Medium published my new article “Desperate for an Economy of Sharing”

Despite the insistence to keep the economy running, it’s grinding to a halt. “The U.S. economy shrank at a dizzying 33% annual rate in the April-June quarter — by far the worst quarterly plunge ever,” wrote Time magazine.

In the near future, people will realize that only the well-being of society guarantees the well-being of the individual within it.

There are consequences to a slowdown. According to Bloomberg, “A special project by the Census Bureau has set out to map and measure all the anxieties that Covid-19 has brought in its wake.” And the findings are alarming: Almost a third of people in some states have little or no confidence they can pay August’s rent or mortgage. Almost 127 million Americans experienced a loss of income since mid-March, and millions were forced out of work dealing with the pandemic. Worse yet, people’s health was adversely affected by the virus, even if they didn’t catch it. In fact, in addition to high levels of anxiety and depression that the virus stirred, 71 million adults did not get medical care that they needed for a condition unrelated to Covid-19, between mid-June and mid-July.

We’re clearly at a crossroads. Eventually, the government, any government that is elected, will have to make the necessary changes to secure people’s well-being. Otherwise, the chaos we are already seeing in some cities will spread throughout the country.

Although a pandemic is troublesome enough, Covid-19 is much more than that. The transformations it is imposing on us are not merely measures to curb its spreading; they are revolutionizing our entire civilization. The job losses we have experienced until now will dwarf compared to the job market that we will see in the near future. In fact, we are racing toward a reality where not working is the norm and working is the exception. In such circumstances, relief packages will not do; we will need a deep change in our perception of the concepts of work and society.

Only essential jobs will remain. Production of food, clothing, housing, healthcare, education, and other basics are necessary. But even here, automation and robotics will shrink the number of workers. In such a state, it will be impossible to maintain the existing model of salaries to those who work, and a few months of benefits for the unemployed. You can’t have the majority of the nation living on food stamps and in affordable (low-income) housing.

Therefore, we need to establish a two-arm program where one arm adapts the economy to the evolving circumstances, and the other adapts the society to those same evolving circumstances. The economy-arm will reshape production so that monopolies cannot exploit their power and people can afford to buy everything they need to support a modest but reasonable standard of living. If the society-arm works correctly, there will be no need for austerity measures of any kind, everyone will have a decent life, and the country’s budget will be balanced.

People’s income will come either from jobs or from the federal or state governments, a bit like today’s public sector employees. However, these people will not work in public service jobs, but in building a completely new society, since the current structure of society is the cause of the crisis.

The economy is a reflection of the society we live in. The current society fosters excessive consumption, unbridled competition, cruelness, and apathy to the plights of others. These, in turn, create depression, violence, substance abuse, suicide, homicide, bullying, racism, eating disorders, numerous mental health issues, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and any form of conceivable misery. The task of the society-arm of the program will be to create solidarity, mutual responsibility, and care among all people. As a result, the economy will become an economy of sharing.

In such an economy, the role of production is not to further pad the already bloated bank accounts of companies’ shareholders. The redesigned economy produces only what is needed, and with an added goal to bring people closer together. Whether one works in manufacturing or provides services, the salaries will be similar and the goal the same: to increase social cohesion and solidarity.

To foster such a society, people will need to understand the shift that the world is taking and participate in it of their own volition. To facilitate this understanding, governments will provide mandatory courses that will show how we are becoming an interdependent society where our lives depend on the lives of everyone else, similar to the way we must keep social distancing in order not to infect other people.

Until today, society consisted of individuals who tried to exploit others for their own needs without any accountability. However, that model has failed and exhausted itself. In the near future, people will realize that only the well-being of society guarantees the well-being of the individual within it. Therefore, people will learn to care for society so that it will care for them. The sooner we realize that this is where we’re going, the better and easier it will be for all of us.
[269680]

Filed under: Economy, Health, New Publications, Society - No Comments →

My new article on San Diego Jewish World “Pandemic ended our childhoods”

PETACH TIKVAH, Israel — We can get all teary-eyed over it, but it won’t help. The world we knew until the beginning of this year is over and will not return. And with it, it took our childhood. Until Covid-19, we were like kids wrecking up the house doing whatever they want while the parents are out on business. But Covid showed us that they’re not gone; they’re just invisible. And instead of showing up and yelling at us, they sent an invisible force with the odd name, SARS-CoV-2, aka, the novel coronavirus, which sent us home and told us to stay home. And every time we come out, it returns and lands another blow until we learn we must obey.

