelipat nogah? In Kabbalah there are four husks. Three husks are completely evil, and kelipat nogah is evil mixed with good. Fine, that’s how it works. This is the serpent; kelipat nogah is משכא דחויא, the serpent’s skin, which cast its impurity into the human being—cast its impurity into Adam and Eve and so on—and on the feminine side, it doesn’t belong; you can take it either toward holiness or toward the profane, your eating. Okay, we’ll see in a moment, yes. But the claim is that it is really the mixed good-and-evil, and this is what is called the animal soul. It is the serpent’s skin, the snake that cast its impurity into Adam and Eve and in the end caused them to sin. And this is found in the heart, in the left chamber, and from there it rises upward. The brain is the dwelling of the divine soul. Meaning that in the animal soul, evil and good are mixed. The animal soul is not evil. The animal soul has both evil and good in it. So what does define it? I think the fact that its dwelling is in the heart means that what defines it is that the good and evil there are instinctive good and evil. It is the good inclination and the evil inclination. Both inclinations belong to the animal soul. The animal soul is the horses. I have inclinations, a good inclination and an evil inclination; they can take me somewhere—if I drop the reins, by the way. And the horses take me somewhere; they can even take me to do wonderful things, if by chance they want to go in those directions. That is not up to me. Whatever the horses do, they do. But I’m without control. Meaning the animal soul is the instinctive dimension of the person, and that instinctive dimension includes both the good inclination and the evil inclination. To conduct oneself according to instinct, whether good or bad, is problematic, because it means I’m letting the horses pull me. The inclinations are taking me. On the other hand, the divine soul is the antithesis. What does that mean? Here the heart doesn’t run things; the head runs things. It starts above. Now maybe here too there is good and evil, but I keep control in my own hands. I don’t let the inclinations lead me; I keep control in my own hands. And the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul is not a struggle between good and evil. It is a struggle between control and lack of control. The divine soul basically means: I’m a human being. The animal soul means: I’m a little ball. Wherever the circumstances take me, they take me. And the struggle is whether I have control, not whether I will do good or do evil. Incidentally, usually when I have control I will also do good, because why would I do evil? A person usually doesn’t do something that is evil even in his own eyes. Sometimes yes, if the interest overrides and so on because he wants it and so on. As long as the reins are in his hand, he always does what he wants. We remember that. Only what he wants can include both values and interests, of course. But in the end, if something is really very evil, usually a person who is not a little ball, who is in a state of control, who chooses, will not do it. But when a person does something evil, it is usually because he switched off his control, turned himself into a little ball. Then he does something evil, as we discussed earlier. And therefore this is really the state of the animal soul as opposed to the state of the divine soul. That is the struggle. Now what is interesting is that each of the souls is present both in the heart and in the brain. Both. The difference is only what is the locomotive and what is the carriage. In the divine soul, it goes out from the brain and spreads to the heart. The brain is the locomotive and the heart is the carriage. Fine? It is pulled after the locomotive. In the animal soul it works the other way around: the locomotive is the heart and the carriage is the brain. But in both of them—therefore the struggle is not between good and evil, and it is not between wisdom and stupidity either. Not that either. Meaning there can be wise and foolish people; there can be good and bad people. The question is whether you keep the control in your hands or not. This depends not on the heart, on traits, nor on the intellect, as such in the brain. It depends on the will. The question is whether you decide what you want, and that is what you do—whether the control is with you or not. That is the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul. And that is what he says: “It is indeed written, ‘one nation shall prevail over the other,’ for the body is called a small city. And just as two kings wage war over one city, each wanting to conquer it and reign over it—that is, to lead the inhabitants of the city according to his will and that they should obey him in everything he decrees—so the two souls, the divine and the vital animal soul from the husk, fight one another over the body and all its limbs. For the divine soul desires and wills that it alone should rule over him and guide him, and all the limbs should obey it and be nullified before it entirely and serve as a chariot for it,” and so on. And the animal soul too basically—each of them wants control over everything. So the struggle is over the whole thing, over all our psychic powers. But what really distinguishes the animal soul from the divine soul is the question of who