The Worth of a Sandwich

Our intrepid heroes, inter-planetary explorers, have landed on the Planet of the Week, a Brave New World where No Man Has Gone Before. Before long they meet the native’s leaders and are having a merry old time - until they begin to discover that things aren’t quite right. The idyllic society has a nasty underbelly, and it is their duty as heroes to Right All Wrongs and expose the evil to the commoners.

Before they can, their once-genial hosts catch them. They are told that they cannot leave the planet, because they might report what they have seen to an outside authority; and they cannot stay, because they might tell the commoners the truth about their utopia. But their captors are not so backwards as to execute them, or toss them in a cell and throw away the key. Instead they are to be hooked up to a virtual reality machine, where they can live out the rest of their lives in a fantasy of their choice, while their bodies are kept alive by IV feeding. Our heroes declare that such a solution is unacceptable, as they could never be happy or find meaning in a life they know to be entirely artificial.

I think most people would agree with our heroes that an artificial existence would be meaningless. We would agree that getting married, having children, a career, being active in the community – in short, all the things we value as indicators of a life well spent – would be meaningless if acted out in a virtual fantasy world. Despite having our every desire catered to, such an artificial existence would quickly lose its novelty and become depressing as we realize that nothing we do really matters.

Why we would feel this way is an interesting question.

An even more interesting question is why we don’t feel this way about the “real” world.

If raising children, being active in the community, etc., are not considered meaningful in the virtual world, then we can conclude that it is not the act itself that has value. The actions and experiences of the individual are the same in the real and virtual world. Rather, the value must be the action’s effect on others. Because there are no “others” in the virtual world, only virtual constructs, the actions are not considered to have value.

The question then is why do we think that the impact of our actions on others give the actions value? Do our actions in fact have objective values, or is it merely that we are wired to believe that acts which help others are meaningful? If so, what if the virtual reality machine could be tweaked to make those hooked up to it believe that making turkey sandwiches has intrinsic value, and they happily spent the next sixty years making turkey sandwiches. Is that bad? They would be happy and would believe they led a meaningful life. How is being programmed to believe altruistic acts have intrinsic value any different than being programmed to believe that making turkey sandwiches has intrinsic value?

If there really is no difference, and person in a virtual world programmed to believe making virtual turkey sandwiches has value can find the same fulfillment that an unaltered human in the real world can find in being altruistic, if in the virtual world tombstones read, “expert turkey sandwich maker,” instead of, “loving father, devoted husband, invaluable member of the community,” then our meaningful, productive, altruistic lives really have no more intrinsic value than the virtual world’s inhabitant’s years of sandwich making.

Havael havalim hakol hevel

The Virtue of Faith Despite Adversity

A while ago, I wrote a post, “Why Is Faith a Virtue?” Particularly faith in the face of adversity. Why is the greatest tzaddik in the frum world the person who, despite personal tragedy, holds on to their emunah?

I think I have an answer. From conversations that I have had with various frum people I have gotten the impression that many believe that everyone sees the world the same way they do. One person told me outright that “The goyim don’t really believe in their religions the way a frum person has emunah in Hashem.” In their view, everyone really believes in Hashem. The only reason someone wouldn’t believe is if they are pretending. They’ll even say that sometimes a person will pretend so well that he will fool himself into really thinking that he doesn’t believe, but deep down he knows that Hashem in the Borie Olam and Yiddishkeit is the Truth.

As an aside, this might also answer a question I’ve had in Chumash. The meforshim condemn Pharaoh for his answer to Moshe’s demand in the name of Hashem to free the Bnie Yisroel: “Who is this God you speak of?” From Pharaoh’s point of view, this is a perfectly legitimate question. There is even a medrash that says he looked through a book of gods and didn’t find Hashem’s name there. The Egyptians had a whole pantheon of gods, and knew the pantheons of other nations. Why should Pharaoh, the embodiment of Ra on Earth, take orders from a god of slaves, a god whom he had never heard of?

The answer could be in the belief I cited above that everyone really, deep down, knows that Hashem is the Borei Olam. Everyone, even Pharaoh. (Never mind that he had legitimately never heard of Hashem. He just KNEW.) So Pharaoh not bowing to Hashem’s will, and worse, having the audacity to ask who He is, is evil.

