Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the lessons learned from Squid Game?“

The screenwriter and director of Squid Game have been noted as saying that “such is our world” in relation to the setup where people become willing to kill other people if placed under conditions where it is either their life or another’s life.

I would take it a step further: that our world is worse than what is presented in Squid Game. In our world, we wish to kill others without playing a game in order to do so, knowing in advance that we will kill them, and not as it is in Squid Game, where players agree to play a game according to certain rules.

If we were to remove the filters that cloud human relations, we would see that we are killing each other. Imagine, for instance, the horrible phenomena we would see if everyone’s thoughts became revealed. Thankfully, however, we have been given a gift of being able to each keep our thoughts to ourselves, so that we would be spared from such a terrible vision.

The main lesson that Squid Game might open up is a view of how human nature works: that we each prioritize self-benefit over anything else, up to a point of killing other people if we are placed in a situation where it is either us or them. However, such a lesson is only a small part of what we truly need lessons in today: the need to transform our nature so that we prioritize positive connection to each other and to nature. The more we develop without undergoing such a fateful transformation, the more we will suffer; and the sooner we take steps to transform our nature in order to positively connect with each other above our self-centeredness, then the sooner we will experience a new harmonious and peaceful world.

Therefore, the main takeaway from Squid Game, which shows the evilness of our egoistic nature, should be paralleled with a serious endeavor that aims at clarifying what human nature is, how it works, why we create such shows, and whether they correctly portray our condition. We will be able to understand that we watch Squid Game and similar forms of art and entertainment because they portray the egoistic qualities that make up our current nature.

However, such viewing should be accompanied with an explanation of the need to change this nature if we are to shift our lives to a positive course, a world of happiness, balance and peace. Then, instead of identifying with our egos, we would start seeing our egoistic attitudes to each other as masks that hide a much better life from us, and we will then start feeling a desire to exit our egoistic state, and develop a completely different attitude to each other, to nature and to life in general.

Based on the video “How Squid Game Portrays Human Nature” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do some like to spy on other people?“

The initial impulse of people who spy on others is to evaluate themselves as being above those on whom they spy. In short, it is an attitude of “they don’t see me, but I see them.” Secondly, it might give the ones spying an opportunity to gain an advantage over the ones they spy on, to command them in some way, or to defend themselves against them, depending on the situation.

In general, however, spying helps the human ego, i.e. our innate desire to enjoy at the expense of others. It expands the ego and makes us feel more in control, like rulers or masters.

Such a feeling is neither good nor bad. Rather, it should lead us to reassess our values so that we understand that the human ego—our desires to be better, stronger and smarter than others—is flawed.

Nature views us as a single whole, as one humanity. To position ourselves correctly, we need to aim at viewing ourselves in the same way, and positively connect to each other. We will then be able to accurately take control of our fate, ourselves and the world. Through positive connection to each other, we increase and expand altruism and lessen egoism. We can then rise above our egoistic nature, and we will then not abuse such actions as spying.

Based on “Kabbalah Express” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Israel Shimshon on February 16, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is pain?“

Pain is an organism’s reaction to a problem it experiences. It is the organism’s way of communicating that something is wrong; it sends a warning signal of danger, and it protects us from harm or injury. For instance, if our hand touches a fire, pain makes us pull our hand away from the fire immediately, and so it protects our hand.

Pain compels our movements: to move away from something painful and move toward something enjoyable. It thus compels us to change our qualities, accept new opinions, realize the pain’s purpose, make conclusions and advance to new states of being.

Pain is a force capable of affecting the human ego. It pushes us from behind, making us develop and evolve. One form of pain are feelings of emptiness within us. They push us toward fulfillment. Our feelings come from clashes, contact and pressure, or in other words, from pain. We enjoy when the enjoyment is preceded by the painful sensation of an unfulfilled desire, suffering or expectation.

However, when we exit the human ego in order to positively connect with others and nature, we start realizing that instead of living our lives based on empty feelings, we can live on the basis of complete fulfillment. In other words, instead of pain at the basis of our drives, we can begin our motivations from love.

It is a completely different kind of existence, an alternative attitude to ourselves, our society, our world and to nature. When we achieve such an attitude, we discover a full picture of nature that is unblocked by the human ego, because we then become perfect like nature itself.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Political Olympic Games”

The International Olympic Committee writes on its website that the Olympic Truce was established in ancient Greece through the signing of a treaty between three Greek city-states—Elis, Pisa, and Sparta—to allow safe participation in the Olympic Games for all athletes and spectators, who were otherwise in constant conflict with each other. Today’s three superpowers—the US, China, and Russia—are doing just the opposite, using the Olympics as a stage for political warfare that only increases animosity. Worse yet, despite the UN General Assembly resolution of October 25, 1993, to observe the Olympic Truce, the rest of the world takes sides in the feud.

