In the News (from Times Online): “Kapital Gains” What with the humbling of some of the world’s grandest banks, the world has been moving in mysterious ways. But few as mysterious as the current climb up Germany’s bestseller lists of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital – a book which tends to be more bought than read. … Marx’s German publisher says sales have been soaring.

My Comment: It’s obvious that our generation is still not morally mature enough to adopt the system of equal and fair distribution according to the rule, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Marx also recognizes that only “…at advanced levels of the collective society, once people’s primitive hierarchy of the distribution of labor disappears, and together with it, the contradiction between the physical and mental work, when the work itself will become the primary need instead of the means of existence, when along with the comprehensive individual development, the forces of production will prosper and all the sources of public happiness will spill in their great abundance – then once and for all the narrow bourgeois views will be rejected, and the society will write on their banner: ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’”

Marx maintained that the society develops by means of colliding forces in it, advancing from one state to the next through cause and consequence. As the negative force increases, it destroys the current state, and then the positive force forms a better state. And this goes on until the positive force is revealed in all its perfection.

But a question arises: should we then just wait for the negative force to bring our society to the best possible state? The problem is that the development by means of the negative force’s influence is lengthy and full of suffering. However, humans, unlike animals (which aren’t able to influence nature), can use the power of thought (the mind) to learn from nature about how to act on our own. We can thereby escape the influence of the negative force, and start controlling our development.

For example, when a person has to produce many chickens, he does not sit and wait for the hen to hatch the eggs to get the necessary quality and quantity of chicks. He instead creates an incubator that produces the chicks at the necessary time and in the necessary quantity and quality.

The same thing happens in the realm of general human development: Man can observe and track Nature’s actions by looking at the process of social development. He can then find an efficient, convenient method that will enable him to reach a happy final goal in the shortest time and with the least suffering.

This is what Marx was trying to attain through his tactics.

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In the News (from Newser): “Obama tells Congress economic crisis will become catastrophe if rescue bill isn’t passed” Warning that a failure to act “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe…,” Mr. Obama said in an eight-minute speech before taking reporters’ questions, “I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this [stimulus] plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis.”

My Comment: These actions won’t produce any results other than waste the last resources. The catastrophe is inevitable.

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In the News: (Interview with EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen from Spiegel): There is crisis everywhere. That is also true for the crown jewels of European industry – in chemicals and mechanical engineering, for example. Economic indicators point to production dropping by 12 percent in comparison with last year. The latest EU growth forecasts predict that the economy will shrink by 1.9 percent in 2009… But no one really knows how long this crisis will last.

My Comment: It’s time for Europe to wake up and unite, based on the principles of globality, integration, equality, and a mutual guarantee. Therein lies Europe’s salvation. Otherwise it will be torn apart by the Nazi regimes that will emerge. And there isn’t much time left…

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In the News (from Market Watch): “Hong Kong chief flags ‘financial protectionism’ ” The head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said yesterday there was a risk that “financial protectionism” could spread globally, triggering a second wave of financial turmoil.

In the News (from Financial Times): “S&P forecasts 200 defaults” “About 200 US junk-rated companies are likely to default this year, according to Standard & Poor’s, affecting almost $350bn worth of debt and adding impetus to alternatives to bankruptcy, such as distressed debt exchanges… “We expect nearly 200 speculative-grade companies to encounter some form of financial distress, leading to default in 2009,” S&P said.

“Currently, we have more than 180 companies rated B-minus or below with negative outlooks. That is where we expect many of the defaults will occur. Among the biggest companies at risk are Harrah’s Entertainment, Ford Motor and Claire’s Stores in the US and NXP and Ineos in Europe.”

My Comment: The crisis is caused by our egoistic relationships; therefore it won’t go away until we correct our relationships. If we don’t do this, the crisis will keep getting worse due to our constantly growing egoism (Reshimot), like a disease that remains neglected.

