Good Urges vs Bad Urges

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On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

The good urge, called in Hebrew, yetzer hatov. Tov means good, yetzer is will. And the yetzer hara, hara means bad. So the bad yetzer and the good yetzer are in conflict, right? Right. And we all have it every day. It happens, in fact, this so shaped my life as a child when I learned it, I still think of it every day, all the time. This is what my good urge is saying, my good Yetzer. This is what my bad Yetzer is saying. It doesn't even apply just to, it always applies to ethical issues, but it could apply to, do I have that cheesecake? My bad Yetzer says, come on, what the hell, you live once, it's delicious, you're a nut. How you gonna forego that cheesecake? The other one says, why, you're—

what, Dennis? Come on, Dennis, you know what, you know, you know what enough cheesecake's gonna do to you.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to dennisprager.com.

To be or not to be. To be? That is the question. Where was God? Isn't God supposed to be good? Isn't he supposed to love us? Does God want us to suffer?

10 years, you're not finished yet? Marty! Why did you do this to me?

Who are you?

Bruce, I am God.

Bingo! Yahtzee!

Is that your final answer?

Our survey says God! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

Well, it was nice to meet you, God. Thank you for the Grand Canyon, and good luck with the apocalypse.

Hi everybody, welcome to the Ultimate Issues Hour. I'm Dennis Prager, and every week at this time, the third hour of my three-hour show, and on Tuesdays, is devoted to some great issue of life. And frankly, it's meant to deeply affect you. It's an issue that deeply affected me, and I'd like to affect you, touch you, influence you with some insight into some great issue of life. This one I completely owe to a man who has long since left this realm of reality. Dennis Prager. He died, oh boy, I'd say, oh, 25 years ago? He was a distinguished rabbi in the United States. Name was Wolf Kelman. Father of a good friend of mine. And he was a major rabbinic figure in the United States. I went to him in my late 20s for some advice. Professional advice, as it turned out. Well, I guess partially personal, but it's hard to distinguish between the two sometimes.

Mm-hmm.

Anyway, I don't even remember why I went to him, but I, in other words, what the issue was. But I remember what he said, and I remember one thing that he said.

It has stayed with me, and I have recounted it endless times in speeches and in personal conversation.

So Dennis, and in order for me to explain this, you have to understand a basic Jewish concept.

It's a very simple one, so you don't have to have any theological or Jewish background, but it's this. Judaism holds that the human being is born with, as it were, two wills, two urges, if you will, a good one and a bad one. The good one tells you, oh, I don't know, to give extra change back if you've gotten too much change.

Mm-hmm.

You got the wrong check, you return it.

The bad urge says, "Eh, who's gonna miss the money?

You know, you're lucky you got it." See my film, by the way, one of the videos that I made, in fact that's how Alan and I met, called For Goodness' Sake. And Alan, wherever I go in the country, somebody tells me they've used it in schools or whatever. And anyway, you should see For Goodness' Sake. It's the best film on goodness I've ever seen.

Yeah.

And in it there was a great scene with Jason Alexander where he is getting some electronic device at a store and the guy gives him—

guy is the clerk is harried— and he gives Jason Alexander the top model when he didn't pay for the top model.

He paid for the middle model.

And there were two voices in Jason Alexander, one saying, "Come on, man, you didn't pay for that.

You just, you have to return it for the one you paid for." And the other voice saying, "What are you, an idiot?

Who's gonna know the difference? And anyway, they made the mistake. You didn't steal it." That's a perfect example of the good urge called in Hebrew, yetzer hatov. Tov means good, yetzer is will. And the yetzer hara, hara means bad. So the bad yetzer and the good yetzer are in conflict, right?

Right.

And we all have it every day. It happens, in fact, this so shaped my life as a child when I learned it, I still think of it every day all the time. This is what my good urge is saying, my good yetzer, this is what my bad yetzer is saying. It doesn't even apply just to, it always applies to ethical issues, but It could apply to, do I have that cheesecake? My bad yatzir says, come on, what the hell, you live once, it's delicious, you're a nut. How you gonna forego that cheesecake? The other one says, well, you're what, Dennis, come on, Dennis.

