On People with Asperger’s and Human Beings (Column 218)
The reply the column is answering: human drives do not exempt us from irrationality
The starting point is a response to an earlier column: human beings, like a frog attracted to flies rather than bananas, act out of biological and psychological drives; therefore there is no point criticizing them in the name of abstract rationality. A conservative, for example, is not necessarily seeking maximum economic gain but maximum psychological gain from conservatism, and from that perspective is acting logically. The rabbi does not accept this move as self-evident, and looks for a way to reexamine the very normalization of human irrationality.
Don Tillman shows how absurd our social lives look from the outside
For that purpose the column turns to The Rosie Project, a novel about Don Tillman — a brilliant, precise, rigid geneticist who tries to find a wife by means of a list of criteria. Tillman’s descriptions of the world — cleaning the bathroom, managing a date, the apricot ice-cream experiment, the lecture that starts late — bring out not stupidity or dullness but extreme rational consistency. It is דווקא the society around him that appears wasteful of time, politely dishonest, dependent on reading vague hints, and ready to abandon evidence in favor of unexplained social rules. The fact that the book never explicitly decides whether Tillman is Asperger also reinforces the idea that this is a spectrum rather than a sharp category.
Reversing the spectrum: maybe the Asperger pole is the truly healthy one
From here the rabbi proposes a provocative reversal: all of us sit somewhere on a spectrum between pure rationality and ordinary human weakness, but if health is measured by adherence to the goals and criteria a person himself has set, then the Asperger pole is actually the healthy one. The people we define as healthy are those who set a time and do not keep it, adopt criteria and then abandon them, and let social vagueness and bias run their lives. The rabbi of course admits that such a person would have trouble functioning in existing human society, and that he himself is not really such a person; but precisely for that reason, he says, it is important to look at ourselves for a moment from Tillman’s point of view and ask why we grant our weaknesses the title of health.
Political correctness sanctifies the human condition instead of challenging it
From here the column returns to the opening response: saying that every action carries some psychological profit does not refute the criticism of irrationality; it may only blur it. If every failure is redefined as an inner preference, we will never be able to say about anyone that he is acting against his own goals or harming himself. The rabbi argues that political correctness works the same way: instead of recognizing that the ordinary human condition is saturated with weaknesses, it turns what is common into healthy and makes pointing to it an offense. In his view, many of his columns do exactly the opposite exercise — they put these weaknesses on the table instead of crowning them as charming humanity beyond criticism.
Why this is not Foucault: psychiatric diagnosis may be relative, rationality is not
At this point the rabbi pauses to distinguish his position from Foucault’s. Foucault criticized psychiatric diagnoses and argued that the distinction between healthy and sick depends on culture and narrative; in that context the rabbi is partly willing to agree, because a psychiatric symptom is often defined as a deviation from the norm. But here, he stresses, the discussion is not about psychiatric classification itself but about rationality: once a person has set goals for himself, the question whether his means fit them is an objective question. The goals themselves may be culture-dependent, but the relation between means and end is not merely a narrative.
The utility-function trap: this is how every mistake can become rational
But here the column deliberately complicates its own argument. Following earlier discussions of rationality and utility functions, the rabbi reminds us that if rationality is defined as achieving a person’s goals, then every mistake can always be rescued by an ad hoc explanation: perhaps he gained psychological comfort, saved effort, acquired a moral image, or perhaps even the mistake itself was part of what he wanted. In the same way, talk about altruism can also be emptied of content, because one can always claim that the altruist gained a good feeling. This is exactly the mechanism hiding behind the opening response as well: if one may always add another hidden goal, then everyone is rational by definition.
Still, it makes real sense to speak about irrationality
Despite the philosophical difficulty, the rabbi refuses to conclude that the concept of irrationality is empty. In life itself we do distinguish, even if not in a fully sharp or measurable way, between consistent pursuit of goals and conduct that sabotages them and is ruled by weakness, impulse, or intellectual laziness. So the final message is double: not everything in the world is logic, and one cannot really live in a society of Aspergers; but one must also not hide behind the sentence that is just how people are in order to sanctify our inconsistency. The Asperger gaze is offered here as a refreshing thought experiment that pulls us out of the bubble and forces us to see how much of what is considered normal is sometimes simply irrational.
With God’s help
“I am a human being, and nothing human is alien to me”
(Publius Terentius Afer, Roman playwright)
In response to my latest column (about the conferences), I received from Ami the following text:
Here is another frog story: a frog was doing everything it could to catch flies with its tongue. The monkey was puzzled: there is a banana tree right here, full of ripe, sweet bananas. Why is the frog trying to catch flies?! The monkey concluded to himself: this frog is simply irrational…
And the moral: human beings are animals driven by various impulses, biological and/or psychological. Therefore, to claim that they are not rational is to miss their essence. There is surely a great deal of logic in human beings who are anxious about change joining together in order to try to halt trends of change, just as it is logical that human beings with opposite drives (or “opposite inclinations”) would want to promote innovation.
What interests conservatives is not which laws/system will bring maximal economic profit, but which path will bring them maximal psychological profit. (And that profit, of course, comes from conservatism).
Laughing at them may be an amusing pastime, but it misses the most basic principles according to which human beings operate.
This is not the first time I have received a response of this sort, and the following column is dedicated to all those respondents.[1]
Asperger’s
In recent years the subject of Asperger’s has yielded some interesting literary fruit. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (by Mark Haddon) is perhaps the best known among them. After it came The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion, which I liked even more. The Rosie Project is a book about a brilliant geneticist named Don Tillman, who sets out on a project to find himself a partner. He composes a list of required traits and sets off on a chase, attempting in a systematic way to locate the ideal woman who meets his criteria. That may sound to you almost reasonable (though it is hard to believe one can find a partner through a precise preordained list of traits), but Tillman clings to the list with devotion and is unwilling to deviate from it. He takes it too seriously. This gets him into trouble when he meets Rosie, “the most beautiful woman on earth,” except that there is a problem: she does not meet the criteria (chronically late, vegetarian, and very sharp-tongued). He naturally falls in love with her, and throughout the book he is torn between the imperative of rationality, which instructs him to stick to the criteria he set for himself, and his feelings. This challenges his Asperger’s, and in fact casts great doubt on the very classification of him as someone with Asperger’s.
