Humble Opinions

For some reason, there are many Americans that feel both Israel and America should leave Iran alone to do as it pleases, and certainly not even consider any sort of military action against it. I think those individuals do not have a clear picture of what Iran is, and stands for. Let’s rewind:

Ayatollah Ali Khomeini

Iran’s most powerful figure (whose title is Supreme Leader) is Ayatollah Khomeini. Ayatollah is just a title, his real first name is Ali. He is the successor to a man named Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the 1st Ayatollah Khomeini, and who first came to power in Iran in 1979. In 1963, the Iranian government passed several social and economy reforms in attempt to stimulate and further develop their economy with the help of the United States. Ruhollah Khomeini formed an underground revolution that boycotted the new laws. The United States arrested him, and held him for 8 months. After he was released, the Iranian Prime Minister asked Ruhollah to publicly apologize for starting the economic boycotts. Not only did he refuse, but he had the Prime Minister and four other government officials assassinated. He was exiled to Iraq.

In 1979, a revolution drove the ruling Shah government out of Iran. The US embassy was seized, and 52 American hostages were held for just under 15 months. Shortly after the success of the revolution, Ruhollah returned from exile, and became the Supreme Leader of Iran. He held that position until 1989, when he died of a heart attack. His successor, the current Ayatollah (Ali) Khomeini was his greatest disciple.

Training for Hizballah

By 1982, the terrorist group named the PLO, who were based in southern Lebanon, had committed literally hundreds if not thousands of acts of terrorism against Israel. The terrorism peaked when the Abu Nidal Organization, a faction of the PLO, attempted the assassination of Israel’s ambassador to the UK in London. The attempted assassination left the Israeli UK ambassador paralyzed for life. In response to this and the rising terrorism being perpetrating against its civilians, Israel invaded southern Lebanon, with the sole mission of expelling the PLO, and bringing the state to somewhat normalcy. This began the First Lebanon War. In response to the Israeli invasion, a group formed in southern Lebanon named Hizballah. The important thing to know is that Hizballah is funded, armed, and trained by Iran. Iran is the home to Hizballah training camps.

A peacekeeping force intervened, and occupied southern Lebanon in addition to a ceasefire being signed. The peace keeping troops were French, Italian, and American. They were to occupy Lebanon for a specified period of time. America ended up leaving 2 weeks before the pullout date, after Hizballah drove 2 truck bombs into buildings in Beirut that housed French and American soldiers. The explosions killed over 300 people - 241 of whom were American servicemen!

In 2006, Hizballah fired rockets into several Israeli settlements immediately south of Lebanon, as a diversion for their militants crossing into Israel using secret tunnels they had dug. They ambushed two Israeli army vehicles, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two. The militants shot out all the cameras, and dragged the two hostages through the tunnel into Lebanon. They immediately loaded the soldiers into a car, and drove them deep into Lebanon, changing cars several times. This sparked the 34-day 2nd Lebanon war, which ended in UN Resolution 1701 which stated that Israel would withdraw from Lebanon (since they had invaded), and that the Lebanese government would disarm Hizballah. Since then, Israel has completely withdrawn from those territories, however no disarmament has taken place in Hizballah. Instead, they have received more funds and arms from Iran. The UN later said the disarmament of Hizballah was up to the Lebanese government, but nothing has changed. In 2008, Israel traded convicted murderer Samir Kuntar, four Hizballah militants captured by Israel during the war, and the bodies of about 200 other Lebanese and Palestinian militants for the remains of the two soldiers that were kidnapped from Israel. Seems like a pretty good deal for those that ignited the war, and lost.

The governing power that funds, supplies people, and arms to Hizballah is the same governing power that is today avidly working to assemble a nuclear weapon. Keep in mind Iran’s governing body is still run by Ruhollah’s successor Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. This ruling power is a radical revolution that is under 30 years old.

