Nickolas Christakis MD, PhD, MPH is an internist and social scientist at Harvard University specializing in health and social networks. In 2009 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.
[56311]
We cannot evaluate each other in any way because there are no true criteria for comparison. Suppose you produce fifty products a day, and I produce only thirty. As a result, your salary is higher than mine, and I, feeling helpless, am angry at you because I measure the two of us by the same standard. At present, we both judge things this way.
We have to understand that every person has their point of the soul, and we have no right to judge others. We only have to help one another so that everyone will fulfill himself in the best possible way. Besides that, there is no other way, attitude, or standard that determines the right mutual connection. I can only evaluate myself and others in bestowal. We will never be equal and right in receiving. Even if both of us feel that we manage to “work well together,” others will start looking at us suspiciously.
The world will never come to good according to the laws of egoism. You can forget about reaching some fair calculation in receiving, which will be perceived as right for more than a moment. A person’s best calculations will never please others.
Therefore, let us not get even with each other according to power, success, brains, feelings, parents, or education. Let us simply disregard this. The world should understand that if we demand people to give each other something or to take something, we will never create anything stable and lasting. Any theory will be refuted.
We must therefore switch to the track of bestowal.
[56709]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Peace in the World”
Related Material:
Disproportionately Different
Education For The New World
A Tycoon As A Punching-Bag
Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: That is because by nature, the power to work is not equal with each and every person. One person in the society labors in one hour of work, due to his weakness, much more than his friend who works two hours or more. …Thus, you see that …the labor of the individual on the condition of the evident truth… is completely unfeasible since it cannot be examined and evaluated in any way.
If we are looking for social justice, we cannot rely on work hours because people are different. We cannot measure a person’s efforts objectively either. People’s success doesn’t indicate anything because one is born stupid and another clever, one is lazy and another is energetic, and so on. Heredity isn’t anyone’s fault, but it isn’t anyone’s accomplishment either.
So we cannot judge people according to the measure of truth because it is determined by the root of a person’s soul, his internal attributes that cannot be examined, weighed, or calculated. This means that we cannot complain about or evaluate a person’s productivity fairly. All our attempts to measure efforts and abilities are actually a total lie. We give children grades at school, we compare everyone in the army, we set an arbitrary standard of productivity at work, and all this only corrupts a person’s natural development.
Experts are beginning to understand the problem after having confronted the crisis in education. But the situation hasn’t changed. We simply cannot measure a person correctly according to the measure of truth.
[56715]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Peace in the World”
Related Material:
We Will Never Succeed By Receiving
A Tycoon As A Punching-Bag
Take Care Of The Tycoons, You Just Might Need Them
In the News (From The Financial Times): “Strains in the eurozone short-term lending markets have jumped sharply this week amid worries that the sovereign debt crisis will deepen, threatening the ability of banks to fund themselves.
“Nick Matthews, senior European economist at RBS, said: ‘We are at a key moment in the eurozone debt crisis. There are tensions in the financial system with still many banks having difficulties accessing the private markets for loans. These banks have to rely on the ECB as a backstop. But this is not a long-term sustainable solution.’”
My Comment: What our brains do not do, time does. In other words, whatever we do not do for advancing ourselves correctly in similarity to nature is done by nature itself, which will force us to reach the same state of unity through crises and suffering.
[56797]
Related Material:
The Cost Of Euro Break Up
IMF: Global Economy Needs Collective Action Now
The Euro Is Breaking Down
In the News (From The Guardian): More than 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday [October 1, 2011] evening during a march by anti-Wall Street protesters who have been occupying a downtown Manhattan square for two weeks.
The group, called Occupy Wall Street, has been protesting against the finance industry and other perceived social ills by camping out in Zuccotti park in New York.
“The group, drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, say they are inspired by social movements in Spain and the Arab spring.”
My Comment: So, the boomerang returns to the hands that threw it into other countries. As soon as mutual connections became manifested in our world, every leader must think carefully before doing something to somebody else as this will cost him many times more. The U.S. was responsible for many actions…. So, this is just the beginning. They ought to listen not to Soros, but to Kabbalists.
