There is always a choice!

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks traveled to Toronto to spend some time with Jordan Peterson.

Making a series of programmes for the BBC on morality in the twenty-first century, I felt I had to travel to Toronto to have a conversation with a man I had not met before, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Recently he has recently become an iconic intellectual for millions of young people, as well as a figure of caricature and abuse by others who should know better.[1] The vast popularity of his podcasts – hours long and formidably intellectual – suggests that he has been saying something that many people feel a need to hear and are not adequately hearing from other contemporary voices.

During our conversation, there was a moment of searing intensity. Peterson was talking about his daughter Mikhaila. At the age of six, she was found to be suffering from severe polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Thirty-seven of her joints were affected. During her childhood and teen years, she had to have a hip replacement, then an ankle replacement. She was in acute, incessant pain. Describing her ordeal, Peterson’s voice was wavering on the verge of tears. Then he said:

Peterson: "One of the things we were very careful about and talked with her a lot about was to not allow herself to regard herself as a victim. And man, she had reason to regard herself as a victim … [but] as soon as you see yourself as a victim … that breeds thoughts of anger and revenge – and that takes you to a place that's psychologically as terrible as the physiological place. And to her great credit I would say this is part of what allowed her to emerge from this because she did eventually figure out what was wrong with her, and by all appearances fix it by about 90%. It’s unstable but it’s way better because of the fact that she didn't allow herself to become existentially enraged by her condition … People have every reason to construe themselves as victims. Their lives are characterised by suffering and betrayal. Those are ineradicable experiences. [The question is] what's the right attitude to take to that – anger or rejection, resentment, hostility, murderousness? That’s the story of Cain and Abel, [and] that's not good. That leads to Hell."

But how is this possible? How can you be a victim and yet not see yourself as a victim without being guilty of denial, or deliberate forgetfulness, or wishful thinking?

...The answer is that uniquely – this is what makes us Homo sapiens – in any given situation we can look back or we can look forward. We can ask: “Why did this happen?” That involves looking back for some cause in the past. Or we can ask, “What then shall I do?” This involves looking forward, trying to work out some future destination given that this is our starting point.

There is a massive difference between the two. I can’t change the past. But I can change the future. Looking back, I see myself as an object acted on by forces largely beyond my control. Looking forward, I see myself as a subject, a choosing moral agent, deciding which path to take from here to where I want eventually to be.

Both are legitimate ways of thinking, but one leads to resentment, bitterness, rage and a desire for revenge. The other leads to challenge, courage, strength of will and self-control. That for me is what Mikhaila Peterson and the Holocaust survivors represent: the triumph of choice over fate.

...Jeremiah kept saying, in so many words, that God will not save us from our enemies until we save ourselves from our own lesser selves.

“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.” That was Moses’ insistent message in the last month of his life. There is always a choice. As Viktor Frankl said, even in Auschwitz there was one freedom they could not take away from us: the freedom to choose how to respond. Victimhood focuses us on a past we can’t change. Choice focuses us on a future we can change, liberating us from being held captive by our resentments, and summoning us to what Emmanuel Levinas called Difficile Liberte, “difficult freedom.”

Hence the life-changing idea: Never define yourself as a victim. You cannot change your past but you can change your future. There is always a choice, and by exercising the strength to choose, we can rise above fate.

Read more here.

"Odd, isn’t it that Democrats are all about “choice” when it comes to babies, but dead set against it when it involves choosing what school your “choice” can go to."

Michelle's Mirror observes,

Odd, isn’t it that Democrats are all about “choice” when it comes to babies, but dead set against it when it involves choosing what school your “choice” can go to.

Go here to read more, including two rumored 2018 candidates for Senate from Michigan.

What story do you tell yourself about your work?

Seth Godin writes,

One of the critical decisions of every career:

"Well, there's plenty more to do, I'll do the least I can here and then move on to the next one."

vs.

"I only get to do this one, once. So I'll do it as though it's the last chance I'll ever have to do this work, to please this customer, to ring this bell."

