Opinion: (Professor Tim Jackson, Author of Prosperity Without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet): “Constant shocks to the world’s financial system over the past few years prompted the BBC World Service’s Business Daily programme to ask leading figures whether they thought Western capitalism had failed.

“This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity is without historical precedent. It is totally at odds with the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival.

“Most of the time, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. Growth must go on, we insist. The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find.

“Western capitalism is structurally reliant on growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes.

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

“Yet question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.”

My Comment: More and more sensible materials about the end of growth, billions of unemployed, and the reduction of production will encourage people to think about a new attitude towards life, general prosperity, and the other, non-material, fulfillment. After all, after simple calculations we see that the planet cannot provide for us.

This means that we should take a sober view of the future economy of reasonable consumption. Food, shelter, social security, and education and upbringing are to be provided for everyone in a reasonable quantity. The fulfillment of our egoism beyond the necessities should be transferred to other areas of contentment—cultural and spiritual, which require little material and energy. Let’s think and we will find a way.
[58211]

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Question: Which incentives will the new economics provide people with? What will drive them forward?

Answer: We need to create an environment around a person that will turn pleasure, which today seems to be abstract, into “candy.” Everyone says: “This is tasty,” and he begins to look around. Everyone exclaims: “This is great,” and he starts searching. “This is amazing!” and everyone screams with excitement. Then a person begins to suspect that they really have something worthwhile, something that he needs.

This spurs a person forward: “Why don’t I have it? Why am I not in the same position as everyone else?” Social influence is a powerful factor. Ninety-nine percent of all our actions are its consequence. Man came out of a cave and acquired his modern form only due to the environment that constantly goaded and pushed him, pointing to the things he lacked.

In general, the cave was a wonderful, very environmentally-friendly dwelling with a great climate. It has a stable temperature year round. There was meat, fire, and a calm, peaceful atmosphere, which did not inspire any desires other than those for basic needs….

Everything in excess to the animal level is exclusively caused by the environment. Man’s calling to develop agriculture, crafts, and commerce does not appear out of nothing. Society rouses these desires.

And now, with the invention of advertising, we don’t have a choice but to convince the world of the need for a system of education that explains what tomorrow will be like, a system that models what the future will be.

We need to promote the good life. But government is slow to make changes. So what is left for us to do? We are to develop this system on the Internet with our own strengths and spread it via every accessible channel.

I have had meetings with the UN and UNESCO executive representatives, and my opinion remains the same: We must do everything on our own. After all, we can bring the Light that Reforms. In this case, our individualism is not a flaw, but an advantage because we are not limited by external limitations. We can do exactly what we are capable of doing and what we consider necessary. We worry for the success of our enterprise, and in the end, we will simply be obligated to evoke the Light that will flow through the system we have built.

Even if the system appears to be weak, like a little raft on the waves of a virtual ocean, it doesn’t matter. Everyone will hear its call letters because the force of the Light is in it. Let the Light do its work. This is what our approach should be.
[57981]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/2011, “Peace in the World”

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We have been constantly evolving, adding to our social, family, and internal development from year to year. We thought that our children would live better than us and that actually life was getting better and better.

Today we’ve lost that hope. We no longer make plans for the future. We’ve entered such a phase when humanity doesn’t feel its future because nature seemingly pushes us from behind and no longer develops our egoistic desires. On the contrary, those egoistic desires through which we developed start closing now: The desires of each and every one of us become dependent upon all the others. This is a big problem, and it is being confirmed by a large number of scientists.

We never felt that we are in mutual guarantee, in “a butterfly effect.” We didn’t feel that the world is global and integral. We never thought about that. We thought: “Interconnection is good! I will sell to him, he will sell to me, and we will do this and that together with these and those.” Meaning, I felt that I could use globalization egoistically, that I could gain something from it. It’s good that the world became so small; it’s good that I can fly everywhere and do everything….”

Then suddenly, the world became different! All of a sudden, it is becoming clear that globalization does not get along with my egoism, that it starts pressuring and constraining me if I don’t interact with it properly. This is called a crisis.

What’s the matter?! What is going on? People remained people. Money, industry, goods, food, everything is the same. What’s the crisis about? It’s about our disparity with this new law that is now being revealed.
[57647]
From the Talk on Global Education 9/4/2011

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Question: Yesterday, on October 15th, an event was held in Tel Aviv called “Uniting for change in the world.” During one of the discussions an activist said that he is sorry about how weak the protestors are, “We won’t achieve anything because we let the authorities take apart our tent cities. We have to be more aggressive to be heard….”

Answer: This is the regular egoistic approach. We acted this way throughout all of history. But who said this is fair or just? That kind of struggle won’t lead to any results because any “accomplishment” will be achieved at someone’s expense. What’s required here is general social agreement, compensation via all-enveloping consideration.

