Entries in the 'Globalization' Category

Fear Of Growing Up

Laitman_088In the News (Pacific Standard): The Peter Pan Syndrome was one of the best-selling books of the early 1980s. In it, psychologist Dan Kiley argued that teenage boys were increasingly reluctant to grow up and accept adult responsibilities.

“Any hope that this might be a short-lived phenomenon is refuted by new research. It finds that, compared to previous generations, today’s university students — both male and female — consider maturity a minefield they are in no hurry to start navigating.

“‘Today’s emerging adults seem reluctant to take on life’s next chapter,’ concludes a research team led by Miami University psychologist April Smith. ‘Undergraduates today experience more fear related to facing the demands of adult life than undergraduates in the past.'”

Answer: When I was young, it was the opposite. We wanted to be grownups so much, to start working, to do something, to aspire for something, to discover something. Schools seemed like a prison to us, while today it is the other way around; the young want to remain the way they are because they have everything.

They are locked inside their cell phone screens or computers and are in fact trapped in a cage that provides a filling they cannot give up. Of course they don’t want to break away from the screen because if they can spend all their free time in front of the small screen like small kids, they have no need for anything else.

The average amount of time in which a person can work, discover, and “conquer” the world is between 20 to 60 years, but there is nothing that attracts the youth these days.

In the past when we were that age, we dreamed about being pilots or astronauts. And then all of a sudden everyone began to regard pilots as taxi drivers who merely transport passengers back and forth.  And astronauts? They merely fly, orbit in space, land, and that’s it. People lost the yearning for romanticism, for a special filling, and nothing in this world attracts them anymore.

We are developing very quickly and we understand that there is nothing in our world that can fill us. Although we don’t fully understand it yet, we do feel it.

Humanity is moving in two directions: one is determined by the elite who see what is going on and try to organize and manage everything, but don’t know how to cope with the economic crisis and aspire to reduce the number of people on this planet in non-military ways. This is what humanity can do, and there are no other solutions since people don’t understand what is going on.

The other direction is determined by the wisdom of Kabbalah, according to which humanity is in the midst of a very meaningful evolutionary phase, in the transition and an ascent to the next level. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our consciousness has to change; we can and we should change our attitude to the world and to each other.

When my generation looks at young people today, it is hard to understand what they engage in, and  they don’t understand us. We seem to be living on two differ planes. They have their own interests and we have ours.

We can see this as an ordinary generation gap between fathers and sons, but according to the wisdom of Kabbalah this is not really a gap, but the ascent of the new generation to the next dimension. The young people of the new generation will attain it; their consciousness will change completely; they will not regard corporeal problems and there will actually be none.

Modern robotics and scientific discoveries will ensure that we will not have to think about anything but how to build the correct society, since otherwise we will be destroyed.

We have to find out precisely what options we have: either to build one unique network between us, or this is where we will all be buried.

Question: Do people understand that they are in prison?

Answer: It isn’t a prison but a very simple action of the universe, which we have to respond to in order to survive. If a global flood threatened our lives, we would have to take some measures otherwise we would drown.

Similarly, a new system is approaching us, a totally new paradigm, a new level of existence, and we have to adapt to it. Those who will not adapt to it will not survive. It may well be that only a couple of thousand people from all of humanity will survive, and they will attain the new level of existence. Just like after the global flood, they will reach a new land and humanity will be regenerated.

This phase is starting now and I hope it will end in a couple of decades. Then humanity will understand what it is facing, the wisdom of Kabbalah offers a method by which we can quickly undergo this phase, with little suffering, easily, by understanding what is going on and, at the same time, in a qualitative way.

