eProceeding...

Copyright © Larry Pfeffer, Jerusalem 2004

Lately it is fashionable to talk about "Tikun Olam": a Hebrew phrase meaning "Fixing the World". Attempts to fix and improve the world are laudable and are often fueled by idealism. This note talks about the immense dangers in Tikun Olam, if idealism is not moderated by wisdom and some other forces.

There are many examples of significant attempts at Tikun Olam which brought immense suffering to mankind. Perhaps the two best historical examples are two great religions, one God based and the other secular, Christianity and Communism and to some extent also the French Revolution.

Christianity was based on noble ideas and at least in principle teaches love toward fellow men, thus its theology tries to transform the world into a kinder place. For a long time the reality of Christianity was dramatically different than its theology. The Crusades, Inquisition, witch trials, religious wars, persecution of the "heretics" and extreme antisemitism emanating from Christianity poisoned the various Christian churches and led to immense suffering for two millennia.

Communism held out a dream of Heaven on Earth, or in secular terms a Utopia. The road from noble sounding ideals to the torture chambers, Gulags and the graves of Communism’s estimated 100 millions victims was very short. Almost immediately after launch of the Bolshevik Revolution what emerged was Hell on Earth, or an anti-Utopia.

Admittedly the religious rituals of Communism were quite different than two other massive twentieth century secular religions: National Socialism (Nazism) and Fascism. The Communist ritual was preaching peace, democracy, equality and other terms with humanistic connotations, but these terms were cynical double talk. The common hymn of Socialism and Communism, the Internacionale, spoke of a last great war which will globalize the world. The key phrase of Khrushev’s shoe banging talk at the UN was "We will bury you". The hate talk against the "Imperialists", "Zionists" and "Titoists" was intense – as was the incitement against the "class enemies" and "kulaks". As the major European countries were divesting their colonies, the USSR was becoming the major new imperialist in the post-World War Two era and colonized much of Eastern and Central Europe. Whereas the colonies were called "People’s Democracies", they were, in fact, Stalinist dictatorships ruled by the heavy iron hand of one party.

There are many strong parallels between the Catholic Church in its darker past and the Soviet system. Both were intensely "religious" in their own ways. Both had a "Vatican", "Inquisitions", "Crusades" and practiced uncompromising torture and murder of "heretics" and the "unbelievers". Both worshipped a God in shape of man and both had a New Testament. Pilgrimage to the embalmed Lenin and Stalin next to the Kremlin was a strange added religious ritual and icon.

The often glorified French Revolution too commenced with noble ideals: "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" – truly laudable aspirations of a secular Tikun Olam endeavor. Yet, it wasn’t long before the public executions by the guillotine started, to the cheering of the mobs. As the momentum of the revolution progressed the sacred altar of the revolution, the guillotine, demanded more and more sacrifices and eventually claimed the lives of the revolution’s high priests …

What went wrong with the above attempts at Tikun Olam and why did they bring Heresz Olam (Hebrew for Destruction of the World)? What could have done to prevent the above and similar disasters?

There is a strong contrast between the dynamics of many "ism" driven political movements which seek to impose their "vision" on others and the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals, which aim to cure or moderate disease.

Social revolutions are driven by fervor, are uncompromising and their energized adherents feel justified to imprison, torture and murder anyone they perceive to be their ideological opponent or who are in the way of "The Big Idea". The revolutionary never has doubts and is fully certain that her or his vision is correct and that competing views are wrong and must be displaced, by the sword if necessary. For the revolutionary the envisioned changes can’t wait until some undefined future time, but must take place immediately, "NOW!"

Someone with a new concept for a therapeutic drug can’t unleash the "great vision" on humanity the moment a new concoction has been brewed in a makeshift laboratory. "EUREKA" does not immediately lead to prescriptions and marketing. In the world of pharmaceuticals there are no possessed concocters jumping out of their laboratory with huge jars of pills in their hands and followed by assistants forcibly popping a pill in the mouth of everyone they encounter, by force if necessary, in order to "save them". In contrast revolutionary concocters, and their brainwashed and trance possessed foot soldiers feel that if the revolution’s pill is not swallowed by the "people" then it is "Tikun Olam" to torture and murder those who resist and even those who don’t jump on the bandwagon.

At least in the USA the developmental, testing and marketing dynamics of a new drug is rigidly regulated by the FDA. It is not unusual that 12-15 years pass from the birth of an idea for the new drug or its first "concoction" until it can be marketed. Both the positive and negative effects on the proposed drug need to be carefully tested in laboratory and clinical testing trials with independent reviews. Even with the caution imposed by this discipline occasionally unexpected negative results are discovered – such as the Tylenol induced side-effects in the 1960-s. Such failures of the development cycle require immediate alerts to physicians and the public, recalls and taking the drug back to the labs - into the regulated development and test cycle.