[56809]
Related Material:
Demonstrations: A Way To Create A New Society
Anti-Wall Street Protest In New York
Mass Rally On Wall Street
Opinion (O. Poddymnikov, director of Investment Management, Lanta-Bank, from finam.ru): “The Americans are persistently trying to solve new problems by using old methods: increasing infrastructure spending and open market operations. The former helped Roosevelt take the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The latter …would have let the country avoid it altogether. But will these methods help this time?
“Globalization has led to cardinal changes in the economic structure of the the U.S. Since the beginning of 2008 too many individuals and corporations have lost too much money. There are negative expectations concerning short- and mid-term perspective and absence of faith that the government can deal with this. Because of this, the money that is made is either used towards compensation for losses, or as savings. The rate of maximum tendency towards savings is rising, and it is inversely proportional to the government spending multiplier, which is what the U.S. government is hoping for. Consequentially, the return from investment into the economy is low.”
My Comment: The only thing that can help the U.S. is to stop violating anyone in the world, stop trying to shift their problems onto others, threatening others, putting pressure on the EU, and disturbing the Middle East. The change in their attitude towards Israel opens up problems which they won’t be able to overcome. The U.S. has to look two steps ahead. It shouldn’t go against nature, but rather study the tendency of its development and follow it. Humankind has reached the homestretch to the purpose of creation.
[56579]
Related Material:
Fed’s Report Paints A Gloomy Picture On Growth
The US Continues To Face An Ongoing National Crisis
You Will Die Today So I Could Die Tomorrow
Opinion: (Tim Jackson, professor, director of research project Resolve, author of Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet): “Every society clings to a myth by which it lives.
“Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades, the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate it will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.
“This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity is without historical precedent. It is totally at odds with the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival.
“Most of the time, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. Growth must go on, we insist.
“The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find.
“Western capitalism is structurally reliant on growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes.
“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists, and revolutionaries.
“Yet question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.
“But economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To engage, for instance, in a radical overhaul of dysfunctional capital markets.
“Untrammelled speculation in commodities and financial derivatives brought the financial world to the brink of collapse just three years ago. It needs to be replaced by a longer, slower sense of capital.
“Fixing the economy is only part of the battle. We also have to confront the convoluted logic of consumerism. The days of spending money we do not have on things we do not need to impress people we do not care about are over.
“Living well is about good nutrition, decent homes, access to good quality services, stable communities, satisfying employment.
“Prosperity, in any meaningful sense of the word, transcends material concerns. It resides in our love for our families, the support of our friends, the strength of our communities, our ability to participate fully in the life of society, a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.”
My Comment: Some don’t see the future of society in unity and fair consumption, and some do see such a society in the future. But actually, material equality in a society of reasonable consumption can exist by giving more fulfillment to every person rather than by following one’s egoistic demands to be better, higher, stronger, richer, and smarter than others.
And that is possible only by spiritual fulfillment, which a person can receive by revealing the next level of existence, that of “Human” (Adam). And this needs to be explained to a person in advance even if he or she is not willing to perceive it yet. This is because life will gradually show a person that it leads him or her exactly to that.
[56599]
Related Material:
Has Western Capitalism Failed? Part 1
Has Western Capitalism Failed? Part 2
Altruism Is Precise Calculation
Opinion: (Mr. Popov, president of the International Education Association, from ng.ru): “The problem with our society is that it doesn’t know in which direction the world is moving. The direction of the future is not being taken into account when building the education system. …The adults are disoriented.
“The main organizers of the pre-school, kindergarten, and school education system were industrial and military leaders. Thus the pre-school-kindergarten-school system was organized to support this idea. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to take tiny children away from their parents and put them into daycare; however, the industrial model of those times demanded daycare. And it wouldn’t even occur to today’s parents that this can be done differently. This is why today we’re missing an affordable and developed network of qualified nannies. Children are being put into institutions where they get sick, and then they are all vaccinated. Schools and universities are based on an industrial way of life and are designed to raise a class of disciplined workers.
“Today the world is competing for people who are capable of independent decision-making and action. However, the parents don’t want there to be any changes within the school system. We don’t understand where the world is going. Fifth graders are spending time on the Internet, they’re in a different world, and the schools can’t do anything about it.
