Riddle: What Can Be Divided Without Being Lessened?

A young Jew travels to Israel on a trip sponsored by a group called Birthright Israel. While there, for reasons that are not hard to understand, he comes to believe that it is a place he wants to defend. So he joins the IDF, to devote his life to its defense. Sunday he was killed in the fighting. He was 24.

This is the sort of story with which we are all well-familiar. So what is the moral of the story?
There are many people to blame for Steinberg’s death. There is the Hamas fighter behind the weapon that actually killed him. There are the leaders, on both sides, who put him in Gaza, and the leaders behind all of the wars between Israel and the Palestinians. I can trace it back to 1948, or 1917, or whatever date suits you and still never find all the parties who are responsible. But I have no doubt in my mind that along with all of them, Birthright shares some measure of the blame.
Blame?

17 comments:

raven said...

"It turns out that it’s not that hard to persuade young people to see the world a certain way"

Yes, Allison, that may be correct.Perhaps some self examination is in order.....log in eye and all that.

raven said...

Oh yes, the riddle.

Love.

Grim said...

That was not the answer I was considering. Is it true that love is divided? If you have one child and another one comes, do you now have only one love that is divided in two? Or do you obtain a new love, whole and complete?

Eric Blair said...

He saw his duty and did it. 'nuff said.

E Hines said...

This is an example of how a false assumption of moral equivalence illustrates the cloudiness of the judgment of those who cannot distinguish.

On the riddle itself, raven is right: If you have one child and another one comes, do you now have only one love that is divided in two? Or do you obtain a new love, whole and complete?

You asked about dividing and not being lessened. You've provided an example of exactly that division without lessening--the new love, whole and complete. Indeed, that divided love, far from being lessened, has been multiplied by the division.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Well, I suppose there is a sense in which multiplication is a form of division. Indeed, you can speak of division in half as a multiplication by 0.5, so the terms are interchangeable.

The canonical answer to the riddle is "Guilt." Guilt is singular in a different way than love, since we speak of the guilt for some particular crime: there's only one crime, but the fact that two or three people committed a murder instead of one doesn't reduce anybody's sentence.

I'm trying to decide if love satisfies the riddle as well. Only, I think, if we speak of a love that is singular but has multiple objects -- maybe God's love, which is a single act, but embraces all things. Human loves seem like they may be multiple things, rather than divisions of one thing.

Grim said...

He saw his duty and did it. 'nuff said.

Just so. And when we say it, we aren't "assigning blame." Praise, rather, for a man.

raven said...

Yes, Praise- and the writer is so far from the natural orbit it does not even occur to her. "Duty"? Wazzat,Jack?

Ymar Sakar said...

Divided but not lessened. Ai

Ymar Sakar said...

"Guilt is singular in a different way than love, since we speak of the guilt for some particular crime: there's only one crime, but the fact that two or three people committed a murder instead of one doesn't reduce anybody's sentence. "

According to that guy who wrote On Killing, guilt and responsibility for pulling the trigger can and has been divided, since people together are easier to act due to shared responsibility and guilt.

MikeD said...

I think "Love" does answer the riddle as well, Grim. Think about it. You loved (and love) your wife. That's pretty clear. When your son was born, you loved (and love) him. Did your love for your wife lessen at all? Does it not now have more "targets" (I failed to come up with a better word, "objects" being the runner up)?

Grim said...

I'm still unconvinced that my love is divided between my wife and son, as opposed to my having (a) love for my wife, and (another) love for my son. For one thing, the (two?) loves have not only different objects, but a very different content. My love for my wife is romantic in a way that parental love is not at all. That suggests to me that it is not a single love that has been divided, but two loves that each have their own individual character.

However, I'm willing to bow to the common opinion at least to award the prize for having answered the riddle. :)

E Hines said...

award the prize for having answered the riddle. :)

Ooh. A participation prize.

[g]

Eric Hines

Grim said...

A victory of no less moment, nor any smaller reward, than winning one of Sly's caption contests.

MikeD said...

And to be fair, with just as large a reward as all other answers were given.

Grim said...

No, the winner gets double.

Ymar Sakar said...

The Japanese considers love to be a higher level entity, like a higher dimensional construct, thus while humans express it in different ways, at the root it is the same thing, it comes from the same power or source.

As such, the division in human families is merely a social construct, designed to facilitate human weaknesses and human survival.

At the basic conceptual level, family love, romantic love, and love of causes or countries, is the same thing.

Humans have priorities, so it is good and necessary to prioritize. But if these were compartamentalized into boxes, then the higher dimension would look at the set as a total box or a single box. Just as if you placed 2 dimensional squares on top of each other, you would get a single box if you broke the dimensional barrier.