There is a very strong sense that people like us ought to give, and give generously and plentifully, and give to cost-effective charities, and do some proselytizing about it. But we also need to be friends to those around us, and not let our monkey minds weaponize our concern for those more distant from us into a cudgel to use in a dominance game against those nearby to us.
Over on the email channel ex-FRBNY Vice President Charlie Steindel is quoting, apropos of SBF, some of the words of Hillel, Moses ben Maimon, and Yoshua bar Yosef. The last of those is also supposed to have said: "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other…"
There is a very strong sense that people like us ought to give, and give generously and plentifully, and give to cost-effective charities, and do some proselytizing about it. But we also need to be friends to those around us, and not let our monkey minds weaponize our concern for those more distant from us into a cudgel to use in a dominance game against those nearby to us.
Over on the email channel ex-FRBNY Vice President Charlie Steindel is quoting, apropos of SBF, some of the words of Hillel, Moses ben Maimon, and Yoshua bar Yosef. The last of those is also supposed to have said: "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other…"