“English schools are among those that have the most freedom. Up to 80% of children are studying via the Internet. The whole world is trying to teach children to work independently and find information on their own. After all, children are bored at school, and though they are small it’s still impossible to force them to do something they don’t want or have no interest in doing.
“Teachers are mistaking that there is no alternative to school education. There is an alternative. It’s because of the teachers that the parents today don’t see it. First this alternative is discovered by the children. Some, for example, realize that a better way to study geography is through the Discovery channel. It’s also a lot quicker and more comprehensible.
“The development of the global Internet can lead to a point where everyone could receive knowledge through the Internet. In the U.S., a company called Apple was the first to introduce a school education system through the Internet. There is a growing number of children who are being home schooled and receive a certificate of completion at the end.
“If we wonder what will happen to all the teachers, then we’re not thinking about the children. Our society isn’t discussing what we’re doing with the children. It’s convenient for us to think that schools should be conservative and that kindergartens are a very necessary invention.
“Today, parents don’t want to put their children in schools because they want to protect them from violence and abuse. This attitude toward schools is reaching a large scale. Parents are trying to save their children, never mind giving them knowledge but simply save them from beatings and humiliation.”
My Comment: On the “correct’ school see sections “Children,” and “Education.”
[56485]
Related Material:
French Teachers Strike Over Job Cuts
What The Department Of Education Does Not Talk About
Fathers And Sons: Who Lacks Understanding?
There are three degrees of attaining man’s total adhesion with the Creator: embrace, kiss, and adhesion (union), which he achieves with the help of the system of connections he reveals. These levels are symbolized by the holidays at the beginning of the New Year: the New Year itself (Rosh HaShana) – an embrace from the left, and then an embrace from the right – the Light of Sukkot, which grows bigger every day until reaching the 8th day, immediately after the end of Sukkot (Shmeni Atzeret), when total adhesion is attained.
It is written, “His left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me.” Then comes a connection called “kiss”—above Tabur, and then on the level of Yesodot—below Tabur, in the receiving desires when the Light of Hassadim is already present in order to draw the Light of Hochma into it for the sake of bestowal.
The whole world is now revealing the same degrees. And even though the world does not know what phases it is going through, it is still going through the same process. First the transgressions gradually become revealed—a bad sensation, a reason forcing us to reveal the evil because we feel bad. But we still don’t know why we feel bad and nothing goes right anywhere.
Then the next phase arrives where we begin to reveal that the reason for these failures is that we are not connected with one another and do not correspond to nature.
When the Creator turns to the world as a whole, to all the people, He remains in a certain concealment, and instead of Him, who is bestowing, He offers people a representative of Him—the surrounding nature with which we have to reach balance.
Instead of attaining love for friends and building a common spiritual vessel for the revelation of the Light of adhesion, people are simply revealing the need to unite in order to correspond to the global, integral mechanism that operates in nature and is now starting to envelop the human level as well.
Previously we thought it acted only on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, being the law of the universe’s existence. But we considered ourselves above it. However, now we are revealing that we are also inside of that same global mechanism, which is becoming expressed in us and is obligating us to also unite with one another and with all other parts of nature into one, single system.
It turns out that the “transgressions” are starting to become revealed not only for those who consciously aspire to attain the Creator’s revelation, but also for all of humanity, except they become revealed to it in a more concealed form. All people will have to attain correction, meaning unification among one another on all its degrees: “embrace, kiss, and union,” but they will have to do it in a slightly different form.
First come the phenomena that are given to us as preparation. And then, as the Rambam said, the secrets of bestowal begin slightly being revealed to the “women, slaves, children, and elderly,” meaning to all those who are not “men,” capable of independently overcoming (a man, Gever comes from the word overcoming, Itgabrut).
This is talking about all of humanity, which is gradually revealing the laws of the upper system. By virtue of this, every person also gains the ability to join those who belong to the “men,” those who will provide them with the Light of adhesion with the Creator.
