Timeless Wisdom: The Problem of Happiness - Part 14
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here, thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
Hi, Kevin McCullough.
Think fossil fuels are climate villains that the legacy media and establishment politicos ask us to believe that they are?
Think again.
Did you know that fossil fuels power the systems that keep us safe?
From air conditioning that prevents heat stroke to heating systems that protect against extreme cold.
They also provide low-cost power for our storm warning systems, giving us time to evacuate and save lives.
Forget being a villain.
Fossil fuels have literally been the hero in the prevention of billions of deaths and the extension of life.
In fact, over the past century, deaths from climate-related disasters like extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, storms, wildfires have declined by 98% thanks to fossil-fueled infrastructure and technology.
I'm Calvin McCullough, and I just want you to know the facts.
Don't be fossil-fooled.
Get the full picture at oilfacts.com.
Brought to you by NASDAQ Listed Prairie Operating Group, a high-growth, low-cost producer of safe and responsible American energy.
That's oilfacts.com, oilfacts.com.
Religious system does not pan out.
What if it's not valid?
What if it's not viable?
Is that what you're saying?
Or satisfactory or whatever.
All right, there are two very quick issues to comment there.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am arguing here for the necessity of religion for happiness in the human being.
I am not arguing at this point for a specific religion, number one.
Number two, I'm not arguing that all religion is valid.
Number three, I am not here to prove to you that religion is valid.
I'm here to make one case and one case only.
I do not believe that a happy life is obtainable without what religion gives.
Religion may in fact be an absolute human creation with invarying degrees of nonsense.
I don't believe that.
But that's not this course.
This course is not on the truth of religiosity.
This course is on happiness.
And I'm arguing to you that in my lifetime, both in theory and in practice, I have not found an ability to obtain any depth of happiness without religion.
Religion answers needs that only religion can answer.
When we attempt to answer religious needs with other things, we get distorted things.
That's why I began last week with the argument.
See, sometimes I feel that when I present certain arguments to you, because I don't use melodramatic terms, which is something I've weaned myself from over years, it doesn't hit you over the head with the severity that it ought to.
But my friends, I made an argument last week, which, if I am right about, must cause deep, deep thinking on your part.
If I'm wrong about, then I'm just wrong, and you wasted a session.
You may end up wasting two and a half sessions.
But if I'm right, then it's a very serious challenge to those of you whose lives are bereft of religious meaning.
And that is that the human being has a religious need every bit as real as the need for love as the need for certain physical things.
I use love most particularly because you can live without love.
And you can live without what religion gives.
But I don't believe that you can do so in the fullest way of our association of happiness with depth.
Okay?
So I'm not here to argue, therefore, all religion is wonderful or all religious people are happy.
That's nonsense.
There are many people for whom religion is a cause of misery.
Okay, I am deeply aware of that.
There are people for whom, if they were liberated from the way their family lived religion, they would be a much happier human being.
I want that understood here.
It is, you know, to argue that aspirin is very powerful in helping headaches is not to argue that every one of you should be taking aspirin.
Because some of you may have terrible allergies to aspirin.
All right?
I mean, it's a lousy metaphor, but it serves the purpose for the moment.
Okay?
I want that understood.
I'm talking about healthy religion.
I'm talking about it in its best sense.
I'm not talking about it where it is a vehicle for neuroses, let alone for evil.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
All right, yes.
Dennis, you made your correlation between happiness and religion.
Frequently on your radio show, you've indicated there's religion and there's a religion with and without ethics.
Is it implicit in what you're saying here that you're speaking about religion with ethics?
Yes.
No, it is implicit here that I'm speaking about religion with ethics because of my argument earlier that goodness is one of the vehicles to happiness.
That's why this ties in a lot of that, and that's why the religious part comes at the end of the course.
On the basis of those other suppositions, like depth, especially depth, and especially, what did I just say?
Goodness.
I think that that's right.
The two are essential.
But there is many more reasons, and that's what I'd like to get to today.
I will not get to all of them today.
Incidentally, for those of you who, after all of my reasons, will reject my argument for the necessity for a religious commitment.
And by the way, did I make it clear that I was speaking of organized religion and not just some vague form of spirituality?
Did I?
No, that's important, and I will have to get to that.
Let me write that down.
You know, I really ought to make that clear at the outset now.
Even if you reject my argument after hearing all my reasons, and there will be about ten of them, it will still be worth your while for a number of reasons to have heard all this.
One, you will have to figure out what you have in your life that answers these needs that I am listing that is not within religion.
Are you with me?
You may say, I don't need religion because I have answered those particular needs in the following ways.
So it is still very worth your while to confront the challenge that I'm posing to you in this regard.
I don't think there are other ways, and I think that people do attempt to use other ways, and that is to tell what they are is to repeat last week.
But the fact, by the way, that people do so often try to use other vehicles for doing exactly what religion does may give you a sense of the importance of that innate need, as I call it, in the human being.
Now, let me just make something clear here.
I am talking about organized religion.
I am not talking about spirituality.
You had a question?
Is that it?
Okay.
With Abraham Maslow, he was saying just the opposite, which was that in his study self-actualized actualized people, which pretty much gets a description of what you regard the happy person.
He said just the opposite that in his study he found that very few were involved in organized religions.
Right.
And that they were even atheists.
Right.
I would say that Maslow and other thinkers from the 60s who spoke in terms of self-actualization have reached a dead end.
But he didn't talk to if he talked in the same terms.
Well, look, you know what?
I suggest the following.
Don't trust Prager.
Don't trust Maslow.
Trust something that I'm a big believer in, common sense and your own observations.
You get around in life.
You know people.
You've seen people.
Ask what I am giving you, he gives you his fruit of his research.
I'm giving you the fruit of my research.
I wanted to know what you thought about him, because I'm not that familiar with him and maybe where you went.
I started reading him in the 60s and gave up.
This does not mean he is not brilliant.
It just means that I personally did not relate to what I was reading in him.
Okay?
So it's okay.
I really, it's unfair to him to even comment on him from my perspective, given that fact.
All right?
But I do, I want to just finish that thought.
You, first of all, an interesting question would be how many of you know truly religious people?
See, a lot of secular people live with secular people.
A lot of religious people live with religious people.
Unlike Maslow, I suspect, I have lived very intensely with both.
I truly straddle both worlds.
I have immersed myself in and immersed myself entirely at times only in one of the two worlds.
I don't know any psychologist who has written on self-actualization or just happiness who has done so.
Overwhelmingly, those in the secular disciplines, like psychology, have studied religion from the outside.
Good, except that I'm more reactive to what you were saying, that in order to be happier, the key element in religion...
No, a key, a key and indispensable, I would put.
But it's not enough alone.
Otherwise I would have just spent a religious course on happiness.
Okay, I guess at that point is where I was saying I agree.
religious people are able to be, or I mean, that is the key element for a lot of people, but here it is now.
Okay, I would have to read it.
It's like when people...
All right.
Okay.
Okay, so then that's why I don't want to comment on it.
Neither of us knows enough about Maslow on that particular issue.
Was there someone else?
Yes.
He believes that religion has caused these little wars for these centuries.
This woman has a friend who is Jewish, who wishes to be or has become an atheist because he believes that religion has caused most problems and wars in history.
Okay, well, first of all, your friend made a very unintellectual decision.
