Medium published my new article “How to Really Prepare Children for Life”

A new educational program in Israel proposes to prepare 12th graders for life. They will attend it during the final six months of their K12 years, and will teach them how to manage their finances and how to conduct themselves successfully in a changing job market. Preparing children for life is a great idea, but if you start it in the final six months of their attendance in the education system then a) you will not really prepare them for anything, and b) what have you been doing during the eleven and a half years prior to the final six months? To prepare a child for life, we must first prepare the parents for parenthood, and then prepare the children from the moment they are born.

When speaking about preparing for life, we must include all aspects of life. Financial education is only one aspect, and not the most important one. Children need knowledge in every aspect of life, but the most important aspect, and the one least taught, is human relations. We may excel in our field of expertise, we may make a lot of money and be affluent, but if we cannot communicate with other people positively and make them feel good around us, then we will not be happy.

Today, the most common medical condition is depression. Most other conditions, such as various addictions, violence, eating disorders, workaholism, and so forth, ultimately stem from depression that manifests through various symptoms. Currently, the common treatment for depression involves drugs. However, drugs do not cure depression, they only dull the pain. If, on the other hand, depressed people could form supportive and positive relationships, their depression would vanish as if it never existed, and without any medications.

Today, most adults do not know how to communicate with others positively. Hence, in order to teach children how to build positive relationships with others, grownups, too, must learn the craft.

It may sound naïve or unrealistic to think that people can relate to one another without malice in their hearts, but continuing to live as we have been living until now is not only unrealistic, it is also destroying our society and our planet, and poses a real risk that another world war will break out.

Therefore, even if we fail to make a positive connection, it does no harm to anyone if we make an effort. But if we do not make an effort and continue as we are, we will surely destroy ourselves and the planet we live on, and the future we will leave for our children will be very bleak. After the catastrophe, they will still have to learn to be on good terms with one another, so would it not be better if we learned this craft and taught it to our children while we are all still here?
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Comment: Many viewers, quite a number, are asking this question: “How do you talk to children about the war? How do we explain to them what’s going on?” How does one explain why they are bombing and why childhood has ended to those children who are hiding with their parents in bomb shelters and in the subway?” And other children whose childhood continues, those who do not hear sirens and explosions but see what is happening to their peers, ask why this is so.

And the main question is: How do you raise children at a time like this when wars, suffering, and tears are non-stop?

My Response: Children can understand because they also fight with each other. After all, egoism works from a very young age.

So there is nothing here that needs to be hidden from them. Indeed, if we don’t bring up children correctly, then, just like they play in childhood and want to take away from each other and become such bullies, so they continue in adulthood, and that is why we end up with war as a result. Grown men no longer have just shovels or sticks in their hands, now it is something serious. And that is when war begins.

So what should we do? While children are little like yourselves, remember, we tell children, we need to teach you, to bring you up to be able to talk to each other, to come to agree with each other, and to learn to compromise. Then you will not get to such terrible, big problems like these men who start these wars. That is what comes from the fact that in childhood they did not obey their mother.

Question: Do you think that a child will listen to that?

Answer: When he sees this very thing? He is extremely impressed.

Question: When he is under fire? Can he be told just like this?

Answer: Tell him exactly like this. Of course. This is true education. This is the basis of wartime education.

Question: So it’s not to dwell on “enemy,” “hatred,” or “against us”?

Answer: No, they will not understand it; they have no concept of it, no foundation. But when you explain in terms of childhood play and give and take, “when you wanted to take something, but he didn’t give it to you,” you can talk about everything.

Isn’t it how it really works? These games of oil and gas and all sorts of international relations, are they not the same children’s games?

Comment: It has turned into something dangerous.

My Response: Yes, because they didn’t stop it in time or couldn’t explain it in time. So this is how it turned out. Because in childhood they could not explain to understand that it is never necessary to resolve disputes by force. Can you convince the others? If yes, great. If not, compromise.

Question: Should the child understand that disputes are not resolved by force?

Answer: They can’t be resolved by force; otherwise, we will destroy each other. Can you imagine it in the modern world?

Question: How are disputes resolved? What should the child we are raising understand? How do you explain to a child how to resolve disputes?

Answer: Only by persuasion, when you do not force another person to peace, but when you explain to each other how you can come to peace together, with mutual concessions, and not with the approach of “I am right and you are wrong, and now you will understand it.”

Comment: Now you have said a very serious thing, that a child should be able to compromise.

My Response: Of course! This is the most important thing in education. Otherwise what is all the education for? To teach how to hit first? To hit stronger? Or better? It is for the sake of being able to stop and compromise.

Comment: This is the most difficult thing, for children especially.

My Response: Of course. Because they have exposed egoism, small, but revealed.

Question: So you propose to teach concessions, to teach a child so he can yield to others?

Answer: Everything needs to be explained. And then sit in a circle and conduct practical exercises.