In reality, all of the disorders, all the hatred and animosity, all demands of the social protest are intended for us to reveal the upper force. If people try to establish good relationships on the social plane, they will reveal nothing but evil. In the egoistic reality, there is no hope for peace. However, while they are inside of that reality, they cannot imagine or envision anything different.

This is why people are demanding to take money away from the rich. We already know the price of pretty words about fair distribution.

Therefore, we have to remember that we are dealing with “children” who do not understand the ways of the universe, are in no way connected to the forces operating in nature, and do not see the true, final goal. It’s as if I take my disobedient child by the hand and lead him in the right direction. On the way he shouts next to every fast food stand, “I want ice cream! I want potato chips!” So what should I do? I buy him an ice-cream and lead him further since otherwise he would remain in the same place and continue going wild pointlessly.

This depends on who organizes the correction. If we give the instigators freedom to act, their “correction” will lead to disorders and bloodshed, which might have unpredictable consequences, both in separate countries and in the whole world. Besides, they won’t attain what they desire because they are going against the goal of creation. Instead of correcting the interconnection between people, only hatred will become revealed in them, more and more. That means one way or another, we will have to explain the real state of affairs to the world.

As for those who “wave their fists in the air,” their rants will end with the first blow that misses. We were all young and hot-blooded once. Everyone, including the government, understands that at this age it’s necessary to let a person “go wild.” But nothing can be achieved that way.
[57777]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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In the News (From Reuters): “The world’s wealthiest families have embarked on damage limitation rather than seeking to boost their fortunes as financial turmoil erodes their riches, with some so worried they are putting their money in ‘catastrophe’ portfolios.

“In southern Europe, where the financial crisis is at its most fierce, and the Middle East where the Arab Spring has heightened the sense of political risk, rich people are now sending more money abroad….

“The trend marks the end of an era in which tycoons in both regions kept much of their wealth at home, attracted by high rates of return from frothy property and stock markets before the turmoil set in.”

My Comment: The cleansing wave will touch everyone in earnest if we are not smart enough to begin our gradual change towards balance with nature. If we do not act ourselves, gradually our lagging behind accumulates, and the equalization with nature, the correction of what we have not done gradually and smoothly ourselves, occurs by explosion, war, or as a blow.

Kabbalah originally suggested a soft method for solving the problem by equalizing us with one other (mutual guarantee) and with the environment (reasonable consumption, similarity to and balance with nature). To date, no one takes this seriously. It is true, over the last ten years, many scientists have  discovered how necessary these actions are. But of course, no one listens to them: “You got our money to do your research, so be grateful for that.” Egoism beats any logic!
[57272]

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Egoistic development took place gradually in billions of people, and suddenly we have found ourselves closed in, linked like cogwheels that become short-circuited and must rotate together. We have now come to a state where we have become closed in to a single system together. However, this system has certain measures of freedom within it. In other words, it is not yet locked into a gear system, but rather it is like the friction of wheels spinning together, although still in a slipping motion, and we are still living due to this freedom from one another.

An egoistic nature is when I spin on my own like a ball, like a single wheel that is not connected to other wheels, the way it’s comfortable to me. I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me. I don’t want to be linked to you. We are not mountain climbers who depend upon each other. I don’t want to be dependant. I do my job, you do yours.

When the system becomes completely revealed, we will see that it is global, integral, and all its parts are completely binding, like an enormous live organism. Its individual parts do not have any freedom of will to do whatever they wish to do because this does not exist in nature. Everything abides by the law of determinism.
[56912]
From the Talk on Global Education 9/7/2011

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We have to create a giant propaganda system, and first of all—in Israel. We have to disseminate our materials with all we’ve got and lay a sound foundation for the notion of mutual guarantee in the Internet and mass media. We have to come out into the world with this notion, and in Israel we have to turn it into a “superpower” of our small, Hebrew-speaking, virtual world.

Soon many European countries will be enveloped by serious disorders. The processes are developing very fast and this requires us to act. However, besides explaining the causes and the objectives, we have to talk about the economy of the transitional period. The world’s system has become global, yet specialists still describe it using terminology of the egoistic, consumerist economy. Therefore, we have to introduce a new format by describing the current situation in a new light.

After that we will apply this new worldview for describing the final state: a balanced economy of basic necessity where people receive their excesses on the “human” degree of development. On the “animate” level we provide all the necessities: housing, food, healthcare, and so on. A person lives with all his needs provided for, not worrying about anything. This is the base level. And in the meantime, his “human” desires go on to spiritual fulfillment.