Even if he was right, and he's totally wrong, but I'll come back to that in a minute.
But even if he's right that religion has been the greatest source of evil in history, to conclude, therefore, that one should be an atheist is a total non-sequitur.
Even if religions have been the greatest source of evil in the world, what does that have to do with whether or not God exists?
It merely has to do with how people have used religion.
It is like saying if someone who had been tortured by a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz had concluded that they no longer believe in medicine.
Gee, look at how the doctors at Auschwitz were.
By the way, it is a very common, non-thought-through response of those who attack religion to say precisely what your friend says.
Because religion has been used for evil, therefore they make a conclusion with regard to God.
But it's identical to saying, because doctors have been corrupt or used or even evil, as in the case of Nazi doctors, I no longer believe in medicine.
Well, how come we don't do that?
How come with all the lawyers that many of you think are scum of the earth, how come none of you believe we should therefore drop law?
It is the only area of life where there is evil, where people say, therefore, you have to throw out the source, is religion.
And the reason I am convinced is not at all intellectual, it's purely emotional, because nothing arouses as much passion, pro and con, as religion does.
Now, as regards to the claim, the claim itself is absurd.
Human evil is caused by humans.
It is not generally caused by religion, though religion has, on occasion, absolutely caused it.
People will be evil, and they will use anything at their disposal, whether it will be totem pole worship, nationalism, believe in humanity.
Tell your friend, and this is easily documented, far more people have been murdered in the name of humanity and progress than have been murdered in the name of God.
Should we therefore drop belief in humanity and progress?
Far more people.
Communism in this century has slaughtered more people than any religion, excuse me, than all religions in all of history.
Therefore, well, then let's drop all of its claims or anything that it believed in.
People want to do that with religion, and there's a reason people want to do it with religion.
Religion is the only thing that tells you you're wrong.
People don't like to be told they're wrong.
What your friend really doesn't want is something telling him you're wrong, your conscience, your brain, your reasoning isn't sufficient.
That is very bad news to your friend, especially if he's Jewish.
Jews have a particularly hard time with religion, which is too bad since they brought it into the world.
It's a very serious problem in Jewish life, but that is for another course at another time.
All right?
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Hi, Calvin McCullough.
Think fossil fuels are climate villains that the legacy media and establishment politicos ask us to believe that they are?
Think again.
Did you know that fossil fuels power the systems that keep us safe?
From air conditioning that prevents heat stroke to heating systems that protect against extreme cold.
They also provide low-cost power for our storm warning systems, giving us time to evacuate and save lives.
Forget being a villain.
Fossil fuels have literally been the hero in the prevention of billions of deaths and the extension of life.
In fact, over the past century, deaths from climate-related disasters like extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, storms, wildfires have declined by 98% thanks to fossil-fueled infrastructure and technology.
I'm Calvin McCullough, and I just want you to know the facts.
Don't be fossil-fooled.
Get the full picture at oilfacts.com.
Brought to you by NASDAQ Listed Prairie Operating Group, a high-growth, low-cost producer of safe and responsible American energy.
That's oilfacts.com, oilfacts.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
People who have found great meaning in their lives are not religious and are happy.
I believe that they exist.
I believe, however, that the fact that individuals of any variety can exist does not make it a rule.
As lawyers say, bad cases make bad laws.
I'm not here to pass judgment on others' happiness.
I can tell you, though, intellectually, that if someone has found great meaning in life without religion, I think he is fooling himself.
I think what he has done is exactly what Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialists have said you have to do.
They have said as follows: there is no meaning in the universe.
It is all accident.
Which anyone who is an atheist must conclude it is all accident.
In fact, it is accident upon accident upon accident.
Stephen Jay Gould, the great paleontologist at Harvard, has just written his latest book, and he is the most widely read on evolution in the world, or at least in the English-speaking world.
And his theory is that even those who believe in Darwin haven't gone far enough.
Most people, he said, believe that the human being is the pinnacle of natural progress.
He said, Baloney, we are pure accident, absolute accident, a fluke of nature.
If you take that seriously, you cannot intellectually hold that life has meaning.
No existentialist did.
Existentialism posits an honest thing.
Existentialists say as follows: there is no God, therefore life has no meaning.
It is all an accident.
But you cannot wake up every day, look in the mirror, and say, Good morning, you coincidence of molecular development.
It's too depressing.
You end up like Woody Allen, the child in the film, telling his father about the sun exploding 90 million years from now.
That's why, like Woody Allen, he's honest.
He confronts, he confronts the questions most irreligious people do not confront.
And so, you are a meaningless coincidence of molecular development.
Molecular development has no meaning.
It is pure chance.
But since you can't emotionally look in the mirror and admit it, what you do is you make up a meaning.
Your friends, whom you claim are not religious but have meaning and happiness, have made up a meaning, which it's a good thing they did.
Let me tell you, they go nuts, but they're not being honest.
Life is pointless if there is no God.
Absolutely pointless.
You can make up one.
I want to help the poor.
I want to be nice to my children.
Sure, you made it up.
But it's just the way you have dealt with the given of meaninglessness.
And I'm going to come to that in the last part of the religious part, so let me go ahead now with what I'm going to talk about and get to that later.
Now, my friends, let me make this point clear to you about religion.
Those of you who are my age, I'm 41, those of you who are my age, around my age and younger, probably, while you have some emotional reaction against,
or might have some emotional reaction against my argument about the necessity for religious meaning in one's life, do not probably do not nearly as severely react against this claim as you would have 20 years ago.
If I would get up in front of an intelligent group of people like yourselves, and you know I'm not patronizing you, you are.
If I were to get up in front of a group such as yourself in the 1960s and early 70s, same people or same type of people, same educational background, I take it most of you are not religiously active, in other words, active in an organized religion, I would have been hissed and booed.
I think out loud, not just silently in your mind, to have made the claim that happiness necessitates religious meaning.
A lot has happened in the last 20 years.
One of them is purely a function, however, of chronology.
And that is, the generation that dominated American thinking, my generation of baby boomers, is now, thank God, 20 years older.
This country became youth maniac because of the preponderance of baby boomers and one other equally important reason.
Adults were so weak that they admitted that the kids were right.
First time in the history of humanity that that happened.
Educators at major institutions such as the one I attended, Columbia University, actually said to the students, you're right.
We don't know what curriculum to teach you, even though we're two and a half times older than you.
You, at 19 years old, 12 years after diapers, you know better.
And so, once the older generation abdicated any notion of having greater wisdom than the kids, kids became the dominant issue.
But most of us, not by any means all, have actually grown up.
And when that happens, questions are asked at 40 that aren't asked by most people at 20.
I asked them at 20, not because I'm wonderful, but because I was raised religious.
And having to confront the secular world meant I had to ask questions very quickly in my life, or either stop being religious or hide from the secular world.
I opted for neither.
I stayed religious but live in the secular world.
Now, at this age, something has happened to our generation.
And that is a certain realization that some of the presuppositions of our youth and of the past may not be all that valid.
For example, a lot of the things that we thought would in fact bring happiness, inner peace, satisfaction, don't quite turn out that way.
Whether it be revolution or a white picket fence dog and two kids, whichever way 60s kids went, left or right or center, whether they became arbitrage maneuverers on Wall Street or what have you, something is gnawing at much of our generation.
And certainly something is gnawing at many who are also somewhat older than us.
