True North Does Not Move

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but one who listens to advice is wise.” Where We Begin King Solomon wrote in the Book of Proverbs: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but one who listens to advice is wise.” Look closely at the words, and the point is simple. The fool is not short on brains. He is short on a true measuring stick. He measures reality by what seems right “in his own eyes.” His eyes are what he sees around him: whatever looks common and accepted. The wise person is different. He “listens to advice.” He listens to a voice that does not depend on what his eyes happen to see, and does not depend on how many people see things a certain way. That is beautiful. But what is the root of this difference? That is what we have come to talk about. The Parable: When a Billion Compasses Go Wrong Imagine that tomorrow morning every compass in the world points south. A billion compasses, all of them pointing south. The plain question is this: did north move? Of course not. A billion broken compasses do not change where north is. They only show that they themselves are broken. North is a real, objective fact. It does not point according to the statistics. The same is true in the lesson of this parable. The Lesson: Hashem’s Seal Our Sages said: “The seal of Hashem is truth.” Truth here is not a philosophical idea. It is Hashem’s very being. The Torah, which reveals Hashem’s will in the world, is the “north” of reality. It does not move. It does not move with the universities, with the media, or with the public opinion of the day. On the other side stand human reasoning, the rules of society, and whatever looks like “common sense” in the eyes of the world. These are the compasses, and compasses are prone to break. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, teaches in chapter 19 that human reasoning is limited to its time and place. It is swayed by the “spirit of folly” of this world. In every generation it takes on a new shape, only to point south once again. Madness Multiplied Is Still Madness The “fool” in the verse is not a wicked person. He is simply someone who sees all the compasses around him pointing the same way. His logical conclusion is that north must have moved. He is not fooling himself on purpose. He is just measuring with the wrong measuring stick. He measures by statistics instead of by truth. Here is the sharp point: quantity does not change quality. Madness, multiplied, is still madness. If a billion people believe that “up” is down, not one person will fall into the sky. Reality does not change direction according to how many people believe something. The Psalms say: “Truth will sprout from the earth.” Truth grows up out of the ground. It does not grow out of the number of voices. Our Job: Set the Compass, Don’t Argue Here is something important to understand. Our job is not to argue with every broken compass. There is no point arguing with a compass. It has no ears. It is broken. The wise person in the verse “listens to advice.” What is that advice? It is the voice of the Torah and of our tradition. It is not spoken out loud, not always. Sometimes you can hear it only when you go quiet from the noise of the crowd. But it is there, steady and fixed. The wise person’s job is to make sure his own compass is set correctly, not to get the world to agree with him. This is a matter of setting your compass, not of taking a vote.