Opinion: (Viktor Kuvaldin, Professor, Head of the Moscow School of Economics, MSU, manwb.ru): “The end of the century revealed the dangerous discrepancy between the global problems of humanity …and the limited public resources to address them….

“We all have witnessed and participated in the formation of a single interconnected, interdependent world, in which global systems not only bind the previously separate fragments, but also affect them deeply by transforming them. Practically, we talk about the creation of a global society….

“The study of a mega society requires appropriate analytical tools: concepts, categories, and language….

“The information revolution changes the principles of social organization. Vertical hierarchies are replaced by horizontal connections, established by people’s own choice and desire….

“This will inevitably change our ideas about society, citizenship, law, political power, and international relations on which the life of our society is built. This unavoidably influences those who control resources and make decisions….

“Political structures, state institutions, and management systems …lose their effectiveness in the world that is becoming globalized….

“The causes of conflict between globalization processes are in the difference between the level of socio-economic and political development of human communities, their lifestyle, and their attitude toward the main problems of existence….

“So far, globalization breaks down barriers in life, but not in our psychology and consciousness. Man is still a means, but not the goal.”

My Comment: In order to solve the problems of the world that is emerging before us, we have to change, become globally and integrally connected with each other, begin to think only in terms of WE, but not I, see the world whole and connected, and “format” our thoughts and desires from individual to global.

Otherwise, we will not be able to exist in a new world. Either we will realize this and begin to change gradually, or nature will force us to do this by suffering caused by our discrepancy with nature. Only by understanding what is happening will we be able to change ourselves and to solve the emerging problems.
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The world of egoists is a place of struggle for what the future world order will be. Supranational communities and businesses take the place of the state, the state loses power over media (the Internet), science, and the economy (which become global), and it is forced to deform itself into a new flexible body, to the extent that the new independent formations leave space for it, while they overtake the state’s functions.

But the state is unable to handle even the functions it still retains. All the work of authorities, which is increasingly reduced to servicing the population, causes a growing discontent. Undoubtedly, private institutions would be much more efficient at it.

The state, in its historical form, is dying. A new kind of power and society are emerging parallel to and outside the state, and they elude it. For now, it’s all about the state, its abolition and transformation into a single world government.

Besides, people no longer feel as a nation or society, but more as individuals who are willing to live in any place, any country, and they do not tend to be concerned with a certain community or nation. It is evident that gradually, “a nation” disappears and “a character” emerges. Egoism separates us at all levels of our communication.

But the need for unification of all for the sake of their survival and the need for new means of unification will be revealed precisely in this mutual inner (psychological) and outer (cultural, national, and state) distancing. However, people will not find such a force and idea in our world, except the one offered by Kabbalah: the mutual guarantee. A need for a unified global community will arise. Only in this way will we eliminate suffering arising from our lack of correspondence with unified nature.
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Freedom of the Collective and the Freedom of the Individual Are Equal

This is why the world was created filled with so many people, each with his own thoughts and opinions, …so that each and every one will adopt the thoughts and opinions of all others. Thus, when one corrects oneself in similarity to the Creator, one gets enriched …since he himself is incorporated in all the alien notions and thoughts of the entire world.

After all, if one wants to draw closer to the Creator, he must perform good deeds to justify the Creator’s actions towards him and the entire world. Hence, one is connected with the thoughts and opinions of the entire world.
[ 48790]
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard), Article No. 33, “The Lots”

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Shamati #26 “One’s Future Depends and Is Tied to Gratitude for the Past”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected, Chapter “Truma (Donation) 2,” “The Stars,” Item 841, Lesson 37
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 2, Item 3, Lesson 4
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 46, Lesson 29
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag “The Peace,” Lesson 3
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All of humanity is now facing a choice. We have advanced in our egoism until it closed us off inside one integral system where we are totally interdependent. Therefore, today’s world has become global, meaning the connection between us has become universal and mutual, and we cannot do anything to circumvent it.

That is why we are losing the ability to control this kind of world. After all, it is becoming similar to the upper system, and these two systems exist parallel to one another. One is a system of rigid, mutual connections, like Malchut of the World of Atzilut or the World of Infinity, which is already in the corrected future state. And the second system is our present state where we, egoists, are confronting one another.

