Kavanah Kards - A PERSONAL NOTE BLOG

Purim--seeing Hashem in our Lives

3/8/2020

BS"D
Purim is a time that I always am blessed to see Hashem in my life in such a beautiful way, and this year is no exception.
Usually, a week or so before, I start to get an idea for my annual Purim Poem. I just "hear" it in my head. This year I noticed that nothing was coming, despite my awareness that Purim was fast approaching. It didn't cause me any concern, just notice.
Two days before Purim, I was preparing to return to New York from visiting my daughter in Florida. I couldn't seem to settle down to go to sleep.
Then it happened! The words started FLOWing (I'll explain more) and I wrote,. Around 2 am I finished and then got to sleep.
A little fact checking and a tweak here and there, and here it is for you.
Enjoy!
See more about FLOW below the poem.

The Flow is another wonderful example of Hashem's "partnership" in my life.
It "happened" seemingly by coincidence, although we all know there are no coincidences.
A friend felt inspired to do something for Klal, so she got a small group of women together about 6 weeks ago on a motzei Shabbos to discuss it. What we came up with was to send love to ourselves and to others, including someone that it's hard to do that with, as well as to Klal and Hashem.
What has unfolded since starting is what I call The Flow--sending forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, gratitude and love to ourselves, our family and more. I send out text and email "reminders" daily.
What I have seen, and what others are reporting is noticeable increase of "FLOW" in life, B"H. It could be in something as seemingly simple as getting parking spaces more easily,to improvement in relationships, health and many other kinds of success.
My explanation is that the opposite of FLOW is FORCE: having to try hard, struggle, etc. By increasing the positive FROM you, it increases the positive TO you (the Law of Attraction).
I am posting it here for you to download and use. There are 2 versions; the longer one has explanations and directions. The short one is just the steps.
Why don't you try it for 30 days and see what happens? And please share it with others. It doesn't take millions of people to create change. Who knows how much your effort will bring to change the world?
I am delighted to support you in any way, including daily reminders. Just contact me at transforminglife@gmail.com.
Hatzlacha!

Dynamic vs "Conveyor Belt" Judaism

2/21/2019

Jewish women all over the world are preparing for a very special event next week-- the Geula Event, with gatherings in cities all over the world to create a force for geula.
Kavanah Kards were listed among the resources, and several organizers requested them for their event.
One of the women I spoke with said something that struck a cord which prompted this blog post. She said that without the meaning conveyed to our religious lives, we risk falling into "conveyor belt" Judaism--going through the motions like so many around us, but without the heart.
What a striking concept! It really spoke to me.
In truth, this is exactly what Mindful Mitzvahs and Kavanah Kards is all about--elevating the mundane and giving it "heart".
It's a simple concept. Every day for the next 40 days:
1. Say the Daily Kavanah Declaration every morning to declare your intentions when saying Hashem's names throughout the day.
2. Focus on the meanings of Hashem's names as given on Kavanah Kards as often as possible.
3. Think or say as often as you can before a doing mitzvah, "I am fulfilling the mitzvah of ____, as Hashem commanded"
4. Thank Hashem for your problems, acknowledging thereby that, while you don't know why you need this problem, Hashem, Who is perfect and does everything for your best through His love for you, knows why you need it, and you are declaring your faith in Him.
5. Whenever you feel you need to, do teshuva for anything you thought or did that didn't model the above.
Imagine the ripple effect throughout Klal for every person who does this--who lives Torah and their relationship with Hashem dynamically and mindfully, instead of living "conveyer belt" Judaism.
Download the Mindful Mitzvahs pamphlet to help and inspire you .

Thank Hashem for your problems--very powerful!

1/24/2019

For quite a long time I had been thanking Hashem every morning for being able to see with each eye, hear with each ear, smell, taste, feel and being able to walk. I started doing it after hearing Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein talk about his gratitude practice.
Also, I had more recently adopted the practice of thanking Hashem for my problems, as described in "Say Thank-you and See Miracles", by Rabbi Shalom Arush.
Then in the summer I fell.
VERY painful when it happened, but once my arm was in a sling, there was no more pain. Not even when I slept.
So I was sure it wasn't broken.
Twelve days later my chiropractor told me to get X-rays.
It WAS broken and I needed surgery.
I won't describe my utter panic at the thought of it all. But I wanted to walk my talk, so I started to thank Hashem for it. Frankly, though, it was puzzling.
Here I had already BEEN thanking Hashem for being able to walk normally and independently, and I fell, breaking my arm.
Plus, I kept hearing horror stories from people about their pain after surgery, while the bone was healing and with physical therapy.
Astoundingly, though, I had NONE--not with the surgery, bone healing, or physical therapy.
And, to the astonishment of the surgeon, my arm was totally healed in just three months!
So, what I realized was that, although I NEEDED to have a broken arm and surgery, Hashem blessed me that I DIDN'T need to have pain and that I had such a fast healing.
That is the power of gratitude!

August 24th, 2018

8/24/2018

Why are Mindful Mitzvahs~Kavanah Kards the way to a better new year?

8/14/2018

BS"D

With Elul upon us, everyone's mind is increasingly focused on Rosh Hashana & Yom Kippur and doing all we can to be blessed for a good year.

I just finished watching a wonderful talk by Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky (“Suspending our Disbelief” https://torahanytime.com/#/lectures?v=65567) about what inspires people and how to improve their connection to Hashem.

