Opinion (Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst): “The collective orientation of society beginning from the 16^th century gradually passed to a marketing orientation where a person feels that he is a commodity.

“Success depends on how a person sells his personality, he isn’t concerned about life and happiness him but only how suitable he is for sale. The goal of the marketing orientation is to maintain the demand for himself. People don’t have a self because it is changing all the time according to the principle, “I am as you need me to be.” They are not interested in such questions as, “What is a person living for?” Their ego is changing all the time and suppresses this feeling. The members of society become faceless machines, their feeling of identity is based upon active affiliation with organizations.

“People with a marketing orientation don’t know how to love or to hate because emotions are a disruption to sales and trade, to advancement on the bureaucratic ladder. They don’t experience deep affection towards themselves or others, so the danger of nuclear or ecological disaster doesn’t concern them. They love to buy and consume, but don’t value what they acquire. Lack of communication makes them indifferent towards objects. Importance is only in the value and comfort provided by the objects and not the objects themselves. They use friends and lovers without deep communication.

“The goal is to function properly, causing a rational response to the surrounding world. The dominance of rational thought is associated with the degeneration of emotional life. Feelings are considered to be a disturbance to optimal functioning and remain undeveloped. So people with a marketing orientation are terribly naïve regarding the emotional side of life. This is the reason that so many con men are so successful in the spiritual areas of life and politicians who express strong emotions attract people. We have stopped being the masters of technology, we have become its slaves, and technology turns towards us with the face of the goddess of destruction. We yearn to sacrifice ourselves and our children to her.”

My Comment: The next stage of our development is awareness of the shortcomings of the present stage and overcoming them, a state that will be the opposite of the previous state, a search for the true self and a true realization of unity with others, meaning outside of the self, with others, like seeds in the ground. In this manner we need to recognize that the full realization of one’s true self is possible only in unity with others, “within” others, and not individually, “outside of others.”
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In The News (sdelanounih.ru): “The main resource of the modern economy is the imbecile. You can sell him anything. Humanity reached the peak of scientific and technological power in the 60’s of the 20^th century. There was a great demand for engineers, physicists, and mathematicians then, so these occupations were fashionable, respected, and valued. It was fashionable to be smart.

“But detente in the mid 70’s wiped out the fashionableness of science and knowledge. The fashionable rationalism and positive approach towards science began to be recognizably undermined.

“In the 60’s the normal basic needs of the ‘Golden Billion’ were satisfied. People began to wake up to the question of the meaning of life and to eliminate it, the business world found another question and answer.

“Capitalism began to not just meet requirements as before, but to create new needs and meet them.

“Marketing came to the fore—the doctrine of how to make something unnecessary seem necessary and purchased. This is the role of total advertising.

“Marketing professionals build the needs. Global capitalism established a more difficult mission than the manipulation of human consciousness, the shaping of the ideal consumer who totally lacks the ability to think rationally and has no scientific knowledge about the world—something like a pipe through which one end products are pumped in and on the other end they fly into the dump.

“The clueless buffoon cheerfully living with elementary emotions and craving novelty. Grabbing a new toy, he must immediately throw away the old. The media doesn’t descend to the level of the reader to elevate him; it works to pull him down.

“The purpose of education is also to educate the cultured consumer. It is not necessary to hold onto anything in one’s head; everything can be found through Google. After all, if a person doesn’t know anything, it is possible to push everything on him.

“Ignorance and darkness are the last refuge of modern capitalism and its most important component without which the modern market cannot exist.”

My Comment: These overlords will not get anything since they are acting against the law of evolution in nature. This law will break them and bring humanity by the way of suffering or the way of re-education to a developed and elevated state.
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In the News (Psychologies.ru): “70 years ago the beginning of the 21^st century seemed happy: we thought that machines would do all the hard work while people would only work in order to receive pleasure by realizing their talents and would spend the rest of their time vacationing and enjoying a good happy life.

“So how did we become addicted to work, working more than our fathers who dreamt about our time, and even seem genuinely pleased with this circumstance? The work week in most developed countries is 35 hours and a holiday is not more than 4 weeks long. We take pride in being addicted to work and have no time for meeting new friends, sleeping properly, going on vacations, having sex and even for having a baby.

“People who are idle feel humiliated when they see those who are busy and they become much happier when they get a chance to be part of some activity even if it is very difficult. The actual thought of a vacation or rest seems wrong.”

Answer: Nature has set limits for us (that are external to us) in our corporeal development and we inevitably have to reduce production and consumption. Nature develops more new desires in us and we lose the yearning for corporeal savings.

The new generation is a good example of that. Nothing is more threatening to society than being unemployed; it leads to the deterioration of the individual and society. The only thing we will be able to fully engage in is our re-education.
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Opinion (Thorbjørn Jagland, Norwegian politician and Secretary General, Council of Europe): “We have observed a collapse of interest rates on the interbank lending market that has practically reached 0%. This indicates that the world is about to undergo a serious crisis in 2015, the kind we have never seen in the past.

“Today’s modern banking system is based on positive values of interest rates in the real credit market. What will happen if the banking services for storing money will no longer be profitable? What will happen to the pension funds and to our savings?

“We also see a crisis of trust in the political arena. The global balance of power is changing and no one makes any decisions by himself. We are witnessing the changing of the world from a unipolar one to a multipolar one. The leading political figures have undermined the mutual trust between them by their actions. Will the current political elite be able to overcome the crisis of 2015?”

