Question: Humanity has already experienced serious economic crises, but it has always found a solution. It even managed to overcome the Great Depression of the 1930’s. But today we claim that we have to correct man. This doesn’t sound rational…

Answer: I see it differently: the cause for all the problems we encounter today is man. In earlier days there were different external causes of the crises, but in the modern age it has become clear that the source of all the trouble is man who doesn’t find the right way and doesn’t understand where he is. The human is the worst being; he cannot get along with others, and he is the one who blows up this bubble, and it is beyond his powers to fix the system.

It would seem that the flaws of human society are evident, and we just need to correct them, but we don’t know how. New problems keep appearing and when we cannot solve them we feel that we are weak as we confront them. This means that the main problem is in us.

We cannot, for example, unite Europe so that it would become a true united alliance of countries that will not deceive one another or humiliate each other but would work as one unit. But nothing happens; each country pulls the blanket in its own direction instead of giving it to another, and as a result no one gets it and everyone is in trouble.

What is Europe actually missing? It has agriculture, industry, different services, relations between countries, transportation systems, trains, planes; everything is there. For a good life, the only thing missing is the right connection between people and nothing more. Everyone lacks this: the tycoons, the poor, those on the right and those on the left of the political spectrum.

So is there another means for correction besides educating people? With the proper education, Europe could arrange a paradise. But instead, despite the material wealth in Scandinavia, the rate of suicide is higher than in the southern countries fraught with high unemployment and unrest. In Greece the situation has become a humanitarian disaster—people literally cannot feed their kids. Babies are abandoned on the streets so that the state will take care of them, and the poor are so desperate that they break the law so that they’ll be put in jail.

So what can we do? Correct man!

After all, the natural resources are enough for everyone; someone has salt, for example, and another has meat, and another has fire, and someone else has vegetables, but we cannot come to an agreement so that we can cook soup for everyone. Everyone holds on to what he has, and eventually everyone is left with nothing; after all, you cannot be satiated by salt or by raw meat.

This situation will only get worse since this is nature’s plan, until we understand that without the right connection we will simply die.

As for earlier crises, they are not comparable to the current crisis. Today’s crisis depends on the correction of man and is the most difficult with regard to its solution.

In the 1930’s, capitalistic evolution was still burgeoning with ambitious plans and hopes and the sudden collapse did make people feel terrible. Today human beings are disappointed in their own desires and are prepared for the worst in advance. We don’t feel “new heights of consumerism” are ahead of us, only deepening gloom.

This happens so that we will realize the essence of the modern crisis is different than the earlier crises; it is developing on a totally different level, in another field. It develops in man, and so it isn’t about the banks and about other external symptoms of the illness. If we fight the symptoms, we will not be able to cope with the crisis. The only way is to correct the relationships between people.

We will die of hunger unless we unite and “cook the soup” together. This state is profoundly different than what it was in the past. Once people wanted more and were left with nothing, which brought about despair, unbearable sufferings, and often suicide.

Today a person has no such ambitions and he already knows that soon there will be nothing to eat. It’s as if he is shown in advance how he gradually will enter his grave. This is being shown so that everyone will gradually understand where we are headed. Nature teaches us step by step and reveals the current state to us, explaining what we should do.

This process won’t end at once; it will last for another year or two, until people feel that there is no end in sight to their troubles, until they find themselves at a snail’s pace of not sinking into grave conditions.

We aren’t completely aware of the results of the crisis. We don’t pay attention to the plants that are being shut down, to the decrease in business activities, and the collapse in various areas. Gradually, however, the world will fall into a deep dark sleep before our very eyes. Until people acknowledge that the problem is in them, it’s not in their power to “stir” the world despite its great abundance.

“So why don’t we get anything out of it? Here is the meat, the water, the fire, and the vegetables—so let’s cook a delicious soup…” it will take time until they finally agree to that. We haven’t had such a crisis yet.
[100508]
From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

Related Material:
We Wanted The Best, But We Got…
Everything Is Against Us
The Only Correct Solution Is Unification

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Education, Integral Upbringing, Politics, Q&A, Society - No Comments →

Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and Nobel laureate): “The long malaise into which the economy seems to be settling, and the growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest — an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity. To me, these problems are two sides of the same coin: with inequality at its highest level since before the Depression, a robust recovery will be difficult in the short term, and the American dream — a good life in exchange for hard work — is slowly dying.

“There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. …

“Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.

“Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts. ….

“Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable. … The International Monetary Fund has noted the systematic relationship between economic instability and economic inequality, but American leaders haven’t absorbed the lesson.

