Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Hope is an act of will.  Sen. Tina Smith
 
Emily Dickenson was the one who wrote that hope is a thing with feathers. She compared hope to a bird, perched on the soul of the human being, ready to flutter even at the darkest moment. Prof. Alan Mittleman of the Jewish Theological Seminary made the case that hope is a virtue – something morally admirable, commendable, excellent. And Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota suggests that hope is an act of will.
 
They all have something in common. For all three, hope is something very different than an emotion. We use some of the same language to describe the experience of hope as we do the experience of love, anger, happiness, and distress, that is, the language of feeling. But while emotions are most often the result of a combination of inclinations and hormones, hope, accurately described, is a decision.
 
Maybe half-way into my career as a rabbi, I realized that I needed to stop delivering sermons I thought the people in front of me ought to hear and concentrate instead on the messages I needed to hear. I enjoyed writing and delivering those messages much more, and I had my favorites. One of them was about hope. Hope was defined as the expectation that things would get better. That’s not the same as faith, which is more certain, nor is it the same as knowledge, which is more demonstrable. Faith is much closer to emotion, and knowledge requires nothing more than acknowledgment. But having hope is a choice, and Prof. Mittleman argues that a virtuous life includes a commitment to choose hope.
 
Because I have faith in God (a certainty without proof), I attribute virtue to a divine source. And because I am committed to knowledge (proof independent of certainty), I am skeptical of that which is not empirical – that is, I have doubt. Were I to face a demand that I choose between the two, I could not. And that is where that thing with feathers hops out of slumber and flutters around my soul. It is possible to have doubt and at the same time hold to the expectation that something better is ahead, because that is what faith demands.
 
The choice to hope is a hard one and, too often, is a choice against likelihood. Just before the elections of 2016, I tried to reassure a frantic friend that if the candidate she feared won, “the Republic will still stand.” I can’t say I was sanguine about it, but I hoped (expected that things would get better) that grown-ups in the room and the weight of responsibility would more than balance what she most dreaded. Then, my hope was bolstered by faith. Today, my hope is an act of will.
 
It is both comfort and challenge to me that the national anthem of the State of Israel is entitled “The Hope.” Its most powerful and poignant verse exclaims, in refutation of Ezekiel’s description of the dried bones in the valley, “our hope is not lost.” And though the national sovereignty is what that hope is about (which is pretty typical for a national anthem, I should think), the hope is not about power as much as it is about freedom. And as I expect everyone who is not in denial knows, unless everyone is free, no one is really free.
 
I am not hearing such hope resonate in the slogans of Israel’s opponents – neither their enemy combatants nor those who sympathize with the civilian victims of this conflict. The expectation that things will get better, whether the result of a divine mandate or of an appreciation of facts in evidence, is not the domain only of one side in a disagreement, no matter how profound. Abandoning hope results in tacit permission to excuse atrocity because, if things will not get better, it is inevitable.
 
The notion that hope is a choice is most certainly easier to accept by those in a position of privilege than by those surrounded by suffering. But virtuousness is not a matter of privilege; to the contrary, there is no trick to virtue when life is easy. The soul that is distressed by others’ fear and suffering when life is good is the one in touch with that thing with feathers that awaits within.
 
Hope is an act of will. May it be your will.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
But that would be one thought too many.  Bernard Williams
 
I always hate finding out something I should have known a long time ago but didn’t. My life would be much easier if I knew then what I know now. And I am not dismissing the value of experience, just my general laziness or forgetfulness resulting in unnecessary ignorance.
 
So, this quotation requires some background. As you probably know, Bernard Williams was a highly influential English philosopher of the last century. He was a contrarian when it came to some of the popular moral philosophical systems of the time, arguing that people do not make moral decisions in categories. Rather, they make them based in their lived experiences and values. He believed that moral philosophy (especially Kantian and utilitarian – look ‘em up) was boring. He dreamed of “a philosophy that would be thoroughly truthful and honestly helpful.”
 
Famously (well, not famously enough for me), he described a man standing on the shore seeing two women drowning. He can only save one. One is his wife, and the other is not. The moral philosophers of his day would have categories of consideration about which woman to save. Williams correctly insists that the guy is going to save his wife. The man could give some thought as to the moral categories that might govern his choice, “but that would be one thought too many.”
 
