Dead in the Long Run?

High time preference is embodied in the timeless quip by Keynes:

In the long run we are all dead.

This is not a cop-out against saving, but a Bohemian, “apres nous le deluge” and anti-Jewish outlook. The truth is that in the long run, we are eternal, through children and the messiah and good deeds. The story of the carob tree and Choni comes to mind. Judaism is anti-nihilist, but also, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz says, “anti-delusional“.

Yeshaya 40:6 tells us how to gain eternity:

A voice says, “Call!” and it says, “What shall I call?” “All flesh is grass, and all its kindness is like the blossom of the field.

The grass shall dry out, the blossom shall wilt, for a wind from the Lord has blown upon it; behold the people is grass.

The grass shall dry out, the blossom shall wilt, but the word of our God shall last forever.

Even in this world, most outlive the short run. As Ron Paul says, “those who spend beyond their means are destined to spend within their means”.

ה’ניסים’ שמשיח עתיד לחולל…

תא שמע הא דאמרו רבנן בפ”ק דראש השנה דף י”ח שהיו כותבין בשטרות בשנת כך וכך ליוחנן כהן גדול לאל עליון, וכששמעו חכמים בדבר אמרו למחר זה פורע את חובו ונמצא שטר מוטל באשפה, וביטלום ואותו היום עשאוהו יום טוב (פירוש נחשב להם לנס שיכלו לבטל דבר שנתפשט מנהגו בטעות בין המון העם שמנהג כזה הוא קשה כהיום לבטלו, דיותר יבטלו ההמון א’ מעשרת הדברות, ממה שיבטלו מנהג טעות שלהם, או תקנה אחת אף על פי שנתקנה שלא בחבר עיר, כמו שכתבתי בארוכה במאמר המנהגים עיין עליו, ולפיכך נחשב להם לאותם חכמי הדור ההוא כאלו נעשו להם נס שעלתה בידם לבטל כתיבה זו מהשטרות ולפיכך עשאוהו יום טוב)…

מקור: ספר משנת חכמים לרב משה חגיז בהיברובוקס, כאן (עמ’ 98-99)

(שיניתי ר”ת.)

A Refresher on Personal Prayer

Alone with G-d

Hi,

“Hitbodedut is a great level, surpassing everything else. This means to set aside at least an hour every day to be alone in a room or a field and to speak with one’s Creator, explaining oneself, appeasing, and supplicating Him to bring oneself close to true divine service. And this prayer and discussion should be held in the vernacular, i.e. Yiddish… for it is hard for us to speak in Hebrew, which we are not used to… But in Yiddish, which we are accustomed to, it is easier to express oneself… One should express all that is in one’s heart before G-d: regret and teshuva regarding the past and supplications to draw close to G-d… It is important to practice this every day at an appointed time and the rest of the day is to be joyous. And this practice is very great and constitutes an excellent method for drawing close to G-d… for everyone can do this and in doing so one will reach a great level. Happy is he who follows this.”

(Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, Likutei Moharan II 25, translated by Zvi Leshem, Tradition 47:3 (2014))

Have a great day,
Mordechai

From Daily Torah Thought, here.

Peace Begins at Home

Trouble with My Wife

My wife truly loves me. So much so that she tolerates my libertarian monologuing. She even reads books to better understand and contradict me. A while back I got her to listen to Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable. She then took the initiative of listening to Murray Rothbard’s Libertarian Manifesto. A few days ago she downloaded Atlas Shrugged from Audible. All well and good, but she also downloaded Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and has started to listen to it. She did this knowing full well that I have not actually read Smith myself. Her intention is to know more about libertarian thought than I do and being able to stick it to me. I have thus have had no choice but to start listening to Smith. (It is not as dry as I thought it would be. Smith actually was an engaging writer.)

Having to read a book that I was planning on reading sometime before I died anyway, is a minor point. What happens when my wife decides that Smith’s labor based monetary theory is totally inadequate to describe a post-industrial revolution economy and therefore converts to radical Austrianism? My wife is already the more religious one in my family. It would not be be fair if she becomes a more fanatical libertarian than me. I will not be able to lecture random strangers about the innate illegitimacy of government for minutes on end until she drags me away, because I will be too busy trying to stop her from lecturing people. I will have to apologize to statists, which will be totally embarrassing. What if my wife decides that her conscious cannot abide being a government employee, using special-ed children as means to defraud the public and resigns? I will actually need to go out and get a real job for the two of us as my wife stays home to dedicate herself to writing an anti-government blog.

I married this woman on the assumption that she was an Obama voting California liberal. It says openly in our make believe social contract that her role in this marriage is to make me feel guilty about eliminating welfare and public schools so I could compromise with Milton Friedman moderate positions like negative income tax and school vouchers. It is just like my wife to be so dastardly and so wonderful as to make me read more books and push my libertarianism to the next level.

I love my wife!

From Izgad, here.