It doesn’t provide us with a tranquilizer in order to mitigate the unavoidable transition to the next phase of united humanity, but it offers us a way to understand the process and to do it by ourselves. This is how we will attain the new quality independently, and it will not only be a totally different feeling, but will lead to a totally different outcome.
[190196]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/15/16

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New World Economy

laitman_228Question: Does the wisdom of Kabbalah provide an answer to the question of how to build a new economy and new attitudes toward production?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah treats this very seriously. Baal HaSulam wrote about this in the book The Last Generation. You can read or listen to my conversations with economists on the Internet in any language.

The current economy is a transitional economy for the last egoistic generation. Therefore, our world is in a huge crisis.

We must go through these situations so we will recognize the imperative of changing ourselves. The change doesn’t “come down” from above.

From above only opposing forces “come down.” In our time an immense opposition between the egoistic system of our world and the altruistic system of the upper world is being discovered so that we will understand we need to be similar to the higher system that the wisdom of Kabbalah talks about. So the need for self-improvement, correction, and re-education will appear in us.

I can say briefly that the economic system by which the next generation will live is a system in which every person in society will receive the rational necessities for his existence but no more than that.

Everything else will be accessible to him only to the degree that he will be connected to the higher system from which he will begin to receive fulfillment in the form of a unique force that will fulfill him directly because a person is actually a desire.

The desire is fulfilled with forces; if we shape the desire correctly, then we will have the ability to be fulfilled by nature because this force is found in it. And that is how he will exist in an eternal, perfect, infinite, everlasting state.

The world requires a new fulfillment, not a physical fulfillment. Therefore, the present economy exists to connect everyone together, manufacturing only what is necessary and distributing all of the products among us. In an ideal situation, this is the right mutual connection between producers, consumers, and service teams.

In contrast to this, the economy of the coming generation will be based on mutual connection between us and mutual fulfillment of each other, but without competition and only to the degree that is necessary for each one of us. All other kinds of connection will be directed only toward discovering the source of the higher fulfillment between us.
[191651]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/17/16

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The End Of The Money Era, Part 4

Laitman_115_04All of the destructions are a preparation for correction. The first destruction, the very first sin of Adam was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Later, as a result of this fundamental sin, there were many separations from generation to generation.

In every generation, more and more divisions were revealed until in ancient Babylon, it was revealed so strongly that it separated the people of Israel from the nations of the world. This does not speak about people, but about two methods of correction. One method says: “We will go the way nature shows us. The Creator created us with the desire to enjoy and succeed in life, and we will fulfill this desire.”

The second method says: “The Creator created a desire to enjoy not in order for us to succeed in life. Nothing good will happen if I follow my egoistic desire. After all, life will end one day. I must use my desire to enjoy in order to rise above it. If I make the correct effort to act against the desire to enjoy, then from above I receive the highest force of nature. It is a miracle. It is enough to do some work on my egoism by resisting it and trying to unite with others, and a great Light will come to us and help us connect above our egoism. In this way, we begin to reveal the Creator.”

So, there are two methods. Either we work on the egoism and with its help we will organize ourselves and the world, or we want, due to desire to receive pleasure, to organize the higher level, using egoism only as means.

Question: If any destruction is a preparation for correction, then which division better prepares the world for correction, an American model or a European one? Which continent is closer to the realization of its evil and to correction?

Answer: America is an initial stage with a touch of egoism. It once brought people of different nationalities from different countries together, people who had nothing and began from scratch to build the country according to a single principle—the power of money.

And consequently American culture is close to all the world; it is possible to export it anywhere. After all, people everywhere understand what money is. Whereas in Europe it was different. Europe is proud of its individual, special culture, which it tried to introduce in all of its colonies.

The lack of unity was revealed much faster in Europe. In it, there are conflicts between countries, governments, including territorial claims. According to the program of creation, they must discover that the American project that translates everything to money can’t be realized, especially in Europe where it is necessary to weigh the many parameters that do not have a cash equivalent.

As a result, it will lead them to understand that they are going through suffering. Any program that they offer now will result in great suffering.

Question: At what point will the group of Abraham and the group of Nimrod meet again and unite?

