Comment: A child serial killer Mary Bell was born in 1957 in England, her chilling story began after the baby’s seventeen-year-old mother, who worked as a prostitute, failed to provoke a miscarriage. The baby was an unwanted child. The mother tried to get rid of her child after birth as well, but again was unsuccessful.

The child Mary was abused and become a child murderer. The press called her an “evil born monster.”

My Response: In such cases it is also necessary to take into account the human psyche. It is possible that she was mentally ill and this has not been determined.

Comment: Usually people who stand trial for a crime are examined and have to be recognized as sane.

My Response: This is also a problem because psychology is not a perfect science. A person has such switches in the brain when he suddenly becomes absolutely normal after the fact. We cannot necessarily evoke in him those same states that prompted him to commit a misconduct, and therefore we give them a different interpretation. All this is very conditional.

But the problem is really a universal one. Each of us should blame the environment that brought him up for his wrong attitude toward life. And of course, we all feel bad. We can see this from the global state of things today, for example in the way people drive on the roads without observing traffic rules or how they communicate with each other.

In general, our entire human community is arranged in such a brutal way. Each one builds himself on the suppression of the other, on power over the other. This indicates the misuse of our initial human data. It doesn’t make anyone feel good, but still we don’t find the strength to change things. The intelligent humanity does not find the strength to realize this and start acting differently.

Therefore, unwanted children will appear more and more often and this phenomenon will become widespread. It is a consequence of our growing egoism, which does not want to consider anything or anyone
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Unwanted Children” 11/28/10

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “America’s Division, Not Guns, Is Its Most Dangerous Weapon”

America is once again trying to make sense out of the tragedy of yet another deadly mass school shooting. The lives of 19 children and two teachers were cut short by an 18-year-old gunman who attacked a classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Everyone is asking when will this madness stop? The answer requires a broader approach than gun control. It should penetrate deeper layers of the social fabric and move toward cohesion.

The most recent rampage occurred just days after a white, far-right youth killed ten people in a supermarket in Buffalo, NY. The Texas shooting, perpetrated by a teen of Hispanic descent, is the deadliest school massacre in the US since the Sandy Hook shooting ten years ago that killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown (CT). The incident is ammunition firing up the debate in America over the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Both President Biden and former President Obama accuse the gun lobby of opposing the regulations.

The mass shootings in the United States will not be solved until the root of the problem is addressed, and that is not gun control. Even though it is obvious that gun sales should be monitored, I do not believe that it will stop the bleeding in America. Even if there were regulations, it would still be possible to buy guns on the street. On the other hand, violence cannot be prevented if everyone carries a gun. It will be safe only if absolutely no one has a gun, but that is just an illusory reality.

So, America is not facing a gun problem, it is facing a social epidemic. The US is an extremely and increasingly divided country. There are too many factions, divisions, and interests within the population that clash in education, culture, temperament, religion, with tendencies to live opposed to each other.

Conversely, the more homogeneous a society is, the more it neutralizes and prevents individuals from heating up and aggressing others. But in America today, the opposite is true. In US society, people do not understand, empathize with, care about, or even tolerate each other. They have little patience with their neighbors, they do not want or even ask favors from others. Everyone wants to stand alone, as far away from each other as possible.

Has someone fallen down in the middle of the street in a big city? No one cares about that. No one owes anyone anything because there is no sense of belonging. Other countries have a relatively uniform social fabric, but in a deeply individualistic society like America’s, diversity has a particularly hard time.

In children and adolescents, it is many times more amplified. They absorb the tensions between different types of people, charged with the latent anger between the descendants from the English and the Germans, the Irish and the Africans, which has existed since the founding of the United States. The Latinos, and each penultimate group who immigrated to America can also display brutal outbursts.

In such a social climate, it is easy for a boy who does not agree with any idea or opposes some position to take a machine gun and go out and settle his scores with the lives of innocent people. This is his way of showing everyone how much he hates the society in which he lives.

Therefore, addressing the epidemic of gun violence in schools and anywhere else goes beyond laws and regulations. America must address the deep cultural and social conditioning that produced these events by initiating an educational program to teach its children new examples, norms, and values. A school should feel like a supportive community, not a place where they must compete mercilessly while struggling for social acceptance.

American society needs to be thoroughly taught how to replace street-level carelessness with feelings of consideration, mutual caring, and cooperation. Through workshops, discussion groups, and joint projects, they should be regularly trained to cooperate, build trust, and develop their social sensitivity to one another.