He ended with thoughts about how we can make a meaningful improvement during Elul, saying the best way is to commit to something that will not be too hard, so we will stick with it. He talked about two Torah greats--Reb Yisroel Salanter and Rav Shach.

Rabbi Orlovsky quoted Reb Yisroel Salanter as saying, not to take on big things, take on small ones, and that Rav Shach, Rosh haYeshiva of Ponovez, said he took on that on Shabbos he would bentch with a bentcher, not by heart--he chose something that was doable.

Mindful Mitzvahs is a perfect thing to take on--anyone can do it!
1. Every day say at least one bracha focusing on the meaning of Hashem's name. Optimally, also say the daily Kavanah Declaration in the morning
2. Every day do at least one mitzvah with thinking or saying before, "I am fulfilling the mitzvah of ____, as Hashem commanded"  (optional. add: as a zechus for Klal Yisroel.)
3.Thank Hashem for your problems (as Rabbi Shalom Arush says in his seforim Garden of Gratitude and Say Thank-you And See Miracles)
4. Consider things to help others come closer to Hashem (fulfilling that mitzvah, as Hashem commanded), such as sharing Kavanah Kards and Mindful Mitzvahs. Every time someone does, you get great schar.

As Rabbi Orlovsky says, you don't need to turn your life upside down. Simply do whatever Mindful Mitzvahs you can for the next 40 days--and hopefully ongoing. And, if you can do 2 a day, so much the better!

The Mindful Mitzvahs Pamphlet and Kavana of Mitzvahs have all the information to help you. Share it too. Of course, you can get Kavanah Kards to use and share. Just let us know.

Here are comments from some people who have been doing Mindful Mitzvahs:

You mentioned to me last year the idea of thanking Hashem when something goes wrong, and I thought that was a bit much for me, but I've actually tried it and it does work for me - as long as I can say it from a place of acceptance and not bitterness. So thank you for the idea and the chizuk! -Queens, NY

When I started the first 40 days I think I told you about the hashgacha that got me to do it but aside from that I also received some Rav Arush mini books I had ordered around the same time and they gave me a jolt about some health issues that I needed to get on top of.

In general most people are happy to participate in the project and some are quite enthusiastic, like I said one of the rabbis here jumped on it and found the issue about think or say vs. just say before mitzvot and it's a credit to the devoted population that frequents his father's shul!

Plus there was the other story in the winter when I went to a small women's event and started giving out the cards and someone I knew was excited as she had started to work on this area of avoda in her life. Then the Chabad Dayan here, incorporated the whole idea of the kavanah behind the words of a beracha into his discussion about the Rambam, without even knowing we had brought the visual aid of the cards themselves! This leads me to the idea that these cards do more than just getting individuals to improve our avoda but it's uniting different communities of Jews to work together in unity to get closer to Hashem. - Montreal

Rabbi Wallerstein said in a shiur I watched recently that it is not the gadolim, but the average person who will bring Moshiach through their tehillim and other things to come closer to Hashem.

Mindful Mitzvahs is just such an opportunity and NOW is the perfect time to take it!

Hashem loves the French speaking Jewish people!

6/10/2018

My favorite thing to write about is the awesome way Hashem shows so clearly how much He loves and wants Kavanah Kards Mindful Mitzvahs.
The new French cards are no exception.
A wonderful lady in Montreal who gives out Kavanah Kards suggested some time ago that we do them in French. Great suggestion, but the wily SA (sitra achra) worked overtime to prevent it from happening.
First I put out requests for someone to help translate, and then there was a stalled attempt at getting someone I knew to do it for me (I was stalled!)
One day, I received an excited email from the same Montreal woman that she had gone into a yeshiva and saw some! She attached a picture of one, and it did look like the business card size English one. WOW! How awesome!
Aimee (her name) contacted the person who had taken it upon herself to do the translation, and got her to send me the file. BUT Aimee didn't stop there. No, she and her husband decided to take it upon themselves to make the French card like the other Kavanah Kards.
In brief, I put her in touch with my graphic designer, and she did the card in our 2 x 4 format with the French translation.
Then there was the printing. Aimee and her husband contacted several printers in Canada, and found out that the price of my printer "angel" was a fraction of the cost. They decided to go ahead with printing 5000 of the flower card in NY, and sent me the money. About 10 days ago I picked them up.
How to get them to Montreal..... SO EXPENSIVE.
Aimee knew someone whose mother was coming in from Montreal and she said she would take back a shoe box size package. But there were five TIMES that amount to get to her!
Hashem to the rescue: while speaking with my oldest son before Shabbos, I told him the story of trying to get the French cards to Montreal. He said his brother-in-law, who lives in Montreal, was coming in for my grandson's Bar Mitzvah this week!
Of course, I contacted him immediately and he said he would be happy to take as many as would fit in his car back after the Bar Mitzvah and that he would be coming in again a week later and take the rest!
I thanked Aimee's friend and told her that Hashem sent a ride for the cards, but that she got the schar for being willing to take some, and "I'm fulfilling the mitzvah of Hakores ha'tov as Hashem commanded (Mitzvas tzrichas kavana)" by thanking Hashem for being the wonderful "President" of the Kavanah Kards project and making it all possible, AGAIN!
That's not the end of the story, though.
I made a web page for the French cards, musing that it "should" be in French (but we know I can't "do" French). After an email exchange with Aimee, she sent the translation complete with accent marks, and I was able to put it onto the page. After I uploaded it, I thought about formatting, and "decided" to make it centered. A minute later I got an email from Aimee that she "had the same idea". What a coincidence! Of course, Hashem sent us both the same idea. How amazing, as usual!
Thanks, dear reader, for reading this, and for spreading the word and supporting Mindful Mitzvahs, Kavanah Kards and kavana of mitzvahs and our newest "French family member" to help Klal Yisroel.
May your Mitzvah bank account be filled to overflowing with the schar of helping bring others closer to Hashem (and for using them yourself!)
Bracha v'hatzlacha

