Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

Poverty Will Not Be Eliminated In The 21st Century

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Brookings): “Over a billion people worldwide live on less than $1.25 a day. But that number is falling. This has given credence to the idea that extreme poverty can be eliminated in a generation.

“The World Bank has recently set a goal to reduce extreme poverty around the world to under 3 percent by 2030. It is unlikely that this goal can be achieved by stronger than expected growth across the developing world, or greater income equality within each developing country, alone. Both factors are needed simultaneously.”

My Comment: A trend should be completely different—not to increase production in struggling regions as there is already too much production in the world, but to evenly distribute the products necessary for rational existence.
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Global Shock As Manufacturing Contracts In US And China

Global Shock As Manufacturing Contracts In US And ChinaIn the News (from The Telegraph): “Manufacturing has begun to contract in the US and China for the first time since the Lehman crisis, raising fears of a synchronized downturn in the world’s two largest economies.

“The closely-watched ISM index of US factories tumbled through the ‘boom-bust line’ of 50 to 49, far below expectations. It is the lowest since the depths of the crisis in mid-2009 and a clear sign that US budget cuts are starting to squeeze the economy.

“The news came hours after HSBC said its index for China also fell below 50, a major inflexion point for the world’s industrial workshop.

“’This is not a good moment for the world economy,’ said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC.’ The manufacturing indices came in weaker than expected in China, Korea, India and Russia, and then we got America’s ISM.

“’We thought we had a clear picture that the US was recovering, Japan was printing money and were we’re back to happy days, and now suddenly a huge spanner has been thrown in the works.’”

My Comment: There are uncompromising laws of nature, which in any case will destroy the previous (egoistic, consumer) economy and will inevitably lead us to suffering. Feeling it, we will quickly agree to change our nature to the good connection in a united community.
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Against The Egoistic Urge

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that all of humanity is one closed system that cannot be awakened. In his time a man from the Vernadsky Academy and his followers wrote about this. Today this has become clear to all, but you still get the sense that it’s possible to handle the system as it is, to correct its orientation.

Answer: They are trying to do this with the European Union, but are they succeeding? And the Americans are also trying to act, from a supposition that the world is mutually linked. But both in America and in Europe they don’t understand this system of mutual linkage. The Americans have wasted billions of dollars on Iraq, and what has this brought? Nothing, they have only destroyed the nation, destroyed connections, and no more than this. And now America needs to leave quietly.

What happened in Europe? Haven’t they transformed the Common Market into a “collective market?” They decided one-sidedly to “link” everyone with everyone. Certainly this only led to a crisis discovered in an even greater form. It’s not known if they can simply disconnect previous affiliations.

Question: Is it possible to manage this system somehow?

Answer: It’s impossible if people don’t change. The person needs to change. He needs to think differently, to feel the world as integral and himself as a part of the integral world. This doesn’t exist in people. We are still egoists and nobody thinks that the whole world depends on him or that he depends on the whole world. This doesn’t appear in us.

The idea is that general rules operate here, absolutely different laws and trends. We have risen to such a level of human development where integral laws operate. These are laws of an analog system where everyone depends on everyone. The beginning, end, middle, everything is mutually linked and at every moment everything is found in balance, like a self-regulating system that supports and stabilizes itself.

All of nature is like this and we need to become like it to be within it: To begin to feel all of nature, the communication, the harmony, the integrality, and ourselves as an inseparable part of it. But for the sake of this, we need to change ourselves completely and not enter it with our egoistic “boots.” We need to bring ourselves constantly to the level of a life of social participation, equality, to a level of mutuality. This is not found in us at all; and this is work that we need to do against our egoistic inclinations.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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How To Combat Drugs

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from European Parliament News): “One in four adults in Europe – more than 85 million people – have tried illicit drugs at some point in their lives. But is the situation getting better or worse? A new report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction gives all the facts, such as that 73 new psychoactive substances were sold for the first time in the EU in 2012. …

“The good news is that there are fewer new users of heroin and less injecting, while the use of cannabis and cocaine is going down in some countries. However, there are concerns over synthetic stimulants and new psychoactive substances being offered, both legally and illegally.