This is achievable. Just one comprehensive educational step can truly wash over America by leveraging the creativity it is capable of through Hollywood movies, riveting TV shows, and proper media content. It would help to guide everyone from an early age about how to act in situations where anger arises, how to lock it down with a strong, inner bolt, and how to prevent anger from erupting to the point of killing. When America has had enough of senseless bloodshed, it will be ready to move beyond failed attempts at remedying the symptoms and it can take truly meaningful steps to prevent violence through social reform.
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Medium published my new article “What Can Make Us Caring”

May 9, 2022 — Orlando, Florida, United States — Baby formula is displayed on a shelf at a Walgreens pharmacy on May 9, 2022 in Orlando, Florida. Stores across the United States have been struggling to stock enough baby formula, causing some chains, such as Walgreens and CVS to limit customer purchases. While manufacturers report that they are producing at full capacity, it’s still not sufficient to meet the current demand caused by supply chain issues and product recalls. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto) Reuters

The events of the past few months, and in fact, the past few years, teach us a very important lesson: If we want to survive, we must learn from nature how to do it, since if we follow our own ideas, we will continue the march of folly until we destroy human civilization and our planet. When we look at nature, there is one law that weaves all its parts together into a perfect tapestry: balance and collaboration. That law is exactly what we humans do not abide by in our own society. Instead of balance, we strive for prominence at the expense of others, and swap collaboration with exploitation. If we keep this up, we are on our way to extinction.

I am not saying that we must love one another or even care for one another all at once. However, we must know nature’s laws and what happens when we break them. Since we are currently acting contrary to the law of balance and collaboration, we must also know the consequences, the penalty, if you will, for breaking it.

We are already feeling some of the consequences of our ignorance and vanity. Food shortages are worsening around the world, and hunger has become a real peril in places that have not known it for centuries. Gas shortages are also hampering production and causing energy insecurity in western, leading OECD countries, and the overall atmosphere is that hard days are coming.

Indeed, it is only the beginning. According to pundits, we are looking into years of deprivation and scarcity.

But there is no real reason for it. No natural disaster has hindered humanity’s ability to produce abundant food or ample gas and oil. It is we humans who are inflicting these deficiencies for the sole purpose of crushing one another. Nothing guides our moves but hate, and hate destroys everything, including, ultimately, the hater.

Because everything we do stems from the motivation to defeat and vanquish others, nothing we do succeeds. When one effort fails, we move on to another, but it, too, is bound to fail for the exact same reason: our foul intentions toward others.

How, then, can we change our nature? What can make us care for others? To do that, we first need to acknowledge the truth about our own nature, and then we can begin to nurture a new one within us. What all other beings do instinctively — follow the law of balance and collaboration — we can accomplish only if we choose it consciously. The way to do this is by realizing that we are made inherently opposite from this law, and then carefully examine each and every aspect of our lives, and adjust it to work according to that law.

It may seem unfair that only humans have to learn this law the hard way, but there is a great reward at the end of the process. Since humans are the only ones who have to go through the learning process, we are also the only ones who will reap the reward.

When we learn about human nature and the nature of the rest of reality, we begin to compare them. As a result, we gradually learn to value the law of balance and collaboration. We understand much deeper than any being since we have something to compare it to, a negative image of the law, and its palpable consequences. When we begin to act according to the law of balance and collaboration, it is because we made a conscious choice to do so after learning about our own nature and choosing to shun it and adopt a new, more inclusive and cooperative nature.

For us, then, learning to care about others is not an instinctive process, but a profound process of deepening consciousness, and choosing care and connection over alienation and exploitation every step of the way. This is the real advantage of man over beast — the gift of consciousness. However, we earn it only after having chosen balance over superiority, and collaboration over exploitation.

The painful process that humanity is undergoing will ultimately lead us to make that choice. However, awareness can shorten the process and make it much easier and quicker. The sooner we understand that all our troubles stem from our malice and cruelty toward each other, the sooner we will open our eyes and realize that there is another option. Then, the sooner we choose the option of balance and collaboration, the sooner our troubles will end and peace will begin.

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Question: What does Kabbalah say about education? By stuffing young people with knowledge about chemistry, physics and other sciences, we do not take into account any human factor, we do not give them any fundamental life values.

Answer: Kabbalah says that education is the most important thing! Not chemistry or physics, because they can develop only if a person is correctly disposed to apply them. And without proper education, he uses these sciences to his detriment.

Therefore, we must first properly educate a person, and then give him chemistry and physics; otherwise, he will feel bad from them, he will do damage.

Why do we need today’s chemistry and physics? What do we do with the help of science and technology? We are pumping the last juices out of nature and that is it.

