Question: What do you think? Will people continue to split into different groups according to their political and religious reasons up to the point that the one block will fight against another? Will even members of the same family be set against each other? Do you see this in the future?

Answer: We can already see it now. There are such examples and there are many of them. But I think it will gradually recede because the blows, which we are already beginning to feel and that are associated with the last stage of our development, will lead us to unite despite our differences. They teach us and push us toward unity even if we are in preliminary hatred of each other.

Question: Nationalism is different from racism, but is the root still the same?

Answer: Yes, the root is the same. It emanates from the shattering of the common system called Adam into different parts. Our goal is to connect these parts.

We do not have to particularly understand what these parts are, how different they are, how they should be connected. This is all useless and will bring us nothing. By studying our differences, we will get nothing.

We need to bring ourselves to the necessity to rise above our differences, in spite of them, and then we will achieve proper existence.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

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My new article on Linkedin “What Is Next for America?”

Regardless of who will be sworn in this January at the U.S. presidential inauguration, much has been said about “Trumpism” as a strong political force that will expand not only in America, but also in other parts of the world where a new style of governance has been adopted.

How will this impact the future in America? At this point, it is hard to tell about the evolution of movements and tendencies that are currently unfolding. What I know for sure is that any political powerhouse can be considered as such only if it is aimed at connecting the opposing factions, the antagonism between people. This is the ideology that should prevail and be clear to everyone from now on.

It is precisely the capitalists who know how to work, organize, promote, and earn—the ones who can advance humanity to the correct connection. Conversely, the socialistic approach of the Democrats will reveal itself to everyone as an approach that is not constructive, does not build. Such an attitude and direction was implemented in Russia and destroyed the country.

However, under the current circumstances, no single force alone will be able to govern and succeed. Neither right nor left, neither Democrats nor Republicans, but only a unifying force above both that can be drawn by enacting a positive connection above the differences.

Bridging the divide in America requires everyone feeling they are taken into consideration and are represented; not like it is in the current state where half of the country celebrates victory and the other half feels deceived and embittered.

What will make people want to rise above their divisive stances in the first place? Why can’t the sides continue trying to overpower one another to put into place their vision of how things should be run?

It is because, ultimately, the underlying division leaves everyone dissatisfied. And the longer society develops while remaining divided, the more negative and bitter America will become. In extreme cases, each player pushing his or her divisive position onto others can lead to total chaos and turmoil, to unfortunate levels of suffering that eventually force people to revise their conduct and change focus.

The cure for division can be found in a process of unity-enriching learning. People must come to the realization that nature wants us to unite. This system of learning will not demand the impossible from people, nor force anyone to do anything that they do not want to do. We simply discover how to organize our socio-cultural influences to bring the need for unity to the center of public discourse, then we will think about it more and more, and will start wanting it to happen.

The problem today is not polarization in and of itself. Rather, it is that people view the polarization exclusively from their own side. The more we develop, the more we see that our side is good and correct, and the other side is wrong and bad. Thus, we increasingly view the other side as a heavy burden on society and on ourselves, one which we would be happy to eliminate from our lives.

If we, however, could see our polarization from a broader context—that nature is polarizing us more and more in order for us to exercise our free choice to positively connect above our increasing polarization—then we would be able to size up the situation more accurately and steer a straight course toward a harmonious and balanced state.

While it is perfectly natural to hold on to our differing opinions, today we need to wake up to the fact that we are becoming increasingly interdependent. And in order to realize our interdependence harmoniously, we need to start seeing the need for building a second level of discernment above our current one: the construction of positive connection in the middle line on top of our disagreements that should be more important than letting ourselves remain at the level of our conflicts alone. Such an approach will be the key to America’s prosperity.

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Medium published my new article “The American People Deserve Praise, but the Future Is Bleak”

I must confess: For many years, I thought that Americans cared only about money. I was wrong. In the years after the Obama administration, I have learned to appreciate Americans. I have learned that they truly care about ideals, and not only about material gain. But perhaps precisely because of it, the future of America is very bleak. Unless Americans somehow find unity above their deep divisions, the US will soon become a third world country, leaving the international arena to Russia and China.

