As I have embedded myself in my Jewish ethics project, I think that these are all very incomplete. I believe that the most accurate way to see the world is as if values are the atoms of our universe.
🔍 Moral & Strategic Blueprint InsightsCommon Derachot:Both used revolution as operational permission, ideology to shroud power consolidation, and charisma/institutional cults to maintain control.Key Differences:Mao’s derachot were more systemically violent, doctrinally infused into governance, and ideologically totalizing—impacting social structures, economics, and inner-party theology at massive scale.Castro’s blueprint remained tactically authoritarian but rhetorically revolutionary; Mao’s was philosophically totalitarian, with ideological extremism as a structural necessity.📌 Final Ethical ReflectionBoth leaders present coherent moral-strategic patterns: revolutionary ethics used to justify authoritarian rule. But Mao’s derachot are far more radical and comprehensive. He fused ideology with violence—not just as an occasional tool—but as the engine of sustained political order.Castro deployed authoritarianism with revolutionary theater; Mao made revolution the infrastructure of authority.
I am not the first one to come up with this idea, but we took it further.
There are a lot of values out there, but it seems that most people have their values set from a young age. Morality isn't that you take on all values - for most people, it is to do the best with the values that your own personality has already adopted.
This fits in with Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. Rambam (Maimonides) says something similar - that people have different innate temperaments (middot) which form the raw material for their moral development.
In this sense, we can say that for each of us, values are relatively stable and moral growth is learning when and how to act on them. If you are going in the wrong direction, that is where you can re-align - or, in Judaism, do teshuva (repentance.)
The world is not just a series of events or a sequence of time. It is the sum total of our moral decisions, based on our values. A biography is the story of a person's value decisions. History is the interaction between different national or leaders' values. Perhaps psychology is really the study of individual values and therapy is about changing people's derech to aim to fulfill their own personal values.
This is a powerful way to look at the world. It centers our own agency. Natural disaster just happen, but human decisions don't - and history is the story of decisions based on values.
Living up to our values is what gives life meaning. And nothing is more important than that.
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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