TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Would More Money Make Most of Your Problems Vanish?
Date: 03/15/24 Length: 1:16:47
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, happy warriors. And thank you for listening to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi, solemnly dedicate myself to revealing for you how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show and thank you for being happy warriors. Because I feel privileged every single morning when I get up, and I say my prayers, and I express gratitude for serving a growing community of happy warriors. People often ask me what a happy warriors and sometimes I start the show with a few minutes of explanation, but today, I will just say that some of the characteristics to the characteristics of Happy Warriors; one is Happy Warriors do not procrastinate. Happy Warriors have overcome the demon of procrastination. Happy Warriors are people who know and are able to do what they need to do when they need to do it. It does not get put off to later, it does not get put off to tomorrow. It does not get put off indefinitely. Happy Warriors do not procrastinate. Happy Warriors discipline themselves to do what they know they need to do when they know they need to do it. And Happy Warriors are also proud of every dollar they earn. Because when a Happy Warrior makes $1, or a Happy Warrior lady's husband makes $1. She and he are both proud. Because they both realize that it wasn't just him making the money and it's not his money. It was them doing it. Because his effectiveness is multiplied by a huge factor. Because of his wife, and they're proud of every dollar they make a Happy Warrior. Yes, a Happy Warrior doesn't despise money. A Happy Warrior doesn't think that people who make money are evil. A Happy Warrior does not think that profit equals plunder. A Happy Warrior is proud of making money, not taking money making money. Because when you make money, every single dollar you make is evidence that you have pleased another one of God's children. Because the only way you can make money is for other people to willingly, voluntarily and consensually handed over to you put it in your bank account. Why would they do that? Because whatever it is that you do for them, they value much more than the dollar you charge for doing it or supplying it. And so you are busy pleasing other human beings. That is a wonderful characteristic to possess. And it is a defining characteristic of Happy Warriors.
Daniel Lapin 3:34
I was speaking to a lawyer the other evening, he'd invited me over to his woodshop in his basement. And he showed me a beautiful chessboard that he'd built by laminating dark wood and light wood in strips, and then very cleverly sewing them in such a way to provide the basis of an alternating black-white square chalkboard layout. And he'd built a nice maple wood frame around it. It was just a nice piece of work. But what was so interesting was that I've seen this lawyer in his office, and I've seen him the other night in his home hobby woodshop. And I gotta tell you, and the enthusiasm and the excitement, and the vibrant face he had on expressive and animated was so different in his woodshop than it is in his office. It was it was very noticeable. He was he was enjoying every minute, and showing me his chessboard meant much more to him than when I've been at his office and he is described is a complicated law strategy that he's working on. And so I was not surprised when he said to me, you know, I, I wish I didn't have to work in the law, I wish I could just be working on wood. Not a carpenter, but a fine wood, a cabinet maker, that's he was saying that's what he'd rather do. And so here is a lawyer who doesn't enjoy his law work. But he does enjoy his hobby. So this is, it's not a great way to live, you know, it's not a great way to live. So how do you end up? How do you train yourself to enjoy being a lawyer? Well, you can't necessarily easily train yourself to love doing law work, and to enjoy research and enjoy laying out an argument and making a case or filling in paperwork or building up boilerplate statements. You don't necessarily enjoy that. But there should be and can be considerable enjoyment to be derived from serving your customers. And that's true for whatever you do, it doesn't make any difference. There is a joy to be found in serving another human being customer service, very similar wording to worship service. That's right. That's right. Because pleasing, one of God's children, is viewed as just as valuable, as pleasing God directly. That's right. In the same way that you like to see somebody helping your child, God likes to see people helping his children. And that's what we do when we're earning money. And we're going to do it much more effectively. When we feel a delight in what we're doing. I don't doubt for a moment that the lawyer I was talking with, would actually enjoy his work much more, if he really extracted delight from solving his customers' problems. Now, I'm sure he does, to some extent, but not enjoying it, as much as he enjoyed his hobby, would suggest that he could really derive more pleasure from not necessarily from the technology of law, but from the interaction with customers and knowing that a customer goes away, happier after you worked with him than he did before. And this is true for a plumber. And it's true for a construction worker. And it's true for a nurse. And it's true for almost everybody, when you serve your customer, that customer goes away happier after than he was before. And you made that difference. And by focusing a little bit on that aspect of what customer service really means, we can introduce a joy into our occupations into our work, which will absolutely make us more effective in that work more profitable in that work. So, but you know, I get what he was saying, Look, I love what I do. I love teaching ancient Jewish wisdom. And I also love teaching not to a captive audience. I have to work hard to win your attention on this show. I can't force you to be there. The government is not telling you, you've got to listen to the rabbi Daniel Lapin show, I wouldn't want them to do that. But
Daniel Lapin 9:19