The first chapter of the book can be read online. Since my recommendation that you read it in order to get into the matter will probably not help, I decided to bring most of it here for the reader’s convenience. There we meet Tillman in all his glory:
This chain of events was set in motion by Gene, who insisted that I give a lecture on Asperger’s syndrome, which he had previously agreed to give himself. The timing was extremely annoying. The preparations for it could be combined with eating lunch, but on the appointed evening I had allocated ninety-four minutes to cleaning my bathroom. I was forced to deal with three options, none of them satisfactory:
- Clean the bathroom after the lecture, thereby losing sleep, and as a result suffer a decline in physical and mental performance.
- Postpone cleaning the bathroom until next Tuesday, thereby compromising the bathroom’s level of hygiene for eight days, and as a result risk illness.
- Refuse the lecture, and thereby damage my friendship with Gene.
Quite a tangle indeed. Here we have a man of consummate rationality.
His friend Gene suggests that he hire the services of Eva, the perfect Hungarian cleaner, and pay her to clean the bathroom in his place:
“Just say you’re calling because she’s the only cleaner who does it properly. And if she asks about me, don’t say anything.”
Tillman, who as you may recall is a brilliant man, immediately understands the advantages of this ingenious proposal:
This was an excellent outcome, and an example of Gene’s marvelous ability to find solutions to social problems. Presumably Eva would be delighted by the recognition of her expertise, and perhaps she might even be suitable to fill the role on a regular basis, which would free an average weekly total of three hundred and sixteen minutes in my schedule.
His friend Gene is described by him as follows:
Gene had a scheduling problem with the lecture because he had an opportunity to have sex with a Chilean academic who had come to a conference in Melbourne. Gene has a project—to sleep with women from as many countries as possible. As a professor of psychology, he is very interested in sexual attraction between human beings, which in his view is greatly influenced by genetic endowment.
This is a scientifically precise description of Gene the human being from the point of view of a robot whose interaction with his environment is itself a kind of sociological-psychological study of it. That is also the point of view from which he describes his relations with Gene and his wife Claudia:
During the period when we both worked in the genetics department, we had many fascinating discussions, which continued after he moved to another position. I could have been satisfied with our relationship for that reason alone, but Gene went further and invited me to a meal at his home and performed other rituals of friendship, which led to a social relationship. His wife Claudia, a clinical psychologist, also became a friend. Which brought my total number of friends to two.
For a certain period, Gene and Claudia tried to help me with the wife problem. Unfortunately, their approach was based on the traditional dating paradigm, which I had previously abandoned on the assumption that the probability of success did not justify the effort and the negative experiences. I am thirty-nine, tall, athletic, and intelligent, with relatively high social status and above-average income from my position as an associate professor. By this logic, I ought to attract a broad range of women. In the animal kingdom, I would have been highly successful reproductively.
Nevertheless, there is something about me that women do not like. It has never been easy for me to make friends, and it seems that the deficiencies that caused that problem also affected my attempts to create romantic relationships. The Apricot Ice Cream Disaster is a good example.
Claudia introduced me to one of her many friends. Elizabeth was a researcher in computer science, highly intelligent, with a visual impairment corrected by glasses. I mention the glasses because Claudia showed me her picture and asked whether I had any problem with them. An unbelievable question! From a psychologist! In the process of assessing Elizabeth’s suitability as a potential partner—someone who was supposed to provide intellectual stimulation, share activities with me, perhaps even raise offspring—Claudia’s first concern was my reaction to her choice of eyeglass frames, a choice that in all likelihood was not even hers but made on the advice of an optometrist. This is the world in which I must live. Then Claudia told me, as though this were a problem: “She has very firm opinions.”
“Are they based on evidence?”
“I think so,” Claudia said.
Perfect. She could have described me that way too.
We met in a Thai restaurant. Restaurants are minefields for people who lack social skills, and I was nervous, as always in such situations. But we got off to an excellent start when both of us arrived at exactly 19:00, as agreed. Poor synchronization is an enormous waste of time.
We survived the meal without her criticizing me for any social errors. It is difficult to conduct a conversation while wondering whether you are looking at the correct organ, so I locked onto her bespectacled eyes, in accordance with Gene’s recommendation. This created slight negligence in the eating process, which Elizabeth apparently did not notice. On the contrary, we had an extremely productive discussion about simulation algorithms. She was so fascinating! I could already see the possibility of a permanent relationship.
The waiter brought the dessert menus, and Elizabeth said: “I don’t like Asian desserts.”
This was almost certainly an unsupported generalization, based on limited experience, and perhaps I should have seen it as a warning sign. But it provided me with an opportunity for a creative proposal.
“We can buy ice cream across the street,” I said.
“Excellent idea. As long as they have apricot.”
I assessed that up to that point I had been progressing well, and I did not think the preference for apricot would pose a problem. I was wrong. The ice cream shop had an enormous range of flavors, but they were out of apricot. I ordered myself a double scoop of chocolate with chili and licorice, and asked Elizabeth to state her second preference.
“If they don’t have apricot, I’ll pass.”
I could not believe my ears. In principle, all ice cream has the same taste, which derives from chilling the taste buds. This is especially true of fruit flavors. I proposed mango.
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
I supplied a detailed explanation of the physiology of chilling the taste buds. I argued that if I bought ice cream in mango and peach flavors, she would be unable to distinguish between them. Broadly speaking, both would be identical to apricot.
“They are completely different,” she said. “If you can’t distinguish between mango and peach, that’s your problem.”
Now we had a simple objective disagreement, which could have been resolved on the spot by an experiment. I ordered the smallest serving of ice cream in each of the two flavors. But while the man at the counter was preparing them, and I turned to ask Elizabeth to close her eyes for the experiment, she had disappeared. That was the end of the “evidence-based” part. And of the “computer scientist“.
Afterward Claudia told me that I should have let the experiment go before Elizabeth walked out. Obviously. But at what point? Where was the sign? These are subtleties that I fail to understand. But I also fail to understand why heightened sensitivity to vague hints concerning ice cream flavors should be a prerequisite for a relationship with someone. It seems reasonable to me to assume that there are women who do not require this. Unfortunately, the process of finding them is inefficient to the point of impossibility. The Apricot Ice Cream Disaster cost me an entire evening of my life, whose only compensation was information about simulation algorithms.
Later in the chapter his preparations for the lecture in question are described, the subject of which was, what else?!, Asperger’s syndrome…:
Two lunch breaks were enough to gather the information and prepare my lecture on Asperger’s syndrome without sacrificing nutrition, thanks to the wireless network in the cafeteria of the medical faculty library. I had no prior knowledge of autism spectrum disorders, since they were outside my field of specialization. The subject was fascinating. Focusing on the genetic aspects of the syndrome, which might have been unfamiliar to my audience, seemed to me most appropriate. Most diseases have some basis in our DNA, although in many cases we have not yet discovered it. My own work focuses on genetic predisposition to liver cirrhosis. A large part of my working hours is devoted to getting mice drunk.
