In the News (from Reuters): “Standard and Poor’s sees a high risk that Spain, Italy, Portugal and France will not be able to carry through necessary reforms as the unemployed become less willing to put up with austerity, S&P’s Germany head Torsten Hinrichs told a newspaper.

“The high unemployment in Spain, Italy and France is socially explosive,” Hinrichs was quoted as saying in Monday’s Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

“’There has to be a social consensus for saving measures. High unemployment … does not help.’

“Hinrichs said the people of Spain and Portugal had already proven they were willing to bear with austerity measures, but ‘this cannot continue forever.’”

My Comment: It is necessary to immediately announce the introduction of integral education among the recipients of unemployment benefits and to test its effectiveness in a month, then social explosion would not be a threat, and on the contrary, “out of nowhere” a general sense of security and wellbeing will rise. It is elementary psychology …
[103602]

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Question: I would like to ask about a situation that can occur in a group regarding the dissemination and teaching of integral education.

Suppose there is a group of five people who have accepted the group charter and are trying to keep it, exhibiting love, etc., and there is me, a solid, educated, clever person who has graduated from courses of integral teaching and integral education and who can already teach others. I don’t have time to be incorporated in the group; I want to disseminate, but the group doesn’t support me. It turns out that they are holding me back. What should we do in such a case?

Answer: The point is that before the general global crisis started I didn’t speak about integral education at all. Baal HaSulam writes a lot about this and talks about this issue very seriously. He emphasizes that the revelation of the Creator cannot occur if the world doesn’t yearn for it, both the part of humanity that has the point in the heart and the part in which the point in the heart has not yet awakened. So everything depends on dissemination. I also saw how in the beginning my students didn’t quite grasp this idea, but I pressured them, and eventually they understand that first of all, we have no choice and that it is essential, and secondly, that it is true.

What would I do in your place? There are many groups around the world and some understand that we must disseminate and some don’t. The same thing happens in each group where there are some people who understand this point and some who don’t. In any case, the members of the group have to live in peace and allow those who want to disseminate and who acknowledge how necessary it is to do so. Those who still don’t understand should wait until they understand; they will see that all the groups are dealing with it and will eventually feel not only that they are interested in it, but also the need to disseminate.

The point is that when you begin to work for the general public, you feel great energy; you feel the meaning of life. It’s like becoming parents, since when we have children, we feel a new urge for life: You don’t live only for yourself anymore but for them. So, a group that deals with dissemination is always more lively. It turns out that first of all dissemination is important for the group itself. Let’s hope that everyone will gradually understand this.
[103569]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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Opinion (Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, author of Enterprise 2.0 and Race Against the Machine (with Erik Brynjolfsson): “As it turns out, when tens of millions of people are unemployed or underemployed, there’s a fair amount of interest in what technology might be doing to the labor force. And as I look at the conversation, it strikes me that it’s focused on exactly the right topic, and at the same time, it’s missing the point entirely. The topic that it’s focused on, the question is whether or not all these digital technologies are affecting people’s ability to earn a living, or, to say it a little bit different way, are the droids taking our jobs? And there’s some evidence that they are. …

“Corporate profits are quite high. In fact, if you include bank profits, they’re higher than they’ve ever been. And business investment in gear, in equipment and hardware and software is at an all-time high. So the businesses are getting out their checkbooks. …

“So, in short, yeah, the droids are coming for our jobs. In the short term, we can stimulate job growth by encouraging entrepreneurship and by investing in infrastructure, because the robots today still aren’t very good at fixing bridges. But in the not-too-long-term, I think within the lifetimes of most of the people in this room, we’re going to transition into an economy that is very productive but that just doesn’t need a lot of human workers, and managing that transition is going to be the greatest challenge that our society faces. Voltaire summarized why. He said, ‘Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.’”

My Comment: If we exclude people’s revolt against machines and technological progress in general, then the only thing that remains is for us to occupy the unemployed—the most reliable and necessary for this—is integral education in which people begin to understand the essence of the era and of the necessary changes that should occur in them and in society.
[103456]

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Question: The children are our future and the world’s future. They work on connection by playing games, but sometimes they get tired of the connection games and say, “That’s it, enough! We want someone to finally win.” What can we do in situations like this?

Answer: It is a problem when someone in the group wants to win. It means that the game isn’t managed correctly. Of course, both grownups and children always wish to win. It is a psychological urge that exists in each of us to some extent. However, education is about teaching a child gradually to think that it is impossible to win alone but only together, and then a habit becomes a second nature.

This is psychology. This is how many groups around the world are trained, such as divers, athletes, and so on. It is psychological training. When a person understands that, even if he succeeds in something, it is still thanks to the group. So, this is something that must be learned. We can teach this to kids so that they will think, feel, and behave that way.

