Rabbi's Musings

I am a collector of corporate slogans. In a few words we can learn so much about a particular organization or at least how it likes to think of itself. For instance,

"All the news that's fit to print" -- the New York Times

"Think different" -- Apple Computer

"The happiest place on earth" -- Disneyland.

My personal favorite is (unofficial) Google's: "Don't be evil!"

Why such a slogan for an Internet search company? Perhaps it is a dig at Microsoft, or maybe the Google folks realize that, based on how much information they have about us, they could be evil if they wanted to be! When describing this approach, the founders of Google used to speak about what they called “crossing the threshold of discomfort.” When that happens, it is time to stop.

This is a very useful phrase for all of us: Crossing a threshold of discomfort is a sign for us that we have begun inappropriate behavior. And that we are AWARE the behavior is wrong.

Think back to that wonderful movie, Broadcast News, with William Hurt and Holly Hunter. Hunter plays a journalist with integrity and Hurt plays someone unaware of the lines he is crossing between reporting and creating news. When Holly Hunter’s character confronts him, saying he has crossed the line, he replies, “But they keep moving the line!”

In essence, that is part of our problem: How do we know when we have crossed the threshold of discomfort? I remember a Seinfeld episode when cell phones were still pretty new. Jerry was calling a sick friend on a cell phone and Elaine thought that was a terrible breach in etiquette. A call to a sick person should be made from a land line. Anyone still make that distinction? What if you no longer HAVE a land line? (I have not had one for years.)

Yes, establishing the threshold of discomfort is not so easy. But let’s assume we all still know there are lines that are crossed. What might those lines be?

Let's first admit that we have all double standards. For instance, there are ways we treat our family that we would never treat our friends, or certainly acquaintances. Somehow, in a bizarre logic, we find it better to be rude and caustic with loved ones. I know we argue we are just being ourselves. But that might be the problem. Who said that being ourselves is an excuse for boorish behavior.  I also worry about how we treat the less fortunate among us. We don't want to ignore their plight but often the persistence of the problem of poverty, and the admittedly obnoxious ways some ask for help, can easily inure us from the actual suffering. 

The late great social activist and rabbi, Stephen S. Wise, once went to China. The first night he couldn't sleep because the moans of the rickshaw drivers, doing back-breaking work, kept him up. When he mentioned something at the front desk of the hotel, he was told that in a week he would not even notice it anymore. Rabbi Wise was pained to hear such a callous remark but truly mortified when, a week later, he realized the prediction had come true.

How often do we deal with our discomfort by forgetting to notice? Not noticing is not the same as fixing a problem. And so I wonder if we might be crossing our threshold of discomfort without even noticing.

So let me conclude this message with an appeal for all of us to reconsider who we are, and to become more aware if the people we have become are the people we wish to be.

A professor recently put it like this: we all need to withstand the “cubicle” test. What is this test? It is to remember how we thought we would be before we matured before we were successful. You know, sitting in the cubicle, imagining how we’d behave once we were in the corner office.

Well, now is the time to take stock of where we are and ask ourselves if former self would like current self.