I CLOSE-UP I

To find the best CD rates in town.

Addictive Culture

Shop
'til you drop
or shop.
United Savings
Bank.

Continued from preceding page

We don't want our customers to feel they have
to shop all over town for the best rates on
Certificates of Deposit. So we do the shopping
for them and adjust our rates regularly. We
want to deliver consistently better rates on
CDs, overall, than any major bank or savings
and loan in the Detroit area. Call for today's
rates. 855-0550.

6 Month CD Rate

Effective Annual Yield

8.50% 8.77%

$250.00 Minimum Deposit Compounded Quarterly

United Savings Bank U
The little bank with the big i d

ea.

9-4:30 Monday through Thursday, 9-6 Friday
Middlebelt Rd. and Northwestern Hwy. • 855-8913
Buhl Building • 963-8350
14 Mile and Farmington Rd. • 661-1703
Tri Atria Building, 32255 Northwestern Hwy. • 855-0550

Rate subject to change without notice. Penalty for early withdrawal.
Limited offer. Does not apply to jumbos.
© 1988
Insured by FSLIC.

DAVID BIBER
CRISSMAN CADILLAC

1350 N. Woodward • Birmingham

6 4 4 - 1 9 3 0

"Where You Come First"

Kosins

FINEST SERVICE
AFTER THE SALE

Southfield Rd. at
111/2 Mile • 559-3900

SPECIALIZING IN SELLING THE FINEST AUTOMOBILES IS WHAT
I DO. AND DOING ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY HAS
MADE ME VERY GOOD AT IT. CALL ME AND LET ME SHOW
YOU HOW I COULD BE VERY GOOD FOR YOU.

Big & Tall
Southfield at
101/2 Mile • 569-6930

26 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1988

Uptown

wrestlings of conscience, the
struggles to wrest convic-
tions out of ambiguities.
The addict comes in many
forms. In the gambler, com-
pulsive overeater, alcoholic,
sexaholic, drugaholic, worka-
holic, cultaholic there is an
underlying desire to escape
reality, to escape its am-
biguities, conflicts and
cruelties. By pouring oneself
into one activity or one obses-
sion we hope to block out the
world.
A word about the worka-
holic, the most acceptable ad-
dict in our culture. This addic-
tion to something vaguely
called "career" or drawn to
some endless compulsion
called "upward mobility" is
no less escapist than the
substance abuser. He • is as
compulsively dependent as
the others. He is drunk with
mirthless sobriety. He is in-
toxicated with the cold effi-
ciency of the computer. He
seeks escape from the affec-
tive world of personal rela-
tionships. He mocks at com-
munity service, at everything
that cannot be summed up
with the bottom line. He has
no time or room for poetry or
philosophy or religion or fami-
ly or friends. The workaholic
has no time and no interest in
the commitments of causes,
the struggle for ideals or
idealism or personal service.
He will pay someone else to
meditate for him, to parent
for him, or to engage the
world for him. Annoyed, he
will cheerlessly write out a
check to avoid the pain of in-
volvement. Only let him alone
to feed his accounts.
Hedonism is the religion of
our mass culture. Hedonism
is an idolatry. The addict is an
idolater who has found his
small gods and has blocked
out the larger God. He has
chosen his compulsions and
denied his freedom. Frighten-
ed of life, he has unconscious-
ly decided not to live. Afraid
of pain, he has deadened his
sensibilities. Fearful of in-
dependence and the respon-
sibilities and pains it entails,
he has become dependent on
something or someone other
than his self.
Hedonism lies to us. It in-
sists that all we want out of
life is the presence of pleasure
and the absence of pain. But
it is untrue. Who would allow
a frontal lobotomy to be per-
formed on us, an incision
severing nerve fibres to our
brain which would deaden all
pains, all fears, all concerns?
Who of us would allow the im-
plantation of electrodes con-
nected to the pleasure cent. Prs
of the brain, bombarding u,
with ceaseless pleasures, re-
quiring from us no struggle,
a life of immediate and con-
stant gratification until we
die by exhaustion?

We would not choose to be
chained to a pleasure machine
devoid of pain because a life
without aspiration, ideals, or
purpose is euthanasia. lb live
is to know that you are man-
dated, that there is some-
thing significant that you
must do, something purpos-
ive that offers meaning to
your life and therefore
something deserving of your
suffering. lb be alive is to
know that you are a child of
imperatives. Micah summed
it up, "It hath been told thee,
0 man, what is good and
what is required of you: to do
justice, to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God."
None of these imperatives can
be realized without struggle,
pain, and sacrifice.
Therein lies human dignity,
self-respect, and meaning. No
one chooses suffering for its
own sake. We choose life and
love and peace and justice.
But no one can truthfully
choose those ennobling ideals
without embracing struggle.
Therefore wisdom counsels,
see to it that what you live for
is worthy of your sacrifice.
Only the dead have no im-
peratives, no mitzvot. As the
Talmud Shabbat (30a) puts it,
"When a person dies, he is
freed from torah and mitzuot,
from study and deeds of
goodness." The dead are
beyond pain and beyond life.
We Jews do not seek pain.
There is no masochism in our
tradition. But we know that
to feel no pain is to court
disaster. There are children
born with "familial dysauto-
nomia," the inability to feel
pain. Such children will burn
themselves, break bones, con-
tract fevers, destroy them-
selves. Not to feel pain is far
more dangerous than to feel
pain.
We live in a culture found-
ed on a dangerously false
understanding of reality, but
that prepares the ground for
addiction. Its lure is a
painless life, but its price is
death.
The hedonistic culture
avoids pain and has affected
the education of our children.
When parents will not allow
children to visit the sick
relative in the hospital or at-
tend the funeral of their
grandmother lest they see
human beings cry or mourn