Studies (from RBC.ru): “Back in the XX century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that making people work more than 40 hours a week was dangerous and expensive. The increase in working hours increases the risk of injury and the percentage of rejects. Productivity should grow through the introduction of new technologies and modernization. When manufacturers reduced the work week, their businesses become more productive and profitable. …

“Research has shown that workers engaged in intellectual labor are productive for not even eight hours a day, but six hours. …

“Research by the US military has shown that losing just one hour of sleep per night for a week will cause a level of cognitive degradation equivalent to a .10 blood alcohol level. …

“Each person in a modern civilized society ought to live, using the benefits of civilization itself. Otherwise life is meaningless. We are afraid of the end of the world, knowing that we ourselves are to blame for those disasters that our nature has prepared in response to our disrespectful attitude. A person should have time for himself.”

My Comment: Soon, a complete restructuring of our attitude to work will take place—to work as necessary to provide reasonable needs, about two hours a day, and the rest of the time will be dedicated to the process of correcting our nature from egoistic to altruistic by the method of integral education.
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In the News (from Komsomolskaya Pravda): “The crisis affects everybody. We are all paying the price for rampant consumption in recent years. … Experts compare the global economy with a huge pyramid. Some borrow from others; those borrow from a third. Sooner or later, one of the links in this chain will break, and the whole system will collapse. …

“The economic crisis is spreading. The last large-scale crisis the Great Depression led to the Second World War. At that time, the crisis began with a sudden fall in stock prices. That day went down in the history of the world economy as “Black Tuesday.” What awaits us this time? Is not this an option of the apocalypse?

My Comment: It will be the general restructuring of the attitude towards ourselves, the world, and life and its purpose. The crises are the labor pains of a new stage of our development towards unity and the revelation of the upper world that rules us.
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In the News (from CeBIT): “‘Shareconomy’ describes the societal shift from owning to sharing. According to Pörschmann, this is evident in several dimensions: ‘First, Shareconomy is profoundly influencing enterprise processes, because social media tools will become more and more popular. Second, the Internet is the place for teamwork, both in and outside the company. Partners, consultants, suppliers and customers will be more closely integrated as part of a networked process. The borders separating companies and organizations will become ever more transparent. Therefore, employees and managers must rethink and be prepared to share know-how, contacts and assets.’

“Modern tools that enable fast and comprehensive sharing are already reality in successful companies. …

“This is already apparent in the use of everyday products, where the strong trend is towards using instead of owning or renting instead of buying. ‘Car-sharing is becoming an increasingly popular form of mobility. Music portals based not on ownership but rather on time-defined usage are very popular,’ said Pörschmann.”

My Comment: In general, this is a socialistic principle. The decline in living standards forces us to be prepared to share what we have. Thus we will compensate for what is needed at an affordable price. So soon, we will come to the public (socialist) property. Nature pushes us to unite.
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Opinion (Angela Merkel, German Chancellor): “German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected suggestions on Friday that the worst was over for the euro zone, saying the currency bloc faced years of painful reforms, slow growth and high unemployment.

“’One reason I am careful with my forecasts is the adjustment process, the changes that we are going through are very difficult and painful, Merkel said.

She said the bloc would not see the fruits of labor market and other structural reforms for several years, with 2013 shaping up as another challenge.

“‘Next year, and the ECB president said this, we will have very low growth rates, we will see negative growth in some countries, and we can expect very high unemployment levels to continue,’ Merkel said.”

My Comment: No matter how gut-wrenching, they must move from propagandists to realists. Gradually, we will all get accustomed to the fact that we do not rule the world, but it is controlled by Nature, according to a strict program. Get to know it, and understand how to adapt to it; it is possible by  studying Kabbalah.
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In the News (from Espanarusa):“Education Coordinator of the Super-Parents organization appealed to Spanish parents with advice about how to tell a child about a difficult economic situation; it is important to avoid transmitting anxiety and fear, to explain that not only material benefits bring happiness. …

“Children need to understand that the crisis limits Christmas gifts. The child must feel surrounded by parental love and understand that whether he receives many or few presents, he, in any case is loved very much.”

