I learned once that apparently the incidence of cancer among the Mormon population is noticeably lower than the national average. No explanation has been suggested, and yet I wish to articulate in this post the idea that it represents evidence of the outcomes of practicing a good religion on not only mind but also body. And that a religion which appears silly to outsiders might not be less effective than one that’s “hip”.
The fundamental underlying concept I think is that religion is supposed to be a bit silly, and you’re supposed to take it seriously. To me the rituals we associate with OCD are basically an atypical means of satisfying the self’s innate desire for religiously doing things. To me the concept of a weekly Netflix & Chill session where you read one chapter of the Five Books of Moses and one where you watch one episode of Gilmore Girls sit within the same niche in the psyche’s hierarchy of needs.
The point is that every cell in one’s body is also independently a living thing. And I believe it is both true that the mechanism by which lung cancer occurs can be described as being mediated by chemicals found in smoke, and that lung cancer itself might be rightly thought of as the cells of one’s lungs saying “fuck this human who’s treating us like shit I’m peace-ing out and starting my own multicellular organism”.
We are quite familiar with many chemical messages that induce our cells to rebel against us, and I find it entirely logical to conclude that a mode of being focused on cultivating harmonious cooperation might be capable of addressing cancer risk factors which remain as-yet-uncharacterized by modern science. Certainly it is known that spiritual practices like meditation can improve physical health. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
I believe that the way humans behave in the context of a society is similar to the way in which human cells behave in the context of a multicellular organism; just as the latter is similar to the way in which atoms behave in a substance or quarks behave in an atom. To me reality is a series of nesting-dolls, and the possibility of identifying smaller dolls within dolls allows me to imagine myself as inside a larger doll.
I think that the challenge faced by any society is the same as the challenge faced by any multicellular organism, which is to figure out what the components that make the self up need to be healthy and to become healthy as a collective by supporting individual health.
Mass Hysteria
I think that the phenomenon behind events like the Salem Witch Trials was not a bunch of people going crazy for no reason. I view this as an example of a society which has become sick experiencing a vomiting response. “Burn the infidels” is sometimes the correct solution to a problem when that problem is the existence of someone harming people without feeling remorse and without getting caught. Who knows if some of the people burned in Salem might have been engaging in what today would be called child abuse or domestic abuse or “coercive control”.
I think that the other way to approach the idea I am walking you towards would be to begin with the concept of a human psychopath and to suggest that a cancer cell’s perspective on the other cells in its body is akin to a psychopath’s perspective on the other humans in its society.
My opinion is that the existence of a witch hunt implies the existence of some unpunished antisocial behavior in need of correcting, and the defining characteristic of a witch hunt is to burn anything even remotely resembling the problem just to be safe.
The end of a witch hunt generally comes when all legitimate culprits have been burned or otherwise disposed-of, and in the best-case scenario the aftermath involves redeeming those innocents who were killed for committing crimes like “guilt by association” and learning how to spot the behaviors being undertaken by those legitimate “witches” in a precise enough fashion to prevent future recurrences of the problem without the need to harm innocents. A witch hunt is a shotgun; the elimination of a known harmful phenomenon can proceed with a surgeon’s scalpel.
I’m going to now just state plainly the seed at the center of this fruit. I think that the phenomenon of “anti-semitism” which was common throughout Europe and which has experienced a significant resurgence in recent years is based upon genuine uncaught antisocial behaviors being acted out by certain people within the Jewish community. I do not believe these behaviors are unique to that cultural context, and hence I believe that the defining characteristic of this world which treats that prior witch hunt as based on nothing whatsoever is for those bad behaviors which ought have been stamped out to become popular and condoned to engage in in a wide variety of social situations which have nothing at all to do with Judaism.
My Diagnosis
I remember reading in Humanae Vitae that the Catholic Church cares deeply about the problem of “birth control”. It was articulated in a typical Papal fashion that good Catholics are concerned about overpopulation and that they engage in “natural family planning” to avoid overly stressing the Earth’s resources, but that they under no circumstances partake of pregnancy prevention methods which go against natural laws.
I remember reading on Chabad.org that this Chasidic organization believes that “God doesn’t care about overpopulation”. And being perfectly honest with you I think that the truest fulfillment of being enthusiastic about the promise made to Abraham that “your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky” is an attitude which is quite possibly entirely innocently enthusiastic about having lots and lots of children and is simply unaware of the broader social implications of this view on family planning.
I believe, actually, that it’s possible to empathize with a cancer cell in precisely this same fashion. It isn’t motivated by a desire to kill you. It is just unconvinced that participating in the multicellular organism you’re running would be in its best interests and has decided to focus exclusively on making as many copies of itself as possible.
And I believe that the drama underlying the Crown Heights Riots was rooted in the way in which this group of people demonstrated authentically the way in which a traditional Jewish value system views non-Jews. The Rebbe did not intend to kill that small black child with his motorcoach - he was just being negligent. And no amount of rioting carried out by the other side would provoke an emotional response commensurate with how much they valued the life of that child, because Chasidic Jews genuinely view non-Jewish lives as less valuable than Jewish ones.
