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There are two seperate things here: 1) KNOWING right from wrong and 2) being able to explain the logic behind it. Someone can know intuitively what a car is but not be able articulate and explain just what makes this thing (a smart car) a car as opposed to a golf cart with a roof.
Hashem has imbued each person with the intuition- with regards to certain things- as to what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. Ask a secular person if an incestous marriage is wrong. They will all, to a person, say it is absolutely wrong. Ask them to explain why it’s wrong and they can not. Same goes for having relations with an animal, eating human flesh (from someone who died naturally), etc.
This ability to judge right from wrong is the basis for why and how Hashem can hold people accountable for the evil they do and has been the basis of establishing societal norms since the beginning of time. Adam didn’t have the Torah. Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov didn’t either. Neither did any people before Matan Torah. There was still RIGHT and
WRONG.
Therefore when goyim behave in a “WRONG” way, even if one cannot explain logically as to WHY what he is doing is wrong, you can still know that he did do wrong- even according to him.
This is the greatness of all people. The ability to be able to discern and therefore be bocher between right and wrong. To be able to explain your decisions logically to everyone in a way that can hold up to an amoral mindset- that is not guaranteed or required to be able to do the right thing which goyim also have the ability to do.
So let me pose the following challenge to anyone here: ask a respected litvishe Talmud Chacham- who doesn’t have chassidishe leanings- if we say eilu v’eilu divrei elokim chayim with regards to the Chassidishe mehalach. I did, and the answer is, at best, not very clear. It doesn’t mean that Chassidim are bad people. For the most part they are scrupulous in Halachah, following their mesorah and work on their middos and even, nowadays, learn a lot of Torah. But with regards to the specific differences and unique focuses they have- Chassidus- the litvishe Gedolim seem to feel that they are off the mark.
@Zev7: And it’s a chassidishe idea that if it will overall help your avodas hashem if you let up on the fight and focus on how hashem loves you- that you should do that? I am going to assume that you were never really exposed to a solid, comprehensive derech in mussar- either that or you missed the boat of what your rebbeim were telling you.
The main point is that the chassidishe mehalach was a major change and innovation in the mesorah and mehalach in avodas hashem. A change that the Gra amongst others felt was invalid and wrong. Again, the Gra felt it was WRONG. Not a machlokes that we say eilu v’eilu divrei elokim chayim. Some people have suggested that the Gra didn’t really have SUCH a problem with Chassidus in general and he was really just against the Baal Hatanya and the Lubavitcher chassidus, but everyone agrees that he was at least not a fan of the genral mehalach of Chassidus. That is the origin of the Litvishe world’s aversion to Chassidus and I don’t think there have really been any gedolim that have changed on this.
What no one here has mentioned- and I don’t know why- is that in LA in general and specifically in the Frum community in LA there is an extreme open-mindedness that is not healthy. Like some people I know like to say- they’re so open-minded their brains fell out. There is very little hadrachah from the Rabbanim and very little hadrachah on a more personal level within the family unit. Everyone needs to be accepting and open-minded to everything they encounter, which leads to confusion, people having all sorts of warped values and a dearth of true Torah hashkafah. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is an enfatuation in LA, not just the frum community in LA, with gashmiyus. Specifically that life is all about how geshmak and easy someone has it (the weather is so nice! and therefore it’s the greatest place in the world….?). There is a lack of stress and focus on accomplishing, achieving and doing, like there is in other big Frum areas.
For someone who is living life to break-away from and disassociate as much as he can with a corporeal and materialistic existence I would think that living in Los Angeles would be a tremendous impediment.