As things stand now, the future of America is bleak. Biden cannot run the country, and Obama will run the show behind the scenes. If this happens, America will decline to a level of a third world country. In that case, Russia, with its military power, and China, with its wealth, will dominate the world.
Come January, great changes will happen in American society, regardless of the identity of the president. Whoever is declared triumphant, the other side will not accept it, and this will stir up the country.

Both sides, including the Democrats, to whom I do not belong, must understand that this division leads to unity, one way or the other. There can be no winners here, since winning isn’t the point of the division, but unity above the division. You can’t walk on only one leg; you need both the right leg and the left leg to move forward, and the same goes for society. Opposite views don’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong, but that both are required in order to make the right decisions regarding society.

There are merits to the Democratic and the liberal perspectives, as there are merits to the Republican and conservative perspectives. Both sides advocate worthy values. But when one side denies the other side’s legitimacy, demonizes it, and presents it as “the enemy of the nation,” it obviates the legitimacy of the critic. The realization that only unity above the differences is the solution will come, but the question is how soon and at what cost. Both sides must keep the future of the country in mind.

In my view, if Biden becomes president, it will give Americans a chance to see (those who still haven’t realized it) what it was like in Soviet Russia. It is the same approach that destroyed Russia, and we will see what it will do in America. If this happens, people might understand that Trump was not as bad for America as he was portrayed by media and political adversaries.

The bottom line is that you cannot go after people’s whims; you have to follow the natural law of unity, which leans neither toward Democrats nor toward Republicans, as both are required in order for the country to prosper. The current talk about revenge and other divisive discourse will yield nothing but trouble. Cessation is unrealistic, and revenge is a call for civil war.

But all is not lost. If the American people decide to rise to the challenge and realize that their personal future depends on the future of their country, they might be willing to unite above the chasm. It requires courage, sincerity, and resolve, and Americans are known to have all three. The question is whether they realize that they must employ these traits now, before it’s too late.

The First Amendment, which enshrines freedom of expression, is valuable. However, there can be freedom of expression only when it lies on the basis of common values such as mutual consideration and the integrity of society. This does not mean that one cannot express even the most extreme views, including even an aspiration to dismantle society. However, even one who expresses such views must accept that expressing them is possible precisely because it is part of a collection of views that make up a complete whole, and that he or she would not be able to express such views were it not for the existence of their complete opposite.

For example, think of the human body. Within our body, there are organs that perform opposite actions, yet their performance is made possible only because of the existence of their counterparts. Think of opposite muscles that enable our movement, think of organs that use oxygen, emit CO2, and stimulate our breathing mechanism. Without organs that emit CO2, we would die of suffocation. Our body is filled with contradictions that enable our healthy existence. How conceited are we to think that in society, only our view merits existence? If the American people can learn to work together for their country, above their opposite ideals, they will discover that the contradictions between them are precisely what the country needs in order to be healthy, prosperous, and strong.
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My new article on Linkedin “When You Fight the Symptom, the Cause Keeps Hitting”

Nature has a great sense of humor: Just as humanity started rolling out the vaccines, it churned up two new strains of the coronavirus, one probably in the UK and one in South Africa. Both strains are fast spreaders, and doctors are as yet unsure if the vaccines are effective against them. But what can we expect? From the very beginning of this pandemic, I warned that Covid-19 isn’t the problem; it’s a symptom of a much deeper problem that stems from ill human relations. When you fight the symptom, it’s no surprise that the pathogen keeps hitting you. The current strategy is about as smart as having a burst pipe and trying to seal the water instead of shutting the faucet.

Time after time, nature will keep hitting us until we realize that viruses, volcanic eruptions, wars, bloodshed, or forest fires aren’t the real problem, but we, humanity, are the world’s only problem. When we ask how to correct ourselves instead of everything else besides ourselves, we’ll start seeing some positive results to our efforts.