There is even a tragic example of a submarine that was sinking and half the crew could have saved themselves, but the other half could not. So, the first half refused to leave the submarine, and eventually they all died. They felt that they were so connected that they could not leave their friends!

This example shows to what extent the preparation for connection—for the feeling of “we” without which there is no “I”—is developed in a person.
[103550]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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Opinion (Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a leading scholar of globalization and economic development): “Nothing endangers globalization more than the yawning governance gap – the dangerous disparity between the national scope of political accountability and the global nature of markets for goods, capital, and many services – that has opened up in recent decades. When markets transcend national regulation, as with today’s globalization of finance, market failure, instability, and crisis is the result. But pushing rule-making onto supranational bureaucracies, such as the World Trade Organization or the European Commission, can result in a democratic deficit and a loss of legitimacy.

“How can this governance gap be closed? One option is to re-establish national democratic control over global markets. This is difficult and smacks of protectionism, but it is neither impossible nor necessarily inimical to healthy globalization. As I argue in my book The Globalization Paradox, expanding the scope for national governments to maintain regulatory diversity and rebuild frayed social bargains would enhance the functioning of the global economy. …

“But the trouble is not just that these global institutions remain weak. It is also that they are inter-governmental bodies – a collection of member states rather than agents of global citizens. Because their accountability to national electorates is indirect and uncertain, they do not generate the political allegiance – and hence legitimacy – that truly representative institutions require. Indeed, the travails of the European Union have revealed the limits of transnational political community-building, even among a comparatively limited and similar set of countries.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with national parliaments and executives. During the financial crisis, it was national governments that bailed out banks and firms, recapitalized the financial system, guaranteed debts, eased liquidity, primed the fiscal pump, and paid the unemployment and welfare checks – and took the blame for everything that went wrong. In the memorable words of outgoing Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, global banks are ‘international in life, but national in death.’

“But perhaps there is another path, one that accepts the authority of national governments, but aims to reorient national interests in a more global direction. Progress along such a path requires ‘national’ citizens to begin viewing themselves increasingly as ‘global citizens,’ with interests that extend beyond their state’s borders.”

My Comment: Since national governments depend on their citizens, integral education will lead to an understanding of global connection and responsibility, causing pressure on national governments.
[102967]

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In the News (from MIT Technology Review): “The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists.

“In 1992, the Harvard-based political scientist Samuel Hartington suggested that future conflicts would be driven largely by cultural differences. He went on to map out a new world order in which the people of the world are divided into nine culturally distinct civilizations. …

“Bogdan State at Stanford University in California and a few pals … have analyzed a global database of e-mail messages, and their locations, sent by more than 10 million people over the space of a year. State and co say that the pattern of connections between these people clearly reflects the civilizations mapped out by Huntington. In other words, the way we send e-mails is a reflection of the mesh of civilizations that is an important driver of future conflict. …
“This result provides evidence towards a division of the world into civilizational blocks following Huntington’s theory,” say State and pals.

“But there are other patterns too.  ‘The findings (unsurprisingly) support the idea that geography, transportation and administrative decisions are all important determinant of between-country communication: distance decreases density, as do visas, while direct flights increase it,’ say the researchers.

“And there are surprising results as well. For example, a common border between two countries actually reduces the communication density between them, perhaps because of increased tensions.  ‘These curious findings do raise the issue of potential problems with European integration, as well as of the higher potential for conflict between countries sharing borders, which may lead to less communication,’ say State and pals.”

My Comment: Global and personal egoism is constantly growing and becoming interdependent, which heightens contradictions further. It is impossible to isolate oneself. We can only follow the trend, indicated by nature, that is, to unite. This is possible only through the change of the human being, by our re-education. A method of correcting our egoistic nature is offered: integral education and upbringing.
[102862]

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In the News (from CNN): “Global warming has propelled Earth’s climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest – in just one century.

“A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

“If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record,” he said. It is a good indicator of just how fast man-made climate change has progressed.

“A century is a very short period of time for such a spike. …

“If not for man-made influences, the Earth would be in a very cold phase right now and getting even colder, according the joint study by Oregon State University and Harvard University. Marcott was the lead author of the report on its results.

“To boot, the range of temperatures from cold to hot produced since the industrial revolution began are about the same as the 11,000 years before it, said Candace Major from the National Science Foundation, ‘but this change has happened a lot more quickly.’

My Comment: The cause for all the changes is to encourage people to correct themselves. But a person arrives at this decision only when, after many misfortunes and sufferings, he finally becomes convinced that there is no other way—he has to change himself. How much and what kind of suffering we have to go through to accept this decision is unknown.

Everyone who understands the necessity of following the laws of nature, to become similar to it, and to become connected by the good ties of mutual guarantee should make every effort to disseminate the knowledge about it. By these actions we will definitely bring the correct decision closer and reduce suffering.
[102689]

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In the News (from Euronews): “It has been a day of industrial action all over Europe.