I personally think they should be completely halted in every possible way without hesitation. If Iran is successful in developing a nuclear weapon, it will set the stage for an eventual nuclear Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, and that will definitely be bad news for all of the world. Nuclear weapons were insanely powerful in 1945, and at this point, the technology has had 63 years to advance. The outcome of even one being detonated is unthinkable.

Let’s hope something good happens very soon…

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It is not very often that we get an opportunity to break from our busy lives, and reflect on the world and its trends. A topic I believe to be vastly under appreciated is mankind’s ongoing development of technology, and its impact on the lives of the civilized world.

Realizing the unbelievable advancements made in the past few centuries, and even decades, should give a person pause, and leave them in wonderment. The inventions of the printing press, railroad, automobile, automatic weapons, airplanes, video cameras, the industrial revolution, and the birth of computers / the Internet have all irrevocably changed the face of the world and life forever.

There are a few areas of change I would like to highlight:

(1). Information

We are currently living in an era that has been named the Information Age. It denotes the global economy’s focus shifting away from the production of physical goods to the manipulation of information. To consider the amount of information that has been made available through the Internet, and the speed with which that information can be disseminated could give a person a headache.

As I have mentioned previously, Europe during the dark ages (which was sparked by the fall of Rome) had an almost 100% rate of illiteracy. The rest of the middle ages was not much better. Up until the last few centuries, it was practically unheard of to own a book. Aside from the fact that few could actually afford a book, most people were not particularly interested in books. Let’s compare that with our time: The Internet offers pretty much anyone access to more information in a single day than their grandparents probably came across their entire lives. I read a statistic that more information will be added to the Internet in 2009 than all of the information known in all of human history before 2009 combined.

In the Babylonian Talmud, it is recorded that during the 3rd and 4th centuries, questions regarding Jewish law were sent by messenger from the land of Israel to Babylonia (modern day Iraq), and the messenger would then return with the answers to the questions. This process took 2 years. Meaning for a piece of information to travel from modern day Israel to modern day Iraq, and back, took 24 months. Compare that to today, where pages of information, as well as photographs and videos can be transmitted across the globe via email in a matter of seconds.

If one were to approach a person from the 1300s, and tell them that on a tiny portable screen, they could see and speak with a person hundreds or even thousands of miles away, I believe they would classify it as a miracle on the scale of the splitting of the red sea. Today, we’re upset waiting more than 10 seconds for a song to download and start playing. Namely, a song that was composed and created primarily without the use of real instruments.

(2). Time

Thanks to modern technology, we all save incredible amounts of time, leaving us with enormous spans of what we call “leisure” time. Instead of heating food up in an oven (let alone a man-made fire), we can make food steaming hot in seconds by using a microwave. Instead of washing dishes and clothes by hand, we now have dish washers, laundry machines, and driers that do it for us. Instead of traveling by boat for several months in horrendous conditions, we can now travel the same distance in hours via airplane, while watching a movie, and eating hot food with dessert.

All of these inventions create the opportunities for a person to accomplish more with their life than those in previous generations could ever have imagined. In this void, the modern day entertainment industry has blossomed into the #1 most profitable industry by filling (ahem, wasting, ahem) people’s time with movies, celebrities, amusement parks, and all the other activities vital to a healthy existence.

(3). Accomplishment

Like I have already said, using technology, people are able to accomplish many times more than those of previous generations, and still be left with far more leisure time than they had. This blog is a perfect example. I can create a piece of literature (by literally pressing buttons), and it can instantly be accessed by millions or even billions of people (don’t worry, almost there). That creates amazing opportunity for accomplishment. I could write a one page article in 20 minutes, and spend the remaining 23 hours and 40 minutes of my day playing video games and drinking slurpees, and I’d still have wider publication than my grandfather probably could have gotten in 200 hours of work in his time.

(4). Quality

In addition to being able to accomplish far more nowadays compared to earlier points in time, we also have the ability to produce at far higher qualities. Thanks to computers, and the slick geniuses that write computer programs (that’s right!), we are able to create amazing slideshows that incorporate all kinds of charts, graphs, video clips, audio recordings, and animations, rendering the presentation of information far more home-hitting. We can also do incredible calculations far beyond the ability of any human that further the study and prediction of things like medicine, weather, DNA, and more.