The root cause that’s behind all of our disasters, traumas, and any other conceivable affliction, is our own egoism. This is what’s destroying the world we live in, including ourselves. Whenever we’re told that our ego is the problem, we furiously deny it, but this doesn’t make it any less true. We deny it because our egos don’t want to face the truth that they are the problem. But until we do, the troubles will only worsen.

And here comes another problem: The world will not know how to rise above egoism until the people of Israel show the way.

Currently, we Jews are showing the exact opposite; we squabble among ourselves and show nothing but division. When antisemites blame us for causing all the problems, I can’t help but agree with them. We who became a nation when we agreed to unite “as one man with one heart,” and who were promptly after assigned to be “a light unto nations,” shine nothing but the darkness of division and separation instead of the opposite, as we were meant to do.

They may not realize it, but antisemites don’t hate us because of how we treat them; they hate us because of how we treat each other. When we project the odium we feel for one another, that odium spreads the world over and makes people hate each other and jump at each other’s throats. When the rivals finally turn against the Jews, it’s not because they’re looking for a scapegoat, though scapegoating may have something to do with it; it’s mainly because they really feel that they are at war because of us, though they cannot say how we instigated it. Nevertheless, their intuition is correct: Had we been united instead of divided, we would have projected unity instead of division, and the rest of the world would be at peace, as well.

When humanity is not at peace, when nations fight for superiority, they use every means at their disposal to achieve it. In the process, they exploit people, natural resources, pollute the Earth and deplete it like there is no tomorrow. But in the end, they are destroying our future. Now we have reached the future; we have come to a time when humanity’s exploitation has become so burdensome that nature can no longer take it. Now it pushes back on us, and it will not stop until we change. The more we pressure nature, the harder it will push back, and regular people will suffer the consequences.

However, if the people of Israel realize their role and change course from derision to cohesion, the entire world will change its course along with Israel. When that happens, we won’t need vaccines; our own relationships will protect us from harm, and not just from viruses, but from all the other misfortunes that are caused by our disunity. We’ve come to a point where we can vividly see how the level of disunity in Israel, and subsequently in humanity, is impacting the intensity and frequency of disasters throughout the world. Now all that’s left is to keep pointing it out until the world becomes convinced and we are ready to fight against our egos, which separate us and thereby kill us.
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My new article on Linkedin “Cultured Meat Will Not Save Us”

A week ago, Food & Wine magazine broke the story that lab-grown chicken meat will make its restaurant debut. According to the story, “Good Meat Cultured Chicken was approved for sale in Singapore. Now, it’s heading to its first commercial restaurant.”

I’m all for it. Anything that helps people is good, and what’s more helpful than securing food and water supply? In fact, in recent years, there has been an influx of inventions that can help people cope with food and water deficiencies. We can produce water out of the moisture in the air, grow vegetables without soil, desalinate seawater into fresh drinking water, and now we can even produce meat without animals.

It seems as though we have defeated nature. But in truth, we haven’t. It is our own nature that’s developing these wonderful inventions, and it is our own nature that will prevent us from using them for people’s benefit. As long as we do not change who we are, life on Earth will not improve. In fact, they will go from bad to worse.

These inventions enable us not to worry about anything and focus our attention on improving our societies, strengthening our bonds with one another, and solidifying our communities. But will we choose to use them in this way or will we choose to profit off of them, just as we are doing with the coronavirus vaccine? We all know the answer.

Life on Earth can be as good as it should be only when we change how we relate to one another; nothing else needs to change. People will be happy only when they live in solidarity with the people in their community, and the countries they live in are at peace with the rest of the countries. Our ill-will toward each other is the only cause of misery, and the only cure to our woes is changing our intentions from wanting to exploit or destroy each other to wanting to help and support one another. Until we change our bad thoughts about each other, water and food from (almost) thin air will be just two more disappointments on the pain-filled road humanity has been treading since the dawn of time.

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Comment: The holiday of Hanukkah is called the celebration of the victory of light over darkness, purity over conformism, spirituality over corporeality. And I think, clearly this is not only a Jewish holiday. The whole world is now on the threshold of victory or defeat of light over darkness.