But knowing that I can convey really valuable information on how you can improve your family and your faith and your friendship relations, and your fitness and your finances and how they all integrate together and how to fix one in order that others should be fixed as well and vice versa. I love doing that. Now, if somebody came to me and said you know what? You can go ahead and earn your living and serve God's or the children. By building and repairing boats, that's what you can do from wanting to all you have to do is go down to the harbor, go into your workshop, and build or fix boats. I'd be very tempted, I would like that. But I think that maybe after a while I would miss teaching, I would miss being able to make this difference in people's lives. But I do understand my lawyer friend, because I'll be very tempted to do that. No question about it. Um, probably, at the moment, I'm probably not good enough. I would have to get back and listen to me talking as if it's that, but I certainly look back with fondness. On the two years I did spend building boats and and working on boats, I enjoyed that. And when my family and I boat off the coast of British Columbia, I would say there's not a single summer, where something in the boats went wrong. Anybody who's familiar with boats knows that that's just a reality of boats. Whether it's an electrical system that goes wrong, because saltwater and electrics do not mix well together, or whether it was a hydraulic problem or a plumbing problem. But there it is, you know, on a boat, you're providing your own electricity, you have a generator, you're providing your own water, you have a desalination system, or you got to deal with waste and, and all the tankage that goes along with that. And it just never happens that that's something that and you know what, I actually enjoy fixing these things. Maybe with the one exception that I had carefully explained to some we had two babysitters along with us to help with littler kids. And I explained precisely that a marine toilet on a boat is very different from one at home, you absolutely cannot throw anything in there, other than a toilet paper, or body waste. And that's it. And please nothing else at all. I guess they didn't believe me, because the toilet they were using God stopped up. And we were in some isolated Anchorage. And it was just me and my wife, and our children, and these two very lovely babysitting gals. And then we were used far away from civilization. And the whole boat had three toilets on it. We had a one for my wife and my cabin, we had one for the children, and we had one for the babysitters. And so I obviously did have to give this one fixed. And I don't mind telling you, I did I fixed it. And I was proud that I sold and I took it apart and I was able to withstand the profound unpleasantness that surrounds the entire experience. But anyway, that's in a weird sort of way. Yeah, I enjoy doing that.
Daniel Lapin 13:29
But you know, used to be that you could fairly reliably say that men worked with things. women tended to work with people. And then there were a few people, a small minority of people who worked with intangible abstract ideas, things have changed on that front. But before I tell you exactly how they've changed, I want to ask you to please go ahead and subscribe. Would you do that? Subscribe to the show. I love to see our subscription numbers going up. So go ahead and do that. And that way, you'll also know whether the podcast posts some weeks of posts on Friday, some weeks of posts on the weekend, some weeks, and sometimes it posts on Monday. And this way, you will always know exactly when a new episode drops. So hit subscribe and like and do all that good stuff. As soon as you can. That'll be fantastic. And also, as I mentioned before, you are a happy warrior you must be because if you can listen to me on the show, without getting angry at the things I'm saying then you are a happy warrior. If you're able to listen to the things I'm saying on the show, and you're able to nod and say that begins to make sense. I hadn't thought of that. But this is your real happy warrior. This is wonderful. Bye Maybe you haven't yet formally joined our community of happy warriors. And the great thing about that is that you are then in a position to help and encourage other people who are also on the same journey as you are of trying to enhance and improve and grow their families and their finances, their faith, their fitness, and their friendships. And you, of course, are able to be helped and encouraged and supported by them. That's what happens in a community. Yes, we're a virtual community. Because we are literally all over the world. We have happy warrior members in that I'm aware of now, over 20 over well over 20 different countries, I should count again, and and check up and see. But at any rate, we're all over the place. But through the miracle of modern technology through the internet, we're able to connect with one another. And we we have, first of all, happy warriors connect with Susan and with me once a month on the on the live chat, where for an hour or so we all get together. People from all around the world, happy warriors all we get together on a on a zoom live chat. And then many times happy warriors make their own arrangements to get together with one another, get to know one another befriend one another and even though they may be 1000s of miles apart, they're nonetheless able to play significant roles in enhancing one another's lives in in quite absolutely wonderful ways. So I, I think that that is absolutely incredible. And so go to RabbiDanielLapin.com. And on RabbiDanielLapin.com, you will see that there is a place to become a Happy Warrior to join the Happy Warrior community. So go ahead and do that. Because I would very much appreciate knowing that you are part of us and we are part of you. And that we can count on you and you can count on us as we make our way through life improving and growing onwards and upwards. So you got to RabbiDanielLapin.com. Okay, L A P I N. Rabbi Daniel Lapin some people I noticed struggle with the word rabbi. And I can understand that it's not word you come across a lot. It's RABBI. So it's www dot RabbiDanielLapin.com. And you'll find a place where you can become a Happy Warrior. So please go ahead and join us I would greatly appreciate that. So this is interesting. At the turn of the end of the 19th century, in the early 1900s, between 30 and 40%, of all American workers were employed in agriculture in farming, something to do with producing food off the land, there was 1900, about 30 to 40%. Big number, by 1950, halfway through the century, it was down to 20%.
