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Medium published my new article “Polarization and Anti-Social Networks”

Day by day there is more division and polarization, more anger and hatred, which is weaponized by an increased flood of information on social media. That is the conclusion of a recent study revealed by Yale University. But is anyone really surprised by the discovery?

According to the research co-authored by Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California, more information does not mean more pluralism, it only intensifies already polarized views. Individuals tend to read and absorb only the material that confirms their existing beliefs in a sort of “confirmation bias.”

To me there is nothing new. After all, it is written and known, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21).” That is, we are all under the control of an egoistic desire, in a constant desire for self-fulfillment. Not only in every human being does this tendency exist, but society as a whole is founded on it. Family, national and international relations — all of humanity is built on selfish systems. This is natural and logical, since everything in nature, including the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, works to get maximum pleasure with the minimum investment.

What started as a desire of social networks algorithm developers to fight for our attention, to bombard us to live on their platforms, and to profit financially by influencing marketing content, has led to intensive efforts to crack those algorithms and understand how they work on us, but what really needs to be explored through a deeper layer is our human nature.

It is far better to research and find out who we really are. Our evil instinct is a ticking bomb with tremendous negative potential; we will witness this more and more day by day. There is great advantage in internalizing that under certain environmental conditions we will not hesitate to benefit ourselves even if that comes at the expense of others, we seek our own momentary pleasure without any remorse for anyone we might harm to get it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that at some point we will no longer be able to tolerate the monster we created with our own hands, and we will unanimously decide to destroy it or at least direct it to the right place for re-education.

We have no idea how much our brain is destroyed when it is infected with this polarizing disease. According to our evolution we must eventually become a more balanced humanity, but until that happens, instead of assembling and connecting ourselves to one global system, we let our egoistic desire control and separate us, and the mind, which responds to our will, cooperates. As a result, we divorce, separate, quarrel, and divide, and cause ourselves more trouble that we pay for dearly.

When we cannot settle things with rational common sense, then we are filled with anger and rage, and erupt under pressure. Social networks reflect our nature and ignite the antagonistic passions. An extreme opinion voiced from the other side of the barricade is enough to raise our threshold of agitation and throw us out of emotional balance.

It will not help to clean up the toxic content and censor the inciting videos and tweets. In the end we will only reduce the noxious evil for a short time and soon will continue our destructive habits until the next eruption.

To change the direction of thinking we need to recognize, face, and acknowledge our harmful nature and talk about the human egoism that rules us. Heightened awareness can persuade the public to agree to eliminate this evil ruling nature. Proper and serious recognition will make everyone realize on their own that thinking and acting badly toward others causes a split that gradually leads to self-destruction.

This process needs to happen in all of our social systems, and from there it will also spread to social networks, which mirror ourselves. So naturally we will enact laws that will be agreed upon by social media users and will forbid us to be careless toward others out of a simple understanding that this evil will eventually backfire on us.

If we are already reaching out to the networks and intervening in them, then it would be good to develop a positive algorithm that encourages unity and closeness, that evokes a feeling of connection to benefit and sweeten our lives. Just as social networks have entered our lives with great impetus and changed them fundamentally, so can this positive algorithm be implemented with great success. Only then we will start building real social networks.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “They Can Impose War; We Must Impose Peace”

We are living through a very tough time in Israel: Relentless terrorist attacks are spreading fear and increase tensions with our Arab neighbors and division among ourselves. There is, of course, the temporary solution of separating the two communities, but in the long run, the only solution that will work is if we rise above our division and form Jewish unity. This will not only solve the internal division among Jews, but it will also dissolve the Arabs’ hatred toward us.

When we malign each other, the nations malign us. It is not even a conscious process for them. All of a sudden, they “realize” that everything is the fault of the Jews and blame every woe and misfortune on us. When it comes to the Jewish state, they add to it the sentiment that everything is the fault of Israel.

The current wave of terrorism is also the result of our division. I understand that it is very difficult to nurture unity and cohesion with someone who believes in everything that you oppose, and vice versa, but we really have no choice. The condition of unity above division, or as King Solomon put it (Prov. 10:12), covering crimes with love, is inexorable and irrevocable.

