Entries in the 'Children' Category

When There Is No Correct Education

547.05Question: What is happening now with our children? Why is there currently so much negativity in the brains of young people? Why do both boys and girls try to change their gender to the opposite? What is happening on Earth?

Answer: The problem is that humanity is not standing still. Even the animal world is gradually developing. Humanity is also evolving because egoism is developing in it; it is as the main force of our life that is aimed at receiving, seizing, and desiring.

If a person does not have the correct education, then his egoism becomes uncontrollable, eats the person himself, and this leads society to terrible, disfigured states. This is what we are seeing in the world today.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/5/22

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Become A Useful Member Of Society

600.02Comment: The principle of criminal law provides for the inevitability of punishment. A person should know that if he commits a crime, he will be caught and convicted. And this fear allegedly saves him from misconduct.

My Response: Unfortunately, we always draw the wrong conclusions. Fear does not help and crimes are committed. If the same criminals were to work eight hours every day and after that would spend another six hours a day engaged in spiritual methods, then we would see how it would help.

Not only would it help, it would make them the most useful members of society. By going through their selfish impulses, they would begin to understand what controls them. They would correct themselves, change, and begin to feel why this happened to them. A person in this state is more likely to improve no matter how terrible a criminal he may be.

As soon as such people with great egoism—tough, egotistically directed—begin to encounter a methodology with the revelation of the true higher state, they become the most predisposed to correction. We just treat them the wrong way.

Question: Suppose a person who committed some crime works and studies the Kabbalistic methodology, so he is in the process of being corrected, but is not corrected yet. At this point, should he be isolated or not?

Answer: No. You cannot isolate a person from society. It is created by the social element. It is necessary to put him in the right framework, the right environment, assign him to work and to study so that he is busy there for 15 to 16 hours a day, and leave the rest of the time for sleep and a little for the family. But in no case distort it.

People who have been released from prison, suffer in all their internal systems—biological, physiological, psychological—and are terribly traumatized. Man is not made for this. We see that this does not lead to anything good.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of Innocence” 3/10/10

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Does A Child Have To Be Strong?

547.05Question: The parents of fifteen-year-old teenager Ethan Crumbley were arrested in the United States. He shot four people at his school.

A teacher saw the boy viewing images of bullets. The boy explained that his family engaged in shooting sports. The school attempted to immediately informed his mother about it, but only was successful to get a corroborating response from the mother a day later.

The following day, the day of the shooting, a teacher saw the boy’s drawings that depicted a semi-automatic weapon, a person who was shot, a laughing emoji, and the words “Blood everywhere,” and, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” The school called the parents in for a conference and requested the parents to take the boy home. The parents refused and left their son at school.  They also failed to disclose that the boy had a weapon that the father had purchased for his son.

On the same day the 15-year-old shot and killed four students and wounded 7 others in his shooting rampage in a high school in Detroit, Michigan suburb. He killed four students, and seven others were injured.

What kind of parents are these?!

Answer: They themselves are a product of our society, of our state. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know how to react to it. They are in some kind of confusion. And it’s not just them.

Question: But if they buy military weapons for a child or teach him to kill in some way, what is the parents’ idea? What is their philosophy?

Answer: The idea is that, in the end, he would be able to protect himself in this terrible world.

Comment: Which means in advance they are saying: “Son, the world is terrible, and you have to be strong.”

My Response: Yes. That’s what he feels.

Question: Where will we arrive with such a philosophy?

Answer: We will destroy each other.

Question: But we ourselves will die, right?

Answer: Well, then we’ll die.

Comment: In principle, we give birth to a child and at the same time we say: “In order to survive, you have to be strong, stronger than everyone else.”

My Response: Yes, that’s how the world works. Look at everyone from state leaders to everyone you see on the street.

Question: But what about this idea that we constantly uttered that we always wanted our children to be happy?

Answer: We don’t know what happiness means. Maybe happiness is, as they say in a song, “a warm gun.”

Comment: The concept of happiness is all mixed up. The understanding of happiness has ceased to be somehow warm, close, or dear.