Kabbalah speaks only about the education of a person. Everything depends on it! Moreover, it says: If we properly educate a person, then no physics and no chemistry will be required. A person will suddenly find himself existing in a comfortable world, nature will treat him well, and he will not feel anything bad from it.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Europe Today” 1/26/11

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Comment: In European countries, such as France and Germany, the birth rate is falling. Today, Europeans do not want to have children and openly talk about it.

My Response: This will be the case in most countries of the civilized world. We see no benefit, no purpose, in childbearing. “What do I need this for?! I live in such a way that I curse my life, I feel completely aimless in it, unfulfilled, and it’s all a burden to me. Why should I have children?! So that they live even worse than me?!”

Today humanity has already passed the peak of its development. For many thousands of years we have been climbing and climbing, and we always had the hope that the next generation would be better off. People had a dream, and it didn’t matter that it was incomprehensible, inexplicable.

So, both in Europe and in America, people hoped that they were living in order for their children to be better, and for their grandchildren to be even better. At the end of the twentieth century, the peak of such an attitude to life passed without being noticed. We don’t think like that anymore.

I have talked to hundreds of people all over the world and they all clearly understand this problem. Humanity has lost hope that it is developing for the better.

Why give birth?! For what?! I can allow one child for myself. Not for the child, but for myself. That is, we are egoists, we are ready to give birth to a child so that we have something to do, something to play with, to make life more pleasant for ourselves. But not for the child.

If we thought about them, about the unborn, we would not have given birth to them. After all, we see that our life, as a result, is not filled with anything good; it’s the pursuit of existence in a continuous struggle. And for what?

Even in ancient wisdom it is said: “Not by your will you are born, not by your will you live, not by your will you die.” So why should I do it to them? What would I suffer all my life for? Just to provide them with some kind of existence? What for? What’s the point?

Today, this issue is facing humanity more clearly, acutely, and realistically.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Europe Today” 1/26/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How could anyone abuse a child?“

In recent weeks in Israel, there have been several cases of children and babies being abused by their kindergarten teachers and caretakers. It is a phenomenon that has been shaking up many people.

Indeed, how is it possible to abuse defenseless children and babies?

The Torah speaks of even worse states that humanity could reach, where merciful mothers would eat their own children.

Our development is marked by our constantly-growing egoism, which has become overblown in our era. The ego, i.e. the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, has reached such major proportions that horrible cases of child abuse increasingly appear the more that we become more egoistic and detached from one another.

There is a method, however, called “the wisdom of Kabbalah,” which can teach us how to build a correctly-functioning society, where we learn how our egoism operates, and how to rise above it in order to develop positive connections to one another.

With the learning and implementation of such a method, we could reach a state where we feel other people’s children not only as our own, but even more closely than we feel our own children.

Why would we feel that way? It is because through a positive attitude to each other—and to each other’s children—we would become close with the positive force of nature that dwells in our connections. Our positive attitudes would let us connect to the positive force that dwells in nature, and such a connection would fulfill us with a much greater sensation of fulfillment than what we currently sense.

We need to start discovering how the positive force of nature dwells in the connections between all people, and we have the ability to reveal and connect to this force. Doing so can let us feel love toward other people’s children and babies, beyond even feeling them as our own children.

This is precisely why the wisdom of Kabbalah has become revealed on a mass scale in our era: Without the wisdom of how to positively connect to each other above our egoistic drives while our egos constantly grow, we would end up eating each other alive.

Based on the video “How Could Anyone Abuse a Child or Baby?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: In ancient times there was a court of Kabbalists—Sanhedrin. How do you think such a court would assess a crime committed in a state of passion?

Answer: During the times of the Sanhedrin, it ruled, judged, and educated society.

It was a governing body, foundational in its laws and educated the population. The entire ideological tune of the society was focused on it. Decisions were made on how to pull the society to a higher degree, educate a new generation, and so on.

In fact, the court’s purpose was not to punish but to correct a person. According to the notions of those times, there was no such punishment as imprisonment. What can be achieved by this? Nothing.

Send the offender to some kind of forced labor, force him to live in a certain society that will correct him. At the time of the Sanhedrin, there were so-called cities of refuge or other places where a person would be under the influence of the most serious educators rather than supervisors, oppressors, or guards.

While today, we isolate a person from society, place him in a concentrated, evil, terrible society of murderers, robbers, and rapists. Naturally, he receives additional bad influences from such a place.

And after that we let him back in! So what is achieved by that?! Someone who is 20, 30, or 100% evil is released into a normal society.

