TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Maintenance is Moral
Date: 03/21/25 Length: 01:05:59
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I your rabbi, reveal how the world
Daniel Lapin 0:12
really works.
Daniel Lapin 0:15
This is not a show for clowns, creeps, crooks and cranks, no this is a show for Happy Warriors. This is a show for Happy Warriors, eager to embrace the challenges of life and eager to improve the five key areas of their life, their families, their finances, their faith, their fitness and their friendships and everyone else need not apply. This is strictly for Happy Warriors and one of the most compelling conflicts in our time. It's in many ways, it's an exciting time to be living in. The most compelling conflict is over a very simple question, and that is, how did people get here? How come there are big cities, and how come there are huge machines called ships sailing the seven seas. This is a very peculiar creature, right? There are bears that are bigger and stronger than people, but they've not done any of that. And there are beavers who build beautiful dams, but they can't do anything else, and they'll even build a dam where it's against their interests to build a dam, because their instinct, anytime they see or hear moving water is to stop it up. And so a willful ability to deliberately go ahead and build things and expand things and and try and defeat entropy, to try and overcome the natural tendency towards chaos and disorder. This seems to be unique to human beings. And so the cultural struggle going on, and it lies behind a great deal of ideological disagreement and philosophical argument, and that is, are human beings here because of a lengthy process of unaided materialistic evolution, or are human beings here because a good and loving God created us in His image and placed us here to work the garden. Now, obviously people whose outlook is religious, will take the latter approach, and people whose chief outlook is mainly secular, well, they'll take the former approach. But for most of us, we are willing to not be locked in to either position, and to be open to discussion and argument and debate, not because we think that it'll ever be possible to prove either premise, but because it's always interesting to see the arguments that are being advocated by either side. And so I say that nothing is able to be proved, because if that were the truth, then there would be no intelligent secularists in the world, anybody who's intelligent enough to hear and understand the proof would obviously become religious. That's that's all there is to it. Now I do want to stress that when I say religious, I do not consider all religions in any way whatsoever to be equivalent to one another. Okay? I religions are not all the same. There really is a huge difference. What is the difference? Well, you don't need me to tell you, and it's not because of profound contradictions within the theological texts of Easter religion. No, all you have to do is take a look at the behavior of people who are adherents of each religion, and so take Islam, for instance, certainly not to say that every Muslim. Believes in terrorism, of course not, but it is certainly true that the overwhelming majority of terrorists believe in Islam, and so it's not a ridiculous presumption to say that, although I don't know much about the faith, I don't know whether the word jihad means an internal ideological struggle or the word jihad means draw the blood and cut the throats of stewardesses on airlines that you've commandeered. You know, I don't know, but all I know is that if I look around the world, I see that violence and backwardness seems to be an unfortunate characteristic. I look and I see that whereas universities, and I'm not a big fan of universities in general, but universities around the world, whether you look at universities in Ireland, or universities in in Ghana or Nigeria or Zambia, you will find the universities putting out material. You will find the universities, for the most part, publishing things that at least within the measure of legitimacy in their own world carry some degree of authenticity, but you don't find much in the way of translated studies and interesting work coming out of the Muslim world universities. And so it's a different culture, and culture is the lifestyle that, for the most part, is produced by a religion. And you take Christianity, and I know people say, Well, what about the Crusades? Fine, how about if we just talk about the 21st century? Would that be okay with you for now? And if we look at the 21st century, you will see that Christian countries leaned over backwards to welcome in immigrants from all around the world, but particularly young males from Middle East, North Africa. And if you look at the debates in Germany and Sweden and Norway and United Kingdom and Italy and France, you will see that people cited Christianity and Christian compassion. They cited religious Christian values as the rationale for opening their doors to immigrants or refugees from almost anywhere. And so if, if nothing else, I think one can see that, you know, if, if you're going to be stabbed, you know, let's imagine that you are a Jew walking through the streets of London, identifiably Jewish. Let's say you wearing a skull cap on your head that we call a kippah, and and you get stabbed. Are you most likely to be stabbed by a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints? Are you most likely to be stabbed by the member of an evangelical church like a number of them in London, or are you most likely to be stabbed by a believer in the Quran. Now, this is just a thought experiment, and going on the statistics of the last 20 years of street violence in London, it's a fair bet that you were not stabbed by a Mormon and you were not stabbed by an evangelical Christian, you are stabbed by a Muslim. Okay, that's that's just the reality. And if you take a look at at Christians around the world, whether it's evangelical Christian hotspots in Africa, evangelical Christian hotspots in Europe, you will find peaceful, productive people, building their families and taking care of their business and being charitable and looking after their churches. That's what you're likely to find. That's a plus for a neighborhood, that's a plus for a community.
