Prophecy Defined - by Pinchas Winston

 

The Essence of Prophecy *   - Pinchas Winston -

[Imagine] a child [at school] who, upon seeing his enemy in a group of other children, throws a stone seeking revenge. Sure enough, the stone hits its mark, and a tremendous scream goes out from the hit child, as all eyes focus on the thrower who all of a sudden cowers from the unpredicted negative attention.

The next thing he knows is that the principal comes out to see what is causing all the commotion. After wiping the blood away from the boy's head and sending him to the nurse, the principal turns in the direction of all the pointing fingers and spies the boy who is responsible. He does not know the whole story of the two boys, nor does he care about it: no one throws a stone at another person, at least in his school.

As the principal advances towards him with a grim look on his face, the stone thrower sees his life flash before his eyes. He no longer remembers the sense of accomplishment he felt momentarily upon accurately hitting his enemy with the stone. All of that was quickly wiped away by the extreme sense of dread he now feels as he wonders how far-reaching the consequences of his action will be. His life is about to change, perhaps forever, of that he is sure, and he wonders what it was in the first place that blinded him to all of this as he threw the stone.

Thus, the rabbis teach: Who is a wise man? One who sees what will be born?

However, if you think about it, that is not the definition of a wise man, it is the definition of a prophet. Perhaps that is why the exact translation of the Talmudic statement is not "one who sees what will be born," that is, what will end up occurring in the future, but "one who sees what has been born," that is, now, in the present.

In other words, it [prophecy] is not about predicting the future; it is about properly and accurately understanding the present.
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* Source: "Born to be Wise" by Rabbi Pinchas Winston
http://www.torah.org/learning/perceptions/5766/devarim.html

The Evil of Bureaucracy - by TPO

 

The Evil of Bureaucracy *
- Hannah Arendt -
Regarding the malevolent and persistently ever-present human creation known as "bureaucracy", American political theorist Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) has a few choice words on the subject:

The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
 
Considering other theorists’ definitions of power as “the instinct of domination” driven by the urge “to command and to be obeyed,” Arendt argues bureaucracy is its greatest aberration:

     These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man—of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the many in aristocracy and democracy, to which today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.
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* Excerpted from Hannah Arendt's "On Violence".
Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/politics/page/6/