Much of the Orthodox world today is synthetic, the yeshiva world in particular. They operate from a single directive - do Brisker analysis on a few pages of Gemara. Everything else is scorned. But we are physical creatures and need doctors, farmers, accountants, and taxi drivers. Since Charedi yeshiva boys are directed away from that, services of those people need to be purchased. That requires money. So a second directive emerges from the prime directive: donate your money or fundraise. And to get people to give their money requires guilt, or really fear. So we have a triad - gemara, gelt, and guilt. It's simple and consistent.
Life requires decision making. And sound decision making requires balancing of facts, feelings, yearnings, and perspectives. Fanatics don't engage in sound decision making, they just make declarations of dogma. And that results in poor decision making.
When I was in yeshiva, anytime I ever talked to rabbis about what to do it was always stay in yeshiva. Once I left, it was always live near a yeshiva, and if I already did, it was never to move. So I was in New York, which I couldn't afford, but all ideas about moving even to towns with a yeshiva were squashed because it wasn't New York.
And if I left New York and went to a town that had yeshiva parts and Modern parts, the yeshiva people would always tell me to live in the yeshivish part. Is that what was best for me? I don't deal well with the anti-goyim talk, the life is only for study part, the mockery of every secular activity. No matter, you have to be yeshivish. The answer was always coming from the dogma.
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