Dennis Prager

October 12, 2011

Opinion: Why is it so hard to become a better person?

By Dennis Prager

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The following is a summary of the Rosh Hashanah sermon I gave this year.

The purpose of the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) is moral introspection: Every year, Jews meditate on the issue of becoming a better person.

But how many of us do become better people the next year?

This question has bothered me for many years, and I have decided to finally address it. Why is it so hard to become a better person?

1. Most people don’t particularly want to be good.

The biggest obstacle to people becoming better is that you have to really want to be a good person in order to be a better person, and most people would rather be other things. People devote far more effort to being happy (they do not know that goodness leads to increased happiness), successful, smart, attractive and healthy, to cite the most prominent examples.

2. Confusion about what goodness is.

Goodness is about character — integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.

Not everyone agrees.

For thousands of years, more than a few religious individuals have regarded goodness as being more about sexual behavior and religious piety than about character and the decent treatment of others. And while sexual behavior and religious piety are important, they are not as important as simply acting decently toward other human beings. That is what God wants most (see Micah 6:8, for example) and what we should want most.

At the other end of the spectrum, to modern progressives, goodness is all too often about having the correct political positions, not about character development.

3. Goodness is not about intentions.

Very few people have bad intentions. Even many people who commit real evil — such as true believing Nazis, communists and Islamists — have good intentions. But as an ancient Jewish dictum put it, “It is not the thought that counts but the action.” Good intentions alone produce good people about as often as good intentions alone produce good surgeons.

4. We don’t learn how to be good.

Even if you want to be a good person, where is the instruction manual? Where are the teachers, the coaches and the schools? People spend years studying how to be good at everything — from sports to medicine to plumbing — except how to be good people.

5. We think too highly of ourselves.

Self-esteem frequently runs counter to goodness. Raising children with self-esteem sounds great, but when unearned — which it usually is — it leads to bad results. In fact, it is people who do not have particularly high self-esteem, people who feel that they constantly have to prove their worth, who are more likely to act good. And it is violent criminals who have the highest self-esteem — “I am better than others and can therefore do whatever I want.”

6. We think we will be taken advantage of.

Many parents have told me that they fear raising their children to be “too” good, lest they be taken advantage of.

People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of.

Yes, bad people take advantage of others. This is why it is so important that good people surround themselves with good people. They allow us to be good and they make us better.

7. Few personal models.

It is very difficult to grow into a good person without good models — whether a parent, a sibling, a friend, a clergyman or even good characters in literature and film. That is why it is so important for all adults to try to be good models — not necessarily friends — to all young people.

8. We don’t believe there are rewards for being good.

In fact, however, there are many rewards:

• Good people have far more inner peace.

• You will trust other people. The cheater never trusts anyone because he thinks that everyone is like him — out to cheat everyone. Not being able to trust is not a pleasant way to go through life.

• People will like — and even more important, respect — you more, just as you like and respect good people more.

• You will make more friends. And life is incomparably better with good friends.

• And, finally, God will reward you in the afterlife. It isn’t fashionable in our hyper-sophisticated and secular age to speak of the afterlife, let alone about ultimate reward and punishment. But if there is a just God, there is ultimate justice.

9. We have to battle our nature.

To be a good person, most of us have to battle our nature. Among many other things, we are naturally preoccupied with ourselves. Yet, to be good, one has to constantly think about others, and how we are treating them.

10. I’m a victim.

I suspect that more people than ever before, in our society and in many others, walk around thinking of themselves as victims. Victimhood status is actually cultivated.

Now, the truth is that most people are victims. Very few of us have been entirely fairly treated by life. The problem, however, is that people who see themselves primarily as victims will rarely do any good, and many will do evil: “I’ve been mistreated by others,” the thinking goes, “so I don’t owe anybody anything.”

11. Few people were raised to be good people.

Parents raise children to be good students, good athletes, to have high self-esteem and with myriad other goals. But few parents put character first. For decades, I have asked parents whether they would be angrier at their teenager for smoking cigarettes or for cheating on tests. You can guess the overwhelming response.

The sad irony is that while goodness is the thing that everyone most wants from everyone else, few people want it most for themselves.

To obtain a recording of Prager’s sermon, call 800-225-8584.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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The stringency that Dennis demands of everyone else and the latitude he affords himself is evident in this sermon from the bimah.

