My experience of the journey of self-knowledge is that every time you turn the corner, there's a new issue. That is, if you're conscious and engaged in that process; and not everyone is. The poet Robert Bly once said (at a men's group I went to) that you don't become conscious till you're 35. When I was younger, the issues I struggled with were my Mother issues, my power issues, my anger issues, and my weird personality/socialization issues. I feel as if I've gotten my arms around the anger and the personality/socialization issues. I don't begin conversations with rebarbative questions, I seek to be more straightforward, I try to listen. Not a very good listener. But I don't destroy dinner parties at nearly the rate I did when I was younger.
So having made this progress, my wife has informed me lately that I have entitlement issues. I agree with her, and without getting into it too intimately (I'm embarrassed by them; and they involve the fact that I make little money), I wonder whether there isn't a Jewish component to these issues. My mother issues. When I was in college, my girlfriend said I was a Jewish prince. My sisters said the same thing. Certainly there is a Jewish prince tradition in my culture. The mother lavishes praise on the Jewish prince, and contributes to his lack of engagement with the real world, to his becoming a luftmensch. My mother is street-smart, I'm not; she instilled that quality in her daughters. When I was in college, my best friends gently suggested I was a flake. I think Allen Ginsberg suffered from the same syndrome, and he had mommy issues. Mailer's mommy issues are discernible in his youthful letters lately published in the New York "Gaza's Not on Our Mind" Review of Books.
My wife's concern with my lack of straightforwardness also seems to me to have a cultural element. There's a Jewish love of unstraightforwardness, of irony. You can see it in the great Jewish jokes about Minsk/Pinsk and "Look who thinks he's a nobody!" (which I can relate some other time). Speaking in riddles. My wife's tradition is to be more quiet and if you speak at all, do so honestly, sincerely. "Simplicity, sincerity and service" are the values inscribed on a plaque at the Quaker camp she went to as a child. I never had those values myself.
All these issues can be related to power, too. My wife comes from the power group. I came from an outsider group. Now we're merging. Gonna be some collisions, and a lot of beep-beeping on the way. (Phil Weiss)
To deal with whatever issues you have, you have to name them consistently as your own.
You will distort the process of healing by naming them habitually as "the group's" problem, or "your mother's".
My sense is that sibling dynamics would be useful for you to look into. There are patterns associated with birth order. I'm sure your older brother is different than you even in relation to the same issues that you've identified.
Your younger sisters are also very interesting people and "types".
All of this plays out in different ways as we age.
I've recently been forced to reexamine my identity in the world (nowhere near completed) owing to a forced change in job, opening to a prospective change in vocation.
There is little about my personality that I attribute to really any distinctly Jewish characteristics.
Philip, everytime you use a Yiddish/German word like "luftmensch" I'm happy. Because it reminds me that the German-Jewish tradition is strong, certainly was strong before Hitler destroyed so much. It reminds me that many Jewish writers wrote in German.
And then there are the idiots in the Israeli Knesset who protest when German politicians come there and talk in German, they claim it's the language of the Holocaust.
No it's not, a language cannot be the twin of a historical moment. It's the language from which Yiddish was formed.
And I hope that we see the day were Jews and German language and German people are getting over the deep abyss which Hitler and the Nazi-movement has created.
There is an old Jewish joke: During Yom Kippur, the rabbi is seized by a sudden wave of guilt, and prostrates himself and cries, "God, I am nothing before you!" The cantor is likewise seized by guilt, and cries, "God, I am nothing before you!" Seeing this, the janitor at the back of the synagogue prostrates himself and cries, "God, I am nothing before you!" And the rabbi nudges the cantor and whispers, "Look who thinks he's nothing."
Take no pride in your confession that you too are biased; do not glory in your self-awareness of your flaws. This is akin to the principle of not taking pride in confessing your ignorance; for if your ignorance is a source of pride to you, you may become loathe to relinquish your ignorance when evidence comes knocking. Likewise with our flaws – we should not gloat over how self-aware we are for confessing them; the occasion for rejoicing is when we have a little less to confess.
Otherwise, when the one comes to us with a plan for correcting the bias, we will snarl, "Do you think to set yourself above us?" We will shake our heads sadly and say, "You must not be very self-aware."
Never confess to me that you are just as flawed as I am unless you can tell me what you plan to do about it. Afterward you will still have plenty of flaws left, but that's not the point; the important thing is to do better, to keep moving ahead, to take one more step forward. Tsuyoku naritai!
Excerpt from: link to overcomingbias.com
"There is little about my personality that I attribute to really any distinctly Jewish characteristics."
I'm surprised just typing this didn't trigger some kind of global Internet meltdown.
"Simplicity, sincerity and service"
Yes, that does capture one pole of a cultural divide. I've always thought the state motto of North Carolina was also significant, "Esse quam videri." (To be rather than to seem.)
