Question: How does intercultural ideology help the personal spiritual development of each individual?

Answer: It helps us to rise above all differences. I held classes with students in Los Angeles and wondered how they communicate with each other. One of them is black, the other one is yellow, the third one is white, this one is wrapped in a Muslim headscarf, and that one walks with the Star of David. They answered my questions by saying, “You know, we do not notice this.”

Today, this may no longer be the case. But, in those years, they said, “We have become so accustomed to each other and we communicate so closely with each other that all those external attributes do not bother us.”

Comment: One of the advantages of that kind of society is that emigrants are a source of knowledge and a qualified labor force. They bring new tastes, styles, music, culture, as well as the opportunity to learn different languages and religions.

But all of these cultural and scientific interests within different nations disappear as soon as conflict arises. What interferes with them? It seems that there has been an upbringing in which billions are invested and, nevertheless, we can see what is happening now, for example, in America.

My Response: This upbringing is wrong. Nothing will help. The mistake is that they have not been taught how to get close to each other in the right way. Everyone is given freedom in all respects, and they believe that they have found the right way to get closer to each other this way. This is wrong.

Nature only has one way of getting closer, which is for a person to rise above his nature and prefer to be in connection with his neighbor, above his egoism. This should be taught. This should be introduced gradually.

Without changing human nature, it is impossible to solve anything. We are approaching this eventuality today. We must understand human nature, otherwise we will not survive.
[275049]
From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/16/20

Related Material:
Cultural Diversity
Cultural Inventions Of Humanity
“Does Multiculturalism Work?” (Quora)

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Globalization - No Comments →

Comment: It has been said that lies are in the foundation of creation, in our desire to receive.

My Response: Sure. If I think about being happy, I have only one goal in mind. I don’t care if it’s true or false, it’s important that I feel good. I have a completely different orientation, a completely different attitude. And so in this state, everyone is with their own truth, and everyone seems to be right.

If we try to figure out what is more important to each and every one, then everyone will have something different.

Comment: Indeed, for some, freedom is more important, for others, equality. Therefore, it turns out that there are right and left in the world.

My Response: And the most important thing is that they do not understand each other. They don’t understand that there is something in common. They don’t want to come to this common ground.

Question: What does Kabbalah say? Is there something in the middle?

Answer: There is an upper.
[276920]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

Related Material:
Why People Lie
Lie And Truth, Part 5
“Why We Lie”

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization - No Comments →

My new article on Linkedin “Europe’s Collapse—a Reflection of the World”

Look at what is happening in Europe: The Dutch government resigned in its entirety over a childcare subsidies scandal; the Italian government is on the brink of collapse; Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is stepping down and the political future is uncertain; and Estonia’s Prime Minister, Juri Ratas, resigned over a corruption scandal and his government collapsed. If this is not enough, in Belgium and France, violent riots broke out as immigrants and members of radical political groups smashed windows, torched cars and a police station, and injured dozens of law enforcement personnel. Besides all the above, the coronavirus is spreading like never before, claiming thousands of lives each day despite the vaccines and the closures.

This is not a coincidence. We are experiencing the integrality of the world, its inexorable interconnectedness. We are dependent on each other on every level. Covid-19 forced us to acknowledge that contagion anywhere is contagion everywhere. Now we have to advance to the next phase in our awakening and realize that a crisis in anything is a crisis in everything. The coronavirus wrecked the global economy, tore up the society in countless countries, and as a result, governments are falling apart. This is all part of the same process: the collapse of the old, individualism-driven world, which is now crumbling in a global domino effect.

The crisis is everywhere. The global interdependence behooves global coordination and collaboration. It only makes sense that if we are dependent on each other, we will cooperate in order to make things better for all of us.

While many have already realized that we are dependent on each other, this is not enough. Now we must also realize that we are responsible for one another! Currently, countries are behaving like mountain climbers scaling an impossibly steep cliff. They realize that they are all tied together, but instead of using their mutual dependence to help each other to the top, they are trying to tear the ropes that hold them together and climb on each other’s head on their way to the top. Any novice climber will tell you that there is only one result that such an attitude can yield, and it is not a good one. The only way up is together, by watching out for one another, making sure that everyone has a good grip on the rock, and that if someone slips, the others will hang on until he can find his footing again.

The escalating global mayhem should teach us that we are in absolute interdependence and there is no point trying to take down any country because we will all go down with it. Look at what happened in the presidential election in America: Suddenly, we realize that everyone is meddling with the election in America: Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, as well as other countries. There is no point pretending that we didn’t know. It can’t be any other way! If what happens in one country influences all the other countries, naturally, those other countries will want to influence what happens everywhere. Everyone does it to everyone so there is no point pretending that it doesn’t happen.