The whole concept of sports has become so self-centered and distorted that it has lost its merit. For this reason, I would cancel these competitions altogether. If we bring the wars into the games instead of using them to end the wars and promote peace and unity, then there is no point in holding them at all.

Even without an official boycott, as in this year’s Winter Olympics, the war still rages and the athletes pay the price. They are doped, suffer frequent injuries, and are often verbally, physically, and even sexually abused by their coaches. Spectators, too, are pitched against each other in the name of national pride, the exact opposite of the spirit of unity that should prevail in the Olympic games.

Ideally, the games aspire to build “a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” Today’s Olympic “Games” could not be further from this spirit.

Competition is great when it motivates us to improve ourselves. But there is no self-improvement in being ready to kill one another because one person jumped with a stick one centimeter higher than his or her competitor. And what about the whole issue of defining gender in women’s sports? The whole concept of sports has become so self-centered and distorted that it has lost its merit.

For this reason, I would cancel these competitions altogether. If we bring the wars into the games instead of using them to end the wars and promote peace and unity, then there is no point in holding them at all.

We should compete over who helps the world the most, not over who exploits and abuses others the most. Are these the values we want to pass on to our children? Is this the kind of people we want them to grow up to be? If we want them to live in a world where they can trust others and have friends to associate with, we must at least try to set an example of unity and mutual consideration. Afterwards, we should encourage them to follow in our footsteps. But if the Olympics do not promote the spirit of unity, then we should not hold them.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is currently the single largest problem for human beings as a species?“

The very foundation of our attitude toward life, nature and everything else is our ego, which is a desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature.

Therefore, our most significant problem is our desire to exploit for personal gain that we place above the development of positive relations.

We cannot continue by wanting to control everyone, destroy them, and then discard them.

We are depleting our planet through such an attitude, and it is the base cause behind all of our problems and crises on personal, social, economic, ecological and global scales.

Besides our world, we have nothing else. So, let us not delude ourselves, thinking that we will inhabit the moon or Mars or anywhere else. It is not going to happen. They are unsuitable for our survival, and moreover, even if we succeeded to somewhat populate them, what would we do there? We would destroy ourselves and those places similarly to how we bring ruin to ourselves and to our planet.

We thus only need to correct our attitude toward each other and to nature, to see that by following the dictates of our egoistic nature we bring ruin to ourselves, and then seek how to positively connect in society with attitudes of mutual consideration. The more we engage in developing positive attitudes to each other and to nature throughout society, the more we would activate the positive forces dwelling in nature to enter our lives, which would start letting us think and want oppositely to our egoism, for the benefit of others and nature, and we would then see a major positive transition to a new harmonious and peaceful world.

Based on the video “New Paradigm Approaching” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Chaim Ratz. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Medium published my new article “Spyware Will Not Hurt Us, Spying Will”

Pegasus, the spyware developed by cyberarms firm NSO Group, can be covertly installed on mobile phones and other devices running most versions of iOS and Android. It can read text messages, track calls, collect passwords, track the target device’s location, access its microphone and camera, and harvest information from apps. The spyware, which was developed in Israel, is used by authorities all over the world, as well as in Israel, and has raised the alarm against unlawful infringement of privacy. In my opinion, the problem is not the spyware, but the spying, the foul intentions of those who use technology to harm, manipulate, and abuse others.

The fact that such spyware exists does not surprise me. It is clear that governors and government officials are not saints and that they do anything they can to know as much as they can about each other so they can manipulate and control others more easily and gain more power.

We need to recognize that our society is broken. The way the government operates simply reflects the society from which the governors come. The same goes for law enforcement and the justice system in general. If a society is corrupt and filled with people who wish to hurt and overpower one another, we cannot expect its representatives to be any different.

It has been this way for decades. What started with wiretapping and other forms of surveillance has simply adapted itself to today’s technology, but in essence, nothing fundamental has changed. This is why it is not the spyware that is hurting us, but the spying we constantly do on each other.

When parents look after their children and want to know their whereabouts, they are not “spying” on them; they are looking after their loved ones. But when strangers or authorities do the same thing, it is spying because their intentions are to hurt or manipulate us. In other words, the problem is not with the software but with its operators.

