Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

Either Integration Or Defeat

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Marc-Olivier Padis, editor-in-chief of Esprit): “The difficulties in Europe lie in the fact that now it must unite even more, but it is almost impossible because of the distrust of the population. Today, either the integration will be deeper, or we are threatened with total defeat.”

My Comment: Everything is correct, except that there are no means of integration in our world because to do this we need to replace egoism with bestowal, hatred with love, and this is possible only through the method of integral education.
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Capitalism Is Out Of Control

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Steen Jakobsen, Saxo Bank Chief Economist): “I have travelled to 16 different countries over the past year. They are all very different, with different systems, starting points and cultures, but they all share the same burden of inequality. I realised that the real loser since the financial crisis began in 2008 has been the middle class.

“Pundits will have you know that we are witnessing capitalism and the free market running amok. Where? There is not a single market working according to capitalistic rules.

“The main policy response in this time of crisis remains one of buying time. This solution will not last however; it will only make social inequality more severe. The source of income and wealth equality is an equal right to capital and to work. Currently the only parties with free access to capital are overburdened banks and governments.

“Ironically, pundits have dubbed the current crisis the running amok of capitalism. I would argue that we are witnessing governments and politicians running amok.

“We must invest in education, secure free markets, competition and long-term tri-party agreements on education, salary and working hours. This is the path towards more equality.”

My Comment: The solution is wrong—it is based on the model of egoistic capitalism that no longer works. We need to invest in the following:

  1. Reaching a reasonable, single level of well-being for all people,
  2. Introducing mandatory integral education and upbringing.

Both of these measures will eliminate the crisis because they will remove the contradictions between man, who devours nature, and the world around him; they will change us, and we will understand how to create a new economy of well-being and balance.
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The Local GNP Per Capita Does Not Reflect The Standard Of Living

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from mignews.com): “According to the report issued by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the ratio between employment and the size of the world population is uneven and does not depend directly on the local Gross National Product (GNP).

“In Turkey, the GNP per capita is very high, while only 29% of the population is in the work force. The next highest GNP per capita is Kazakhstan, with 77%.

“In Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, the rates of the GNP per capita are lowest, but the rates of employment are 59% and 39% accordingly.

“In the developed countries, the ratio between employment and the size of the population is about 50 to 60%, which points to prosperity and stabilization of the people’s economic situation.”

My Comment: As we all know, the figures in economics do not reflect the situation of the population at all and only help the rich get richer at the expense of the poor by presenting statistics that are convenient for them. Economics is not a science, but a result of calculations that are beneficial to those who manipulate it.

However, it appears that its period of dictatorship is over, and the economy of balance between society and nature will replace it, whether we like it or not. Only the formula of balance will dictate and determine our social and economic relationships.
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Revealing The Unity Of Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If we achieve the goal and unite in one common world Kli, what changes will occur in Europe?

Answer: We must understand that all the problems, including the crisis with all the suffering, appear for one reason: to guide people to find the root of the cause, to find why this is happening. We see that scientists, economists, and politicians cannot do anything.

The world has entered the stage that Kabbalah mentioned a long time ago. We talked about this before the 21st century. I heard about this twenty years ago and did not believe that this could happen. “So,” I thought, “they talk. What can I do?”

The world entered a different stage. Today, we are on a completely different level. We must reveal the unity of nature. That is why the world is global, it is integral, not only in us, but around us.

Today, we reveal the upper force at all levels of the development; the still level of nature including space, not to mention the higher layers, and vegetative and animate nature are one whole. All of this is a global, integral force from zero to infinity, one whole.

There is an exception that is a problem. Inside, there is a human being, the center of the world. He is given freedom, and he does whatever he likes in spite of everything else. He is a terrible negative against everything else.

We compare this human, that is, all of humanity, this collective image, to a cancerous growth because he eats everything around him. He destroys everything living and is in contradiction with the rest of nature. The rest of nature is global, integral, and united. We are not united at all, not integral and not global.

We say that the global crisis has come. What does that mean? It means that you do not match the rest of nature! Where is the crisis? Is it in you or in what surrounds you?

You must rebuild yourself. You are a human society that also must become global and integral. How can this be done? It can be done by uniting, achieving equality, interconnection, and mutual understanding. All of our development shows us the extent to which we are interconnected. We cannot get away from it.