My Comment: That’s right, due to the crisis, parents’ attention and love will be returned to children!
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In the News (from EUROPA, Eurospats): “In 2011, 119.6 million people, or 24.2% of the population, in the EU27 were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, compared with 23.4% in 2010 and 23.5% in 2008. This means that they were at least in one of the following three conditions: at-risk-of-poverty, severely materially deprived or living in households with very low work intensity. …

“In 2011, the highest shares of persons being at risk of poverty or social exclusion were recorded in Bulgaria (49%), Romania and Latvia (both 40%), Lithuania (33%), Greece and Hungary (both 31%), and the lowest in the Czech Republic (15%), the Netherlands and Sweden (both 16%), Luxembourg and Austria (both 17%).”

My Comment: This is only the beginning of the breaking of past economic relations. Only a policy of rational (required) standard of living, with full reduction of all other production and the implementation of integral re-education will lead humanity to similarity with the new natural relationships, to reveal the nature and evolution of society.
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In the News (from Spiegel International): ““The list of accomplishments this latest European Union summit was supposed to deliver was long: The euro zone was to receive a substantial push forward with a decisive redesign of the currency union’s architecture. There was even to be a new convention to rapidly adjust EU treaties to the realities of the changes occurring in the euro zone. …

“Yet by the time the 27 heads of state and government arrived in Brussels on Thursday evening, such ambition had been forgotten. It could be pre-Christmas exhaustion that got the better of the EU leaders, but enthusiasm for reform was nowhere to be found. One after another, they insisted that they would merely hold nonbinding talks about the deepening of the currency union. After nine hours of talks, the summit agreed on a five-page paper that, while called a ‘roadmap,’ is little more than a vague outline for the next six months. Indeed, the most concrete date mentioned is June 2013 – by then, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy is to have worked out a solid timeline for the establishment of closer fiscal policy coordination among eurozone member states. He is also to examine how bilateral reform treaties between the European Commission and individual common currency members could look in order to make reforms recommended by Brussels more binding. The creation of a fund – referred to vaguely as ‘solidarity mechanisms’ at the insistence of Germany – that could be used to reward those countries serious about reform is also to be examined.”

My Comment: European leaders are lost in the new world; they do not understand what is happening, and in this state, the best decision is to decide nothing. They act reasonably and sensibly, looking at what is happening. However, the development in the direction of integration continues, and the social systems that were created in the past become less and less suitable for working with them; that is, they increase the crisis, but that the answer is not in changing the world, but in changing man; this still needs to be understood and then only to agree with the need for integral education.
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In the News (from The Guardian): “European governments clinched a landmark deal on bank supervision and approved long-delayed aid to Greece on Thursday, trumpeting the agreements as signs the bloc is getting a grip on its problems after three years of deep crisis.

“European Council President Herman Van Rompuy told the leaders as he opened the summit. ‘The worst is now behind us but of course much still needs to be done.’ …

“ECB President Mario Draghi hailed the deal on banking supervision, the first stage towards a banking union with more pooled sovereignty, as an important step towards a stable economic and monetary union.

“Still, creating a full banking union, with powers to wind down failed banks and guarantee deposits across the eurozone, is likely to take several years. And it forms just part of the bloc’s masterplan to bolster the architecture of the euro zone and prevent a repeat of the crisis that has threatened to tear the single currency project apart. …

“European officials acknowledge privately that bolder steps towards closer integration of the single currency area will be on hold until after a German general election next September.”