If we were just individual egoists, then each of us would experience small misfortunes and problems, but we would know how to fix them. However, today, when our development has brought us to a state where this entire system is being rigidly blocked and closed, we do not know what to do.

Each of us is no longer able to cope with the problems of his life. The crisis is breaking out everywhere: from our private lives in the family, at work, and with ourselves, to the global crisis of society, culture, education, and even ecology, meaning in the nature around us.

The crisis is being revealed everywhere—inside of man and outside of him. And he does not know how to cope with it because he is in a closed, integral system. And now we have no choice left: Under the pressure of suffering, we will have to find a connection between us that will be similar to the upper system so these two worlds, the upper world and this world, would match one another, until they unite completely, into one whole.

Now we are setting our own boundary toward which we want to advance in the direction of this correspondence. But to the extent we do not wish to advance, this “unwillingness” will boomerang back to us in the form of suffering. For example, according to the program of creation, to the timer that shows how the flywheel of development has unraveled, I already have to be on a certain level, for example, I had to have come “10 centimeters” closer to spirituality by now.

And the whole world has to advance in this way even though there are different people in it. Some understand things better, and others—worse, and others yet do not feel anything at all. After all, just as all of nature consists of different levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human, the same division exists inside of man as well.

But the whole world, its whole mass, must now take a step forward. And if we do not do that, then this delta, the lack of our progress, will be felt by us in a negative form, as suffering. But the suffering will still push us to advance.

That means you won’t be able to run away from this work. The engine continues to run, and if you still don’t want to work, then instead of a “-1” you will receive a “-2” and then a “-3,” and so on, until you reach such enormous suffering that you will no longer be able to refuse to budge.

Stubbornness always has a limit. In reality we are very sensitive to pleasure and pain because our matter is the will to enjoy. Therefore, there is no doubt that eventually, the world will advance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/29/11, Shamati

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Man was created with the desire to enjoy which aspires to be fulfilled, feels deficient if it is not, and sees the whole meaning of its existence in it. Besides this, man has no sensation. All our sensations come solely from pleasures that we see before us—that is from what our world is built. Reality is comprised of the pictures of pleasures that our imagination paints for us.

We see around us the still, vegetative, animate world, and other people because our desire is composed of four levels at which we experience images of all possible pleasures. But if we do not want to live among these illusions and wish to see the real world, we must view it not from the desire to enjoy but from the desire to bestow. In fact, it is there that we find our root and our connection with it, meaning the Thought of ​​Creation, its program and purpose. But egoistic desire separates us from it all, from the true knowledge, sensation, and purpose.

We have a unique opportunity to get closer to the true picture, to put a veil on the picture painted for us by our egoism. And it isn’t that we should stop seeing it all together, but rather stop giving it as much importance as we do today. Instead, we must search for the picture of roots that lie behind it, which emerges in the very same desires if they change direction from receiving to bestowal.

Desire is one, but all of its parts (the still, vegetative, animate, and human) must be transformed into bestowal. And then we will see the roots of that very picture which is seen in our desire to receive pleasure for ourselves.

This is done by “the shadow of holiness.” After all, when a person strives for this kind of shadow, he tries to make it himself. But soon he finds that he is incapable of it. He finds that his flight from the desire to enjoy and trying to put a “shadow” on it, meaning make the screen, restriction, and work above it, is impossible without outside help. It requires a miracle!

A miracle is something out of the person’s hands and not available to him directly as an obvious means. And gradually he comes to the conclusion that the very root, the upper force he wants to disclose, should help him and deliver the concealment.

But since a person asks for it on his own volition, it is counted as if he created this shadow. And so he conceals his desire to enjoy more and more, which is regarded as, “do not do to someone what is hateful to you,” and he acquires the property of Bina, bestowal in order to bestow (Hafetz Hesed).

And when he finishes the job and rises above all of his egoistic desires to Mount Sinai, he starts to work, even receiving in order to bestow, in “loving his neighbor as himself.” Gradually, all desire turns into bestowal, and so on until the end of correction.

All of this is accomplished by way of concealment or so-called “modesty.” It is the work when a person is looking how to hide from his desire to enjoy, to not use it directly, selfishly, and certainly not to use it instinctively without thinking, but only after rigorous analysis and testing. This is the very first stage of our work.