My Comment: The world is forced to give up smoking—to turn to drugs. This kills in an inexpensive and silent way….
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We Need To Think About The Future!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The years 2008 through 2009 showed the world stumbling into a crisis, the like of which had not been seen until now, and it was clear that those practices and methods that had worked in the past don’t work now. Independent observers, economists, speak about this more and more. We are entering a new kind of era. Where are we going and why doesn’t what worked before, work now?

Answer: Ten years ago, there already were some people in the world who understood that a crisis had begun.

If we look at the past from a greater distance, from the second half of the last century, representatives of the Club of Rome began to speak about an end to the egoistic development of humanity. Their view was based on this: The earth had completed its task, all of its resources were no longer being renewed, and this could not continue. We need to think about our children and in addition, about their descendants.

After this, ecologists took the stage to protect the ecological condition of the earth and claiming that it is impossible to continue this kind of contamination. The oceans and the air are polluted, trees are cut down, etc. It follows that we are not just depleting the contents of the earth, but are polluting it with industrial wastes so that for hundreds and even thousands of years this will remain the primary condition. The earth cannot process it, and it will not go away.

For example, the problem of plastic is an immense problem that doesn’t seem to have any solution. It cannot be so easy to live like this in the present, for although we think that humanity is wise, it is necessary in spite of it all to consider the future!

Why do we behave like this? After all, ultimately nobody will profit from this. We see that this only adds “green paper” to particular bank accounts, but  generally, nobody gets anything.

Gradually, the crisis has passed into a parallel form. It began with the development of a crisis in the family. The number of divorces reached 50%, then there was a crisis in science. People stopped continuing with it, and most space programs have closed. The crisis between fathers and sons began to gain momentum. Humanity is on drugs, depressed, suicidal, and in complete chaos.

Ultimately, we came to a financial and economic crisis. We confuse these two crises, linking them together, but basically, this is not so important. What is important is that all of the crises are crises of mutual relationships between us. The most recent financial crisis particularly revealed the deterioration of the irrational and egoistic relationships between humans, for finance is that system through which we are linked.

If not for the present system of buying and selling, if we didn’t need to profit from each other, people would not be interconnected. Therefore, the financial crisis is the last in a long chain of crises about which we can do nothing except uncover all the defects and flaws of modern society.

Moreover, society had to reach them. Throughout all of the history of humanity, we acted according to our nature. An ego that constantly grew evolved from generation to generation, so humanity developed evolutionarily. This doesn’t exist in the plant world or in the animal world, only in humans.

Therefore, we are found in what is called progress all the time; it is only conditionally called progress. Now, we have finally reached awareness that we are found in a deep crisis, but what else can be done and what is its nature? Humanity has not yet decided definitively. We are standing at that point.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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“Humanity’s Last Chance”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (from LaRouche): “An international conference of the Schiller Institute took place in Germany on April 13-14, dedicated to a new paradigm for the survival of mankind, with panels on ‘Hope for the Future,’ ‘Energy Security in the 21st Century,’ ‘Eurasian Integration,’ and ‘Life after the Euro.’ Representatives of 27 countries took part, among them a delegation of the Izborsk Club composed of Alexander Nagorny, Mikhal Delyagin, and Andrei Fursov.

“‘We’re in a situation now, where mankind is in the greatest danger of virtual extinction of the species ever known to us in historical times. …[N]ever before, since prehistorical times, has mankind ever faced a danger to the human species as great as the world as a whole faces today,’ said Lyndon LaRouche. He explained that billions of people are doomed to die of hunger or disease, unless we change the current global system by which mankind is ruled.