My Comment: Now, the main thing is to play for time because there is no solution, and time itself will work somehow. We need to understand leaders: They have nothing to manage, they need to play according to their positions, and the more desperate the situation is, the more assurance should be heard in the voice!
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Instead of holding on to the principle of “there is none else besides Him,” my thought depends on different factors, which I see before me. Instead of looking ahead to see beyond people, beyond the mechanism, beyond all the natural phenomena, and to see just the Creator and myself, I, like a shortsighted person, look at objects that are close to me and see them as the factors my freedom depends on. Just like Don Quixote, I fight windmills, lifeless “scenery.”

As a result, the Creator has to intensify the evil and the sufferings, so that I will have to take a better look at what my life depends on. He does it so that I will not be able to stop this search.

We see this in the example of the state of Israel: Ahmadinejad, the Hamas, threats, missiles, Mubarak instead of Sadat, Mursi instead of Mubarak…the Creator constantly hardens the heart of Pharaoh. Why is that? Because the Jewish People don’t want to see the real reason for what is happening. In the meantime, all the minor reasons were only meant for one thing—to bring Israel to the Creator, so we have to be grateful to them for that. They are merely means.

Accordingly, the people are required to be a bit more clever in order to see who they are dealing with and who is managing the world. The troubles only remind us what the goal is, and it is easy to get rid of them if we turn to the Creator. But we don’t turn to Him in order to receive “rewards,” but in order to correct ourselves, in order to adhere to Him and by that bring Him contentment. Then the current “reminders” will be annulled, and then the “angel of death” will turn into a “holy angel.”

Question: So whom are we working with, with the group or with the external world?

Answer: All of reality, including the external world, including me and the group, are in the Creator. The external world gives me a negative impulse (1), by constantly evoking me to turn to the Creator (2). But I know that I cannot turn to Him directly. First I have to turn to the group, and then together with it to the Creator. Only then will I have a vessel, a desire for it, while nothing will help me if I work individually.

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Question: Why do we speak about the end of the consumerist society? Why does the era of consumerism have to come to an end?

Answer: There are two reasons:

1. The first reason is external: We are running out of natural resources.
2. The second reason is internal and it is the main reason: Our desire is changing—the foundation of human nature.

We can analyze economic theories, propaganda, and advertising, we can invent different tricks and technologies, like three-dimensional movies, but all that will not help. A person will simply lose interest in it, like a cat that doesn’t care about the TV set it is lying on. Instead, we will simply pay more attention to society, to those around us. All this is because the desire is changing. There is nothing we can do about it, since it is desires that motivate a person.

This, of course, will not happen all at once. Today it is still possible to promote consumerism by different “special offers.” Still, compared to the past, things are changing. The rate of suicide and divorce is rising, and disappointment and despair are spreading. It is in fact the beginning of a new trend. A person, of course, will still need food and other basic necessities, but the problem is not in such things, but in the desires that we are using incorrectly.

One way or another, the desire is changing very slowly. The question is why does it lag behind the parallel external changes? Why do we encounter problems like the crisis if instead we can leap to a new level by a quick change of our desire? Isn’t it better for people to switch from consumerism, to more social activities of their own freewill? Why do they still want to buy like before, although the previous system is collapsing?

The reason is that this is how they will recognize evil, so that the current situation will leave a bad taste. Otherwise, they will find a vessel, the desire, for something else. They have to feel that they are in despair—that the world is full and at the same time that it is empty. If the previous desires simply disappear, a person will not learn a lesson from the past and will not understand the problem.

Therefore, the desire is changing much more slowly than the external conditions. These conditions have to pressure us and gradually evoke the right response.

Then integral education appears, which explains that the desires in excess of the animal level, meaning basic, rational needs, can be met only in the context of human relationships. The current crisis is meant to show a person that he can meet his needs only in a new integral way. By that, his desires are not restricted, but they actually improve, become updated, and rise to a higher qualitative level. Then he will not settle for something transitory and ephemeral, but only for something that is more emotionally meaningful. A person develops, becomes sensitive to, and wants to enjoy other experiences, which are closer to spirituality.

So it is actually in personal relations, in the family and in educating children that the current crisis is revealed most intensively.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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