In the News (from InoPressa): “Even four years ago the UN has warned that humanity is entering an era of extreme weather events. Events that used to be registered once in 100 or 200 years are to be repeated every few years.

“The world community has the opportunity to discuss pressing issues in the climate conference, which opens in Warsaw. But one should not expect any radical decisions. Scientists believe that the human race will be able to stay within the global temperature increase to two degrees Celsius, which is considered to be the limit, beyond which we face a disaster.

“But two degrees is the average for the planet, it should be noted that in Europe the rise in temperature can be up to 6 degrees, and such a summer, as the summer of 2003, when heat caused death of tens of thousands of people, will be repeated annually. The era of extreme performance began for everyone.”

My Comment: Even if we stopped polluting the atmosphere, land, and oceans; even if we were able to remove everything that we had contaminated, returned the environment to the state of the last century, we would still have experienced blows of nature, only perhaps in a different form. This attitude of nature toward us stems from our opposition to its integrality, interdependence, and community. Until we heal ourselves, we will not stop being a cancerous tumor in the body of nature, we will not stop bringing about increasing blows of the elements.
[120452]

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In the News (from ITAR-TASS): “In the near future, millions of people around the world may be in extreme poverty, providing only their physical survival. The middle class is being eroded by the fact that there is an increasing stratification between the rich and the poor. This year, the unemployment rate will reach a record high of 200 million people. …

“Scientists point out that chronic poverty is characterized by the point of no return, after which the hopes for changes for the better are lost. Usually, it takes three years, spent in extremely difficult circumstances. Over the past ten years, the number of poor people who display extreme passivity with respect to life has increased dramatically. They accept their plight and do not believe that they can change things for the better; they do not even want to look for some kind of work.

“The situation seems hopeless to the poor segments of society, and they are not ready to rise internally.”

My Comment: That is why integral education, which can give relief to the masses through unity, is especially desirable for them. As Marx wrote and Baal HaSulam emphasized, that he addressed not the bourgeoisie, but the oppressed masses, calling them to change themselves, to change society (See Baal HaSulam “The Last Generation”).

But as they distorted religion, replacing the commandment “Love thy neighbor” with only carrying out the requirements mechanically (See Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose“), so they ignored Marx’s message about changing society by changing the human being, thinking that it was possible to compel people to be altruistic by the force of KGB pressure. We must bring the method of integral education to the masses, and proceeding from changes in themselves, they will rebuild public relationships.
[120366]

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In the News (from The Telegraph): “The children of rich parents are put under so much pressure to succeed they are at an increased risk of suffering of mental illness, a study has claimed.

“Scientists found that children from homes with an annual income of more than £100,000 ($160,000 US) a year were suffering anxiety and depression at twice the normal rate of their less well-off peers.

“Researchers found issues such as eating disorders, drug abuse, neuroses and self harming were soaring among wealthy teenagers.

“It is thought the relentless pressure being piled on youngsters both at school and in extra-curricular activities is leading to increased feelings of vulnerability.”

My Comment: The reason for this is that they are being pressured by parents and competition among peers; they continue to live in full capitalism, while their poorer peers are in a more sociable environment.
[120303]

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In the News (from Pravda): “The indicator of the level of GDP is increasingly criticized. According to experts, this is not a good indicator of social welfare. GDP cannot estimate the international flow of income, production of services by households, destruction of the environment, quality of social relations, economic and personal security, health and life expectancy.

“GDP increases when growing crime, pollution, disasters and public health threats entail costs for protective or remedial actions. Economists suggest using the ‘happiness index’ instead of GPD. The UN has adopted a resolution that happiness should be included among development indicators.

“Despite the broad public interest in the happiness index, this indicator is purely subjective. From the point of view of each individual, the state of happiness is considered the highest achievement, which include all the other desired acquisitions: intellect, wealth, health, fame, love, peace, children, joy, and so on.”

“Otto von Bismarck said about happiness: ‘For happiness one needs to be healthy, to be rich and to be a fool. Without the latter, the first two qualities do not matter!’”

My Comment: The method of integral development of man creates a feeling of happiness outside ourselves, collective, and the quality of being a fool is no longer necessary for happiness!
[120190]

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In the News (from Russian Bazaar): “Once the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. Almost everyone had a house, a couple of good cars and the ability to provide a comfortable life for his family. However, the bulk of this was done on credit – but at least then people had the ability to pay their loans on time.

“Unfortunately, those days are over. In today’s America, prices, unlike revenue, grow at an astounding pace; jobs are scarce, and most of the created jobs are low paying.

“In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families plunge deeper into debt, and millions of others are forced to seek help from the authorities.

“Unfortunately, today’s politicians do nothing while jobs go overseas, inflation destroys purchasing power, and the middle class continues to shrink.”

My Comment: This is the natural tendency of the evolution of egoistic society. No attempts by the government to prevent a further decline in the standard of living and in the feeling of wellbeing will bring any result. Ahead, is the prolonged agony of the thousand-year period of the human egoistic development and an enforced (by suffering) or voluntarily (by awareness) change to the altruistic development and the achievement of universal unity toward the similarity with the Creator.
[120033]

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Opinion (Dr. Erich Fromm, German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher):

WALLACE: Recently, Dr. Fromm said: “There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958, but …’He added, ‘if the United States goes on in the direction it is now taking, it is in serious danger of destroying itself.” We’ll find out why in a moment.