If the human in us learns to hide from the desire to enjoy within us, he separates himself from this desire and rises above the screen. And at that moment, he is connected with the root and makes calculations above reason. Thus he keeps walking the path and advances.
[49209]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/2011, Shamati #39

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Opinion: (Joseph Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, Chief Economist of the World Bank, a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001)): “The medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece.

“There is an alternative: an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund….

“Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth….

“A failure of either Europe or the United States to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. The failure of both would be disastrous…. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.”

My comment: The world continues to move in that direction because the artificial stimulation of growth—or saving—does not make sense. It is impossible to “stimulate growth” artificially: It depletes resources, the environment, and increases the gap between rich and poor countries and people. We cannot promise work to everybody: There will be less work. It is pointless to oppose this trend; we have to understand it. Therefore, a third direction emerges.

The solution is to bring society to a new system of internal connection:

1. Reasonable consumption—distribution that provides life’s necessities to everyone.
2. Mandatory and constant training and education for everyone in the global and integral vision of the world. As school for children, the school should be on-going and teach everyone to exist in the new, integral, globally connected world.
3. Educating everyone in the possibility to sense a new level of awareness and perception of the world.

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Opinion: Globalistics (from Latin “Globus,” the Globe, a science about the universal) is a science about the mechanism of development of humanity and the world in unity, in real conditions of the Earth: its finite size, limited natural resources, and anthropological overpopulation. The world is humanity and its environment.

Globalistics examines the unified world from a global perspective and describes this world, its developmental dynamics, and its inner interconnections as a single system of integrated parameters.

Globalistics studies the general laws of the quantitative development of humanity and builds quantitative models of the manageable sustainable world order in the conditions of anthropological overpopulation. Globalistics harmoniously combines basic and applied research and developments.
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Freedom of the Collective and the Freedom of the Individual Are Equal

The whole of the body exchanges thoughts and sensations regarding each of its organs. If the whole body thinks that a specific organ should help it, this organ will immediately know that thought and provide the contemplated participation. Also, if an organ feels that the place it is in is narrow, the rest of the body will immediately know that thought and sensation and move it to a comfortable place.

However, should an organ be cut off from the body, the body will no longer know the needs of the separated organ, and the organ will not know the thoughts of the body, to benefit each other. But if the organ connects to the body as before, the organ and the body would once again know the thoughts and needs of each other.
– Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”
[48690

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Question: How can we explain the integrality of a new world to the masses so that they become fully convinced of it?

Answer: To experience it, the world will have to go through a lot of troubles. It is not difficult to agree intellectually with total interconnectedness. “Indeed, I’ve read and heard something about this. There is an earthquake in Japan, and we have problems with spare parts. There is a war in Libya, and Denmark is closing the border. I agree: The world is integral.”

However, this integrality must be felt to the marrow of the bones so that there is not a single thought, a single desire to consider ourselves separate from everyone else, from all of humanity. It should sit in us relentlessly, and we should tremble at the thought of it, not just perceive it by the mind.

I have to feel it physically, “in the guts.” Let hunger torture me, I cannot take a bite into my mouth if I am not sure that the same bite is available to everyone. That is what the integral world is: Eating what others do not have is like swallowing poison.

It is difficult to imagine something like that. We are not living it, we simply heard of some sort of connections. It is still a long way from here to an individual meal turned poison and to the blessing from everyone being provided with everything. Imagine the suffering we have to experience on this path.

Question: But we want to prevent sufferings. This means that we have to provide a person with tangible evidence that he should be imbued with this integrality; otherwise, it will be painful. We have to touch his feelings to convey this message.

Answer: Correct, but on the other hand, if we do not resort to the help of the Light, it is impossible to convey this deep knowledge even through the method of social influence. You have to accelerate progress; otherwise, the “press of development,” approaching from behind, will do this for you.

And that is why education is required. We do not talk about the facts taken from advertising; a person must “delve” into these facts so that they surround, “mold,” and “format” him. An objective, abstract presentation will not help here; we have to reach man’s essence. And you are not capable of this.

Reading about the neighbor whose house burned down, a person clicks one’s tongue: “Poor thing. Perhaps the government might help him now.” And he will not move further. The barrier of our egoism could be breached only with the Light. No evidence will help without the Light; even great sufferings do not change people.

It is virtually impossible to advance from sufferings. They can just lead us to the need for spirituality, but not to correction. Only the Light performs correction itself.
[49568]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/2011, “The Peace”

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