Tikun Olam – Heresz Olam

by Larry Pfeffer

It is fashionable to talk about “Tikun Olam”: a Hebrew phrase meaning “Fixing the World”, one of the basic concepts of Judaism. It is often cited these days as a call to various types of social action. 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, often shaped by the negative aspects of the group mind and conformity, is not moderated by balance, wisdom and some other forces.

Examples of Tikun Olam turned into Heresz Olam

There are many examples of significant attempts at Tikun Olam which brought immense suffering to mankind and turned out to be, in fact, “Heresz Olam”: “Destruction of the World”. Perhaps the two best historical examples are a God based and a secular religion, Christianity and Communism and to some extent also the French Revolution.

Christianity was based on noble ideas¹ and at least in principle teaches love toward fellow men and similar concepts rooted in the Old Testament. Certain aspects of Christian theology supposedly try to transform the world into a kinder place. For centuries if not millennia 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 various branches of Christianity, poisoned the various Christian churches and led to immense suffering.

Communism held out a dream of Heaven on Earth in our time, or in secular terms a Utopia. The road from noble sounding ideals to the torture chambers, Gulags and the graves of Communism’s estimated 94 million¹ victims was very short. Almost immediately after launch of the Bolshevik Revolution what emerged was Hell on Earth, or an anti-Utopia. Surely not Tikun Olam, but Heresz Olam.

Much as with Christianity Communists preached 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 world². The key phrase of Khrushchev shoe banging talk at the UN was “We will bury you”. The hate talk against the “Imperialists”, “Zionists”, “Cosmopolitans³” and “Titoists” was intense – as was the incitement against the “class enemies”, “parasites” and “kulaks”. As the major European countries were divesting their colonies in the twentieth century, the USSR become the major new imperialist in the post-World War Two era and brutally colonized much of Eastern and Central Europe. Whereas the colonies were called “People’s Democracies”, they were, in fact, ruthless Stalinist dictatorships ruled by the heavy iron hand of one party centered in the Communist Vatican: Moscow.

In an abstract sense secular religious rituals of Communism were similar to rituals of another massive twentieth century secular religion: National Socialism (Nazism) and Fascism. Unlike the latter two, Communism was perceived by many in a positive manner, yet that positive glow was only an illusion – in reality Communism was just as evil and took many more lives. It is amazing that in spite of the huge number of victims Communism still has a positive after-glow for many and despite evidence to the contrary almost everyone regards it to have been much more benign than Nazism and Fascism.

There are many strong parallels between the Catholic Church in its sinister 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 had prophets, worshiped a god in shape of man and both had a New Testament¹. Pilgrimage to the embalmed Lenin and Stalin corpses next to the Kremlin was a strange added religious ritual and icon of Communism.

The often glorified French Revolution too commenced with noble ideals: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” – truly laudable aspirations of a secular Tikun Olam endeavor. Yet, during that revolt 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 its sacred altar, 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? What could have been done to prevent the above and similar disasters?

Looking for a positive parallel model

There is a strong contrast between the dynamics of many “ism” driven political movements which seek to aggressively and often brutally 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 besmirch, imprison, torture and murder anyone they perceive to be their ideological opponent, who are in the way of “The Big Idea” and even “agnostics”. The revolutionary never has doubts and is fully certain that her or his vision is correct and that competing views and even apathy 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!” In case of Communist dictatorships this destructive revolutionary zeal degenerated into a dark, fearsome and murderous milieu which turned mass murder and perma-fear into a basic constant of society and the rule rather than the exception.

In strong contrast, 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 of new medication. In the world of pharmaceuticals there are no possessed concocters jumping out of their laboratory with huge jars of pills in their hands, followed by ideologically intoxicated assistants popping pills 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 immediately jump on the bandwagon.

At least in the USA the developmental, testing and marketing dynamics of a new drug is rigidly regulated by the FDA¹. It is not unusual for 12-15 years to pass from the birth of an idea for the new drug or its first “concoction” until it can be marketed and prescribed. Both the positive and negative effects of the proposed drug need to be carefully tested in laboratory and by 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, costly 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 much more “half-baked” than a new concept for a medical drug. The short, mid and long term positive and negative affects are even less known, yet the ism infected revolutionary feels fully justified imposing the new “drug” on everyone under her or his power.