Naturally, the books and articles described the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, and the interim conclusion I reached was that most of the symptoms are merely simple variations in the functioning of the human brain, unjustifiably appropriated by medicine because they did not conform to social norms—artificial social norms—reflecting the most common human configurations, and not the full range.
The lecture was scheduled for 19:00 at a neighborhood school. I estimated the bicycle riding time there at twelve minutes and allocated three minutes to booting up my computer and connecting it to the projector.
I arrived as planned at 18:57, after letting Eva, the short-skirted cleaner, into my apartment twenty-seven minutes earlier. About twenty-five people were clustered in front of the classroom and around the door, but I immediately identified Julie, the organizer, from Gene’s description: “blonde with big boobs.” In fact, the size of her breasts did not, apparently, exceed one and a half standard deviations above the average for her body weight, and did not really constitute a striking identifying feature. It was mainly a matter of uplift and exposure, a consequence of her choice of clothing, which seemed perfectly practical for a hot January evening.
Perhaps I spent too much time verifying her identity, because she gave me a strange look.
“You must be Julie,” I said.
“Can I help you?”
Excellent. A practical person. “Yes, direct me to the video cable. Please.”
“Oh,” she said. “You must be Professor Tillman. I’m so glad you managed to come.”
She extended her hand, but I waved it away from me. “The video cable, please. It is already six fifty-eight.”
“Relax,” she said. “We never start before seven fifteen. Would you like some coffee?”
Why do people so little appreciate other people’s time? Now we would have to conduct the inevitable small talk. I could have spent a quarter of an hour practicing aikido at home.
Until now I had concentrated on Julie and the screen at the front of the room. I now surveyed the classroom and discovered that I had not noticed the presence of nineteen people. These were children, most of them male, sitting at desks. Apparently they were victims of Asperger’s syndrome. Almost all the literature on the subject focuses on children.
Despite their ailments, they were making more efficient use of their time than their parents, who chatted without any purpose. Most of them were working on various laptop computers. I guessed their age range as eight to thirteen. I hoped they had listened carefully in their science classes, since the material I had prepared assumed basic knowledge of organic chemistry and DNA structure.
I realized that I had not answered the coffee question.
“No.”
Unfortunately, because of the delay, Julie had forgotten the question. “No coffee,” I explained. “I never drink coffee after 15:48. It interferes with sleep. Caffeine has a half-life of three to four hours, so it is irresponsible to serve coffee at seven in the evening unless people are planning to stay awake until after midnight. Which does not allow adequate sleep, if they have regular employment.” I tried to make valuable use of the waiting time by offering practical advice, but she seemed to prefer discussing less important details.
“Is Gene all right?” she asked. It was clear that this was a variation on the most common of communication formulas, “How are you?”
“He is perfectly all right, thank you,” I said, adapting the accepted answer to the third person.
“Oh. I thought he was ill”.
“Gene’s health is excellent, apart from his six excess kilograms. We went for a run this morning. He has a date tonight; he would not go out if he were ill”.
Julie was not impressed, and when I reviewed the conversation later, I discovered that Gene had apparently lied to her about the reason for his absence. This was apparently done in order to spare Julie the feeling that her lecture was not very important to Gene, and to justify sending a less prestigious speaker as his replacement. Ostensibly, it is almost impossible to analyze so complex a situation, involving deception and conjecture about another person’s emotional response, and then prepare for yourself a plausible lie, all while someone is waiting for your answer. But that is exactly what people expect you to do.
In the end I set up my computer and we began, eighteen minutes late. I would have to increase my speaking speed by forty-three percent in order to finish as scheduled at eight o’clock—an impossible performance target, in fact. We were going to finish late, and my schedule for the rest of the evening was about to be thrown into the trash can.
By the way, Asperger’s syndrome is not mentioned in the book at all (apart from the subject of the aforementioned lecture at its beginning), and the question whether Tillman has it is left to the reader’s judgment. On the face of it, it seems obvious that he does, but in an interview I once read with Simsion he said that he deliberately did not put that into the book, because in fact he knows quite a few normal people for whom this is their way of looking at the world (especially in the high-tech world, where he works). His claim is that this is a rational perspective, and that each of us is endowed with it in one measure or another, so it is doubtful whether such a person can be defined as sick. Admittedly, with Tillman it is a bit extreme, but not essentially different from anyone else (at least from the rational ones among us). This led me to various thoughts about this syndrome, and about human beings in general.
Asperger’s Syndrome
Asperger’s syndrome was identified by Hans Asperger in the 1940s. It is part of the autistic spectrum (generally high-functioning). Those who have it are endowed with above-average intelligence, and its main feature is a lack of understanding of social situations, an inability to read facial expressions and communicate nonverbally with the environment, and from this a difficulty in forming social and intimate relationships. You can read the passages quoted above and get a sense of it. It seems to me that this is what is usually called in our everyday jargon (now forbidden by the rules of political correctness) an “autist.” When a person says to his friend, “You’re autistic,” he usually means something like this (speaking from experience!).
But personally I do not understand why such a description is politically incorrect. To my mind, this is a marvelous compliment beyond compare. Everything described here is actually astonishingly rational behavior. Tillman adheres to the time set for the lecture and cannot stand delays (certainly if they are deliberate and conscious). He analyzes every situation into its components in an astonishingly rational way, and of course chooses a partner systematically according to a rigid set of criteria from which he is unwilling to deviate. Success is guaranteed. And if not (and it never is)—that is only because of the collection of irrational people around him.
The conclusion that arose in me from reading the book and the interview was that in fact we all stand somewhere on the spectrum between people with Asperger’s (possessors of pure rationality) and a “healthy” person (that is, one endowed with all the human weaknesses and biases familiar to us all). The more rational and logical we are, the closer we are to the Asperger’s pole. And from here a second conclusion follows: the truly healthy pole is the person with Asperger’s, the “sick” one. There stand the rational people who set themselves goals and are careful to abide by them, and who do not let human weaknesses disrupt their decision-making and manner of conduct. At the other, the “healthy,” pole stand sick people who do not act according to the goals they set for themselves, who set a time and do not keep it (deliberately), who choose things in a non-rational way and not according to criteria. Simply the complete opposite of Tillman. That is, all of us. So who here is sick and who is healthy?…
Back to the above response
Not long ago, when I said these things to someone who works with me, she asked me in astonishment: “Are you trying to tell me that you really have Asperger’s? I’m sure you don’t.” I answered her something like: “Indeed, unfortunately I don’t. Nobody is perfect, but I’m working on it.”
