Three questions I received on the new generation’s changing traits and values:

Question: In the last few years, psychologists have shown that younger people are much less able to focus their attention and to anticipate and build models for future actions.

My Answer: This is actually a positive phase of their development, because there cannot be anything negative in nature. People have to go through this, since all the positive properties and qualities originate from the negative ones.

Question: People who enjoy books, such as myself, are now being replaced by number-oriented people, who have completely different values and a different kind of perception. Because they are so different from people like me, they often just can’t hear or understand us. How can we communicate with them so they will actually listen to us?

My Answer: If this change is happening, it means that it is precisely these types of people that must start becoming aware of and sensing the spiritual world, rather than the philosophers and other thinkers of the past. Things just might work the opposite of how we expect them to: the awareness, logic, and ability to analyze and synthesize that the great, enlightened thinkers have, could actually be an obstacle that keeps them from entering the new, spiritual world.

Question: Then what type of thinking is preferable?

My Answer: Our thoughts arise as a result of our desires, because desire is the basis of our nature. Therefore, reason appears only according to one’s desire to attain something. If I desire to fulfill myself with something, then my mind develops accordingly. Otherwise, I would not have a mind (or reason).

The more I desire something and the more this desire is aimed at something higher, something new and unknown, the more my mind develops in new ways along with this new desire.

When Kabbalah speaks of reason or the mind, it is not talking about the egoistic kind of reason, which is handed down to us by various philosophers, thinkers and scholars. It is not talking about the kind of reason people are normally proud of, which they consider the human part of man. This kind of reason is not present in man, but in an egoistic creature whose mind works only for satisfying one’s egoistic desires, desires that are aimed at science and cultural values, but not bestowal. All of these desires are based on reception and egoism, but not bestowal.

This is why all the previous cultural and academic values will gradually decline. They will come down from the high pedestal they currently reside on will be considered insufficient. People will use them as a mere base to help them achieve the next, spiritual degree.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam On Human Nature
Laitman.com Post: Living Within The Desires Of Others
Laitman.com Post: Philosophy Has Finally Run Its Course
Shamati #153: “A Thought Is an Upshot of the Desire”

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