Comment: If there is an argument, let’s sort it out? How can we not fight but make peace. This is such a long system…

My Response: Otherwise it will take even longer.

Question: Can this be explained to children who are under fire?

Answer: To everyone! It all depends on the words, vocabulary, and expressions you use. You are explaining this to the ego, which is the same in a small child as it is in a grown-up man, it is the same egoism.

Comment: The main problem here is to train teachers, prepare those who can teach what it means to come to peace, and what annulment means.

My Response: Yes, this is the most important.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/3/22

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Question: Current statistics show that in the near future a very large percentage of the population will be unemployed. What will happen if these masses of people do not know about the purpose of creation?

Answer: We will make them study. When a person begins to learn, listen, speak about, and discuss the topics of exploring and mastering the next, higher level of one’s existence, he brings about a great correction to the world.

Seven billion people don’t need to work twelve hours a day. Half a billion is enough to provide for us all, to feed us, etc.

Evenly distributing responsibilities for a reasonable level of sustenance would allow everyone to be fed, clothed, and provided with optimal living conditions. The rest of the time, say five or six hours a day, they will engage in internal self-improvement via television and the rest of the mass media channels.

It is necessary for a person to truly rise to a new degree. Meaning, this is our job, not producing unnecessary trinkets, but rising to the level of eternity and perfection and becoming equal with nature and harmoniously connected with it.

Everyone must take part in this. This is the reason there will be so much free time. A person is obliged to spend half of his working hours on his inner spiritual development. To do this we have to establish a massive educational system—virtual, full-time, part-time, no matter what.

It is necessary to bring up the new person who will become Adam, similar to the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Partnership Agreement” 4/7/10

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Medium published my new article “Here Comes Another Wave”

While the media is busy covering the war in Ukraine, Covid has returned to haunt humanity. In China, more than fifty million people are on tight lockdown; in Hong Kong, the number of dead is rising; in Israel, the reproduction number (R) is climbing fast and is now well beyond the spreading mark of 1. If we thought Omicron was contagious, the new strain, BA.2, is 30 percent more so, and hybrid variants like the Deltacron are emerging, too. New strains and new waves will keep appearing until we learn all that we need to learn from the virus.

The virus is not here to teach us about itself; it is here to teach us about us. We think of these waves as waves of Covid-19, but they are not. The original strain is virtually gone; we are dealing with a different virus because we ourselves are different. This is why the vaccines that defeated the original strain are no longer effective.

As I said from the first appearance of the virus in early 2020, this virus, or its “relatives,” is here to stay. It needs to teach us how to live more peacefully and harmoniously with each other and with nature, and it will not leave until we learn.

We may not have noticed it, but the virus has already done a great deal of teaching. Our career aspirations have changed dramatically. Suddenly, everyone is talking about The Great Resignation and the fact that so many people now prefer to work from home.

Many people have also become content with less money in return for more peace of mind. The movement toward a four-day workweek is also gaining momentum around the world. Even in Asia, known for its workaholism, big corporations such as Panasonic and others have switched, or are in the process of switching to a four-day workweek.

Traditional education is also falling from grace. “Until 2019, the number of homeschooled students had been growing by between 2% to 8% each year. From 2019 to the fall of 2020, the percentage of homeschooled students changed from 3.4% to 9%.” According to the National Home Education Research Institute, “there were about 3.7 million homeschool students in 2020–2021 in grades K-12 in the United States (roughly 6% to 7% of school-age children).”

These are not minor changes. Fewer working people means more modest consumption, less congestion on the roads, especially if people are working from home, and more family time. Likewise, homeschooled children require a parent to stay home and tend to the education and occupation of the children. This, again, affects many other aspects of society.

This is why I think that Covid is not a punishment but a correction. The only reason that we feel this correction as painful is that we resent the change, so nature imposes it on us.

At our current level of narcissism, without restraint from the outside, we might destroy ourselves and the world with us. The war in Ukraine is only an example of what pride and power-hunger can inflict. Therefore, I think we should be grateful to Covid’s restraints. We are counting its victims, but we have no idea what catastrophes its appearance has prevented.

That said, I do not think we should continue to suffer its restraints. Since nature imposes corrections on us, and we have no choice but to obey, as is clearly the case, we can impose these corrections on ourselves instead of inviting nasty bugs to do it for us.

All we need to correct is our egoistic behavior. To do that, we need to be aware that in a world that has become totally interconnected, thinking that we can take all that we want regardless of others and enjoy other people’s pain is not only reckless, but destructive to everyone, including to ourselves.

We need to understand that if we want to subjugate other people, even in thought, much less in action, we are harming ourselves and our environment. No other being but humans have such evil, narcissistic thoughts. If we annihilate them from within us, we will put an end to war, hunger, exploitation, abuse, tyranny, and everything else that plagues our world. If we are reluctant to learn, the viruses will clear out these plagues from humanity.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Israeli Education System Is Imploding”

Ayala Moshe, a student of mine, has been a school teacher in Israel for the past fifteen years. This year, she gave up. The audacity of students, the poor salaries, the disrespect and rudeness of parents, and the physical assaults have become too much. “I have been slapped, thrown down the stairs by students, and had to watch security camera footage showing me being thrown, when I had to defend myself in court for being a victim of an assault.”