We don’t like it; we want to get rid of it, but we are gradually realizing that we can’t, and probably will never be able to, at least until we do what it tells us: “Stay apart and stop infecting one another.”

We already know that Covid-19 is affecting our brains, but what we haven’t realized is that it is affecting our hearts. It will change our hearts from alienation to connection. For now, it only increases our loneliness, but at some point, we will realize that to connect and not be lonely, we have to connect in our hearts before we connect in our bodies. Only then we will overcome seclusion, the negative influence we have projected on each other will be reversed, and this will be our healing.

The virus has come to teach us how to be grownups, responsible for our common home, and accountable to one another. It has come to turn us from unruly children into caring adults, who tend to one another and to the world around them.

Just as children do not notice as they grow until they are already adults, we will see what we have become only after the fact. And probably, only then will we be thankful to the virus, without which we wouldn’t be able to disconnect from our previous, infantile, and destructive little selves, and become mature, responsible, and caring humanity.
[269614]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a learning from the global Corona pandemic, that we all are missing?“

We should learn that the coronavirus is not merely a blow to our health and the economy, but it emerged in order to completely transform our lives.

On one hand, many understand that there is a major transition unfolding. On the other hand, we mostly wish to revive our pre-coronavirus lifestyles as soon as we discover a remedy for the disease.

We thus need to elevate our awareness to see that nature is acting on us via this pandemic in order to increase our understanding and feeling of why it is happening.

That is, the coronavirus did not appear to merely shut us off from each other in our respective homes, and to keep a distance of a few feet from each other when we have to go outside, and also not to stop us from attending public events, and so on. It surfaced in order to nudge us toward understanding our interdependence and interconnectedness, and to adjust our relations accordingly in order to live with more mutual responsibility and consideration toward one another.

The longer the pandemic dwells among us, the more it serves to gradually establish a new, more integral and global sensation.

Other than the blow itself, which does the work of teaching us about our interdependence against our will, I also very much hope that we will succeed in raising our awareness willingly, through education.

In other words, instead of merely reacting to a problem that suddenly reveals itself before our very eyes, we can learn about the greater evolutionary process we are in, and see how we live in a global and integral nature, acting to ultimately raise us to a harmonious state of perfect connection among each other and with nature.

By understanding this bigger picture, we can then view the coronavirus pandemic as a tough lesson that nature is teaching us in a very calculated way. Similar to how we educate children, if they willingly listen to our advice, then we relate favorably to them, and they spare themselves from various deviations. However, if they do not listen to our advice, then in order to save them from greater impending blows that we can foresee, we have to act more strictly and sternly toward them.

This is why I, my students and my organization invest so much in explaining the root cause of the pandemic, and how we need to use this situation in order to readjust our approach to life. That is, by learning about how nature operates on us, we can enter into balance with nature quicker, experiencing much healthier and happier lives, on one hand, and also saving ourselves from more intense future suffering.

We would thus be wise to accept the coronavirus as a warning from nature, using it to become more like nature. That is, as nature is interdependent and interconnected, so we should realize our interdependence as parts of nature positively by increasing our mutual responsibility and consideration toward each other.

Ultimately, there is no pandemic or virus here, but a single force pressuring us out of necessity. It has no desire to burden us, but like a loving parent witnessing his or her child straying to a negative course, it needs to act more aggressively in order for us to notice what it wants from us.

One way or another, we will need to develop and become more positively connected. The question is whether we do so harmoniously by activating our minds and hearts to positively connect with others, and by reorganizing our lives so that we supply each other with the essentials we all need; or on the contrary, that we let nature’s steamroller of evolution continue catching up to us, goading us from behind to wake us up through painful circumstances.