You know what enough cheesecake's gonna do to you, right?

I mean, we have it. I think it's a terrific way to raise a kid, by the way. Tell them that they have these two voices in them at all times, and they are at all times over every issue, absolutely every issue, personal and ethical and moral, you name it. It's— these are two competing things.

All right.

That, by the way, is worthy of another Ultimate Issues Hour, how important it is to go through life, because if you can distinguish the two voices, you'll You won't always listen to the right one, but you will be cognizant of that battle in yourself. And it's a very good thing to raise a child with. What does your bad side say? What does your good side say? Okay, fine.

Having said all that, on behalf of understanding existence through the prism of the good Yetzer and the bad Yetzer, This is what this Rabbi Kelman said to me when I was 27 years old. He said, "Dennis, let me tell you something. By and large, I have my bad yetzer under control." And most good men, most mature men or women, do. By and large, we do have our bad yetzer under control. And, you know, whether it's sexual matters or it's financial matters or what have you, I believed him.

He, you know, he was a good man.

Everyone who knew him felt that. So here's what he said, my friends, and this is the lesson for today, which is overwhelming in its significance, both macro and micro. He said, Dennis, by and large, I have my bad yetzer under control. It's my good yetzer. That always gets me in trouble. That is the subject for today's Ultimate Issues Hour.

That it's your desire to do good and our collective desire to do good that gets us often into more trouble and does more harm than our bad desires. Dennis Prager.

And that was a statement of great wisdom.

The fact that your good nature, or the good side of your nature, wants to do something doesn't make it right. The fact that it comes from the good urge and not the bad urge doesn't mean it's good. This is where life's problems get, start. They're not because we listened to the bad urge. That happens, of course that happens. There is evil that is done, bad things that people do that emanate from their bad desires. But more likely, And certainly on a macro level, it's the stuff that comes, stuff that comes from the good desires cause more harm and more devastation and more evil even than the stuff that comes from the bad desires. The number of people slaughtered, tortured, and enslaved in the 20th century on the basis of values or systems that appealed to the good side, to the good yetzer, is far greater than that which appealed to the bad yetzer. More people have been murdered by people thinking they were doing something good than by people who were just sadistic and cruel. You hear me? More damage has been done by idealists than by selfish bad types. There were a lot of idealistic communists. There were a lot of idealistic Nazis. People who thought they were doing good for the fatherland or the motherland or equality or the working class. The fact that something, the fact that something emanates from the good part of you, the sincere idealistic good part, doesn't mean manure from Cheyenne. It means nothing in terms of whether it really will do good. Nothing. I'm told all the time, for example, that my generation, the baby boomers, You know, they were very idealistic. As if that means anything. So what? So what? I will give you example after example, both in the way we raise children, in the way we act in our daily lives, and in the way we construct social policy, all of which come from the good Yeats-ère, which are bad news. Yes. Do bad.

This is life-changing stuff. 1-800-PRAGER-776, the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Come back home. Welcome you.

Dennis Prager here, the Ultimate Issues Hour. Every week at this time I devote an hour to some great subject. If you actually take the conclusions that I will draw seriously from this, it will be life-changing, unless you've already come to these conclusions, in which case it's just reinforcing. But most of us had to learn this.

I did.

I had to learn this. I was lucky that I learned it early. And it was this comment made to me, and I explained the context, that most of the trouble in this world doesn't come from the will to do bad, but from the will to do good. Yes.

Good intentions don't mean anything. We live in the age of reliance on the heart, and that is part of the reason that I am not optimistic for the world, because heart-based stuff is a problem. Now, why is it? Now, let me talk to you about what the conclusions need to be. I'll give you examples.

This is so important. I would say that most of you get in more trouble from, not all of you, most of you, from your will to do good than your will to do bad.