Daniel Lapin 18:30
And by 2000, by the end of the century, it was down to about 10%. And that's sort of more or less where it is now a little bit less. So it's hard to get exact figures, but that's roughly where it is now. So in 100 years, down from say, probably 38%, down to 10%, within 100 years. And you know, partially, the rules of larger works better apply to agriculture as well. And so if, if a farmer is trying to make a living out of 200 acres, he's working very, very hard. But if a company owns 20,000 acres and is farming that, well, the efficiencies of scale come into play. So that's really what's been happening. But obviously, a lot of a lot of people no longer working on the land used to be very common, much less common now. In general, it used to be that most men generally tended to work with things, whereas most women tended to work with people. And so women tend to be teachers and nurses and waitresses and customers. nervous people and stewardesses on airplanes. That was typically what women used to do. Because women were drawn to that just as they are today. And nobody's forcing them as a matter of fact, in Scandinavian countries that are considered to be the ultimate in gender egalitarianism, it's, it's very disturbing to them, because women are dropping out of male-dominated fields, to, you know, in an eye, Agra like cascade, they just pouring out of those areas. And they're either if they're married, many are not working at all. And those that are in traditionally female fields. It's not that necessarily, although there may have been instances, I'm sure, but it's not necessarily that women work forced into those fields. Instead, in general, women prefer fields in which they mix and are involved with people, whereas men are okay with things. And, and we find that out, you know, in, in our case, Susan remains baffled that I can go to a service at a synagogue one morning that I've never been at before. And so when I come home, she'll say, Did you meet any new people and the new friends? And I'm saying no, she said, Well, did you introduce yourself? Do you know? I said, No, no, we arrive, we pray, and then we run off to work. That's what we all do. And then she laughed. And I realized, because when she does the same thing, when she's at a goes off to a Bible class, or to a prayer service, and she comes back, and she immediately tells me that she's met somebody that she wants to invite them for a Sabbath meal, somebody else invited us a whole lot of people socializing a lot less in my case. And so, yeah, people, men are drawn comfortably to things. And we don't do a lot of interacting. And that's one of the reasons that married men are much more connected in the community than single men are apt because in general, women are just more than good at their natural connectors. And that's something that is actually stated explicitly in ancient Jewish wisdom as well. But that is really what it's like. And it's one of the reasons I started off saying that many people, okay, so it used to be men tended to work with things, women tended to work more in people-oriented fields. And then there were always a few people who worked with ideas with intangibles. spiritual matters. And, you know, the it used to be philosophers, but it's many, many, many more people now. And I think you could say that there are probably many areas of law that are ethereal and intangible. And that's true. And it's not a total surprise, that men like hobbies, not every single men, but men like hobbies that involve things. Men, like cause much more than then women do. Men like having a workshop and doing stuff. Not every man, there are many men who have become effete and over sophisticated in the sense and who really have no contact whatsoever anymore with things at all. And my guess is that it's probably not a great thing for a man to be utterly disconnected from things in the same way that with the drop in people involved in farming. I don't think it's a really great thing for for people to be so detached from nature. And I think that's one of the reasons that with the Hebrew calendar operating on the moon in general, you can you can go up to a kid at a at a Hebrew Middle School and asked him what phase the moon were in and he'll know, and I think that's very unusual among people. Today, most people are unaware of the phases of the moon and indifferent to it. But because the Hebrew calendar runs off the moon, people are more aware of that. People you know, may go out and enjoy a bit of nature on the weekend or go for a walk or a hike, but in turn have actually been in touch with nature, the way somebody who grew up on a farm 100 years ago might have been. We've we've lost that actually lost that. And as a result, one of the things that happens is people tend to over-romanticize nature, you notice that by the way, you know that what people do to nature is, is a crime, it's horrible, natural nature just by itself is perfect. And of course, that simply isn't so natural nature left by itself can be pretty cruel, pretty brutal. And, and it only gets romanticized by people who do not know it at all. Talking of people who do not know it at all. One of the areas that is very, very not well known, of course, is how money works, and how business works and how an economy works. And why it is that there are things that a government can do, that literally destroyed the value of money, and how one deals with us in terms of your business strategy or investment strategy, I am going to be speaking at a financial conference, May 23, this year, May 23 2024. In WhatsApp, that's about a month and a half. And two months, rarely, more than two months, even. So it's quite a way slow. But I wanted to let you know about it. It's called the proven conference. And if anybody wants to meet me there and get together with me, here, I'll be speaking, I think more than once, it's called the proven conference as in to prove something. And it's called that because it really does prove to work. That proven conference, if you go online and look for the proven conference, slash LePen, the proven conference slash LePen, you will be able to read more about it. But if there's, if you're at all interested in hearing, practical and proven tips and tools for increasing your revenue, and you'd like to also meet a few 100 like-minded people who are also doing that in various different businesses, it's very inspiring. And by the way, if you are thinking entrepreneurially at all, if you're thinking about possibly starting up a side gig to see if you can build up your own business, it's really well worth it coming there not only to hear me or her that I think that will be worthwhile as well, I'll be very focused on making it valuable. But also because you get a chance to socialize and interact with a few 100 other people, some who are further down the path you want to walk, some may be where you're at some maybe even further behind. But there's an enormous amount of give and take, which really serves to nurture and stimulate one's own thinking, I always come away very uplifted. So I would think about that very seriously. look it up online, the proven conference, slash LePen will do it.