Daniel Lapin 9:21
What are you likely to find if you take a look at Jews, whether in Israel or in anywhere else in the world at all? Well, for the most part, you're going to find people who, like the evangelical Christians, do not show up much on the crime rosters of the local police. And you'll find people are taking care of business and making money, and which, as you know, I list, is a very good thing. And you'll find them building community institutions like synagogues and schools, and you will find them taking care of each other. So. Right? Basically, a plus for a neighborhood, a plus for a community not hurting anybody. That's pretty much the pattern. So we have to take a look and understand some of the practical implications of Judeo Christian thinking. But if you don't mind, first of all, I do want to let you know that we are getting rid of the inventory of a lot of books. The reason is because people are buying them as downloads. People are buying them in audio form. And meanwhile, we are paying storage in the warehouse for these books, and so you can get a copy of the thought tool book set for $10. $10 buys you two cups of coffee at a certain international coffee chain whose name I will not mention because we will be giving free advertising, and they are not a sponsor of this show, but that's what we're talking about. Why? Why might you want a thought, a thought tool, book set? And I'll tell you why, because there are occasions, whether it's with your children or with your spouse or maybe with your in laws or siblings, but there are times you get together, maybe it's with a work associate, and you don't want to talk gossip, you don't want to talk about people that you really don't want to talk about people, and you don't want to talk about movies and and videos you've seen. You'd like to have a conversation about ideas. Well, here's what's nice. The thought tool, book set gives you scores of ideas, because each thought tool is exactly what the name suggests. It's a tool for thought. And so for $10 it boils down to just cents per thought. And when you're in one of these situations where you'd like to suggest a topic to discuss, maybe a family dinner, maybe an outing, maybe a car ride, but you'd like a topic to discuss. And here's the great thing, when you talk gossip, when you with somebody and you talk about a human being, it's a demeaning experience. You come out of that feeling you need to take a shower. If you talk about movies and entertainment, yeah, you know, sort of kind of neutral, but if you talk about ideas, you actually get uplifted. And so there is a lot of merit in that you get a lot of ideas for those $10 so I did want to let you know also we have this lovely olive bet book, which is a depiction of the Hebrew alphabet in brilliant color. It's a hardcover book with a page to every letter with usages and pronunciation and what the letter looks like, and it's actually pitched on a children's level. It's designed to get even young people intrigued at the ideas that underlie the Hebrew alphabet. But as is so often the case, we adults will read or take a look at something that was designed for children, and we find it absolutely gripping. And so you'll find that to be the case. And then we've also got a book called The skeptic and the rabbi, which is actually I'm the rabbi in the book. Fascinatingly, it was really fascinating for me to read because I saw myself through someone else's eyes. It's not a biography of me, but it's the Autobiography of a young woman who grew up she was a feminist, she was a liberal, she was a leftist, she was a secularist, and somehow another through ways she describes having to do with romance. She found her way into the four walls of the synagogue I was privileged to plant in California, and it talks about her, her initial encounter with genuine Bible based faith and the impact it had how she dealt with it, how she dealt with conflicts between her friends and family and the faith that she was being drawn to, and the fact that it was the faith of her grandparents that her parents had Abandoned made it even more fraught with emotional tension. So that's called the skeptic and the rabbi, and that's like the alphabet book is $5 again. You know, I hope you don't, but many people spend $5 on a cup of coffee these days. So think about that. And we'd love for these things to be in your hands, rather than simply sitting in a in a bookstore. We don't want that to happen, and not in a bookstore, in the book inventory, the book warehouse. So okay, you should definitely go ahead and do that, and also at our website. Rabbi Daniel Lapin. And.com that's where you go to, by the way, for these sale deals on these various books, you also go there because that's where you can become a member of the happy warrior community. And there are all kinds of reasons why you'd want to do that, communication and mutual encouragement other happy warriors going through many of the same challenges you are. You can encourage and bring joy to them, and they do the same for you. So I certainly find it very uplifting as I spend a little time in the happy warrior community, answering letters, posing questions, raising issues. And I think you'll find it equally uplifting and equally beneficial. So you become a member of the happy warrior community at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com and also, as some of you probably, well, certainly happy warriors know, and that is that I do do a private mini podcast, especially for members of the happy warrior community, on topics that I do not necessarily want to have in the public domain. So I wouldn't want to put them on YouTube, but I'm happy for it to be on the happy warrior site that you as a happy warrior get access to so for instance, the one that is a partner of this particular podcast today. Let's say you know if you're a member of the happy warrior community, when you finish this podcast, if you're interested in the shorter one, especially for happy warriors, you would discover that that is a discussion on sexual purity and financial abundance, which, on the surface of it, sounds esoteric and weird. What are you saying that if I stay faithful to my wife, I'm going to make money well? As a matter of fact, that is part of the story that is exactly right, and in that private podcast, mini podcast, especially for members of the happy warrior community. So you join today, you'll be able to listen to that one tomorrow, or whatever it is. So yes, so I do explain what that's all about and why that is so where sexual conduct that is essentially Judeo Christian in Outlook actually has a lot to do with why it is that countries that were founded on Judeo Christian principles invariably became engines of economic prosperity to a much greater extent than societies that never had any connection at all with the Bible. So I'll be explaining all of that. But meanwhile, on the question of where we came from, and are we, you know what. What are we exactly? How does this? How does this come about? And are we nothing but animals, or are we something different, things that point a finger in one direction become electrifying, and they ordinarily are very controversial, accepting that when they point a finger clearly in the direction of human beings, not being just another step on the spectrum of biological Evolution, but instead it points at you and me as being unique creatures touched by the finger of God. That sort of information tends to become a little suppressed because it's awkward and it's uncomfortable.