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

Love?

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 and the various churches talked a lot about love. In fact some theologians can convincingly say that the ultimate love shown by the Inquisitor was torturing and killing his “heretic” victims or the Jewish and Moslem “non-believers”¹. From a theological perspective this purifying process can be presented very positively² explaining that torture and murder ultimately save the victims’ souls and thus they will not suffer eternally in after-life. The faithful is led to believe that the torture or immense pain of a victim burned at the stake is but a microsecond in the soul’s eternal cosmic time. If life in the physical world is brief and life of the soul is eternal, then for some people the above argument is difficult to resist. Whereas the murderous excesses of the Church during the Crusades, Inquisition and other periods can be presented as “love” and Tikun Olam fixing the inner world of “straying” people, in reality it was Heresz Olam: the destruction of huge number of lives, each a world¹. Apparently “love” is not a simple concept and surely needs to be qualified. Also, even true “love” is not a substitute for wisdom and a sober mind.

Opening passages of the Torah

Much can be learned about Tikun Olam from the Torah (the Old Testament). In its opening passages someone² with a powerful idea: 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 and should fix and extend the world. Hence the idea of Tikun Olam³.

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”⁴, 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 complex things by stages, wait between each stage to be sure “it is good” and only then proceed to the next stage. This methodology is clearly missing from the modus operandi of a “revolutionary” intending to fix the world¹.

Stepwise refinement

The Midrash says that prior to creating our world over nine hundred other worlds were created and destroyed – each time with water as in the biblical 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 and the prototyping process is inherently error prone.

One tangible example of creation or building by stages 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, often after many cycles, the program is ”refined” and a final, crystallized system emerges and even it is not error free.

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 and implications of such systems. Thus we ought to construct in stages, which in time converge to the intended goal or is abandoned if shown to be a wring direction. An even simpler paraphrase is the honest insight that in new encounters with sufficiently high 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 can perhaps 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 develop an increasingly higher skill set in the new problem domain. In addition, at least in software and probably any complex engineering endeavor, in spite of construction via a tedious and lengthy development cycle the result is extensively tested, inasmuch as possible by an independent team before released for actual use. Releasing even moderately complex software without the above methodology is a road to failure. The step by step approach also allows sober reflection and stopping a project if necessary.

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 rapidly developed so badly that much of its critical parts: most people, animals and plants had to be destroyed¹ – 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 world created with such care almost immediately developed unexpected major problems, how much more so in many of our Tikun Olam endeavors, with our significantly more meager envisioning and creative powers and in realms where we immediately and without restraint move from feverish idea to full-scale implementation and dissemination without any caution or checks and balances.

The value of doubt

There are a number of examples in the Torah of man arguing with the Creator for the sake of justice and mercy¹. 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”². The fact that the Creator exhibits Safeq and when necessary “changes his mind” teaches that doubt is not necessarily a sign of weakness, but can be one of the ultimate signs of strength. In fact, true belief can only be based on life long questioning and doubt³. 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 and truth seeking 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.

Individuality

Many political, religious, psychological, social and other movements discourage doubt, and often severely punish anyone who dares to question or exhibits signs of individuality. Totalitarian and dictatorial social milieu subvert the individual to the “system”, the “movement”, “the current paradigm”,… the “Big Idea”. Once again the Torah offers a lesson. It says very clearly that man was created in God’s image: “Betzelem Elokim”. That grand picture of man is the antithesis of those enslaved by dictatorship – for example the Communist Gulags. Someone who is in the image of God is by definition destined for greatness, to soar as opposed to crawl, to create and even create worlds¹. A life-long inner struggle, on-going tension between doubt and belief, constant yearning to fix one’s inner and outer world – with wisdom – are indeed fitting to a being who is Betzelem Elokim. In the Torah perhaps Abraham exemplifies this best. Already in his youth he started doubting the pseudo-gods worshiped around him: the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the stone idols, which he smashed in his father’s Idol Shop as he was struggling to peel away layer after layer of Illusion and relentlessly sought to find Essence. Thus he was the first Essence Worshiper.

