Question: Researchers argue that such a concept as “materialism,” which is characteristic of both the rich and the poor, means people’s addiction to things.

The social image and value system created by this addiction is destructive for both society and the individual. Whoever succumbs to this loses the joy of life, peace of mind, brings anxiety, depression, and the collapse of relationships.

Nevertheless, in the past year of the “crown,” coronavirus, people began to demonstrate less materialism. But, on the other hand, now it is already clear that this is the reverse side of the same coin. Why do people love things so much?

Answer: Man is an egoist. He loves to acquire and feel that it is his: “Mine, mine, mine!” We see this in the example of small children, when they grab a toy and do not give it to anyone else. Even if you convince him that this is not appropriate, the child does not understand. He always wants it to be in his hands. That is how he is born.

Therefore, we cannot condemn people for the fact that they have such a craving for acquiring everything they like: “I want this to be mine.” Or even something that he doesn’t like, but the other likes it, obviously, this is good, he also wants to have it.

Moreover, he wants to have this thing himself, while the other child should not have it, and if this is not possible, then no one should have it. That is, this is absolute selfishness, childish and petty that accompanies us all years of our life. You can’t get away from it.

How can you balance it? Only with the right upbringing. But for this it is necessary to build a system that will work on people and educate them in such a way that they are satisfied with what they have, even in comparison with others. In general, this must be a special education system, otherwise, we will never get rid of materialism.

Question: In essence, materialism is the decoration of oneself. A person decorates himself with something extra. What should replace materialism or will it go away over time?

Answer: I think it will. Instead, a more internal decoration will prevail: the attitude of a person toward others, the attitude of others toward him, but not the replacement of some things with other things.

As a result, a person must come to the understanding that his greatest acquisition is his love for his neighbor as for himself, and even, perhaps, more than himself. This is a completely different ascent of man over his little egoistic nature.

I hope that under the influence of correct upbringing, one will gradually cancel the other.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 2/16/21

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My new article on Linkedin “Entanglement Will Save Us or Destroy Us, but It’s Here to Stay”

I think it’s fair to say that countries no longer dream of self-sufficiency. The idea that one country, however vast and however developed, can provide for all its needs by itself is not only unrealistic, but also very dangerous to any country that tries to implement it. The price such a country would pay is horrendous. At the same time, interdependence has also done a lot of harm, shifting jobs and industries from some countries to others, and depleting job opportunities in countries that suffered from job migration. This process, of growing entanglement and interdependence, is irreversible. However, if we play our cards right, we will benefit from its advantages and avoid its harms.

And since our egos will continue to grow, we will have to work on our relations even harder, to keep from falling back to alienation. As a result, our relations will grow stronger and closer to the extent that our egos grow more intense. If we stick to this simple formula, we will win the war against hunger, poverty, sickness, and sadness anywhere in the world.

The first, and most important point to understand is that our growing entanglement is a goal oriented process, at the end of which we will all take care of each other and no one will need to worry about anything. To understand how this is possible, think of our planet as the home, where all of humanity lives. There is plenty of food in our home. In fact, there is so much food that we trash half of it because we cannot eat it all. There are also enough clothes to dress everyone, enough energy to provide everyone with heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, and enough money to pay for everyone’s education, health care, housing, and even entertainment.

Nevertheless, many people in our global home are starving, many have no clean water, many are sick and have no health care, and many more lack proper education. Why? Because we do not care about each other, and because we do not care, we also do not share. In other words, the problem is not one of production, but one of distribution, which stems from our alienation. And because we treat each other like aliens, the result is competition and destruction instead of complementation and construction.

Yet, there is a reason why we treat each other so appallingly. The more we evolve, the more egoistic we become. You would expect egoism to drive us apart from each other, but it actually does the opposite. Because we are growing increasingly selfish, we want to benefit from one another, use one another, enjoy not only what we have, but also the knowledge that we have more than others. Our desire to be superior to others has become our prime pleasure, and it impels us to live in societies where we can compete and defeat one another. It turns out that our egos are pushing us to live together, yet hate each other, and that atmosphere is toxic. This is why our house, Planet Earth, is in such disarray.

There is even worse news than the growth of our egos: They keep growing and there is no way to reverse the process. In other words, we are destined to become increasingly entangled until, eventually—unless we find a way out of the catch—we will destroy ourselves.

However, as I said in the beginning, we have more cards to play than we have used so far. If we play them right, we will be victorious.

The first card we need to play is awareness. So far, we have not been aware that we are so completely dominated by our own egos. We also didn’t know that the ego is an ever growing power. Now that we are aware, we know that the ego is our true enemy and we can start devising tactics to defeat it.