The gnawing is that inner angst, something is missing from my equation.
There's a real black hole there, and I don't know how to fill it.
And by the way, people will think of many ways of filling it.
And I will talk about that in a moment.
So, something has arisen which has in fact attracted literally millions upon millions of people of this generation.
It's called New Age thought.
New Age thought is spirituality without religion.
It is one example of it.
What you have here, in theory, is the best of both worlds.
You have the meaning and the transcendence that traditional religion gave you, but none of its demands.
There is nothing more wonderful.
I am God.
God is in me.
I don't have to listen to any God outside of me, which is exactly what Judaism and Christianity teach.
New Age, in that way, is the antithesis of Christianity and Judaism.
Christianity and Judaism teach that God is outside of you and makes moral demands upon you, and you are accountable to this God for your behavior.
New Age, in its various incarnations, whatever the incarnation is that I am aware of, is fundamentally, and they have many variations, but it's within these parameters, that each one of us has God within us.
And that we have to get in touch, to use its lingo, with the God within us.
Now, that is fun.
You know what it is?
It's light, L-I-T-E.
Like you have light beer, you've got light religion.
This generation that did not go into traditional religious movements and has wanted, however, some sort of spiritual, and not just this generation, it includes 50s and 60s as well.
People who were formerly secular who have opted not to remain entirely devoid of the transcendent and not gone into organized religion will have gone into what I call light religion, a religion that gives you some sense of the spiritual, yet none of the moral demands, none of the judgments, if you will, to use the dirtiest word from the 60s,
none of the judgmentalism which traditional religion is filled with.
And I say that as a given, not as an accusation, not as a defense, but as descriptive as you can get.
The Judeo-Christian world is a judgmental world.
That is correct.
Some Jews on the left, some Christians on the left will try to deny it and will become New Age Jews or New Age Christians or just call themselves radical within their own religion, but they are distorting what is at the essence of it.
And the essence is there is a God who says thou shalt and thou shalt not, and you've got to answer, and if you don't answer right, you pay the bill.
That is as Jewish as it is Christian.
Christians may speak of hell and heaven more than Judaism, which will speak of reward and punishment, but what difference does it make?
The idea is basically the same.
There are certain ways to lead a life, and if you don't, there is punishment, or if you were better, consequences at the end.
All right?
That's not appealing to a generation in particular of people raised secular.
When you don't have to answer to anybody, and after all, what was the motto of the 60s?
It's still on some Volvo bumper stickers.
You will never see it on any other car.
It is only on Volvos.
And that is, question authority.
Right?
Well, the ultimate authority is God.
And that is the last thing I want.
An invisible, morally judging God, count me out.
I don't want that.
I like the one inside of me that I can get in touch with in between orgasms.
That is the way to do it.
And so it has a real appeal.
I understand its appeal.
And I believe that in some ways it can, in fact, even be intoxicating enough to help blind you to the real black hole inside of one.
But I am talking, and here I have to ask you to write down the questions, or I'll never get through the material.
Please don't forget it.
So therefore, please understand, I am talking about organized religion.
I don't care if the organized, I am not here to advocate, not in this course.
I am not advocating a specific organized religion.
And I, A, I have my own preference, which is well known to you.
But B, I also believe that within all organized religions as we know them, there are some beautiful aspects.
So it doesn't matter to me as such what the option will be in most cases.
Well, obviously, I think it's healthiest if Jews look into Judaism first, if Baptists look into Baptist faith, Baptist Protestantism first, and if Catholics look into Catholicism first.
If you can't, if after looking seriously, you still wish to reject your origins, I respect you.
But it is very important for your own psychological health.
Why look elsewhere if you can find, in fact, where you came from first?
That's why, by the way, it is very common, for example, if a Christian will come to a rabbi, Reform Conservative or Orthodox, say, you know, I want to convert to Judaism, a common question will be, do you know what you're rejecting?
Why don't you first look into your Catholicism or your Methodist tradition or whatever it will be?
And then, if you find that truly wanting, come back.
Priests I know do the same thing to Jews, for example, who will come to them.
Do you know the Judaism you're rejecting?
Before you turn over 3,200 years of a way of life, it's worth knowing.
Then come back and see me if you know it and still reject it.
So that is my argument for all of you, whatever faith you were raised in, if any.
Some of you truly were raised, I am sure, with virtually nothing or nothing.
So when I say religious, I mean active in an organized religion, and in terms of happiness, which this course is, it's not theology, I will explain why either today or next week.
Why organized religion and not just a spiritual feeling is necessary in terms of happiness.
Because there are certain things, one in particular, that organized religion has that spirituality as such does not have, that is, I believe, critical to human happiness.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Hi, Calvin McCullough.
Think fossil fuels are climate villains that the legacy media and establishment politicos ask us to believe that they are?
Think again.
Did you know that fossil fuels power the systems that keep us safe?
From air conditioning that prevents heat stroke to heating systems that protect against extreme cold.
They also provide low-cost power for our storm warning systems, giving us time to evacuate and save lives.
Forget being a villain.
Fossil fuels have literally been the hero in the prevention of billions of deaths and the extension of life.
In fact, over the past century, deaths from climate-related disasters like extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, storms, wildfires have declined by 98% thanks to fossil-fueled infrastructure and technology.
I'm Calvin McCullough, and I just want you to know the facts.
Don't be fossil-fooled.
Get the full picture at oilfacts.com.
Brought to you by NASDAQ-listed Prairie Operating Group, a high-growth, low-cost producer of safe and responsible American energy.
That's oilfacts.com, oilfacts.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
All right.
Hmm?
The questions?
Oh, no, no, no.
I think I'm at the end of the session.
I'm not at the end of any given one topic.
Okay.
Last week, I spoke to you about the human innate need for religion, and secondly, that religion helps to give, more than any other thing I know of, one of the few indispensable things for happiness, and that's gratitude.
Okay?
You all recall that?
Number three.
This harkens back to the first half of the course.
Those of you who took it will understand this simply, more likely, some of you simply know it on your own who didn't take part one.
But those of you who took the first part know how true this is, certainly.
Another indispensable, and if anyone should know how indispensable it is, it should be contemporary Americans.
Indispensable thing characteristic for happiness is self-control.
I say no one should know better than Americans because this country is drowning in lack of self-control.
They're called addictions.
And now, all of a sudden, anything that you don't control is called an addiction.
The latest is sexaholic, which I find basically a joke.
Saku wouldn't be a sexaholic if he didn't or she didn't control him or herself.
Isn't that a joke?
I mean, I'm sure that there are people who have.
I'm not sure.
I know.
I've been told by psychologists there are people who truly have a very relatively weak libidinous drive.
Okay.
But what about for the norm?
And what about for the many who are beyond the norm?
How can a civilization, which has billions, billions of dollars of pictures of naked women on video and in magazines, argue that people don't have to control themselves in the sexual arena?
How could a country where many women will be raped?
Now, what is the percentage in America?
One in what?
Does anyone know?
One in three.
One in what?
One in three.
One in three.
Is that your definite on that?
Let's say it's one in ten, okay?
Let's say it's one in ten.
How about this, a statistic I do know?
Boys at colleges who were asked, if you were certain you could get away with it, would you force a woman on a date to have sex?
50% plus in every instance from UCLA to Montana answered yes.