Naturally, he will act as he was taught in prison. Therefore, all prison and detention systems are detrimental. It practically turns our society into one detention center. And there is no escape from it.

Although in many countries this system is called correctional labor, the fact is, they do not seriously set the goal of correction. While the Sanhedrin was intimately involved in this.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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The Sanhedrin existed at a time and in such a society when people were in attainment of the Creator. Therefore, trials and sentences were compensation for the fact that a person stumbled in relation to himself, and could have not stumbled.

The Sanhedrin’s decision was like a recommendation to a person about what to do to ascend spiritually. It was only about spiritual crimes. Therefore, if in the 70 years of the Sanhedrin’s existence (once in 70 years they were assessed as existing) at least one death sentence was passed, then this Sanhedrin was considered cruel, a fiend of hell.

Can you imagine? Once in 70 years! This is only in case when they came to the conclusion that nothing could be done with this person, it was impossible to somehow influence him. But in practice there were no such cases, there was always an opportunity to correct a person.

In those days, there was no death penalty, although the Torah mentions stoning, strangulation, beheading, and so on. All of this is purely theoretical. There was nothing really like that except correction in the right society.

A person should not be isolated from good society but placed there so that he has nowhere to escape. Then he will have no other choice but to pull himself up to the level of this society.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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Question: In the modern world do we need to educate the surrounding society first of all and not the individual?

Answer: We need to urgently change mass media. This is a very difficult job because it leads to the greatest revolution at all levels. Absolutely at all levels.

The mass media pass on certain politics of each country to a person. We understand that changing it can impact big changes in society.

Comment: Naturally. If society and its laws are egoistic, when everyone thinks only about how to snatch something for himself, then the media is also built on the same principle.

My Response: Do not replace one with another and do not swap them. It is because the media is loaded and directed at people in this way that people are like that, and not the other way around.

Indeed, a person is initially an egoist, but it is the mass media that teaches him how to use his egoism. No one else. The environment, not the parents.

However, if parents also act badly, it is only because they have been taught this way, they have seen these examples. A person is brought up only by examples, as they say: “You lie with dogs, you wake up with fleas.” Therefore, we have to take into account that if we want to change something, we need to change the environment. Basically, what else do we need besides improving a person? Nothing else.

To do this, you need to change the environment around a person. Give him the right examples, not by force, but so that he is surrounded by them. Then he will have to change.

If we encourage bad examples, we end up with a terrible society. I watch TV programs and they just scare me. This is the future society!

Most programs do not talk about anything except murders and investigations. Everything revolves around this. There is nothing else. They practically make people accustomed to the fact that they live in this environment and must conform to it.

I once gave a report about this in Arosa, Switzerland at the famous World Spirit Forum. I was applauded, and that was the end of it. What else can they do? This is a massive problem. People have no problems besides education. Everything depends on the education.

If we took today’s generation and were able to educate it well, then in 10 or 15 years we would have a normal society, a completely different civilization.

Why can we not realize that we can do this, for the sake of our children? Let’s create a good society for them. Let’s make the world completely different, and they will become different.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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Question: The age limit for being accountable for committing crimes is gradually decreasing. In some countries, teenagers have been responsible since the age of 12. But we see that despite the fact that this bar is constantly lowering, nothing helps. Crime is growing particularly among teenagers.

Why is this happening? From the point of view of Kabbalah is a person at the age of 14 already an accomplished person? Is it possible to change something?

Answer: What about the age of 40? Is that not an accomplished person? It all depends on the person’s upbringing. If a person is brought up in Africa, in nature, in his clan among adults, then at the age of nine or 10 he is already an adult man. He understands how others act, all their states, all their relationships, and behaves the same way as they do in this world, which is natural for him.

If in our world both a child and an adult learn completely artificial relationships and actions from the television screen and unreal circumstances and conditions are shown to them, then they do not know what sort of world they are in at all. They go outside and replay the same scenes they have seen on television. As a result, even at 20, 30, and 40- years-old, it is all the same.

I look at people on the streets, they play what they hear on the radio, see on television. They just replay what the media gives them. Is it possible to call these people adults who are responsible for their actions? No!

You can talk to them and see how much they live automatically because that is how everyone lives. They don’t even think about it. They were not told that it is possible to live in any other way.

Everything depends on the upbringing of a person, on the measure of his independence and awareness of what he is doing.

Our current upbringing is aimed at teaching a person to stick to the TV screen and learn only from it how to act, talk, think, and so on. And what can we demand from him? Exactly what we give him.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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