The second card to play is to use the entanglement that our egos have created to our mutual benefit, instead of for destructive competition. Just as no country can be self-sufficient, neither can people. However, if we decide to supplement for one another what we can’t provide for ourselves, we will have more than enough of everything. As said before, our house has more than we need, but it is in disarray and there are deficiencies because of our alienation from each other. Reverse alienation and you have erased deficiency.

And since our egos will continue to grow, we will have to work on our relations even harder, to keep from falling back to alienation. As a result, our relations will grow stronger and closer to the extent that our egos grow more intense. If we stick to this simple formula, we will win the war against hunger, poverty, sickness, and sadness anywhere in the world. Even better, we will discover that the goal oriented process of the growth of our entanglement has always been to bring us so close that we would not only secure everyone’s needs, but truly become as one, united all over the world. If we do not succumb to our egos, we will triumph over our egos and raise humanity to new heights. If we surrender to our selfishness, we will destroy ourselves and our children will have to do the work we haven’t, much more laboriously.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Personal Price of Social Indifference”

People today seem to care about almost nothing. We are indifferent to entire sectors of society that are suffering, unless something directly impacts us on a personal level. We watch the news, get upset and grumble, and that’s the extent of our community involvement. Why is apathy constantly on the rise? We are indifferent because we are increasingly detached from our environment. We lack a sense of belonging, even though such a feeling is as important as the oxygen we breathe. Each of us must realize that our future is inextricably bound with those of others.

As the good connections between us strengthen and deepen, we will begin to feel a special power flowing through our communications network—a force that animates us, magnifies us, and gives us understanding, feeling, thought, and desire at an unprecedented level. Our integration with one another will make us feel a new reality beyond the limitations of our current individual perception.

A person’s basic makeup can be defined as a desire for pleasure and enjoyment, a desire for satisfaction. At each developmental stage, we enjoy different things, and this is true both throughout our individual lives and as a human species in general. Our developmental stage affects our level of social involvement or social indifference. For example, once children felt a natural tendency toward social life; today they are locked inside screens right from the start.

Further, in the past people were proud of their group affiliations like professional guilds and trade unions; they found satisfaction, confidence and power in them. Today, no one has the patience to hear a word about such things and, certainly no desire to belong to any such association. In the workplace, tenure, job security, and stability are things of the past. It has become commonplace for people to have no idea whether they will even have work in a year.

As a result of these and other changes in the relationship between the individual and society, contemporary man does not feel he belongs to anything. If in ancient times people needed social connections for physical survival, today we prize our independence and try to avoid social demands and commitments. We pay the taxes we must and that is the end of the story. As human nature has continued its inner development, a person identifies less with a country or place and has become much more egoistic. As a result, society is now composed of a collection of disconnected elements that are increasingly indifferent to one another.

The only place where one can perhaps see high levels of social engagement is online social platforms. On the web, people are actually very active. Despite beautiful social initiatives here and there, however, what mainly fills the virtual space is cynicism, intolerance, bickering, bullying, and abuse.

What fate is this trend heading us toward? What awaits us in the coming years? The desire to enjoy will continue to develop in every individual, but at the same time, people will no longer find anything that fulfills them. The loss of good connection with society will gradually leave a person feeling like they are suffocating inside their private shell. Today’s indifference will lead to tomorrow’s despair. People will begin to feel that there is nothing to live for. Deep inside the heart will grow a feeling that there is nothing to fill ourselves with, no passion, no challenge, no hope. Nothing but dryness like death.

In a surprise twist at the end, this existential despair will lead to a breakthrough to the next level in the evolution of individual and societal relations. The online virtual world will actually serve as a springboard to a new reality. At the point when we realize we are causing harm by the way we are currently using high tech, we will begin to use it intelligently. We will start to use social media as a tool for shaping society according to an integral worldview based on and promoting reciprocity and complementation. Instead of using it to aid the current compulsion to acquire more and more stuff and to boost material development, humanity will look for ways to use it to help forge real connections between everyone’s hearts.

Smart software will promote the tenet, “love your neighbor as yourself,” as the only formula for life that fits the connected world of the 21st Century. Together we will define the next step in the development of the relationships between us, and then we will work on exercising our muscles of bestowal and support.

As the good connections between us strengthen and deepen, we will begin to feel a special power flowing through our communications network—a force that animates us, magnifies us, and gives us understanding, feeling, thought, and desire at an unprecedented level. Our integration with one another will make us feel a new reality beyond the limitations of our current individual perception. In such a world indifferent society will no longer exist because every individual will feel that he or she receives much more through the association with others—greater fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning, to the point of boundless joy.
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Question: What is the value of man’s decisions if they all stem from the ego?

Answer: They are necessary in order to discover that you cannot attain the truth from egoism. But you still advance thanks to the ego. On one hand, many feelings and experiences appear in us which we attain with the help of the ego.