Answer: The group of Nimrod, beginning from ancient Babylon and onward, acted only according to one principle: the power of money. This approach is ingrained in every nation to the present day with small differences according to the national character of each one.

The group of Abraham began to connect between themselves not on the basis of money, but on the principle of unity. So, in their attitudes, money did not dominate, but mutual bestowal did. It means that to unite, the efforts can come from the pocket or from the heart.

This group managed to build the Temple and reach unity, but then it shattered. Now, the group of Abraham finished mixing with the group of Nimrod. Nowadays, Jews, especially in America and Europe, want to connect to the group of Nimrod as much as possible, but they will discover that it does not work.

They really would like to dissolve in all of humanity and adopt its customs, but they will not succeed. After all, humanity doesn’t want them. It despises and hates the Jews and pushes them away. The Jews don’t realize how much they are hated by all the nations of the world.

These two groups can begin to work together only on condition that, as a result of the work of Abraham’s group, that is, the Kabbalists, the Upper Light will be shed on Nimrod’s group and enable them to understand that they must join Abraham’s group, the method of connection. This method will be spread between all nations. Only in this form will it be possible to make the correction.
[191660]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Laitman_115_05Question: Can there be any other common denominator, apart from money, that could unite Europe?

Answer: It is impossible to find another standard that would be accepted by everyone. Therefore Europe will stay divided. It wanted to follow the example of America and so it decided to unite.

But this obviously won’t work since it is impossible to overcome the existing differences, to rise above hatred, difference in languages, religions, attitudes, and contradicting mentalities of the peoples.

The unification of Europe is a complex recipe that requires a very skilled chef who adds spices to this dish and knows exactly which country can be combined with another, what exactly to combine and in what amounts. Therefore, there is no point even dreaming of uniting Europe.

They wanted to unite to become like America against America, but it didn’t work.

Question: Is it possible that Europe will be able to unite around the common problem of radical Islam?

Answer: Radical Islam is another additional problem for Europe. And soon it will appear also in America, once radical Islam will be imported there with the help of its high-ranking supporters like Obama. He doesn’t hide his plans to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States during the year. It is his program and it is very important to him.

Today, both Europe and America show us their disappointment. It is possible to ignore it and continue to enjoy life, but there is a clear negative trend in society, in the economy, and in the family. The trend is simply terrible in both Europe and the US.

They are similar to a terminally ill person who just before death suddenly starts to feel better for a few days, seemingly comes to life and becomes healthier. However, it is just before he dies.

The unification of Europe is not sustainable. It is a direct consequence of ancient Babylon.

The group that followed Nimrod that selected money as a standard of measurement and dispersed all around the world now, after all its history of egoistic development, is discovering that this principle stopped working.

There is nothing wrong with it. After all, they have done their job in order to finally discover this. Meanwhile, Abraham did his job with the second group, finished it, and also prepared everything that is necessary.

Today the group of Nimrod is in a helpless state. But the group of Abraham is also helpless. The time has come for it to reveal his method. It is clear that we can’t be successful any other way.
[191633]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Laitman_004Question: The Americans managed to cultivate patriotism and national pride among its people. Why hasn’t this happened in Europe from the moment the Common Market was created?

Answer: This is obvious. In the US there is one army, one police, one capitol, and one White House. And although each state has its own laws and management, it is purely a municipal division. And this is one country and that gave America a completely different look compared to Europe.

In the European Union there are thirty languages, thirty countries, thirty different cultures, and even different religious faiths that were fighting with each other throughout the history. Each one has a claim against a neighbor over boundaries. Each one holds a grudge toward the nearest neighbors. Therefore, there can’t be such unity between them as in the US.

In the US they have adopted a single principle: money and freedom of economic enterprise. As long as you act within the legal framework, do what you want and then everyone will be evaluated according to the amount of money he has in his bank account.