My Response: There are actually no Jewish holidays. This is the interaction between the quality of bestowal, love, and the quality of reception, hatred, which always fight with each other.

Question: Was there a day in history when the forces of light defeated darkness?

Answer: Yes. The forces of connection.

Question: The forces of connection, of love, suddenly defeated the darkness in this egoistic, dark world of ours. Was there such a fragment in history?

Could you reveal it? How can we expand this fragment now and bring it to the present? Everyone is interested in the present time and only few people are interested in history. How can we bring light, the holiday of Hanukkah to this melancholy, to this despondency of humanity?

Answer: In general, this is a constant, ecumenical opposition between Rome and Jerusalem. Rome is power, it is strength, the conquest of Europe, the conquest of all the savage tribes that lived in Europe then. It is no secret that almost until the 10th century people there lived in trees, underground, and so on. There was barbarism in Europe, and they ate each other.

And Jerusalem wanted to bring to the world a completely different law: the law not of power, not of supremacy of authority, but of the spirit. This was the motto, the goal of Jerusalem. Of course, people were not ready for this.

Question: Is this the time when the Temple was built on the height of love for the neighbor?

Answer: Yes, for a thousand years from the 10th century before our era to year zero of our era, there was a struggle of what would overcome. Eventually, Judea fell. And at the end, when it was already crushed, during the fall, there was a great uprising. It was led by the Maccabees. It was the Maccabees who were carrying this light. This last surge in the fight for ideals marked Hanukkah.

Question: This was a fragment of history. How can we transfer it to our time? What is Hanukkah for the world today?

Answer: Hanukkah is an image of light, bestowal, love, connection of all and everything no matter at what level. The main thing is the good attitude of everyone toward everyone, above all prejudices, religions, philosophies, above everything.

In this dark time, there is an opportunity to tell the world what it should be like. This is because the advantage of light is precisely over darkness. And also because the world today, during these 2,000 years, has already been completely imbued with this ideology of Romans and Greeks.

Question: That is, with complete materialism?

Answer: Yes. Since the world has realized where it is heading, where it is, and also its end, today it is already possible to tell, explain, and try to pull the world to look in a different way, with different eyes. We are not going to conquer the world; we just want to explain to it that it is falling and that this is very threatening.

Question: So, is this holiday very relevant and necessary?

Answer: Of course.

Question: How can a person now light this little fire in himself?

Answer: It is very simple. We have nothing else left but to turn ourselves inside out, to begin to negotiate between all our hatreds, adversities, desires to destroy, humiliate, and subjugate each other, and so on. We should stop playing these games.

Today we can say: “Let us remember, let us see what those true ancient Maccabees, the Jews, were talking about.” They talked only about restoring the kingdom of understanding, mutual help, and love between all the people in the world. Not on an egoistic basis because it is impossible—we would be building something unsuccessful again—but on the basis on which the wisdom of Kabbalah is founded.

There is a force in nature that can reveal itself and subjugate our egoism. This will happen. I do not just believe it, I see it coming closer every day.

It is on the ruins of the old world, and now we see how its last bastion that is built on capital is crumbling, and crumbling, and crumbling, that a different world will be built: a world of mutual respect, love, opposite to the past one.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/7/20

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Question: Do you think that people of different nationalities and races should live in different countries?

Answer: I believe that we should gradually eliminate all differences between us and not feel that we are living in different countries. We exist together.

Question: Since we have not been able to arrange these connections for thousands of years, maybe it really is better to be separate?

Answer: No, we have to learn. There is nothing else that will help us. As we develop, mingling increases and there is no limit to it, just as there is no limit to our mutual hatred. We see this in America and in Europe.

In the places where mingling occurs—and it occurs spontaneously—no one really regulates it. We see from many signs how difficult it is for people to coexist with each other. There is only one possibility for us to correctly coexist to gradually annul all the barriers that exist between us.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/14/20

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My new article on Linkedin “Life After the Pandemic”

Since the wave of vaccinations has begun in the US, UK, and many other countries, people have received the news with a sense of relief accompanied by safety concerns and questions, according to recent polls conducted by public health institutions. One thing humanity can be sure of: The world will not return to the way it was before the virus. Even though the time is still too early to determine the nature and configuration of the world after the pandemic—the systems that will be rebuilt and how they will impact our lives—there is no doubt that a new line of thinking and behavior will dominate from now on.