The problem is that such a game can last only so long, and we are nearing its end. The spiraling collapse of governments and societies indicates that we are nearing a total breakdown. When that happens, we will be left with one of two options: The first, and less likely, is that at the last minute, governments will get a grip on their power hunger and agree to establish balanced connections that are acceptable to everyone and guarantee the well-being of all the countries in the world. The second, and regrettably more likely option, is that the ruthless tug of war will end in total destruction, a nuclear world war. The local collapses of the past months have been warning signs. If we don’t heed them, the big one will follow.
[277195]

Filed under: Coronavirus, Crisis, New Publications - No Comments →

Medium published my new article “We Can Soften the Onslaught”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” 2020, which Time magazine dubbed the “worst year ever,” has barely ended but it already seems like 2021 will “outperform” its former as far as misfortunes go. It seems as though nature has launched an all-out onslaught on humanity and will not let up until it kills us all or we surrender. But as is always the case with science and humanity, when we don’t understand the cause and effect relation, we call it a miracle or a coincidence. This is nonsense. If you drive against traffic, you will get hit. The accident will not be a coincidence; it will be a direct result of your stupidity, as MLK has pointed out.

Nature has a very clear direction, a very clear traffic flow that has existed since the dawn of time: Everything moves toward connection. The more evolved a creature is, the more complexity it demonstrates. This manifests on all levels of nature, from the subatomic level through the human body, to the Earth’s ecosystem, and onto the entire universe. Everything is interconnected and functions perfectly within the system. In turn, the system protects it and supports its continuous development.

Only we, humans, are driving against traffic. The more we evolve, the more we strive to be individuals, separated, alienated from everyone and everything. The more we insist on our individualism, the more blows we suffer precisely because we are moving against traffic. If we continue to insist, we will have a fatal car crash; there should be no doubt about it.

Our ignorance of nature’s stream and our stupidity in insisting not to learn about it have inflicted on us all the blows we have suffered so far, and will inflict on us the blows that we are destined to suffer down the line. It is a terrible shame since it really needn’t be this way. All we need is to recognize that we, too, must evolve toward connection rather than division and separation. This is all it takes to align us with nature’s flow of evolution. It will make the blows we are suffering now for going the opposite direction become a tailwind that will push us forward to new heights and unimaginable achievements.

Nature’s apparent “onslaught” is really our own doing. We can soften it and even reverse it into nurturing if we only open our eyes, discard our ignorance, abandon division, and embrace the connection that is nature’s most inherent quality.
[277188]

Filed under: Crisis, New Publications - No Comments →

Medium published my new article “The Superior Principles that Guarantee Life”

It is not only America that’s falling apart. The Dutch government resigned in its entirety, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down, the Italian government is on the brink of collapse, and the coronavirus is wreaking havoc all over the world. Vaccines have already been developed, but new and more infectious strains have already appeared spreading more rapidly and with a higher death toll than before there were vaccines. And worst of all, we are shifting into a new phase in the collapse of the old world: from lack of work to lack of food. If we don’t wake up soon, we will wake up to a plague of hunger, and people will smash everything for a piece of bread for their children.

The only way to avert the looming meltdown is to reconstruct society under new, non-egoistic principles. This does not mean that we have to become altruistic, but we must understand that if we continue to behave selfishly toward each other, we will die; it’s as simple as that.

The new principle that must be the basis of the new society is connection, or rather, mutuality. Succinctly, mutuality means that we must treat everyone, whoever they are, equally. We must make sure that every single person receives the basic necessities that allow for reasonable subsistence. This principle must override any border, view, race, gender identity, faith, or any other difference among people.

Since the problem that the world is going to face is lack of staple foods, the first and foremost expression of our connection must be the provision of sufficient nutrition to everyone. Whether people are Communists, Nazis, or any other extreme you can imagine, we must still provide everyone without exception with the basic needs of life.

As we attempt to achieve this, we will find that we need a global, overarching organization that will guarantee that everyone, in every country, gets those staples. Clearly, such an umbrella organization brings to mind the image of a global government with all the justified concerns about excessive use of power. However, without global coordination of food manufacturing and distribution, chaos will ensue everywhere.

The era of self-sufficient nation states is over. Just as the coronavirus has spread throughout the world faster than a brush fire, so will any crisis going forward. Without global collaboration that genuinely seeks the well-being of everyone, we will not survive. And nothing is more fitting to start our global cooperation than guaranteeing food supply to every single person on the planet. This will not only be our biggest test yet, but it will also be the proper basis on which to build humanity’s new establishments, which will cater to the well-being of all of humanity.