Daniel Lapin 18:59
And so for instance, for instance, before you even get to talk about whether alligators evolved into racehorses and racehorses evolved into dogs, and dogs evolved into baboons and baboons evolved into people, before we even get to that, the initial question is, how did organic life form in the first place? So it's all very well, even if you persuade me that your alligators turned into baboons. Okay, fine. But where did the alligators come from? Well, eventually and ultimately, they come from single cell creatures called amoeba. Okay, fine, but how did self replicating, cell based creatures like amoeba emerge from rocks and sand and mud and water? How did that happen? And you probably have not heard. Heard that the is absolutely no idea. No Nobody has a clue. They are clueless. Everybody that the world of academia now, if on the very peripheries of it, where people don't know very much, but they know just enough to be dangerous, people will tell you, Oh, that was already done in the Miller Urey experiments of the 1950s Okay, fine, yeah, we get that. And there's only one problem with that, and that is that the Miller Urey experiments of the 1950s proved absolutely nothing at all, didn't, didn't do it, and the evidence of it is very simple. You don't have to trust me on this, and you don't have to delve into the complexities of molecular biology for that. No, you just have to ask yourself, well, if the Miller Urey experiments were promising, and they did, in fact, show that it is possible to produce organic cellular life from rocks and and gasses. And in other words, as you know, there's two areas in Chemistry, Organic and non organic and organic chemistry is the area that deals with life compounds. And inorganic chemistry, you know, is calcium and and nitrogen and lithium and boron and beryllium, all of which do not exhibit any signs of life whatsoever. And so if indeed the Miller Urey experiments produced a jump from inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry, then you would have expected that this would have continued. And they, as always, happens when any experiment in a revolutionary area shows promise. Everyone picks up on it, and away they go. And so you would have expected that to happen, but no, the Miller Urey experiments were done in the 50s. They were so hopeless, they produced so little in the way of anything of interest that they were just abandoned, and nobody even tried it again. And that's where we stand at the moment. So instead of debating whether alligators, you know, can turn into giraffes, really ask where the first cell based life form came from. What indication is there that nothingness can evolve into something this, and indeed that remains a huge problem. Do you hear much about it? No, of course not, because it is a huge challenge to the secular, fundamentalist story of the origin of life. It's a huge problem. Here's another one. Again. It's not something you hear about so much. But in 2014, 11 years ago, from when I'm recording this show, The Journal frontiers in psychology carried an article in May of that year, May of 2014 it carried an article the mystery of language evolution, and it featured all the big names in the science of language and communication. I don't know if these names necessarily mean anything to you, but these are big names. Richard Lewontin, big these are scientists that are prominent and occupied prestigious chairs in major universities, and Noam Chomsky, to name just two. Anyway, this article was fascinating, and as I say, you know, I speak about it from time to time, but you don't hear much about it because that article stated that these eight eminent experts and scholars of language have given up. They're thrown in the towel. They're basically folding on the question of where language comes from, where speech comes from, and how it works. Essentially, in a nutshell, what they were saying, which makes perfect sense, is that if human beings came about because of evolution, then we ought to be able to find certain early stage examples of human beings in the process of evolution. And there have been attempts by people like Richard Leakey in Africa to find the the missing link is what they called it. And it's, you know, obviously understandable that indeed, if. Boons turned into barbers and bakers, then you ought to be able to find something in the fossil record, something between baboons and ballerinas and bookkeepers. You ought to be able to find something between them. And in this, in the same way, we should find a missing link there. We should also find, you know, after all, baboons do not talk. Human beings talk. So we surely must find some indication of language making an evolutionary progress between baboons nothingness and human beings articulate and eloquent, there ought to be some kind of evidence that language evolved, because the only other alternative is to say that pop there it is one one day there was no communication. The next day there was but if that happened, then there has to have been a cause, and that cause would be God, and that would open a whole can of worms, because the the side of the argument that is dealing with this question is desperate to find a god free explanation of language and communication. But it's not just language and communication. There's also something else. How about ownership? Animals have a territorial sense. There's no question about it. And so if a lion is a territorial about a certain area in Africa, he has no objection to zebras and giraffes and wildebeest coming into that area. In fact, he might even like it, because it's like home delivery of food, you know, gosh, doesn't have to go far to find a wildebeest or or a deer, an impala or a buck. And so that's convenient, and there's nothing wrong with that. He likes that and but he won't like another lion coming in. Now that's different from ownership, because when a human