In the News (from DailyMail): “’At first it was the immigrants and the illegals; the homeless. Now they’ve been joined by the young, the professionals, the middle class. And every day more come. …’

“‘We’re seeing them younger and younger,’ [volunteer Dimitria Kollia] says. ‘And also professional couples who’ve lost their jobs. In three months the queue has changed, and that is very frightening for our future.’

“… A quarter of Greek firms have gone bust in three years; employment is at 22 per cent and rising; new property taxes have hit all, as have massive salary, pension and welfare cuts. …

“Quietly every day, and the figure is rising, at least 4,000 are fed by the charity of the city [Athens], the churches and individual communities. Some say that figure is a woeful underestimate. Schools have been given extra meals for children who have been fainting with hunger.”

My Comment: It’s impossible to feed the hungry in this way; there will be up to 50% of them and more. All manufacturing and services are being reduced to a reasonable limit, the economy of reasonable consumption. We should accept growing unemployment as a fact, as a trend rather than a sudden and temporary phenomenon, create a new approach to the new world—for this our program of integral education and upbringing is intended.
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In the News (from The Independent): “The crises in Europe and the Middle East are very different but they are beginning to cross-infect each other, creating a general mood of uncertainty and fear. In the Middle East, the Arab Spring was at first seen as wholly positive, as dictatorships and police states tumbled or came under democratic assault from Tunis to Bahrain. A bright dawn was breaking across the region. …

“In the past decade, the Muslim world had its grim reminders of the national egotism of great powers, notably that of the US. In Europe, people in states belonging to the European Union have had a different, less blood-soaked but no less compelling, demonstration of how little we have moved on from the Europe of contending nationalities. …

“The European and Middle East crises are in their different ways exposing as claptrap optimistic talk of European solidarity, globalisation being beneficial to all, and ‘humanitarian’ intervention. As mutinies against the powers-that-be spread across Europe, the natural conduit for political activism is strongly nationalist parties on the right and the left. Many voters may feel that angry nationalists may be able to cut a better deal with Brussels than their over-complaisant predecessors. The age of competing nationalities, which never really ended, is back with a vengeance.”

My Comment: Egoism has not been corrected, so what can we hope for? It will be manifested more and more, until it forces us to correct it by means of the method of integral upbringing.
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Question: How should the situation change, qualitatively and quantitatively after the introduction of integral education and upbringing?

Answer: For example, we can compare the statistics of a city where an integral experiment is being conducted, a city like Detroit, where violence, murder, and suicide are prevalent and the most active part of population is leaving the city. If things are left to take a natural course of development, like in Detroit, the city will become a ghost town.

But a town with integral learning is beginning to prosper, because residents together build parks and attractions, and find ways to attract tourists, etc. All of this is possible.

If we were to compare the data from the two cities, it is like heaven and earth. If once Detroit was a prospering city, now it is impossible to step outside. The homes, that once cost a million dollars to build, now go for no more than five to ten thousand dollars! But no one wants to buy them; it is impossible to live in these houses because you do not feel safe at home. No one goes there. It is impossible to convey what a city turns into in a case like this.

But a city where an integral process is taking place will attract everyone, since its population is becoming richer by creating a completely new atmosphere. For this reason, apartments in a city, a place where this is happening, will rise in value.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Upbringing” 3/3/12

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “At least 20,000 people held a major rally of the local Occupy movement in Frankfurt on Saturday to decry austerity measures affecting much of Europe, the dominance of banks, and what they call untamed capitalism. …

“Last year, thousands in Germany took to the streets in rallies during the world-wide Occupy movement. But as Germany’s economy is robust and unemployment at a record low, those protests mostly have fizzled out.

“But Europe’s lingering debt crisis has given new fuel to some demonstrations.

“Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, suffers none of the austerity measures now heavily affecting southern European nations, such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. But Germany has championed sometimes-harsh spending cuts across Europe to get budget deficits under control.”

My Comment: After all, saving is against the modern economy of a consumer society, which rests only on growth and expansion, rather than reasonable consumption. As society has become, like the world, globally interconnected, Germany will get a boomerang reaction from all the EU countries. There comes a  time when the strong one is not strong on his own, but strong in its connection with others in a united system. The world turns from individual, egoistic, and discrete into round, integral, altruistic, and analog.
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In the News (from Crossing Wall Street): “The national unemployment rate gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job. … According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million. … The numbers are staggering.”

My Comment: Their number will only rise until the economy is reduced to a reasonable size. Only the introduction of integral upbringing will ensure that everyone finds his place in the world in a correct harmonious combination, to live not to work, but to live in order to reveal a higher existence, a higher dimension, in an increasing unity.
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Opinion (Smitha Mundasad, from BBC News): “Half a century ago, in the drug industry’s golden era, we were bestowed with countless pills to lower blood pressure, control blood sugar and get rid of infections. But today it costs about $1bn to bring a new medicine to market, a process that can take 15 years.

“The industry faces multiple crises as budgets are squeezed and tough scientific challenges loom.

“Academics and patients’ groups are concerned we will not have the drugs necessary to treat future ills.

“Last year, the World Health Organization’s director general, Margaret Chan, warned that the world was heading for a ‘post-antibiotic era.’

“She raised fears that many common infections might no longer have a cure and could once again ‘kill unabated.’

“Major problems, Dr Chan suggested, included growing resistance to antibiotics.