My Response: No, no, it needs to be taught for a long time and really from a young age. It’s not easy. Today the world is not like that anymore. Today if you talk about such values, they will laugh at you and no one will be friends with such a child.

Question: So the child should be strong? The strongest in the class?

Answer: He should be feared. The cult of power, in principle, is the cult of our time. Be the first.

Look at what is being done between countries and states, in all kinds of enterprises, and between everyone. The most important thing is to be strong, to be physically strong like a bodybuilder, strong in money, strong in some game, in something. In general you have to be strong. And such a state leads to despair; it’s easier to just buy a weapon and employ lynch “law”.

Question: The fact that the boy has such hopelessness as evidenced by what he wrote on the day of the execution: “Help me! The world is terrible!”—is this a consequence of this parental affection, this parental love?

Answer: Maybe. Because he sees what a difference there is in relation to him from the outside world and from his parents. His parents are ready to do anything to give him everything. Even buy a gun.

Question: So are we the first to break the world with our love, as you say?

Answer: It’s due to incorrect parental love, which is realized in this way.

Question: How do the parents direct their love in today’s world so that a different child grows up, so that everything works out differently?

Answer: It all needs to be changed. We need to change at the root, at the core. And if the basis of our world is egoistic and we don’t think about it, then we simply can’t think of anything else except to stock up on weapons and each one to fence ourselves off, batten down, and live like this.

Question: And shoot back?

Answer: Yes. There’s no getting away from this. “My house is my fortress.” And this is the way to think and act.

Question: But how should we raise children?

Answer: That’s the way to educate: that he needs to constantly think and worry about his own safety. And such thoughts about his own safety, which the surrounding world imposes on him, lead to the fact that he draws the appropriate conclusions: I need a gun and I must, after all, destroy my haters.

Question: Then the question is: how will we change this world? What should we do to change this world?

Answer: You can’t ban guns; that’s understandable. You can’t ban hatred between people. The only thing you can do is teach them how to use love and hate correctly.

Question: How do you do that? How do you use them correctly?

Answer: This is already a whole science, and it needs to be learned at school.

And all these activities in class, in all kinds of subjects they study at school, geography, history, and so on, are secondary. The most important thing to teach a person is to interact correctly with others and with their environment—with the still, vegetative, animate, and people. This is the most important thing. And we don’t teach them that.

They came out of their mother, were born, and somehow in the first years we teach them how to interact with this world. And then, when we have to teach them the sciences of how to interact with this world correctly, we stuff them with all sorts of empty material.

But we do not teach how to treat other people, how to create the right society with them, how to make a person look at you favorably, or how to create a community.

Question: And this should be taught?

Answer: This is the most important thing! There must be a school for this. Because school exists in the transition between a small child who practically just came out of his mother—and for the first 5-6 years he is still next to her—and then adulthood. And adult life is with strangers, with other people, and so on. That is, the school should be in the transition from birth to getting out into the world. We do not give this preparation.

Question: So are we talking about a school for children as well as for parents? Because there should be the same atmosphere at home.

Answer: Of course, yes.

Question: And is a school for teachers as well?

Answer: This is naturally a common task.

This is called pedagogy; this is called teaching; this is called raising and educating children. It’s called parenting!

And what are they given? They are given a completely unnecessary education. It’s not parenting.

Question: What will happen then if the gun is still in the child’s hand? If he is brought up the way you say, what will he do with this gun?

Answer: He will protect everyone. From whom? From animals, from aliens, I don’t know. He will have the idea of protecting everyone. This Earth and this is all mine. I want everyone to feel good.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/9/21

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An Unusual Sentence In Odessa

559Comment: Two young men, aged 19 and 23, were tried for stealing car radios in Odessa. They admitted their guilt. Yet instead of three years in prison, they were sentenced to probation. The judge heard the case and decided that although they are adults, they were actually still children in their development, with a primitive vocabulary and so on.

The sentence obliged them to read 5th grade literature including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, White Fang by Jack London, and Taras Shevchenko’s poem “Days Pass, Nights Pass.” The judge decided that classic literature would help criminals understand universal values and attitudes to private property.

Do such extraordinary human decisions mean something?

My Response: Yes. This shows us how much we lack the correct humanistic education.