If we want to “correct” Pegasus and other malware, we need to correct the mal-will that is operating them, namely human nature. The malice we harbor for each other is the root of all evil, not only Pegasus, but everything we do that is intended to hurt, harm, manipulate, exploit, and overpower other people, and the whole world, if possible. If we do not correct the root of the problem, namely ourselves, we will not be able to correct anything.

As a first step toward correcting our root, we need to acknowledge that we are as rotten as our actions toward each other. Here, transparency and courage are key. If we are unwilling to look at ourselves in the mirror, we will not advance toward fixing anything in society. We will have to wait until enough malpractice surfaces to convince us that we must correct not the practice or the practitioners’ tools, but the practitioners themselves.

Once we, all of society or at least its majority, accept that we are the problem and not what we use to satisfy our ill-will, we can begin to work on ourselves. This is when we will begin to examine ourselves instead of blaming others for our woes.

When we shift the focus from others to ourselves, we will begin to see that we are just as bad as everyone else. It will not be just one or two people going through a process of revealing their evil selves. It will be a process where all of society realizes this. As a result, people will begin to change their attitude toward others from wanting to exploit them to wanting to support them.

The realization process may take a long time, but the transition from an exploitative attitude to a supportive one can be very quick. After all, there is nothing that we need to do here; it is only a matter of changing the intention behind our actions, and changing the intention can happen as quickly as our thoughts change.

Therefore, the most important phase in our correction is happening right now.

The sooner we expose the wickedness of human nature, and the more profoundly we acknowledge that this is who we are, the sooner and easier will be the shift from bad intentions to good ones, from spying on each other to caring for each other.
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My new article on Linkedin “From the Body to the Mind”

The current wave is causing more confusion than ever. If previously, experts believed that mass vaccinations were necessary in order to curb the spread of the virus, now there are experts who believe we should let go of all the guards since the current strain will turn the pandemic into an endemic disease like the common cold. I really don’t know how it will end, if it will end at all. Either way, one thing is clear: Our woes will not end. A new menace will come, which will not affect our bodies but our minds.

To begin with, the whole problem is in our minds. It is our minds that are sick, and they sicken our bodies and the rest of the world. For this reason, I believe that future woes will be more complex and more sophisticated, more subtle. They will not attack our bodies but our brains. As a result, we will begin to think differently and see things differently.

The sickness in our minds has to do with our attitude toward others. We are so abusive to others that we cannot stop even when we know we are harming ourselves in the process. There is an anecdote about a man whose jealousy of his neighbor overcame him. One day, the man found a lamp. When he rubbed it, a genie came out and promised to give him anything he wanted, but with a caveat: “Whatever I give you, I will give twofold to your neighbor.” The jealous man thought about it for a while and finally said to the genie: “Take out one of my eyes.”

This is what we are doing to ourselves. Our minds seek dominance, power, and wealth at the expense of others. In the process, we are destroying the very sources of abundance that make our world livable. We have become so absorbed in overpowering others that we cannot stop attempting to destroy them even when it eventually means destroying ourselves.

This attitude will be the target of the new bug that will infect us. I hope it happens sooner rather than later, but I cannot be certain. What I do know is that when it comes, we will begin to recognize the damage we have been causing our surroundings.

Regrettably, we learn only through pain. Only blows open our eyes to see we have been going in the wrong direction. If we use our intellect to learn more quickly, we will spare much of the pain, but it depends on our willingness to learn. For now, unfortunately, I cannot say that we are in learning mode.
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Question: Psychologists, religions, and spiritual movements often tag pride as the greatest evil. Pride is behind insults, diseases, wars, and all kinds of sufferings. Author Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth contends that there are 41 evidences of pride, which include: self-infallibility, a patronizing attitude to others, a sense of self exclusivity, feeling like a victim, bragging, the ability to put an opponent in his place, and so on. All these evidence pride within us, but in disguise.

Why is pride given to a person?

Answer: This is our main quality!

This is precisely our egoism, which supposedly wants to raise a person above others. Pride is given in order for me to realize how sinful, vicious, insignificant, stupid, weak, etc. I am. It is in order for me to understand in all my actions and thoughts, that is, in my mind and desires, that if I want to do the right thing, I must act only by the force of connection with the Creator.

Question: Does it mean that it is not evil, but rather good?

Answer: Of course! It was created to show us how insignificant we are if we are under the control of pride.

Comment: Psychology and religions say that it is the greatest evil. Yet you, after all, say that this is the greatest good.

