Taking Stock, and Finding the Good Stuff

[The following is adapted from the speech I will be making the first day of Rosh Hashanah this weekend]

The world is sick. Humanity is dying out. And this is not because of external forces, but entirely driven by tendencies that, in the big picture, can only be described as broadly suicidal. Individuals, communities, entire nations, and Western Civilization writ large have lost the desire to live. It's a uniquely modern phenomenon, caused by the conditions of modern life. Survival is no longer hard, and people have generally decided that life is not worth the hassle.

Our own technological successes and wealth have paradoxically made the preservation and growth of life much more difficult. That is because the challenge of living has been conquered. The world produces so much food that far more die of obesity than starvation – Grok estimates 15-25 to 1. Almost nobody dies of starvation anymore. We are so easily multiplied and self-interested that the world, since 1980, has voluntarily aborted more than 30% of its entire population. Not because we could not feed or clothe more people, but because having a child would interfere with our leisure.

We have stopped investing in the future, in children. In the US, in 1800, women averaged 7 children apiece. It then started falling steadily to where it sits today, below 1.6. No society in the history of the world has ever recovered from such a low birthrate.

Why have people stopped having children?

Initially, it is because, as I said, survival became easy. But now the trends are accelerating.

We have created virtual worlds that act as proxies for the real thing. We can live in our heads with only minimal engagement with the rest of the world. And we do this in every aspect of life: a digitized life optimized for maximum human addiction. Video games, internet addictions, and marijuana that saps ambition and drive, and pornography that takes the energies of the human libido and ensures that it is not used for holy ends.

And in the years to come, when we add robots and other interfaces that replace spouses, children, and communities, the warmth of real human contact, this tendency will accelerate. Why go through the difficulties and disappointments of real relationships when we can get everything we want – from conversation to love to house cleaning – from a machine running on AI?

This is not science fiction. It is happening, live, all around us. I don’t think this is like any of the dozens of other apocalyptic scares of my lifetime. I don’t think it is like them because this scare is, in my opinion, actually real. Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Acid Rain, the end of the Rain Forests, Climate Change, COVID, Y2K? For many and varied reasons, despite all the hype, none of them truly endangered humanity.

Failing to reproduce does. We are seeing it in the choices that people are making. Remember, in the history of the world, no society or nation has ever recovered from the birth rates that we see almost everywhere today. For the first time in our history, it was reported this week that there are more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 5.

In short, humanity is dying out. It is killing itself off. And it is doing so voluntarily. It is a death cult as an unintended consequence of no longer fixating on mere survival – collateral damage for a narcissistic society without any fundamental worries, but with plenty of time-wasting distractions.

And it is shocking when we compare it to just one example in the Torah: Avraham and Sarah’s deep and abiding desire to procreate, to ensure their lives meant something, that there would be an ongoing legacy. They cared deeply that there are things bigger than our own lives, and that it is worth dedicating our lives to those things.

Avraham and Sarah understood that if nothing is worth dying for, life isn’t worth the trouble. They got that. Most of us today, on the other hand, are not even making the effort. They don’t see any reason to.

Which brings me to the question at hand: How can we market something that we cannot talk about?

Because there are things worth dying for, and we should choose to do those things. But the things worth dying for are not necessarily things we can publicize. A lot of what makes life so wonderful is like photographic film in a darkroom: the magic is lost if you expose it to the outside world.

AI and robots and video games cannot duplicate the inner joy we discover in the soft words spoken in the dark between a husband and wife, or the bliss that bubbles up inside us when we see our children and especially our grandchildren. Electricity and a profound sense of connection are found in the still, small voice that comes to us when we are deep in conversation with our Creator. All of these are so achingly beautiful, so essential for a meaningful life.

In other words: The Good Stuff. This is what really matters.

But none of them would make for an effective marketing campaign in newspapers, billboards, or internet pop-ups. Indeed, any marriage in which the genuine tender moments are shared with the public is a marriage that is finished. Privacy is critical to what makes those moments holy. Like the Ark of the Tabernacle, the holiness and power stem in part from its intimate and private nature.

We must not express the quiet things out loud, because that ruins them.

It is the same with the mindful focus in our prayer. The magic happens when we, each and every one of us inside our own heads, close our other senses and listen. We pray, and we make ourselves receptive. In so doing, we can kindle and feed and grow the holy connection – a profoundly private connection.

I believe that G-d and his Torah are worth dying for. And we must rededicate our lives to living for them.

This is at the heart of Rosh Hashanah. We cannot express in words how the shofar can touch our souls – if we could, we would not need the shofar.

We take this time to recenter and refocus. To identify and find the divine connection. And use it to give meaning to our lives. This starts on Rosh Hashanah, with the connection we make between our souls and their Source.

Might this help answer our question? “How can we market something that we cannot talk about?”

Perhaps. Perhaps the only way to market holiness is to live it? To model it for others?

If we are able individually to kindle and grow these most holy connections, then it can spread. Every great thing started with something small, with a single person who invests in the future and does so with conviction and love, has the potential to inspire others to follow. If we can start with ourselves, then maybe – just maybe – the result will be the promotion of the beauty of Torah to the world, and a renewed sense of meaning for mankind.

Because to save humanity, people will need to discover things worth living for, worth investing in. We need not just to avoid starvation or exposure to the elements; the world needs things to live for. Things that cannot be replaced with distractions like spectator sports, silly videos or doomscrolling. Things that cannot be replaced with AI conversations or robots. If G-d and His Torah, the guidebook for building holy relationships with G-d and with man, are the real mission statements for the Jewish people, then maybe humanity can be saved.

If we can do that, if we can identify with the Torah's meaning to life and apply ourselves to it, then making something of ourselves may be worth the trouble after all.

I pray that you find deeper meaning in all your connections, with G-d and with man. May you go forward with a renewed clarity about how you can live your life for all the things worth dying for.