It has already been shown — and I, too, have written about it multiple times — that the seemingly endless stream of crises are all connected to our attitude toward each other and to nature. Countless scientists and scientific institutions have published studies that link our mistreatment of other people and the whole of nature to the collapse of our global ecosystem. The current global institutions are powerless; they are dummies with no real power, and perhaps it is only for the best, since they actually represent the interests of their countries and have no real concern for the well-being of humanity.

As I said in the beginning of this piece, the global institution that will oversee the food provision project need not consist of altruists. Besides, as we know, altruists are very hard to find these days. Instead, the people who will lead this project will be those who understand that it is in our egoistic interest to guarantee everyone’s well-being, or the global system will collapse. This understanding is imperative, and it is realistic to find such people.

Understandably, governments will not be happy to yield any power to such an institution, but we can trust nature to do its thing and force them to comply the hard way, at the expense of all of us. There are trying times ahead, but if we understand that our lives are at stake, and how we can save them, perhaps we will succeed.
[277094]

Filed under: Crisis, New Publications - No Comments →

Question: Sociologist Igor Eydman wrote on his Facebook page: “All mass murders in world history were fighting for the sake of ‘high ideals’: religion, ‘national interests,’ ideology. Terror and violence will cease only when the highest value for people will become not gods, leaders, ideologies and other artificially created entities, but their own individual ones: life, health, freedom, creativity, security, life comfort. And not only in Muslim, but also in Christian, Jewish, Chinese and other societies.

How do you like such a simple, trivial idea that if a person only cares about himself, he will not get involved in all these conflicts?

Answer: Yes, it is good, of course, to speak, but egoism will wear us out, wither us, squeeze all the juices out of us, and will not let go until we wish only one thing: to rise above it. And to exist in it in some comfortable, warm corner will not work.

Question: Will it still lead us out of this corner?

Answer: Yes. It is specially created to be constantly evolving. All the time its evil, green, poisonous juices wander around. It will not let us live in peace.

Egoism is growing in us all the time. Our natural desire is to somehow get along with it because we seem to have no other way.

And so we invent all sorts of theories of appeasement for ourselves with it, between us, and so on. “Well, can’t we? We are all human. There are republicans, there are leftists, all kinds of socialists. It doesn’t matter, we must somehow live together.” It will not work! We will arm ourselves and everyone will sit at home with machine guns in every window.

We will have to understand that only adopting the middle line of our joint coexistence will give us access to the next human level when it is neither you, nor me, but precisely because we use our mutual hatred, rejection. We are using it! We do not suppress it, we do not extinguish it, but on the contrary, we use both the left and right lines correctly in order to raise the middle line above them. And then we can build ourselves.

But this is a very serious design. A person will understand what he is building, what he is building it for, what he is doing. All in serious internal stress. And by this, he will rise above his nature. Because the two lines that exist in nature—the right and the left—are being animated in us more and more in order for us to call the middle line. The Creator is the source from which these two lines, right and left, arise in us.

We must contrapose them in such a way that we understand how to connect them together so that a middle line appears. And we will learn and see where we come from, where it all descended from in us.
[274667]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/9/20

Related Material:
Religion—The Imaginary “Spiritual Sphere”
Genetic Socialists
On Human Nature

Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Globalization, News - No Comments →

Question: I am amazed at this great screenwriter—the Creator.

Just now as we have created a vaccine, bam, there is a new kind of virus in England. At exactly the same time! London is in lock-down, flights are cancelled. Israel and other European countries are not accepting incoming flights. Panic is gripping Europe that this virus will jump over to them. Boris Johnson announced that the country is under quarantine.

Tell me, please, how much longer will this go on? At the very moment we seem to have found some kind of an antivirus, this happens!

Answer: You are not after the right thing. Seriously! This is the problem of humanity. It tries to get rid of what it is faced with. Meaning, it wants to fight not with the root cause but with the consequences.

And if you only deal with the consequences, you will have newer and newer ones emerging until you reach the root cause. And you will find yourself facing a wall and all that will be left to do is to scream. To scream for your own correction. It is not the world or some external virus that needs to be fixed, but the virus in you.

Question: If I scream: “Tell me what I should do!” Is this already a big step in the right direction?

Answer: Yes. Besides, we all know that the virus is in us. This virus is called “human egoism.” Once we get rid of it, there will be no more problems.

Comment: This is something that only you and maybe a few more scientists know.

My Response: That is the problem. This means humanity will continue to receive blows.

Question: Is it for it to come to realization that the virus is inside of us, that it is our egoism?

Answer: Yes. Unfortunately, you cannot do anything else here.