Ayala is just one of thousands of teachers all over Israel who have had enough. According to a special report by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, thirteen percent of the teachers quit within their first year on the job. Within five years, a quarter of the teachers will be looking for a new occupation. Worse yet, the higher a teacher’s education, the more likely he or she is to leave in search of a more rewarding career. Clearly, the education system is imploding.

If I were asked what to recommend, I would advise them all to quit, every single teacher. This may be the only move that will make parents realize that education cannot be taken lightly. The education system should be the most important system in the country, and so should be the status of the teachers. We cannot throw the responsibility for the upbringing of our children on the laps of teachers who are not equipped or meant to handle it, who face mounting pressure from conflicting sources, receive an embarrassing salary, then face public scolding and derision left and right for their poor achievements. Parents must be held accountable for the behavior of their children, and they must take part in mending it.

If the system is already crumbling, it is time for parents and teachers to put their heads together, envision the kind of country and society they want to see, and design a plan to make it happen. A situation where neither parents nor teachers can bring up children to be human beings, where no one knows what values children absorb from dubious sources online and elsewhere, that situation is intolerable.

Currently, children go to school to be force-fed knowledge they neither care about nor need for life. They hate it, and therefore hate the people who feed it to them. Given the growing intolerance in society, it is no wonder that some of them turn violent.

Instead of memorizing material, they should first of all learn how to relate to one another. Afterwards, they need to learn how to learn, since they will be learning their entire lives, and finally, they need to learn how to cooperate in teams that learn together and achieve together.

In the real world, there are no individuals. Everything is achieved in teams and through cooperation with other teams. If people leave school without having learned to be good teammates, then they have been brought up to be misfits. In such a state, they will either adapt to a reality for which school did not prepare them, or they will not be able to make a proper living. Social skills are therefore vital for success in today’s world, and virtually no school teaches them.

Social skills are critical not only at work. They are the basis of every relationship—with the significant other, with the children, at work, and even with pets. If you let a person grow from infancy to adulthood without providing social skills, then you have crippled that person for life.

Now that the education system is collapsing, there is an opportunity to build it right, and our entire society will reap the benefits.
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Comment: The large numbers of people becoming unemployed should be provided with necessary income. You said this 20 years ago. Today, it is discussed more and more.

Meaning, today’s global productivity is great enough to provide everyone with necessary food, clothing, and shelter without having to work. You suggest putting these people in classrooms for them to study something.

My Response: Not just to study. I propose making these people workers of a new generation so that they can transform their egoism into altruism with the help of a special study. This is the most inner work a person can do in one’s life in this world.

If we start this, we will see firsthand how our world will change. We will bring a positive force, energy, and direction that is lacking now. This force can only come from man, since he is the only bearer of evil or possible good. It will lead to massive positive changes in the world. This is as stated by Kabbalah as well as myself personally.

Question: Can regular classes, in accordance with a special methodology, really accomplish this? Is it just reading or working with teachers?

Answer: It involves people working on themselves and between themselves. Nothing else is needed.

It is better for us to start this early rather than to wait until the world is completely drained, falling into all sorts of problematic states, and descending into wars that are now quite feasible.
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From KabTV’s “Virtual World” 2/9/22

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Question: In the article “The Last Generation,” Baal HaSulam touched upon the topic of justice in the future. I am interested in your opinion on this. I would like to know: will there be justice in the future generation?

Answer: In the future, a person will judge himself by knowing and understanding how to carry out this judgment upon himself. Everything will exist only for the sake of the common, collective good. And the so-called courts will help everyone rise above themselves and connect with each other and with the Creator.

They will allow each one to see at what level he is, what he has yet to correct, and which connections with others can lead to his correction.

Question: If the motivation of a person living in the last generation is to feel closeness to the Creator, to the quality of bestowal, and to become like Him in qualities, then can it happen that it is the respect he receives from society that will fuel him and not the very merging with the Creator?

Answer: It is basically the same thing.

Question: It turns out that I work for respect from society?

Answer: No, that is an absolutely egoistic reward. What is meant here is quite different.

I work for the society and I am ready to do anything for it. But in order to give my egoism the energy to work, I need to get fuel from this society. Therefore, I do everything I can to get a reward from it. And the reward is to receive energy from it so that I can give everything to society beyond my egoism.

Question: It turns out that the courts should not judge but educate a person?

Answer: Of course. They should engage in his spiritual advancement and create the right intention in a person.

Question: Do you think this will happen in the future?

Answer: This can happen even today. Let’s hope so.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/11/22

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Question: 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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Comment: 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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Question: 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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