leads. Does the mind lead the heart, or does the heart lead the mind? But in the end, both in the conduct of the animal soul and in the conduct of the divine soul there is both heart and mind. Every person has both. It is not fools versus wise men. It is also not evil people versus good people. It is choosers versus little balls. That is really the struggle. Now what is the meaning of this idea that the animal soul goes out from—let’s start with the divine soul. The divine soul starts in the brain and harnesses the heart to its service. Right—the brain leads and harnesses the heart. I think that’s fairly easy to understand. What happens there? The person basically decides in his head what he wants, what his values are, how he wants to conduct himself, and so on. Then he uses the heart as something that can help him in this. He creates psychological or emotional identification, or whatever it may be, and the heart can help him actualize what the brain decided to do. But the brain dictates what we will do, what our values will be, what we will want, how we will conduct ourselves, and so on. One can use emotions, the heart, emotional capacities, even inclinations. “With both your inclinations,” yes, the good inclination and the evil inclination, and so on. “With all your heart”—with both inclinations. And one can even use the evil inclination to do what one wants to do. If someone decided he wants to study Torah, let him use the desire for honor, because the desire for honor will help him; it will motivate him more to study Torah. So that is serving God with both inclinations—you use the inclinations in order to go in the direction you decided upon. So there too there is heart, there too there are inclinations, but they serve the decision, the brain. What happens in the opposite situation, in the animal soul? In the animal soul exactly the opposite happens. What does that mean? The heart basically decides what it wants. The urge decides what it wants. Sometimes good, sometimes bad—incidentally, we have inclinations in both directions. There is a good inclination and there is an evil inclination. It feels very good to us to do good things. The brain serves the heart, serves the heart’s needs. What does that mean? I build an intellectual theory that helps me walk in the path my inclination decided to walk. Okay? So it isn’t that I’m stupid. I can be an intellectual genius, and my theory can be brilliant. But the theory comes after I marked the goal. Meaning after I marked where I want to go, the theory enables me to behave that way. This is exactly the case of the turkey and all we discussed earlier, when I said that a person builds for himself some kind of theory—and he does this with the intellect—but de facto he builds it so that in the end it will tell him to do what his inclination wants him to do. Okay? That is the conduct of the animal soul. The turkey, that prince, that king’s son who thought he was a turkey, is basically functioning in the mode of the animal soul. That’s the point there. And what is required of us is to conduct ourselves in the mode of the divine soul. What does that mean? There are still inclinations and there is still a heart and everything, but control has to remain with us. We decide what is right, what we want to do, and we harness all our soul-powers, the higher and lower and everything, for the sake of that goal. The heart serves the mind, and not the mind the heart. I once heard a joke from Dov Sadan, who was a literary scholar at the Hebrew University. Shlomo Nitzan once told it on the radio in his name. He said the next person who will make a revolution in the world will probably be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? That’s obvious, because the person who makes a revolution in the world is usually a Jew. But why an orthopedist? So he said: because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our father, Moses our teacher, I don’t know, who said, “Lift your eyes on high and see who created these.” The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was Jesus. He told them everything is in the heart, right? “The Merciful One wants the heart.” The third Jew who made a revolution in the world was Marx, who said everything is in the stomach. The fourth was Freud, who said everything is below the belt. Okay? So the next one will probably be an orthopedist. Now I think there is something very true in that joke. There is a process, which I think today one can see very clearly, of lowering control lower and lower all the time. People are not becoming stupider, nor more evil. But there is a total lack of trust in intellect in our era. People can be brilliant, geniuses, philosophers, scientists, whatever—but they have no trust that the intellect can lead you in the right direction. So control gets shifted to the heart or to the inclinations. People start developing all kinds of theories about “what I feel,” “what I connect with,” and all this strange discourse. These things really reflect—you hear someone who saw a movie, or went to a concert or an exhibition or whatever. What does he say? “Wow, it was so moving.” I don’t care what it did to your heart. Say something intelligent. Say it was like this, it was like that, I don’t know, it was special, he did this in such-and-such a way, it was complex. Nothing. Moving, not moving, yes