Inequality leads to political inequality and a broken decision-making process. High unemployment, of course, depresses wages. Adjusted for inflation, real wages have stagnated or fallen. … Since the Great Recession, most of the increase in the nation’s wealth has gone to the very top.

“Meanwhile, as incomes have stagnated or fallen, tuition has soared. … We could have recognized that when young people are jobless, their skills atrophy. We could have made sure that every young person was either in school, in a training program or on a job. Instead, we let youth unemployment rise to twice the national average.  The children of the rich can stay in college or attend graduate school, without accumulating enormous debt, or take unpaid internships to beef up their résumés. Not so for those in the middle and bottom. We are sowing the seeds of ever more inequality in the coming years. …

“Globalization, and the unbalanced way it has been pursued, has shifted bargaining power away from workers: firms can threaten to move elsewhere, especially when tax laws treat such overseas investments so favorably. This in turn has weakened unions.”

My Comment: Inequality is the principle criterion of our world—egoism; it can be eradicated only through integral education which everyone should go through so that humanity can get rid of its evil and survive.
[100414]

Related Material:
America Is No Longer The Land Of Opportunity
The Empty American Dream
Social Inequality Is Killing Everyone

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Egoism, Integral Upbringing, News - No Comments →

Question: Would it be worthwhile for business people to change their direction now, to diversify and turn to some kinds of essential production?

Answer: In the new integral system, unnecessary businesses, unnecessary profession, and unnecessary jobs will automatically be discarded. After all, we are approaching this and in the end of things, humanity will only produce essential food goods, products, and services.

Question: Will the result be that trade as we know it and brokerage services will disappear?

Answer: No, they will remain. There are numerous connections in trade and in brokerage services. But in the same trade and intermediary services there is a set of completely unnecessary contacts, companies, and industries that fill artificial niches. As a result of integral development, all of that will gradually disappear as is already evidenced by the level of increasing unemployment.

People begin to demand higher fulfillment, instead of continuously purchasing more and more. It will become increasingly revealed to man that the level of consumption doesn’t exceed rational consumption. I need to feed my “animal,” to maintain my body, my children, family, and relatives. This is essential, but this is the animal level of our state.

And today a new level is already discovered where I need to receive fulfillment not from purchasing a better car than my neighbors, etc. I suddenly begin to feel within me such an emptiness that I can fill only with close contact with the community, through mutual integration in a common connection.

The feelings of confidence, security, warmth, generosity, and kindness are what is missing now in the society. But in the meantime they are not aware of it. We see this according to the programs that are shown on TV, according to how the media distorts people, etc. But still, it’s true because it’s necessary for people to understand as quickly as possible in what kind of world they are living.
[100295]
From KabTV’s “Personnel Secrets” 2/3/13

Related Material:
I’d Rather Be a Janitor…
There Is No Harmony Without Integrality
To The New World Through A Qualitative Leap

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society - No Comments →

Opinion (Christophe Bernard, Chief Strategist of the Vontobel Group): “Money serves as a foundation for trust. We take for granted that we can go to a bakery and exchange it for bread. A banknote itself costs nothing, in contrast to silver and gold coins, which have material value. …

“The current situation is quite new because the relationship between currencies and gold was destroyed only 40 years ago, but gold as payment was introduced in the time of Croesus, the king of Lydia, in 560 BC and since then has maintained its purchasing power. In Babylon, an ounce of gold could buy 350 loaves of bread, about the same as in our days.

“The attachment to gold is unreasonable in our time because the amount of gold that can be extracted is limited, and if the amount of money depended on it, it would slow down economic growth. …

“If since 2008, the central banks had not flooded markets with cheap money, we would not have a depression with unpredictable consequences. So far, these measures were correct. But I wonder how they are now going, on the one hand, to reduce the mountain of debt and, on the other hand, to reduce incredibly inflated balance sheets?”

My Comment: Gold and silver were used as a payment more than 3,000 years ago; we read in the Torah that Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah for 400 shekels of silver. And even before that, in ancient Babylon, that is, 3,500 years ago, gold coins were in use.

The strategists writes, “The attachment to gold is unreasonable in our time because the amount of gold that can be extracted is limited, and if the amount of money depended on it, it would slow down economic growth.” But precisely this economic progress has to be gradually stopped! And it is no longer progress, but accumulation of empty monetary mass.

What will banks do with cheap money? Either we will do this ourselves or Nature will correct everything itself: The entire mass of money will be reduced to the mass needed for existence. There is no need for a big mass of money, and no more gold is mined!
[100288]

Related Material:
The Financial Industry: Living In A Lie
The World Of Fake Money
Establishing Balance Between Countries

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News - No Comments →

Question: What is “round” egoism?