Therefore, these holidays symbolize a quite lengthy process, rather than the several days they last on the calendar. Every new day is a new revelation—first of the left line, and the next five days are the revelation of the right line, and the dissemination of Light in the seven Sefirot of Zeir Anpin until the eighth day, immediately after the end of Sukkot, Shmeni Atzeret, which already corresponds to Malchut, the eigth Sefira, which follows it.
All of this symbolizes lengthy, scrupulous work and gradual progression through the degrees of the states.
[56701]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/11, Shamati
Related Material:
The Dating Of States
The Day Of Atonement Is A Day Of Joy
Let Us Connect To The World
The economic system is a sort of egoistic imprint of the calculation we make in the “body” of the soul when we prepare it for spiritual action. In economics we aim for maximum profit with minimum investment and risk. These are practical, egoistic calculations where everything is clear.
Even if egoism is repressed formally, it is only because we cannot characterize it qualitatively since it belongs to feelings, to familial connections, to the interests of a country, a nation, and so on. In reality everything can be enumerated and if we were able to do that, we would find ourselves in a precise system, analogous to the one operating in the spiritual world.
Except there, the calculations are made in the “body” of a Partzuf, in the aspiration for bestowal. When you are on the path leading to bestowal, you make a precise calculation, like in an ideal economy: How much do I have to extract from every desire, from every situation, from every factor in this action or maneuver in order to receive the maximum benefit? But obviously, that benefit is selfless.
Here we count on receiving, whereas there—on bestowing, yet the calculation remains. The only question is how to shift from one mode to another. Explaining the final state is also not simple, yet it is characterized by mathematical precision. The current economic disasters are essentially revealing the traits of our egoism which we lacked to conduct the most precise of calculations.
“I love this person. I hate that one. This one is repulsive to me. This one is far from me. This one is close to me. This one is more important in the general system. This one is less important….” How can we take all of these parameters into consideration? And how will every person act individually according to them, renewing his calculations at every second? This will be the real economy which we will have to uphold. In other words, we will have to get to know the correct, healthy system in which egoism works correctly, using two forces.
Today our economic complex is based on just one egoistic component and therefore, without knowing the second half, we cannot manage it. However, when the forces of bestowal join the forces of reception, we will start to interact with the people around us differently, balancing out bestowal and reception in conformity with our own level and the level of society. This will be the real calculation.
We will have to measure and consider our interconnections, which we are unable to do today. We will have to consider all the possible threads extending between us in thoughts and feelings, levels of our closeness and the “bestowal coefficient,” bringing all of this into the economic calculation that will have a purely mathematical character.
If we add the qualitative variables to its parameters, which reflect feelings and the states of humanity as a whole, we will receive a reliable and indisputable result. The same calculation is made in the head of the Partzuf: I consider the inner and surrounding Light, the Reshimot, TANTOT, my inner and outer desires, and methods of working with them…. Precisely this is economics.
Only spiritual calculations are made in the desire and therefore all numbers are precise and authentic. In the desire I can classify factors and give them values, extracting TANTOT from them. In essence, books of Kabbalists are the economics of the universe. Lights are “money,” meaning life, while vessels, desires, and screens allow us to acquire fulfillment, profit. Inner profit is inner Light, and future profit is the surrounding Light. We make mutual loans: For example, the upper one loans to the lower one in the first type of Gadlut. And in the second type of Gadlut the lower one receives Light from the upper one in order to pass it on….
It’s not accidental that the main blow of the crisis affected none other than the economy because it is the most important thing to us. It wasn’t the destruction of the family unit, a collapse of upbringing, or the ecology, but precisely economic problems that have forced us to seriously talk about the crisis. And this corresponds to the spiritual processes.
With time we will begin running a healthy economy, will begin deducing it according to the spiritual system and feeling out the transition to it. This transition will become possible only on the condition that we bring the mutual guarantee component into the calculation, if we measure it, weigh it, and designate it numerically. We will consider it when making calculations on the stock market because otherwise it is impossible. Tomorrow’s success depends on how much the mutual guarantee component grows in our economic formula.
[56665]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/11, Shamati
Related Material:
A Loaded Message
Altruism Is Precise Calculation
Economics Done By The Balance Formula
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