That is how we designate the target state and extend a “bridge” to it—form the transitional process. This transition is not easy and we won’t make it happen on our own. However, there are already specialists who understand that there is no other solution. Gradually they will agree to join us, to understand the meaning of our explanations, while we will in turn understand their statements. That is how we will work together, depicting one phase after another.

First we will formulate the general objective and then we will narrow it down to the details, proceeding to the step-by-step realization. We will create schemes and explain the particular aspects, and as a result, we will clearly deduce what we have to do today as a first step.

That is how we will change the interconnection permeating the world, the entire order of threads connecting people. The economy is a system of connections between us. The Torah states, “Go and earn from one another.” In other words: By uniting with one another, you will attain fulfillment. This is already the science of Kabbalah in action. After all, it talks about how to correct the world, meaning how to correct the connections between us from the material, egoistic, consumerist connection, funneled through the “American dream” to the true connection that leads to a different kind of dream. This is what our work comes down to.

However, we can’t just dash forward right away. The only thing we have to do right away is help those who are starving to death. This is necessary, while everything else has to be done in a thought-out manner. This is where the problem lies: People still don’t understand that it is enough to just start moving in the right direction even if you haven’t actually made anything happen in practice—and the Lights immediately express favor toward you.

In this case you are no longer hostile to nature. You do not oppose the integral system with your discrete, individualistic nature. On the contrary, you focus on the changes within you; your desires and intentions are already aimed at these changes, and that’s enough. The Light begins working on you and you already start to understand, to have a greater desire to change, and to correspond to the necessary changes even more.

Imagine what will happen when a huge mass of people agrees with the fact that there is no other solution and we have to make these changes happen. Then we will gain an enormous force and will realize our plans.
[57222]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/11, “Peace in the World”

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The connection between people is a lot stronger and obligatory then people realize. According to nature, this connection represents a whole organism that is gradually becoming revealed to us.

As it turns out, all of nature is unified. It began developing from a single point as a result of the Big Bang. In our perception, nature is divided into many different parts: the still, vegetative, animal, and human levels, as well as into physical, chemical, biological, ethical, moral, and other laws. We don’t see all of this as one whole. We don’t see how all of this is interconnected and interdependent, how my thoughts and feelings effect the explosions of stars, or how these star explosions effect the plants in my garden. We don’t see everything, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Nature is global. The reason that we are discovering this fact more and more is because we’re becoming more developed. After all, the revelations I make today couldn’t have been made yesterday because I wasn’t developed enough. However, it doesn’t mean that these things didn’t already exist in nature and that I’m discovering some new attributes in nature. It appears within me because I develop.

I am the most actively developing part of nature. As a person, I develop more and faster then anything else: in my knowledge, attainments, emotions, and so on. And when I develop, I obtain a greater overall perception.

Did America not exist before it was discovered? It did exist! What about the stars and the galaxies, did they not exist before we discovered them? Everything existed, only we couldn’t see it because we weren’t developed enough.

We’re beginning to reveal our interconnection. This interconnection exists on levels we can’t sense, meaning that I can’t perceive it through my five senses. This interconnection exists beyond my senses, within some thoughts and systems of connection between us, and therefore, my thoughts, actions, and feelings effect you.
[56672]
From the Discussion About Global Education 09.07.2011

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The economic system is a sort of egoistic imprint of the calculation we make in the “body” of the soul when we prepare it for spiritual action. In economics we aim for maximum profit with minimum investment and risk. These are practical, egoistic calculations where everything is clear.

Even if egoism is repressed formally, it is only because we cannot characterize it qualitatively since it belongs to feelings, to familial connections, to the interests of a country, a nation, and so on. In reality everything can be enumerated and if we were able to do that, we would find ourselves in a precise system, analogous to the one operating in the spiritual world.

Except there, the calculations are made in the “body” of a Partzuf, in the aspiration for bestowal. When you are on the path leading to bestowal, you make a precise calculation, like in an ideal economy: How much do I have to extract from every desire, from every situation, from every factor in this action or maneuver in order to receive the maximum benefit? But obviously, that benefit is selfless.

Here we count on receiving, whereas there—on bestowing, yet the calculation remains. The only question is how to shift from one mode to another. Explaining the final state is also not simple, yet it is characterized by mathematical precision. The current economic disasters are essentially revealing the traits of our egoism which we lacked to conduct the most precise of calculations.

“I love this person. I hate that one. This one is repulsive to me. This one is far from me. This one is close to me. This one is more important in the general system. This one is less important….” How can we take all of these parameters into consideration? And how will every person act individually according to them, renewing his calculations at every second? This will be the real economy which we will have to uphold. In other words, we will have to get to know the correct, healthy system in which egoism works correctly, using two forces.

Today our economic complex is based on just one egoistic component and therefore, without knowing the second half, we cannot manage it. However, when the forces of bestowal join the forces of reception, we will start to interact with the people around us differently, balancing out bestowal and reception in conformity with our own level and the level of society. This will be the real calculation.