being owns a yard, it's not just that we don't want other human beings come into it, coming into it, and that that is certainly true, but we also do not want a neighborhood dog coming into our yard and digging a hole in our lawn, right? Because we own it. It's ours. And the you know, one of the reasons that, in spite of the fact that there are very good drive share companies today, I mean, you can really many, many of us come to a city for a business trip and where, in the past, our first stop would have been a car rental agency. Today, we just say, You know what? It'll be cheaper and more convenient for me to just call a ride share driver as I need to get around places, I don't need to drive myself anywhere. So why do people still own cars because of the pleasure of ownership. We human beings are unique among all creatures of the planet. Ownership means something to us. And so there would be, again, an interesting area of study, right? When, when did creatures develop a sense of ownership? And, you know, evolutionary psychologists will come up with all kinds of theories, and that's what they are, theories, but they're not even as interesting as the basic question, which is that here is something else that is absolutely unique to human beings, there's speech, there's ownership and and there are all kinds of other things, religion, particularly Bible based, Judeo Christian religion, really has an impact. And I wrote about this in a thought tool recently, but I want to tell you about it as well, and
Daniel Lapin 29:00
I happen to have sent to me by some friends in South Africa. They sent me photographs and videos of what has happened to South African railways. Now the the rail system in South Africa, originally built by the British but very quickly picked up by the local inhabitants, the Boers, who originally came to South Africa in the 1600s and then the British came much later. And then when gold was discovered in the Johannesburg area, around about 1860s somewhere around about there the the British established and and forcefully took over most of South Africa, which resulted in the Boer War. There was in 119, 101 19 102 and that was a war between the Afrikaans. I call them the first white tribe of Africa, and that's really what they are. They are a tribe. They're white, and they are Africans, you know, as much as anybody else living anywhere, because very few people in Africa are living where their ancestors lived 500 years ago. There's always been a tremendous amount of movement, because Africa has been so subject to famine and drought and water shortage that people would would move and resettle somewhere else constantly, so and so. There they are. And they picked up on taking over the railways, and they started building more and they started even building locomotives in South Africa, and laying 1000s of miles of railroad. And railways in South Africa were really very effective, because we talking about fairly long distances, not like the United States or Australia. But if you wanted to travel from the financial hub of the country, which was Johannesburg, or from the Legislative hub of the country, which was Pretoria, and you want to those two cities are 30 miles apart, you wanted to go from them to, shall we say, Cape Town on the coast. Well, that's 1000 miles, and so railways was a great way to go. And I have the fondest of memories, and because friends of mine know that I have a fondness and a nostalgia for railways, particularly steam trains. I really, I really like and enjoy and and so they send me pictures of what the current condition of railways in South Africa is. And I don't have to tell you. I mean, rolling stock is lying abandoned in remote sidings and rusting away. Locomotives are not working the electrification section, there were parts that were electrified in the 70s and 80s, and all the copper wire that powers, you know, the pantograph that rises above the locomotive to be in contact with the copper wire running along overhead in order to conduct electricity down into the electric motors of the locomotive. All that copper has been stolen. How do you steal copper that has 600 volts of electricity in it? Well, easy. Turns out that the power goes out for a few hours every day. And as soon as the power goes out, there's a whole cadre of, shall we say, metal traders, who descend on the railway lines and start ripping out all the copper wire in order to sell it, which they then, sometimes they even sell it abroad, overseas. But they're doing a lot of that, and so the railways are a mess today. There are exceptions. One is the Blue Train, which is a big tourist attraction. It's not run by South African railways. It's run by a separate private company on rail track owned by another company, and it's a money maker, and so they they keep that running. But ordinarily, there are always that ordinary people would travel on. It's it's another world, all gone electricity. The electricity supply commission was known as Eskom. I must tell you, my whole childhood, I have no recollection of a single power outage. Blackout, unknown. You know where I saw blackout for the first time in my life, California, in the year 2000 San Francisco kept on going dark during that summer up till that point, it sort of, of course, a first world functioning country has as its primary obligation, or among its primary obligations, providing reliable power. Well, South Africa no longer is able to do that. Water. No, not water either. And if the railways are a mess, how do people travel? Well, you have no choice but you ship things on roads with trucks. Here's the problem. Roads are not being maintained. And when you don't maintain roads, you get potholes. And when I say potholes, you know you can probably find them yourself. Pictures online of potholes on South African roads that would swallow up an average small car. Anyway, the roads in South Africa are a mess. The electricity