Believe it or not, even I understand very well that someone with Asperger’s cannot function normally in a “normal” human society (= terminally ill), but I would at least expect us to recognize that as a problematic (= pathological) state and do something to change it. For us, this illogical and harmful behavior is charming and normal, and therefore any deviation from it seems to us a kind of illness, abnormality. We are human beings, and nothing human is alien to us, as the poet said. There is something very charming about this non-rational humanity. Some would say that this collection of weaknesses is the very substance of humanity. I too do not see myself succeeding in functioning in a society of people with Asperger’s (as I said, nobody is perfect). And still, in my opinion it is important to step outside this bubble and look at ourselves from the outside. From Tillman’s point of view. It is a refreshing and amusing point of view, and through it we can suddenly see how sick and ridiculous we are, and how the Tillmans are the pinnacle of health and rationality.
Why do we define the pathological human condition as the “healthy” pole of the spectrum, and the healthy pole as “pathological”? After all, by everyone’s account this is a collection of human weaknesses. True, that is what we are because that is how we were created, but if we put it on the table there may be some chance of coping with them and recovering. Political correctness will leave us sick forever. We are unwilling to recognize that we are sick, and therefore define in reverse the continuum between sickness and health.
In fact, this is what I try to do in many of my columns. Irrational conduct, that is, illogical thinking and behavior, is very common in our world, and therefore is somehow perceived as reasonable and normal (see the response quoted at the beginning of the column). Hence my criticism in the various columns of these modes of conduct appears to people as a kind of Asperger’s that ignores human weaknesses and our psychology and focuses solely on cold and alienating philosophy and logic. I am very well aware of these human weaknesses (as I said, unfortunately I do not suffer from Asperger’s. Surprise!!!), for nothing human is alien to me. But from time to time I try to place them on the table, if only as a thought experiment. Perhaps the day will yet come when we shall all be healthy (and not “healthy”). Let it be.
Foucault
The picture I am describing is ostensibly every postmodernist’s wet dream. In effect I am claiming here that on a second look we may see that the sick person is the truly healthy one, and vice versa. Foucault had already criticized accepted psychiatric diagnostics, and tried to show that our criteria for normality and mental illness are culture-dependent and relative. But do not worry, I am not Foucault, nor have I suddenly turned postmodern again.
The accepted (modernist) conception sees the ordinary human condition as healthy and Asperger’s as sick. Foucault, by contrast, thinks that all positions are equally healthy or sick (there is no such thing as healthy or sick. It is all narratives). But I, little me, unlike both of them, think that only the person with Asperger’s is healthy and everyone else is sick. So do not identify me with Foucault’s concerns.
I am sure there are readers who are now leaping for joy at the contradiction that has emerged in my doctrine (there, I too am not someone with Asperger’s, and so I too make mistakes). After all, I have written more than once that with regard to psychiatric symptoms I actually tend to agree with Foucault (see, for example, my columns on homosexuality 25–6). I explained there that the determination of what counts as deviance is a value-laden and cultural determination, not a medical-clinical one, ostensibly very much like Foucault. That is indeed true, but note that in this column I am speaking about rationality, not about mental illness or a psychiatric symptom in the accepted senses. Rationality is defined through adherence to the goals you set for yourself, and this is an objective definition. A psychiatric symptom is grounded in deviation from the accepted human norm, and therefore Asperger’s is indeed such a symptom, and about that Foucault is certainly right. But in the rational context, Asperger’s is health incarnate, and that is a claim that is not culture-dependent. The goals we set for ourselves may perhaps be culture-dependent, but the optimal striving toward them is defined objectively (the question is whether one achieves them in the best possible way or not).
But even this is not so simple, and to see that let us return to another topic I have already discussed in the past.
Back to rationality
In column 20 (see also columns 122, 197, 200 and others) I dealt with rationality, and I used there a definition taken from game theory—the utility function. I explained there that it is hard to determine a person’s rationality, since we have no yardstick with which to examine his goals (his utility function). A person sets goals for himself, and his rationality is measured by the way he strives to attain them. As long as the path suits the goal, he is a rational person, however bizarre the goal may be. Up to this point, this is exactly what I described in the previous section: rationality is examined through the striving toward goals, and not through the character of the goals themselves.
But I have more than once pointed out that such a definition also empties the very definition of rationality itself of content, because even if a person errs, that is, chooses a non-optimal path for attaining his goals, one can always say ad hoc that from his point of view there is value in the error itself (for example, he likes making mistakes), or that the error brought him some side benefit, psychological or otherwise. In fact that is part of his goals (his utility function), and therefore he can always be considered rational (= acting optimally for the sake of his goals). True, I tried to propose criteria in order to get out of this, for example to examine whether there is a situation in which the person himself later regrets his choice (that is, he himself admits that he took a non-rational path—one that does not yield him optimal profit and does not attain his own goals), but even that does not really succeed in presenting a sharp and clear-cut criterion. After all, one can always flee to ad hoc districts and say that in fact he did have a benefit, except that now (when he changes his mind) his utility function has changed. Alternatively, one can claim that the very fact that he is now changing his mind gives him some psychological profit (he is perceived as an honest person, not perfect, and the like, and he has an interest in being perceived that way). Or perhaps some of his goals simply include saving the energy required for a systematic examination of all the alternatives. That seems to him an oppressive burden, and so he gave it up in a completely rational way. The punctilious will argue that by definition, if a person did some act, apparently he had a reason for it (people do not do things for no reason). That reason is itself one of the goals toward which he is striving, and therefore by definition every person is rational.
This discussion is also related to the question I dealt with in column 120 (see also 122): whether a person performs an action without a reason (an altruistic act is done for a purpose and not from a self-interested reason). There too we saw that a reason can always be proposed, and it is hard to defend the claim that there are altruistic acts (the good feeling of the altruist can itself be a self-interested reason for carrying out such an act).
But somehow we do allow ourselves to speak about an irrational person, and sometimes even to diagnose people as such. We are not deterred from stating that a person acted incorrectly in pursuit of his goals (and that is how we also speak about altruistic acts—see column 122). The fact that this cannot be defined sharply and that the phenomenon is elusive does not mean that there is no such thing. In short, don’t be so Asperger-like; not everything in the world is logic.