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In the News (an editorial from Asia Times):”Inflationism: Bane of capitalism” Wall Street finance was a destructive force imperiling our capitalistic system through the distortion of market pricing, spending patterns and resource allocation. …The effective pricing and distribution of finance throughout an economy are fundamental to the long-term success of capitalistic systems. …The focus should be on supporting the financial and economic systems toward a path of much less dependency on credit growth and the asset markets.

My Comment: People are still living with outdated theories and ways of thinking. Until they reject them, they won’t be able to shift to a new communications system and to build new economic relationships – and the crisis will not end.

The crisis is a demonstration of how far we are from being a global, integral, perfect society, where each member is guided by the quality of “love your neighbor as yourself.” We have to begin moving toward this state. Our delay in this development, our disparity with nature’s conditions, is what we feel as a “crisis.”

To the degree we will begin to adopt the correct, integral social structure, the “crisis,” or our dissimilarity to the Creator’s quality, will vanish. It seems unrealistic that humanity will develop this way, but nature will “force us to happiness,” and this will happen very soon!

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A question I received: Do you really believe in a world without money?

As an answer, I’ll post a letter from my long-time American student, Tasha:

I work in a financial company, which, until recently, was one of the pillars of the financial world, but now is grabbing on to every last dollar trying to stay afloat. Only a year ago, there wasn’t a single vacant position in the company, but now, a year later, less than a third of the positions are occupied. There are layoffs happening every month and everyone is waiting their turn, hoping to postpone what is inevitable and trying to solve the question of how to feed their families.

So what happened? Why did everything fall apart? We are taught that we lived and worked for “virtual” money. But we still worked, and we gave others an opportunity to work and feed their families. So what changed?

The material world did not change, but offices are empty, flights are canceled, and no one is vacationing at resorts. Instead people are joining the lines for unemployment benefits. Why is everyone on the planet suddenly seeing a surreal world? Why isn’t the “established” system, where everyone received from each other, no longer working? The universal economic system has shattered.

Even if money flows into the system, the system won’t work properly since banks and businesses don’t trust each other. Businesses don’t receive credit from the banks, and therefore they don’t trust them with their money. As a result, everything closes down. In other words, right from the start, the system was based on trust (on the perspective of a profit) rather than on money.

But if there is no money at all, then I have to work “out of the goodness of my heart” (without receiving any money), take what I need from the store (without giving any money), and the store will receive goods from a supplier (without giving any money), which I have produced (for which I did not receive any money). Will such a system work, where everyone works out of the goodness of their hearts and receives what is necessary? It would be heaven on earth.

But how can we even attempt to work “out of the goodness of our hearts” if everyone around us will immediately begin to use us and there’s no guarantee that we will get back at least some of what we need? In other words, such a system will only function normally under the condition that all the participants will agree to work for free, putting in the maximum for society’s survival and receiving the bare necessities. This is how all living, natural system operate, where the parts of the whole live for the sake of the whole organism’s existence. And if the crisis continues to develop, this will remain the only workable solution.

So the real question here is: how exactly can we all curb our egoism and begin to live by helping and caring for each other, instead of exploiting each other? What is the reason that people are ready to step on each other in order to snatch up more money? What’s the importance of how many zeros we have in our bank accounts? What’s the difference between an infinitely large amount and a complete absence of money?

A large sum of money gives a person one thing: confidence that he and his family will always have what is necessary, that his children will receive an education, and he will be provided for in old age and receive the best medical aid whenever he needs it. So if there was a way to give people the confidence that the society will provide them with all the essentials, how much money would each of us need? We wouldn’t need any money, since, as it’s now becoming clear, everything that exceeds the necessities is only to our detriment.

The necessary amount is, of course, subjective. For one person, it is a second pair of socks, and for another, it is a third Mercedes Benz. However, if humanity will reach the point where the only way for it to survive is by consuming the minimum, then everyone will view what is necessary for them only as an opportunity to bring the most benefit to the society. So where is that magical force that can switch our essence from consumption to bestowal, from using everyone to caring about everyone?