Daniel Lapin 28:21
So what happens there we were, at a certain time where most men are working with things. And most women either either are at home, or they're working with people. And and then you know, there was a small number of people working with intangible ideas. And now that's changed hugely. Many women working with things, although nowhere near as many as with men, but many men now not touching things. Many men today, literally do not know the difference between a flathead and a phillips screwdriver. Really, there are men who simply do not know about tools. And I know some of you are gonna say, Well, yeah, who uses tools, something goes wrong, you call a guy guy comes and fixes it. And I think that there is something very attractive and positive about a man who when something goes wrong at the house goes and gets his toolbox or his tool belt or a bunch of tools and fixes it. I think there's something very valuable in that but times really changed. And what what really changed? Well, something big happened in 1919 because it's sort of largely during the 20th century, roughly that we see these changes really at high speed. Needless to say by the time we get to 1962 it's moving at a breakneck rate and, and what happens when, when men are detached from things. And when people are detached from nature, woke, progressive ideas begin to sound credible. But something happened in 1919. And what had happened was that Newton's theory of relativity, you know, was a few years old already. Early 1900s, he was spelling all of that out. And it was a very interesting theory, but it never got huge publicity. You know, today, all relative, but back then there was another theory. But what happened in 1919? Is that a British scientist, Arthur Eddington ran a test of the relativity, how did he do it? Well, one of the aspects of relativity and I promise you, I'm not going to try and go into it now. But one of the aspects of relativity is that a beam of light can be bent by a gravitational force. And so what happened in the first quarter of 19, there was a big solar eclipse. And that gave Arthur Eddington a brilliant idea, he realized that he can use the eclipse to watch and measure the extent to which the ray of light from a distant star gets bent by a gravitational pull. And he does this all and outcomes, the result was pretty much identical to the theoretical calculation that Einstein had presented a few years earlier. Well, I gotta tell you, this was really on the front pages of newspapers all around the world. I know, it doesn't seem as if it would be. So today, right? Who'd think about that today, but, you know, scientific experiment proven Whoa, big news. Now, let's rather tell what stars and celebrities were wearing as they went to an award ceremony, a self-congratulatory backpacking, bat back-patting ceremony, that's much more important. And indeed, today, that would be seen that way. But in 1919, big newspapers, the biggest all around the world world ran front-page stories, relativity proven. And that was a big thing. Because all of a sudden, the term fell into popular usage. And it dropped out of the lab, and off the Blackboard of theoretical physicists. And all of a sudden, everybody is using the word relativity. And the I know the sounds incredible that this had such an impact. But it really did, because the next thing that happened is that ideas that had always been thought to be foundational, and reliable and unquestionable. All those all of a sudden, everybody said, Well, it's relative, not necessarily so.
Daniel Lapin 33:13
And meanwhile, it's also during this period, late 1800s, early 1900s, that Einstein gave the world the idea of relativity, he mentored in a very narrow theoretical physics area, but people picked up on it. And at the same time, there were three other people dealing in ideas, three other people who I'm sure would not have known the difference between one screwdriver and another, or between a lines, men's pliers and a needle nose pliers. And those three people were called mocks Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. Karl Marx, Jewish, I'm sorry to tell you comes up with the idea of a worldview based on materialism, because pretty much up to when everybody's worldview was largely based on the Bible, on Genesis and on God. That's how people sort of viewed reality. And men and women got married, and they had raised children and they created families. And they taught their children the idea of good and evil, and they taught them the Bible, and they introduced them to God on Sunday mornings, and things sort of work that way. And then comes marks and says, No, you can be a good person in a completely secular way. And that is you got to care about society, social, everything, social justice, social welfare. and Social Security, everything became social. And the natural result of that is today's identity politics, where instead of people being unified, which is what a godly worldview does, right, we are all children of God, we are all equal to one another in terms of how we were created. And that's fundamental. And along comes the legacy of Karl Marx. And this is now identity, politics, and intersectional politics, and the idea that morality is now recalibrated. We used to have a definition of morality, which was Bible based was as simple as that. If you wonder why homosexuality used to be considered to be a crime, until about the 1950s. In England, at least, the reason is very simple. And that is because the Five Books of Moses identify it as a crime as wrong. You know, adultery, yeah, a crime. Absolutely. That's how it used to be. And along came Karl Marx and said, No, morality now is based on the degree of social capital that is owned by the person you're talking about. And so you might have thought in action that yesterday used to be viewed immoral. Today, if it is performed by a person who is underprivileged? Well, then it's no longer immoral. And this was part of the entire creation, if you like, what Marx was trying to do was write a Bible from a completely materialistic and secular point of view, that would define good and evil and how people ought to live and what the aspirations of society ought to be. And so they there it was, and that really had a huge impact.