It's all in Hashem's hands

5/14/2018

BS"D

For a couple of years, I've dreamed about Kavanah Kards being given out at the Torah U'Mesorah Convention. This year, with my focus firmly fixed on children having the right kavanah and enthusiasm from the outset, I decided to explore the possibility.
The best way to get exposure was to get Kavanah Kards into the hands of the convention participants. First there was the Torah U'Mesorah fee for doing that.
Not so bad...they said I could have an envelope with materials put into the package that every participant received for a reasonable fee.
Next there was the matter of what to put in the envelope.
For a minute I thought about trying to get an assembly line of grandchildren to put them together. SIXTEEN HUNDRED? What was I thinking? I had cold sweats even thinking about all the terrible possibilities.
Not possible.
I called my "best friend" at the printer I use for a quote.
He said we would have to have everything in hand in TWO DAYS in order to get it to the convention by the required day!!!!
Okay, so let's do it.
Jumping the gun....
He asked me what I wanted in the envelope.
Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.
Would anyone want Yiddish? Probably not.
Called Torah U'Mesorah.
I was wrong. LOTS of Yiddish schools attend.
OK, so English & Yiddish.
Counting all the English & Yiddish materials, there would be twelve pieces, plus a cover letter. It could fit into a half flat envelope. Sixteen hundred times 12 is over 19,000 cards!
Baruch Hashem, I had almost everything I needed, but there was NO way I could drag the heavy boxes back down the steps and into my car to get them back to the printer. He said he would have some guys pick them up (he really gets a LOT of zechus for his part in helping so many Yidden come closer to Hashem.
Next decision: What to print on the envelope.
I struggled with a couple of ideas, and thankfully the printer gave me his advice, which I gratefully took.
Then he wanted the cover letter right away. Oye, what should it say?
Hashem poured the words out of my fingers into the computer.
A bit of kvetching it, then I "gave it over to Hashem" that it was right.
True to his word, two men from the printer were there the next day taking dozens of boxes to the shop. Fortunately, Hashem had previously helped me figure out that 100 cards measure two inches, so that I was able to estimate how many had to go into each box.
There were "little" crises, like not having enough of two items, but my printer malach didn't blink an eye--he did it in house.
Miraculously, 1600 printed envelopes with 12 Kavanah Kard items and a cover letter were delivered to the hotel in Pennsylvania a day before they were due!
The bill? It seemed like a lot in my mind, but Hashem already sent help. A wonderful supporter had already made a sizeable donation several months before, so part was just waiting. Then two of my wonderful children gave me another generous chunk, B"H. Some more funds came from supporters of Rabbi Garfinkel's work, and some extra clients helped with part of the remainder, so the rest was my investment in Olam Haba.
Now it is up to Hashem to open the minds of the schools that went to the convention to realize and bring Kavanah Kards into their schools.
Now I'm fulfilling the mitzvah of emunah and bitachon as Hashem commanded!

The Sitra Achra vs Kavanah Kards--a true story!

4/17/2018

BS"D

We know, of course, that the sitra achra opposes everything we do to grow in kedusha, but recently, I got a big glimpse of it. Here's what happened...
While I was in Eretz Yisroel for Pesach (a glorious time, by the way, Baruch Hashem), I got a website contact form from someone who wanted more than 1000 Kavanah Kards, Mindful Mitzvahs Pamphlets and Kavana of Mitzvohs cards in English and Hebrew. He wrote that he runs the Pirchei there and that his wife is starting a wonderful new project in their shul for mothers and daughters.
I was thrilled, of course, at the opportunity to help someone who would be bringing so many people closer to Hashem! I emailed him back that I was excited to send them when I returned to NY after Pesach.
Last week, before Shabbos, I received a follow-up email--had I had a chance to send them out?
Enough jet lag. It was time.
I emailed him that I would take care of it that day, b'li neder then looked in my email for the original Contact Form for the list of what he requested and address to send them to.
Not there.
Hmm.
I searched for "Pirchei", "Pennsylvania", everything I could think of.
Nothing.
Hmm.
Then I looked in the email trash, thinking perhaps I had inadvertently pushed some sort of link that sucked it out of my inbox.
Nothing.
Hmmmmmm
I searched in the computer file where I keep notes on every request.
Nothing.
Hmmm
I checked my text messages. Nothing...
Looked in another email account inbox & trash. Nothing...
I sent him an email apologizing, explaining the mysterious disappearance of his contact form and requesting that he please resend it so I could put the package together.
Two days with nothing, nothing, NOTHING.
Hmmm.
Then I started getting worried. Was I hallucinating? Losing my memory? My mind?
I even started to imagine that maybe it was a prank..
None of that helped, of course.
Finally I gave it over to the Boss with emunah and bitachon (Hashem is having this happen for a reason), hakores hatov (Thank-You, Hashem for the opportunity to have emunah & bitachon), kavei el Hashem (Hashem, I really want to do this mitzvah, but I can only do it with your help)
Suddenly, "I got an idea" (thank-you Hashem): maybe it's somewhere on the website. But where? I do all the design and maintenance now, but didn't know how to find where that information was stored.
I finally gave credit to the sitra achra for doing such a superb job and showing me, once again, how big a threat Mindful Mitzvahs and Kavanah Kards are to his "job" of separating people from kedusha.
Suddenly, there it was tucked away in a link I don't know if I can even find again.
Immediately I copied the needed information, put together the package and took it to the post office with a ride from a friend (my car had a dead battery from an energy drain--encore from the sitra achra?).
Fifteen pounds of closeness to Hashem on it's way, at last!
What a lesson on how much the sitra achra can interfere with our positive intentions.