It does not exist inside us. We can only place our hopes in the force that created us, this whole world, and every plant and living creature, with such immense wisdom. It is the force that’s pushing humanity to develop toward a qualitatively new level, still unperceived by us. We need Light in our darkness. It is the Light that will correct us and bring us into a new world, with new relationships.

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Our world (the universe) began with the emergence of an empty space. This space did not exist before. It emerged from the Upper Dimension, in the form of an informational rudiment (a Reshimo – recording), which expanded to form emptiness – a space for the universe.

There is a very familiar term in economics to designate the emergence of this space for a new world – “inflation,” which means, “sudden expansion.” It originates from the Latin word “inflatio” – “to blow up.” This is also what happens in the corporeal processes, where “inflation” is the birth of humanity’s new state.

First the space increases (similar to how the monetary supply increases during a crisis). This only creates the space that will later be filled by matter (or, in the economy, this only increases the monetary supply, but not the products or services). Once the space has gone through the inflationary expansion, the process of matter’s emergence begins, at the expense of the gravitational field’s energy (or, in the economy, people realize the nature of the crisis and create new socio-economic relationships, ones based on bestowal and love, which enables them to feel life on the Upper Level, above matter).

The expansion gives birth to a new sense – the soul, which perceives a new world or a new reality beyond time, space, and motion (the parameters of our world). The soul feels an an eternal and perfect existence, not confined by these parameters.

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In the News (from Times Online): “New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe” It is, some say, just the beginning: 2009 could become another 1968 – a new age of rebellion. The LSE economist Robert Wade warned that large-scale civil unrest was on the way, “It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds and millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international.”

In the News (from The Telegraph): “1,000 immigrants break out of detention centre on Italian island of Lampedusa” The immigrants marched out of the detention centre in protest at their treatment by Italian authorities. They headed towards the town hall in Lampedusa town, the main settlement on the island after forcing open the gates of the camp.

My Comment: In the article “The Last Generation,” written in 1930, Baal HaSulam describes how governments will use force to pacify the people, to repress hungry hordes moving from Asia to better-fed Europe, and use weapons of mass destruction…

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In the News: (from APP): As Group of Seven finance ministers prepare to meet in Rome this weekend, officials from Tokyo to Berlin are signaling their concern that a “Buy American” clause in a U.S. stimulus package marks the first shot of an international trade war. … The fear is that unless checked, governments will repeat the mistake made in the Great Depression when protectionism choked global trade and prolonged the economic slump… The “Buy American” clause in the stimulus package moving through the U.S. Congress would require steel and other goods used in infrastructure projects to be made in the U.S… A November commitment by leaders of the Group of 20 not to establish new trade barriers was ignored within a month as Russia increased duties on automobile imports, China reintroduced tax breaks for exporters, and India imposed caps on steel imports.

In the News (from Elnotes): “In Hong Kong, a second wave of financial crisis is predicted” According to Joseph Yam, a second wave of crisis may be a growing phenomenon triggered by financial protectionism, which is to replace the practice of trade protectionism and threatens to take on a global nature. This is a “freezing” of foreign financial and investment channels as a means of protecting national economies in crisis.

My Comment: Today we have revealed the global, integral interconnection and interdependence between everyone. Therefore, these measures of protectionism and separation between nations will lead to horrible consequences, since they are opposite to Nature’s tendency. Countries should act on the contrary: implement a curriculum about the integral world and remove all barriers from all the communication and trade channels.

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A question I received: You often say that there’s a multi-faceted crisis going on, including a crisis of science and religion. But what’s the right way to define the crisis: A crisis of what?

My Answer: The crisis we feel and observe demonstrates our lack of similarity to Nature. Everything in Nature is interconnected, and since we are a part of Nature, we have to behave as an integral part of It, interacting harmoniously with all parts of Nature, as one organism.

Therefore, I view this crisis as the birth of a new world, as the breaking of an eggshell and the emergence of a baby chick into the world, or as the labor pains felt by a woman, the contractions that precede the birth of humanity’s new state.

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