[1] The main point is already hinted at in column 142, around note 6 and within it.
Discussion
The question is whether you laughed at me (in which case I’m Asperger’s) or at what I said (in which case I’m not)? 🙂
It sounds a bit exaggerated to me to say that most human beings are sick because they only have two hands and also fall into a coma once every twenty-four hours. Illness is measured by the norm. Human beings live naturally and fluently, and therefore Asperger’s is Asperger’s—it’s an illness. But this definitely explains Your Honor’s fixed position on every issue. I would suggest taking into account, here and there, the opinions of human beings who are also driven by emotion and feeling.
And sorry, I forgot to say: the column is fascinating and amazing! I’m running to look for the book.
1. But there is another contradiction. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have Asperger’s. After all, He created the world in order to complete an infinite perfection in His own essence (according to the Ten Days of Repentance column).
So perhaps one should retract that conclusion regarding the Holy One, blessed be He—that the sins in the world and creation contribute to Him—and consequently also return to the definition that every act is rational and depends on considerations of utility.
2. I think that only determinists like Kahneman, who present contradictions between human goals and their execution, would be considered as defining human beings as irrational. As someone who believes in free choice, why not include every act as rational according to considerations of utility (just as in sin, where a person is not coerced)?
There is a certain point in Tillman’s way of thinking that is inferior in comparison to a normative person. In the case where Julie asked him about Gene’s illness, his answer was to respond with a direct no, because he was unable to come up with the logical reason for her question. He did not make the obvious assumption that a person does not just randomly make assumptions. If he had internalized that, his analytical mind would easily have been able to understand why she asked that, and what he should answer in order to gain the maximum from that situation.
One of the most beautiful columns I’ve ever read! Thank you!
You’ve killed literature, legend, psychology, sociology, maybe history too. (Why am I not surprised?) We’re left with an ideal mathematical, logical, calculated world. How boring.
Cool column! But don’t you think the problem with people with Asperger’s is that they’re analytical? On the other hand, the “sick” people simply work with intuitions (and so in fact they’re the healthy ones)? Don’t you see that kind of correlation?
Funny stuff. A few days ago I met a friend who insisted that if you pay attention, you’re actually a very human person.
And then came this column, which vindicated his claim.
There’s a correction needed in the body of the post: “…and all of them if it is possible to define someone like this as sick” – “…and therefore if it is possible to define someone like this as sick…”
Amazing! I think this post should be put in the category “Introductions and assumptions for site readers.”
What do two hands and sleep have to do with anything? People can behave differently (it is not forced on them). They choose to give in to their weaknesses.
I have no interest whatsoever in taking the opinions of emotional people into account. I also have emotions, but emotions are not supposed to determine one’s views.
1. I didn’t understand.
2. If I understood what you’re saying here, you’re repeating what I wrote at the end of the column. But of course it has nothing to do with determinism.
Obviously, because everyone around him is irrational, his Asperger’s prevents him from reaching optimal results. He doesn’t understand human beings, and therefore can’t get the best out of them. What can you do—in a world of madmen, sanity is an illness, and it interferes with functioning (cf. Rabbi Nachman’s stories, about the fellow who wrote on his hand “I am sane,” to remind himself of it).
Thank you.
A person who goes to sleep at night is “giving in” to his weaknesses? Is everything okay? A person who was not fortunate enough to have Asperger’s is not “giving in” to any weaknesses. He is a human and normative person.
No one is claiming that emotion rules above reason, but you can’t kill it, and it has a few seats in parliament. Under certain conditions we have to take it into account.
1. You claimed that as part of the perfection of the Holy One, blessed be He, there is also His self-perfecting. If so, then even He is not completely rational Asperger’s.
2. I didn’t understand the flaw in the theory that rationality = considerations of utility.
Only if you are a determinist will you find a flaw in this, because every mistake you would consider irrational because it clashes with your own private considerations has already been calculated by holy statistics.
If you are a libertarian, every act is fully rational and accompanied by deliberation, even if hidden.
Hayuta, if you keep annoying me, I’ll reveal here before everyone that you are the one I spoke with about Asperger’s. 🙂
To me, the mathematical and logical world is fascinating and wonderful and deep and infinite, but those who have phobias against mathematics (and against Asperger’s) think that only biases, weaknesses, and distortions are interesting. Similarly, some think that the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed דווקא through miracles, whereas in my opinion He is revealed much more through ordinary natural conduct. And just as newspapers report on a man biting a dog, it’s good that there are crazies, otherwise the world would be boring and journalists would have no livelihood.
Besides, I was talking about what is right, not about what is interesting. But you know what? I’m willing to admit that we also need a few sick people for the world to be interesting. As long as the environment is healthy (= that is, afflicted with Asperger’s).
And as for literature, legend, psychology, sociology, and history—if only there were something there to kill. 🙂
No, if that were true, then the sick normal people also wouldn’t understand one another. From the very fact that we do succeed in interpreting and analyzing situations in a similar way, you can see that at the root of the matter there are some rational assumptions (I’m tired -> I need to get to the conference -> I’ll lie so I don’t create a situation that could harm me in the future).
Absolutely not. You are confusing intuition and deviation from deduction with irrational behavior. I am referring to rationality, not deductiveness (= analyticity). It is really not the same thing, and that is almost the main message of all my books.
But only with a microscope!!! 🙂
And besides, I don’t know why I deserve this insult (= that I’m human). Did I insult you?
Anyone who wants to see the doctor’s early doctrine on Asperger’s is truly invited to read his correspondence with Dr. Deutsch that appears on the site.
There is something to what you say. 🙂
Actually, in my humble opinion, it seems that if Tillman had adopted the usual mode of thinking—the possible scenario Moshe suggests—he would have suffered from an infinite loop of the form: “Is she aware that I am aware that…” Tillman answers with the option that has the higher probability: Julie is not aware, and that is perfectly rational according to his considerations.
In exactly the same way, Elizabeth has refined taste in men who know nothing about ice cream, and not that he is the connoisseur.
Oren has apparently already corrected it. Thanks.
Someone above wrote: “Anyone who wants to see the doctor’s early doctrine on Asperger’s is truly invited to read his correspondence with Dr. Deutsch that appears on the site” – where?