My Response: Evil leads us to absolute good. It is what the Creator created: “I created evil and gave the Torah, the upper light, to correct it.” So, go and correct yourself.

The Creator created pride so that we would realize our insignificance in it, and would want by all means to get rid of it, and therefore, to find strength, to find the mind to turn to the Creator so that He would do it. Thus, pride leads us to the Creator, helps us find a connection with Him, and allows us to reach the height of the Creator.

Question: What does pride turn into in this case?

Answer: Into complete agreement with the Creator. There is nothing left of it but joy in obtaining the greatness of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/4/21

Related Material:
The Spiritual Root Of Pride
Proper Pride
Learning To Overcome Pride

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What will be the next major step in the evolution of the human species?“

We have been building our society for thousands of years, and have often resorted to fighting, killing and lying to each other in order to get what we thought we wanted.

We have reached a state where we understand that it is better for us, even selfishly, not to kill others because then we have no one to work with. On the contrary, we want others to be dependent on us.

Afterward, we feel that their subordination to us does not give us what we ultimately want. We realize that others also need to develop, so we become concerned with developing different societies around the world.

Instead of fighting and killing each other, we realize that everyone should engage in trade and commerce, as it is written, “go and provide for each other.”

Afterward, international trade, commerce and science start becoming implemented in that system. Why? It is because our goal while we are alive in this world is to become as integrated and interdependent as possible. We currently do not understand this, even though nature is guiding us toward increasing interdependence the more we evolve.

The laws of nature—laws of interconnection and interdependence—guide our development. One way or another, we will reach a state where we will understand that the best way to realize our interdependence is to be like a single family. In a healthily-functioning family, its members benefit and enjoy what each one adds to it.

When we try to become as one family around the world, we will rise to the next level of our evolution. In our current state, we become more and more interdependent, and our ego also increasingly grows at the same time, so we feel our growing interdependence as something terrible. When we learn how to redirect our egoistic desires toward positive connection with others, where we each mutually support, encourage and consider others above self-benefit, then we will start realizing our growing interdependence in a completely new, positive and harmonious way.

Based on the video “Humanity’s Need to Adapt to the Law of Nature” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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All actions supposedly performed for the sake of humanity are actually done for one’s own sake in order to show one’s righteousness, strength, and power. Thus a person works and claims that he is making efforts for the sake of humanity.

But if I really want to work for the sake of humanity, then I need the power of bestowal, the upper force. Therefore, if someone claims that he is ready to work only for the benefit of society, it is a lie. He just does not understand what he is talking about.

But humanity no longer has the strength to work for itself because we have reached such a limit where everyone has already completed their egoistic development. And now we need to develop by uniting.

We see that all of nature develops in a similar way. At first amoeba, the simplest organisms, developed until molecules combined into more complex systems. As a result, they formed more complex bodies that had feelings and a mind, and made a division of roles within their connection.

Humanity is beginning to feel that we do not have enough force for further existence. And when we try to egoistically receive these forces from nature, we cannot do it, and we give up in desperation. This is when the science of Kabbalah must be revealed.

All our development up to this point has been in order to reveal us as a complete zero, that is, that we do not have a single correct goal and strength to reach any truth. We must discover this truth of creation.

A person is not able to work for the sake of humanity because he needs to rise above himself for this. I do not have the ability to feel humanity.

I can feel my family because it is one of the basic desires, which are food, sex, and family; therefore, I am ready to work for it. But humanity and even a nation are almost indiscernible concepts for me. After all, I must egoistically feel that they are in me so that I can work for them. And if I do not have that feeling, then I do not want to make an effort.

Therefore, one additional component is needed here: for the sake of the Creator, above reason, that is, a connection with the upper force due to its revelation. And it is possible to reveal the upper force only through the similarity of properties. This “small” addition opens the entire spiritual world, the true reality, before us.

But we must build the Creator ourselves. He does not exist outside of us. We cannot reveal the Creator until we reach the form of creation. And the form of creation is the ten, the group. Therefore, first of all, we must try to include ourselves into each other.

There is no Creator without creation. There is a common upper force that fills the entire universe. And to the extent that we construct creation, the ten, we can reveal a part of this abstract upper force that fills all of reality on one hand and is not felt by anyone on the other. It is revealed only to those who build the right vessel, the Kli, for its revelation.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/22, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace“

 Related Material:
The Peace (Baal HaSulam)
The Peace Of Every Person Depends On Everyone
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