A year has passed since the coronavirus appeared on the scene. Like teenagers who suddenly mature and look at their childish toys with disdain, or like young people who seek to stabilize and settle down after waking up with a hangover after a late night of overindulgence, so, too, is humanity destined to go through a similar process of maturation and sobering up.

Reality has changed, and people have undergone a psychological change. What was, will no longer be. What has happened is so much bigger than us, it is hard to digest before the fact. But I predict that when the population is healthy again and feels everything is ready to open up again, to travel from place to place, to hug and to get closer without masks and distance separating us, we will discover that we have grown up.

We have moved to a new stage in our human development. Therefore, our inner world will not be as it was yesterday. We will understand that we are not who we were before the outbreak of the coronavirus, that we lost our taste for meaningless stuff, for acquiring things only for the sake of having them, for working as slaves, earning and spending compulsively. We will feel that we are no longer attracted to the same pastimes and they will appear frivolous and unfulfilling.

Our frenzied consumerism is one of the areas in which we have changed the most. We have realized that we do not need countless shopping malls, restaurants, or stadiums filled with players and fans. Our desires have changed drastically. There are those who will return to the routine and find that it no longer suits them, and there are those who will not want to leave their house at all and feel that it is better for them to work from home—not only for women, for whom this is usually a comfortable life setting, but for men alike.

Why is it so? Because living in the home, in the arms of the family, is a comfortable and good life, efficient and peaceful, free of traffic jams, waiting in lines and unnecessary pressures. So why dress up, spend hours in the car, and spend half a day in superficial posturing? It is better and cheaper to sit in your pajamas at home and make calls from the garden, or to work calmly on your laptop while sitting on the balcony. Working from home pays off in many unexpected ways.

It is a win-win situation for both employees and their employers. Business can be very efficiently run remotely, in addition to affording huge savings in office expenses. People also become more efficient when working from home, since with fewer distractions than in their traditional workplace it’s easier to focus on finishing their tasks instead of wasting time.

Once this benefit permeates all stratas of society, the relationship that the pandemic has established between us, the same social distance that has kept us from getting infected, will be better for us in the end. The habit of moving away from each other will become second nature, and it will also form the basis for the new future relationships that we have yet to forge between us.

It is currently too early to talk about advanced stages in the social relationships between us. The slowdown and cooling that come from nature are still growing on us and becoming comfortable for us. They dictate the spirit of the new period. If we peek further ahead, this situation will not satisfy us in the long run. A kind of lethargy and helplessness, darkness before light, must set in to open up a new space for spiritual connection with others to be revealed, a push for a new kind of human relationship. Only then will we be able to feel cured of the pandemic of divisiveness and will we attain a fulfilling life and healthy society.
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My new article on Linkedin “In the Days of Post-Covid”

Now that mass vaccination is around the corner, it seems as though everyone will return to the 2019 way of life, before the coronavirus took over human civilization. But I think we’re in for a surprise. Once everyone is healthy and we can all travel and do what we were used to doing, I think we will discover we have moved on from our previous lives. We have begun a new stage in our development. I don’t think people will run back to working in offices, though some will do. I don’t think people will fall back into the “travelmania” that engulfed the world like a pandemic prior to Covid-19, and I don’t think we will go out as much as we did, even though it will be safe.

I think we have grown a little, become more settled. It is said that humans are social beings and need people around them, but are we really so? We need jobs because we need an income, so we socialize with colleagues, but are we social beings? We also need confirmation, which we can only get from other people, so we have to communicate with others, try to dominate them, get their approval or make them subordinate to us. But these are not social needs; they are selfish needs that require satisfaction.

It seems to me that the coronavirus has given us new joys in being with ourselves or with our families and enjoying this more than competing with the world for power and prestige the way we did before, often for lack of choice. Clearly, not everyone has changed in this way, but I’m sure that enough people have changed to make the shift felt, lasting, and growing.