Egoism blossoms if it is allowed to work freely. It can be weighed on these scales. How much do you weigh? Only hundred dollars? And he weighs a hundred million, this is a respected person. However, it gives a clear value to everything and the entire system works smoothly.

Everyone is evaluated this way, whoever he is: musician, writer, or professor. The first thing he is asked is how much he is worth, that is how much money he has in the account. And this determines everything.

And in Europe everything is blurry, because the Europeans value culture, education, and the ideals of the French Revolution, i.e., all different values that can’t be measured with money. The Europeans keep them and value them. On one hand, this is good. But on the other hand, these are not clear egoistic principles that can lead to a common denominator to evaluate all countries according to.

One standard of measurement for everyone is required, and there is none. For the Frenchman it’s his French wine, for the Belgian his dried fish, and for the German his beer—these are more important than the whole Europe. There weren’t such differences in America so it was easy to connect people who came just to become rich and to provide a good life for themselves. But in Europe there isn’t such a simple principle, it is divided into a number of different values.

There is no one standard, no common denominator between the countries, and therefore they can’t unite. The common denominator isn’t very simple—this something common between all of us, between you and me, between you and him. We need to do some kind of averaging between everyone, but in Europe this won’t work. It isn’t possible to unite even according to the American principle: to enrich and create a United States of Europe.
[19157]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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It Is Impossible To Continue In The Old Way

Laitman_120Question: How is it possible to give up the production of unnecessary goods if all resources and plans are concentrated in the powerful in this world and they cannot be reached? Ordinary people must work in production to provide for themselves.

Answer: Today, 80% of the products we manufacture are not needed at all. According to statistical calculations, 3% of the overall population of the Earth would be sufficient to work to provide humanity with everything it needs. All of the surplus products we manufacture are intended only to extract money from others to keep it in our “piggy banks.” And then the money loses its value, as is happening today.

Now banks have introduced interest-free loans and even negative interest rates. Suppose you take out a loan of $1,000. You only need to return $900. Is it clear where the economy is moving? It is beginning to work in the opposite direction. We don’t understand that we have created an artificial world for ourselves. Everything is already living in it according to spiritual laws and only humans live in the old way! Therefor we don’t succeed at anything. We must simply open our eyes and sober up.

Those who hold positions in the government in every nation want things to be good for the citizens, but they don’t succeed! This is because on one hand, we cannot work today with our egoism and the egoistic system that is tearing us apart and making us reject each other, and on the other hand, we are discovering that we are completely interconnected.

So it is possible to say only one thing here: before anything bad happens to us, in a good way or a bad way, we must understand the world we exist in. We see how the powerful people in this world are really powerless. They don’t have enough knowledge of how to manage the world, how to manage an economic and production systems. Everything is “running through our fingers,” everything disappears somewhere! This indicates we don’t know the system that manages us today. The world has changed. In the last thirty years it has become different and we don’t understand what kind of a world we are living in.

So the wisdom of Kabbalah has been revealed in our time. It was concealed for thousands of years specifically to be discovered in our day to explain to us what that system of forces is that manages humanity and the world today. If we continue to behave in the same form as today, then human society will go down the drain, in a free fall because this will have an influence on those strata of nature that will actually lead us to annihilation. We already see today what is happening with the climate.

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals to us the general system of management through which we see that such a possibility is not excluded that only a small fraction of the population of the Earth will remain. And this part will bring the mini-humanity to unity in any case.
[191549]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/17/16

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Laitman_115_06The sin of the first man with the tree of knowledge of good and evil was that Adam tasted what great pleasure can be received by bringing contentment to the Creator and couldn’t resist receiving it egoistically. He could receive this pleasure on condition that he would lead the entire world to connection, and in this way he would have created a screen on the egoistic reception. However, he didn’t have such screen and therefore sinned.

The revelation of this huge egoistic desire is called the original sin, and all of us, our entire world, are the result of this sin. The first time it was revealed was in the ancient Babylon. Once they discovered that egoistic union leads us to crisis, some of the Babylonians simply decided to disperse. The same thing is happening now in Europe and will soon begin in America.