The false vilification, vile incitement, and countless bogus libels should not worry us. We need not worry about what others think of us. We can be certain that they do not harbor good thoughts about us, and nothing we might say will change that. Instead, we should focus on uniting our ranks so tightly that we will truly become “as one man with one heart,” just as our ancestors did when they forged our nation.

If we foster unity, we will not need to fight against enemies. It is not that we will defeat them easily; it is simply that there will be no war between Israelis and Arabs. They can impose war on us, but if we unite, we will impose peace on them.

We complain that we want peace but we have no partner on the other side. We do not need a partner because if we make peace among ourselves, we will have no enemies. The world is at war with us because we are at war with each other.

Our calling as Jews is to set an example of peace above division. We have mastered division; now it is time to master peace. If we accomplish this, we will be a light unto nations.

For more on the link between Jewish unity and antisemitism, read my publications The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.
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Medium published my new article “Humanity Restructured”

A war in Europe that is lasting longer than anyone expected, and whose end is nowhere in sight, a virus that mutates and easily outsmarts scientists, seemingly unstoppable inflation, supply chains incorrigibly broken, and other worldwide crises are pounding humanity. But the blows do more than pain us; they are restructuring the world. They are leading the entire planet — minerals, plants, animals, and people — toward a state of harmony and balance that is happening even though humanity is desperately trying to avoid it. It is a very special phase that we are going through. A new, peaceful and harmonious state is emerging, and it is painful only because we are resisting it, because we want to call the shots even when our decisions work against us.

Everything that happens in the world today is pointing to a clear and simple fact: We have no idea what is going on. We have no idea why things are happening, how to make them work to our benefit, and how to secure our future and the future of our planet.

The climate crisis, economic downturn, and unceasing international violence are symptoms of a broken system. And the system is broken because we refuse to recognize and act according to one simple fact: For better or worse, we are connected to each other and dependent on each other. Therefore, we must work for each other rather than against each other.

The global crises show us that alone, we will not be able to solve any problem. Gradually, through pain, they will teach us that we must learn to work together. This will be the beginning of the restructuring of the world.

Nature will leave us with only two options: teach ourselves to cooperate, or let nature teach us that, as it is doing now. The former is painless and quick; the latter is the current path — filled with turmoil and torment.

Take the virus, for example. If we worked together around the world, we would long be free of it. Since we refuse, it keeps spreading and defeating our efforts. Or, take the food shortage. It is bogus; there is no scarcity of food. Humanity produces far more than it consumes. Since we distribute it unevenly, parts of the world are oversupplied, others are starving, and the surplus food is thrown away and pollutes the planet. It is strictly a manmade crisis that should not be happening.

As it is with food and healthcare, so it is with access to education, housing, economic development, and every other area of human engagement. Add to this the endless arms-race, and you have a recipe for endless poverty, misery, frustration, and ultimately violence.

Now that things have gone too far, the crisis is reaching everyone. This is nature’s way of saying that unless we work together, no one will succeed. No country can prosper irrespective of other countries. Every country is dependent on the global markets — on raw materials from other countries, on products manufactured abroad, and on foods it cannot produce itself.

When the struggle to outdo other countries reaches a certain threshold, the damage we do to others begins to return to us. At that point, a global breakdown occurs. This is what is happening today.

We can keep fighting one another and make our lives increasingly, and eventually unbearably hard, or we can stop fighting one another and make everyone’s life easy and safe. In the end, we will choose the latter, because no one wants to suffer. The only question is how long it will take us and at what cost.

Restructuring humanity is not an option, but we can choose between the quick and easy way, or the long and painful one. Currently, we’re clearly on the latter.
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“Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?” Such questions arise when a person really wants to come closer to the Creator. There is only one answer: “I consider this necessary for me,” or as it is written: “Blunt its teeth.”

When no matter how many times I try to answer this question to myself and still do not see any results, and it arises in me again and again, then I just, do what is called, “blunt its teeth.” That is, I say to egoism: “I do not want to hear from you anymore! I go above you in faith above reason.”