Daniel Lapin 37:10
Darwin, although it was not at all what he actually wrote, In Origin of the Species that he wrote after his return from the voyage in the Beagle. But generally, the popularization of Darwin and what was later understood to be part of Darwin's thinking, was this idea that you know, what? We weren't created by God. So here was an another alternative perspective to the Bible. Up till then, like you have to any little kid, you know, a little Lutheran boy on the outskirts of Stockholm, or a little church of England kid, you know, living in Bridgehampton and, you know, or an American child or a Canadian child or an Australian child. You know, in this early 19 hundred's period, you're going to say, How did people get on this planet? And everyone would tell you, God created us in His image and put us here. But now Darwin provided an alternative theology. And that is that through a lengthy process of an aided materialistic evolution, primitive protoplasm turned into plumbers and proctologists that's, that's what happened. So just an alternative theology, to the first few chapters of Genesis.
Daniel Lapin 38:36
And then, and then Freud, Sigmund Freud came along, another member of the tribe, I'm embarrassed to tell you, who, with absolutely no training, it's not as if he'd been trained as a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist. Because there was no such thing. Basically, he introduced this completely novel idea. And that is, you thought you had a soul. You thought all along, that you are made up of a body and a soul. You wrong, you just a body. And what you thought was your soul is really nothing more than the movement of small particles, within the nerves of your body, and in your brain. And every thought you've had every song you've ever thought of every emotion you've ever felt every sublime idea that has ever inspired you. Nothing. In all of this is anything more than the firing of neurons in millions of different parts of the brain. And that's that was essentially Freud's message to us. So as you can imagine, yeah, it's hard for us to believe. Prior to this period, let's call it around about 1900. Prior to this, although, you know, we saw the effects of it all the way in 1962, it was all over. But it's hard to believe the extent that prior to this, the worldview was essentially religious. It's hard to believe to what extent wars were fought over religion. You know, in the 17th century, in the 1600s, there was a devastating war called the 30 Years War, millions of people killed. It was unbelievable. Who's that between Catholics and Protestants, Catholics and Protestants fought. That's all it was. Many of the big battles the 16th century naval battle in the Mediterranean, the the Battle of La Panther that was between Christian navies, and Muslim navies. There were many counters, the siege of Vienna, finally broken by a battle won by Christian soldiers on the 11th of September 16 83 is September the 11th. That's correct. Religious people have long memories. And there was again, a war between Christians and Muslims. Religion was seen and really was the center of our existence. The problem with the secularization movement that we found, taking place, not only with the, with Einstein giving us relativity and Freud, taking away the soul, and Darwin taking away the, the origin of how we got here, God creating us here, and Marx taking away a system of morality and replacing everything, everything used to be understood to be religiously Central. And the result is because that was thrown away, we threw the baby out with the bathwater, which is to say, that many people to this day, do not understand that to this day, the role of religious faith is an important one. In other words, if you want to understand and again, this is something I speak about in my lectures, and you'll you'll find earlier podcasts in which I've discussed it. But if you want to understand the financial and economic differences between Belgium and Holland, take a look at religion. If you want to understand the financial and economic differences between North Italy and South Italy, look at religion, if you want to understand the differences between Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola and Haiti and I wrote about this in a thought tool recently, if you are a happy warrior already, then you probably received that. And if you're not a happy warrior, please just go to Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And become a happy warrior. But I I wrote about this, how do you explain the difference of I mean, a line is drawn across an island, same racial stock on both sides, same colonial history, same slavery Hill, everything is the same, same weather, same climate, same typography, and yet a Dominican Republic is functional. And Haiti is the is I don't know a word that can describe how utterly dysfunctional it is. You want to know the difference. I wrote about it in a Thought Tool a few weeks ago, the differences religion.