He excoriates those liberal Rabbis who pontificate their political views and yet, he states in the sermon above, ‘‘to modern progressives, goodness is all too often about having the correct political postions, and not about character development.”

How many ways and times does Dennis spell hypocrisy?

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/13/11 at 1:34 pm

Another hypocritical component is Dennis espousing that others be treated justly, morally and ethically, but God forbid you disagree with one of his in-granite-never-to-be-excavated tenets, you will be showered by a fusiallde of the most ugly and detestable expletives by Dennis and his followers.

I thus find the gap between his rhetoric and behavior a legitimate area of contention, difference and discussion.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/13/11 at 1:38 pm

The Ocuupy Wall Street protests, that started in New York City and have now spread across the globe, are not only a refutation of the corporate-bought-and-dominated Democratic and Republican parties- they are also a refutation of Dennis’ beliefs that change for the commonweal is deleterious to the country’s wellbeing and that the whole( all the people) are greater than the sum of its parts( the individual).

May the OWS MOVEMENT correct the inequities that have hurt the United States both nationally and internationally and may the people of this great country refute and jettison the Prager beliefs and policies that have resulted in such financial and moral destitution.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/15/11 at 10:18 am

Please someone tell these meaningless “occupy Wallstreeters” to protest this President’s failed economic policies that are crippling our nation and support a new candidate for President.

Comment by Earl on 10/15/11 at 11:44 am

You are making this a consertvative vs. liberal fight, Earl and not a people vs corporation fight, with both parties sipping at the fiscal corporate trough.

According to the nonpartisan Congrssional Budget office, Reagan increased the national debt by 189%; Bush I by 55%; Clinton by 37%; Bush II by 86% and Obama by 35%.

And we will never know if this president’s policies would work or not as long as the Party of No to anything and everything suggested by Obama continues to filibuster and as the last 30 years so clearly indicate, show their complete disregard for people like you Earl and me.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/15/11 at 12:23 pm

I truly liked Dennis Prager’s article about becoming a better person. It gave me great comfort today, where I felt a bit down, because I often feel judged based on external things, such as my success, possessions, looks, family status, cultural origin, rather than my character. Thank you.

Comment by Sabine De La Boussiere on 10/15/11 at 5:23 pm

Marc, since Dennis Prager’s radio program is available on Podcast, please site some examples of the “detestable expletives” Dennis has used either on the radio or in print. I have listened to his show for over 5 years and find him to be the kindest talk show host among both conservatives and liberal.

Comment by Jay on 10/19/11 at 7:58 am

Putting aside my vast ideological disagreements with Dennis, I appreciate Jay the proffered opportunity to respond:

When I debated Dennis in person, and due to our political differences, he tried to use his size and bulk in an intimidating and hectoring fashion- unluckily for him, I am physically taller and bigger.

When I wrote an admittedly excoriating letter into the Journal critiquing his views and the hypocritical chasm between his word and deed, his riposte assigned me a psychiatric label and strongly suggested that I needed psychological help( by the way, I have a Ph.D in psychology).

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/19/11 at 12:33 pm

When other people honestly differ and do not defer to his political views, he accuses them of promulgating ad hominem polemics, an accusation that is the main weapon in his verbal and written arsenal.

A few weeks ago, he tore apart a letter written by a Rabbi who is a Rebbe in the truest sense of the word, using language so eviscerating and denigrating as to make one’s face blanch.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/19/11 at 12:39 pm

And finally, when I disagree with his pronounced conservatism and his endless tirade for everything liberal, his followers have showered me with expletives and one even threatened, with his friends, to physically hurt me.

I thank you Jay for listening to my point-of- view and you sound like a man whose mind is open and whose heart is warm and solicitous.

I wish you and yours a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/19/11 at 12:43 pm

I do have a Ph.D. in Psychology, that is a fact.

Another fact is that I will let Straight Shooter and anyone else have their say about me and let the Journal’s readers come to their own decisions.

I promise that I will not participate in anymore debates regarding Dennis and let him and his followers rise or fall on their own statements.

Everyone have a Happy and Healthy New Year as well as extending the same wishes to your loved ones.

Comment by Marc Rogers on 10/22/11 at 9:24 pm

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