“’The policy being implemented … is to reduce the world’s population to somewhat on the order of magnitude of 1 or 1.2 billion people. That policy is a policy of deliberate genocide.’ LaRouche said that Barack Obama was implementing precisely this policy, worldwide, including the USA, Russia, and the Middle East. He added that the Queen of England, through her puppets in the European Union, and through the euro itself, was imposing the same policy on the nations of Central and Southern Europe.”

“Current economic problems are only a particular expression of a systemic crisis of mankind, a crisis whose character is changing. The most important developments, as usual, are taking place outside the realm of the economy. They involve a fundamental change in mankind’s relationship to nature.

“Meanwhile, since the beginning of globalization, the development of technology has turned the shaping of consciousness into the most profitable type of business that is easy for people to get into. Being ‘the most profitable that it is easy to get into’ makes it also the most widespread. This means that a person’s main preoccupation now is no longer to change the world around him, but to shape his own mind. Mankind’s very mode of action is changing. In our entire history as a biological species, there has never before been such a transformation.

“The human mind is being turned into an object of the most intense and chaotic influences. The appearance of a huge number of feedback links makes the world more difficult to grasp. This lessened intelligibility of the world increases demand for mysticism and reduces the thirst for science, and therefore, for education, too. Education then degenerates into a tool of social control. Mankind is becoming more primitive and dehumanized, sliding into a new Dark Age.

“The purely economic aspect of the current crisis is the state of decay of the global monopolies. …Therefore, the decay of the global monopolies will continue until it leads to a breakdown into depression. Due to lack of demand, the single global market will disintegrate into an intricate system of macro-regions; the reduced size of the markets will lead to the loss of a number of technologies and to technogenic catastrophes.

“The macro-regions will engage in harsh and chaotic cultural, political, economic, and technological competition, as in the period between the First and Second World Wars. Perhaps the very formation of these macro-regions will limit the absolute power and, therefore, the decay of the global monopolies; despite their power, their access to the macro-regions of “others” will be limited. That is precisely why this scenario is unacceptable to the global ruling class and the U.S. leadership, which comes closest to expressing the interests of that class. They prefer to plunge potential macro-regions into chaos, rather than allow them to hive off from global markets that are controlled by the global monopolies.

“The fundamental problem of development today, however, is not the egoism of the United States, not the lack of liquidity, and not the debt crisis, but the lack of a source of economic growth in the United States, and along with it, in the entire world economy.

“One manifestation of the exhaustion of the liberal paradigm is the elimination of the middle class.

“After all, democracy exists on behalf of and in the name of the middle class. After its downfall, democracy will degenerate into a new dictatorship, based on the reshaping of minds. This will complete the process of dehumanization and the repudiation of civilization. We will see the West reject individual sovereignty and self-consciousness, that most important achievement of the Enlightenment, and revert to the Middle Ages—perhaps because of a disaster that smashes the public and individual psyche. The first step in this direction has already been taken: Descartes’ maxim, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ has been replaced by a more profitable business formula: not even ‘I consume,’ but rather ‘I buy, therefore I am.’

“Traditional democracy and the market have come to an end; we just haven’t recognized this fact yet. … Thus, a painful and deep retrogression awaits us, with considerable loss of life: a kind of plunge into a new Dark Age…” Source: The Schiller Institute

My Comment: What is written above reflects the view of many researchers. No one offers a solution that comes anywhere close to Integral Education because due to an absence of the method of correction of man, no one believes in changing a human being, and thus in the emergence of a more developed society that is, most importantly, more similar to Nature (the Creator).
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There Is No Need In Creating New Jobs

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (from CNN): “The ‘failed’ policies of austerity must be rejected and focus instead turn to job creation, international union representatives said during a meeting of global leaders in Paris Tuesday.

“Members of the International Trade Union Confederation, speaking at the Organisation for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD) Forum, said the world needed to shift its focus as harsh austerity measures had been unable to pull troubled nations such as those in the eurozone out of recession.