Daniel Lapin 38:44
You know, if you if you want to know the difference as to why it is that some children in America ended up in problems with the criminal justice system problems with the police. Why they end up sexually precocious before they even turn 16 Why they drop out of school and don't function well, why they turn to fists and guns to resolve disputes. So the answer is once again, religion, it's not racial, it's religion. It's very, very clear. Because there is no shortage in America, of boys and girls at schools run by the churches, boys and girls of every race and every color and every creed. And they attend schools it with and they live within a religious environment. And they don't have any of these problems. I mean, you know That's a reality. Let's say scientists discovered that if you painted a blue spot on the left ear of every nine-year-old, that nine-year-old would be guaranteed academic excellence sticking with school, not getting into trouble of any kind of tall, graduating and moving on to success. How long do you think it would be before government organizations would insist on painting a blue dots on every single child with or without parental permission? Well, as I've often pointed out, the good news is you can get exactly the same result without a blue dot. The bad news is it needs religion. So I guess what I'm trying to show you is that religion used to be seen to be relevant to every part of life, faith was a crucial part of every aspect of life, then during this period, late 1800s, through the early 1900s, religion gets decimated. And the result is people assume now that it is utterly irrelevant. And that couldn't be further from the truth. Do we still have religious wars? Yeah, sure. In the Middle East, not only between Jews and Muslims, between Muslims and Muslims, different breeds, different groups, different philosophies of Muslims, go ahead and kill each other. So this, this amazing change took place. And this is a fascinating part of the history of humanity. Because particularly, I'm talking particularly about the West. This all happens in a short space of time. Now, don't forget even universities, universities used to be religious, you know that, right? Whether it was Princeton, Harvard, Yale, you know, Cambridge University in England, has a college called Christ College, Oxford has a college called Christ Church. These used to be religious institutions. Why? Because everybody understood that religion was such an essential and integral part of reality, that you couldn't possibly become wise and understanding of how the world really works, if you didn't have any understanding of God and religion. And so universities taught religion that there was there was part of it. Well, what happened is that universities were among the first in the, in this period of time, let's, you know, let's say, a few decades, either side of 1900, all right,
Daniel Lapin 47:55
roughly, universities were very quick, to embrace the ideas of Marx and Darwin and Freud and Einstein, and the rejection of religion was part of it. And the religion was replaced with these new ideas. So, instead of being on in sympathy with the biblical blueprint of reality, they adopted a progressive, materialistic socialist communist blueprint of reality. And I want to point out that in understanding reality, it's not really as if there are four alternatives or seven alternatives, or 123 alternatives. The truth is, there are really only two. That's really what it is. The two approaches are essentially the fundamental questions of life, not technological, not scientific, but the fundamental questions of life are answered in God's message to mankind, namely the Bible, or alternatively, that there is no such thing. And reality is understood entirely on the basis of human rationalism and founded on fundamentalist materialism. Yeah, those are the two approaches. So not surprisingly, over the course of many years, America ended up with a two-party system, that although it took a while today pretty much reflects this duality. And so instead of being ideological homes and repositories of information and history and talent for the God's blueprint idea, universities switched, and they became the fortresses of secularism. So I mean, from the very beginning of universities, they were religious in the European tradition before the United States of America, the university emerged from schools that were attached to cathedrals. It was, I think it was Pope Gregory the seventh, who ordered the the establishment of regulated Catholic Cathedral schools. And they later transformed themselves into the first European University. So obviously, they were religious. And if I had to identify a sort of century, 100 years in which everything changed so dramatically, I'd say from 1860, to 1960 1862, to 1962, the whole Association, the bond between academia and God was replaced with a strong link between academia and socialism. Now, please understand, I tell you all this, and not because I'm, I'm trying to change your philosophies. But what I am trying to do is give you the information you need to flourish in your five deaths. You need to flourish in your family life, your financial life, your social life, political life, your friendship, life, and your physical fitness. And the reason that our new book, called The Holistic You includes a fifth F, in addition to family and finance, friendship, and fitness, we also have faith, because the kind of children you will raise will be entirely different if you raise them with faith than if you raised them without your entire approach to money and capitalism. hinges on your understanding of faith. This is why it's not an accident, that no secularistic regime, you know, Cuba, North Korea, and places during the seven years of the Soviet Union, none of them developed a functioning economy, you can't, because faith is part of finances for heaven's sake. You know, just think about what money means. Think about the faith you exhibit every time you stock up your store with inventory. Every time you give somebody credit in your business. Every time you open a business, all of these things are faith-driven. And again, I cover this very, very detailed in great detail in the book V holistic u, which is now just out you can get it you know, I think I think anyone who's trying to really dramatically improve their life, and I think you're improving your life is a very vague term, or I want to improve my life. What it really means is improving your family, your family life, your social life, your financial life, your health. And yes, your connection with the infinite your connection with the spiritual side of life. And, and so in this 100 year period, between 18 I like to say 1862 to 1962. But obviously, you can't really be that precise.
Daniel Lapin 53:34
The link between academia and God was replaced utterly with a link between academia and socialism. Socialism, you must know always justifies tyranny and force. Because what socialism says is that the kind of society needed, most ordinary people aren't smart enough, only intellectuals can get it, but ordinary people can't. And so we're gonna have like, you know, supreme socialists, like Vladimir Lenin, said he, we're gonna have to use force to improve the lives of people who don't realize what they need to improve their lives. So socialism always justifies tyranny and force. And so not surprisingly, tyrants in socialism, often went hand in hand. It's, you know, think about Pol Pot. Pol Pot was the head of the Chimera rouge, which literally, massacred and butchered more than 2 million of his fellow Cambodians. And the phrase he used was we have to restart civilization. Pol Pot what many people don't realize is he wasn't a street thug. He was a professor of French literature you know, the the brute Will Shining Path gorillas in Peru number of people who have been massacred in Peru, all for the purpose of making Peru perfect. And the Communist guerrillas who can be thanked for the pain and suffering inflicted on the country of Peru, were led by Abby Mel Guzman, right? A philosophy professor at a university? Or how about the guy who helped Fidel Castro bring about the glorious Castro revolution in Cuba. And he subsequently went on to help bring about similar revolutions elsewhere in South America at Cray Guevara his real name was en esto not que un esto Guevara. Here's a quote from his writing and I, I had to swallow twice and and check it up three times to make sure that I was going to be telling you the truth. I'm quoting Kay Guevara, to send men to the firing squad. Judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution and a revolution must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. This is the guy Kay Guevara, who There's a famous poster with him on his motorcycle. And you still find this in the dorm rooms of college students. They think he's such a hero. You remember the Baader Meinhof gang. The bottom line of gang was bringing socialist revolution to Germany and many parts of Europe during the 70s. It was formed by a number of people. The bottom guy was Ben Otto Andreas bear above beta BARDA. And he was a German communist led leader of a left-wing militant organization called the Red Army Faction. Some of you old enough will remember the sort of things the killings they perpetrated in Germany particularly but also throughout Europe. And so he started the Red Army Faction, which later became known as the Baader Meinhof group Baader after him, Meinhof after a woman called Ulrike Marie Meinhof. And she was again an intellectually university educated, became a left-wing journalist. She got deeply involved in the Red Army Faction. And later on she and Baader got together and became known as the Baader Meinhof gang.