On the other hand, we begin to realize that we will not attain the truth this way. We need to ascend above egoism and then we will begin to think about what faith above reason means.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/15/19

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Everything in reality, good or bad, and even the most harmful in the world, has a right to exist and must not be destroyed and eradicated from the world. We must only mend and reform it because any observation of the work of creation is enough to teach us about the greatness and perfection of its Operator and Creator. 

Question: Terrible things have happened throughout history: monstrous murders, the genocide of entire nations. Can you explain how the worst states help advance humanity toward a higher goal?

Answer: The fact is that we consist of one very vivid desire to enjoy. We want to feel good. And when we feel bad, it pushes us to the next, as it seems to us, better state. In it, we feel like we are coming out of the past for a while, but we still feel that it is bad in it. It also pushes us to the next state. And so we move constantly.

This is our destiny, our fate, our history, our development, and everything that happens.

How can we not move like that by chance, along Brownian motion, from this “bad” to another “bad,” a third, and so on? How can we see our path in advance so that we can move from bad to good, and from good to even better?

This does not happen. There are better periods, worse periods, but in principle, nothing radically better happens.

So we have a problem: what is happening to us and to nature? We see how intelligent nature has created physical bodies, minds, qualities, feelings, and everything else, that is, a huge super-organism in which we are small, but very nasty bugs.

Question: Is all this for us to realize the evil of our egoistic nature?

Answer: Not only. Obviously, through this awareness we can come to change ourselves, and in accordance with this, to change the whole of nature. After all, on the one hand, we are the most egoistic beings in this world, and on the other hand, we are the most active, strong, and powerful.

So we need to figure out what we can do with our great potential and our great evil egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/13/19

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Question: There are people whose egoism constantly grows.There are those who don’t need anything at all and are quite satisfied lying on the sofa watching TV all day. What is the egoism that grows and where is it?

Answer: The ego is the desire to fill yourself. The ego is not only in each of us, but also in the matter that the still, vegetative, and animate levels are made of. If it weren’t for egoism, matter would not exist.

Matter feels itself only to the extent that it feels its egoism, to the extent that it feels the desire to enjoy, to sustain itself, and to keep its existence.

Where is egoism? The ego is inside matter itself, and it is also its spiritual component. If the ego changes, matter also changes. Egoism is the internal force that sustains matter and forces it to exist, that forces its electrons and its atoms to revolve.

We have all studied in school about chemical reactions and we know what the valence of an elements is, how they combine with each other according to the free electrons in the outer orbit of the atoms. These states are indicative of our egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/15/19

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Kabbalah says that there are two systems inside a person. They exist within us and must exist in society. But society cannot properly adapt to these systems. Therefore, in the days of ancient Babylon, Nimrod’s system developed—capitalistic, and the group system of Abraham—Kabbalistic.

In our time, they are beginning to gradually find each other and connect with each other. The fact is that the system of Abraham must be realized in all people, in the general system, according to the principle Love your neighbor as yourself. Nimrod’s system is decaying, as we find that egoism, if not balanced, is the greatest evil.

Therefore, only now, after 3,500 years, they are beginning to converge as we begin to understand that it is necessary to balance both systems. They are balanced in the form of receiving for the sake of bestowal.  Receiving is a property of Nimrod, bestowal is a property of Abraham. This is how they should be realized in society today.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/13/19

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Comment: The Torah examines four relationships between people. One of them: “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” is regarded as the worst and is called “Sodom.” And in our world it is considered normal.

My Response: No. This is an abnormal state because it cuts off all connections between people. I have no right either to give something to you or to receive something from you. So everyone in the society is absolutely isolated from each other. In addition, they even spy upon each other to comply with this condition.

Question: It is against unity, against the tendency of nature to bring us to one common whole?

Answer: This is completely against nature because nature is built on interconnection between atoms, particles, cells, and people at least in something, at least in some way. And here, everything is based on isolation.

The second state: “What is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.” This is the essence of the nature of a primitive society where everything is common property: wives, children, dwellings, and animals. This state is characteristic of undeveloped egoism, in particular, of a primitive communal system.

The third state: “What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours.” In the Torah, it is called Hesed.

This is a good but incomplete state in which I am practically locked on giving to another person and thinking about others.

This is good for small groups of people, for children, for weak societies, for the sick, and old people, when I give away and transfer everything to them. But this is a flawed state in which there is no flow of information and forces, no exchange. Everything goes in one direction, and nature is not built that way.

Nature is based on the fact that all of its parts are integrally locked in one common system, and  between them there is an exchange of energy, information, and vital forces to support the entire system together in its integral, correct interaction.

The fourth state: “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine” is called “criminal”—when I get from society more than I should.

Basically, all these four types of interaction between people exist in egoism. None is perfect. Kabbalah raises us above them.