FROMM: I would say, if I would put it generally, because in our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good – goods – we have transformed means into ends. We’ve wanted to produce more in the 19^th century and the 20^th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life; but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means – have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy. …

I think his work is to a large extent, meaningless, because he is not related to it. He is increasingly part of a big machinery, social machinery, governed by a big bureaucracy……and I think American man unconsciously hates his work very often, because he feels trapped by it…imprisoned by it… because he feels that he is spending most of his energy for something which has no meaning in itself.

WALLACE: In writing about men in America, you’ve said frequently – you’ve talked frequently – about what you call “the marketing orientation.” What do you mean by “the marketing orientation,” Dr. Fromm?

FROMM: I mean by that, that our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality – or as one says sometimes, our “personality package” – for something. …

WALLACE: So, his sense of his own value must, therefore, depend upon what the market, in this sense, is willing to pay for it…

FROMM: Exactly, just as a handbag which cannot be sold because there is not enough demand is, economically speaking, useless. And if the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless. So does a man who considers himself as a thing, and if he is not successful to sell himself, he feels he is a failure. …

WALLACE: Let’s talk about man in relation to his love, his marriage.

FROMM: Well, I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being -of becoming one with another being. And yet, I would say that love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a…as something one falls in. But the question is that one cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love. And that means that loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.

WALLACE: Why is it so difficult for us to be in love, as human beings? What is wrong with us, as you see it?

FROMM: Because we are concerned with things. We are concerned with success. We are concerned with money. We are concerned with instrumentalities. And the most important things we talk about on Sundays are things to which we pay very little attention. …

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people – many people even with their wives and husbands. And we substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow. …

I think if you would ask people what their concept of Heaven is, and if they were honest, they would say it’s a kind of big department store with new things every week, and enough money to buy everything new. … Happiness should be something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness – awareness, responsiveness, to everything in life – to man, to nature.

My Comment: It is written beautifully, in the form of an appeal, but the solution is not given. The only solution is to change human nature. But since it is not in our hands—although many understand that this is the only solution—no one speaks about it. The absence of the possibility to change the human being is accepted in silence. But when the suffering increases, and not only the suffering of egoistic slavery, but the plagues of Egypt begin, then people will agree to check the solution proposed by Kabbalah: integral education.
[119989]

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In the News (from The Atlantic): “By sending every adult and child $3,000 a year, the government could achieve historic poverty reductions. Think of it as Social Security for all, not just the elderly….

“The upside of giving everybody about $3,000 is that it’s a very easy policy to run and a surefire way to cut poverty in half. But it’s a large program: it would require about $907 billion in 2012, or 5.6 percent of the nation’s GDP. …

“Could we afford it? Sure. For starters, we could raises taxes, first on the rich, who would pay more in new taxes than they would receive in basic income, and then on lower-middle class and poor families, who would come out ahead. There is also plenty of room to cut tax expenditures on homeowners, personal retirement accounts, capital gains exclusions at death, and exclusions on annuity investment returns. This submerged welfare state for the affluent costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year. There is also the matter of the $700 billion military budget, which could take some trimming. …

“The appeal of such a program is immense. You get a check from the government every month no matter how much you make or how much you work. Maybe that will convince a few Americans work isn’t worth it anymore—but the vast majority who will probably continue to work won’t have to worry about losing their check as they move up the income ladder. That security might not just keep people out of poverty. It might let workers demand better wages and working conditions, because they know they always have something to fall back on. In other words, it could level the playing field for the bottom 99 percent.”

My Comment: Thus, we see that the idea of the equal rational provision for the population is being born. There will be less and less work. But it is necessary to occupy people, and with what if not with the method of integral education and upbringing, which will completely heal society.
[119924]

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In the News (from Reuters): “One of every seven Americans will take a hit on Friday when a $5 billion cut in food stamps, the first across-the-board reduction in the history of the decades-old federal program, takes effect.

“But if conservative Republicans in Congress get their way, this week’s pullback may be just a taste of what’s to come for some of the almost 48 million Americans who receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“SNAP, the largest U.S. anti-hunger program, is designed to help poor people – most of them children, disabled or elderly – buy food. But enrollment has doubled and the program’s cost has nearly tripled since 2004, and has remained at record levels even as the economy improves and unemployment declines.”

