Q&A: Are the Public Stupid? Maybe Yes?
Are the Public Stupid? Maybe Yes?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In recent days, a phenomenon that actually started long ago has been intensifying: half the nation thinks A and half thinks B.
The small difference between the halves is who happens to be in each half.
The revolution is supported by groups that are mainly led by others (Haredim, Hardalim, and partly Bibi-ists), and generally not by people who are especially educated (on average).
And the questions are:
1. Is there any common sense to the idea that if a large public supports something, then it probably isn’t the end of the state (because people won’t support their own destruction)?
2. Is it reasonable to expect the media that every opinion supported by half the nation should be represented on every panel in equal proportion (half the panel)?
3. If so, when there is a discussion whether the revolution harms the economy, is it right to bring 2 economists who each think differently (some economist versus Sagie Dromi) so that it will be fifty-fifty, or since 99 percent of economists think one thing, is it wrong to present it as an equal debate?
4. How does an educated and serious person like Nadav Shnerb support this thing?
Thanks in advance.
Answer
- A person should form his position based on his own considerations. Preoccupation with the question of what others say and whether they might be mistaken is neither constructive nor necessary.
- No, but some degree of balance is appropriate.
- It is definitely appropriate. There is no point in bringing two economists who will say the same thing. At most, don’t hold a discussion.
- Ask him.
Discussion on Answer
To the former yeshiva lecturer,
I usually don’t comment, but now you’ve made me curious.
I’m a young kollel fellow who is really trying to escape religion, but unfortunately I’m not succeeding! And that is because I try to be honest with the arguments and still haven’t found a way out. So I would be very happy to hear how this causes a person to become “feeble-minded.”
Thanks in advance…
To the kollel fellow Papagayo,
That is a good and important question, and I too, in my humble way, wrestle with it a lot.
First of all, one could make do with options 2 and 3:
That the feeble-minded are drawn to this, whereas those whom the Creator, may He be blessed, has endowed with intelligence flee from it; and when this goes on for generations, the result is inevitable and understandable.
Or there is some external factor that is responsible both for weakness of mind and for attraction to religiosity as it is currently expressed.
But option 1 (and 4) also makes more sense if one assumes that the Giver of the Torah gave us a Torah of life—“for that is your wisdom and your understanding”—
and as Rashi brings: if you distort it, you will be considered fools.
That is to say: the Torah remains perfect, restoring the soul and making the simple wise,
and part of its special quality is that when people counterfeit it, they literally become fools.
(On the simple level, they understand it in a crooked, bizarre way that provokes ridicule in any sensible person; but on a deeper level this is a punishment: they become fools also in general life, in worldly conduct, in the decency that precedes Torah—and we can see it with our own eyes.)
The Sages too addressed the explanation of the contradiction: “The ways of the Lord are upright; the righteous walk in them and sinners stumble in them”—seemingly, in those very same ways.
And they answered: if one merits it, it becomes for him an elixir of life; if one does not merit it, it becomes for him an elixir of death.
And they did not say: if one does not merit it, then it is as if he had not learned.
Rather, he becomes lower and baser than an ordinary person—it becomes an elixir of death for him; he becomes a typical Bibi-ist.
And may God save us.
In my humble opinion, the supporters are either Haredim or Hardalim or traditionalists.
The possibilities:
a. Religion (as it is perceived today in this country—my understanding is that it is just a mediocre forgery) damages the mind.
b. Damaged people are drawn to religion, while the successful ones flee from it, and this has been going on for 200 years already (or they adopt a more sensible version of it).
c. Some external factor that causes people to be feeble-minded is the same thing that causes them to be very religious (and likewise, what currently goes by the name of religion is an unsuccessful forgery).
d. All of the above are correct, in my humble opinion.
I know this from up close—I used to be a yeshiva lecturer.
Hope I helped.