The above caution is, of course, missing from the Revolutionary’s Handbook for Bringing Instant Heaven on Earth. A new ideological "drug" for "curing" a perceived social disease is most likely much more "half-baked" than a new concept for a medical drug. The short, mid and long term positive and negative affects are probably even less known, yet the new ism infected revolutionary feels fully justified imposing the new "drug" on everyone under her/his power.

It is striking that whereas therapeutic drugs are rather narrowly focused, revolutionary Big Idea concoctions claim to be universal cure-alls – an idea pill which will solve all problems of society. It is interesting to speculate how the FDA would test a new drug making similar claims in medicine.

It is tempting to feel that "love" can prevent Tikun Olam turning into Heresz Olam. That this is not sufficient can be seen from Christianity’s dark past. Surely Christian theology talks a lot about love, in fact some theologians can say that the ultimate love of the Inquisitor was torturing and killing its "heretic" victims or the Jewish and Moslem "non-believers". After all, from a theological perspective this purifying process can be presented very positively as torture and murder ultimately saving the victims’ souls and thus they will not suffer eternally in after-life. If life in the physical world is brief and life of the soul is eternal, the above argument is for some difficult to resist. The torture or immense pain of a victim burned at the stake is but a microsecond in the soul’s eternal cosmic time. Whereas the murderous excesses of the Church during the Crusades, Inquisition and other periods can be presenting as "love" and in a sense Tikun Olam: fixing the inner world of the straying people, in reality it is Heresz Olam: the destruction of huge number of lives, each a world. Apparently "love" is not a simple concept and surely needs to be qualified.

Much can be learned about Tikun Olam from the Torah. In its opening passages someone with a powerful idea: the creation of our world, sets about implementing the vision in six days, and then resting – not because the world is "finished", but because it has "critical mass", all the ingredients to sustain itself, including man who can fix and extend the world. Hence the idea of Tikun Olam.

In the biblical view the Creator is all knowing and all powerful. Why would he take six "days" to create the world? Why not just do it all at once – in one inspired moment or nano-moment? Why create each day some new architectural components of the world, then "see that it was good", wait until the next "day" and then resume the creative process? The Jewish belief is that nothing, not even a word or letter is superficial in the Torah. If the Torah goes into such detail about the way the world was created it is believed to be a lesson to us. Even with superficial reading the Biblical passages teach to create by stages, wait between each stage to be sure "it is good" and only then proceed to the next stage.

The Midrash says that prior to creating our world over nine hundred other worlds were created and destroyed – each time with water as in Flood story. The immediate questions which arise are "Why?" "What do we learn from this?" Perhaps the lesson is that prior to creating anything highly complex and of potentially great significance extensive prototyping is required.

One tangible example is what is called in software engineering "stepwise refinement". This is a software construction methodology which advocates building an initial, no frills prototype program, experimenting with it and demonstrating it for feedback, then going back to the drawing board and refining the prior model. Gradually the program is "refined" and a final, crystallized system emerges. A more direct meaning of this methodology is realization that some things we create or modify are very complex and that it is not possible to fully understand all aspects of such systems. An even simpler paraphrase is that in new encounters with complexity, in realms where we lack sufficient experience, we really don’t know what we are doing and are advised to take one step at a time as opposed to one monumental leap. An initial small scale model of an envisioned new program or system is perhaps can still be comprehended; it is still in a controlled laboratory setting and allows the constructors to rapidly learn what is required to refine and expand what was created to its next evolutionary phase. At each stage the changes are gradual and the stage-by-stage construction technique allows the constructors to rapidly learn and develop an increasingly higher skill set in the new problem domain. At least in software, and probably any complex engineering endeavor, whatever is constructed through a tedious and lengthy development cycle is extensively tested before released for actual use.

Even with the Creator’s omnipotence and step-by-step creation methodology one of the early episodes in the Torah is the story of the Flood. It is indeed very puzzling that despite all the care a world was created which has developed so badly that much of it, its critical parts: most people, animals and plants had to be destroyed – once again by water as with over nine hundred prior worlds. Without delving into the theology of how this makes sense, it can be observed that if the omnipotent Creator’s plans for a world created with such care developed unexpected major problems, how much more so our Tikun Olam endeavors, with our significantly more meager envisioning and creative powers and in realms where we immediately and without restraint move from idea to full-scale implementation and roll out - without any care or checks and balances.