Filed under: Coronavirus, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Medium published my new article “America — Either Everyone Succeeds Together, or No One Will Succeed”

A few weeks ago, I warned that the spreading unruliness and violence were only going to worsen unless they were treated correctly. After some of the countrywide George Floyd protests became violent came more localized incidents, but they were just as disconcerting. The Seattle Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), the Portland unending riots, the Chicago rampage on the city’s Magnificent Mile upscale section of Michigan Avenue, and the rising tsunami of gunshot victims in New York that has already claimed nearly 1100 lives this year alone are all symptoms of the same ailment: alienation and disconnection. The next president will have his hands full and I don’t envy his position.

We don’t have to like those who are opposite from us, but we do have to acknowledge, value, and maintain all sides and facets of the nation. Without even one of them, the country will crumble.

In many respects, America is already in a state of civil war. But without borders between North and South, without clear ideologies that one can choose besides a penchant for anarchy, it is hard to determine who is fighting whom. Therefore, for now, it looks more like chaos than war, but it is very painful nonetheless.

I don’t think that there can be a quick fix to the situation in America, but there is certainly a solution. The only question is how fast and after how many needless victims the American people will opt for it.

The solution is simple: Americans must find a way to live together. In the past, the relationships between blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, or Conservatives and Progressives were not as tense and full of hate as they are today. Of course, American history is rife with bigotry and violence on a racial background. However, it seems as though this time, it is happening all over the country, at the same time, and with added tensions and frustrations accumulated over decades of neglect. So although there has always been racism in America, this time, it seems like another facet of a generally disintegrated society that is coming apart at the seams makes the situation much more perilous.

I don’t know by whom and I don’t know how this can be done, but I know that as always, so now, the solution to America’s problems is not in dealing with each problem separately. The solution can only come through mutual responsibility, when each resident is guaranteed a sufficient and dignified standard of living, above which it will be possible to develop national consciousness that is stronger than one’s personal view on the sensitive issues that are tearing the country to pieces.

It will not come in a day, and it will not come without a learning curve, but there is no choice. Either everyone succeeds together, or no one will succeed. In today’s reality, interdependence is a given. No one can survive alone, and it is only the complementary nature of civilization that enables it to continue. If we try to eliminate the diversity and go solo, we are dooming ourselves.

Everything in reality has its opposite. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to know about it since we notice anything only on the backdrop of its opposite. The idea that eliminating the people or ideas we don’t like will improve our situation is a figment of our self-centered imagination. But it is a very dangerous one, since should we succeed, we would eliminate ourselves along with the target of our hate.

If we want to grow, we can do so only by examining ourselves against those with whom we disagree or of whom we disapprove. As much as we may dislike them, we are totally dependent on them. Understanding and accepting this truth is vital for our survival in the interconnected society that we have become. We don’t have to like those who are opposite from us, but we do have to acknowledge, value, and maintain all sides and facets of the nation. Without even one of them, the country will crumble.
[269652]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the businesses of the future?“

We first need to understand that the financial, industrial and educational systems we have lived according to until today will change completely.

It is because the basis upon which we built all of our systems was our egoistic human nature, i.e., personal benefit at the expense of others. The more we develop with egoistic motives underlying our systems, the more corruption, exploitation, manipulation and abuse fills these systems, which gradually leads to a multi-system collapse.

Our past egoistic notion of success, where an individual or company is considered successful if they manage to run other individuals and companies to the ground, while simultaneously shining the spotlight on their increasing profit margins, is revealing itself to be unsustainable and harmful.

Today, nature presents us with increasingly interdependent and interconnected conditions, where we can no longer think of ourselves as separate from others, considering our own benefit alone. Therefore, increasing profit in one person’s hands as a result of subtracting from other people can no longer work as a success indicator.

Moreover, it is important for us to understand that the end of our egoistic-materialistic paradigm has been greatly accelerated by the coronavirus, which has forced us to distance ourselves from our past systems in a very poignant manner.

Today, we already live in a new system, but we have yet to fully acknowledge what that means. Thus, we are far from sensing our current transitional era positively.

The key for adapting to our new era is to start emphasizing the importance of human connections above all other engagements.

If we succeed in upgrading human connections, so that we will feel mutual consideration and responsibility toward each other, then we will discover exactly what kinds of businesses we will and will not need. In short, businesses will need to be conducive to improving human connections. On one hand, we will need our life’s essentials met, and on the other hand, we will need to continually invest in building positive connections among society.

