The Ancient Art of Troll

Do I own my own possessions and raise my own children, or are they somehow re-assignable for The Greater Good? A society cannot, for long, believe both of these things without tearing itself apart. In America today, mall riots and schools promoting gender surgery are showing just how incompatible these different belief systems are.

Those who hold that private property is sacrosanct are appalled by the “You Didn’t Build That” attitude of progressive liberals. We cannot accept anything they have to say on the subject.

Reason offers no resolution to this problem, because Reason offers no fundamental truth; it is only a tool, harnessed for the advancement of the underlying assumptions that a person has.

We have learned to understand that when people do not share enough assumptions or presuppositions (Reagan/Ben Shapiro might call them “facts”), no progress can be made. You simply cannot reason with someone who does not share enough of an underlying world view.

This problem is at the heart of every cultural misunderstanding. For example, Westerners may believe that Palestinians want peace – because we want peace, and assume everyone must. Similarly, people who are motivated by money do not understand those who are motivated by honor – which one reason why Gaza did not become the Singapore of the Middle East starting when Israel withdrew in 2005.

Cultures that are driven by shame are incompatible with those who are driven by honor (and vice-versa). The perspectives are so different that they can only be bridged with great difficulty, if at all.

Jews and Christians generally believe that every person should be treated with respect on the basis that each person has a divinely-gifted soul. But if the Other Guy does not share that belief, then they have no problem dehumanizing other people, calling them “animals.” If you believe that either Jews or Palestinians are properly described as “animals,” then I cannot have a productive conversation with you on this topic.

At least all of the above examples are of people who are making an effort, trying to find a way to reach common ground.

But what of the person who has no such intention? A person whose sole purpose is to create and foster the differences, to amplify small differences in order to break down civil conversation entirely?

I speak, of course, of The Troll.

Trolls are willfully obstructive. Trolls refuse to agree on anything important, throwing a wrench into any conversation that is trying to make forward progress. By obstreperously disagreeing on even the simplest factual matters, your common internet troll actively divides himself from others by openly rejecting every single statement that could otherwise be used to find common ground and to build relationships. Trolls could try to perceive things your way, for the sake of building a relationship. But they instead choose the opposite.

As the central commandment of the Torah is “love your neighbor as yourself,” trolling represents its antithesis. The troll refuses to see things through the eyes of someone else. They refuse all commonality of every kind.

Which might explain why the greatest troll in the Torah, Lavan, is also the leading symptom (“lavan” means “white”) of a spiritual ailment that is linked to antisocial behavior – from gossip all the way on the spectrum through to and including murder.

Lavan was the archetypal troll. We first meet him when he agrees to let his sister go and marry Isaac:

Here is Rebekah before you; take her and go, and let her be a wife to your master’s son, as G-d has spoken.”

Followed soon after with:

But her brother [Lavan] and her mother said, “Let the maiden remain with us some ten days; then you may go.”

Which is it?

That was just Lavan’s warmup. Lavan finds ways to keep stealing Jacob’s labor for free. He then swaps Leah for Rachel (pretending that there was some kind of misunderstanding), and engages in machinations to keep Jacob around for the labor value.

Then Lavan goes full troll: foreshadowing the true progressive liberal, Lavan simply denies that Jacob owns anything at all!

Then Laban spoke up and said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks; all that you see is mine.

Claiming that the things that belong to others is actually yours, because of your unique victimhood… it all sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

Lavan willfully and obnoxiously acts just like an internet troll: he denies the evidence that is crystal clear to everyone else. More importantly, he acts in such a way that he actively destroys the relationships between family members. He is working to destroy relationships, not build them, and do it on the basis of nothing more than selfishness. Which is why, when he and Jacob part ways for good, they do not even agree on the name of the place! Proper trolling means stubbornly refusing to embrace any shared knowledge at all.

It is no wonder that the disease for anti-social behavior described in Leviticus (tzaraas) is shown by white, lavan, spots. Trolling not only existed in the ancient world, but it was identified as a leading scourge of a healthy society. When we fail to even try to understand things from the perspectives of others, then we shred any wisp of a possibility of bridging the divisions that keep us apart from others.