That means an ability to rape, a willingness to rape, forget ability, every man has the ability, willingness to rape, then there is no superego, no conscience to stop it.
The only issue being will I get away with it or not.
A society that is so run out of control in that arena.
And of course, what does it bring to the men and the handful of women?
Because this is overwhelmingly a male problem.
Women may love too much, but men screw too much.
Okay?
Let's put it that way.
All right?
Let's be very point-blank on this issue.
The men, they're not one whit happier for being led by their genitalia.
That's what I argue to single men all the time.
Men are profoundly, by nature, profoundly afraid.
Both sexes are afraid of commitment today, but men are even more so and have always been so.
Generally, when both get engaged, he gradually, before the wedding, deteriorates into a slithering, wimpy ball of fear.
He starts dreaming of being hit by trucks, and they're not considered nightmares.
That's what's so interesting.
A major part of the reason is, a man says to himself, I can't sleep with another woman the rest of my life.
That is a major part of it.
That is a major part of it.
It is absolutely animal-like.
It has no brain.
It is located in the midsection of his body.
His brain is there when it comes to that.
Okay?
Now, the only issue is, therefore, can he control it?
If he doesn't, though, he is made miserable.
And that's my argument to the single guy who feels that.
You want to live your life for your genitals?
That's what you want to run your life?
You will die and be able to say you went to bed with X number of women?
Wow.
Isn't that wonderful?
And his brain knows what I'm saying is absolutely right.
But he's being tugged profoundly by hormones that are saying, don't listen to him.
He's selling you a bill of goods.
And certainly don't listen to her.
She has an agenda to entrap you.
That is why it's very, but it is still important to hear it from a man.
Men can make powerful arguments to men about the importance of marriage.
And need to, by the way, it's very important that men know this.
But that's what it is.
It's being led by one's genitals and not one's brains.
That doesn't bring happiness.
It brings pleasure.
But the minute that pleasure is over, is he happier?
Is he deeper?
Or is it yet the next time for pleasure?
I'm not making moral arguments.
I've told you, if these arguments worked and were not ethical, then I would have to, in honesty, argue for them because this is a happiness course, not an ethics course.
But it doesn't work.
Men who are led like this, men who have affairs, oh, having affairs, as we all know, is a great source of happiness for all concerned, right?
Everyone who's having an affair, everyone involved is thrilled.
The third party is just so happy, as we all know, from fatal attraction, for example, we're aware of the positive impact that it has on the outside party.
Let's say, and let us say, it doesn't matter if it's the husband or the wife, the misery of the constant secrecy, not a life, the burden, the burden that is involved, that actually it's one of the few areas of wrongdoing that I have massive sympathy for the wrongdoer.
I think it is so miserable to be having an affair that I actually feel sorry for one who is having it.
I don't say that almost ever about other wrongdoing in life, but in that regard, I have to say, while I obviously have sympathy for the one being wronged, the partner, I have great sympathy for the one involved in it because it is sheer hell.
Everyone concerned, it is sheer hell.
And I'm not making any moral judgment.
I'm telling you, my sympathy even goes out.
I'm not making a moral judgment.
But just in terms of happiness, is that happy?
The ability to conquer your hormones and conquer your drives is the greatest gift of happiness the human can have.
Take it outside of sex into a much more relaxed arena, food.
Who is happier?
He or she who says, I love cheesecake and will eat much of it all day.
Because I love it, I will eat it.
Or one who says, I love cheesecake, but I am going to control myself because I want to look better, I want to whatever, feel better, etc., etc.
Who's happier?
Now, by the way, like everything else, there's an extreme to be reached.
I believe that some people with regard to dieting at our time have definitely gone overboard.
They'll never touch something that they enjoy.
And I don't agree with that either.
I have said all the time, I would not trade in if you told me, Frager, your half-piece of cake a day is unacceptable because as a result of that, with its cholesterol and fat and sugar, you are knocking two years off your life.
I will sign a contract.
Frager is willing to give two years of his life for half a piece of cake a day.
Okay?
Hey, folks, let me tell you, I'm into pleasure.
Okay?
Just in case you didn't know, I like pleasure.
I like fun.
I like all the stuff.
If I didn't like it, I couldn't speak so well on the issue.
Okay?
I'm a closet hedonist.
All right?
Now you know.
Very good.
And for part of my life, I was not in the closet.
All right?
Now, having said all of that, everybody knows that self-control is critical to happiness.
We do not envy the fat person who eats a box of doughnuts.
We do not, oh, are they lucky they have no hang-ups about doughnuts?
That is not what we say.
We say, too bad she doesn't have a hang-up about donuts.
She'd be a lot happier a human being.
Let's give her a donut hang-up.
To use that old 60s term about anybody who exercised self-control, remember?
It was called a hang-up.
People who have no hang-ups about exercising what they wish to do in life end up addicted.
I have hang-ups about cocaine, about drugs, and about whiskey.
We're living in a society that is the world-living proof of the need for people to exercise self-control for happiness.
I always find it so interesting.
You think of an alcoholic, for example.
A person becomes an alcoholic.
And then they spend so much miserable time, painful time, reforming, because they say they can never fully not be, and that's the term that's used.
And finally, they say, you know, I have achieved a level of happiness.
I am sober now for eight years.
And think about the rest of us who have been sober our whole lives.
You know, how much envy they must have in that sense of people who don't have this battle.
If you were able not to get involved to begin with, if you're able to control yourself, you'll be a happier human being.
One final word on this.
And then given the religious tie-in, last term, I showed the whole thesis of the first term, the whole thesis of the first half of the book is the major obstacle to happiness is our own nature.
Our ability to control our nature is the single most important item to becoming happy.
You know, I often, when I meet somebody who is unhappy, I often say, in so-and-so's battle with life, life won.
I see it as a battle.
It is.
In some ways, it's a real battle.
Can you, in the battle with your own nature, can you win?
Because if your nature wins, you're finished.
In this regard, I know of no vehicle that is more capable of having you exercise self-control than religion.
So much so that I will tell you, while I theologically and intellectually am quite remote from some of the more fervent Jesus, we used to call them Jesus freaks in the early 70s.
Remember that term?
And I don't say that at all pejoratively, just giving you an idea of whom we're thinking of.
But people for whom Jesus is everything and it's constantly spoken about, and hallelujah, Jesus, to every question that is asked of them and so on, and praise Jesus.
I'll never forget, I met a man who was working at a hotel in the South.
I think he was the guy who drove the limousine from the airport to the hotel.
And he was telling me, he asked me, what were you doing here?
I said I was speaking.
He said, on what?
I said religion.
So boy, did he have a story to tell me.
And his story was very simple.
He was the lowest.
He was on drugs.
He was on alcohol.
He was constantly womanizing.
The guy was an absolute lost soul.
Couldn't hold a job.
And then he met Jesus.
And now he is responsible, monogamous, no whiskey, no drugs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believed every word the guy said.
Every word.
There is no doubt in my mind he was telling me the truth.
And I'm telling you a story where I have no axe to grind.
I don't believe in Jesus.
But I know that he was right.
The ability of faith, the ability of religion to conquer what nothing else can conquer, my God, that's the secret of AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous is based upon higher power.
They don't say Christianity.
They don't say Judaism.
They say higher power.
But without the higher power, there is no AA.
It is all an investment in the higher power in this universe.
