In the News (from the Demography Report): “Demographic change in Germany is marked by low birth rates and a declining population size.

“The population of Germany has been shrinking since 2003 and is now 81.7 million residents.

“According to models of the Federal Statistical Office, Germany’s population will decline to 65-70 million by 2060. …This trend is also accompanied by a decline in the working-age population.

“While the population is declining, the age structure is also shifting. …In 2060, every third person (34%) will be at least 65 years old.

“There are two reasons for population ageing: Germany has had low birth rates for many years.

“In addition, average life expectancy in Germany, as in other industrial countries, has steadily risen over the past 150 years by about three months per year.

“This trend will affect almost every area of life, society and public policy, giving rise to new challenges to social cohesion and economic prosperity in Germany over the long term.”

My Comment: The global integral crisis will force us to change and become a society of total interdependence, in which humanity will no longer be divided into countries and civilizations. So the problem of the aging of the Old World will disappear by itself.
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In the News: “Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago — a sign that people may be living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past.

“In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.

“Close relationships are a safety net, Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C. says. ‘Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.’

“The study finds fewer contacts are from clubs and neighbors; people are relying more on family…. The percentage of people who confide only in family increased from 57% to 80%, and the number who depend totally on a spouse is up from 5% to 9%, the study found. ‘If something happens to that spouse or partner, you may have lost your safety net,’ Smith-Lovin says.” (Source: USA Today)

“In this age of email, instant and text messaging, cell phones, and our super-sized-surpassing 300 million citizens–nation, the very idea that we are becoming increasingly isolated and disconnected from each other seems absurd. However, all of our cyberspace playthings are not satisfying our needs for closeness and friendship. Developing social networks beyond the family is a necessary survival skill. Feelings of isolation and loneliness in the extreme can lead to physical and mental illnesses. What accounts for so much social disconnectedness? Networks beyond the family is a necessary survival skill. Feelings of isolation and loneliness in the extreme can lead to physical and mental illnesses. What accounts for so much social disconnectedness?

“Most of us have little leisure time. Friendships require time and commitment. At the end of the day, most of us retreat home and want nothing more than to close the door on the outside world. We go indoors to be entertained by our electronic gadgets. For the most part, we are not hanging out or walking around the neighborhood to visit with neighbors. For that matter, we probably have not uttered a full sentence to the person next door since we moved into our house or apartment. Privacy and a do not disturb attitude are the mottos of the day.

“Traditionally, women have been responsible for developing the family’s social diary and maintaining friendships with other couples. Sustaining such a social network takes a great deal of time and energy. Most women today are working full time.” (Source: American Sociological Review).

My Comment: All these symptoms will grow until we understand their purpose: to show us that the only solution to all our problems is in mutual guarantee.
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The laws of nature are irreversible. We’re unable to add anything artificially because the conditions within our society’s political, industrial, familial, and social systems force us to come to a mutual and integral interdependence. We will be forced to do this regardless of whether we’re rich or a regular worker, a jobless person, a student, or an elderly person.

Nature is locking us into a single general system and forces each person, in accordance with his status, qualities, and interrelations with the society to gradually transform. We can’t remain in our previous state.

Do you see what’s happening in the world today? Could anyone imagine that Germany would give Greece 500 billion dollars and then pardon the debt? Can you imagine Germans giving 500 billion to Greece? There is also Italy and Spain on the line. No one knows how this will end. However, people aren’t out on the streets protesting, they’re not trying to overthrow the government, and they’re not demanding their money back.

Imagine that we have 500 billion in the bank saved up by all of the country’s workers. This is the government’s fortune, and instead of putting this money into realizing the country’s needs, we give it to someone who we don’t even wish to know.

Why doesn’t this result in a civil war? I know Germany, I’ve been there and I’ve talked to the German people. People aren’t particularly happy with the situation, but no one is really opposing it. This is because people understand that for the politicians and the economists having to come to this decision was a lot more painful than for the rest of the people.

They are “sitting” on this money, and with its help they rule over the people and the nation. But if they’ve decided to part with this money, then things must really be bad. We are really that interconnected that I have to give to other countries and pardon the debt, just as I would give to my own nation. They realize the depth of the interconnection and see that the law of nature connects everyone and that this tie cannot be undone.