BE AWARE "How the internet is altering and 'messing with' our brains, and our children's psychological development,"

3/8/2018

BS"D

A major problem today leading to many tragedies R"L in the frum community is the issue of addiction--no matter to how it is manifest. Addiction can exist in any area, it becomes a way to mood-alter. We can help ourselves and our loved ones avoid or escape the life limiting effects of addiction through Hashem's help and with healthy, positive emotions and beliefs. (For more about the Emotion Code & the Body Code--uniquely effective methods of helping this--please contact me or see www.SuccessfulPerception.com--my professional site)

Dr. Norman Doidge, author of two excellent books on brain neuroplasticity, & Jim Balsillie, developer of the first successful smartphone, discuss below how technology is a culprit. I put in the entire article because it's of such importance to you and your loved ones--especially children. The most impacting part is that the underlying intention of manufacturers is to create addiction. Read further...We need to be vigilant
Dr. Norman Doidge & the developer of the first successful smartphone discuss below how technology is a culprit. I put in the entire article because it's of such importance to Klal Yisroel.

THE GREAT DISCONNECT
Digital technology is changing almost every facet of our lives, from the way we work to the way we parent. Our brains are changing, too. What does it say when we can't go more than a few minutes without reaching for our phones, or give our private information to faceless corporations without a second thought? Below, tech titan Jim Balsillie, and psychiatrist Norman Doidge wonder whether we'll ever kick this addiction, and what the internet is doing to our brains. Jim Balsillie is former chairman and co-CEO of Research in Motion (now known as BlackBerry Ltd.) the company that brought the world the first smartphone, and co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

They held their discussion, by phone and over e-mail, in January and February.

JIM BALSILLIE: Will we ever kick our smartphone addiction?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Kick it? We're just getting started. Google's Project Loon is working on bringing wireless to the four billion people not yet online by using balloons in the stratosphere to carry signals to the remotest parts of the planet. And unlike other addictions that are opposed by mainstream institutions, screen time is being pushed by educators, governments and businesses. Not a chance we can kick it the way things are currently organized.

BALSILLIE: What's causing this addiction?

DOIDGE: Simply put, the chemistry and the wiring of the brain can be manipulated. There are all sorts of behavioural addictions - gambling, online porn, shopping - that take hold because they trigger the same areas of the brain as drugs. People are unsuspecting of digital addiction. That's because each addiction - cocaine, heroin, alcohol, video games - has a slightly different form and effect, so it takes a while to recognize any new addiction as such.

BALSILLIE: I recently experienced something fascinating that made me see smartphone addiction in a different light: I attended a dinner that included a young teenager. He was constantly engaging with his smartphone. His parents saw that it was poor table manners, so they took it away. The teenager then started to fidget.

His eyes darted everywhere. He couldn't calm down and was visibly uncomfortable for the next 45 minutes. I could see the kid was in pain and was manifesting it physically. I know there is always moral panic about technology, but this incident told me that, in the case of smartphones, it might be coming too late. Seeing this kid suffer and not say a word to anyone stayed with me. People now spend on average more than 10 hours a day on their screens.

This is no longer an attention economy, but an addiction economy.

DOIDGE: Digital tech is especially good at changing our brains without our awareness. The brain is neuroplastic, meaning it has a property that allows it to change its structure and function in response to mental experience. Digital technologies are uniquely "compatible" with the brain, because both are electric and also work at high speeds. Marshall McLuhan figured this out. He argued that all media extend us - the microphone extends the voice, the radio the ear, the computer the brain's processing power. In 1969, he said, "Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull, and his nerves outside his skin." At the time it seemed like one of his more bizarre aphorisms. Few believed the brain was plastic and that the media could work by, in some way, connecting to and rewiring our neurons.

BALSILLIE: Are you saying that by using screens 10 hours a day we are, by definition, addicted?

DOIDGE: For some, "addiction" is just a metaphor meaning "too dependent on" or "a compulsion."

But for many, it is literally true, and they show all the signs of addiction: compulsivity, loss of control of the activity, craving, psychological dependence, using even when harmful. Everywhere we see people who must check their phones every few moments - according to Adam Alter's book Irresistible, the average office e-mail goes unanswered for only six seconds. That's compulsive! They check while driving - that's harmful - and feel agitation when they can't. They stay up late, stuck on their computers, and then can't sleep. In online-porn addictions, people develop tolerance and need ever more stimulation for excitement, start to crave the porn, without liking it, and feel withdrawal when they try to stop.