Answer: At present, all humanity has become a common globally interconnected system. Our dependence on each other is manifested in everything: in business, culture, communication, politics, and the economy. But we do not know how to work with it because we are small individual egoists. And now, as we are entering this new system, we do not understand its laws because we are transitioning from a linear, discrete system to an analog system.

In a discrete system, everything depends on me, on my actions, and in a mutually closed, interdependent system, little depends on me. It turns out that if I relate linearly, directly, discretely to my enterprise, business, I see myself dependent on many factors, which I cannot calculate.

That is why politicians, economists, and investors get together at all sorts of G8 and G20 summits and cannot find any viable solutions to continue a normal operation of the system. After all, the law, which we suddenly face in our development, became integral.

An analog system is different from a discrete system because all the factors in it are dependent on each other. But we cannot take into account such a volume of data because within ourselves we are not like that; we have not ascended yet to that level. That is why we have lost the reins, the steering wheel, the ability to manage, and the world around us becomes unmanageable; we do not know exactly where we are being carried. There is no clear entrance-exit; there are just some consequences that we have not foreseen. It is very difficult to live in such a world.

That is why it is necessary to think about how we can still adapt to this new state, a new system, in which we suddenly find ourselves. It is the next level of our development, which has never existed in human history. But now it is already a given.
[100114]
From KabTV’s “Personnel Secrets” 2/3/13

Related Material:
There Is No Harmony Without Integrality
Separated Parts In An Integral System
Which Businesses Will Succeed?

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Egoism, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Unity - No Comments →

Opinion (George Soros, investor, philanthropist, chairman of Soros Fund Management): “As Open Europe blog notes, Soros fears that ‘there is a real danger that the [Euro] solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem.’ The interview with Dutch TV shows Soros’ grave concerns that the Southern nations are ‘being pushed unwittingly… into a long lasting depression,’ as Germany’s austerity program is ‘counter-productive – cannot actually succeed.’ Just as we recently noted the similarities between the European Union and the Soviet Union, so Soros believes the ‘Euro’ itself is ‘bound to break up the European Union.’ It may take generations, he notes, as a terrible tragedy of ‘lost political freedom and economic prosperity.’”

Opinion (Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament): “As President of the European Parliament I was forced to acknowledge that in October 2012 the EU was already essentially insolvent. Although the bills for November and December had not yet been submitted, in October the shortfall already amounted to EUR 9 billion. … In a laborious process which did indeed see some Member States refuse for weeks on end to make outstanding payments, two-thirds of the shortfall of EUR 9 billion was scraped together. The remainder was carried over to the financial year 2013, as were the shortfalls for November and December 2012, which had not even been taken into account in the supplementary budget. Accordingly, we effectively began 2013 with a deficit of EUR 16 billion.”

My Comment: Undoubtedly, any attempt to impose unification without appropriate education to change a person from egoistic to integral will give the same results in different countries and systems because we are dealing with the system of nature, that is, with science, so we should comply with its laws!
[100187]

Related Material:
Where Are You, Common Europe?
The EU Crisis Takes Many Faces
Where Are You, Common Europe?

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Integral Upbringing, News - No Comments →

Opinion (Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in economics and professor at Columbia University): “The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos has lost some of its pre-crisis panache. After all, before the meltdown in 2008, the captains of finance and industry could trumpet the virtues of globalization, technology, and financial liberalization, which supposedly heralded a new era of relentless growth. …

“Those days are gone. But Davos remains a good place to get a sense of the global zeitgeist.
“It goes without saying that developing and emerging-market countries no longer look at the advanced countries as they once did. But a remark by one mining company executive from a developing country caught the spirit of change. In response to one development expert’s heartfelt despair that unfair trade treaties and unfulfilled promises of aid have cost the developed countries their moral authority, he retorted: ‘The West never had any moral authority.’ Colonialism, slavery, the splintering of Africa into small countries, and a long history of resource exploitation may be matters of the distant past to the perpetrators, but not so to those who suffered as a result.

“If there is a single topic that concerned the assembled leaders the most, it is economic inequality. The shift in the debate from just a year ago seems dramatic: no one even mentions the notion of trickle-down economics anymore, and few are willing to argue that there is a close congruence between social contributions and private rewards.

“While the realization that America is not the land of opportunity that it has long claimed to be is as disconcerting to others as it is to Americans, inequality of opportunity at the global scale is even greater….

“The Associated Press organized a sobering session on technology and unemployment: Can countries (particularly in the developed world) create new jobs – especially good jobs – in the face of modern technology that has replaced workers with robots and other machines in any task that can be routinized? …

“Those suffering the most are the young, whose life prospects will be badly hurt by the extended periods of unemployment that they face today. …

“… If the euro was to survive in the long run, there would have to be a fiscal and banking union, which would require more political unification than most Europeans are willing to accept. …

“In the last 25 years, we have moved from a world dominated by two superpowers to one dominated by one, and now to a leaderless, multi-polar world.”