Comment: For now, doctors are comforting us: “It is OK, we will come up with an antivirus.”

My Response: The doctors represent those who point us in some other direction instead of showing us the root cause of all the problems.

Comment: But they do not know.

My Response: This is the problem. Nobody in the world knows anything, but they think they know and keep confusing each other.

Question: So, what is going to happen? Let’s say we find a way to control this with some antivirus. But it will pop up in Brazil, then in Argentina, in Russia, and on and on. Are these “boils” going to keep erupting all over the “body”?

Answer: Yes. Until it gets to Israel!

Question: Do you believe that, one way or another, Israel must be the first to arrive at the root of all these problems?

Answer: I believe that all the peoples of the world must realize that if Israel wants this virus to disappear, then it must make it so that it disappears, which means that everyone should unite together. And if the Jews unite, then automatically all the other peoples of the world will unite in this. Join them! Nobody will be against this kind of vaccine if it is done in Israel!

Question: By vaccine do you mean connection?

Answer: Unification! Nobody in the world will oppose it! It will be like waving a magic wand because the conductor is standing there—at the top.

Question: The screenwriter?

Answer: Yes. As soon as it becomes revealed in the world and as soon as the nations of the world force Israel to do so, then this feedback passes from the nations of the world to Israel, it will happen!

The points of connection will be revealed. Just like the spikes this virus has, that is how everything will be locked in together like cogwheels, and everything will be fine.

Question: Is this for every Israeli, every Jew?

Answer: And everyone else also.

Question: Will the whole world become locked in together and the machine will start working?

Answer: Nothing else is needed—only to become locked in together! Then all this will instantly manifest itself as a single mechanism.

We cannot even imagine how our unity will start changing everything on the global scale. Everything will start to change: stars, galaxies, nebulas. It is merely inanimate matter! It is on a level below us.

Question: Will humanity start changing also?

Answer: As we begin to aspire toward each other, everything around us will begin to change. The picture of the world, the depiction of the starry sky, and we will witness how this is happening. This all is yet to come.
[276138]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/21/20

Related Material:
Life Has Not Gone Anywhere
The Great Plot Of The Screenwriter
A Special Trend Of Our Time

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization, Health - No Comments →

Question: From a letter: “I am full of hatred for the parents who brought me into this world! Why? Did they not see that this world is a garbage heap, that it is not fit for a living?! I do not want to live in it and I cannot leave on my own. I live with constant pain.

Despite this, I am married. But I said to my wife on the first date: “We will not have children.” She agreed. We have been married for five years. My wife asked me to write to you and ask for your opinion. But so you know, my mind is made up.”

That person writes with an unambiguous opinion that he is not going to bring children into this world. But his wife seems to want to. What do we do with all this? Is the world really such that it is scary to bring children here?

Answer: So, what? It is scary, but you bring them. Do the right thing, what a person should do. Do everything for it.

Question: Should I think about children?

Answer: You should think about children, you will think about children. Now you are not thinking about children, you are thinking about yourself.

You have to give birth to the next generation. Because that is the way in nature—look at animals. As for the next generation, we are like animals. Each couple should give birth to a boy and a girl.

Question: Those who have decided that they do not want to, can they be called a family?

Answer: This is the highest egoism, and you cannot call them a family.

A family is a male and female individual who create their own kind.

I say what is written in Kabbalah. Kabbalistic wisdom is higher than our world’s, and it speaks about how it is established by nature. Call it nature or the Creator. We are obliged to reproduce our own kind, and thus we continue ourselves in our descendants.

Question: And for those people who deliberately do not continue themselves in descendants, does something, somehow later respond to them or not?

Answer: Their story ends with them. But a person should strive to continue oneself.
[276602]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/30/20

Related Material:
A Baby Boom Won’t Happen
What’s The Point …?
A Successful Woman’s Career Jeopardizes Marriage

Filed under: Children, Crisis, Education, Globalization, News - No Comments →

My new article on Linkedin “Toward a Year of Reckoning”

2021 will not be an easy year for America. It will not be an easy year anywhere or for anyone, but Americans are likely to feel the heat more than others. The conditions for a perfect storm have ripened; the combination of a plague that claims thousands of lives daily, a failing economy and uncertainty about the future of personal finance, searing hatred between Left and Right and Blacks and Whites, and loss of confidence in both the media and the authorities will force Americans to either stop everything and contemplate their future as a nation, or let the country accelerate its downward spiral to destruction.

Everyone already recognizes the severity of the situation; everyone is already talking about it, and I am really happy that they are. I hope that these scrutinies, however tough they may be, will help the country get a grip on itself and put some order in the chaos.

