December 19, 2013  / 16 Tevet,  5774

During the short period of time (some six months) since I undertook to write under “The Radical Traditionalist” pen name, I had not encountered until now a topic that has been as extended nor as instructive to me.

I began with sadness, almost a lament, about how folks do not take the time these days to respond to invitations.  In that first segment of my thinking, I concluded that people hold back their RSVP'ing as a form of self-protection, if not denial, about the necessity to commit time and emotions to a particular gathering or forum of ideas.  That installment ended on a note of possibility, with the contention that knowing of such a self-interested seed could be beneficial if we were to understand it and play to its strengths.

And then, last time, I compared self-interest with the yetzer ha-ra (evil inclination), something that we all need for survival, leading me to think that the cultivation process could be effected through a healthy dose of yetzer ha-tov (the good inclination).

There is a tacit understanding with Jewish thought that we are born with the evil inclination, and the journey from infancy to Bar/Bat Mitzvah is seen as a time of gradual emergence from baseness to cultural refinement, punctuated by our receiving the good inclination at the age of maturity (which, contrary to popular belief, is not adulthood proper).  In other words, the celebration of one's coming of age at 12 or 13 is conducted amidst the reality of a new mechanism, whereby two inner selves will proceed to compete for dominance.  The “winning” inclination will only prevail once it has determined how to work successfully with its rival.

I was somewhat startled by my own discovery that personal conduct is a window of understanding about how we are able to control our “selves,” and how the linkage between the evil inclination and self-interest might offer me a variable with which to understand from where others are coming when they persist in their denial of invitations, deferral of responsibilities, and resistance of interactions that are necessary to their own growth (It should be pointed out, though that there are some among our community who are bereft of the apparatus with which to effect such power and they are deserving of our empathy and support in finding the appropriate therapies toward getting them to a safer place).

Let us not conclude so negatively!  It is precisely knowing how and when to catalyze self-interest that brings people into community, and affords groups to achieve great things.  The revelation of common, mutual goals is tantamount to unleashing enormous powers of cooperation.

At the end of the day, my friends, the essence of an individual's virtue is rooted in the ability to manage his/her own self-interest. And, as with so many other issues, people are all over the map!