If you are still with me, dear reader, I think that I can explain to you from here what happened in Germany.
What Happened in Germany
I was recommended a documentary by my cousin once which told the story of Jewish immigration to San Francisco from Germany around the time of the Jewish Reformation/Gold Rush. Apparently the last straw for a group of people which included many of our shared ancestors was a law preventing Jewish males who were not first-borns from owning land.
I was reminded in this moment of the difference between the Catholic view on overpopulation and the Chasidic one. Because I think that an outcome of focusing as if wearing blinders on your own tribe’s welfare and acting as though other people are members of a different species is an attitude which can be unempathetic and therefore by definition psychopathic. I think that my ancestors’ ancestors were in the habit of having large families and buying up more and more land and their non-Jewish neighbors who were reproducing more closely to the replacement rate felt that their options were to have more children with the intention of competing or to artificially limit the expansion-potential of those whose religion was specifically about producing as many offspring as there are grains of sand on all the world’s beaches.
I think that “the Jews will not replace us” is a specific response to being next to a neighbor who is reproducing much more aggressively than you are and that the desire to have “living space” was a maladaptive response to that feeling of being “cramped”.
My ancestors upon moving to the United States (according to this documentary) found themselves uniquely in a place in which no laws pertaining specifically to Jews were on the books. And they decided to hold fast to their Jewish heritage in a more minimalist fashion and otherwise behave just like everyone else in their vicinity.
The controversial opinion which I am representing here is precisely and hopefully clearly this: that while it is true that the Talmud containing many laws pertaining specifically to Jews and European nations passing laws pertaining specifically to Jews are both phenomena which have been around since before 1942, the Talmud was written before the Quran existed.
I don’t even have a particularly strong opinion on whether a legal framework which incorporates an explicit double-standard based on ethnic heritage is inherently good or inherently bad. I just can no longer stomach the hypocrisy of concluding that laws which other people write targeting your ethnic group specifically are an evil which must be eradicated and laws which your ancestors passed targeting your ethnic group specifically are a vital necessity which must be preserved for all time.
Apparently I’m going to incorporate attributing blame to the Talmud a lot in my musings on this website. Hopefully I have articulated here that the main reason why I think this is important is that I believe that the motivation behind passing laws targeting Jews specifically was to counteract the legal advantages Jews gave to themselves in the context of their own society, and that anyone who is upset about the concept of racial discrimination ought to understand that random people of Jewish descent are in no way the witches to be burned but that yes actually observant Orthodox Jews frequently believe in the merits of racial discrimination and the degree to which they know how to avoid revealing this varies widely between different individuals.
Actually I think that the way white people are treated in the social context in which I was raised makes a similar attribution error to the one that Adolf Hitler made.
Absolutely there have been exploitative white people throughout history, and no blaming white people indiscriminately is not an appropriate response.
Absolutely non-Orthodox Jews benefit from racially-oriented efforts pursued by those continuing to uphold the spirit of the Talmud, and no killing people of Jewish descent who do not believe in upholding the spirit of the Talmud will do nothing at all to ameliorate your frustration.
To be clear I don’t believe that acts of violence are in any way the correct approach to this situation. I have learned that in Orthodox culture pride is the most important value and shame is the main tool by which conformity is enforced. I would propose that the correct response is to mercilessly mock these Nazis wearing kippot for how stupidly outdated their way of treating other people is. The Talmud itself is full of all sorts of obvious bullshit, and yet the fact that it was written by members of the same ethnic group means that these morons think it’s the highest truth possible because the racist bias of its authors aligns with the tendency towards narcissism which exists within all beings that grow and make copies of themselves, and narcissism feels good.
The point is that by faithfully representing an attitude which is consistent with that of a single-celled organism, these people who are in some distant sense my blood relatives played Devil’s Advocate against one version of a global human social organism. Hitler tried killing the Devil by killing the Devil’s Advocate, and in so doing he made the same mistake made by Orthodox Jews who try to kill their doubts by killing Amalek. The possibility of rebelling against one’s society and turning to selfish pursuits instead is the cancer that plagues every society. Excising humans from society can be as effective as cutting out a brain tumor, and yet creating a society in which every cell voluntarily prefers to remain participatory is also possible by upholding the right set of social values.
I genuinely believe that Orthodox Judaism’s “secret to success” is “if you tell every man he has a chance at being king every man will be happy about it”, and its main downside is that believing oneself to be part of a special lineage produces an arrogance which like the chemicals emitted by yeast can harm other life in its surroundings. I think that Adolf Hitler’s “secret to success” was adopting that exact same stance on “Aryan” lineage, and that his failure would predict the failure of any successful realization of the Talmud’s eschatology. Thank you for reading my rant.