This is an inner tragedy for those who had to make this decision because parting with 500 billion dollars isn’t easy. Just imagine what your family would say if you took all of your possessions and money from the bank and gave it away?

What we are talking about here is a sense of total connection and necessity. The politicians see no other way out. We, the “small people,” don’t see it, but they do. This is why the biggest tycoons and billionaires will part with their money just as these politicians did, otherwise they won’t be able to exist. They will understand the necessity of this action. Totally paradoxical things are happening right before our eyes, we simply don’t realize it yet.
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From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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The society of mutual guarantee is built in such a way that it obliges me to be its active participant all the time because with every effort directed at benefiting it, I receive huge fulfillment and enthusiasm. Every person working for the good of the society and helping it deserves respect and encouragement: medals, prizes, and praise, all of which give him huge pleasure.

I’m not filled by the dollars that I have in my Swiss bank account. I’m filled by the feeling of what I’ve got, a feeling of dignity, importance, usefulness, and wholeness. This is much more! And nobody can take this away from me.
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From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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In the modern world, everyone must participate in education and upbringing that are based on the principles of mutual guarantee. Education includes the need for knowledge about the integrated society and the system of interconnections in which we exist. We need to understand the qualities inherent in man from birth: He is absolutely opposite to the integrated connection with others, does not wish it at all, and wants to “get his hands on everything”—these are our natural impulses.

We have to become opposite to our egoism under the influence of society and upbringing. This work that we must do is against our primal, instinctive nature, and absolutely all of humanity has to participate in it.

To do this, a person must be under the constant influence of the environment that would direct him towards a good mutual connection with it. This has to be realized in a good, pleasant manner so that the person feels that by being in balance with the environment, he feels good and free, everyone treats him wonderfully and keeps him in the state of optimal health and best possible relations with others.

At the same time, the forces of nature with which we’ll be in a state of homeostasis will begin to help us. We’ll perceive the whole picture of nature: its net, interconnection, and system. We’ll begin to attain the general thought of the universe, the process and purpose of the entire creation. As we enter the system, we’ll be able to perceive the “inner motor” that activates it, meaning the forces that control us along the path of evolution and lead us forward.

We see that we are going through certain stages of development: consecutive, necessary, and fixed in nature. Today scientists, philosophers, social and political scientists, all agree that there are laws of which we are not aware. They are inside all-encompassing nature, and we are gradually getting to know them.
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From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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Our life is arranged so that we are all in different relationships: a system of laws, frameworks, and rules. On the basis of these relationships, we build all the other systems.

One kind of a relationship among us is “mutual guarantee.” This is the most natural and perfect connection because it begins to manifest from within nature as a pressing need.

When we study the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, except for human society, we constantly find more and more new mutual connections between them, such as integrality and globality. We have discovered that all parts of nature, even in space, immediately connect. What happens in one part of the universe has an immediate impact on its other parts, and no million years have to pass for that. It is all one, mutually-tied system.

Inside this system there is human society that has developed independently of nature, not in accordance with natural pressures and laws. Egoism has developed, and we have built different systems among us to match it: public, family, work, state, political, social relationships, and so on.

Now we’ve reached a point in which we discover that we’re just like the rest of nature, tied together. This connection isn’t felt by everyone yet. However, scientists, scholars, philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists are beginning to feel it.

It isn’t by chance that the current crisis is called global and integral. Actually it isn’t a crisis, but our maladjustment to the conditions that we are in. Now it’s like we are in one net, a net of connections between us. We have to adjust ourselves to this connection because we cannot exit it. We have to see ourselves and our future in this mutual integral connection although we may be reluctant to do so. This connection has to be good.
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From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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In the News: “‘The crisis of its [Italy’s] debt can destabilize the entire world, beginning with France. … I realized that we are falling into the abyss, the clock of the policy makers does not coincide with that of the market, and we need a great acceleration,’ said [Carlo de Benedetti, CEO of the Italian manufacturer Olivetti]. (Source: Corriere della Sera) 

“Fitch Ratings warned that it may reduce its ‘stable’ rating outlook for U.S. banks with large capital markets businesses because of contagion from problems in troubled European markets.

“Agency Fitch Ratings warns that a further worsening of the eurozone debt crisis promises serious risks to American banks that have a portfolio of government bonds of countries of concern. The size of national debt exceeded $15 trillion and is almost 100 percent of GDP, the established ceiling of the official national debt.