supplies a mess. Water Supply unreliable a mess. Railways a mess. What? What? What happened? And the answer is obvious, its entropy, natural deterioration, causes it. Well, why didn't it cause it before 1985 and or 1990 I should say, and the reason is because it was being maintained. It's a lot of work to keep a train running, maintenance of the locomotive, maintenance of the railway track, maintenance of the coaches, maintenance of the fuel supply, electricity or coal, or whatever it is. It's a huge amount of work. And I think it's fair to say that many more people are hard at work on maintenance than are actually working on driving the the railway system in the first place. Maintenance just ceased. What's the problem with electricity? Also, the generators stopped because the they break down, they just not being maintained. What would happen to your car if you just drove it and drove it and drove it, you never had the oil change, you never had it greased. You never what would happen is it would eventually seize up. It would just stop running. Well, that's exactly what's happened to the the motors and the engines that are driving the electricity generators in South Africa just stopped working. It's all over. The infrastructure is dying. Now I don't want you to think this is unique to South Africa. It isn't in America. We all know about bridges that fall down. Why? Because they weren't maintained. Everybody knows of dams that are dangerously neglected, making it very risky. If you ever have to drive in New York, shall we say, from Manhattan to Kennedy airport, you will be amazed at the condition of the roads. It's certainly that's been the case for me every time I was there. And I was last there in, I think January, maybe January of this year, just a few months ago. And it certainly was always like adapted. The roads are potholes in New York, and the same is true in Baltimore, and the same thing is true in Newark, Detroit. What's going on? It's just there hasn't been maintenance that's all aging infrastructure and neglected maintenance that'll take care of it. Amtrak. You go on Amtrak, and you can see that has not been maintained. Traveling on Amtrak is like a 19th century adventure. I mean, it's just not being updated, not being taken care of. Sometimes the Amtrak will just stop for an hour. I've had that happen, and the problem is, oh, the REL, the the the rails deformed, and they have to do something to make the rails possible. We just have to wait and so. And not only that, but you'll also, in others, I've been talking about mostly neglected maintenance on the part of governments and cities and states, but you'll also find homes like that, I hope not in your neighborhood, but almost anywhere in the United States. You do not have to travel far to find homes with peeling paint, unmowed grass, non working cars up on blocks in the yard, broken windows that wasn't fixed and and you'll find it. So what's going on? And so what I have to tell you is that maintenance is a religious value.
Daniel Lapin 38:36
Looking after your possessions is a religious value. It's something that is important, because one of the ways we are distinguished from animals, one of the ways that we are like God, is that we own things. There are things that are ours, and we take pride in that, and we should look after them and maintain them and be careful with them. And it's hard to do in a certain way, because let's say you know that you need to hire somebody to mow your lawn, or you know you need to repaint the front of your house, but you've got $200 available, and you can either buy a new camera or a new phone or a new something, or you can do the maintenance, and you can see what the appeal is. You know, will it really be a problem if a grass grows for another two weeks, I'll mow it. In two weeks time, I'll have another $200 painting the front of the house. You know what it's looked the way it looks for for a while it'll look a bit longer. Meanwhile, I got a much better usage for my $200 than maintenance, and that's exactly how cities feel as well. Now, I mean, they they get it right. You work. A city you can either spend money on a thankless job of maintaining a decaying infrastructure. Nobody sees you. Got to tell people what you did. Nobody gives you a medal. Nobody gives you a pat on the back. Nobody wants to throw a dinner in your honor because you fix the water pipes? No, it's ignored. But if you open a new highway or you create a high speed rail line from nowhere to nowhere, that doesn't matter. But you can sell tell people, oh, we're building a new railway. That's why we need a bond issue, and that's why we need new taxes. It's going to solve the congestion on the roads, and everybody applauds and everybody gives you medals. It's wonderful. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, you will remember she actually proved this for us earlier in 2025 right? What happened? Instead of making sure that fire hydrants had money, she instead took an all expenses paid first class all the way trip to Ghana, because it's more fun going on a junket to another country paid for by your voters and your constituents. It's much more fun doing that than it is having a serious problem and solving it like water in the fire hydrants. That's what goes on, and I want to explain why it is. What's really happening here and what's really happening here is that awareness of time, past and future is a religious value. It's a part of Bible based Judeo Christian thinking. If you strip that away, our natural default condition is to be focused on the present, and that is absolutely normal, and that is absolutely natural, because the present can provide you with fun and pleasure, and if you focus on the present, you can even stay safe. You make sure that the lion doesn't come and eat you, but that's all about the present. And I can have great pleasure by doing things in the present, and