Following your recommendation, I made the effort to obtain the book [when I finish reading carefully, I’ll be happy to pass it on…]. It describes, for example, a situation in which he presents to his lecture audience the well-known case of a group hiding from the enemy when a baby starts to cry. They have a pistol with a silencer and can kill the baby or risk the death of them all. According to him, all the Aspies in the audience immediately decided to kill the baby, while the others found it hard to decide that way. Tillman immediately proves to them that in all the Aspies, intellect overrides emotion. You seem to me to go along with him quite a bit, but I think the fact that Aspies do not act with emotion does not mean that every analytical person who thinks rationally about every step is the true Aspie; rather, he simply knows when and how to use emotions and when to beware of them. A person without a hand will never injure that hand—not because he has an advantage but because he has a deficiency. It is important to define things properly. In any case, thank you for the excellent recommendation.
Suppose I’ve reached the conclusion that being an asparagus is perfection, but on the other hand I live in a world where everyone is not like that, so I’m forced to be a pragmatic rationalist—isn’t that a utilitarian asparagus?
Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed through mathematics and the laws of nature, so art and literature work with human nature—that whose spectrum of colors is incomparably greater and richer than that of the average Asperger robot (Data, for example, the hero of the science-fiction series of our childhood—Star Trek—whose store of knowledge and processing speed did not help him with his constant failure to understand nuances and subtleties, including beauty and emotion, which are not pathological at all. He missed them, and therefore his world was poor; he was nothing but a sophisticated information processor, no more). To take one trait of such an information processor (rationality) and set it against the full rainbow of human manifestations is excessively overblown, even for a mathematician like you. And by the way, you yourself explicitly write here how much you enjoy a literary work like The Rosie Effect—and yet in the book the hero’s Asperger-ness is nothing but estrangement from humanity, that is, a fine literary technique used to preserve and make present this humanity in all its force and beauty, with its shortcomings and advantages. An author with Asperger’s would never write a literary work like this, and what then would you have to enjoy? Of course—math problems ad infinitum (and beyond).
You’re waiting for an answer to this riddle? Please translate it for me into Hebrew. 🙂
Okay, you’ve taken things too far. Obviously there is room for things beyond mathematics and logic. But decision-making should be done with reason.
According to Kant’s criteria it is not moral to be an asparagus (thanks, Boaz!), just as it is not moral to break a promise, because if everyone broke promises then no one would believe my promise either. So similarly, I cannot universalize and ask that everyone be asparaguses, since they are unable to court women (cf. the book), which would automatically lead to their extinction within a generation. Unless we say that an asparagus is at least capable of successfully courting a female asparagus. This requires further investigation.
Have I for a moment become an asparagus? I wonder.
You assume in your post that the truly rational ones are the asparaguses, whereas we have given up rationality in favor of our human weaknesses.
My claim is that perhaps we are even more rational than our asparagus brothers, except that we understand that in order to survive in this bitter and fleeting world within human society, we have no choice but to give up rationality from time to time in favor of political correctness; say, then, that we are more asparagus than the asparaguses.
If I still haven’t succeeded in solving the fresh riddle, that is only because of my being an asperdus.
Sorry, I forgot the rules of the comments for a moment.
This explanation is circular. If in the real world we were all asparaguses, then your whole argument would be unnecessary, because our entire environment would be that way too.
Is migo as an evidentiary presumption irrationality, and migo as the power of a claim Asperger’s?
A person “afflicted” with Asperger’s is considered sick because he has a reduced ability to communicate with other people.
In other areas, such as decision-making, he may have an advantage over someone who does not have Asperger’s, but in the area of communication he still has a limitation, and therefore he is considered sick.
In my humble opinion, the ability to communicate with other people is more important than rational decision-making (cf. Yuval Noah Harari, who made this ability the main reason human beings rule the world).
Don’t mention it, I’m here (also) to make worthy Jews happy?.
It’s important to mention that Asperger’s has other sides as well, and that “rationality” is not really its only characteristic.
Obviously. But only because the others are not Asperger’s. Otherwise there also wouldn’t be a communication problem.
By the way, a quote from Harari’s speculations is not evidence of anything.
Indeed. I was speaking about that characteristic.
I didn’t understand (maybe because I’m Asperger’s?!…).
There is a possibility of being completely rational without having Asperger’s, and indeed there are such human beings (though not many). What a person with Asperger’s is unable to understand—that there are human beings who are not perfect, and is also unable to plan his life according to this knowledge—that truly is an illness.
It reminds me of what Tolkien brought in the name of a certain literary critic in Tree and Leaf:
“Chesterton once told that the children who watched Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird in his company were dissatisfied because the play did not end on Judgment Day, and the hero and heroine did not discover that the dog had been faithful to them and the cat treacherous. ‘For children,’ he said, ‘are innocent and prefer justice; whereas we, most of us, are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.’”
That is a very correct nuance. Indeed, my essay is right that Asperger’s is a problem only because there are people with weaknesses around him. But you are also right that a rational person is supposed to understand that there are weaknesses around him and take them into account.
But in his own conduct, in and of itself, the Asperger’s person is still the perfect one.
Whoever says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is indulgent…
Eruvin 18a
“Another interpretation: ‘And the Lord God built’—Rav Chisda said, and some say it was taught in a baraita: this teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, built Eve like a storehouse. Just as a storehouse is broad below and narrow above so as to hold the produce, so too a woman is broad below and narrow above so as to hold the fetus.”
According to the rabbi’s words regarding Asperger’s (and some say asparagus), one should explain that the man is broad above, in his intellect—that is, he examines everything analytically—and narrow below; his emotions, which come from the belly, are lacking. In contrast, the woman is broad below; her emotions are more developed in order to receive the fetus, that is, to communicate with it, but narrow above in analytical analysis.
Indeed, how manifold are Your works, O Lord.
Nothing said here is intended to decide any feminist issues whatsoever.
I decided to invest the effort and read the whole book before commenting （it was worth the effort!）
I’d be glad if you would write briefly (or send a reference if you’ve already written about it) what your attitude is toward psychology, and especially psychoanalysis.
Quite apart from the state （deplorable in my view）of this （pseudo?）scientific field, it seems to me that therein lies the key to progress toward more optimal—and also more rational—behavior.
A deeper understanding by each person of himself can lead to recognition of the “objective functions” hidden within us.
At the end, the book’s protagonist understands that the way he built his life is not rational, because he did not know himself well enough. He realizes that his being a kind of clown who whistles at social norms stems from a difficulty he had in childhood. And that his perception of himself as a person incapable of love is fundamentally mistaken. The patterns according to which he managed his life （such as a terrifyingly efficient schedule）turn out to contribute very little to his happiness.