“‘Unless the euro zone debt crisis is resolved in a timely and orderly manner, the broad outlook for U.S. banks will darken,’ Fitch said. ‘The risks of a negative shock are rising.’

“The analysts don’t expect a resolution of the issues for another 12 months or so, and are unlikely to adjust their outlook on the sector quickly. ‘This is going to have a prolonged and uncertain income,’ Mr. Scott [one of the analysts who wrote the Fitch report] said.” (Source: The Globe and Mail)

“It may well be so that if the U.S. government initiates political games around its debt problem again, a new wave of the global crisis might cover the world by the New Year.” (Source: Utro.ru)
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Opinion: (Alexander Spirin, a biochemist, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences): “Man will be forced to transform himself not only under the pressure from the ‘external’ social and economic threats, but also under the ‘internal’ threat from nature itself. It would be a mistake to assume that the biosphere cannot find means to stop the aggressor who has become dangerous and to prevent its own end.

“The biosphere will not meekly await the sad fate that has been prepared for it by one of the millions of species generated by it, which imagines itself to be the master of nature. From the standpoint of the ecological imperative, a human being is just a parasite that consumes nature’s energy and matter.

“The biosphere’s attack on humans’ fertility and intellect has already begun. The changes in genotype of human Homo sapiens would amount to the rise of a new species: a safe human, Homo innoxius.

“Due to the imperfections of his own genome, a human would have been doomed to extinction a long time ago, if not for his ability to move beyond his specific program. The human being’s originality and power appeared in his ability to overcome the limitations of his own type.

“So, if the modern human expands his ecological niche, his own gene pool, immune system, he is able to compensate, to correct his mindset and to include in it such valuable guidelines as auto-evolutionary methods of survival and adaptation.”
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In the News (from Novosti): “According to experts, service workers, that is, those who do not earn money directly, may be the first to be adversely affected by the crisis. At the same time, there are areas where recruitment continues even during difficult economic times. The specialists who do not have to be afraid of the crisis are the following:

1. IT professionals;
2. Financial experts and top managers;
3. Pharmacists, health care providers;
4. Agrarians;
5. Home staff to VIP families;
6. Office staff;
7. Sales specialists;
8. Promoters and supervisors.”

My Comment: Only those who produce necessary goods and services, such as a moderate range of food products, essential household and industrial goods, delivery and distribution services, and so on will be left.

Everything will be calculated on the basis of minimal cost of energy and labor, optimal production and delivery to the consumer. Progress is a harmful phenomenon if it is not essential because all the comfort, above the necessary level, is achieved through spiritual sensations.

At the level of this world, the need for comfortable surroundings is gradually reduced to the minimum, to what is required by the human body, and the feeling of connection between everyone and the sensation of the world and oneself in it occurs through the upper (spiritual) relationship between people (souls).

All the earthly questions about the existence of our bodies are solved on the basis of the development in the spiritual space, until we reach such spiritual level of complete correction that we cease to feel our bodies.
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Opinion: (Jacques Sapir, Professor, Director of the Industrial Studies Research Centre, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, from expert.ru):

1. Is there any hope for a favorable resolution of the situation in Greece? No.

2. Will the crisis expand? Yes.

3. Can’t the leading European states offer help? The Germans and the French are debating it. The Germans are against help, and the French are in favour. If the German position prevails, the future of the eurozone is uncertain.

4. How do you explain the German position? Already in the 90s, a greater fiscal, budgetary, and economic integration was needed. But for the time being, the integration is not happening, and if so, Germany will have to subsidize the EU countries. Thus, the German elite are ready to accept the fact that the eurozone will cease to exist.

5. Why did the Stability and Growth Pact fail? This Pact is not about growth, but about saving the budget. And those countries that had introduced it have gotten the reduced growth and recession: Tax revenues get smaller, and this increases the debt.

6. The worst scenario for the global economy is the collapse of the eurozone, isn’t it? The collapse of the eurozone will impact the reserves, but in the long term will keep Europe from recession. If the euro is saved, Europe and countries that depend on it, such as Russia, will face a long recession and reduced demand.

7. And how will it affect Russia? In both cases, Russia will go through hard times because Europe is the main consumer of Russian exports: oil, gas, and metals.
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