Addicts always underestimate the time spent on the activity because they're under a spell.

If you think of addiction only in quantitative terms, you worry about, "Am I spending too much time online?" But our brain is sculpted by whatever we do repeatedly, and 10 hours a day also drives huge qualitative changes. The most important factor in any technology is what it does to our brains. In this case, it's plummeting attention spans, patience, memories or how social media is creating insecurity. So there are significant mental health issues involved.

BALSILLIE: What do you think about personal responsibility?

Have we alone made ourselves addicted? Because I definitely don't think the blame should rest solely on users, especially since big tech companies now hire teams of hundreds of neuroscientists to teach what applications will have the "stickiest" effect on the brain, so they become deliberately addictive to their users. As a brain guy, does that make you feel guilty?

DOIDGE: Is it guilt we feel when we find out our relative is a snake?
These people are behavioural psychologists and behavioural neuroscientists whose focus is not therapeutic, but on manipulating behaviour to create craving and anxiety if we try to resist it.

BALSILLIE: So we should believe James Williams, the former Google strategist, when he said in The Guardian: "The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine human will." What are the techniques these behaviourists use?

DOIDGE: Originally, they mastered moulding complex behaviours incrementally by giving animals rewards. Doing so, they discovered important things about learning and even how to treat phobias and aspects of anxiety.

Now, they guide software engineers to layer each new pop-up or message or interaction with "juice" and clickbait - colour or novel stimuli - that connect to the brain's "orienting reflex" so that we involuntarily turn our attention to that thing. It also triggers chemicals that put the brain in a state that maximizes our readiness to attend to that thing. So, when something novel appears, it's pure neural "bling." You can't not look at it. These scientists are the true masters of the art of distraction. We look because this brain circuitry evolved over millions of years to make us reorient our interest to something novel, because it might be a predator or prey - our next meal - or a mate.

Then, if a quick reward is attached - such as buying a product with a click, a seductive image, a "like" or reading that some rival has just been humiliated - dopamine, another chemical, is released, consolidating that circuit. Our brain reward centre lights up and we feel a thrill. These behaviourists carefully engineer the timing of the stimuli they present. Neurons that fire together wire together, so that over time, links are moulded and we form new circuits and get addicted. Data gathered from our keystrokes can be used to further addict us, in a tailor-made way, and sold to advertisers and even to politicians, who use it to personalize their message to us, to get us to buy what they are selling.

BALSILLIE: But why would behaviourists do this?

DOIDGE: Not all do, but those who do would probably say, "For the reward." That's a joke, by the way. I would say that as their science became an "ism" - behaviourism, in this case - many leading behaviourists concluded that human beings are little more than a suite of reflexes and conditioned responses, determined by previous stimuli. And therefore we lack free will. And when you have such an impoverished view of people, what is to restrain you from doing what you did in the lab every day to those habit machines also known as human beings?

BALSILLIE: CEOs of big tech companies are simply capitalists doing what capitalists are supposed to do: maximize profit within the rules set by legislators.

And of course if you lobby those legislators, you get rules and regulations that help you increase profit. In an economy of intangibles, the marketplace frameworks are everything - absolutely everything. These companies benefit enormously from addiction so they build it into their products wherever possible.

DOIDGE: I have a colleague, perhaps the best known psychiatrist in the United States, who went to work for Google, to help them analyze all their data in terms of what it reveals about mental illness. I asked him what he thought about the industry leaders and their motivations. One of Google's founders told him, "I'm 40 years old and I'm worth $40-billion, and believe me, I really don't need more money. I want to make the world a better place." Perhaps they both wanted to believe that.

BALSILLIE: Don't ever believe a rapacious capitalist when they tell you they are not a rapacious capitalist. The joke is on those who take these "noble" pronouncements to heart. Global tech is a predatory, vicious game that very few people are built to play. It's a lot easier to virtue signal and say things such as "Money isn't that important to me" when you've got billions in your pockets. If you want to figure out the motivations of tech capitalists, look at the outcomes and infer from there.

DOIDGE: How did these companies position themselves so we can't do without them?

BALSILLIE: These companies are called "multisided platform businesses" because they bring together different groups of customers and suppliers in a way that would not be efficiently possible without the internet platform in the middle. Think eBay, Airbnb and Uber. Without any additional production costs, they attract more participants and become exponentially more valuable and entrenched. This is called "Metcalfe's Law of Network Economics." There was a common misconception that RIM's business was smartphones, but we made virtually all of our money - more than $1-billion profit per quarter - on our multisided service platform that made the whole BlackBerry system work.

We enabled mobile users to seamlessly connect to their chosen application using 600 carriers globally. But there's an important twist when services are free: Without paying anything, you're not really a customer any more - you are now the product being sold. These compelling free apps you're addicted to? They're what's needed to bait you in order to generate valuable data for an internet company.

DOIDGE: Well, how do you feel about this, as the rapacious capitalist who was there at the start? You ran the company that created the BlackBerry, often called the CrackBerry. I am a shrink. Help me to help you deal with all the guilt you must feel.

BALSILLIE: No guilt here! Our specialty was security and protecting individual privacy. We didn't take people's private data and sell it to advertisers so that they could then target them. And we certainly didn't have any professional behaviourists on staff or on retainer.