moving. What do I care? The despair of the intellect is so great that the whole center has shifted to the heart. And it’s not because people have become stupider; on the contrary, sometimes it’s because they’re too smart, and then with the intellect you can get anywhere, and you despair because you can’t really reach the right conclusion, so you say okay, we’ll go with the heart. A lot of expression of this can also be found in political contexts. You see articles, say, that want to persuade you to be left-wing—Gideon Levy. Okay? I don’t know if he still writes; I have no idea. In any case, he describes heartbreaking stories about these Palestinians and those Palestinians, who really do suffer greatly through no fault of their own, and so on. Which is indeed not okay; that shouldn’t happen. Okay? But do you think that therefore I’m supposed to become left-wing? Why? Maybe yes, but persuade me. But if not, then… But if not, the fact that there is some poor person here and you tore my heart out—does that mean I now have to change my political worldview? And the reverse too, by the way, the same thing from the Right, the same propaganda. Meaning the attempt to harness the heart in order to harness the mind so that it will build the theory that nourishes the heart. You want there not to be such cases? Then be left-wing. Now we will build a left-wing theory, and everything will be fine, and I’ll be wonderful, and there will be no stomachache. Same thing in the other direction. The Right too. Both sides are guilty of this. And again, it all stems from some very deep despair about intellect. People do not think that intellectual arguments can lead them to some truer place, something like that. And again, not because they are stupid. It is not stupidity, but despair of intellect—simply moving the center from the head to the heart, and then to the stomach, and below the belt. The question is whether a person who came out of a concert and didn’t talk about the musical complexity of the violinist—you think he is more right than someone who said wow, it was an amazing spectacle? I don’t know what “more right” means. I’m saying: if you want to tell me something useful, why do I care what it did to your innards? Say something intelligent. Say that it was this, that it was… What intelligent thing can be said here? I don’t know—I don’t understand music. I understand other things. About things I understand, I can try to say intelligent things. What I don’t understand, I don’t understand. But this whole thing of “I was moved” is, to me, such a vague, evasive kind of statement. Why do I care what it did to you? Explain to me why it did that to you. What is the significance of it? Intrigue me. Try to persuade me to experience it too. I understand. It reminds me that once I saw a program—there’s some music reality show, there are several of them, I don’t even remember which. In one of them, Shlomi Shabbat was one of the judges. We were sitting with our kids watching the program, and he said there to one of the contestants—I don’t remember whether it was a man or woman—he says, “Listen, my head says one thing, but my heart, my heart…” and he stopped there. So I said, okay, and what did you decide? That’s what I said to the kids there. He didn’t bother telling us the conclusion, because obviously if the head says one way and the heart says another, you go with the heart. That doesn’t need to be said; those words are unnecessary. And that was a wonderful sign of this annoying phenomenon. This phenomenon of shifting everything to emotion and religious experiences and this kind of experience and that kind of experience, and everything becomes terribly emotional, and you can’t talk to people in terms of arguments. And again, not because they’re stupid, but because there is despair of intellect. Yes, but you can’t explain bungee jumping logically to a person. Huh? You can’t explain bungee jumping logically. Fine, because bungee jumping really is not such a very complex thing. You do it for the fun, and that’s it. The intellect doesn’t really belong there. Fine, but in music and in other places there is also something to say on more intellectual planes. There are things where there isn’t. Whipped-cream cake—I enjoy it simply because it feels good in my stomach. I don’t need to describe to anyone the complexity of the cake, although maybe there too there is an art of baking, I don’t know exactly. Yes. So all these things basically amount to there being a huge struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul, and I think the world is moving more and more in the direction of the animal soul. Again, it is not necessarily becoming more evil. On the contrary, in some respects the world’s conduct has even become better in general. But it comes from places of what do I feel, what do I connect with. You can’t talk to people in terms of arguments. It simply drives the mind crazy, all this—drives the mind crazy, of course, not the heart. Political correctness is part of this. Huh? Political correctness is also part of this phenomenon, yes. There’s something where it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, but it’s not politically correct because it feels bad. Yes. Okay, let’s stop here. We have one more meeting next Wednesday and we’ll finish. Have a good Sabbath. Have a good Sabbath.