And the other part of the Babylonians said, “No! We have a teacher, Abraham, who says that it is possible to find a force that will be able to unite us.” Since then humanity split and went in two different ways.

Those that went with Abraham and called themselves people of Israel also fell into the same egoism as other nations of the world. And yet they couldn’t become the same as the others due to the division that occurred in ancient Babylon that has run throughout the entire history of humanity. And to this day the same fight is going on.

Once a new egoistic desire was revealed in Adam, he couldn’t think about anything else apart from reception. Our entire world is a materialized consequence of this action, and therefore it is built entirely on material success. In it everything is measured by money, which is an equivalent of all a person’s actions.

We can’t evaluate people according to their psychology and achievements in culture and education. In the end, everything is converted into money. That’s the way it is organized all over the world, but nowadays this model of measurement is beginning to collapse. Soon it will be impossible to measure anything with money and it will disappear, no longer being the sole criterion.

The destruction has already begun in the United States, where previously there wasn’t any other way of payment except money. After all, this country was created by people from all nations and all cultures. They didn’t pay attention if your skin is black, white, or yellow, nothing about you worried them apart from money. Money has been a major force.

And now the force of money is disappearing and eventually there won’t be any model of measurement left. However, for the three hundred years of existence of America, it was very helpful that it didn’t take into account any values other than money.

It was different in Europe. America is one country where many nations live, but in Europe there are many countries and many different opinions, ideologies, ideals of freedom and equality, and the long history of mutual relations and conflicts between all the countries. Therefore the union wasn’t easy for them, and instead of connecting they started to fight.

After the wars, the Europeans attempted to unite following the US example, they wanted to realize the American dream for themselves. However they had to become a United States of Europe for that and this isn’t simple. They didn’t have one government and one nation. Therefore it didn’t work out. And besides, they were prevented by disagreement in psychological principles. In America there was only one principle, money! And in Europe there were many other principles, after all, this is a special ancient culture. Although, no matter what, one collapses from one side, another from another side, but in the end they both will be destroyed.
[191516]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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How Does One Break Away From Monetary Problems?

laitman_626Question: What should one do to make more money and not suffer?

Answer: The best situation is when a man has a steady job, gets a fixed salary, and in his spare time engages in things that aren’t related to profit or wasting money.

Then his mind breaks away from thinking about monetary problems. It suddenly becomes clear to him that he can get along well, because in principle, a person doesn’t need much to live: clothing, food, housing, and to pay taxes. And everything else should be in a completely different area: spiritual needs, perceptions, and so forth. A person should specifically direct himself this way because things won’t be any better later on. People in the world will never be able to make much of a profit. The worldwide “Golden Age” and its bourgeois habits are over.

We have the ability to provide everyone with an income necessary for existence: food, clothing, housing, education for children, and so forth, everything required for a person to function normally without luxuries. Modern technological development makes it possible for us to provide for all of these needs.
[189804]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Women In Power

laitman_627_2In the News (Financial Policy): “For the first time in history, the inner chambers of global leadership may go genuinely coed. The anointment of Theresa May as Britain’s next prime minister, the seemingly endless rule of Angela Merkel in Germany, the brightening prospects of Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential race, and the presence of women on the shortlist to succeed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (though last week’s straw poll wound up with men in the top slots) could mean that as of early next year, global summitry will see nearly as many pantsuits and scarves as it does suits and ties. …

“Contemplating the rise of female leaders in Britain and the United States and at the U.N., it is hard not to think of what the business world has termed the ‘glass cliff’: the notion that women are elevated to power amid crises so daunting that men are deterred for fear of failure, prompting women to step up to no-win situations. …

“Amid these challenges, it is tempting to hope — and there is some evidence to indicate — that this cohort of female leaders may turn to one another as a source of solidarity, forging effective partnerships that translate into policy results. Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas have written a book arguing that when women team up professionally they can achieve greater confidence, flexibility, and accountability than is attainable in other working relationships. Across multiple academic disciplines, research confirms that women tend to be more open to teamwork than men.”