Question: Is there any meaning in the fact that I “blunt” exactly “its teeth”?

Answer: Of course, 32 teeth are 32 millstones that grind knowledge. Then this knowledge can be absorbed by us.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Question: What does the name of the Pharaoh’s daughter “Batya” (“Bat of Yod-Hey“) mean?

Answer: This is the name of the force of the Creator.

This is not a woman or a girl who pulled Moses out of the Nile, but a spiritual force that was manifested inside the soul. This force is called “Moses – Moshe” from the word “Limshoch” (to pull out). It pulls the desire called Moses out of the initial egoism, and then this desire rises to the quality of bestowal and love.

In other words, Pharaoh’s daughter is one of the qualities of egoism, which detaches from it and begins to work against her father, Pharaoh. We can say that this is a point in the heart, which then pulls out all the other desires.

It all started with Batya. She found Moses in the Nile, raised him, and accompanied him for a long time.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/19/22

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After the Big Bang, due to the outspread of forces, a certain area began to form and a place appeared, followed by the universe. This place began to fill up, i.e., some properties of force began to manifest in it.

Naturally, the fact that we are talking about the past at all is a very big misconstruction. After all, we are talking about ourselves, about how we attain rather than what really happened without us. That we know nothing about and will never know.

We can determine everything only based on our senses, on our feelings. So I can’t say that this was happening. I understand that this happened in the past, that is, in my past, in my feelings, in my understanding.

I create a category of the past within myself, and work in it. I place the Big Bang there, the universe, this past. But this is my past. It was created in my imagination, in my perception.

In fact, there is no past. Whatever there is, I can only judge in relation to myself.

Therefore, we need to put everything that our science does in a very constrained framework. All this is only what we research and investigate. Just like the world with its laws that we are used to.

All the laws we study: mechanical, electrical, magnetic, biological, zoological, no matter what, interactions between all forms and properties of matter, energy, and information we study within the framework of our world.

Today it is already clear to us that if we find ourselves in some other, cosmic conditions, completely different laws would be at work. And those laws will have completely different forms. So, we can only talk about something relative to us. This is how we attain, how we reveal all this.

There is a very deep misconception here not only among ordinary people, but also among scientists because everything gets forgotten. We forget about the necessary condition that all this is attained, realized, perceived by man, meaning measured by us, felt by us, and seen by us, and not by other senses unknown to us.

All we know is that this is how we perceive the universe and ourselves right now. And if our geometry were different? Our minds would be arranged differently and what we think of as curved today, we would consider to be straight or flat. That is, it would appear very differently to us.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. The Will of the Universe” 11/28/10

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Comment: Today a well known word is “bullying.” This is when some unfortunate person is bullied or harassed at school, in institutions, or on the Internet.

In France, a new law will fine those guilty of bullying 45,000 euros and imprisonment for three years. Teachers or students, it doesn’t matter.

And if it is proved that the victim missed school because of harassment, the prison term will be increased to eight years. In case of attempted or committed suicide as a result of bullying, the fine will increase to 150,000 euros, and the prison term will be up to ten years.

The law has already passed the lower house of Parliament. They proceed from the fact that such a strict law could stop this bullying.

My Response: What kind of relationships can possibly be at school so that there is a need to adopt such laws! France! The source of world humanism, freedom, revolution!

Question: Do you think such harsh, sharp measures will help?

Answer: For some reason, everywhere, in all countries of the world, it is believed that detention, isolation from society for many years corrects society, corrects a person. By the end of the day, we want the criminal to improve. And society would somehow correct not only the criminal, but also the flaw that it inflicted on him.

But I don’t see it! So many are jailed, for how many years and in all countries of the world! Let’s check statistics: where they jail more and for more years is there a better society?

Conversely. According to biblical laws, there is no such thing as “sitting in prison.” This is not a punishment. By doing this, you take away a person’s opportunity to interact with society, to learn from it and somehow improve. Prison is not a system for correction, no one has come out of prison reformed.