This is a totally, totally different realm. Today's smartphones are designed to be highly addictive and extract whatever information they can. I am still troubled by the sight of that vulnerable teenager I told you about.

DOIDGE: It's sad. He probably had FOMO - the fear of missing out - if not constantly connected to social media. Hooray for us - we've created a new social-anxiety neurosis! But, to be fair to you, you are not in that "we." The fact that there were no brain scientists at RIM explains why I was never really "addicted" to my BlackBerry any more than to a landline. Some people were perhaps co-dependent-lite on them, but not like on today's smartphones. I think that's because the original BlackBerry wasn't a fullblown computer. It was truly a "smart" phone, so I, like most, used mine to connect with people of my own choosing.

BALSILLIE: People are paying such a heavy price for their screentime addictions, with all the attendant issues: anxiety, depression, envy, etc. And everyone is losing their privacy, too. Because I've never used social media and am not addicted to my phone, I have very little understanding of why people are exposing their lives and their kids' lives online.

DOIDGE: Privacy and mental health are inextricably linked, especially for young people. You need periods of privacy to form a self and an identity, a task not completed until at least the late teens. Having an autonomous, spontaneous self is the result of a long psychological process where you have time to "step back" from the crowd, and from your parents, to reflect. It requires time to let that self - your true feelings, your own quirky, uncurated reactions - emerge, spontaneously. The new phones foster enmeshment with parents, and the world, and hamper individuation, the process of becoming a unique individual, because kids are overconnected. And peer groups at that age can be Lord of the Flies cruel - and often love to mercilessly hunt down, expose and denounce the eccentricities of emerging individuals.

The "wisdom of crowds" is overrated; many crowds are far more regressive mentally and emotionally - and stupider - than the individuals who make them up. Kids know this, but lacking a solid sense of self, still long for the mob's approbation and are terrified of its censure.

And so they keep checking for and fishing for "likes" and now are compulsively virtue signalling to avoid being disliked, instead of developing actual virtue. Fear is one reason that virtue signalling is our chief vice. Social media is a 24/7 hall of mirrors, with everyone watching themselves - and everyone else - and making comparisons, all the time. This hugely exacerbates the ordinary painful self-consciousness, insecurity, narcissistic vulnerability and drama of young people's lives. How can anyone not become thin-skinned living in a round-the-clock panopticon of peers, all competing with each other for attention in an electronic colosseum? Depression has increased since 2005, most rapidly among people 12 to 17. That's not all caused by screens, but if we're spending 10 hours a day looking at screens, it's definitely a factor. Leaked documents show that Facebook told advertisers it can now track teenagers who feel "insecure," "anxious," "nervous," "worthless," "stupid" and "useless." Great. Now we have people exploiting a kid's "confidential" data by selling it to businesses that will further exploit the kid's depression. Everyone knows that social media is a world of show: masks and advertisements for yourself. It develops what psychoanalysts call the persona, a false self or facade in which one is just playing a role to impress others. But kids know they can't live up to that role and therefore fear they are imposters. It also teaches kids precisely the wrong way out of the mess: grow your vanity.

Post selfies of your best underwear pic on Snapchat; airbrush your opinions to get likes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, pondered the soul of the modern bourgeois as affected by social life. He observed - as beautifully summarized by Allan Bloom - that the bourgeois "is the man who when dealing with others thinks only of himself and in his understanding of himself thinks only of others." That is many kids today.

BALSILLIE: But if it's unpleasant, why do kids keep coming back?

DOIDGE: Because that is the world they know - and because it has a shiny surface. But you see what it hides when you take it away. Kids become insanely anxious when they don't have their phones, like that teenager you mentioned. They freak out if they go on a camping trip: Not bears, but wilderness without wireless is their nightmare. Parents increasingly discipline kids by taking away the phones, because that's the best way to get their attention. Then the kids have a meltdown and feel they've just had a part of themselves amputated. They have a point, in a cyborgian kind of way.

BALSILLIE: Actually, I know many people in Silicon Valley who deliberately constrain their children's use of the social-media applications that they, as parents, created at their companies. They send their kids to low-tech, or no-tech, Waldorf-like schools, complete with rolling hills and wildlife. They know smartphone addiction is a problem - they intended it just as it's playing out, but protect their families from it.

The Silicon Valley elites deeply value their privacy. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, bought four houses around his home because he wants to ensure he and his family have privacy.

It's not a trivial matter to be the pioneer of surveillance capitalism as he is and still maintain his family's total privacy. As I said earlier, the joke is on the users ... But why do people sell their privacy so cheaply?

DOIDGE: I think one of the problems in a mass communications-based society is that we develop mass tastes, and then the meat grinder of globalization further homogenizes us, and the more similar we become, the more interchangeable and expendable we feel. We don't feel we matter as individuals. So, for the insecure, it's nice to know someone is watching, someone is taking notes, tracking my irrelevant existence online! But what terrifies me, Jim, is that this generation, which has never known much privacy, is understandingly indifferent to its loss. They don't understand that there can be no liberal democracy without privacy.

The whole idea of liberal democracy, going back to John Stuart Mill, is that the liberty of the individual is our best bulwark against authoritarianism and the tyranny of the democratic majority, or government, or the powerful, because they have the numbers, or wherewithal, and historically seek to dominate others and determine how they must live.