That is what enables them to conquer themselves.
You need help in conquering yourself.
I'll put it to you in another arena.
When I was single all throughout my 20s, I used to very frequently interview, and I don't mean on radio or TV, privately, but it's the best word I could use, married men.
I was intensely curious about marriage and intensely fearful of it as well.
And I would ask them very open questions privately.
Now, I remember one man, he was then in his late 40s, I believe, or early 50s.
I became very friendly with in my 20s.
And I said to him privately once, I said, listen, if you don't want to answer this, please feel free not to.
I'm only asking it for my own ability to understand men, women, and marriage.
Have you been faithful to your wife?
Have you always been faithful?
And he said, Dennis, I have no reason to lie to you, but the truth is I have.
But let me tell you, I've been very, very tempted on a number of occasions to stray.
So I said, well, why haven't you?
He said, you're going to laugh at me.
I said, I promise I won't laugh at you.
I'm dying to know the real reason.
I didn't know.
I don't know.
Maybe he thought his organ would fall off.
I had no idea what he would say.
I was curious.
Why would I laugh at him about?
So he said, I'll tell you exactly why.
He said, look, I'm not all that involved in religion, but I have a very basic belief in the Ten Commandments.
And I really believe I'll be punished if I violate thou shalt not commit adultery.
So whenever it has been tempting, to be perfectly honest, fear of punishment by God has stopped me.
I didn't laugh at him at all.
It made perfect sense to me.
To which, of course, some people will say, oh, God, is that primitive?
People should do it for much more sophisticated reasons.
Maybe they should.
Maybe they shouldn't.
My own view of life is very bottom line.
How do you act?
Why you act it is much less important to me than whether you do.
Ask any woman over 11.
Okay?
I mean, I'm being hyperbolic.
I'm sure there are 20-year-olds who have the maturity level of a child who would not answer this in the way that I expect.
Ideally, a woman would want her husband to be faithful every day of his life solely out of love for her.
There's already laughter in row two, by the way.
Right, that's the ideal, and I'm sure women hold that ideal when they're 15, 16, and dream about men and women living happily ever after.
And of course, all those stories always ended that way, because if you really peeked in two years later, it was much difficult.
It's always easy.
They lived happily ever after because you never had to watch what was really happening.
Ask a woman, would you rather have your husband, yes, would you rather have your husband faithful because every day out of love?
Of course.
Okay.
But what if it's because he believes in the Ten Commandments?
Fine, that's fine with me.
I'll take it.
I'll sign on a dotted line.
Have him.
That is fine by me.
I can't even imagine a man or a woman who would object to that.
Oh, that's the reason?
Forget it.
It's so preposterous.
Of course.
But the issue is that one wants one's spouse to be loyal.
Obviously.
If the reason is religious commitment and fear of a God who monitors behavior, what's the difference?
In fact, I would argue that's a wonderful thing.
Because if I had to rely on my spouse being faithful always solely because she loves me, what's going to happen on some Wednesday in May when she doesn't?
Binding.
It doesn't go by mood.
He doesn't think any given day, well, God doesn't watch this.
He's in Africa today.
He's monitoring Africa.
People don't think that.
But people fall in and out of love daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, decadely.
That's a very good, binding thing on self-control, thinking that I owe it to a religious value system.
You bet.
If you have religious parents who are faithful, believe me, you know and they know the good part of it.
I'm here friends with a Mormon couple.
I am not naive about human nature.
Any of you have ever heard me speak no in any event?
I don't even believe human nature is basically good, so I certainly can't be charged with a rose-colored view of human nature.
I'm pretty certain that this couple is going to be faithful, and it's very hard to say about any couple in the world.
But in the Mormon church, boy, if you're an active member in the Mormon church, you better not commit adultery.
There are monthly or whatever, certainly there are regular procedures whereby you speak about your behavior, and there's a very strong system of belief about punishment on these issues.
That's not bad.
What else is going to work?
Love?
Tell me what non-religious thing can compare on keeping people faithful to each other to a religious commitment.
Because I'm not taking questions now, don't raise your hand, but write down if you can think.
I'm serious, I would love to know if you can imagine any non-religious, emotional, value, whatever you will say.
There is no comparison to a religious binding element.
None.
The breakdown of family life in America, which we hold to be a major source of unhappiness in this country, is directly attributable in part to secularization of the family.
Absolutely.
I'm not arguing that religion is true.
Remember, I said that in my first answer.
I'm arguing that it works.
We're talking about happiness, not theological truth.
I think it's true.
I believe it's true.
That's a separate issue.
That's the class before this one.
By the way, on this binding element, I'll give you one example that is not related to happiness, but will help you in understanding the role that religion plays in people's lives and why I rely on it.
A lot of Jews were very suspicious of the Reverend Jerry Falwell's support of Israel.
They said, ah, the only reason Falwell supports Israel is because of his belief in Christ, and he believes that if the Jews go to Israel and Israel thrives, then Jesus will come again, and the Jews will recognize him, and that's the only reason he supports Israel.
To which I said to Jews publicly for years, dummies.
That is a great reason for him to support Israel.
What's wrong with you?
You don't think clearly, which I do believe emphatically on this issue.
Jews didn't think clearly.
I publicly, in a dialogue with the Reverend Jerry Falwell, in front of 1,000 people at the Scottish Rite Auditorium here in Los Angeles, made a deal.
I said, Reverend Falwell, I mean this with no tongue-in-cheek.
Well, a little tongue-in-cheek, but I mean it absolutely seriously.
Will you make the following deal with me?
You will support the Jewish people on Israel until Jesus comes again.
And we will recognize him when he does.
He liked the deal, and I liked the deal.
Everybody gained.
It was absolutely perfect.
I have an entire fundamentalist Christian community support till Jesus comes again.
That is fantastic.
I can't think of a better deal.
That is why Jerry Falwell said on national television in 1973, while a lot of people were wavering in the secular political world on support for Israel.
He was saying that was during the Arab oil embargo.
I heard him say this to his church, not to a Jewish group.
I would sooner be forced and happily ride a bicycle and give up my car than give into the Arab oil embargo.
And it was solely out of religious faith in the divine element of the Jews in Israel and whatever Christological element would accompany that.
When people have religious values, they're pretty strong.
If you religiously believe that you have to suppress certain of your urges, that's pretty strong.
And it helps.
However, my friends, like every good thing in life, do you hear me?
Every good thing.
It can be warped and used for evil.
There is nothing in life, nothing, that can only be used for good.
Nothing, not love itself.
As many of you know, by parents who smothered you with love.
There is nothing in life, nothing, just like a knife.
A knife could be used as a scalpel to take out a tumor, and it could be used to butcher a human being.
So too religion.
That's why a lot of you are suspicious of religion.
You're right to be suspicious of religion.
But to be suspicious of it doesn't mean it doesn't work.
It works.
It's got to be used right.
You can also suppress every urge.
Some religious people are dead.
Because all they have is a life of suppression.
You masturbate, you go to hell.
There's an example.
That was a terrible doctrine.
Any religious person who would have made up such a nonsense idea, masturbate, you go to hell.
It's ridiculous.
Who'd you kill?
Sperm?
Wanted for the death of two million sperm.
Mass murderer, Abe Rosenberg.
It's an idiocy.
Idiocy.
And women don't even kill sperm.