Look what happens: A country is boycotted, disconnected from financial transactions or something else, and it cannot do anything. That is it; life has ceased. Cut it off from the rest of the world, and it cannot exist. That is the extent to which the world is global. This never happened before.

Our society is opposite to this globality; the present human nature is opposite to it. That is why, naturally, if we remove this contradiction, we will see the force of nature revealed in its entirety.

We will find ourselves fully connected with the entire world, moreover, as limitless, infinite. We will feel ourselves existing eternally in harmony with all other layers of nature.

This applies not only to countries that are suffering from the crisis. We should consider the level to which we rise and see all these crisis phenomena as obstacles for us to overcome to reach the highest goal. Just as a person has crises in the individual sense, a state does in the national plan and human society is in global terms. This is the only way to look at life.

We cannot approach governments today and talk about this with them because they are the greatest egoists and will not be able to understand it. Nevertheless, their minds are changing. There is a big difference between what they said five years ago and what they say today because blows and punishments make a person wiser and more receptive. That is why I hope that we will be able to accomplish this.

In addition to the materials that we are preparing to submit to UNESCO, the United Nations, and other international organizations, we are connecting many scientists to our work who have the same opinion that we have, those who understand that human nature, the nature of human society, must be fundamentally changed.

The problem is that they do not have a method. There is no doubt that we need to be in global equilibrium with nature, to be in homeostasis with it. Thousands of scientists in the world are talking about this, but we also should do it. How can it be done? We must…? There is no answer.

Millions of people around the world are becoming unemployed. The crisis will bring us to a point where we will produce only things that are necessary for our existence.

That is why people must understand. They should study themselves and change themselves instead of polluting and depleting nature. I do not need much to feed my “animal” for my normal existence.

I have to dedicate the remaining time, the rest of my strength, to changing human society. Then, we will feel eternal and total harmony. This will be much more than what we try to achieve today. Therefore, we should view the crisis as an obstacle above which we must rise together. That is why we are here.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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The Method Of Recovery

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe develop special education and upbringing programs because we need to bring them to all people who exit the labor market and become unemployed. We must gather these people, unite them, and instead of employment, supply them with education that will become their new job.

That is, a person should work two hours a day (if at all) and the rest of the time dedicate to studying. All of us should again sit behind the desk and become students. Our unemployment benefits should not be called such but rather a scholarship, and we must strive for everyone to have a sufficient standard of living.

That, in general, is the society we have to come to very soon, otherwise various protest movements will become a huge obstacle in the world. Young people, especially in countries with high rates of unemployment such as Spain, where the unemployment rate reached 50%, can no longer return to work and go back to studying. They rapidly lose interest in life, in the rest of the world and become very inert. Entire cities, such as Detroit in the US, where industries go bankrupt, simply become ghost-cities: Vandalism, poverty, and drugs flourish there. Such cities are not few in the world.

The problem is that today humanity doesn’t yet understand that it has to re-educate itself to lift itself up to the integral, global level offered to us by nature. We have to achieve a state of mutual balance with it, and then we will feel a great release of energy and opportunities. Each person and the entire humanity will indeed achieve the state of fulfillment. This is humanity’s goal today. This is what is taught by the method of integral upbringing, which is applicable to both children and adults.

A part of the method of integral studies is called “Integral Education.” It describes the integral state of a family: how families, family dynamics, and children’s upbringing should be arranged.

We raise children not even knowing how to bring them up correctly. Young people who have children don’t know what to do with them. Only many years later do they begin to realize how many mistakes they made as young parents.

Family economics and the whole process of historic development, egoism as the foundation of our society, the correctly formed egoism and correct interaction between people as the foundation of new society of integral interaction between us, all of it comprises a part of the method called “Integral Education.”

The other part of the method, “Integral Upbringing”, concerns itself with changing man himself, transforming him from a narrow-minded egoist into a human being who can integrally relate to society, people, and environment.

The fact is that a person is formed under the influence of his environment; his only free will lies in choosing which group or society to join. Accordingly, when he joins a certain society, he begins to change; that is what changes us. The only thing we can do for ourselves is to change ourselves under the influence of a certain society surrounding us.