And as the population ages, many of us will battle with neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, where new drugs are also lacking. …

“Prof Paul Workman at the Institute of Cancer Research points to another pressing issue: “With the problems of the financial crisis there has developed something of a vacuum that many of us describe as ‘the valley of death’.

“This is the valley between basic research and innovation on the one hand, and patient benefit and commercial success on the other, with this chasm in between into which there is a lack of funding and a lot of failure.

“He points out that they don’t do the whole thing alone, often partnering with smaller and larger companies in later stages. …

“What all these newer models of drug development have in common, it seems, is collaboration – perhaps presenting a cultural change for an industry that many people believe has had competition at the centre of its working.

“But, says Prof Vallance, while there is need for more collaboration in the early stages of drug development for some of the more complex diseases, that will turn into competition at a later point.

“’There will be fierce competition to get the best drug first, to make sure you do the right trial and show you’ve got the best medicine.’”

My Comment: Medicine and the pharmaceutical industry appear as the largest commercial organizations, opposite to the Hippocratic Oath. What can you expect from them!? People no longer trust doctors, who prescribe medication profitable to their organizations but not helpful to the patient. In everything, egoism works against us!
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Question: Can the method of integral upbringing be applied to cases of man-made or natural catastrophes? For example, if a catastrophe takes place and people become disoriented, then the entire country participates in restoring the affected region, but the process is difficult and lengthy.

It requires enormous resources, and people quickly become accustomed to being dependent. But on the other hand, they are so psychologically disoriented that they are ready to change their lives. Can this situation be used to change the problems of a given region?

Answer: I have thought about this a lot because the crisis brings this thought to one’s mind. Let us say that 50% of the young people in Spain are unemployed, or Detroit has become a ghost town. A catastrophe is the most appropriate situation for explaining the cause of our local and all other global problems.

People immediately perceive the integral method; it helps them “warm up,” get together, and feel the community. Naturally, people start helping each other and all pressures decrease: criminal, family, etc.

The atmosphere immediately becomes completely different. People are willing to live in tents, and they even perceive it as sort of an adventure. Their psychology changes so much that they stop seeing the negative sides of life; they do not concentrate on them. The interesting thing is that their perception of life changes. This is why I think that integral upbringing is psychological support as well as great social support in these cases.

Question: It often happens that professional builders come to restore a region while local residents sit and wait for their houses to be built and food to be brought to them. The integral method envisions a different organization—mixed brigades of visiting builders and local population?

Answer: Both immediately begin to participate in working and learning. This way, the same builders will also be touched by integral learning.

Question: Then the visiting builders will also need to be taught?

Answer: During the time they are free. At least the builders will be provided with voluntary heartfelt help from the local population. People will be glad to take part in the restoration of their city.
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From the “Talk on Integral Education” #23, 3/3/12

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Opinion (Barry Schwartz, Psychologist): “Barry Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance — where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before — are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today’s Western world is actually making us miserable.

“Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. … Too much choice undermines happiness. …

“‘Clinical depression has exploded in the industrial world in the last generation. I believe a significant — not the only, but a significant — contributor to this explosion of depression, and also suicide, is that people have experiences that are disappointing because their standards are so high, and then when they have to explain these experiences to themselves, they think they’re at fault. And so the net result is that we do better in general, objectively, and we feel worse. …’

“‘If some of what enables people in our societies to make all of the choices we make were shifted to societies in which people have too few options, not only would those people’s lives be improved, but ours would be improved also. This is what economists call a ‘Pareto-improving move.’ Income redistribution will make everyone better off — not just poor people — because of how all this excess choice plagues us.’”

My Comment: In any case, rational integration and redistribution (equilibration) always brings benefits to everyone—even according to the laws of economics.
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Question: Is the method of integral upbringing something essentially new?

Answer: This is the method for overcoming the crisis. This is a law of nature that modern studies confirm. They show us the picture of the transformation of society to a certain state. For this reason, let’s be ahead of this development and prepare for the changes that it’s assumed that we will overcome through the path of suffering, meaning being pushed towards happiness with a stick. And we do this through conscious advancement and thus, on the contrary, see a good and wonderful ascent in this.

Question: When can we move on from the educational stage towards the upbringing stage?

Answer: It is only possible to transition towards the upbringing process when people who take the integral education courses understand that the crisis is unavoidable and constant. It will bring us towards a common collapse and bankruptcy. This means that the only solution to the crisis is reorganizing the individual and society. When people complete studying this topic and, in general, understand, agree, and are inspired by it, then we can move on to upbringing.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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Opinion (Bhaskar Patel, USA, General Director of Cybersoft Technologies, Inc., from the international research paper Models of Post-Crisis Development): “If we learn to cooperate and co-exist, all other progress is possible and becomes easier; it will also be easier to deal with natural calamities; otherwise we will consume unnecessary energy and resources for internal fights.”

Mustafa Badawy, Columbia, entrepreneur and founder of the company Colacom: “I believe the 21st century will be the spiritual century – to consume less, to live more happily. This earth can no longer take our consumption rhythm, I mean the consumption rhythm of the USA, China and the EU.”

Adriano Benayon, Brazil, professor of economics at the University of Brasilia, author of “Globalization versus Development”: “Spiritual values, if they correspond with the common good and are independent from established religions, seem most important to me, since technology is neither good nor bad in itself: it all depends on what technology is developed and employed for.”
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