I mean, what can a woman's masturbation?
I can't even think of what went wrong on that.
Of course it could be misused.
It could be used to control children by parents.
Right?
Don't, you know.
Whatever.
Or a million don'ts.
It's got to be used right.
It's a very powerful weapon.
But when used right, there is nothing that helps you control yourself as well.
I'll give you a few little things and then move on.
I contend to you that most Americans are addicted to television.
And I use my words very carefully.
Addicted means addicted.
And I told you, I think I've told you, my proof.
Most Americans could not stop for a month.
That's all.
That's how you prove you're addicted to cigarettes, how you prove you're addicted to Coke, right?
Same thing.
And by the way, it's so easy to test yourself to see if you're addicted because you can use a VCR to record what you missed.
Let's say after the month you say, see, I missed a month, big deal, no skin off my back.
Now I'd like to resume and see all the wonderful weather reports that I missed over the course of the month.
Because people will insist on watching things like weather reports.
So you have a whole 30 days of weather or whatever you will have videotaped or baseball games or whatever.
Different religions have different traditions, but I will tell you one from my own life.
In our home, Friday night sunset, when the Sabbath starts, we do not use radio, television, telephone.
It is so wonderful a blessing in our home.
It is one of the few things in life that has only positive benefits.
First of all, it's quiet.
A home with children that is quiet is immediately either suspect, being abused, perhaps, or wonderful.
Our kids are not being abused.
It's wonderful.
It has another beautiful effect.
Wives don't become football or baseball or basketball widows.
At least 24 hours a week, they actually have their husband return to them.
He cannot cop out into baseball or football.
The story I always tell, because this is the way I was raised, this is the way I'm raising my son.
Friday night, two years ago, when the Dodgers were in the pennant race, they were playing a Friday night game in New York against the New York Mets.
Night games are televised here early.
Obviously, we're three hours behind the East Coast.
So, at 4:30, we could actually, before the Sabbath begins, watch a Dodger night game.
A reason in and of itself for observing Jews to live on the West Coast.
And here it was, it was about the eighth inning, and it was about 7:30, just as the Sabbath was about to begin.
Thai game, and my son and I are riveted, and my wife announces the Sabbath is beginning.
She's lighting candles.
I didn't want to turn that TV off.
That my son didn't, I don't even have to tell you.
I didn't want to.
I'm a baseball fan.
It was exciting.
Nothing in the world, literally, earthquake, death, okay?
Outside of earthquakes or imminent death, the only thing that would have taken, not dinner, if my wife would have yelled up, it's dinner, said, okay, honey, it's the eighth inning.
It's the eighth inning, right?
There's not that question.
That's what I would have yelled.
The only thing in the world that would have gotten my son and me to shut the TV without screaming, it's the eighth inning, is religion.
Nothing else in the world would have brought us downstairs for dinner, for time with the family.
It's powerful stuff.
It works in every arena where we observe the Jewish laws of the Jewish dietary laws, kashrut.
Let me tell you something.
It is a very wonderful training in one's life to know that you can't have a lot of the things you want every day.
It's good.
It's been very good in my life because I do not innately have much self-control.
But the ability to say, I would love to have a hamburger, but once again, we'll have a tuna sandwich for the 8 millionth time is a cultivated ability.
It's rough.
It's also good.
Already at the age of three, my son, we eat in any restaurant, but we'd only eat food that is kosher, like tuna, for example.
Wouldn't eat the meat out.
And so he would be walking by, it was a riot.
He was walking in a restaurant.
He would stop by each person.
Is that kosher?
I remember one woman was having a BLT.
Is that kosher?
And I said, don't ask those things.
You don't ask.
Ask me.
Ask me, David, don't ask them.
But the ability at an early age to immediately say, hey, that looks good, but I can't have it.
And it's not because daddy said so.
It's a sense of God said so, or the religion said so.
Or my Mormon friends with tea, coffee, and smoking.
Or Catholic friends with their disciplines.
Or whatever it might be.
These are very, very powerful things in one's life.
They add a sense of character, of fortitude.
You know what else?
You like yourself more.
And boy, is this society aware of how important self-image and self-liking is.
Everybody talks about self-love.
I don't even understand the concept.
I understand self-like.
I understand self-image, self-respect.
I don't know what self-love.
Well, you're Dennis, Dennis.
I must admit, I'm sure some of you are more psychoanalytically aware than I think I am probably flipped out, sick man.
I just don't understand it.
Love is a very complex idea.
I understand liking me.
Sometimes I like me, sometimes I don't.
Sometimes I respect me, sometimes I don't.
But these are things, by the way, religious disciplines, when, after all, nobody would know.
Right?
Who would know?
Who would have known if my friend had slept with a woman on one of his business trips whom he'll never see again in his life?
Doesn't know his name, he doesn't know her name, and he's not running for office, okay?
So there were no photographers around.
Okay?
Who would have known?
As Woody Allen puts it, in crimes and misdemeanors, God has eyes.
That's the difference.
These are very good things in life.
It is a healthier life.
I hope you will understand it is not a dead life.
I can't stand religious deadbeats, but I must tell you, for every religious deadbeat, there is a secular deadbeat.
Okay?
For every hung-up religious person, there is at least one hung-up non-religious person.
Religion doesn't guarantee health and happiness.
I believe it's indispensable to it.
That's the difference.
So the third thing that it gives that is indispensable to happiness is self-control.
Now, number four, which is why you will understand, or how I will explain, why religion as opposed to spirituality as such is necessary.
The word here is community.
I have read time and time again that the greatest affliction in America is loneliness.
Loneliness.
It's a horrible thing, loneliness.
Horrible.
There is no guaranteed answer to loneliness.
But the single best answer I know is religion.
Because organized religion gives you people.
It gives you a community.
If there's one thing that we associate, even if we don't like them with religious people, it's having comrades.
It's having others.
Where's the first place you'd say to somebody, let's say, if a A single calls my program.
They say, Dennis, I don't know where to meet anybody.
My first question is: are you religious?
If you are, have you tried a church group, synagogue group?
And the more religious the community, the more there is a community.
Now, let me tell you at the very outset of this, I know as well as anyone, probably better than almost anyone here, because I've been so involved in religious life that it is a double-edged sword.
Community comes with a lot of prices.
They're nudniks, busybodies.
They know exactly when you last defecated, okay?
Community, the more there is community, the more they know exactly, oh, when did he come home last night?
Who was he with?
When did he go?
Why did he do?
And this can drive you crazy.
So, what you try to do, at least I try, is have moderation.
But I do know, I'll put it to you this way: I'll put it very, very honestly and candidly from my own life: every Sabbath we have guests over, or we go to someone's home.
I'd say it's a ratio of 80-20, we having over versus we going to someone else's, but that is about every, there isn't an exception, I think, out of the 52 of the year.
In fact, we had it cut down because we wanted more time for family Friday nights, and now we have it only Saturday afternoons, and only on rare occasions, even Friday nights as well.
I have made the point so frequently to my wife, and we have, and she's realized this as the family has.
Most of the people that we have over on the Sabbath, we would never associate with if it weren't for religion and the Sabbath.
First of all, during the week, people are too busy.
How often do you have guests over Wednesday night?
It's very rare.
People don't have that.
Maybe some people will pop by and maybe they'll watch TV with you, but even that has become uncommon for most people.