When we’re young, we look at others and imitate what they do. As we grow up, we develop a more individual personality and our instinctive tendency to follow the herd diminishes. I think that humanity is going through a similar phase. We will begin to ask ourselves more often, “What for? Is it worth it? Will I get any real benefit out of doing what everyone is doing?”

I still don’t know what will replace our old pleasures, what will come instead of traveling, for example. To a great extent, this depends on opinion leaders and people at the top, who want to entice us into spending money on things that don’t give us any lasting satisfaction since it’s lucrative for them. But either way, it seems to me that we have come down from our pre-Covid frenzy and will now be more settled, composed, or in other words, mature.

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Medium published my new article “Legal Drugs — The Convenient Way to Cull People”

On November 3, Oregonians decided on something more than their choice for the president of the United States; they chose to decriminalize personal use of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other hard drugs. “Today’s victory is a landmark declaration that the time has come to stop criminalizing people for drug use,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which led the initiative. According AP News, “The Oregon Academy of Family Physicians,” who support the measure, said that “One in 11 Oregonians is addicted to drugs.” We’re not talking about recreational, occasional use of marijuana; we are talking about addiction to hard drugs, the kinds that make you commit crimes just in order to get another dose, and to do it every day. One out of eleven people in Oregon are in that state.

As I see it, the authorities don’t want these people clean; they want them dead. And until they die, they want to keep them from harming other people, so they will allow them to get their daily dose until they stone themselves away. Sooner, rather than later, the state will realize that it’s best to open distribution centers just like today’s soup kitchens, dispense each one their daily dose, and send them back happy and off the streets, away from the (dwindling) regular population.

The Oregon decision also states that “Instead of going to trial and facing possible jail time, a person would have the option of paying a $100 fine or attending new ‘addiction recovery centers’ funded by millions of dollars of tax revenue from Oregon’s legalized, regulated marijuana industry.” However, I don’t think anyone is taking this part of the decision seriously, for two reasons: 1. If drug addicts had $100 they would buy drugs with them, not pay fines. 2. No one truly recovers from drug addiction. And because of it, the authorities are trying to keep them quiet until they wither away.

I can understand why the state would want to put out drug addicts. From the perspective of the authorities, the world is already grossly overpopulated, so tacit culling is the most reasonable solution. If we don’t see a reason for having that many people in the world, then we should find a (preferably) humane way of shrinking the population.

But there is a reason why we are here. Humanity is becoming more crowded precisely because we are meant to connect, not to stay apart in our own little slots. Our unwillingness to connect is why we suffer, since reality is forcing us to be in constant contact with people, while our antagonism toward people grows relentlessly. When the chasm between our growing narcissism and compulsory connection to people becomes unbearable, we seek refuge. Some find it in violence, others in various forms of escapism, including substance abuse, and most everyone finds it in depression.

There is only one solution to this mess: education toward connection. There is a reason why so many people, with such different views and attitudes to life, exist in the world. If we look at the world from a bird’s eye view, we will find that what we experience as dissonance is actually diversity. From a higher perspective, the contradictions on the ground create a beautiful, rich embroidery of colors and streams that weave together to become the fabric of life. Imagine oceans without land, mountains without valleys, forests without deserts, males without females, life without death, summer without winter or fall without spring. Everything we know about life comes from distinguishing one thing from its opposite. Life is not one state; it is the flow between them, from one extreme to the other.

If we were aware of it, and if we knew that this diversity is here for us to enjoy, we would be grateful for the things that irritate us because they are different from us. In fact, we wouldn’t feel them as irritation but as life’s pulse, telling us when it’s time to stream on to the next phase. Our struggle with life would be over and we would not need to run away from it. We would realize what is our purpose in being here — to grasp life in all its depth and richness — and we would never want to get away.

There is no solution to substance abuse except to show people that they are here in order to connect with one another in gratitude, and especially toward those who are different from us since we and they together make the stream of life flow. Alone, each of us is nothing. Together, we are life.
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