Improving the world

[shkrobius]

Ours is the age of meliorism as blindly unquestioning as medieval fatalism. Meliorism is the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment. The improvability of the world cannot be justified by reason (e.g., see Rescher's essay

Comments

[hannahsarah]

Excellent topic. I was taught by Rabbi Itzak Goldman, talmid of R. Akiva Tatz, that in Orthodoxy tikkun olam follows the same path as chessed and tzedakah. First you start with YOURSELF, then your family, then your community, then klal Isroel, and then the rest of the world.

The point is, before you go out saving the whales, perfect your own middos, and focus on helping those around you. Before you fight global warming, pick up the litter in your own neighborhood.

This is a main difference between the Orthodox and the Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative view. It reminds me of women who want to put on tefillin like Rashi's daughter, but they don't keep kosher out side the home, avoid loshon hara, or dress modestly.

Don't start with grandiose plans, until you are SURE that you are doing your very best to perfect your own olam. None of us are without aveiros that need working on, so make sure that you get your priorities straight.

[shkrobius]

I feel extreme unease about this topic. It pains me that our sages unwittingly unleashed a monster that still haunts us. I do not doubt their best intentions, and I am certain their understanding of the concept (judgung from the timidity of implementation) was similar to your rabbi's. And yet they laid foundations for an easily pervertable concept that was easily perverted.

And that's secularization of just one esoteric idea... Imagine what can happen if they discover the rest. Luckily they've stopped reading our books; I doubt that unaided they can concoct something that is fatally harmful. Come to think of it, improving the world might be the best of the worst. At least one can be certain that the result of all this activity would be zilch. I cannot say this about good many other things.

[hannahsarah]

"Come to think of it, improving the world might be the best of the worst."

I just thought of something. Perhaps the sages knew (prophetically, on some level) that this was what the weak would latch onto. It gives them a safe "mitzvah" to do, so that they don't go around messing up things even worse.

It's like having a small child, and giving them a toy that they can't break, instead of letting them have a china vase to play with.

Seriously, the Torah is wiser than we will ever be able to comprehend in our lifetime.

[shkrobius]

My dad used to say, it is easy not to steal and it may be possible not to murder, but it is positively impossible not to covet idols. Here the best minds are as impotent as the worst. You start with the best of intentions and that's what comes out of it. With some ingenuity, an idol can be made out of anything.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

[nagunak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

[riftsh]

With all due respect to our sages, it looks like the Zoroastrians may have been there a bit earlier:

22. That belongs to the gods in the heavens and to those in the material world, and to the blessed ones, born or not yet born, who are to perform the restoration of the world.
23. It is they who shall restore the world, which will (thenceforth) never grow old and never die, never decaying and never rotting, ever living and ever increasing, and master of its wish, when the dead will rise, when life and immortality will come, and the world will be restored at its wish
(Zamyad Yasht)

[shkrobius]

That's the common messianic narrative. It is still a far cry from improving the world...

[citizen_global]

What exactly do you mean by "improving the world"? Has the economic growth in the last two centuries and a half been an instance of it?

[shkrobius]

There is little we can argue about, because it is purely circular logic. If one defines improving the world as economic growth than surely economic growth is improving the world. I'd rather suggest to change our perspective: why is it that out of a myriad of indicators it is specifically economic growth that is singled out by our age as a sign of improving the world. Could it be for no other reason that there is economic growth, which cannot be said about many other indicators that would show steady decline? (E.g., economic growth cannot be sustained infinitely, so it i obvious that the future cannot hold growth as its chief value) If every age creates its own criterion of improvement, you can rest assured that it will select precisely the one that exposes it in the most beneficial light. There was not a single century in human history without improving of the world. Today it is measured in economic growth. In the 9th century CE it was measured in valiant raids of neighboring castles. The idea of economic growth is precisely as old as

[citizen_global]

Well, my implied point was that "improvement" is a subjective term. There is no objective criteria why something must be called an impovement.

As to unsustainability of economic growth, I have to disagree. Barring huge nartural and human-induced catastrophies or scenarios where people will increasingly become content with what they have, there is no principle limit to economic growth rightly understood (ultimately as the increase of the amount of goals humans are able to achieve).

[shkrobius]

If these are purely imaginative goals achievable in purely imaginative ways, then of course there is no limit.

[poltorazhyda]

I suspect this is a train of thinking that owes heavily to the Gnostics and Manicheans. However, the idea of a Messianic age has roots that go at least as far back as the late prophets. You can, of course, argue as the Rambam does that the world in the Messianic age will look the same as it does today, with the exception of the fact that the Jews will have their own religious state which will be secure, but that raises more questions.

As for progress-I was just recently arguing with my friend about whether the sages had the idea of scientific progress or not. If they did, it would be ironic, since their era saw the decline of science from Greek medicine to Babylonian barbarity.

[shkrobius]

That's debatable. I am inclined to believe that Gnostics shared the same root rather than providing direct inspiration (there was no greater critic of Gnosticism than Plotinus). Rambam also did not keep to himself what he thought about the forerunners of the kabbalists and their Islamic counterpart.

It does not really matter what motivates people to do the right thing until and only until they do the right thing. If they need to believe they are improving the world to do it, so be it; I cannot judge. The problem is that the very logic of such a view would and did lead people astray. Then it begins to spill over & becomes dynamite.

[poltorazhyda]

Gnosticism, like building pyramids and sacrificing people, just seems to be one of those recurring archetypal patterns in human behavior

[shkrobius]

Well, Saadi Gaon suggested to excommunicate the believers in reincarnation, etc. I am pretty certain what would he say. I do not pretend I always understand what Rambam means: kabbalah is hidden understanding that is open only to those who see. In this sense, he was a kabbalist. But he had a sensitive ear to Neoplatonic doctrines and conistently destroyed them. He was pretty hard on the Hekhalot, too. It is undeniable that his affinities were elsewhere. So are mine.