We will never understand ourselves completely. But instead of choosing external measures that are easy to measure (like career success and money), it is better to focus on trying to connect to our more inner motives and feelings, which are admittedly hard to decipher, elusive, and vague… but in that fog dwells each person’s great and unique truth.
Isn’t that so?
Hmmm… I expected a response of that sort.
But that is exactly what my previous comment was aimed at (and I was glad it received the treatment of a whole column here).
In the end, every person is driven by a unique internal system of drives, the product of unique genes, a unique environment, and a unique interaction between the two.
Because of this uniqueness, and because the secrets of brain mechanics are still mostly hidden from us, it is hard to turn this field into a hard science.
An internal system of drives is a given. You don’t have to understand it for it to operate: people choose partners, have children, choose a profession, and do everything… without even knowing themselves how to explain why.
The fact that a person with Asperger syndrome is better at analytical analysis but fails at understanding people （including himself）makes him less faithful to his inner drives. And thus he is less rational.
Rationality goes on decreasing as one moves toward the healthy end of the autistic spectrum.
Obviously, the key to a deeper understanding of human drives lies in the brain (or the subconscious). But the better a person understands himself, the easier it will be for him to make decisions in accordance with that internal system.
I agree that psychology does not do much to help, and there is no solid ground there to stand on. But “defining the problem is important,” if only to prevent strange conclusions like the one brought here, according to which if only we all had Asperger’s…
I don’t really understand these matters so well, but it seems to me, as far as I correctly understood the present column, that the two terms that appear in the column—“healthy person” and “Asperger’s”—rather parallel the Kabbalistic terms of circles and straightness. The figure of the “Asperger” robot, who acts only for the sake of the goal he has and gives no place to emotions to influence him, parallels the straight line, which can be cut into dozens of small points lying on the same latitude some distance apart, like the Asperger’s person who at every different point in time stands in the same relation to his goals and has no human weaknesses. By contrast, the healthy, human person parallels the circular line, which bends and is subject to changes according to his emotions.
I didn’t understand the claim.
I very much doubt the identity, but the gates of interpretation have not been locked.
As an Asperger woman, I’m half flattered and half confused. All in all, it made my day. The next time I feel sick, I’ll probably open this up.
Let’s distinguish between the high intelligence and rationality of people with Asperger’s—which is a side effect that exists in most of them—and the fact that they don’t understand social situations, and also have difficulty even among other people with Asperger’s; that is, their problem is objective, not merely relative to “normal” human beings—even if everyone had Asperger’s, they would still have difficulty getting along socially.
That is, people with Asperger’s are not superior human beings by virtue of lacking social skills, but only by virtue of being rational—and that is only a side effect. True, the percentage of rational people among people with Asperger’s is higher than among normals, but high IQ is neither the illness here nor a necessary side effect.
I really disagree. Asperger’s (the typological figure I’m talking about, of course—pure Asperger’s) would understand other Asperger’s (pure) very well, if only because there is nothing to understand. They do not have human complications. When a time is set, they arrive on time; when they are asked to do something, that’s what they do. Everything is clear and logically understood.
There were no compliments here, because Asperger’s is forced on the person who has it (just as I do not compliment someone born healthy or condemn someone born sick with an organic disease). I am only pointing out that this is an ideal state compared to a “healthy” person who did not have the privilege of being afflicted with it. But if I brought some gratification to someone—and that is my reward. 🙂
If we are dealing with ideal Asperger’s, fair enough, but even then he is not superior because he understands social patterns, but because he is rational. And that is not the definition of Asperger’s but only a blessed side effect. The essence of the syndrome is the social problem. Admittedly, as you said, from the standpoint of how he conducts himself with himself, he is perfect.
(The social problem exists because even people with Asperger’s have all sorts of irrational behaviors, but here we are speaking about “pure Asperger’s,” who is of course perfect.)
Maybe after this column I can understand the Gemara in Nedarim 91 a bit better.
It tells there of men hiding with women not their own in the women’s homes. The husband comes, and they run away / shout and the like.
Again and again the Amoraim say: if he committed adultery, that would not be a logical way to behave. Therefore there is no need to worry that adultery took place (and the woman is permitted to her husband).
And I ask—did Hazal expect these adulterers, who are under pressure, to do only the most logical thing?
Are such reactions not suitable for a person under pressure and hesitating what to do?
Or alternatively—for the adulterer who told the husband that he was in mortal danger, could it be that this person’s emotion (which moved him to save a life, like an idiot) overcame reason (which says it would be better for him if the husband died)?
It seems that the simpler plain meaning is that the Amoraim are proposing the counterintuitive possibility. In order to permit the continuation of the marriage (and perhaps also to give the husband a feeling that his wife was not really adulterous), the Amoraim found an opposite argument—if he ran away, does that mean he committed adultery? On the contrary! If he runs away, that means he did not commit adultery!
In any case, the column reminded me of the sugya.
A rational person is someone 100% of whose actions stem from intellectual inferences. There is no such person. Most human beings are 0% rational most of the time. And at most 1% rational for a small part of the time.
Adherence to goals indicates the action of an external factor (some desire) behind the scenes, and clearly this is irrationality.
Rationality means solving problems on the way to achieving the goal, by the use of the intellect on the basis of the available data and the regularity learned on the way to achieving the goal; the more information a person has, and the more he knows the regularities of things, the more rational he can be.
Rational action includes recalculating the route at every moment. Sticking to goals on the basis of calculations from previous times stems from irrationality and ignoring new information. And there is always new information.
And difficult:
If rationalism requires “recalculating the route” at every moment with every crumb of “new information” that pops up “new every morning” – then one cannot rely on intellectual analysis based on information and its processing, for presumably more information will pop up…
And it seems that one must hold both sides: on the one hand, to be “running” and seeking after new information and new arguments; and on the other hand, to be a “dove,” proceeding with innocence and faith. This is the aspect of “run-dove”: to initiate initiatives and innovate innovations, but with moderation and caution 🙂
Regards, R. Tziyon List
I didn’t understand the claim, nor the connection to the sugya.
Interesting.
In any case, sticking to old calculations is supremely rational—not every new piece of information is relevant, and even if you miss something, sometimes the resources needed for recalculation cost more than the damage that would be caused.
As for relying on intellectual analysis: “relying” is a word that describes behavior, not what led to it. What happens is that the person hopes it will be correct. And it takes less energy to hope than to recalculate the route at every moment.
If you could calculate when new information would appear and what information would appear, then it is not new information and it has been taken into account. New information means that you calculated a number of possibilities and one of them came to be realized.
