A question I received: The world today has become global; we’re all bound within a “small village.” Suppose one person wants to buy something and another wants to sell it. How should this transaction proceed in the global world? Typically, people haggle: the seller wants to sell for the highest price, and the buyer wants to buy for the lowest price, and in the end they reach a middle ground.

My Comment: Actually, that’s not true. When I walk into a store and see something I want, I don’t want to buy it – I want to take it, just like a child who comes and takes whatever he wants. This is our nature.

What did the owners of those financial pyramid schemes do? I invest my money in a bank and the bank gives it back to me with interest. That’s the agreement. But the banks broke the agreement by trying to take all of my money. Essentially, this is what happened to everyone.

We have reached a state where our will to receive – our egoism, has complete control over us. And it doesn’t allow us to do honest business. Everyone is willing to steal, kill, or do whatever it takes to “succeed.” The cause of this senseless behavior is our egoistic nature. Egoism is controlling us like a puppet master.

It is precisely this egoism that has forced us to build our financial systems and pyramid schemes. And people still keep investing their money in other banks, knowing that they may also collapse. But the bankers don’t care about that – each of them wants to earn another 50 billion dollars in addition to the dollars he already has that he can’t possibly spend anyway.

Imagine there’s a chunk of lamb roasting on a rack. I’m devouring it with my eyes, wanting to consume the whole thing! But what happens? After eating half a pound, or a pound maximum, I can’t possibly eat any more. I look at the remains and think: “I can’t throw this out!” But I can’t force myself to give it to someone else either! So, even though a person invests those 50 billion dollars in some enterprise, and he already realizes that this investment will be worthless, he still continues trying to build up his capital more and more. He just can’t stop himself.

This is what our ever-growing egoism has done to us! An ancient parable says that the angel of death brings a sword to a man dying of egoism, and the sword has a drop of poison at the tip. But this drop of poison gives that man momentary pleasure, which he can’t live without. So the man opens his mouth and swallows this drop – and dies. This is how we die from the moment we’re born. Yet precisely this egoism, which is now being revealed, will enable us to reveal its dominion over us and the need to escape this dominion. This will be our “exodus from Egypt.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Egoism Can Force Us to Become Extinct
Laitman.com Post: The Evil Eye Is Our Own Egoism
Kabbalah Today Article: “To Be or Not to Be?”
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “Eradicating Egoism”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”, Item 19

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