The two forces struggling in America, between Left and Right, are two approaches to life that exist all over the world. America possesses all the contradictions; it is a kind of modern Babylon. For this reason, if Americans can overcome their divisions and form some form of solidarity above their differences, which will certainly remain, then America will set an example that everyone will gladly follow.

Precisely because America, more than any other country, has enshrined self-centeredness, their reversal of this ideology will indicate to the rest of the world that it is indeed possible to restrain the ego. If they discover that they have no choice but to “dethrone” the ego since the egoistic system no longer works, and the economic and social systems they have built around it are falling apart, they will have the required motivation to unite above the spite and rancor that have surfaced mainly over the past year. It will not be pleasant, but a reckoning, a recognition of the illnesses within society is mandatory if they are to set off a healing process.

Empires, too, rise and fall. But when an empire such as the United States of America falls, it will pull down with it many other countries and people. Everyone will suffer from the death of such a massive system as the US, not just Americans, though they will suffer most of all.

So far, I have yet to see the forces or people who are bold enough, impartial enough, and publicly accepted enough to lead the process of America’s healing. However, as long as it is possible to reverse the trend, we must not lose hope. The times ahead will tell if we have merited the title “humans,” and rose above our egos to form a new union of society, or have succumbed to our egos and gave up the helm to the beast within us.
[277044]

Filed under: Crisis, New Publications - No Comments →

My new article on Linkedin “Can We Bridge a Chasm that No One Wants to Bridge?”

It is written, “Where there are no people, try to be a person” (Mishnah, Avot, 2:5). It seems very fitting that we should invoke this adage at a time when people have lost all trust in one another, in the authorities, and feel hopeless about the future. We are going through a hard awakening, a reckoning of the fragility of our society.

Democracy has proven its vulnerability once more. Italy was a democracy before it fell prey to fascism. Germany was a democracy before it succumbed to Nazism. Even the founder of China’s communism originally intended to form a democracy. The celebrated historian Maurice Meisner wrote about Mao Zedong, “Neither the terms ‘socialism’ nor ‘Bolshevism’ appeared in Mao’s ‘Manifesto.’ Rather, it was ‘democracy’ that Mao called ‘the basic ideology’ of resistance to oppression.” Now, it seems as though the United States of America is going through the same ordeal when a dream becomes a nightmare.

Does democracy always have to fail? Why does totalitarianism always seem to overcome it? Perhaps if we understand this, we will understand how to save our agonizing society.

Like it or not, different people have different views. There will never be sameness of ideas in any society at any time because, as our sages said (Midrash Rabbah, 21:2), “As their faces are not similar, so their views are not the same. Rather, each and every one has his own opinion.” So how do we determine who is right when we are destined to be different? Why must my opinion be right and the other’s opinion wrong if neither of us can convince the other? Is there a bug in the system?

No, there is no bug. The bug is in our understanding of the system. There is no similarity of views because there isn’t meant to be. There is meant to be diversity! Again, different opinions are not disagreements; they are diversity!

Why must there be diversity? Without diversity, there is no evolution, no growth, no life. Everything exists only through diverse, and usually opposite elements working together to maintain the system they inhabit. From particles of atoms to clusters of galaxies, the universe consists of opposites cooperating to maintain the system they occupy.

Animals, too, kill each other for food, but thereby maintain the health and guarantee the survival of the species that they hunt. We are living in a world of contradictions because only contradictions guarantee development and progress.

But we, people, are an exception. We establish democracies precisely because we value diversity and the necessity for disagreements as a basis for advancement, yet we yield before our egos and determine that only our view is correct. As our egos take control, we lose sight of the fact that stymying diversity is a death sentence to ourselves and to society? How can we not realize that it is precisely the opposite opinion that makes our own opinion matter? How can we not realize that it is my ideological adversary who gives my ideology merit?

If we silence one another, we will not only silence ourselves, as well, we will silence our minds, our hearts, and will eventually destroy our society and our lives. Nothing can be more dangerous than the belief that only I am right, and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.

Being a person, to return to the opening proverb, means championing diversity when everyone scolds it. It means not thinking that only my view is right, but rather maintaining my view because this is my side of the bridge, while cherishing the fact that other people, who maintain other views, are maintaining the other side of it. The name of the bridge is diversity, and we build it by championing multiplicity of views. This is the only way we can begin to advance.

Just as we cannot walk on only one leg, but need both legs in order to move forward, so our opinions need each other so that we, as a society can advance. Where there are no people, it is because there are no bridges between them. Build them, and be a person.
[276973]

Filed under: Crisis, New Publications - No Comments →