All other surplus will be thus seen as nonessential and even destructive to our world, and the coronavirus has already helped us see this a lot quicker.

The principle of future businesses should be fundamentally opposite from today’s principle: that they benefit people’s connection, and that they cause no harm to people and nature. There should be no more situations where one person or company increases their profits at the expense of others. Our priorities will need to shift completely in order that we all focus on benefiting everybody. Success will then be seen not in terms of profiting from society, but in terms of contributing to society, and businesses that sustain the goal of benefiting society will be the ones that prosper.

Filed under: Economy, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Question: The history of human development is the history of the development of our desires. About 3,500 years ago, the level of basic animalistic desires began to develop for food, sex, and family.

For 4,000 years until the 5th century C.E. (Common Era), the desire for wealth became dominant in humanity. From the 5th to the 15th century it was the desire for power. From the 15th to the 20th century it was the desire for knowledge. And since the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century it is the desire to reveal the meaning of life and realize yourself precisely at this degree of the pyramid.

What is the peculiarity of our time? What does it mean to realize oneself at the last degree, in the spiritual?

Answer: The fact is that our desires develop gradually, according to special laws. The highest degree is the one we are on today. It is really the highest: egoism pushes a person to realize himself in equivalence of form with the Creator, to become like the Creator.

On the other hand, the absolute impossibility of achieving this is revealed in us. And here we come to the conclusion that the task of becoming like the Creator is not solved directly, “head-on,” but develops and is realized in a different way.

Everyone should receive the forces from nature that help him change himself and build a structure above himself called “Man – Adam,” “like the Creator – Adameh.” After all, we are animals in all our ordinary pursuits.

And where does the man we need to develop hide in us? Very deeply; it is just a small desire that has been developing in us for centuries, until in our time we begin to feel it. And its realization comes in a very interesting way: We should not develop our original egoistic nature, but change it to the opposite, altruistic one. This is the equivalence of form with the Creator.

If you want to be human, you must turn yourself inside out, renounce animal existence and human predilections. Renounce all current values, such as wealth, power, fame, and knowledge, and prefer only one thing to this—the study of the Creator and the equivalence of form to Him.
[269068]
From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

Related Material:
Man—The Highest Level Of Nature
What Does Nature Want From Us?
Fit Into Nature As Its Integral Part

Filed under: Egoism, Meaning Of Life - No Comments →

We do not understand where our freedom of choice is or how to achieve it and implement it so as not to harm other people because we are all connected. Look at the turmoil in America today, it is a real civil war. There are demonstrations in Israel too, and the same things will happen more and more all over the world because the situation will get worse.

The world is losing its egoistic ties that it was connected by: you give to me and I to give you, commodity-money-commodity-money. This was a system we lived in for thousands of years until we totally squeezed all the juice out of it. By the 50s of the last century, this system reached its heyday and then began to rot. This was inevitable because otherwise we would never come to spiritual correction.

And therefore, today we find ourselves in a world that reveals such problems that will not allow it to return back to its previous state. Financial and governmental minds are trying to figure out how to maintain the existing systems where there was balance between how much a person invests and how much he can get or buy.

This egoistic system was relatively balanced, and everyone understood that this was life. Suddenly it crumbled in an instant. No one knows how to fix it or what will happen to us in the future. We find ourselves in a situation where the former mechanism has stopped working. Egoism, the driving force, kept me in confrontation with others all the time, determined how much each one would give, how much he would receive, and bound us with egoistic relations.

But this connection no longer works. What will regulate our relationships? We have created an army, police, an education system, culture, and financial systems. Our egoism pushed us to build an egoistic society, which has suddenly stopped working. This is a crisis that is not equal to any other previous crisis in history.

It seemed to us that we achieved an excellent organization of human society, which corresponds to our egoistic nature. We got the opportunity to travel, see the world, and understand each other because everyone was driven by one desire —to gain more. It would seem, what are we missing? There is only one thing we lack: that by this we do not implement the purpose of creation.

And look what has happened, how the Creator has ruined all our plans for a good life with the help of the coronavirus. Now we have found that all our preparations for a good life do not help us, not a single egoistic system works. So what can you do? The only way is to move from an egoistic system to an altruistic one.