Most people are alone as singles or alone as couples.
And you can be a very lonely couple, just as you can be a lonely single, which couples know.
If it were not for the Sabbath and this tradition, 80% of the people that we have over, we never get to see.
And do you know what the interesting thing is?
And this is what is so important here: it doesn't matter whether we're close to these people.
See, if I would invite people over, specially, it would have to be people I really want to be with.
That's the reason for it.
I've got to be with these people.
I'm so close.
How many people are you so close with in life?
Let's be honest.
And how many of them live within 100 miles of you?
In general, or very frequently, closeness is in inverse proportion to proximity.
All right?
Oh, I'm very close to my brother.
He lives in Madagascar.
But we're very, we love each other deeply.
Or some friend, oh, we only see each other once a year, but it's like old times.
As soon as we're together, it's like we never missed each other, right?
I mean, that's wonderful, and I believe you have it, but it's also once a year.
We're not that close to many people.
That's the human situation.
But you don't have to be super close to people in order to enjoy companionship.
That's the point.
I enjoy having these couples and their kids or these singles over, even if we're not close at all, and I know damn well I'd never see them if it weren't for Shabbos, for the Shabbat, for the Sabbath.
That's the only reason because it's the Jewish tradition.
You have people over on a Shabbat afternoon.
That's it.
That's the reason they're over, not because we love them.
And they know it, and we know it.
I mean, people don't think this through, and we're not sitting there thinking, oh, I don't want to be here, but it's Shabbat, so I'll be there.
Oh, the Prager Z, yeah.
All right, it's not the issue.
And do you know what has never gone sour?
Isn't that amazing?
Do you know how many people have been over and it has never been bad?
Because we're not looking.
I'm not looking.
Oh, these are our next close friends.
No!
These are people to have a nice Shabbat meal with and let our kids have kids to play with.
And end of issue.
We have something, though, already.
It's called the Sabbath.
That's what we can share together.
So my question to you, my friends, is: tell me one secular thing in the world that unites people like religion does: stamp clubs, rotary clubs, politics.
Invite fellow Democrats over every Saturday afternoon.
Wouldn't that be fun?
We don't have much in common, but we're both Democrats.
And what are you going to talk about?
The next congressional race?
By the way, I am convinced that for some people, politics is like a religion.
It's their passion, it's their lifeblood, that's what they live for.
That's right.
I told you, though, that there are people who have substitute religions.
There is no secular equivalent.
And I told you that there is a bad.
I told you, I admit it.
It's a double-edged sword.
Because the more you're involved in a community, the more they know your business.
But it is a price to a certain extent, only a certain extent, but to a certain extent I'm willing to pay for the price of also having people over when there's grief, when there's bereavement.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Right?
In Jewish life, you've heard of sitting Shiva, the seven days of mourning after an immediate relative has died, and for seven days, people unannounced just show up at your door.
The community announces where you're sitting, Shiva, and people show up for seven days.
It's very brilliant.
It works incredibly well.
I've been so depressed when I have been with people who have lost a loved one, who are not religious.
I go back home, there was a meal, and then they were all alone, and that was it.
Persons died, goodbye.
We'll call you, Harry.
We'll check on you.
Wife just died, and they'll check on Harry the next day.
People will be over for seven days in a community.
I'll give you an example on the happy side.
I have to use my own religion only because it's the one I know best.
In Judaism, traditionally, you do not take a honeymoon, at least for a week.
Because for seven days, you stay within the community and have celebrations at people's homes each night of the week.
They're called Sheva Brachot.
A dear couple friend of ours just got married from New York, but they're originally from L.A., and we made one of them the night after the wedding.
We made one of those evenings.
The idea, by the way, I've always been anti-honeymoon.
Any of you who have taken part one of the course know that it's a classic example of expectations causing misery.
I mean, at best, a honeymoon can only be what you expect it to be.
At worst, which is much more likely, it will fail.
Because how could anything not fail when it's expected to be so wonderful?
Also, how unnatural it is they're finally married and then they leave their world.
Let us just love each other up the night after the wedding and for two weeks in the Bahamas.
It sounds right on paper.
Travel agents love the idea, but it does horrible things to most couples.
most people I know of have to overcome their honeymoon.
There the argument is leave the community, leave everybody you know and love leave them.
Be alone with this human that there's a good chance you never lived with before.
I mean, still, there are some people who marry who haven't lived together and now have a good time instead of gradually entering into a community that will celebrate with you.
It's a very different way of looking at life, and various religious traditions have their ways of doing this.
People need people to be happy.
Religion supplies people.
People need people, religion gives people.
Nothing else gives people like religion.
What is it going to be?
What are you going to share with others?
Actors will share acting with fellow actors.
Lawyers will enjoy having lunch with fellow lawyers.
They usually hate each other.
And in any event, there is very frequently rivalry.
And in any event, if there isn't rivalry, what's so deep about sharing law discussions or acting or movies?
What is it that people will have together?
That's why it's so sad to me, those singles ads.
Not singles ads as a generic idea.
They're not sad at all.
I'm a big believer in them.
I think all singles should put in ads.
I'm a big believer in it.
What saddens me is on what grounds people are supposed to meet.
I love boating, Chinese food, and artillery practice.
I mean, it is amazing to me.
Like, oh, then we're a match made in heaven.
I also like that.
I mean, what the hell does that mean?
In this regard, to go to the other extreme, what is the word that is most frequently used to describe these men, and they're all men, who are mass murderers?
Say it out loud.
Loners.
Every time you read a description of one of these mass murderers, it's amazing to me.
I see the word loner.
Gee, he was quiet.
We really didn't know much about the guy.
He went, did his job, but nobody really ever knew him that well.
It is not good to be alone.
It is, incidentally, the first statement God makes about the human being.
It is not good for the human being to be alone.
It isn't.
An older woman called me on my show once and gave me a very hard time.
Actually, she didn't call me.
She wrote me a letter.
She said, Dennis, you're sanctimonious about television.
For widows like me, older widows, that is our companion.
Thank God for television.
What are you telling everybody not to watch television for?
What a sad letter.
The letter wasn't an argument against my argument.
The letter was a description of something terrible.
An electric box was her companion.
It shouldn't be.
That's not right.
People should be her companion.
And that, as I say, outside of a religious community, which can be smothering, I admit it, but nothing comes with no price.
Nothing.
Remember that?
That was in the second part.
Everything has a price, including religious community.
But I'd rather have that price with a community than none, no community, and just be a man alone against the world.
Do my job, do my work, come back home, stay alone, or just be alone as a couple.
And that's it.
Related to this is number five.
Religion gives another critical...
I'm not sure if it's indispensable.
I think it is, but I'm not certain.
Quality for happiness, and that is roots.
In a discussion with a teenage girl the other week, I was making an argument against, I think it was on the air, but I don't recall exactly, I was making an argument against t-shirts that have obscenities on them.
My argument was, forgetting the concept of the holy and religion and anything like that, that it offends certain people.
And just like you could not walk around naked, even though you're not hurting anybody, because it would be offensive to certain people, so too you can't wear a shirt that has a four-letter word on it.
And I wasn't getting very far because I was arguing that this girl would have to have a commitment to outsiders.
The idea that she has an obligation, that I have an obligation that we all do to the community at large is increasingly foreign to young people in our society.