A sentiment not often heard on the streets of Hollywood, this is I think one of those remnants of an aristocratic class.
Yeah, Witty, you blend.
Who can be more of a nothing than the next? A Jones Race towards
humility? Does that make a saint?
Socrates: "I only know that I know nothing." This is often said to mean the speaker is taking the first step towards wisdom. The line between knowledge, no matter how much, and wisdom, is clearly drawn. Brings me to: Know Thyself
Brings me to Emerson: I am multitudes
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Everyone has issues and contridictions.
When a friend once said to me..'you never feel the need to explain yourself do you?..I knew I had quit wasting my time on myself.
A simple 'I changed my mind' is sufficent for everything.
It will draw admirers and drive your enemies crazy.
American society has been making a transition from patriarchy to matriarchy. Sexually liberated men have been more aware of the changes of sexual roles than their female counterparts partly because they become easy objects of derision for being men, which they are sensitive to.
Sounds to me like you are being well-trained by your wife… not so different than many American men!
Don't read so much into it!
I am aware this is absolutely off-topic, but I am curious:
My sense is that sibling dynamics would be useful for you to look into. There are patterns associated with birth order. I'm sure your older brother is different than you even in relation to the same issues that you've identified.
My sister (the third among four), a teacher and art therapist is into these kind of things, she is the third among four. Would you tell me your place in the birth succession?
Maybe I shouldn't ask? Because strictly I do not know anything about the issue. Although at one point in my life, family therapy or systemic therapy made most sense to me. It somehow feels less esoteric.
If you're asking me, I'm an only child.
Witty, what would an only child really know about being a sibling?
Only child. They romanticize nonexistent siblings, reach out to friends or community for what they naturally lack. They are always
princes or princesses in the sense Phil mentions. What they lack in
family partners of the same age and family, they make up for in
getting an exclusive hold on immediate family generosity. I never met an only child who did not have a strong sense of entitlement.
So here, we see Witty. An only child. And we see his romantic attachment: Zionism.
Is this good for the goys?
I don't think so.
I should apply some other litmus test?
What is it?
To D: Compare North Carolina's motto, "To be rather than to seem," with the old Hollywood joke where the veteran actor instructs: "Look kid, it's all about sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Okay for actors and comedians, not okay for senators, envoys, and attorneys general.
To Phil, in my own personal theology, we are all made in God's image, but imperfectly, each with our own flaws. And, God plays little jokes on us, by mismatching our strengths with our flaws, so that we struggle, each in our own unique set of life challenges. The key is to aspire to the ideal (and also to choose a spouse and friends and colleagues who complement one's flaws and who appreciate one's strengths).
As to those ideals to aspire to, without universal agreement on those ideals, we can find ourselves at cross purposes. Noah Feldman wrote a great piece in the NYTimes Sunday magazine a couple years ago about his estrangement from the Maimonides School he attended, having rejected orthodoxy and married a Korean woman. As I recall, and oversimplifying his story, he recounted a Talmud lesson about whether a doctor sinned by working on the Sabbath when he treated a patient to save his life, where the lesson was that it was not a violation if the patient was a Jew, and if not a Jew, it was not a violation if treatment was necessary to maintain good relations with the Gentiles; otherwise it was a sin. A prominent doctor from the community who spoke at an assembly said you could view this as a technical point of required religious discrimination, or as a means to achieve a practical universality, and he personally chose to read it the latter way. He was challenged by a teacher to examine his intent carefully, for, if it was to achieve practical universality, rather than to maintain good relations, then he sinned. The teacher later apologized to the class for making the point in the assembly, because there had been non-Jews in the audience; he taught them to keep such refinements of thought to Jews only, but Feldman found this to be a breach of good faith.
And I agree with him. In America, we are all free to have our own ideals and religious tenets, but if they involve dealing in bad faith with everyone other than one's own tribe, then there is no hope of a lasting successful relationship, because the truth will out, eventually.
If you're asking me, I'm an only child.
sure, I was asking you. I always ask the person I am citing.
Actually, now that you write it, it seems you may have mentioned it before.
Thanks, anyway. Being the only child loads much more responsibility on one's shoulders. I am glad, I was one among four.
Doppler, the lesson is for the Wittys of the world, what is good for the Jews? The moral equation at best is, what is good PR?
Witty practices it daily. After giving thanks each morning for being
born of a Jewish womb.
So what's new?
What you have, Phil, isn't a 'mummy' issue so much as a 'throwing all your intimate reflections directly into the hands of the enemy who fully intends to destroy you with them' issue.
By the way, I am still waiting for you to tell me what Mailer thought about JHVH (the jewish 'god').
Phil, your description of your relation with your mother is very reminiscent of that of South Asian mother-son dynamics.. i've known many an Indian/Pakistani prince…
The wife takes over everything.