An example, there are, it's both micro and macro. Let's start with the micro, the personal. Parents who give their kids a lot. Who make no demands on their kids, who say yes far more often than they say no. It's often out of love. It's often out of a feeling, "I want my kids to have what I didn't." That's part of the reason the baby boomers grew up so spoiled, because the parents who lived through World War II, their motto was, "I want to give my kids everything I didn't have." They grew up in the Depression. They grew up in World War II.

So they were preoccupied with giving their children an effortless childhood.

Dennis Prager.

And they often spoiled them rotten. And so the kids grew up, that is my generation, a lot terribly foolish, terribly destructive in their values, but all meaning well.

You know, if they'd say, "Make love, not war," they thought that they were genius. You think the people with a bumper sticker, you know, "War is not the answer," you think they mean what?

Bad? They don't mean bad, they mean good.

You know, they hate war, they hate the suffering that war entails, the staggering amount of death. Of course, they mean well, but it's a particularly foolish, particularly foolish comment. Yeah, war is not the answer if the question is what is the square root of 10. But if the question is how do you get rid of a lot of evil, war is the answer.

And so This is a problem that confronts people. I was just mentioning, in fact, in a different context, how important the word no is to raising children.

It's more important than the word yes.

But it's hard because our will to do good and be loved and to love tells us say yes. Give in to your kid.

If that doesn't come from the—

remember this division that I'm making that I got from Judaism, this division of dividing between the goodwill and the bad will, this stuff all comes from the good side, the goodwill. I want to love my kid, I want my kid to feel loved, and so on. Those people who enable a spouse or enable a child or enable a friend, giving money to people, to your adult kid who has no job.

And doesn't seek one. You don't do that out of the bad side of your, of your, uh, of your conscience or your mind or your heart. You do it out of, out of love and out of the good side.

Therefore, since good can lead to so much— good intentions lead to so many, lead to so many bad things, the number one, you can't rely on good intentions.

Yeah.

For good results.

You can't. So just know that at the outset. The fact that you mean well doesn't ensure anything.

Anything.

It doesn't ensure what matters, which is good results. So there are two, there are two spectacularly important conclusions to draw from what I'm saying. Number one, you know something is good by its results, not by its intentions.

Mm-hmm.

Okay?

That's number one.

I much prefer, here for example, I'll give you a guy who, I'll give you an example of somebody who even from perhaps selfish motives does a lot of good. Let us say that somebody wants to get the Nobel Prize in medicine. And that is the primary thing that motivates him and he discovers the cure for pancreatic cancer. Do you give a hoot that he was motivated by selfish desire for the Nobel Prize in Medicine? Right? You couldn't care less. Your loved one has pancreatic cancer, you bless this guy who may be a true a-hole. You don't give a hoot. What you care about, what you care about is, did he do good, not did he mean good. You don't have to marry him, you just have to take his medicine for pancreatic cancer. What if somebody gives money for some hospital wing to be known? Primary desire is to be known.

That's why I've always, I've always, always, always, uh, uh, uh, had no patience for those who argue, "Oh, I'm against all these people naming, having these things named after themselves." You know, this wing or this hall or this building.

Oh really? Well, if it weren't for that person's desire to have their name on that building or that wing, you wouldn't have that building or that wing, idiot! If I am peeing at the, you know, the O'Brien urinal, I bless O'Brien. I just, I can't understand it. It's all part of this nonsense that intentions are what we judge and not results. I bless everybody who has donated a building to a hospital, a wing, a toilet. I bless them. And God blesses them. The last thing I have an intention to do, desire to do, is measure their intention that they want to be— first of all, I don't know they want to be known. Maybe that was their way of saying to the world, "Look, this is what you should do with your money. Build hospital wings." How do we know? How do we know what their intention— we don't know. First of all, let me tell you something about why it is so bad to measure intentions. There's no way to know them in most cases. You don't know your own. I don't know my own all the time. That's why people go to psychotherapy, to figure out what's going on inside of them. We don't even know our own intentions all the time. We are gonna now start measuring other people's intentions? Intentions don't matter. They do not matter. What matters is the results of what you did. That's what matters.