As little as possible. Or as much. The system might push you to become mediocre, but that very same system rewards excellence. The perception that the minimum is viable is built deep into our notion of productivity, but it turns out that the maximum is valuable indeed.

The biggest cause of excellence is the story we tell ourselves about our work.

It's a choice, a commitment and a lifelong practice.

Choice versus Control

Andy Peth is quite persuasive:

Remember, it’s not enough to undo something; we have to convince the country the thing should be undone. So frame each step, carefully exposing Obama’s love of Control while touting our love of Choice. Give the nation time to absorb our message.

Why help the Democrats? Why rush? Revel in the buffet! Go piece by delectable piece, slowly removing each thing people hate. Every couple weeks, force Democrats into another suicidal vote, as Obama vetoes his way to a villainous legacy. Each time, unveil something controlling about Obamacare, and something of ours that expands choice.

Does this mean I’m nice? On the contrary, I’m mean. I’m the meanest Conservative around, for I want Democrats to feel every ounce of the pain they’ve inflicted on America. No short cuts. No racing ahead of the American People. Oh no, I want 2015 to be one long, grueling Enhanced Interrogation of the Left. Let’s put them under the bright light of Choice versus Control, then watch them perspire. After all they’ve done these past six years, they deserve no less.

Read more here.

Thanks to Kris Cook

On depression, joy, life, and death

After Robin Williams committed suicide, The Academy of Motion Pictures tweeted this:



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The Academy ✔ @TheAcademy
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Genie, you're free.
6:56 PM - 11 Aug 2014

Matt Walsh responds:

Free? I’ve seen a lot of this kind of rhetoric. Robin Williams is “in a better place,” he is “free,” he is “at peace,” he is “smiling down upon us,” he’s “happy.”

This all might seem pleasant enough, but have we stopped to think how it looks and sounds to those who may be contemplating this heinous deed themselves? Can we tell our friend to step away from the ledge after we just spoke so glowingly of Robin Williams’ newfound “peace” and “freedom”? This is too important a subject to be careless about. We want to say nice things, I realize, but it isn’t nice to lie about suicide.

It is not freeing. In suicide you obliterate yourself and shackle your loved ones with guilt and grief. There is no freedom in it. There is no peace. How can I free myself by attempting to annihilate myself? How can I free something by destroying it?

First, suicide does not claim anyone against their will. No matter how depressed you are, you never have to make that choice. That choice. Whether you call depression a disease or not, please don’t make the mistake of saying that someone who commits suicide “died from depression.” No, he died from his choice. He died by his own hand. Depression will not appear on the autopsy report, because it can’t kill you on its own. It needs you to pull the trigger, take the pills, or hang the rope. To act like death by suicide is exactly analogous to death by malaria or heart failure is to steal hope from the suicidal person. We think we are comforting him, but in fact we are convincing him that he is powerless. We are giving him a way out, an excuse. Sometimes that’s all he needs — the last straw.

Second, we can debate medication dosages and psychotherapy treatments, but, in the end, joy is the only thing that defeats depression. No depressed person in the history of the world has ever been in the depths of despair and at the heights of joy at the same time. The two cannot coexist. Joy is light, depression is darkness. When we are depressed, we have trouble seeing joy, or feeling it, or feeling worthy of it. I know that in my worst times, at my lowest points, it’s not that I don’t see the joy in creation, it’s just that I think myself too awful and sinful a man to share in it.

So this, for me, is always the most essential moral at the end of these kinds of sad, terrible stories: we are all meant for joy. We are all meant for love. We are all meant for life. And as long as we can still draw breath, there is joy and love to be found here.

Joy and love. There might not be much else for us on this Earth, but these are the only two things that matter anyway. These are the forces that brought the whole universe into being, and these are the forces that sustain it, and us, and all life.

Life. Life exists, and we are made to live it.

To quote Robin Williams playing a character quoting Walt Whitman:

“What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here — that life exists.”

If you are thinking about suicide, don’t keep it inside. Tell someone.

Never give up the fight.

There is always hope.

Read more here.