A perfect state is when we are in complete interaction with each other, in inclusion in each other. This is not the case in any of the four states.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/13/19

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My new article on Linkedin “The Cold Spell – Nature’s Cold Shoulder”

The extreme cold spell that the US is currently experiencing is truly historic. But then, so is everything these days. The American society has never been so divided, at least not since The Civil War, gaps between the haves and the have-nots have never been so wide, the Covid pandemic has forced historic closures on America that have not been implemented at least since the Spanish flu, and the level of violence, substance abuse, food insufficiency, and depression are all skyrocketing. In light of all that’s happening, and keeping in mind the historic fires that burned for months throughout the West and Mid-West all summer and fall, the cold spell, as bitter as it is, seems more like a natural continuation of the trend of extremism overtaking the US than an unexpected disaster. From the human level to the inanimate nature, everything is breaking records of intensity, and it is to no one’s favor.

If America wants to survive, it must reverse course. Just as it indoctrinated its people to overconsume, enshrine self-indulgence, become fanatic over privacy, individuality, and entitlement, now it must do the opposite. Now it must teach its people how to see each other—with their hearts, not with their eyes. It must teach its people that they are all dependent on each other, and that their fate is sealed unless they all work shoulder to shoulder to pull the nation out of the swamp.

The math is straightforward, the more extreme the egoism, the more extreme the climate—both social and environmental. America has put egoism on a pedestal, called it “individualism,” and enshrined it in its constitution. No country has put itself more at odds with nature than the US, and turned this approach into its core ideology.

Since America has turned itself into a role model of individualism, of going against the mutuality in nature, the harmony in it, the coexistence, nature, in turn, has made America an example of the consequences of inconsideration with nature’s most basic law of harmony, achieved through mutuality and balance. What you give to nature is what you get in return. When you give nature a cold shoulder, it gives one right back.

If America wants to survive, it must reverse course. Just as it indoctrinated its people to overconsume, enshrine self-indulgence, become fanatic over privacy, individuality, and entitlement, now it must do the opposite. Now it must teach its people how to see each other—with their hearts, not with their eyes. It must teach its people that they are all dependent on each other, and that their fate is sealed unless they all work shoulder to shoulder to pull the nation out of the swamp.

The menace that is Covid-19 is just the harbinger; many other perils will follow in its wake, and they will be far worse than their “little brother.” The only way America can “dodge the bullets” is if it unites as one nation fighting for its life.

But nature isn’t punishing America; it is merely balancing the extreme egoism America imposed on it. If America reverses course, so will nature, and all the storms will calm. Nature speaks the language of balance and harmony. The more we are like it, the more we understand it, and the better it relates to us. If America stops fighting and starts reciprocating with it, it will discover that it doesn’t need to conquer nature in order to build a good life for its people; nature itself will do it for them.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do egoistic people have behind their ego? What do they do if someone breaks their ego and get into them?“

All people are egoistic. Egoism is part and parcel of human nature. That is, human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the ego is the intention to enjoy at the expense of others and nature.

Our desire to enjoy divides into individual desires for food, sex and family, in which our desire operates in order to preserve ourselves and the human species; and social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, which is activated by our egoistic desires, where we want what others have. Our social desires bring about all kinds of individual, social and national developments. We also have a nucleus of a spiritual desire, which questions life’s meaning and purpose, and gives us the feeling that individual and social desires can no longer fulfill us. The appearance of each successive level of desire depends on the extent of our development.

It is common to think that the ego is the cause of our problems and crises, and that without the ego, our lives would be much more peaceful. However, there is a very good reason for the ego’s existence.

The ego is what separates us from the animal kingdom. It is the motor running behind everything we do. While it indeed brings about much harm, the ego has made us the most powerful and influential beings in the world. The problem with the ego is when we apply it incorrectly. On the contrary, when we use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially, then our lives become harmonious, balanced and peaceful.

What does it mean to use the ego positively, correctly and beneficially?

It depends first on discovering how we exist in an interconnected and interdependent nature, which is a single system of which we are its parts. When we feel ourselves as existing in a single system, then we feel ourselves as small parts of a much greater system. Feeling the magnitude of the greater system of nature outside of ourselves, we would then feel the need to think and act in ways that benefit this system. Then, similarly to how cells and organs take what they need in order to serve the whole organism of which they are parts, we would naturally start enjoying life via the calculation that we wish to benefit other people and nature through our existence here.

Our inborn sensation of life is to prioritize our personal benefit over others. We thus require a new kind of education—integral education—which guides our understanding and feeling of the interconnectedness and interdependence of nature. That is the key to creating a harmonious world of happy and confident individuals, a world free from all the problems caused by letting our egos unabatedly exploit, abuse and manipulate each other and nature.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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