Liberal democracy is thus the form of government that is expressly designed to protect the individual's liberty against that authoritarianism. It does so by dividing life into a limited public sphere, for government, and a private sphere, where government cannot infringe and which it is also duty bound to protect. It is the idea of the private sphere that made us into a free people.

But these new technologies, as currently organized, are creating a generation indifferent to privacy, and giving governments, business and others tools to monitor it. And privacy monitored is privacy destroyed.

BALSILLIE: One of the things I've learned from you is that, in medicine, when you use drugs, there are no "side effects," only "effects." Drugs go everywhere in the body. While they might target an organ and do some good there, they also affect other areas. What we call "side effects" are just the drug doing what it does in places we don't want that to happen.

The designers of digital devices set out to addict users and there has certainly been more and more publicity on this lately. But are we fully aware of the consequences that they didn't intend?

DOIDGE: No, because they unfold incrementally, beyond awareness, and sometimes involve losing awareness, as the "specs" of our brains change. For example, our brain maps in relation to our bodies in space seem to be changing. Because we spend all day staring 18 inches ahead, we are losing bodily and peripheral visual awareness. People are walking down the street in a more disembodied, ungrounded way, bumping into others. Body therapists tell me they are seeing 20-year-olds with the posture of 75-year-olds now, stooped, with heads way forward, from screen time.

BALSILLIE: You've also talked about how exposure to screens affects infants and toddlers - how digital technologies that claim to be connecting people are also disconnecting us in important ways.

DOIDGE: They overenmesh and disconnect at the same time. A few years ago, I was at a lecture with clinicians, discussing visual changes, and a preschool teacher there observed that, increasingly, kids weren't looking at other people when speaking with them.

Another teacher there reported the same loss of eye contact. At first it seemed to them like these kids might have Asperger's, which is on the rise, and involves a discomfort with eye contact.

But as the teachers watched the parents picking those kids up, they saw they were constantly on their smartphones, not looking at their kids - or the teachers, either, for that matter. As cute as these people's own kids were, in the moment, the kids couldn't compete with an entire virtual reality engineered to keep their parents distracted.

BALSILLIE: Were they imitating their parents' bad manners, or is it something deeper?

DOIDGE: Possibly deeper. A big brain task of the first two years of life is wiring up the right hemisphere modules that allow us to read other people's faces to learn about their emotions and, in turn, about our own. This is learned by the rapid-fire exchange of glances between infant and mother when there is so much holding and leisurely gazing into each other's eyes. You know, baby swallows milk, grimaces, mother sees it and unconsciously makes the same face back - she mirrors the baby - showing the baby the distress it is expressing, then sweetly says, "There, there, honey, the milk went down the wrong passage, you're upset in your tummy, let me burp you. You'll feel better." Now, that feeding interaction does more than soothe the baby. It actually teaches the baby about emotions, and that facial expressions show emotions, and ultimately that you can read the internal states of others. That is how we learn about other minds. The same happens when a baby smiles: A healthy adult can't not smile back. You need thousands of those exchanges to develop that emotion-reading right hemisphere, and these exchanges, when they happen, occur very fast. If you are not paying close attention, you miss the baby's smile, or grimace, and your face won't mirror the right emotion back. Good studies show that when the parent doesn't mirror in real time, the baby gets extremely anxious, and if the face is "still" when it should move, babies actually freak out.

BALSILLIE: So, if parents are distracted, either by a screen or even waiting for a message - i.e., they are multitasking - and not giving the undivided attention required to wire up the brain in this period, you can't do it to your full potential. Because humans are born without a fully developed right hemisphere and we need parents to complete our development, right?

DOIDGE: Exactly. In brain terms, infants need people bonded to them so closely that they make the requisite sacrifices of attention. My fear is that we are slipping into a new kind of split-attentional-neglect, in a critical period of brain development, because increasingly parents, although physically present, are psychologically online. A large University of Texas at Austin study shows that even having a phone that is off within reach lowers your cognitive capacity, because it still steals your attention. You're so wired into it. If living in virtual reality means living in something that is a simulacrum of reality, we might say that we, by being psychologically online, are making ourselves into virtual parents.

BALSILLIE: Being mindful of these effects and limiting screen time definitely helps.

DOIDGE: Definitely, but only partially. Even if you limit your child's screen time to what you think is high-level educational television, if their school is pushing computers and pushing down attention spans, that is way more important than a hundred hours of Sesame Street. McLuhan's whole point was the medium is the message, meaning it isn't the content of the medium - Sesame Street - or even the time spent on it, but the way the medium sculpts the brains of an entire society, and now, the planet. Media gurus in our time are merely mouthfuls of praise for what high tech will do for you - and silent on what they will take away.

BALSILLIE: So when it comes to the brain, it's basically use-it-or-lose-it?

DOIDGE: Correct. McLuhan said that each medium can "step up" one sense and step down another. This has huge consequences. Reading books stepped up sight and created a linear habit of mind that valued logic: You go down the page line by line, then turn to the next. This gave rise to a habit of thinking in terms of logical progression of argument. The logician asks of any statement in an argument or conversation, "Does this follow?" But in the digital age, linearity is stepped down. We now ask, "Does it grab you?" Because now information comes at us from many competing directions all at once. Our so-called "great communicators" are those who can best distract us from all the other distractions. When you leave linearity and logic behind, life becomes a Twitter feed: a series of hyper-emotional non sequiturs. That's manifest in our deteriorating, increasingly ignorant public discourse. It's no accident that our education system - itself desperately FOMO - is both computer-crazy and in favour of dropping history, a linear discipline par excellence. That is exactly the wrong move. What we need are schools that teach what screens can't do - to immunize students from the medium's faults. They should get back to teaching the most important books ever written. But that's not enough, Jim. Where are the various levels of government on all these issues?