I'm not here to tell you this generation is the worst that ever grew up, they stink.
Okay, that is not my argument.
But I do think one thing is gradually happening in America.
A sense of community is increasingly dying.
I grew up with one because of my religious roots.
My wife grew up with one because she was raised in a small town in Kansas.
Different people had different things.
A lot of my generation were already beginning to lose roots.
And it's a very interesting thing to see and a very terrible one.
People sense less and less a sense of rootedness in any community.
Americans increasingly, ever more, even more than in the past, are all individuals.
We are all individuals.
That's wonderful to be an individual.
Remember, one of the things I said for happiness is march to the beat of your own drummer in many ways.
But there is still a sense of obligation to a community.
This girl could not fathom what I was talking about.
She has no community.
There are no, there is none.
The typical kid in Beverly Hills High, what community does he or she have?
There is no community.
They have friends, but there's no community.
The world outside is a bunch of individuals.
Part of the reason is America is truly the most diversified, heterogeneous society on earth.
It's true.
Go up Western Avenue.
You might as well be in Seoul, Korea.
I think there's more English in Seoul than there is on Western Avenue.
This is a remarkable society.
That is a great thing in America.
I am very pro-immigration on purely selfish American grounds, quite aside from moral grounds.
But you see, those who believe in pluralism, as I do, have to understand what pluralism means.
It means plural communities.
It doesn't mean no individual is related to anything else.
In this regard, Jews have done a very bad job, in particular, in raising their children to be non-Jewish Americans from a very early age.
A very deep belief in universalism has been distorted into believing that the opposite of universalism is rootedness.
So it is almost as if there has been a conscientious effort on the part of American Jews to deprive their children of roots.
In this regard, I haven't recommended a book.
I will recommend one.
It is written by Paul Cowan, C-O-W-A-N.
He wrote An Orphan in History.
Paul Cowan was a leftist writer for the Village Voice in New York.
He was raised by a leftist father who was a Jew who taught him nothing about his Jewish roots.
He married a non-Jewish woman.
Later in life, poor guy, terribly tragically, he died of leukemia a few years ago and in his 40s.
It's a terrible tragedy.
But before he died, he wrote this book about his being an orphan in history.
It's a perfect title.
You know how many Americans are orphans in history?
I wouldn't be surprised if many of you are, whether you are Jewish or not.
You have no history.
You have no roots.
You have no communal ties.
If I feel for you, that's the only word I could use, and you know I don't mean this, God forbid, patronizingly or condescendingly.
Knowing the joy of community in roots, I know what you're missing.
You may not know.
But for those of us who have it, and for those of us who see the difference in having it and not having it, it is a major, major area of problem in America.
It's part of the reason that it is difficult to raise kids today.
They have no sense of obligation to anybody.
This girl said, why do I owe anybody to whom I don't know anything?
It was an honest, open question.
The beauty of community is you owe to people you don't know something.
We have people over for Saturday afternoon that we don't know.
That's the beauty of it, but they're part of the community.
This is very deeply needed.
It is not good for our children.
They may grow up to be brilliant on Wall Street, brilliant lawyers, brilliant doctors, but they are they I have an image of so many of my peers of just drifting aimlessly in the world.
They're rooted nowhere.
They have no ties.
Family alone isn't good because where is your family tied to?
And the family needs these ties as well.
This has been the greatest single problem of the last generation of Jews that was raised.
Because even if their parents were irreligious, they felt ethnic ties.
They felt communal ties to the Jewish community.
The Catholics who were eating meat on Friday still had some sense to their ethnic community.
But gradually all that is broken, and what you have is individual, individual, individual, individual, unrooted, unrooted, unrooted.
And that is a terrible price.
Happiness needs people.
Happiness needs not to be an orphan in history.
And here, too, I know of nothing that gives you roots, quite like this does, quite like religion.
What else is going to give it to you?
Your alumni association?
People try to do that.
People try to make associations of everything else.
Anything possible, people know they need it badly, and they do.
I'm not against alumni associations, but it doesn't compare to the roots and the people.
All right.
I'll take two, three questions if anybody has.
No, buddy, yes?
Okay.
I'm sorry, what would what?
What would an ad that I would take out look like in a singles thing?
That's a great question.
I actually thought of that.
If I had been single longer in between marriages, I would have taken out an ad.
My only problem was I didn't want to make it, you know, I could have said, radio talk show host who believes in ethical monotheism, looking for like-minded women.
Now, obviously, it would have, you know, I had to think of things.
I would have emphasized, well, you're asking a very personal question now that I think of it.
I would not have put in the hobbies, except maybe classical music.
But I would not have, I would have stressed, I would have had to walk a very fine line between sounding like a dud, because I care about values, and on the other hand, denying what is the essence of my life, certain very deeply held values.
I also would have written that I would not have, it did not matter to me whatsoever whether the woman was professionally successful or if she made a nickel or $10 million.
That would have been a very emphatic part of what I would have written.
And I suggested that to a single friend of mine in New York who did take out such an ad in New York magazine.
He was deluged with responses of women so glad that finally a guy actually said that.
It did not matter to them in that regard.
He just wanted a good, loving woman.
So all these good, loving women wrote in, none of whom were unemployed.
It was very successful.
Yes, can I give you a one or two word interpretation of the word culture?
Oh, kosher.
Oh.
Yes.
Kosher, well, good.
You said interpretation, not translation.
The translation is, the best translation is fit or proper.
Kosher in terms of Jewish food, and it only applies to food.
And it doesn't apply to style.
There's no such thing as kosher style.
Kosher, that is one of the great crackups.
You know, it's like kosher style, bacon, lettuce, and tomato on a bagel.
Kosher means two things.
Certain types of animals are permitted, and certain are not.
And secondly, those that are permitted have to be killed in a certain way that ensures that they're not wounded.
If an animal is wounded, it is not kosher because it suffered in the attempt to kill it.
That's why hunting is banned in Judaism, both for sport and for food.
And as far as the animals are concerned, they have to have split hooves and chew their cud if they are land animals.
They have to have fins and scales if they are fish.
And they have to not be birds of prey if they are birds.
The reason for that is very complex, but it basically has to do with something that you will find very interesting.
Every single kosher animal, kosher land animal, is vegetarian.
And every single carnivorous land animal is not kosher.
Judaism is profoundly interested in separating life and death.
Anything that smacks of death must be separated from that which smacks of life.
That's why milk and meat cannot be eaten together.
Milk is life and meat is death.
That is why you can have fish with milk.
Fish don't produce milk, therefore milk.
And the birds, by definition, birds of prey, are the killer birds.
Judaism constantly, the essence of Judaism is separation.
The word for holy in Hebrew means separate.
And that's next term, I'm giving a course, eight sessions on the case for Judaism.
So you're invited to take it.
Let me just take, boy, we are.
Who wants to ask publicly, because I'll happily take privately, who is, well, that's not fair because I'm asking some of you to be more noble, and I should choose the noble ones.
Let me take one more.
I saw her and then the others come up here.
Yes.
Yeah.
How do you know the tuna didn't suffer?
Right.
When I order a tuna fish sandwich in a restaurant, how do I know the tuna didn't suffer?
The answer to that is I raise fish.
Fish are so stupid that to even speak of their suffering is to stretch the term beyond limits that I'm prepared to.
I'll see you next week, everybody.
Thank you.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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