Thursday, September 12, 2013

Check out this Internet Filter Ad - Part of the Solution or the Problem?

Saw the ad on the right at Vos Iz Neiaz adverstizing an Internet filter. It goes without saying that a Jew should not use the Internet without a filter (I use the Web Chaver buddy system and filter combination) but something just rubs me completely the wrong way about this advertisement. I assembled screen shots of the .gif ad to make this picture. Partly, it feeds into the problem Rav Moshe Weinberger notied in his article Just One Thing is Missing - The Soul wherein we feel that the underlying problem is unfiltered Internet, when it goes much deeper, to what kind of Yiddishkeit we are living. Filters without addressing that won't be effective. It also depicts children (or adults?) who are nichshol in Internet related aveiros as literal monsters. If people see themselves that way b'etzem, it makes teshuva much harder... People ought to listen to this shiur given by Rabbi Judah Mischel on Wednesday  instead. Thoughts?
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2 comments:

micha berger said...

As your own choice shows, trying to develop the yir'as Shamayim necessary to not lean as heavily on filtering doesn't eliminate the need for filtering. And since we're showing a pre-teen, expecting a focus on the soul is really premature.

As for people seeing themselves as monsters... No one would see themselves in one of the last pictures, even if they were out of control. Ein adam meisim atzmo rasha.

BTW, you remind me of the difference between Adam haRishon and Pinnochio.

Adam haRishon was given the snake as an externalized yeizer hara. Pinnochio was given the cricket as his conscience. So, Adam was told that he is a good guy, and all he has to do is not listen to that outside voice. Pinnochio was told that being good wasn't part of who he was, and therefore rebels against the cricket's mussar. Adam was being taught a way to view lifer that can work for us.

DixieYid (يهودي جنوبي) said...

R. Micha,

Thinking about your second point in the comment, I have to disagree. The halachic principle you cite has an application in a certain context, but emotionally, people can and do see themselves as monsters, and this definitely leads to a cycle of shame and escapism that leads a person deeper into the tuma about which he is ashamed and causes him to despair of teshuva. He identifies himself with the tuma.

The approach of this ad is reflective of a certain attitude of many not influenced by chassidus who view the nekudas habechira as setting up gedarim, but who believe that once those gedarim are broken, a person is essentially a lost cause