BALSILLIE: Canada lacks leadership on these issues. We need more people stepping up and engaging intelligently, with integrity and public-mindedness. For goodness sake, we have all three layers of government closely partnering with all of these companies, even at the expense of domestic firms and our national prosperity. They are all advancing foreign tech on a daily basis. So let's not confuse moralizing with either intelligence or commitment.

Just look at the recent "deals" our government made with Facebook, Google and, maybe soon, Amazon. I've never seen anything like this in all my business career by any developed nation. When that leaked memo showed Facebook pitching companies their ability to target kids with ads when they are feeling insecure, depressed or worthless, Australians freaked out. For the issues of data collecting and selling, privacy and transparency breaches, Germans investigated and litigated, the EU started regulating in earnest, and the United States began holding Senate committee hearings. And Canada? We rush to partner with them! Our public officials have to stop sucking up to big foreign tech and start regulating them. Who is governing who here?

DOIDGE: What are the governance tools policy-makers can use to address this?

BALSILLIE: First, we must begin regulating the dominant internet companies in areas such as transparency of their advertisers, the ethics embedded in their algorithms and anti-competitive practices. This is what responsible governments do.

DOIDGE: And then?

BALSILLIE: We must create sovereign laws regarding data ownership, which is a defining issue of our time. More than six years ago, the European Union presented detailed proposals in this realm called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which becomes law in May, 2018. European policy-makers have been working on this for almost 10 years. In Canada, all of our political parties and policy-makers have let Canadians down with their inaction on this issue. Like the citizens of the EU, Canadians could exercise our sovereign right to ensure we own our personal data, set clear rules on the collection of personal data and for governing how the rights to our personal data are transferred to others. Big foreign tech companies will lobby hard against these measures, but I would argue our governments have the duty and the power to protect Canadians, especially our young. Canada would be in a much better place than where we are today if we copied what the EU policy leaders are doing.

DOIDGE: I'd vote for a politician who would support this, because it would actually be getting a liberal democratic government to enhance liberty by protecting the private sphere. What else?

BALSILLIE: We can support an alternative technology architecture. Much of the root problem with these apps is their centralized corporate control, where company profit is based on selling more ads to addicted eyeballs. We can lessen this dominance by supporting emerging rival applications that use blockchain. Blockchain is a new kind of transparent and incorruptible internet system that allows you to better control your own content because it's designed in a way where there's no centralized database or point of control. No one individual or one company can control it. The trust is built within the system architecture.

And trust in the system matters especially now, when there is so much mistrust in centralized power structures. If Canada strategically embraces blockchain for social media and other important applications, we can address issues of privacy and manipulation. Plus, this creates an opportunity for our domestic innovators to generate inclusive prosperity. It sounds like a complicated thing to do but it's not. It's actually very feasible.

DOIDGE: We may be the last generation that understands that privacy is worth defending. But how will we know when we are on the right track?

BALSILLIE: People won't just click "like" when they read this. They will call their MPs, too.

Copyright 2018, Norman Doidge and Jim Balsillie
This originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Hashem isn't always so "hidden"

2/4/2018

BS"D
There have been many occasions in my life where Hashem might have been considered "concealed", but was as "obvious" to me as could be.
Right from the very first time I was "inspired" to go to a Friday night dinner and became frum, (which turned out to be Shabbos Shuva), to the seeming "coincidence" of the first Kavanah Kards after asking Hashem's help with my great problem of focusing during davening, Hashem has been a wonderful "partner", and not at all "hidden" to me.
The new French Kavanah Kards is no exception. French has been on my mind since it was requested by someone in Montreal over a year ago, yet somehow I couldn't "make it happen"--the same as with the Yiddish Kavanah Kards.
Several times I told Hashem that I wanted to do it, but needed His help.
Suddenly, last week, a wonderful Ambassador in Montreal sent me an incredulous email: "someone" had made French Kavanah Kards! She saw them when she was in a school there and emailed me about it. Then she sent a picture.
Sure enough, it was the same layout as the Hebrew men's Kavanah Kard, down to the Kavana of Mitzvohs wording on the back!
WOW! What a beautiful demonstration by Hashem how much nachas ruach (happiness) He has from Kavanah Kards and Mindful Mitzvahs! In fact, probably the reason I couldn't get it done was just so that He could cause it to happen!
I have emailed with one of the woman involved, and hopefully she will be able to see the fruits of their labor of love, BE"H.
It is impossible to express my gratitude in again being able to fulfill the mitzvahs of hakores hatov (gratitude), l'hodos u'l'hallel es Hashem (praising and thanking Hashem) and ain od milvado (acknowledging that there is none besides Hashem)!
If you or anyone you know would like to use, help sponsor or spread these wonderful "gifts" to the French-speaking community, please contact me.
Tisku l'mitzvohs to the WONDERFUL, precious Montreal people who made this happen!