In the same way, a person who experiences a tragic event doesn’t go through a logical process where he decides that an omni-benevolent God wouldn’t do such a thing, and therefore decides God doesn’t exist. At best, he knows that God exists, but he’s angry with God, and so refuses to acknowledge Him out of spite. Contrast this with someone who experiences a tragedy and continues to trust in God.

Remember, legitimate disbelief is not a real option. A person either believes and continues to trust in God, or believes and pretends he doesn’t out of anger/spite. Which of these attitudes is the more virtuous? Clearly, the more socially useful (in a non-democratic society anyway), and therefore virtuous attitude, is continued trust in a leader despite an apparently tragic mistake.

Why is Faith a Virtue?

Once again, I find I am prompted to post in response to something I read over Shabbos. This time it is an article about Holocaust survivors and what we can learn from them. The article was well written and quite moving. As I read it, though, I noticed two implicit assumptions made by the author.

The first was that suffering has a purpose for its own sake. This was expressed in with a quote from a rav who said that he did not say Kaddish for relatives who had died in the Holocaust because they were already sitting next to God and did not need any more merits. I think this idea probably owes a lot to the human need to find purpose. If everything has a purpose, and the victims’ suffering served no obvious purpose in this world, it must have served them in the next world.

The second was the assumption that faith is a virtue, perhaps the greatest virtue, and that the more unreasonable it is to hold onto faith the more virtuous it is to do so. The conclusion of the article was a statement that we must learn from the remaining survivors what it means to have faith, particularly what it means to have faith in nightmarish conditions.

But why is this a virtue? Faith is trust, in this context trust in God. It is often compared to the trust a child has in his parents. Even if the parent forces the child to do something unpleasant, the child still trusts that the parent loves him and knows best. I see this with my own daughter. If I let her she would eat cookies all day. When I tell her she can’t have any more cookies she gets very upset. Sometimes I have to force her to do things that are good for her, like changing her diaper when she wants to play. Yet she seems to quickly forget these indignities.

For most children, this faith in their parents is justified. Their parents really are doing what is best for them. It is often argued that God, like a parent, must sometimes do things to us that are unpleasant but are what is best for us. We are like children compared to God and shouldn’t question His judgment. This works if we assume that a) God is all-knowing and b) God is a loving parent Who wants what is best for us.

What if God is really an abusive parent? Children who are abused often also love their parents. They take the blame for the abuse on themselves, claiming that they deserved to be hit because they were bad. Similarly, when bad things happen to people they often say that it is because of their sins, and God is justified in punishing them.

Several years ago my cousin was killed in a car accident. A rav from the community who came to be menachem avel told my aunt and uncle that she had died because they had not tried hard enough to do the mitzvos properly, that she was a korban for klal yisroel’s aveiros. My uncle found comfort in this. I was horrified. This rav had just told grieving parents that their daughter’s death was their fault!

It seems that God fits the abusive parent profile better than that loving parent. Yet holding onto faith in Him, especially in horrific conditions, is considered a virtue.

I think part of the answer is evolutionary. In general, we consider virtues those things that have helped our species survive and develop complex civilization. Not killing those close to you is a virtue. Helping those in your family and community is a virtue. These things help your family’s genes survive and help to build a community. Trusting your parents also helps you to survive, and similarly becomes a virtue. Trusting those who are close to you, your family and close friends, is usually considered a virtue. This trust is extended to the Parent in the sky, God.

Part of the answer also relates to the first assumption in the article, that all suffering ultimately has a purpose. This strengthens faith under adverse conditions. For one to lose faith while suffering means that one’s suffering has no purpose. So suffering can actually increase faith.

So faith becomes a virtue through evolutionary programming and is strengthened because it gives people’s suffering purpose. Faith is a virtue because it allows people to endure hardship and helps to build society. The greater the evidence to the contrary, the stronger faith can become and the more virtuous it is.

[The question of why faith is a virtue really needs a much longer discussion, but this was inspired by a particular article and mostly addresses the points brought up by that article.]