A great example application, I think, has to do with the tractate of the Mishna (see my post on Jewish literature) called Yevamot. The tractate spends much of its time discussing the relationship scenarios that are acceptable and forbidden to a Jew. At a certain point, these scenarios begin to grow enormously complex, involving cousins of cousins, cousins of half-siblings, descendants of brothers of cousins of half-siblings with questionable conversion to Judaism… you get the point.  Today, amazing companies such as Artscroll have produced great charts that make it far easier to understand each of these scenarios. Thanks to these, many more people can now learn that tractate of the Mishna with far greater clarity and understanding. And that’s just one example.

Food For Thought

It’s always great to stop and realize all the wonderful things in our lives. What would we do if G-d “pulled the plug” on electricity? I think we’d all be in a bit of a bind. Unfortunately, some people (probably inclusive of myself) would be completely lost. If you are Jewish, the next time you make a blessing before biting into a slice of pizza, identifying G-d as the source that brought what you are about eat into existence, feel free to additionally identify G-d as the source of the unbelievable technology that helped refine and perfect every ingredient in that pizza.

Considering all the brilliant points I have made in this post, it is easy to see the immense opportunity for accomplishment in our day and age. As with all things in life, these advancements can be applied for the betterment or destruction of our world and species.

I implore everyone to be careful with their time. It’s so easy to waste away getting involved in things that essentially will be gone tomorrow, and have zero effect on anything. Glad will be the person that lay on his death bed atop a mountain of accomplishment. Sad will be the person that lay on their death bed with nothing but quotes from Adam Sandler movies, and the names of the drinks from Starbucks memorized.

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An interesting topic is that of the subconscious. It is generally believed that the mind can be broken into two parts: the conscious and subconscious - the conscious part being those functions of the brain we are imminently aware and in control of, and the subconscious being the functions beyond our on-demand control, and which influence our thoughts and actions.

So in my humble opinion, if something I am not in control of is influencing my thoughts and actions, I’d want to know a little bit more about it. What kind of trojan horse situation is going on here? Does this mean I’m a robot, following the commands of the man behind the curtains? And worse, I am not even fully aware I am doing so.

Relatedly, how is it that a particular scent can conjure up old memories and emotions so precisely? And how is it that hypnosis can be utilized in therapy (and even court cases) to help a person remember events and details they are unable to while conscious? An interesting topic indeed!

Instead of conscious and subconscious, I like to call the parts abstract and form… or imagination and intellect… or passive and active. I believe the human mind is far under appreciated, due in part to its enormously complex and fascinating functionality. This is how I see it:

The mind has a part of it that is always hard at work, 100% of the time. This part, known to us as the subconscious, is constantly recording every detail of every possible input a body receives (sight, smell, sound, feel, taste). I mean this in the most literal possible way. If a person turns their head and scans a room, their brain just stored an unbelievable amount of information, including the position of every object in the room, its color/shape/size, the smell of the room in every direction, any sound frequencies that passed the person’s ears, etc. And they’re all stored as related pieces of information.

If you want to test this out (which I obviously have), try listening to a CD in a single place/environment only, for several weeks. Then don’t listen to it for several months, and listen to it again in a new setting. You’ll feel like you are in the original place, and it’ll be a very interesting experience. If this doesn’t happen to you, your brain may be broken. I would suggest seeing a licensed subconsciousition.

This is why companies pay huge sums of money to have their logos or taglines appear in strange or highly populated areas. When a person is exposed to a brand name, it becomes ingrained in their subconscious. Later, if that person is trying to choose between two brand names, having seen one of them at an earlier point in time, it is more likely they will choose that brand.