“For those wondering about abuse or fraud in the program, here’s a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report (pdf) on “trafficking” in the food-stamp program. Between 2009 and 2011, about $858 million worth of food stamps, or just 1.3 percent of all benefits, were traded at a discount for cash.” Source: The Washington Post

“According to the UN, today more than a billion of people in the world suffer from starvation. Experts believe that the problem can not be solved within the current political-economic paradigm framework. …

“Lappe, Collins and Rosset in their book dispelled another myth about hunger. They have denied the widespread belief that the world produces not enough food. In reality, the main problem is the abundance, not deficit. The planet produces enough food to provide every person 3,500 calories a day, and this calculation does not include meat, vegetables, fruit, fish and other foods. Today, the world produces so much food that everyone can get about 1.7 kg of food per day – about 800 grams of products produced from grain (bread, cereal, pasta, etc.), approximately 0.5 kg of fruits and vegetables, and about 400 grams of meat, eggs, milk and so on. The problem is that people are too poor to buy themselves food.” Source: The Voice of Russia

My Comment: It is only our egoism that does not allow everyone to live with dignity, in abundance. The same situation exists with all other goods. Until we correct ourselves, change our nature from egoistic to altruistic, there will be hunger, disease, and inequality in the world. Only one force governs in us—egoism, and in order to balance it we need the second force, opposite to it—altruism.

It can be obtained only by the method of integral education (IE). Through this technique, a practical application of the wisdom of Kabbalah for the correction of the human being, can realize the biblical call to “love your neighbor as yourself.” According to the program of development of nature we must change ourselves by force or voluntarily. By force is under the pressure of great suffering. Voluntarily is through integral education and upbringing.
[119819]

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Question: For several years  I have been involved with dissemination via the Internet. From that course that we are going through now, the sensation is that this is an absolutely unnecessary occupation compared to physical dissemination. Can  I leave the job of dissemination on the Internet and get involved with higher priority activities?

Answer: I don’t think that we should abandon the Internet. It’s preferable to try to find forms and places on it that will be more useful.

Unfortunately, the Internet is gradually becoming “dull” and is beginning to kill itself. People are becoming stupefied, the young are becoming stupefied, most of them are satisfied with short messages. The virtual image of communication is short and limited expressions. I don’t think that there is a great future behind it.

Perhaps there will be a technological breakthrough and we will begin to communicate via electronic means so that we can provide each other with the entire fullness of communication, not limited in size or by time. Just press a button and we will be able to communicate directly with many people, with all kinds of groups, to see everyone and feel each other as if we are sitting together around a single table. Everything has to be simple and easy.

If the technical media will give us the illusion of natural communication, then there is a future for the Internet. In the meantime, in spite of it all, it will wither. People will be interested in it less and less; it will begin to expire. After all, we pounced upon the Internet as on every innovation, thinking it would fill any emptiness in us. Yet it doesn’t fill them.

Therefore, in spite of the primitiveness of the generation that doesn’t want to study or work, people simply “graze” on the Internet with nothing to do, out of despair. Nobody is involved with them, in the meantime we cannot involve them in integral education and there aren’t any government programs addressing this concern.

But basically, this will not last long. This must reach either a technological breakthrough where it will be easier for us to go out to people and influence them emotionally or people will simply abandon this means of communication because they will not find any meaning in it. Today nobody pays attention to what is written on the Internet. Who is interested in whose opinion? Who reads five hundred responses to some nonsense? People are tired not only with reading, but also with expressing their opinion.

I recommend not paying any particular attention to the Internet and not thinking that this will be a long lasting involvement. Humanity will very rapidly replace it.
[119178]
From a Talk About Dissemination 10/17/13

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Opinion (Vardan Baghdasaryan, PhD Historical Sciences, professor, Head of the department of history and political science at the Russian State University of Tourism and Service): “Liberalism is a great utopia. As a system, it never existed anywhere, and in principle, it could not exist. A person cannot exist outside of society. Yet, social life always imposes certain constraints, taboos. …

“Liberalism proclaims exactly the opposite program – removing the taboo. Liberalism developed as an ideology of removing social shackles – of religion, the state, the nation, family. Liberalism always existed in a paradoxical combination: freedom of some implied a lack of freedom for others. …

“The ancient Greeks put forward the idea of freedom while slavery prospered. Freedom did not extend to slaves.

“In the Middle Ages, slavery persisted. The most prosperous, free trading posts Genoa and Venice were the leading centers of slavery and the slave trade. Venetian slave trade was carried out throughout the Mediterranean. Not being a Venetian citizen, a slave was not a human being.

“The new time is characterized by the development of the idea of political freedom. But at the same time, the establishment of world colonialism takes place. During the period of colonial expansion, more than 80 million slaves were shipped from Africa. It is significant that among slaveholders there were many theorists of liberalism. The founding fathers of the United States – Presidents Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were owners of slave plantations. The value of freedom was wonderfully combined in their perception with non-freedom. The term “man” was still selective. The paradox of Russian liberals, serf-owners, had the same basis.

“Only in the 19^th century, was a ban on slavery introduced. But colonialist learned how to use the mechanisms of exploitation through indirect coercion. Direct physical slavery was replaced by economic slavery. The freedom of resource owners is still combined with the lack of freedom of others, who are now formally free.

“Liberalism today is a variant of neo-colonialism; it is the mechanism of non-violent economic slavery. …

“Fascism and liberalism are related phenomena; they are two variants of Western expansion in the world. Fascism is condemned. It is time to condemn liberal utopia.”

My Comment: Our natural egoism only changes its signs, but its essence and thus the socio-economic formation, exploitation, remains at all times the same. We are facing either the return to barbarism or universal integration of equal citizens through correcting human nature by means of integral education.
[119582]

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