Question: You are talking about humanistic education. What do you mean by that?

Answer: A kind attitude to others, that’s all. It is when your inner preparation does not allow you to be mean or rude or to cause harm and pain to another.

Simply put, it is when you care. Correct literature, particularly children’s literature, especially in childhood when children cannot feel this, should instill empathy for the other within them. This is the most important thing in birth and development, the feeling of the other, feeling what he feels, empathizing with him, and so on. There is absolutely no such thing in children by nature, and we must somehow teach them this.

Today we say the opposite: “If they punch you in the face, punch them back even harder!”—and so on.

This is our current education—TV programs and everything else.

Question: Would you want to turn it all around and provide only humane education instead?

Answer: Yes. Only empathy for others can bring us closer together and save humanity.

Comment: It seems like the judge might have had such a spark to educate in this way.

My Response: Maybe he is just a wise man and understands that nothing else will work on them. Young fools.

Question: Would it be even worse if they went to jail?

Answer: Yes, of course. They would go through the “school of life” there and will come out even bigger criminals.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/28/21

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Based On Personal Interests

273.02Comment: If we consider the system of punishment that exists today, it has, as it were, two principles. One principle is more humane where the attempt is to instill some moral norms through forced physical labor.

The other principle only involves punishment for all misdeeds. This system has no so-called middle line or correction.

My Response: But it cannot be here because it is not demanded by society itself. If you ask ordinary people or even the same lawyers, they have a lot of theories and philosophies, but in principle they don’t even know what they want to build in general.

What society would they like to see? What kind of person should be in it?

They do everything not from practice or from a plan that is aimed at educating a person, at changing society, and at a vision of the future, but only from what interests them at the moment. What should we do to earn money for ourselves, to become famous, and to rise above others and show off how we work?

Everything is aimed at justifying their appointment as their source of sustenance and success. As long as the system is selfish, it will continue to exist.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of Innocence” 3/10/10

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Feel Your Eternal Part

198Comment: You say that a person can be corrected only by seeing from the perspective of what he is doing to his soul. That is, when committing an offense, I see what I am doing to my eternal part when I reveal the whole picture of cause-and-effect in its overall scope and not at some short period of life.

My Response: Even within a short period of life a person can feel that everything is interconnected, can understand that he is connected to a common system, and can begin to realize that all other people are part of him, that life is short, and he will soon discover—either in this life or after—that by harming others he basically harms himself.

Moreover, this is the most direct harm that he inflicts on himself because in reality, we all represent one whole. We just do not see this system because it is revealed to us when we leave our body.

A person begins to master the properties of leaving the body either during this life or after when the body dies if you give him the opportunity to somehow feel it..

But it is possible. This is what Kabbalah deals with—a method for mastering the feeling that we are one single whole. Only in this case will a person have a different attitude toward others, as toward himself. So it is written: “Love your neighbor as yourself” because in this way we come to the only correct state that actually exists in the universe and only is hidden from us.

The secret world—the one that we do not feel—includes all of us as a single whole, as cells of one body.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of innocence” 3/10/10

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A System Of Correction, Not Punishment

508.1Question: In ancient times in Israel, people who inadvertently harmed someone were placed in cities of refuge until the special jubilee year (Shmita Yovel). What happened if a person did not correct himself by that year? Was he still forgiven?

Answer: No. In the society where he lived, they would work on him. Punishment, of course, existed, but not in the form of imprisonment.

A person must be in an environment that not directly, but indirectly explains to him how to be a different element of society. And so, after some time, he receives a certain influence.

Give that criminal an opportunity to work and study philosophy, psychology, and other sciences; place him in a different environment so that he is in close contact with the others. This is the only way to influence a person.

And we, on the contrary, throw him into an environment of even greater criminals for whom perpetrating a crime is a brave deed. As a result, he comes out ready for new criminal actions.

Is this called punishment? This is called isolating him from society! You prepare him for more crimes. This is what we see.

We ourselves created such a society and systems of punishment. And according to Kabbalah, there should be a system not of punishment, but of correction.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Presumption of innocence” 3/10/10

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The Proper Upbringing Of Boys

961Question: Despite the fact that now schools are trying to separate boys and girls does this remain at the level of our bodies, our animal egoism, and in the end it will not work?