Even if we assume that what is described in the book really represents the patient’s way of thinking, the description of the symptoms, according to your words, is not a thought problem but an inability to obtain the knowledge required (social context) in order to reach the expected rational result.
It sounds as though the author, as a high-tech person, is describing more the cultural context of an emotionless robot, such as Data from Star Trek, than a person who lacks the ability to gather information from the social cues around him.
There are completely rational people who manage to get along in society by gathering the right information and understanding the desired social response.
This has already been beaten to death in the previous comments.
With God’s help, 26 Elul 5779
In any case, according to Hazal’s description (in the chapter “Acquisition of Torah”) of the objective intellectual person, “one who engages in Torah for its own sake” – such a person is full of sensitivity toward others, “loves people” and “makes people rejoice,” while regarding his own honor he is not particular, “and be modest and slow to anger, and forgive insult” – “Asperger” toward himself, and human toward others 🙂
Regards, Shatz
Indeed, in my eyes this is a nice example. It is quite clear that one who lacks an understanding of the subtle nuances involved in understanding humanity will not be able to fulfill “Love your neighbor as yourself,” neither on the side of the “your neighbor” nor on the side of the “as yourself”: self-awareness, self-knowledge, which is a condition for knowing and respecting the other.
And by way of wordplay, one may say that a bit of “Asperger-ness,” pure intellect without taking “many calculations” into account – is like the “asparagus” described in Berakhot 51, which they would drink medicinally at the start of the day: a little undiluted raw wine “on an empty heart,” but it is healthy only when one tastes only a little of it and immediately needs to “support it with bread.”
And in the parable, let us say that at the beginning of examining an ethical question, it is good first to see what pure logic indicates, and this is “on an empty heart,” without prior personal inclination, and without dilution in the waters of kindness that take emotions and sociality into account. But this pure logic is good only in small measure, and heaven forbid that one should “become intoxicated by it” and lose social sensitivity; it must immediately be supported with bread, “which sustains the heart,” and brings about a proper implementation of the pure idea within the complex reality.
Regards, Shatz
Likewise, regarding what they said—that one may return it only to the friend who gave it to him and not to another—it may be said that it is good for two loyal friends to rebuke one another with full force, without refinement and consideration, but not to act with such force toward others.
I am attaching a maqama written by Yoram Taharlev, of blessed memory (who passed away a few days ago). It can be read as a ballad to the Lithuanian Asperger’s type (see also column 142):
A maqama written by Yoram Taharlev, which he did not live to read at his last event:
־———-
Today, in our crazy country, which replaces one elite with another every year,
try explaining to the ordinary citizen what Lithuanian Jewry means.
That excellent Jewry, which truly was the elite of the elite,
the authority of authority,
the Jewry that inflamed and stirred,
which could not be bought with any material thing—
not with a villa and not with a suite,
not with Lolita and not with Aphrodite,
but with one little word: “And you shall meditate”!
A superb Jewry the like of which you have not seen from then until now,
the Jewry of intellect, Lithuanian Jewry.
And if you try to explain this to Israelis, woe unto you,
for as the Lithuanians used to say:
Alle Yevonim di zelbe ponim—all Greeks have the same faces,
today the brazen Israeli will say to you:
All Poles have the same mug!
And if you try to explain to him how Lithuanians differ from Poles,
Galicians from Romanians,
Hungarians from Germans,
he will look at you, my son,
as if you had fallen from a Goldfaden opera into the Mediterranean Song Festival.
For what does the Israeli know of his roots?
If, for example, you ask someone in the street what he knows about the Gra,
he’ll say it’s a street in the old central bus station,
a street of nut shops, cassettes, cold drinks,
and a few massage parlors for foreign workers.
And if you seriously intend to explain to him who the Gra is,
it would be better for you, for the sake of domestic peace, if you would kindly
not use the elitist term “the Gaon of Vilna.”
Because a genius in Israel today, one may say with confidence,
is either a football genius, a financial genius, or Yehoram Gaon.
And therefore, when we come this evening to praise and extol our roots,
we must know in advance that we are speaking only to ourselves!
We, the children of the Lithuanians, must reveal the secret to our children and grandchildren—
who their forefathers and ancestors were—
not in order to cultivate in them the sin of pride,
but precisely “see under love,”
so that they will not feel guilty for being so restrained, measured,
and at times cold,
while their friends, the common people of Israel, rejoice and exult
and dance and sing
and party and gamble.
So that our sons will understand that this restraint
is not connected to their personal character, but is a genetic-anthropological matter:
they belong to a race of realistic and logical people,
people who are all potential thinkers,
the top tenth of intelligence.
Let us put the matter on the table:
The people of Israel, from time immemorial, are divided in two, and this is almost scientific:
into heirs of the Hasidic head and heirs of the Lithuanian head.
While the heirs of the Hasidim—and they were always the overwhelming majority—
dance and exult as if life were a celebration,
the descendants of the Lithuanians navigate their way from worry to worry.
When the heirs of the Hasidim say “eat and drink,”
for the Messiah is coming any minute,
the Lithuanians shut themselves up in inner rooms
and examine themselves according to Duties of the Heart and The Path of the Upright.
But our descendants must know this too:
that even if they inherited the hard and tormented Lithuanian character,
they should not forget that it was this character that established for us the Musar movement,
it established the Tarbut schools and theaters and youth movements,
and created a diligent and active people who study not for honor and not for a degree.
It is the race that created extensive and great rabbinic and secular literature,
the race that invented the clever and wonderful Jewish humor,
and of course established the magnificent chain of yeshivot—heaven forbid it should not be mentioned—
yeshivot in which today in Israel even the kollel students of Shas study—
these are the Lithuanians,
wise, learned people, whom, for example, you will not succeed in convincing
that what will save you in life is a blessing from a righteous man over some amulet,
a race of serious people who do not attach themselves to Kabbalah, messianism, and mysticism,
but rather examine the plain meaning, the logic, and even the statistics.
These are us, descendants of Lithuanian Jewry.
You will not get us to pour water on the hands of some elderly kabbalist, may he live long,
not to be the Messiah’s donkey and not Balaam’s she-ass,
not to walk with closed eyes after exalted people.
We do not rely on miracles, not on the lottery, not on the horoscope.
We are the salt that the people of Israel lack today—
a healthy head – a gezunten kop.
I don’t know whether you have Asperger’s or not, but I’m sure you could be a stand-up comedian. I laughed throughout the whole article.