After all, why can’t we move on to another even more egoistic system if the previous one has stopped working? But the point is that there is an upper program that rules us. From our level, we are not able to appreciate it, but Kabbalists explain how to use it. If we accept it, then we will be able to move forward, and if not, then we will remain at the previous stage until this program forces us to move forward.

At the end of correction, the system will work from both sides: both from the side of great egoism and from the side of great bestowal. These two forces will work against each other, and the created being, in the middle between them, will use both of them in an integral, harmonious, and perfect form.
[269084]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

Related Material:
Polar Star
Only The Umbrella Of Love Wins The War
Mutual Guarantee—Now And Forever

Filed under: Coronavirus, Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Health - No Comments →

New Life 1266 – How To Get Rid Of Stress?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

We feel pressured and stressed in this coronavirus era since we don’t know what we’re facing or how to balance things out. We are like people standing on the seashore enjoying the waves, not realizing there’s a tsunami approaching until the 20-meter wall of water is directly in front of us. We need to help this transition into the new era happen, yet we are unable to digest what is happening. We need a global, integral education system to teach us how we can overcome all the troubles and problems through unity and connection. We need to change our attitudes toward society and the whole world so that we care for everything, as one man with one heart. Nature wants us to become one with the single system in which all of nature lives.
[268032]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1266 – How To Get Rid Of Stress?” 7/21/20

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: Coronavirus, Crisis, New Life - No Comments →

There is a ladder of spiritual ascent at the top of which is the light. The first level descends from this light and is divided into two parts: upper and lower – 1a, 1b. The second stage is 2a, 2b. The third is 3a, 3b, etc.

The light enters the first level only when the level wants that, but it cannot receive the light because if it wants to receive it only for its own sake, the light will not enter it. So it can receive it only to the extent that it bestows unto the light. This means that there is the desire of the light and the desire of the created being.

How can I reach the state in which I will want to bestow, know what I am living for, and what I can bestow to the Creator?

In order to do so I need to feel the lower level. If I turn to it, I will receive from it a desire to connect to the light and I will transmit it upward.

This transmission of a foreign desire, which means that it is not my desire, indicates that I don’t want to receive the light for my own sake, egoistically, but in order to transmit it to others. In such a state I will not receive it.

We are actually connected in a special spiral where each one exists in order to pass something on to others, and so the light passes through us, fills everyone, and no one is an obstacle that stands in the way of the light. So the connection between us is the precondition for the flow of the upper light inside us until we reach the state of total eternity and we are completely filled.

We actually need to be connected this way, and in order to do so there is the commandment of “love thy friend as thyself” because in such a case we reach the state of infinite filling by the upper light, which means, by the Creator, and thus enable Him to exist inside us.
[239735]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/16/18

Related Material:
What Is A Spiritual Level?
125 Degrees Of Revelation
Practical Ascent On The Spiritual Ladder

Filed under: Spiritual Work - No Comments →

What does human health depend on?

Question: There are two types of impact of society on a person.

The first is an indirect, unconscious impact. For example: pollution of the atmosphere, water, genetic experiments that are carried out on animals for food, etc. All of this naturally affects us.

The second is the direct, conscious impact of society: the media, all kinds of economic levers, and social norms.

Do you think human health in most cases depends more on society or does it depend on genetics?

Answer: Health depends on both.

Mostly, no doubt, from genetics. But still, as they say, existence determines consciousness. Therefore, it is imperative to think about what kind of environment we give a person, although in the same environment there are people who tolerate it relatively well and there are those who perish.

Remark: Doctors say that human health depends 10% on health care, 20% on heredity, another 20% on the environment, i.e., from the activities of people. And 50% is determined by a person’s lifestyle. And the way of life is dictated by the media and by the historical period in which a person lives.

That is, in principle, we can say that 80% of health still depends on society.

My Comment: Of course, life expectancy and its quality depend on the relationship between people, on their communication.
[269031]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

Related Material:
Health And Medicine, Part 1
Relationships With People Affect Health
A Healthy Body Reflects A Balanced Soul

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization, Health - No Comments →