בס''ד
8 Tevet, 5772
December 21th,
2012
Publishing these
days means receiving a slew of hateful, anti-Semitic, misogynistic,
anti-religious, and otherwise bitterly hateful comments. Content is irrelevant.
You could post a video of cats cuddling, and someone will tell you to F-off and
die, or that the LORD G-d forBade cats wE must live By HIS Word.
But the tragedy
in Newtown really brought out the trolls.
Take that
article, “I am Adam Lanza’s mother,” written by Liza Long, a journalist with amentally ill child. Though Gawker removed the comment, one writer hoped that
she “rot[ted] in hell, you stupid b*tch.”
Or take the President’s
speech at the interfaith memorial service. I thought he spoke beautifully. However his words
delayed coverage of the ‘Niners-Patriots game, and people took to twitter to lace their disapproval with racial invective.
These days, if a
thing can be thought, it will be said, and then posted or tweeted. If a thought
is possible, we will hear it in public discourse. I am frightened of such a
world.
The Torah
teaches, “The words a person speaks are deep waters, a flowing stream, a
fountain of wisdom.” (Proverbs 18:4). The verse doesn’t seem to make much
sense: considering the amount of blather we hear, how can a person’s words be a
fountain of wisdom?
The verse means
wise people exercise considerable choice when speaking. Being wise means
filtering out 90% of what goes through our heads, and choosing, with care,
those thoughts that deserve to be seen.
Every one of us is half crazy. Every human being has parts of his or her soul –
considerable parts – that are undeveloped, twisted awry, and malformed. Crazy,
inappropriate thoughts go through our heads every second. Rav Kook teaches that
the spiritual journey is one of clarifying, healing, and growing the stunted
sections of our souls.
But when people
have an outlet to express pure id, the soul grows more twisted. Even online,
even anonymously, it matters which parts of ourselves we allow to speak.