There is a second conclusion from all of this, the utter irrelevance by and large of intentions, and I will tell you what that is when we come back on the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort, it may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why PhD Weight Loss focuses on your metabolism first, so your body stops working against you.

Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

All right, everybody, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, The Ultimate Issues Hour. Good intentions generally mean nothing, and it's good results that matter, good actions that matter. Not good intentions. And often selfish intentions end up, or sometimes they can end up with better results, like the selfish scientist who just wants awards and ends up finding a cure for some illness. We have been led astray by idealism in our lives. Don't say no to your children because you just want them to enjoy life. And hurt them in the process. The trick in life is to know what is good rather than to intend to do what is good. And it is hard to know what is good. That takes wisdom. There is no wisdom at our universities, at our high schools. There is— there are courses and there is a tremendous emphasis on feelings. But there is precious little wisdom. And that's why we are in decline.

All righty, let me now take some of your calls here.

And by the way, that's why we have started Prager University. And I beg you to go there. It's free. Our motto is, you give us 5 minutes, we'll give you a semester. And the intent is to give out wisdom. So there are two videos out now, one on America's values and the other on happiness. We have more being made, and that's our intent with Prager University. Okay, since I started with a rabbinic quote, I'll go to a rabbi calling in from San Diego. It's Yisrael.

How do you do, Rabbi? Hello, Dennis Prager.

Hi Dennis, thank you for taking my call. I agree with most of what you said, but I'd like to give a quote from Rabbi Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and I'd like to say he writes, "The yetzer hara, the evil impulse, is called an animal soul not because it's necessarily a brute animal, maybe a fox, but it may clothe itself in the garb of an earnest, straightforward, humble, righteous person possessing fine traits of character. In other words, this desire of idealism is not from the good inclination, but it's from the evil inclination.

Oh, very good.

So, well— And this is not my words, this is Shalabhava Ji Maharaj's words.

No, well, no, and God bless you for quoting him, but this is—

I did make that point in a different way by saying that we don't even know our real intentions, so it's even sillier to rely on intentions. Because I don't know, what I think is a good intention may in fact be selfish.

So here the Rebbe says a quote like this: Take this as a general principle and remember it always. Any matter that is effective towards or actually leads to actual service, good service and is confronted with opposition of any sort, even the most noble, that opposition is the scheming of the animal soul.

There you go.

And he adds off by saying, until then I had not known that there could be a pious animal soul, let alone even a Hasidic animal soul.

Right, a pious one. Excellent, thank you. We are in complete agreement, as it happens. And that's why I said it's another reason that intentions should not be judged. I mean, there are times you have to, you know, an attempted murder or whatever.

I mean, I'm not talking about courtrooms, but in our lives, intentions, you don't, as this rabbi correctly points out, the bad urge may cloak itself as a good urge. So we don't know. We don't know. That's why good is what is done.

Yeah.

It is what is achieved, not what is intended. You mean well with your social policy X or social policy Y? I don't care if you mean well. I want to know if it will work. Will it work? That's the only moral question. Does it increase goodness, welfare of the human being on Earth? Yes. That is what matters. Not does it sound good or what have you. San Antonio, Texas. Patrick. Dennis Prager.

Hello, Dennis. How are you doing?

Good, thanks.

Good. I would just like to say, well, I'm coming from the perspective of a Christian, and I would say that listening to your comment that good intentions don't amount to a hill of beans, they don't mean anything, would be misleading, at least coming from a Christian perspective. Because they do have incredibly significance— it has great significance as to whether a person would be saved or not. A person could do all the good in the world and have bad intentions, could have self-righteous intentions and ungodly intentions, and all the good that that person does does not amount to anything as far as that person's salvation.

It might amount to good for the world, Well, I'm okay, but I'm only talking from a worldly point of view. I never— I'm not talking theology.

I'm talking practical goodness and ethics.