“In Belgium, hundreds of steel workers blocked border crossings to and from neighbouring countries, furious at plans by the steel giant Arcelor Mittal to slash production threatening more than a thousand jobs.

“In France, PSA Peugeot-Citroen workers occupied the offices of a steel industry managers’ organization as part of an ongoing protest against the planned closure of a car factory in Aulnay near Paris. The plant has been paralysed for eight weeks by a strike.

“Travelers using the airport serving Bonn and Cologne in Germany had delays and cancellations as security staff walked out. It’s part of a long running dispute over contract terms and pay. Dozens of flights were cancelled. Passengers using Berlin’s Tegel airport were also affected.

“There was disruption too at Madrid’s main international airport. About 2,000 workers protested against pay cuts and massive lay-offs at Spain’s national carrier Iberia.

“And tourists hoping for some ancient Greek culture found all public archaeological sites strike bound – including the Parthenon temple at the Acropolis. Workers are angry about a planned restructuring of the Culture Ministry.”

My Comment: The crisis is not in overproduction of goods and services, but in the over-production of people. We are moving into the world where everything will be done by machines, printers, and almost all the people will be unemployed. It will happen gradually, but steadily. There is a crisis of an abundance of goods and people.

Kabbalah described this state of the world a long time ago and offers the following: reduce all the production and services except those necessary for living, free all people who are not needed for the necessary production and services from working, provide mandatory education at open universities of integral education, pay stipends at the places of studies (like a salary adjusting for absenteeism), teach integral interaction, the structure of the world and its development, writing, drawing, singing, etc., and have workshops.
[102319]

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The current crisis is meant to bring us to the right recognition of the mutual connection and dependency between us. And it is not this economy in the modern example. After all, a real economy is without “bubbles” and excessive luxuries. It is a small percentage of the world’s population producing the basic necessities that we all need: food, clothing, housing, etc. Everything else is not the economy, but rather, additions to confuse people so that others can profit from them. Only a small part of the market provides the basic necessities for everyone’s existence.

But now the truth is being revealed: People are jobless, especially the young. They don’t know what to do with themselves and they acquire a distorted perception of life; after a short while they lose the ability to work. What’s more, they can’t build a family and lead a normal life. Instead they are creating a new culture with new types of recreation.

In short, there is a worldwide social disaster. Today it is being revealed very acutely in Europe, but there are billions waiting in line in other countries including China and India. The US is not an exception either; for example, we can see Detroit, which has become a kind of “ghost town.”

All this brings us to a new society, and if we don’t correct it, if we don’t explain to people how they should organize and what they should do, then they will live in an urban jungle, like animals in the woods. Then humanity will reach correction not by the path of the integral education but by the path of suffering.
[102188]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/13, ”Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How does the world of business need to be linked to family based on laws of the integrality of nature?

Answer: We are presently in such a transition where the masses still aren’t incorporated in integral education. Thus, in the meantime, it is hard for us to talk about this subject. However, let’s imagine that tomorrow during the afternoon break, we were to hold a workshop at the factory where a few married couples would take part. They would share ideas about how to solve various problems and help each another solve problems that they face.

The issue is that there are things that, in principle, we cannot change in ourselves, but we can change our attitude toward them. We ask the participants in the discussion to change their approach, to be more tolerant, understanding, compassionate, cooperative, and so forth.

This is the first goal that we need to attain in family workshops. Through discussing all kinds of questions together, people begin to understand that these kinds of problems exist for everyone, and this calms them, reduces the heat of passion by half. When I see that the same thing happens to everyone, then I relax: “What can be done? Everyone lives like that.”

Secondly, people really give each other very interesting advice.

During the discussions, each one suddenly begins to listen to what he hadn’t listened to previously. When both of them, the husband and wife, rise and together express their opinions, then a stronger connection is created between them. They begin to feel the strength as a couple facing all the others. This unites them, gives them a very strong feeling of identification! Afterward, they become something completely different.

Thus, events like these are very helpful, especially as they rise. At the beginning in the workshops, it is possible to talk about all kinds of different things, except for problems that are of a severe nature, like drugs or adultery. In reference to these kinds of problems that are difficult to solve, one needs to approach carefully and over time. However, in the end, finding their solution is also possible through the connection in the integral way.

Integral workshops change people and bring them together.

Question: Is it worthwhile to work together with your wife in the same place of business or to be partners in a business?

Answer: If it is the couple’s personal business, then it’s worthwhile.

As to working at the same company, what happens is that, when people begin to participate in the integral connection, their personal relationships are eliminated and above that, collective relationships begin to rise because they have a space for emotions that are completely different—not flat or linear. Thus, I don’t see any problem with that.
[101467]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/8/13

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