Answer: Women are more open, more collective, and less egoistic in teamwork. They require support; they consolidate a collective, a circle around them, while a man would organize a pyramid (dominance).

Also, in serious circumstances, a drive to hide a bit behind a woman is awakened in a man. He must feel her next to him like a child who needs his mother.

It makes no difference if he is mature and healthy, in any case this instinct lives within him. We were born from a woman, we were educated by a woman, we were fed by her, and a woman protected us, clothed us, washed and dried us. So when we are not sure of ourselves, we feel like children, needing female, motherly support. It is not for nothing that it is said that behind every successful man stands a woman.

On the other hand, we must understand that there must be a proper integration between a man and woman. The problem is that in our times both men and women are egoists and someone who rises to power cannot do anything good. A man will not hide behind a woman and unfortunately, even though a woman will partially function collectively, this will be without result because neither these nor those have a method for collective management.

Our world is becoming integral, so much so that everything concludes with this fact. The fact is that in various nations women have risen to power, and in nations like Germany, England, the United States, and France, there is an indication that men are feeling the uncertainty that is sitting in our subconscious. So nature is revealing that advancing to the front of the stage is a woman who is strong, in control, calm and confident, whom men imagine as a mother whose “skirt can be held.”

Question: What can be expected for us in the near future?

Answer: A serious shock can be expected for us in the future because a woman in power is a sign that the situation in the world is truly dim and unclear.

We need to understand that precisely in this situation, in spite of everything, men are obliged to go to the front of the stage. It is specifically the men who must acquire and master the method of correction of the world, seeing their role and realizing it. While women always adapt themselves to men, there is no need to throw everything on them.

One must take into account that they find themselves at the head of the nation against their will because we have been hurled into a dead end. But the correction must always move and be carried out through the men.
[191401]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/28/16

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“We Have Lost The Fear Of Nuclear War”

laitman_228In the News (aif.ru): “Alexei Arbatov : Alas, now really very few people can imagine a nuclear war. Within only the first few hours, 70-80 million would be killed – more than were killed in all the years of the Second World War! And then, within a few weeks the rest of the world would perish. This is what is shown by all the computer models.

“You’re right, there has been a very dangerous psychological shift: in the 25 years since the end of the Cold War, nuclear war as a real threat has been pushed out of people’s consciousness. …

“But the thing is that nuclear missiles are in fact still focused on the major cities of the potential enemy. In this sense, for 25 years, nothing has changed! The US and Russia have only a dozen other major cities. And the number of nuclear warheads each has still would be enough to erase the city to the ground, and even more than once. Think for yourself: a few dozen cities on each side and strategic nuclear weapons – about 1.5 thousand. And those 70-80 million killed in the first hours of a nuclear war – it is just the population of large cities and their hinterlands. The secondary effects – radioactive contamination, fires, the atmosphere filled with smoke – after a while would turn into a disaster for the rest of the world. …

“Therefore, neither the United States nor Russia has any chance of surviving in the event of full-scale nuclear exchange. This would also be the case for other nations, even those located somewhere in Africa or Asia. After all, the planet’s atmosphere would become opaque for many years, which would entail the collapse of all agriculture. And then, as they said during the Cold War, the survivors will envy the dead. They will die painfully in the dark from hunger and disease – in the radioactive ruins of what had recently been a civilization.”

My Comment: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, if we don’t yearn to rein in our egoism through the discovery of the Creator in time, egoism will necessarily bring us to nuclear war. After all, there is no other way than the way of suffering, of egoism, or through the Light above the ego, above our nature, ascending above it to the characteristic of bestowal and connection.
[189854]

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