Jewswithoutjobs's Blog

Aside from the Merchant of Venice, Hamlet gives us a clue to the Bard’s attitudes. When Hamlet realized “there is neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” he realized something that escapes so many of us. Maybe it’s the power of Talmudic teachings. Maybe that our mothers told us to be doctors. If that didn’t work, lawyers would do, but nothing else. We’ve always been able to figure things out. I mean what other religion can argue with God and actually change His mind. Though I’m no Bible scholar, a buddy told me Abraham had a conversation with God when the Big Guy was planning to eighty six Sodom. Abe reasoned with the Lord, and plans changed….If I may say so it’s a bit persumptuous, not to say pretentious.  But it’s right there in Genesis. And ever since Jews have had this great faith in the power of reason and turning a good phrase. On to day and Jews generally believe they can solve whatever befalls them if they just think hard enough.

But it’s not just the learned Bard, who realized the shortcomings of the intellect. No greater cultural icon than Curly Howard (of Three Stooges fame) reminds us:

“I try to stop thinking but nothing happens.”

Or the great Laurel and Hardy dialogue in The Flying Deuces:

STAN: Well, I know if it was me, I’d sit down and relax, I’d close my eyes, and I’d concentrate and I’d think of nothing. Wouldn’t belong then, that’s what I’d do.

OLLIE: Say, I think you’ve got something there.

STAN: I know I’ve got something. Why don’t you take a whirl at it?

OLLIE [sits down, supports his chin in his hands, and closes his eyes]

STAN: Now don’t think of anything.

OLLIE: I won’t.

But the greatest nod to the belief in the mind’s great talents are overrated comes to us through the great Greek author, Nikos Kazantzakis, and his protagonist, Zorba:

“You think too much, that is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.”

Somehow because we’ve had to listen to them for so long, we give so much power to those silent noises apparently emanating from somewhere between our ears . Now I don’t mean to denigrate the power of science, technology and intellectual prowess. After all, the Enlightenment was in large part a response to a lot of hocus pocus. The font of scientific inquiry has brought us untold rewards including fireplaces, flush toilets, clean water, and polio vaccines, not to mention 320 kinds of toothpaste, 435 ways to get your coffee in the morning, 17 kinds of Downy Fabric Softener, and the ultimate dilemma of “paper or plastic.”

But it’s also left us remarkably unable to deal with the essential groundlessness of being human. When, contrary to all efficient planning and effective problem solving, the s___ hits the fan, we become hapless victims of circumstance. And it is here that the wisdom of the heart is the only effective tool to negotiate when rationality falls short. One doesn’t need to be a Buddhist to understand the impermanence of all things. Everything changes.

What is one to do when economic calamity comes out of nowhere? What happens when it’s not possible to get the new job? What happens when uncertainty is the rule not the exception. I don’t have the answer. But I do know that trying to think my way out of the situation just leaves me chasing my tail.