Mental Masturbation

I'd like to coin a new term called Mental Masturbation.
[I saw afterwards it's already out there. See below]

Mental Masturbation is the engaging in the pleasure of one's own solipsistic ideologies and self-projections with little or no corroboration with any empirical or factual data externally. The pleasuring of oneself mentally and intellectually, with one's own internal self-thoughts, even when their truth is completely unsubstantiated and ultimately conjecture.

An example I could think of would be a "scientific" discussion of the moon 1000 years ago. A man will come and "offer his thoughts" that the moon is made of cheese. That's why it has it's white color and dark spots and crevices, etc. Another man may come along and claim that the moon is it's own material (an ether of sorts), with other various characteristics and properties all uniquely specific unto itself, etc. Yet a third man could come along and suggest the moon is (as we know it to be true today) made of rock, and all of the accompanying features that come with that, etc

All these thoughts being offered mind you, without any substantive proof of logic or specific nuance making it evident that, yes, that is The Answer, the only answer. No calculations or experimentations. No broad canvassing of other heavenly bodies or phenomena to try and get a sense of patterns or unifying shared concepts. Just ad hoc: The moon is white and cheese is white so let it be cheese...or rock... or whatever is white. In other words, answers that "fit into" the question but not "fitting" the question.

Consequently they're all "wrong" here-- even the third man, insofar as everything that everyone said was just conjecture with no real proof of corroboration to facts. Everyone's just saying that which "speaks to them" or "feels right". Without having some kind of benchmark measure of data to "work within" or "verify against" it's all just conjecture and the "rock theory" is no better than the "cheese theory" even if generations later it's discovered (through scientific investigation i.e. drisha) that the moon is in fact composed of rock.

And so I come to my point: the hopeless state of Mental Masturbation among Torah Jewry (vis-a-vis the empirical truth of Torah) at even the highest levels of leadership and scholarship. The Rabbi's "Shabbos Morning" sermon where he conveniently "fits in" to the Parasha his agenda pertaining to current events, or the "cute vortlich" among Rebeiim and Roshei Yeshiva (which 75% of the time even the speaker himself knows that the vort is probably not the true intent of the Torah). The "Kabbala Centre" self-help ideas which have been just retrofitted to work within the "jewish framework" of Ten Sefirot or the yeshiva bochur, with his "bag full of ideologies" that he's picked up from yeshiva, with absolutely no cognizance as to how those same ideologies can be traced back to a Sinai and to a Torah she'Bichtav.

And so we live in a world that is totally oblivious to a "scientific methodology of Torah Study" (Drisha) but instead finds its particular circle of mental masturbators that matches best and just "joins in" as it were. A world oblivious to a Shimon haAmsuni (Pesachim 22b) , that will have one את to say a cute vort on and a thousand אתים in direct contradiction to, and still unashamedly make that one את their personal platform and podium for spouting whatever personal agenda they may want to say, all the while justifying it under protection of a שבעים פנים לתורה. A world that has completely abandoned a י"ג מדות שהתורה נדרשת בהם and practically doesn't even know that Midrashei Halacha like Sifra and Sifrei exist. A world of readers reading this blog and saying to themselves "I don't get it. How else can you learn Torah then???"

And so if I could just give over one message to the Torah world out there it would have to be:
Just Say NO to Mental Masturbation!


[יחזקאל טז יז- ותקחי כלי תפארתך מזהבי ומכספי אשר נתתי לך ותעשי לך צלמי זכר ותזני בם]


ספרא נגעים פרק יג משנה ב -- "אמר לו הרי אתה אומר לכתוב שתוק עד שאדרוש" עיי"ש

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

[Post Script: After Googling I see that the phrase Mental Masturbation is already around but fascinatingly enough with a slightly but fundamentally different meaning. The common usage seems to be "mental thought that is unproductive" i.e. just as masturbation is a non-productive activity... but i think that's wrong. The problem with masturbation is not that it's "non-productive", to the contrary it's very productive in giving a person pleasure. The problem with masturbation is that it's an act of fantasizing an external reality and engaging with that fantasy i.e. a denial of reality and an escape into one's own solipsistic world. It is with that understanding of masturbation that i use my term mental masturbation]

[Very happy to just discover shiurim of Rav Michael Avraham on the subject of Midrashei Halacha. Starting to listen to them now...]