When we create around a person a group of people who want to change integrally, they exert upon him a certain influence. Together with them he begins to transform and see what it means to live in an integral, global society that nature brings forward as a condition for our future existence.

It turns out that man in this little society, in this little group begins to reveal absolutely new forces of nature. Through the connection between us we begin to feel the concealed force of nature—the force of bestowal, the force of cooperation, some additional force. We begin to sense nature through our new integral sense organ.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Collaboration: A Property Inherent In Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California): “The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration. Systems are integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units. Instead of concentrating on basic building blocks or basic substances, the systems approach emphasizes basic principles of organization. Examples of systems abound in nature. Every organism – from the smallest bacterium through the wide range of plants and animals to humans – is an integrated whole and thus a living system. Cells are living systems, and so are the various tissues and organs of the body, the human brain being the most complex example. But systems are not confined to individual organisms and their parts. The same aspects of wholeness are exhibited by social systems – such as an anthill, a beehive, or a human family – and by ecosystems that consist of a variety of organisms and inanimate matter in mutual interaction. What is preserved in a wilderness area is not individual trees or organisms but the complex web of relationships between them.

“The more one studies the living world the more one comes to realize that the tendency to associate, establish links, live inside one another and cooperate is an essential characteristic of living organisms. As Lewis Thomas has observed, ‘We do not have solitary beings. Every creature is, in some sense, connected to and dependent on the rest.’ Larger networks of organisms form ecosystems, together with various inanimate components linked to the animals, plants, and microorganisms through an intricate web of relations involving the exchange of matter and energy in continual cycles. Like individual organisms, ecosystems are self-organizing and self-regulating systems in which particular populations of organisms undergo periodic fluctuations. Because of the nonlinear nature of the pathways and interconnections within an ecosystem, any serious disturbance will not be limited to a single effect but is likely to spread throughout the system and may even be amplified by its internal feedback mechanisms.”

My Comment: Today, all sciences point to the intergality of nature, its closed system. The reason for these discoveries is that man has become such a system himself and thus can better understand the world he lives in.
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China Will Combat The Crisis Through Euro Economic Reforms

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao): “Premier Wen Jiabao said his country needed ‘urgent’ economic and political reforms. Without them, it might face more tragedies like the Cultural Revolution.

“‘We must press ahead with both economic structural reform and political structural reform, in particular reform in the leadership system of our party and country,’ he said.

“He reiterates the need for price controls to avoid a real estate bubble and promises that the yuan will float more freely.”

My Comment: China has difficulties understanding how to unite with the world after millenia of isolation, and that is why integration with it will occur slowly and unwillingly, not due to awareness, but to forced conditions.
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Humanity As An Integral System

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe can talk at great length about our interconnection, which in recent times obliges us to make contact with each other at the emotional level. We need to start connecting with each other not only in accordance with ecological laws, manufacturing processes, the banking system, mutual upbringing, and healthcare, but personally. Correspondingly, all the nations need to engage in good relations with each other.

In the process of the evolution of nature, development went through still, vegetative, and animate levels before reaching the level of man. The human civilization developed through the same stages too, leading us to the point where we’re starting to acquire the image of one man. Precisely this state is called Adam, Human.

And here comes a question: How will we achieve this? It’s impossible to exist any other way since our further development requires a good mutual relationship, and without it, we won’t be able to correct the laws of economics, industry, and trade. The world is at a dead end, confused; it doesn’t understand what to do next. People have lost their interconnection altogether because in our time it is a heartfelt, soulful connection that is demanded of us, something that has never existed between us.

We either despised each other, exchanged goods, or collaborated out of hopelessness in manufacturing and trade. But it wasn’t required of an individual or a government to have a good relationship with their partner. However, now we are to required to exert internal, psychological efforts in relation to a stranger, and our development consists of just that.

We can feel that without such relationships, we cannot exist correctly, even in our own home. If I share an apartment with a few people, we find a way to get along provided each of us has their own space. But right now, we are so dependent on each other—each on everyone—that without correct relationships between us, our life becomes simply horrible.

Therefore it’s necessary for us to come to an agreement, and this agreement is called mutual guarantee. In other words, our relationships need to be such that each will feel that his or her life depends on others. That’s how soldiers from the same unit know that their life depends on all the others, and if each one doesn’t support and care for the rest, all of them will lose.