We will have to measure and consider our interconnections, which we are unable to do today. We will have to consider all the possible threads extending between us in thoughts and feelings, levels of our closeness and the “bestowal coefficient,” bringing all of this into the economic calculation that will have a purely mathematical character.

If we add the qualitative variables to its parameters, which reflect feelings and the states of humanity as a whole, we will receive a reliable and indisputable result. The same calculation is made in the head of the Partzuf: I consider the inner and surrounding Light, the Reshimot, TANTOT, my inner and outer desires, and methods of working with them…. Precisely this is economics.

Only spiritual calculations are made in the desire and therefore all numbers are precise and authentic. In the desire I can classify factors and give them values, extracting TANTOT from them. In essence, books of Kabbalists are the economics of the universe. Lights are “money,” meaning life, while vessels, desires, and screens allow us to acquire fulfillment, profit. Inner profit is inner Light, and future profit is the surrounding Light. We make mutual loans: For example, the upper one loans to the lower one in the first type of Gadlut. And in the second type of Gadlut the lower one receives Light from the upper one in order to pass it on….

It’s not accidental that the main blow of the crisis affected none other than the economy because it is the most important thing to us. It wasn’t the destruction of the family unit, a collapse of upbringing, or the ecology, but precisely economic problems that have forced us to seriously talk about the crisis. And this corresponds to the spiritual processes.

With time we will begin running a healthy economy, will begin deducing it according to the spiritual system and feeling out the transition to it. This transition will become possible only on the condition that we bring the mutual guarantee component into the calculation, if we measure it, weigh it, and designate it numerically. We will consider it when making calculations on the stock market because otherwise it is impossible. Tomorrow’s success depends on how much the mutual guarantee component grows in our economic formula.
[56665]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/11, Shamati

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: Four properties are provided for that purpose: mercy, truth, justice, and peace. Those attributes have been used by all world reformers thus far. It is more correct to say that it is with those four attributes that human development has advanced thus far…

It is only by these four attributes that we manage ourselves in order to bring ourselves to the end of correction. So how do we discern them? Many can speak about mercy, truth, justice, and peace for hours, but can we agree on what these attributes are?

It isn’t simple, but Baal HaSulam, knowing the spiritual nature, wrote that this is what we have to clarify in order to manage ourselves and the world. We don’t know what a corrected world is. We are all corrupt and so it seems to us that any egoistic improvement is already correction. However, for Baal HaSulam, the corrected world is a world in which all the possible deficiencies are totally filled. How is that possible? We will have to find that out.

First, we have to understand that we will never be able to fill ourselves egotistically, but only in bestowal because while there is no restriction on bestowal, there is on reception. So how can we desire to receive in such a way that receiving itself will make us understand that it is worthwhile to bestow?

We can develop in this direction by blows: Every time that I want to receive something, I receive more and more blows, until I finally come to the conclusion that it is better not to want to receive egoistically. Then I begin to hate my desire to receive, and I don’t know what to do with it anymore. “So, perhaps I will enjoy bestowal?”

And so different flaws bring me to a point where I ask for the desire to bestow, for the power to bestow, the power to connect to others. This is the road of suffering and asceticism about which it says: “Eat bread with water sparingly and sleep on the ground.” In the past people used accept this and thus advance to bestowal.

It is the same today, if people don’t accept the wisdom of Kabbalah and the explanation about the development of the world, they too will advance in the same way. They will want more and more, but will get less and less, and as a result of suffering, people will begin to feel that it is worthwhile to be together, to bestow upon each other, to connect, to restrict our ego, and even to totally erase it.

We see that in wartime, when the troubles descend upon everyone, people begin to connect. Even animals are not afraid of one another when there is a fire in a forest or an earthquake, and they all escape the danger together. The common problem unites them because the fear of death is greater than the fear of hunger. Clearly, they don’t become “righteous,” but the desire to satisfy their hunger is pushed aside by a greater desire to survive.

We are the same. Of course, we can advance towards correction by suffering. It will compel us to aspire to bestow and to destroy our ego, the source of all the evil in our world. But this is a long and painful way.

This is why we were given an alternative—the way of the Torah. Why? Why do we need this other way? It is because we don’t reach free will by suffering. We only run away from it, like animals. Out of despair, we are even ready to bestow, but it is only because we feel bad when we receive. We don’t choose bestowal by our own free will, but as a result of our suffering as we have no choice. This is the degree of a beast, not man.

In order to bring us to the human level, we need two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of reception, with free will lying between the two. This is the path of people who have the point in the heart.

People who don’t have the point in the heart will also have free will: They can choose to follow those who can lead them forward.
[56427]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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