Daniel Lapin 57:56
The intellectual head of the Red Army Faction was Gudrun Ensslin, okay. She, again an intellectual and directly involved in five bomb attacks, killing four people, and so on. And so it goes on and on. CS Lewis put it beautifully. Here's what CS Lewis said. Of all tyrannies. "A tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive, it would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons' cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who tormentors for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." That CS Lewis, you know what? I'm going to read it again. It's that good. Of all tyrannies. A Tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive, it would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who tomentose for our own good will tormentors without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience, isn't it? Isn't it something really quite beautiful. So the question you got to ask yourself is, do you think you can rely on a gimmick? A government indoctrination center, formerly known as a public school? Do you think you can rely On a gimmick, to give your children good values to make sure your child grows up to be a good person, do you think that's possible? Can you can you rely on sending your child to college? Three-year college four-year college doesn't make you think you can do that, in the hope that the college will send you back, a fully formed child ready for life, who understands the difference between good and evil? Niall Ferguson, a historian put it beautifully. I'm quoting him. Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education, to instill ethical values, has not studied the history of German universities. During the third rife a university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it. The fall from grace of the German universities, was personified by the readiness of Martin Heidegger, the greatest German philosopher of his generation, to jump on the Nazi bandwagon with a swastika pin in his lapel. He was a member of the Nazi party from 1933 until 1945. So yeah, it's important, I think, for us to understand that there are two areas of knowledge, exemplified by the two triangles that make up the Star of David. One of them is the area of how the world works, that always changes and keeps changing areas of science areas of understanding physical objects. But there's another area that doesn't change so much, and that is the spiritual area. And if you are raising a child or you are responsible for the growth and education and maturing of a child, then you want to make sure that their child has both those things. Because simply providing information providing data, in other words, no inculcation of religious values, but simply providing data simply doesn't work. We saw that in the the materialistic way that secularized public education decided to confront male-female relationships. They call it sex ed. And when religious Americans protested, they said, Look, children are going to do it anyway. So they may as well have the information to which religious Americans said, Well, then let's have gun ed. also, because children are going to use guns. And this way we can tell them about gun ed. Needless to say, that fell on deaf ears. And it turned out and this is a remarkable fact that sexual promiscuity, teenage pregnancy, sad and destructive behavior increased in every school district that introduced secularized sex ed. Where do we not find that destructive behavior to religious schools, Jewish schools, Christian schools, you don't have it. I dare say its true for Muslim schools. You don't have it. Because information about sexually transmitted diseases does not stop people following their hormones and their instincts. Only a system of values can do that. Information doesn't work. There is so much information given to doctors about medical ethics and what can be done and what can't be done. And here we find among the most highly educated cohort in American society, a very large percentage, a shockingly large percentage of doctors losing their licenses for ethical misbehavior. And all kinds of areas. And so, but I thought we've taught them Yeah, because information doesn't create character. Very, very different. And so the best universities in the world only give out information. And this was, you know, since, as I say since this roundabout 9200 that's how it's been. But if you go back 100 years ago, 1920s the best universities in the world were in Germany. That's how it was. Nobody took Harvard and Yale seriously. Everything was Heidelberg and, and tubing and all the great German universities. They looked at Harvard and Yale, as places where people were more interested in football than physics. To quote Neil Ferguson, more than a quarter of all Nobel prizes awarded in science, from throughout the first half of the 20th century, were awarded to Germans 50% of Nobel prizes up to World War Two, awarded to Germans about 10% went to American so five times more when to German, I'm telling you this to give you an idea of where of how highly ranked German universities were. Albert Einstein, when he was working on relativity, and where he was made a professor and taught not in Princeton, where he moved before World War Two. But from 1914, to world from 1914 to 1917. He was professor at the University of Berlin. That's where it was, the finest scientists in the world even if they came from, shall we say, Cambridge, all felt obliged to do spend some time at a German university. So we got to know that the majority of people in the Nazi Party were people with university degrees. So you mustn't think of it as a band of thugs. The brown shirts were at the beginning. But as Hitler mainstream the Nazi Party, the people who rushed to join were people who worked with ideas, not with things. That's right.