Such systems of mutual dependence exist in nature and technology: They are called integral or analog systems. Within them, all the parts are so interconnected that if any piece fails, the entire mechanism stops working. Evidently, as human society developed, we have grown to the point of reaching this kind of connection.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Let Us Build A Common Roof For The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanEven though we are different, we still get along somehow like in one family. True, it’s not easy. Let’s say that I have a mom and dad, my wife does too, and each of us has brothers and sisters on both sides, their kids, our kids. We have to take each other into consideration since we’re mutually dependent both in the positive and the negative way. This is why we have no intention of changing and reforming each other.

It’s understandable that if in the past I met a woman who possibly differs from me in her personality, but according to other considerations, we decided to be together, then in this decision to be together, we essentially accepted and agreed without even talking about it that we would be leading a shared life that wouldn’t always go smoothly. We will need to make concessions to each other, to agree with the other’s opinion, either partially or fully, and so on. But we connect with one another, having no other choice, because we want to create a family, to raise our offspring, and to support each other.

Young couples lack this kind of upbringing, which teaches how to get along with each other despite the differences. Even though we think that we choose the most suitable life partner for ourselves freely, in reality, we are still very different. For animals, mating happens instinctively, but people, since their calculations are corrupted, seek something special, perhaps even rare, not realizing that precisely because of that they will have communication difficulties.

The lack of education, understanding, and upbringing related to shared life, as well as the inability to yield to each other lead us to a crisis of the family institution. In our day, more than half the population of the earth, especially young people, are single. They aren’t ready to get married and don’t want to have children because they feel unable to take care of someone.

This crisis has been going on for decades now, and today we are forced to solve analogous problems between countries as well. After all, each of us, at least relative to the neighboring countries, is both giving and receiving, just like in a married couple. This is why it’s also necessary to learn on an international level how to make concessions and to connect above all the differences and disagreements. Yet, we were never taught how to do this either.

So how can this actually be done? What is the technique of making concessions since only through conceding do we demonstrate our good intention?

For lack of any other options, we currently find ourselves in the crisis that teaches us the most pressing things. And people feel this urgency in such a way (and therein lies our hope) that they refuse to accept “divorce” since divorce between countries means war.

I hope that we’ll realize that we don’t have a choice and we need to exercise restraint. This is why we created the UN, a place where supposedly everyone can gather and discuss peaceful cooperation, as well as many other organizations that handle education and healthcare.

For example, in Geneva there are international organizations which I never even realized existed. There is a commission on broadcasting frequencies that ensures that each television and radio station in the world has its own frequency and does not interfere with others. There is a council on manufacturing drugs, medical products, and services, which determines standards in this field. This allows us to understand each other, and thus a doctor, when sending his or her patient for treatment to a different country, is able to explain to their colleague all the nuances of the required procedures.

There are even organizations that monitor flags of every country so that suddenly two identical flags wouldn’t appear. There are standards in every field because we’re becoming so interconnected and close to one another that we need to establish laws to regulate all areas of our interaction.

And just like a parliament of every country that sets laws for the interaction of its citizens, it is done on a global scale today for the entire world too. These kinds of organizations have been in existence for a few decades now, and without them things would be very difficult for us.

But today the problem is not in establishing a place for everyone. The current situation requires us to build some common “roof” that consists of mutual understanding and feeling that we are in the same room, so to speak. In these circumstances it is very difficult for us to be together if we don’t have a good connection between us.

We should feel not only closeness but an interdependence that will necessitate everyone to change their attitude towards others. Whether we want to or not, we are interdependent, connected, and united on different levels: food, clothing, upbringing, culture, technology, energy supplies, water, and even air.

If someone’s industry pollutes the atmosphere, we have nothing to breathe. We are all familiar with the Kyoto Protocols that set limits on emissions of waste byproducts and atmospheric pollution.

I think that it’s worthwhile to provide a list of such international organizations and the issues they work with. Then we’ll feel the scope of our connection. A portion of these organizations is located in Paris, London, and New York, but most of them are in Geneva.

This is very important because it gives people an idea of such mutual dependence that is hard to believe. It is much greater than in a family. In a family, I can stop talking, quarrel, and even distance myself for some time.