I can have a good meal, and I can have fun. The present gets our attention. And so the normal condition for a non religious, evolved natural person, is that the present matters more than the past or the future. Past certainly doesn't matter. Ripping up statues and destroying statues of figures in the past is just the flip side of ignoring the future. And what does ignoring the future mean? Means ignoring maintenance, and so whether it's looking after your car or mowing your lawn, or whether it is a city doing maintenance on a bridge or a dam or making sure that the roads do not have potholes and they get repaired promptly, and that traffic lights are synchronized and up to date. All of those things are an unsatisfying way of spending money, because they the benefit of those things will only come in the future, and politicians tend to think of their lives as periods of time punctuated by elections. And many politicians even know that even if they win the next election, they want to retire or do something else the one after that. And so if a if the requirement is to spend the money on a junket, first class trip somewhere, or to spend the money on maintenance on a problem there won't really become a crisis for another five years, and you're not even going to be in office in five years time. Hey, why would you do that? And they obviously do not that is the amazing thing.
Daniel Lapin 44:24
But what religion does, when I say religion, I'm talking specifically about Bible based, Judeo Christian faith. What that does is entirely different, because religion inculcates you to think about the past and the future, and certainly, if you brought up that way as a child, right? Little Jewish children are very strongly aware of the details about people and events of two to 3000 years ago. They know about it. They come. Life. And so once a year, they celebrate Hanukkah, and they'll tell you, you know, those events took place many years ago, and it was there were has, many ins, and they were Maccabees, and they were wicked tyrants. And again, any little Jewish kid who is raised religious will tell you about the festival of the feast of Esther, and when that happened a long time ago, more than 2000 years ago, and it's like yesterday, these things are real. And so when you are raised to be as aware of the past as you are of the present is hugely valuable. You have an entirely different perspective, and if you were not raised with that, it's worthwhile becoming a way of spending a little time. How do you do that? Well, I would recommend reading biographies. Really get hold of books from the library that are biographies of people that you know lived in the in the place that is important to you, where you live, and read about their lives from 100 years ago and 200 years ago, the struggles they dealt with and how they overcome them, when, When we were living on the West Coast, our children used to read a lot. We used to read at the table stories about the Oregon Trail, how people settled the West, what that was like, all of which is intended to make the past as relevant and as alive as the present. Because nobody, nobody needs to be taught how to take the present seriously. You know, just stick a pin in somebody's arm and you've got their attention. The present is the here and now. It has a clarion call of clarity and urgency to it. The trick is becoming aware of the past. The trick is becoming aware of the future. And there again, people who are raised in the Judeo, Christian biblical tradition. For them, the future is also real. They I mean, again, from from the youngest ages, a young boy brought up in a Christian environment, knows that down the road, he is going to choose a wife and he's going to go out on his own and start his own family. And there's that awareness. It's not I may or may not. He doesn't have discussions about, will he have children, or won't he have children? And for those of you who grew up in a secular environment, you probably don't really understand just how natural thinking about the future and taking the future seriously is to people who are raised in that sort of environment. So there again, if, if you are raising young children now, you want to think very seriously about finding a way in order to make them as aware as about the future as they are about the present, and to make them take the future seriously, because in the same way, you can have obligations in the present, right? You can have obligations to, you know, not step off the very high building. You can have obligations not to eat dangerous foods. There are there things about the present that you do. There are also, there should be things about the past. In other words, there are things that a young male Christian or Jewish will say, I wouldn't dream of doing that. It would be betraying my grandparents. Will be betraying my parents. It would be betraying my ancestors. You know, I've got ancestors who who died because of their faith. How can I possibly dream of betraying my faith? That's really how people think, and you end up with a different kind of person, but more importantly, you end up with a different kind of neighborhood, a different kind of society, a different kind of city, a different kind of country. And so, yeah, you'll, you'll have, you know, right now, for instance, you've got Jewish people in Israel who have been on and off in the army for five years, for a year and a half, you've got people who have lost comrades, you've got women who've lost husbands, you've got parents who've lost sons and daughters, this is what's going on there. And so you think, my goodness, you know, how many Israelis are finding out about. Immigration. You know how, how many of them are looking up? Could they move to somewhere else? Could they move to Australia? Move to America? No, they aren't. Because their belief, deep, solid belief, is that God gave them the Land of Israel, and he's going to