The scientist who finds a cure for cancer, who—

I assume you rather go to a physician who was an atheist, but who was— if God forbid your wife, if you're married, had cancer, I suspect you would choose the atheist who was a genius at surgery than the believer who was mediocre at surgery.

Well, that is true. I would rather go to a person— yeah, who is qualified in what they do.

That's right, exactly.

So I'm only talking about from an earthly perspective. How God judges us is God's business. I've always said that, and I do feel that, because God knows things about us. First of all, the person who claims belief that would qualify him for salvation, you have no idea. You don't have a clue whether it's a sincere statement.

And in fact, from a Christian point of view, you only have a clue as to his sincerity by his works. By his works is his faith known.

So even there, even just speaking salvifically, you're back to what does the person do?

Yeah.

Except for God, who knows the heart, and that's God's business.

We'll be back in a moment.

Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager Show.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

We live in a time where the moment you question the narrative, you're told to stop thinking and start complying.

That's why what Angel is doing matters.

With eye-opening documentaries like Thank You, Dr. Fauci and RFK: Legacy, Angel is willing to explore the issues others avoid. In a culture shaped by gatekeepers, Angel offers something rare: a platform for truth-seeking storytelling that isn't constrained by fear or conformity. Go to angel.com/prager, join the Angel Guild, and watch these films today.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

Preachers and poets and scholars don't know it.

Temples and statues and And I'm a lucky man to be able to do this every day. I'm Dennis Prager. I think well enough of this hour to have it as a as a best of if I ever miss one of these. It's very important.

Very—

if you have mail you want to send me, I love to read your mail, either at PragerRadio or DennisPrager.com. The reason I worry about America, in fact, and worry about child rearing, worry about everything for the future, is that so many people don't know what was said this hour, that intentions don't matter. What matters is good action, which means good results. That's what matters. And that's why it is far more important to know what is good than it is to intend to do what is good.

Okay?

Which brings me to Downey, California, and Kathy. Hello, Kathy. Dennis Prager. Hello, Dennis Prager.

Yes, sir, I agree 100% with what you're saying, to know what's good, and you have to show your actions. What I think people are missing is they're not taught to think through their intentions.

That's correct.

What are their actions gonna be?

That's it.

And how is it gonna affect people?

That's it, that's it, Kathy, exactly. That is why I am so worried about this feelings-based generation that has been raised in mine and the next generation.

It's all feelings.

How do you feel about right and wrong? How do you feel about this or that? And so it's all that.

Like the Swedish woman I interviewed, and my interview with her is available on download or CD from DennisPrager.com, and I said, "You don't believe in God, you don't believe in religion.

How do you know, how do you derive your notions of right and wrong?" She says, "From my heart." End of issue. It's all heart-based.

It's all feelings-based.

Mm-hmm.

I just gave a very big talk on that very subject, on how I believe that overwhelmingly left-wing ideas are feelings-based. And is it now available? Really? Where is it to be found?

At DennisPrager.com.

At DennisPrager.com? What's it titled? Something about feelings and the left. It's really one of the most important lectures of my life. It was a lifetime of thought in that hour or hour and a half. Feelings have been substituted because if you feel that you mean well, make love, not war. War is not the answer. Nuclear disarmament, they all—

so they feel good, but they don't, they don't do good.

Steve in New Jersey, John California, Dave Kansas, Wayne California. Wish I— I really wish I could have taken your calls. Please do send me a, uh, uh, do send me a an email, and visit prageruniversity.com. That's our attempt to offer thoughts on what is right. Thanks for listening. This has been the Ultimate Issues Hour.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

Is it better for husbands and wives to spend a lot of time together, in fact nearly all time together, or is it better to have a, a distance? Hours apart each day, or even sometimes days apart, uh, because absence makes the heart grow fonder.

But I kind of disagree with you on this one, in that, um, I think there's a big difference between not wanting to be with your partner and just needing a little alone time.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort. It may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why PhD Weight Loss focuses on your metabolism first, so your body stops working against you.

Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900. Hello?