But here, this is impossible. It turns out that all the existing countries are already within one single mosaic, and nobody is able to exit it or behave they way they please. We see that any time someone attempts to make some independent motion, it never works out. After some time they come back, or perhaps it doesn’t even go beyond verbal attempts, never coming to any practical actions, because in our time it’s not feasible.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Difficulties Of The Transitional Period

Dr. Michael LaitmanTransitions to new developmental levels have always been induced by small crises: Education, social, financial, and other systems gradually started to go out of order. Marriages started to fall apart, slowly but steadily illicit drug use spread and overpowered alcoholism. All of a sudden terrorism came into view.

Humanity’s nervousness reveals itself. It’s a result of weaknesses in all spheres of life, which were built according to egoistic rules that made everybody concentrate solely on themselves: This is yours, this is mine, don’t cross the line! Everyone defends his or her freedom and personal space. Now, Nature destroys boundaries between us, breaks walls, and drags us into some kind of community life that we try to avoid because we’re not yet ready for it.

When our egos were still too small, we were open to everything. At that time, we didn’t care whether we lived as one family in one village. People didn’t lock their doors and were very friendly with each other. A huge family (parents, children, and grandchildren) shared one room and were not at all embarrassed with each other.

Nowadays, thing are different. We are separated by our huge egoism: Everybody wants a separate room, strives to hide behind the computer or telephone, and tends to contact others as little as possible. People don’t unite into families any longer, but rather get together to have sex and then go away.

But suddenly, Nature starts to destroy partitions and by doing so cancels our severance. The current crisis is the biggest of all we’ve experienced so far. We do everything to delay, to misrepresent it, but it manifests on lower levels at which we all are still interconnected.

Currently, there is no such thing as a family crisis since families are simply broken. More than half of families cannot be considered families per se and have no desire to revive and reconstruct themselves. The number of people who don’t wish to marry has reached 70%! Today, it’s normal, a  good family where its members treat each other with love and respect has become an anachronism.

The second major problem is drugs. We comply with this ugly phenomenon; our fight with it is mild and gentle. We realize that it’s a terrible thing which we can’t avoid because the society we live in and this life itself force us to look for ways to escape.

The next problem is how we raise our youth. Currently, demographics are poor, the population doesn’t grow much, and people don’t know how to take care of their children. Parents agree to leave children both overnight and during the day. Children are not attached to their parents any longer; the gap between generations grows. We are about to lose the next generation, but nobody worries too much about it. We say: “What difference does it make whether our children’s upbringing is good or bad; what does it change?” This is how we think, not even remotely realizing the essence of the problem.

It looks like all prior crises were not too big of a blow for us, nor did they trigger our understanding that we have bankrupted ourselves in all aspects of our lives. The developmental process always flows from the small and weak to impacting the big ones. This is similar to the punishment of children, meaning at first we start convincing them and then progress to threatening with bigger trouble. At this point, we all are going through a very serious process; it’s a matter of life and death.

We are going through two serious cycles of discrepancies between us and Nature. Integrality allows us to realize that we are opposite to Nature and contrary to all its systems, meaning that originally we were supposed to be completely interconnected, but we do everything we can to avoid staying united.

We understand that staying together would be good for us, but we don’t know how to achieve this state. Everybody in the world realizes that if people unite for educational, technical, pedagogical and cultural purposes, it will facilitate the whole situation. But how can we act against our ego? We are not capable of doing so!

Here is the problem: If we are unable to unite, we will stay hungry. Very simple! We won’t be able to provide for basic necessities: food, safety, heat, dwelling, and physical health. These are five basic needs that have to be satisfied in order to survive.

At this time, Nature is pressing upon us so much that if we don’t correspond to its requirements, we won’t be able to provide for our five major necessities. Such a notion as ecology is part of our requirement for safety. We will fail to provide food and keep good ecology; both are intertwined since one influences the other.

Worry, fear, and trouble will eventually force humankind to take drastic measures. If we don’t do anything, our resistance and opposition to Nature will lead us to affliction, wars, devastation, and obliteration. At some point, we will re-evaluate our chances to survive and will arrive at the conclusion that we have to unite and reach the fourth level of development—the Human level.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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