What is "conscience"?

[00:00:01] When we would go hiking, we would sit around a bonfire and eat our meals. [00:00:09] And the person responsible for food would pass around something for us to eat and he would announce how much of it we could take. [00:00:17] Sometimes he announced, take according to your conscience. [00:00:21] How much is that? We asked. [00:00:24] He would answer, think how much you would want to take and take exactly half of that. [00:00:31] To which I. [00:00:33] Well, I actually wanted to take the whole thing. But since I need to take according to my conscience, then okay, I will settle for taking only half. [00:00:44] What is conscience? [00:00:46] Each one of us has some kind of inner understanding of what it is. [00:00:52] But is this understanding the same as other people's understanding of their conscience? [00:00:59] The word conscience comes from Latin, knowledge within oneself. [00:01:04] But everyone has a different knowledge within him or herself. [00:01:09] In the Soviet Union, only those with government influence or connections were able to provide for somewhat normal level of living for themselves. [00:01:21] When talking about their parents. Some people who lived in the Soviet Union told me we lived in terrible conditions. But my father never took advantage of his high position. [00:01:34] His conscience would not allow him to do that. [00:01:38] And others told me my father cared about us so much. [00:01:42] Thanks to his high office position, he got us whatever we needed. His conscience would not allow him not to provide for his family. [00:01:53] Both of these fathers believed that they were acting according to their conscience. [00:02:01] That means that conscience is subjective. [00:02:05] Conscience is our inner voice which is created as a result of how we were raised, what we experienced and how we perceived our experiences. [00:02:17] But we were all raised differently. We all had different lives, and we of course perceived things differently. [00:02:26] Since this inner voice is formed on a subconscious level, we sometimes don't understand where it even comes from. [00:02:35] It is so deeply within us that at times we cannot even formulate its specific principles. [00:02:44] The concept of conscience was born in Europe, and it was created by people who saw that everyone around them lives according to ethics similar to theirs. And this was not a surprise, because all of the people they knew followed religions that were built on Judeo Christian values. Because of this, people got the idea that everyone has the same conscience. [00:03:11] But now, when we see the diversity of this world's cultures, we see a completely different picture. [00:03:21] Conscience can compel one person to lie in order to help someone, and can compel another person to be honest and hurt someone as a result. [00:03:34] I'm convinced that the perpetrators of under killings in some cultures also say that they are acting according to their conscience. They are preserving the dignity of their family, they will say, instead of using subjective ideas which we often cannot articulate clearly, and whose source we often cannot identify. Judaism encourages us to follow objective, detailed, and thought through standards recorded in many volumes of various parts of the Torah. [00:04:13] What should you do if the Torah's instructions contradict your conscience? [00:04:18] Well, this may go against your conscience, but it could be perfectly fine according to your neighbor's conscience. [00:04:29] The question of what to do if the Torah contradicts my conscience, in essence is the question of what to do if my subjective standards contradict objective ones. [00:04:42] If, when studying the Torah, someone sees inconsistency or something objectionable, it definitely must be discussed and the questions must be answered. [00:04:56] We do this in many of our videos, but the mere claim of Torah contradicting conscience is not clear. [00:05:08] I understand that a person always wants to follow his own standards, that he is emotionally it is much easier to do that. [00:05:19] But I would still advise to follow objective thought through standards instead.