take care of them. He's not. He's not. It's going to be okay. They have a future. It is not an accident. And I'm not saying that every secular person believes in a doomed and gloomy future, no, but I am telling you that everybody who believes in a gloomy and doomed future is a secularist. It's really important to know not every secular person, not every non religious person, thinks the oceans are going to drown us all out, but everybody who says that the oceans are rising, and in a few years, there won't be a Miami. Anybody who says that is not a religious person, though you can count on it. It's it's pretty much across the board, people who think that we're doomed because a meteorite is going to be uncontrollably aimed at the earth. And it's going to anybody who believes that global warming is going to wipe out the earth. Not every single non believer, not every single atheist believes that global warming is going to wipe us out, but everyone who believes that global warming is going to wipe us out is a non believing person, because they don't have a vision of the future, and it really matters. It really makes a difference. I'll tell you something else interesting about about the Hebrew language, the most sacred name of God, is four specific letters, which we do not even pronounce casually. If we're not in prayer or Bible study, we don't even say the word. So I'm not going to tell you what the word is, and its actual pronunciation is also an issue. But regardless, I'm just going to tell you that that word comprises three words in Hebrew, past, present and future. That's right. Religious people who invoke the name of God in prayer regularly. Every time they do it, are saying, I live in a world of a past and a future as well as a present. And so people who understand this, and people who think this way, and people who really get the idea that part of being godly is taking the future as seriously as the present and taking the past as seriously as the present. Are most geared up to be able to defer present gratification for the future. For people who don't have a vision of the future, why should I not go and play with my friends now and do homework. Why? Because if I do my homework, I'll be better off the day after tomorrow. I can't even fathom the day after tomorrow. It's not real to me. You know what's real to me, going and having ice cream with my friends right now? Do you follow what I'm trying to say? I'm doing my best to explain that there are real life consequences to faith. It really changes how you live. It changes what it's like to live near you. It changes your economic prospects, because awareness of the future in the past is something that is a gift of Judeo, Christian, biblically based faith, people who tear down statues. That's just the flip side of the same coin as people who allow maintenance to be neglected. Why fix the bridge? It's not going to be a problem for another five years. Why fix the roads? Let somebody else worry about it. I don't need to take care of it now, not my problem. Maintenance is a religious obligation. What's more? Maintenance is a religious phenomenon.
Daniel Lapin 54:20
We value our possessions, and therefore we value looking after them. And this is what is really so valuable to understand. It's really, really important maintenance. Is a Judeo Christian religious value that's, I know it's hard to imagine, but it's so true. It's real. And so as so, you know, so what? What happened it? I sort of explained South African railways. Well, what happened is, and it's, it's, it's a very real thing. What happened is. Is that for many years, for centuries, South Africa was populated and governed, and obviously the problems of white rule were stupendous. It goes without saying, like I have to make myself safe by issuing that proclamation. Otherwise, heaven forbid, I might be sounding as if I approved of white rule in the abolition of other right. Okay, fine. Oh, dear, oh dear, dear. But what I'm talking about is nothing to do with color and race. What I'm talking about is faith, because the people who ran, who populated and runs? The white people who populated and ran South Africa were, for the most part, deeply religious. Bible believing was Bible believing Afrikaans people and so for them, maintenance was a natural thing. South African railways was maintained, whether by people in the boardroom and the C suite or by people walking the railway tracks, by people who believe the Bible and went to church every Sunday, and so obviously the drive to maintain diligently was part of their whole religious outlook. It made perfect sense. But you see, it was different. When the African National Congress took over in South Africa, it made a very big difference, because the African National Congress was although it was started in about 1912 around about 1950 the Soviets took it over. They funded it. The Cubans took it over. They funded it, they advised it, they guided it. And it was a unrepentant Marxist organization promoting aggressively a secular world view. And at that point, everything changed in South Africa. Everything changed because the entire culture switched to secular. The government switches to secular, from religious and so obviously maintenance goes out the window. That is what was happening. That was what it was like. And I know it's hard, it's hard to believe just how important this stuff was, but it really, really made a huge difference. And so from the middle of the 17th century up until 1994 the culture in South Africa was religious. Maintenance was flawless. Everything got taken care of, everything got looked after. Now in America, the same thing can be true, from its founding up until about 1960 I always like saying 1962 you regular listeners will know why I say 1962 it has something to do with the birth control, but that's not for now. Let me tell you about in 1892 the United States Supreme Court declared in a case