My Comment: It may seem that the world is better and more equal without strong leaders, but in the right system, there is always a hierarchy, as in the body, the one who is more caring and responsible is higher, as in the body, the brain and other vital organs that live not for themselves, but for the entire body.
[100151]

Related Material:
Humanity Without Leadership
The American Dream Boomeranging Back
The Lack Of World Leadership

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News, Politics, Unity, World - No Comments →

We are unable to speak about a concrete image of the future society because it will be continuously changing and transforming.

With the implementation of new integral education and a natural reorganization of the entire megalopolis, redundant enterprises, industrial waste, and environmental pollution will automatically cease to exist. Gradually, any nonessential activities will vanish as an excessive and harmful fat that hurts the consumers, manufacturers, and the ecology in general. Our consumption will become optimal and rational. It will depend solely on the degree of our correct interaction. This is why the basis of all these processes is only integral education.

This transformation will be constant. We will learn how to behave depending on the degree of our reciprocal connection, integrality, and mutual guarantee, when each one of us tries to internally support others.

Many unnecessary enterprises will close their doors, thus freeing an enormous amount of human resources, time, and energy. People will have plenty of free time and will be involved in integral education and mutual assistance. Hence, the very basis of modern-day economics that currently survives solely because of its “buying and throwing away” strategy, which is the real cause of its not being sustainable, will vanish.

However, we have no idea of what will replace the dying economics since there are no professionals who think integrally yet. Future integral economics has to emerge from appropriate upbringing!

I have students who are professional economists, but they don’t understand which way to go since they first have to attain the state of integral connection in the integral society. We have to go through a very serious revolution, a severe collapse of current banking, financial, economic, and international trade systems. There should be a period of education and upbringing between the old and the new structures, a qualitative internal leap that precedes the attainment of the next level.
[99487]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World” 11/28/12

Related Material:
The Unpredictable World
Economics Of The Future Society
The End Of The Development Of Egoism

Filed under: Economy, Education, Integral Upbringing, Society - No Comments →

Opinion (Bill Gross, PIMCO founder and co-chief investment officer): “Bill Gross, the Pimco bond guru, said on Thursday a heavy reliance on credit has put the U.S. economy on a trajectory toward extinction, and he warned of an investor exodus from financial markets.

“The level of credit needed to spur economic growth has grown five-fold since the 1980s, said Gross, who is a founder and co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co….

“Using a supernova as a metaphor for the U.S. financial system, Gross said the universe is expanding so rapidly now that in the far future it will end in a ‘big freeze.’ Dependence on credit for growth will produce similar results, he said.

“U.S. government, corporate, household and personal debt is now $56 trillion, a monster that needs ever increasing amounts of fuel, Gross said, calling it a ‘supernova star that expands and expands, yet, in the process begins to consume itself.’…

“The end of credit markets will begin, said Gross, when assets offer too much risk and too little return, causing an investor exodus into alternatives such as cash or real assets.”

My Comment: But exit to other markets is not a cure from the capitalist approach to life; the individualistic view of the world itself should explode like a bubble and expose the only alternative–mutual responsibility, agreement, and complement.
[99978]

Related Material:
The U.S. Economy Has Fallen
The Housing Downturn Is A Prelude To The Real Crash
The US Is About To Plunge Into A New Recession

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Integral Upbringing, Mutual Guarantee, News, World - No Comments →

Opinion (from PR Newswire): “Business executives around the world believe that protectionism is on the rise in both developed and emerging markets, according to a new Economist Intelligence Unit survey and report commissioned by UK Trade & Investment. …

“Ian McCartney, UK Trade Minister responsible for UK Trade & Investment, commented: ‘World trade has been one of the principal engines of global economic growth over recent decades, and increased protectionism risks putting the brakes on that growth. Globalisation should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. Protectionism leads to less trade, lower growth and therefore lower employment and more poverty.’”

My Comment: There is no solution to this without rebuilding the world, or rather the human! Only a view of the world as a single integrated whole in which humanity produces only rational necessities, equally shares everything necessary for existence, is content with integral fulfillment, and feels a single integral space will lead the world out of the crisis. We feel the labor pains of the birth of a new, not individual, but integral attitude to the world. In the end, economic protectionism will lead to world wars.
[99921]

Related Material:
How The World Economy Will Collapse In The 21st Century
Why No One Will Dominate The 21st Century
The Discrepancy Between The Two Systems

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Integral Upbringing, News - No Comments →