
Modernity, Faith, and Martin Buber - chesterfield
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/modernity-faith-and-martin-buber
======
knn
This is a really thoughtful piece. I'd never heard of Buber before this

~~~
tropdrop
Check out Zadie Smith's fascinating treatment of Justin Bieber as love object
in Feel Free [1], where she argues Bieber and Buber are, after all, English
versions of the same German name, so in her mind, the pop star and Jewish
philosopher are spiritual cousins - both forever obsessed about personal
relationships. The entire book has this sort of unorthodox and completely
compelling insight and is a delight!

Edit - a bit more about Feel Free: [1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/books/review/zadie-
smith-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/books/review/zadie-smith-feel-
free.html)

------
vincent-toups
"Such haziness was inevitable, because the questions Buber was trying to
answer were the most ineffable ones of human life: What is the meaning of our
existence?"

This is often said, but I don't feel like its obvious in any way. Questions
can be big and hard to answer, but that hardly means we _must_ speak about
them without precision.

My sense is that people use oblique language on these questions because they
dislike the answers that precise language makes unavoidable.

~~~
OneWordSoln
Such haziness is only inevitable for those who don't know but wish to act like
they know more than others. The first step to wisdom is in honestly admitting
what one does not know. Most people are ego- and pleasure-driven and therefore
would rather make up something pretty or convenient or whatever, instead of
admitting that they don't have the answers.

"What is the meaning of our existence?" is not at all hazy but is far more
simple (yet subtly complex) than people are willing to admit; of course,
people are generally not willing to admit that another person can have
knowledge they do not, especially if they are deeply wedded to their
particular culture (e.g. academic philosophy) and/or faith. And, yes, I do
know the answer to this question, and, yes, the answer is both very simple and
deeply complex (very much in the realm of "Not 2, not 1").

The simple meaning of our existence is to enjoy life, to be happy. The
complexity arises in a couple of dimensions. First, we need to live in
societies to survive and prosper. As such, we have an innate morality that
pushes us away from selfish, animalistic competition and toward selfless,
humane cooperation, across all artificial divisions [e.g. ethnicity, form of
religion (including none at all), sexual preference and identity]. This
morality is a part of our being and is tied to the inner feelings we get when
we interact with our fellow human beings and even the Earth itself (for when
we harm the Earth we harm others). Our morality affects how we think and,
therefore, how we approach life with our attitudes and behaviors; each society
imparts its own moral teachings upon its acolytes, from Dr. King's univesal
love and service to the purely capitalistic callous disregard for the
suffering of others to the purely evil ethnic hatred and violently oppressive
practices by various groups.

The inner feelings of happiness or unhappiness we experience are what we reap
from what we have sown in others, combined with our level of self-evolution,
for we are the only creatures with a free will and a mind that can evolve
itself within its life to achieve moral perfection. As such, we are the only
creatures that live under the most subtle of laws: the Law of Karma. This can
be evidenced in the general misery of the wealthy and the rather surprising
level of joy of the people of the projects that I currently live in; yes,
there are exceptions to this because there are, of course, people in these
projects that look at others as Buber's "It" and there are wealthy that seek
to uplift those less fortunate than themselves (though they are few and far
between). It is obvious to anyone living honestly that material wealth does
not determine happiness, though it sure does buy plenty of pleasure, most
people confusing the two for the simple fact that most people are only
concerned with the material aspect of this world, not the bigger questions
such as those understood by Buber and the other Sufi sages sprinkled
throughout history.

So, then, the meaning of life is to become happy by evolving oneself to create
happiness in others by first personally embodying the highest ideals of
compassion and service and then by working to establish societies where those
ideals are manifest in the institutions of government, business and religion
themselves. Here it is obvious that we have allowed the most ruthless,
hypcritical and selfish liars and oppressors to seize and hold power. From a
game theoretic standpoint, they have access to more tools than the moral human
being and the fruits of their labors stand testament to their single-minded
power-seeking, our tattered Earth going to ruin and the misery of the poverty-
stricken masses demonstrating their efforts.

The crux of the issue resides in the answer to "Why, with most people not
being evil bastards, is the world moving away from happiness?" Besides the
efforts of the relatively few amoral people, most people are too confused to
either confront or overcome their own personal demons and are therefore blind
to either their own foibles or those that rule over them; such people are not
merely individuals, they form powerful groups of super-ego-driven packs of
self-centered power mongers. Here the evidence can be seen in how many poor
people support corrupt, self-serving politicians that make the life of common
people worse, as well as how many obviously hypocritical religious
institutions maintain their adherents.

Here then can be found the ultimate crux of the meaning of life: our Creator
is literally Unfathomable and absolutely peerless -- after all, It is the
Creator of time, space and all the subtle, mathematical laws that interrelate
them -- but It has tied our self-evolution into reaching out within ourselves
and establishing a relationship with It. Only in that reaching out can we
learn how to self-evolve ourselves beyond our petty animalistic, pack-centric
destructiveness and into a global cooperation of compassionate humanitarians
that understand that every human being deserves happiness, respect, dignity
and the opportunities to live a life of achievement and self-worth, according
to their own predilections.

The caveat to such universal compassion is that we must be ever on guard for
persons and groups that teach hatred and oppression of others. They must be
stripped of their ability to harm others for the work of the righteous is
_ALWAYS_ to protect the innocent, no matter who they are, for we are one human
race, with all non-destructuve members deserving of FDR's Four Freedoms.

Ultimately, we can talk about what we believe but our choices each and every
day are the evidence of the life we live, and that evidence shows in our
facial expressions, our tone of voice and the joy (or its lack) we feel
within.

"The Way goes in." \--Rumi

~~~
chmln
> As such, we have an innate morality that pushes us away from selfish,
> animalistic competition and toward selfless, humane cooperation, across all
> artificial divisions

We really don't.

source: look at the world around you today and the past thousands of years.

~~~
OneWordSoln
That the vast majority of humanity choose to ignore their moral impulses only
testifies to our free will being absolute and the callous disregard (or worse)
of others in the choices they make. Simply put, most people simply choose to
remain moored to our physical body's animal heritage, where the mammalian
dictates are competition between groups for power and within the group for sex
and status.