Question: It will not teach others that you cannot humiliate and kill another? It won’t teach others and it won’t correct the person either? And money won’t help? If you pay crazy fines, it won’t help either?

Answer: Money may, somehow, sober him up, his parents (we’re talking about school). But no, it won’t help.

Question: So what’s the way out of this?

Answer: The solution is to educate people from an early age, even his parents before giving birth. You have to educate parents so that they have children whom they can raise properly.

People should get permission from society to give birth to a child and raise him.

Question: And what kind of permission should the school receive?

Answer: Accordingly everything should be aimed at ensuring that the people we give birth to, produce, and educate are brought up precisely as correct members of society. I’m already talking on a social level, not a spiritual one.

Question: You usually say: “In good relations with each other, in love with each other.” Is this precisely the path to the spiritual?

Answer: Yes. Even if they don’t know, it doesn’t matter. They should not think about the spiritual. They should think about mutual correct connection. And in it they will already reveal the spiritual.

Question: So society should look at itself and not at this criminal?

Answer: Society should look at itself. Society must cultivate the right attitude toward others. And in the right relation to others, it will suddenly begin to discover, precisely in these relations, completely different, higher relations, which it will call the upper world. And that’s it, nothing else.

Nowadays, people come to this because they want to feel the upper world, and therefore, by necessity they begin to study how we can begin to treat others well, if necessary, in order to feel the upper world, in order to understand our destiny. We would not like this, but this is the plan of nature, this is its meaning. So, I obey. I will bend my head and study these laws of kindness, proper interaction, and even the laws of love.

Therefore, those who come to Kabbalah classes are the biggest egoists.

Question: When does their shift happen?

Answer: After many years. We are preparing their external relations, the internal basis for this. But it’s hard. They do not initially want to be in love with their neighbor when they come.

Such people, with very little egoism, leave to spiritual practices, Eastern ones and so on. They are not interested in anything more.

But we are on the border of enlightenment—the real one.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/6/22

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Question: What do you mean by “thought”? What is the goal of creation?

Answer: By the goal of ​​creation, I mean one single thought that permeates, fills, and guides everything that exists in nature and that we feel in it.

In principle, we reveal nature in our senses, within the volume, the possibilities, and the limits in which we ourselves exist. The more we attain nature, the more we feel and, at the same time, reveal how limited we are. That is, I reveal some waves, some volumes, some possibilities and impossibilities at the same time.

Any revelation is some kind of private patch from the whole of nature, which only proves that it is really a very narrow strip of knowledge. As Newton said: “…to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

And the sea is a huge universe. So before us, there is not this universe but in general everything, everything that exists in the universe.

The thought we reveal and everything that is subject to us both in Kabbalah and in the natural sciences, we attain in our senses, in our knowledge, in our tools and understandings. We should always speak in relation to a person who attains.

If I attain, then it means that it is me who attains in my senses, within my limitations. And therefore, it is all very relative.

Nevertheless, we attain some fundamental thought that underlies the entire universe, rules it and serves as its substrate, a base above which we can feel everything else.

We cannot even understand and realize the thought itself. We realize and understand how it guides us, how it clothes in us, affects us, and how we can affect it and be in contact with it.

Nevertheless, this is being in contact, this is mutual influence, this is no longer a thought itself, but work with its clothing in us and our entering it. That is, here we are already talking about a man himself, about the revelation related to him.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Secrets of Immortality” 1/7/11

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Question: How are thoughts transmitted between us? At what level does this happen?

Answer: Through the general field of thought in which we are located. This is how we interact in our Kabbalistic group. There are several million people in the world who are working together to unite precisely in adhesion with this field.

The task of Kabbalah is to bring each person to unite with others through a common field called the Creator. As a result, each of us must tune into the Creator and thus reach unity with each other and with the Creator. This is the objective of our development at this stage.

Question: Are there other stages after that?

Answer: After we reach complete correction, that is, complete similarity to the common field, complete unity between us in one single thought with this field, there is some further development. But Kabbalah does not talk about it because at the present stage we are just beginning to correct our nature and our thoughts in order to reach this state.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Secrets of immortality” 1/7/11

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