“Richard Trumka, of the AFL-CIO union in the U.S., said austerity had ‘totally and utterly failed,’ destroying millions of jobs, driving economies into recession and choking recovery.

“It had created a ‘lost generation’ of youth that economies and societies could not afford, he added.

“Burrow called for a 1 trillion euro investment into infrastructure as a way to create jobs and combat the financial crisis.

“Polling conducted by the unions and presented at the conference showed seven countries — Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, UK and the U.S. – supported, by a huge majority, investments in education, research and new technologies.”

My Comment: No activities will help reduce unemployment. There is no need in factories that are being shut down now and in millions of similar businesses that will be closed in the near future. It is necessary to direct people into a different area of occupation: correction of our nature from egoism to correct mutual connection through the method of integral upbringing. This will create millions of jobs, will engage all layers of society, and will create a good atmosphere.
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The Collapse Of The EU Is Only A Matter Of Time

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Bernd Lucke, founder and leader of the Alternative for Germany): “’My reaction is that the euro splits Europe,’ he said. ‘It is actually dividing the European nations as it involves a heavy economic burden on those countries.’

“’The euro is not a currency under which the European project can prosper,’ he said. ‘There is a division of Europe now and this is going to become bigger in the future…’

“’There are parts of the German media that try to communicate this idea that we are a Right-wing populist organisation, but we argue against that because I think we have serious and realistic goals. Not populist goals. We are dissatisfied voters of all major German parties who long for the dissolution of the euro.’”

My Comment: The collapse will be even more terrible than the fall of the Soviet Union!
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A Network That Nourishes Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The kind of network in which we now live is found in crisis.  Yet we are gradually passing to the next state which is stabilizing anyway.  What is this harmonious state that all of nature reaches when it leaves the crisis?

Answer: This is a state in which a person will transform, become integral, mutually linked.  He will think about everyone as partners in one system. What was obviously a purely theoretical plan will be clearly seen—a complete mutual connection in the world.

Moreover, this mutual connection doesn’t depend on everyone on the face of the earth being aware of all the rest through a chain of five people, or that what one person thinks in one place will immediately appear in another part of the world.  These are basic things.  We are in fact linked between us, like an underground mycelium within a network of roots, with all roots, with all plants, and so forth.

This network holds us, we live in it, are nourished by it.  This is beginning to be discovered now.  To the degree that we accommodate ourselves to it, we benefit; we understand how to live better, how to arrange ourselves in this new level, in this new world that is discovered.  If we don’t want to follow it, then nature will oblige us to do this through its pressure, and this pressure can be very tragic.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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Start Corresponding To Nature Instead Of Trying To Make Nature Correspond To You

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is it that the majority of people fail to notice that their desires are seriously changing?

Answer: Because there is nothing to replace them with. They are failing to see the crisis because the mass media presents information in a way that benefits those who pay and organize it. This must make it easier for someone to stay in power.

The problem is that there is no other solution. If you were to turn to the same government or mass media and ask: “And what do you propose?” They have nothing to offer, and because we do not have anything else, we continue to “smile at a bad performance.” We have no other option. But on the inside, we are all shaking because we do not know what will come next. People just want to live a peaceful, pleasant day. And those in power feel the same way.

This is why I always explain that people are the ones who need to change whenever I talk to people. Mankind has reached a completely different level of development; we need to stop breaking nature, making it suit us. Instead, we need to break ourselves to correspond to nature, and this is a completely new stage.

People often react to this the following way: “So what can we do? We cannot change people. No one will listen to us. You are proposing a fantasy, plans that can never become real. So let things stay the way they are, and we will see what happens later. What can we do, life will…”

All hands are raised when faced with problems that change people because people need to become integral beings and their lifestyle needs to become united with the full understanding that they depend on one another. This is the only way for them to come to harmony with nature and begin to receive good forces from it.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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