Answer: This will have some kind of effect, but it will not correct a person and will not make him right in society. It will not lead to the correct mutual relations between men or between men and women. They will get some examples. There may be fewer distortions, but there will be no corrections.

In any case, separate education is better. But we must be careful about what is presented within this framework that students will take an example from.

Question: Is it impossible to build something within the framework of our usual life correctly if there is no spiritual determinant?

Answer: It is still good. When a boy receives an example from adult men, this is a completely different world for him than if he looks at women and subconsciously captures their goals, their outlook on life, the world, and their relationships with each other. This involuntarily distorts him, affects him at all levels—genetic, chromosomal, etc. All his behavior becomes effeminate. This is not right.

Look at what’s happening with men today! They do not want to leave their mothers, they stay at home until the age of forty. Or they get married, have children, and quickly run back to their mother. And then they find themselves another mother in the form of a wife.

So until the end of their lives they themselves remain children. This is all because women are engaged in the education of men, young lads, and boys. Therefore whole generations and even the entire civilization today is such that the female image turns out to be dominant, influencing, organizing, and determining. And there is nothing we can do about it.

Unless we now begin to build the structure of our world with the help of Kabbalah, similar to the upper world that is revealed to us, we will see our generation even more distorted.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Generation of “Lady Gaga”” 3/10/10

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“How Important To Development Is A Father Figure?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How important to development is a father figure?

In the words of Sigmund Freud, “I could not point to any need in childhood as strong as that for a father’s protection.”

The importance of the father figure is embedded in nature and our biology. A child who grows up with a distorted fatherly presence, whether the child experiences abuse or neglect from the father, leads to certain distortions that become part of them for the rest of their lives. On the contrary, a child who grows up with a positive father figure accordingly absorbs a positive influence. In our times, since the human ego has reached overblown proportions, in order to be a positive father figure to a child, men need to undergo an educational process that gives them the ability to rise above their egoistic drives and consistently exercise an altruistic attitude to other people, including their family.

If speaking in broader terms, then we can also say that humanity’s lack of feeling for its “Father,” i.e., the Creator, the upper force, is the cause of every problem that we experience in our lives. If we felt the caring attitude of our “Father”—the Creator, the upper force—which begets and cares for us at every moment, then we would bear witness to a completely different, positive, harmonious and peaceful world. However, it is impossible to feel such a presence with our inborn properties, because we would then possess no free will. We would feel the full love of the Creator, but we would also be subordinated by it. We thus have no such feeling, and it is in order to be able to act freely, i.e. to develop a similar attitude among each other in society as that of the upper force toward us. Until we do so, we will keep finding ourselves in a world that is full of increasing problems and crises.

Based on the video “The Importance of a Father Figure” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Teach A Child That Each Person Is An Important Element In The Global System

962.5Question: You have repeatedly said that we are at a transitional stage from the last generation of egoistic development and that the entire educational system is built in this way. How do you see the Kabbalistic system of education?

Answer: It should be carried out via the Internet, when from serious world centers where Kabbalistic educators are located, everything that Kabbalah does is taught: the methodology of changing a person, the perception of reality, freedom of will, the system of the universe, the interaction and connection of people with each other, the internal system of our communication, and so on. Kabbalah deals with the structural mechanics of the entire universe.

In addition, specialists should correctly teach children everything related to the natural sciences, which are taught based on the revelation of the global system of the universe.

A person is constantly given a general vision of the whole picture of the worlds as one world: where his place is, what his purpose is. And when this is revealed to the child, he begins to feel it and to work with the forces of nature and with society.

A little man (the soul has no age) begins to see what an important element he is in the global system, he has someone to take an example from, and he sees the realization of himself.

At a young age, five, six, or ten years old, when everything is explained to him, it really fascinates him. There is no system of punishments or rewards. The very revelation of the true world in which we find ourselves captivates everyone. That’s how we’re built. And therefore, the system becomes general, global, and kind.

I hope that soon we will come to such a need and do it.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation Lady Gaga” 3/10/10

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