In the News (from The New York Times): “Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide” “This is the worst we’ve had since 1929,” said Laurent Wauquiez, France’s employment minister. “The thing that is new [about this crisis] is that it is global, and we are always talking about that. It is in every country, and it makes the whole difference.”

My Comment: That’s right: the distinctive feature of this crisis is that it is global. This is qualitatively, not quantitatively, different. It isn’t just a crisis that has hit many countries, but a crisis that has hit everyone together. It has connected all the countries in the world even more, revealing our interconnection to everyone.

And now everyone has to learn about this phenomenon. The new laws and qualities of today’s civilization can only be created by means of a complete connection among all people, cultures, countries, and nations in our small village. We will not be able to come out of the crisis without creating these new qualities.

In the past, we progressed by means of simple competition, the way Darwin described it. Now, however, we are a single organism, and we can no longer compete with each other. On the contrary, the only way we can make progress is by drawing closer and reaching greater harmony with each other.

In the News (from Atlantic Monthly): “The Capitalist Threat” by George Soros There is something wrong with making the survival of the fittest a guiding principle of civilized society.

My Comment: Actually, it wasn’t wrong in the past, but it is now, when all our individual egos have united into one, global egoism. This change took place in the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, Baal HaSulam wrote that the whole modern world was already like one family – see the newspaper, “The Nation.”

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In the News: (from The European Parliament): “Focus on the long term while tackling immediate economic crisis” MEPs [members of European Parliament] and national parliamentarians from the 27 Member States and the candidate countries began a two-day Joint Parliamentary Meeting to discuss “A New Deal for European Economic Recovery.” ECB [European Central Bank] President Jean-Claude Trichet said that stimulus packages should be aimed at fostering longer term structural adjustment.

My Comment: They’re starting to understand that they are not in control of the situation and that it’s pointless to try to plan anything, since there is no regulator! The lack of solid ground under their feet will make them keep searching for solutions until they’ll discover that the crisis was caused by just one thing: the lack of a complete, reciprocal and good connection between people.

As they keep searching for more answers, they will realize that it’s necessary to find a means to amend the connections between all the people in the world. And this is possible only by applying the method of Kabbalah – the science that explains this connection. Then, Kabbalah will truly become a science about our lives.

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Laitman.com Post: Crisis and Resolution

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Here is an analysis of our medical insurance by Dr. Angelov from Boston, USA (a doctor and a member of Bnei Baruch):

About the modern medical insurance: 35% of the stimulus package intended to jumpstart the US economy is going to the medical industry. That’s because when the crisis began, the insurance rates rose and people began to save money on visits to doctors and medication. As for the unemployed, they have lost health insurance completely. The government is trying to rescue the situation using the same principles that caused the medical industry to go into crisis in the first place: allocating funds to exalt the ego, which is the only cause of the crisis.

What do I mean? The motivation to make more money has become more important than the right relationship between the patient and the doctor. Modern medicine is founded on the profit principle. It’s not about how effective it is, but about how much profit it brings. Therefore, there’s no trust between the doctor and the patient. The patient suspects that the doctor wants to make money off of him rather than cure him, and the doctor is afraid of being sued for malpractice because the patient wants to profit from the doctor’s mistake. Therefore, the very principle of modern medical insurance is based on profit rather than care for the patient. It’s all arranged so people will pay for the insurance, but never actually use it.

And here’s how health insurance used to work in ancient times: About 4000 years ago in China, a healer would make his rounds around the village every morning. A vase was mounted by the entrance to every house. He would reach his hand into the vase and take out a coin. If the coin was there, this meant that everyone in the house was healthy. If there was no coin in the vase, it meant that someone there was sick. So the healer would come inside and treat the sick person to the best of his ability. In this case, the herbs, needles and other medical supplies were paid for by the coin that was not put in the vase.

In his free time, the healer would go into people’s houses to make sure that their diets and lifestyles were healthy. Whoever wouldn’t comply with the rules of the insurance (such as being too lazy to exercise every morning, for example) would be excluded from the healer’s daily rounds.

So, the principle of health insurance was opposite then to what it is today. People paid money to help keep others healthy, and the person who was ill did not have to pay.

My Comment: It’s clear that we have to do everything possible to stop medicine from being a business. Doctors’ first and foremost concern should be for their patients to become healthy, rather than for the patients to remain sick for as long as possible!

In ancient times, people’s egoism was very small, and therefore the health insurance practiced in ancient China was possible in a small village. However, now we are dealing with a global problem and people have an enormous egoism. The only way to create a correct medical system under these circumstances is by correcting people’s egoism, so everyone will want everyone else to be healthy, just like in one family.

The crisis will show us how interdependent we all are. Then we will set up health insurance that will actually benefit humanity.

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