There are a number of examples in the Torah of man arguing with the Creator for the sake of justice and mercy. If even the most omnipotent imaginable force and intellect tolerates and in fact welcomes and demands dialogue and being corrected when perhaps "wrong", how much more so us, humans? One of the subtle lessons of man arguing or pleading with the Creator as recounted by the Torah is the great value of "Safeq" (Hebrew for "Doubt"). The fact that the Creator exhibits Safeq and when necessary "changes his mind" teaches that doubt is not a sign of weakness, but is one of the ultimate signs of strength. In fact, true belief can only be based on life long questioning and doubt. This doesn’t refer to the destructive questioning of a rebel or a provocateur, or to the debilitating doubt of an indecisive person. The above refers to the "Doubter-Believer", the egoless questioning and doubt of individuals with strong minds, a healthy bio-diversity of concepts and the wisdom to know that the realm of concepts and social interventions in immensely complex and some of the main safeguards are questioning and doubt – directed inward and also outward toward their fellow ism-ists.

Perhaps it lack of occasional healthy episodes of doubt which explain how so many idealists were fervent religious believers and practitioners of Communism even when its bloody reality was known. When asked how they can support such an evil force destroying so many lives apparently many believers answered "When you chop down a tree there are wood chips" and "When you make an omelet you have to break the shell". To the ism-blinded, undoubting, fervent believer the tears and blood of many tens of millions of Communism’s victims was dispensable wood shavings and egg shells and inevitable sacrifices on the ism’s bloody altar. It is deeply disturbing that idealism and humanism was attributed to such believers and that so many of them believed that they are supporting a grand Tikun Olam endeavor, as opposed to a tragic Heresz Olam.

One of the greatest Jewish scholars of the twentieth century, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the "Rav", wrote about "creation" in his book "Halakhic Man". He wrote that it is not accidental that the Torah starts with a narrative of Creation. According to the Rav this is a powerful lesson that we too, creatures created in God’s image (in Hebrew: Be Tzelem Elokim) must create, even create worlds, possibly internal and external to ourselves. The Rav repeats this concept in various ways in his book. The question remains "How?" How do we create worlds and fix our world without inadvertently destroying all or part of the world? What is the "right way" to fix and create? There are probably no easy answers to this. Perhaps life is destined to be a journey on a dangerous precipice, where one has no choice but proceed, but with the "right" mix of calculated risk taking and caution. Perhaps this inevitable tension is an inevitable part of a person’s and society’s existence.

One excellent example was provided by Dr. Laszlo Belady, then a researcher at IBM’s Yorktown Heights Laboratory. He wrote an article in the late 1960-s on the growth dynamics of complex systems, specifically the even then complex programs running IBM mainframe computers: operating systems. He noted much regularity in the evolutionary dynamics of these systems. There were patterns in the growth of discovered errors in various program releases and it seemed that each system change increased the number of errors. Thus as the system had to respond to the constant need to increase its capabilities and as discovered errors were fixed the system was, in effect, decaying. After a certain stage there were such a large number of discovered errors that simply trying to fix them was impractical and the system complexity had to be reduced by splitting the program into two different products, which reduced the error rate for a while.

The decay rate was measured over a long period of time and was thus independent of the identity of managers, designers and programmers – and seemed to indicate that systems above a certain level of complexity have built in and regular decay characteristics. Fixing such inherently decay prone worlds is non-trivial, and the probability is high that over the long term the aggregate patchwork increases decay.

The "world" is significantly more complex than a 1960-s version computer operating system, thus the certainty is greater that "patches" will cause unexpected problems and "decay". It would seem that the potential decay effect is much greater for revolutionary patches, which attempt to apply a magic "fix" to a large number of perceived social ills.

Yet there is hope in large scale "fixing" if it is based on a paradigm change. As complex mature systems (computer programs, parts of scientific disciplines, social systems, etc.) advance they seem to also decay and beyond a certain point the only hope is formulation of a radically new world-view or paradigm and restructuring the old discipline according to the new world-view. At least in technology and science certain paradigm switches had major impact on their discipline. Of course there are critical fundamental differences between the way social vs. technological and scientific paradigm shifts are achieved. Technology and science include significant checks and balances, much healthy skepticism, critical peer review, large scale competition of ideas and, at least in theory, lack of monopoly on ideas and lack of dogmas. Radical social changes seem to rapidly, even instantly, erect highly rigid and dictatorial power structures enforcing the leaderships’ world-view. Thus, paradoxically, the revolutionary becomes ultra-conservative as soon as power is secured.

The notion of worlds internal to one self is significant. Surely one ought to engage in Tikun Olam Pnimi (Fixing the Inner World) and not solely Tikun Olam Hitzoni (Fixing the External World). There are probably many subtle interaction between these two types of worlds. The major obligation is probably to deal with Tikun Olam Pnimi – to "fix oneself" – an arduous and very challenging task. A story is told about someone determined to fix the world. After a while he was wise enough to realize that this was beyond his capabilities. Setting a more modest goal, he decided to fix things in his community. When that too was an overwhelming task he set an even more modest goal: to fix things in his family. Finally he decided that he ought to try something more in his reach: to fix things in himself. He realized that once that is accomplished he is in a better position to set and succeed at loftier goals.