And, says Williams, that is the morally correct choice.
 
Williams was certainly not the precursor of the permissive culture that promoted slogans like “if it feels good, do it,” but he did validate the notion that lived experience and cultural conditioning would reliably lead to morally right decisions. Now, please don’t try to engage me on how awful culture and bad experience could lead to reprehensible behavior – save it for Nietzsche. Williams instead voted for the wisdom of considering that people who want to do the right thing should be encouraged to include their gut feeling in considering their actions (especially in an emergent moment like the example above) and not some categorical imperative.
 
I am looking around at a world that seems to be filled with bad choices and worse choices. You can fill in your own examples – political contests, armed conflicts, AI technology, crypto, Major League Baseball’s intention to expand again. Name your poison. Not everybody wants to do the right thing (or we wouldn’t have all these bad choices), but most people do. Applying Kantian or utilitarian approaches to decision-making, even if it were possible for the average schmo like me, would not necessarily solve anything and would, in any event, externalize the process in a way that would be grossly unsatisfying (not necessarily a bad thing) and, except for Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, not validate personal moral agency and the responsibility to exercise it.
 
Sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – we find ourselves standing on the shore looking out at two or more people in distress. A right decision about whom to save seems obvious, even if it is not the same decision that seems right to the person standing next to us. We could argue about the principles and hierarchies and categories about the correct course of action, but a discourse that results in universal catastrophe in the name of intellectual integrity is the only unquestionably wrong course of action.
 
I can say without equivocation that if I were on the shore or, all the more so, hoping to be saved by someone who loves me, I know there might be plenty of philosophical reasons to have second thoughts. But that would be one thought too many.
 

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
“Silence is so accurate.”   Mark Rothko
 
I recognize that absurdity of writing a lot of words about this quotation. Perhaps as a compromise, if you ordinarily read my columns aloud, you will only move your lips this time.
 
Mark Rothko was, of course, the abstract painter with the signature style. As he transitioned from more “traditional” representations in his art into the use of juxtaposed color, he transitioned away from titling his paintings. By the 1950s and until his death in 1970, his paintings had only numbers. When asked why he stopped giving his works titles, he responded with the words above: Silence is so accurate.
 
You might find that observation profound or you might find it a cheat for someone who just got lazy. But I aggressively take it out of context.
 
We live in a society that demands words. At the same time, we treat words the way that Lewis Carroll satirized them, suggesting that each one means exactly what we intend it to mean. The fungibility of that meaning can render words insignificant – ironically, the exact opposite of what we set out to do with them. Or, in a universe of discourse that assigns authority to every listener and not only to the speaker, words wind up creating confusion rather than clarity.
 
For example, I have an acquaintance who refuses to utter the words “I’m sorry.” This person will readily admit to having made mistakes, often with a much more profane phrase, and if challenged on the actions in question will acknowledge that they were wrong. Yet, faced with the challenge actually to apologize, the individual will insist that “it’s covered” by the acknowledgment of culpability.
 
For another example, not so long ago, I challenged a college student on the use of the word “genocide.” (You can guess the context.) I said, “That word has a specific meaning, and to use it inaccurately belittles the crime and diminishes the actual victims.” The student responded, “The meanings of words change.”
 
And for a third example, one that is very different, is the challenge of consoling someone who is bereaved. Afraid to say nothing, we sometimes insist there is nothing to say. Well, there is indeed always something (appropriate) that could be said, but if there is indeed nothing to say, then silence is so accurate.
 
Here is what is true: when an artist titles a work, they create it twice – once, the work itself (painting, poem, or composition) and the second time, the title they choose. Words wind up being an obstacle to experience if the work is to speak for itself. A confident artist like Mark Rothko will allow the original piece to speak for itself. That is not to disparage the artist who titles a work as a means of communicating inspiration or intention. Rather, Rothko’s silence communicates his intention that his title is accurate, and very much in the eye of the beholder.
 
Does all of this make sense? Maybe, maybe not. But after some five hundred words, I think I will take my own advice and stop making words. After all, silence is so accurate.