Daniel Lapin 1:07:00
As William F Buckley said, or I'll paraphrase him, but I would rather be governed and ruled by truck drivers, then by university professors I really mean that I absolutely with a Buckley wrote a book called rambles left and right a book about troublesome people and ideas worth looking at. I think he wrote it in early 60s. And he, he said, you know, he said he, he'd rather be governed just by ordinary people off the street in Boston, the, you know, the first few 100 names in the Boston telephone directory, rather than the faculty of Harvard. You know, what have got the book listen to this. This is William F. Buckley, I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston telephone directory, than in a society governed by the 2000 faculty members of Harvard University, not have a nose because I hold likely the brain power or knowledge or generosity, or even the F ability of the Harvard faculty. But because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university, which refuses to accept any common premise. One of the most interesting people in Israel, and it's great visiting Israel. Susan, I love spending a few weeks there every year, because of the people you meet, you know, it's so interesting. Well, one of them is Nathan Sharansky, who was imprisoned by the Soviets for expressing the desire to leave Russia and move to Israel. Anyway, he finally made it and he has an interesting but he says that one of the best ways that I've always had problems defining anti-Semitism I to this day, I could not easily define anti-Semitism, and I don't think you can either. It's not not at all easy. I'm serious. I don't think I have a good definition or workable definition even for anti-Semitism. But Nathan Sharansky has an interesting idea. And he says that one of the things you know, is an example of anti-Semitism is when there's a double standard, where something applies more so to Jews than to other people or less so to Jews and other people. And so, a very interesting study that intrigued me was done a little while ago regarding universities, it was done by three people Jay Green, Albert Chang, and Ian Kingsbury. Not people I know but they came up with a good idea. They at Intuit a big number a large number of individuals, some of them University intellectuals, and some of them if you like truck drivers, ordinary folks. And they are they sampled K through 12 teachers, higher education professors, and ordinary folks. And they asked, they did this very, very well. They they designed the question in a way that nobody could tell that this was at all what the what the goal of the survey was what they were really investigating. So for instance, the first item on the survey asks whether the government should set minimum requirements for what is taught in private schools. And some people got as an example of private schools, the Montessori school system, and other people got as a sample Jewish schools. And then they, I'm not going to tell you all the questions, they're all along the same idea, but a couple of these gives you an idea. A question asks whether a person's attachment to another country creates a conflict of interest when advocating in support of certain US foreign policy positions. And the two illustrating examples, some got Israel, some got Mexico. Another one was whether the US military should be allowed to forbid the wearing of religious headgear as part of the uniform and the samples were a Sikh turban, or a Jewish skullcap a yarmulke. They asked whether public gatherings during the COVID epidemic posed a threat to public health and should have been prevented. And the two examples were Jewish funerals or Black Lives Matter protests. And those were the two illustrating examples. And out okay, here's one more. Israel's Basic Law is discriminatory when it says that the State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. There was one statement people had to say true or false. The other one was, they quoted parts of the Danish Constitution that says the Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the established church of Denmark. And as such, it's the only church supported by the state. And so they asked people, you know, which of these are bad statements? And there it goes, well, astonishingly, not surprisingly, where the the truck drivers answered, with no bias either way. You know, for instance, they would say that they either thought that, that public gatherings should be pre prohibited during COVID of any sort, and they didn't favor Black Lives Matter protests over Jewish funerals or vice versa. But as soon as they moved into people who work not with things, but people who work with ideas as soon as they moved into people who are university centric, people who are teachers and professors, it roared into disparity was extraordinary. Were people who people, like 70% of people said that, yes. A, the United States military should prohibit yarmulke as worn by Jews, but they didn't eat they didn't have the same number of people thinking that Sikh turbans should be prohibited, and so on and so forth. So again, whether it was Germany in the middle of the 20th century, or the United States of America in 2024, the area of society that is most tyrannical, most hostile to religion is found in the university orbit. Cake, the kk k, it's a joke. That's not a threat to America today. Though, that's not that's not worrisome. The threat to America comes from the university campuses. And these are things that that you need to know because some of you are probably setting aside investment funds, college funds so your children can attend university. I would recommend that you really have a good second think on that. Go ahead and do that until your children are Ah, you know, 15 and then start evaluating, you know the child, is this a child who is going to thrive in a in a university environment? Or is it a child who will, and you may find yourself with a a windfall of a few $100,000 You saved, that you don't need to use for university because there's absolutely no reason for your child to go to university. And in previous podcasts, I've spoken about what the alternatives are. But at any rate, we are coming to pardon me, we're coming to the end of today's podcast. And so I remind you that if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, you must do that already. Please, for me, also that if you are not yet formerly a happy warrior, please go to our website at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com and become a happy warrior. Look into attending the proven conference in Orlando in towards the end of may just go to the website, the proof the proven conference slash Lapin and also if you haven't yet got your guidebook to improving your life with a five F's namely, The Holistic You: Integrating into your life, the five F's, The Holistic You is available, you can go ahead and get that as well. And we look forward to being together next week. And until then, I am your rabbi Rabbi Daniel Lapin asking you to stay focused on your family and your finance, finances, your faith, your friendships, and your fitness. God bless.
