Unbearable Equality

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The people who demand social justice want to get an immediate answer. What can we tell them?

Answer: You can’t achieve social justice and fair distribution of resources that will satisfy everyone without first building society as a family.

We are all different, each one has his own needs, and each one deserves to receive his share that is different than the others. So, how is it possible to satisfy everyone?

It can only be done if we are connected by ties of love that provide fulfillment when I have a lack due to someone else having more. A person tears something from himself and gives to another.

For example, a father giving his favorite dish to his son is totally different from ordering another portion for his son. Sacrificing something is better than simply giving something. After all, this “piece of the pie” fills you with love, enjoyment on a completely different level, higher and more abstract.

So, equality and fair distribution can only be relative and consistent with real differences between people. In order to learn to live as in a family and negotiate as a family, we need to build the right mutual relationships among us, and that requires the integral education of society.

We need to explain integral education to people in every possible way, with the help of videos, songs, and dramas. We can show how a person understands his own bitter experience. For example, suppose he wants all the good, and in response he receives contempt. He gives everyone cottage cheese because people were protesting its cost, and the next day he sees lots of unused cottage cheese containers thrown in the dump.

Then, he gives everyone a thousand dollars. There are some who use the money to buy alcohol and drugs. For others, the one thousand dollars isn’t enough to make ends meet, and they come complaining to him.

Can I bestow upon everyone in the same way? Even if I have inexhaustible treasures that I could give out generously to everyone, eventually, they will begin arguing and beating one another. A person cannot stand the idea that he has exactly what others have. He must feel that the others are inferior to him in some way.

If you give two people the same presents, they will destroy each other because they won’t be able to bear this equality. Equality denies us the feeling of life. We live only by contrasts, by feeling superior to others.

I am willing to get half my salary if you get less than I do. I would prefer that to getting a salary that is 10 times higher if what you get is 20 times more. I could not stand that.

Everything is relative. So, will we ever reach equality? What is social justice anyway? How can it be measured? After all, no matter how much you give people, they still will feel dissatisfied.

This is what we have to explain, at least gradually, step-by-step, until a person understands that it is simply impossible to have artificial equality among us. Then, he will ask what can we do? The answer is simple. True equality should bring us pleasure, and only love can help here, only by mutual guarantee.

Otherwise, humanity will find itself in increasingly greater troubles. We at least should strive for that, to understand that it is crucial. This is the goal of our dissemination.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/12, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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How To Reach Social Justice

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