called Holy Trinity versus United States, said the court, the historical record of America, overwhelmingly demonstrated that United States is a Christian nation, and so on and so forth. You know the prayer breakfast, the prayer breakfast these days, and I think whether it was Clinton or Obama, and they never even showed up for it, but in 1954 Time Magazine ran an article on the prayer breakfast that year, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren, was not only there, He gave a speech. Let me read you the words. He said, I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the good book, that means the Bible and the spirit of the Savior, that means Jesus Christ, have from the beginning been our guide in geniuses, whether we look to the first charter of Virginia or to the charter of New England order, the charter of Massachusetts Bay, or to the fundamental orders of Connecticut. The same objective is present, a Christian land governed by Christian principles, my dear happy warriors. That's exactly what America was until the 1960s so, not surprisingly, maintenance was diligently taken care of all the way up till the early 1960s but for reasons we won't go into now, America secularized from the early 60s very rapidly, and that was the time when maintenance faded away as well. It was also a time where. Crime began to blossom and mushroom. Well, there's a reason for that, because crime is mostly perpetrated by people who have what the psychologists call poor impulse control. You're irritating me. I want to hit you on their head. I don't have a card. I want to cost I'll go and steal your car. That's poor impulse control, but the psychologist may call it that. The truth is that criminals are just people who are very present focused. Not every secular person commits murder. But I think you'll agree that almost every murderer is every murder is committed by secular people. Most are because if you are not conscious in a real, tangible way of the future, then the present is all that matters. Therefore I can take what you own, I can beat you up or kill you if I feel like it, and you're irritating me, because the future is not there. And for you happy warriors who are normal, functional human beings, I do believe it's hard for you to imagine even just how absent the future is in the hearts, minds and souls of psychopaths and so yeah, are we going to have more crime if we strip away awareness of the future? Yeah? And the surest, most reliable way of developing an awareness of the future is to connect with God. There is no better way. And so that America started deteriorating, and Amtrak went from the best railway system, well, it wasn't called Amtrak then, but America had the the railroads that were the envy of the world to today, where America has railways that are the joke of the world. It all started going in the 60s when maintenance stopped. And the reason that many people are very nervous about flying today is because as much as the flight safety depends on the pilot, you could say that even more, it depends on the mechanic servicing the engine. And how do we know that he is diligent about maintenance. How do we know that the guy whose job it is to keep logs and records of maintenance? How do we know he's doing his job? And as more and more people become secularized, and as more and more jobs of importance are being done by people who are secularized, it makes perfect sense, statistically and scientifically, to assume that the diligence factor diminishes and drops away shockingly quickly. Is there reason to be nervous and worried? I'd say I think so. Absent Judeo, Christian values, we all become present, driven beings, and living in a society of people who are present focused is a real drag. See, doing maintenance is a lot like doing homework, except it's even harder. You take a bunch of children, large percentage of children who brought into the world and pretty much left to their own devices, they are being raised by televisions screens and by geeks, a gig right a government indoctrination center, and they're likely To become present centric adolescents. That is what their biologies will lead them to become. Please understand that absent acculturating a person to be present and past focus, a future and past focus, they'll be present focused. That is the natural default condition.
Daniel Lapin 1:03:58
And so caretakers at gigs. Do you remember caretaker? They used to be called teachers? Caretakers at gigs. Struggle to get children to do homework? Well, of course they are, because these children have been raised to not even consider the possibility of deferring present pleasures for the sake of maybe a good consequence tomorrow or the day after tomorrow? Nah, you're not going to see that happening. And so there we are. Wherever you live, if you're living in a society in which a growing and large percentage of the population is secular, you must know that maintenance is going to deteriorate. You say, Well, why can't we just have monitoring systems and vigilance? Because in the final analysis, there's not enough policemen to monitor all the policemen to monitor all the policemen. In the final analysis, society can only function if we can count. Reliably upon the integrity and diligence of every member of society. Well, okay, truth be told, you don't need every member. You can tolerate a certain number of outlaws as long as the large majority can be counted on for diligence and integrity. But when the balance begins to shift, happy warriors dig in, because it's not a pretty sight, and that, I think, is about as far as we can go. I don't want to end on a negative note, and so regardless of what is happening out there, each and every happy warrior can count on moving onwards and upwards to a bright, sunlit tomorrow by focusing on improving his or her own family's finances, faith, friendships and fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