Anyway, not only does this active part of the brain record every detail of all inputs 100% of time, it also feeds the passive (or intellectual, or conscious) part of the brain with images, thoughts, memories, and information from the past. This causes a person to act based on their past experiences. It is also the source of a person’s psychological defenses. Example: If a person reveals where they went to high school after being asked, and was later extremely embarrassed they had done so, the next time they are asked where they went to high school, a psychological defense mechanism will intercept the question and will influence them to not repeat the same “mistake” they did previously. This brain function can be applied to almost every aspect of human behavior - namely, a person acting solely based on past experiences. This includes a person’s decision to run instead of walk (because the last time they were late), a person’s decision to hold their nose in a certain part of town (because the last time, it smelled bad), etc.

The older a person gets, the more locked in their psychological defenses become, and the person eventually does not even realize a defense mechanism has kicked in. They are essentially a slave to their past.

By the way, I say active and passive because the intellectual part of a person’s brain needs effort to work, while their imagination (subconscious) does not. When a person kicks back in a chair to relax, they may not be trying to figure out a math problem, but their imagination and thoughts do not stop for even a moment (whether they’re aware of it or not).

This is actually where meditation comes into play. Meditation is intellectual weight lifting. One form of meditation, known as visualization, is performed by a person closing their eyes, and trying to picture a single, constant shape. This sounds easier than it is. For an untrained mind, it will be roughly 3 - 4 seconds before another image or thought pops into their conscious - even the thought “hey I’m pretty good at this!” The more a person meditates, the longer they will be able to control the images in their mind, and the more sophisticated the interaction between the intellectual and imaginative parts of their mind will become.

I can go on for a while about this topic (hey, maybe I will in another blog. It’s my blog, I can do whatever I want. nice), but for now I’d like to focus on two lessons to be learned from this:

(1). Open your mind

As I discussed earlier, a person’s actions and opinions are very heavily influenced by their past experiences. This can be extremely helpful, as well as extremely harmful. The helpful application is knowing not to lend a particular individual money, or not to touch a hot stove. The harmful application is when a person’s past closes their mind to new ideas that they wrote off when they were 10 or 11 years old. Consider the possibility that you are shutting down enormously powerful and enlightening ideas simply because the last time they were presented to you, it was in an uncomfortable setting - or you were emotionally injured in the conservation. It really happens! The next time you shut down an idea, try to think long and hard as to why you’re shutting it down. It won’t be quick, and it will take work. But it’s well worth it.

(2). Protect your mind

Earlier in this post, I explained how a person’s subconscious records every detail of every event. This is actually pretty serious. A person’s mind never forgets. That means that in a way, everything a person sees or experiences literally stains their mind, and affects it forever. I’m totally serious about this. You may think I’m being over dramatic, but I’m not. Every thing your eyes see will remain with you until your dying day. Protect yourself!

The more negative conversation a person is surrounded by, the more negative an attitude they will have about life. The same goes for positive. Why do think a large portion of parenting is simply setting a good example? Children’s subconsciouses are clean, and eager to learn about the world. Be careful what you stain their minds with! (ie. Don’t throw them in front of a TV for hours… please).

Why do you think there is a biblical prohibition against speaking about other people, AND hearing others speak about other people? It seems strange that a person would be at fault simply for hearing what another says. The bible was written with foreknowledge of how the subconscious works. That prohibition (like all others) exists for one’s benefit. Listening to people getting trash talked ruins a person’s attitude toward people in general. When a person speaks poorly of another, they’re damaging themselves and the people they are talking to far more than the person they are talking about.

Please be careful! Protect your attitude, your outlook on life, your interaction with others. Only let yourself be exposed to clean, positive, thought-provoking ideas. And open your mind to possibilities outside your ’safe’ zone. That should be pretty simple, duh. I’m sure you already knew all this already. I’m just saying it again because I figured out how to setup my own blog.

P.S. If you’d like to read more on these topics, I recommend the following books as starting points:

Jewish Meditation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
Living Inspired by Rabbi Akiva Tatz

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