Failures within Judaism

One of the most fervent forms of Tikun Olam is Messianism. Jews fell pray to quite a few destructive Messianic movements – the best known being the false Messiahs Shabtai Zvi and Jacob Frank². Messianic fervor seems to spread almost as quickly as a raging forest fire and generally does great damage. Perhaps the historical gullibility of masses of Jews who followed false Messiahs is understandable, given that Jews suffered from extreme forms of persecution for two millennia. The yearning for the coming of the Messiah is in large part due to the hope that suffering will end in the Messianic era. Historically it was not so, in fact the major false Messiahs betrayed the Jews and converted to Islam or Christianity and the suffering of Jews was exacerbated.

The history of false Messiahs, a Tikun Olam movement recurring through the ages, shows that Messianic Fever, an extreme madness of crowds, displaces caution, doubt and sanity and is in fact Heresz Olam.

One tragic episode where extremist Jews brought much suffering on their fellow Jews and large numbers of others was the short lived barbaric Béla Kun¹ Red Terror, a Bolshevik regime in Hungary in 1919, when the majority of leading commissars were non-Jewish Jews, born Jewish but converted to Communism and many first to Christianity. Nonetheless, vicious murderers like Kun and his “comrades” are remembered by antisemites as Jews although, in effect, they were Non-Jewish Jews².

Another example of a Tikun Olam Fever infected Jew helping to bringing Hell on Earth is Lev Davidovich Bronstein, also known as “Trotsky”. At one time Moscow’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Mazeh said to Trotsky “It is the Trotskys who make revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the price.”

The story is, unfortunately, not very different in post-World War II Hungary, other Soviet colonies and in the Soviet Union. Far too many Jews³ were once again infected by Messianic Fever, quickly lost their humanity, became barbaric servants of Communism, and brought much suffering on fellow Jews and others. In the 1950-s two “Tikun Olamist” Jews, the Rosenberg couple in the USA, gave the free world’s nuclear secrets to a mass murderer like Stalin – all in the name of Tikun Olam. Fortunately this didn't lead to a third world war.

Self-delusion

Perhaps it is 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 an evil force destroying so many lives apparently many believers in the free West answered “When you chop down a tree there are wood chips¹” and “When you make an omelet you have to break the egg”. To the ism-blinded, undoubting, fervent believer the tears and blood of tens of millions of Communism’s victims² was dispensable, abstract wood shavings and egg shells, inevitable and perhaps necessary 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, not seeing that they were supporters of tragic large scale Heresz Olam.

Creation

One of the great 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 and we too, creatures created in God’s image (in Hebrew: Be Tzelem Elokim), must create, even create worlds, possibly both 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 high risk of 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 with calculated risk taking and caution. Perhaps this tension is an inevitable part of a person’s and society’s existence.

Growth dynamics of complex systems

One excellent example of the dynamics of complex systems was provided by Dr. László Belady, a researcher at IBM’s Yorktown Heights Laboratory. He wrote an article in the late 1960-s on the growth dynamics of complex systems¹, specifically the 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. As IBM had to respond to the constant need to increase the system’s 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 system complexity had to be reduced by splitting the program into two different products, which reduced the error rate for a while.

The system 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 maintenance 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 without a careful stage by stage approach and discipline to be able to stop the process if it turns toxic.

Paradigm change

There is hope in large scale “fixing” if it is based on a paradigm change: a new way of looking at the problem domain. 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. In some ways a powerful new paradigm is like an elixir of youth to a discipline. 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 dogmas¹. 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.

Tikun Olam Pnimi

The notion of worlds internal to oneself is significant. Surely one ought to engage in Tikun Olam Pnimi (Fixing the Inner World) prior to Tikun Olam Hitzoni (Fixing the External World). There are probably many subtle interactions between these two types of worlds. The major obligation is probably to give priority to 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 turned out to be 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.

Conclusion

Those embarking on any significant Tikun Olam endeavor are cautioned to think carefully at the outset and all through the activity’s life-cycle to make sure the endeavor is still positive, was not derailed or hijacked in transit, wasn’t only a mirage in mankind’s collective Idea Space, is not in danger of becoming destructive and hasn’t become toxic. Once an endeavor has perceived negative impact there is no choice but to stop it and go back to the “lab” to work out the “bugs” with independent oversight as with much simpler things, like therapeutic drugs and engineering projects.