My Comment: We will be able to overcome the lack of trust and the resultant crisis only by a method that raises us above the general human ego. We must first implement this method in Israel and thus set an example for the rest of the world (see “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”, item 71).
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In everyday life we generally hide our egoism. If I depend on my enemy completely, my ego begins to disappear and hatred evaporates. There is nowhere to escape to and I start to look for how to love him and cause him to love me. The self-preservation instinct begins to work, and I cannot hate someone when my life, the most precious thing I have, depends upon him.

But in our case, we are not succeeding. The hatred is being revealed between us more and more and the separatist movements are taking over the world. The more that our world is discovered as whole and mutually connected, the stronger the opposite trend becomes.

Each one aspires to isolation and ultimately we will reach the same situation as in ancient times, where every city and area became a separate nation. The whole world will be divided into such kingdoms.

On the one hand, egoism is growing, feeling its limitations and areas of control with more precision. And in this way, it separates itself from the others. As a result of this, the world in which seven billion people are living will create 10,000 nations that cannot get along with one another.

Even solitary individuals are no longer able to get along with each other. There was a time when families would live in one room: parents, children, grandchildren. And today two people cannot live in peace in the same apartment. This is called hatred.

To the same degree that our interdependence is appearing, the desire to shatter this dependency, separate and move away from each other is appearing as isolationism and separation. These two tendencies will not disappear and will develop more and more within human society, and there is no way to resolve this! Both will grow to the skies and there will be no possibility of solving this conflict.

The art of connection is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. Ultimately the relationships between everyone—children, adults, in schools, at work, in international relations and within society—will reach such a state that we will not be ready to speak to one another and will need the wisdom of connection!

This wisdom will be required simply to be able to arrange normal relationships at work, in school, in the family and in all areas of our lives. People will need this wisdom because hatred, rejection, the inability to speak to one another or even look at others will reach such a threatening degree that we will not be able to bridge this gap.

It will not be possible to overcome the lack of desire to see and feel others. A person will search for isolation so that nobody will be near him, and he will not want to get close to anyone. But on the other hand, he will have to sit in class at school or university and be in connection with others.

Today, one person cannot do anything; even scientists carry out research in large groups. In addition, in our jobs everywhere, we need to connect in teams. But a person will lose the ability to cooperate even with one person who is like him as this hatred will grow to such a degree.

So the wisdom of connection will be very much in demand. The whole world is going to need it.

We need to understand that all of the spiritual worlds: the five worlds, Olam Ein Sof (world of Infinity), the entire ladder of levels, and the Partzufim are revealed in us through the unnatural connection between people. According to nature hatred and interdependence are revealed in us. But if we arrange for a connection between these polar opposites, the hatred and dependence, and communicate with others above our intellect, desire, and all calculations, we will discover new relationships and a new world.

Now we feel this world through our five senses, meaning the five kinds of egoistic connection between us. We see everything through our egoism, meaning that in every situation we search for the opportunity to be confident and enjoy. Thanks to the wisdom of connection, the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will reach new relationships above the egoistic relationships, which are relationships of “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (“Leviticus” 19:18), and within the connection between us we will begin to discover the five additional senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Within these senses, we will discover phenomena called spiritual worlds, until attaining the complete connection called Olam Ein Sof. The spiritual world is revealed in the connection between us, in the levels of our relationships that go from total detachment to complete adhesion. This is the ladder of spiritual levels.

To the degree that I try to develop love above my egoism and hatred, I discover the levels of the spiritual worlds. So it isn’t necessary to search for the spiritual world in any other place, such as in books or mechanical actions with the hands and feet. Everything depends only on work in the heart and how much I can connect emotionally with others above the rejection and hatred without wanting to delete or annihilate it.

After all, everything is built precisely above the hatred, as it is written, “Love covereth all transgressions” (Proverbs 10:12). So with love built above the hatred, I will discover a new world called the world of men. After all, we are all within this world and will be connected as one and receive the form of Adam – man  (Domeh – similar to the Creator).
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14

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Question: Why does human society develop the way it does throughout history? Couldn’t we have evaded all the great tragedies in our history? And now we are also in a state that no one can understand!

Answer: Everything was very clear… up until our time. From now onward everything is also clear except for the events that we will actually determine in the future, we humans, all of us, by our freewill, which is the reason that it is not predetermined. Up until now we had no choice and everything throughout history occurred according to strict and rigid laws of development on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human.

From Kabbalah we learn that our world was created as a result of the creation of the desire to receive pleasure. This unique created being was shattered into many parts as a result of its evolution, and after the shattering, the parts fell into the level of our world and created its four levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

These four forms of the desire have to unite from our lower (egoistic) world and ascend to their source, their root, where the one unique desire was created (born).

This is the reason that our entire history is a movement towards unity that is attained by wars, by mutual actions, art, commerce—by all our actions in which we connect and begin to understand one another better by adopting each other’s attributes and thus becoming incorporated in one another.

This unity (which is egoistic at the moment) took place in the last stage of development of our civilization, capitalism, i.e., under the mediation of capital, the development of industry and commerce, which was the basis for the establishment of global economic, political, and social relationships that led us to a global egoistic society. The development of egoism in people led to the development of industrialism, which has led all of mankind to unite egoistically.

Next we have to discover all the evil of egoism and decide whether to flow with the current it leads us along or to correct it by our proper unity.

This is the solution and our free decision. Until now our history was predetermined, but the moment we have to make a decision onward, we don’t know what will happen. To be more accurate, we know what will happen in each of the cases, but it is up to society to determine in which of them we will be!
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In the News (pravda.ru): “There is a change of power in the EU member states. The voters prefer candidates from the ‘left.’ After the new leaders gain control, they find themselves under pressure from all kinds of creditors.

“The German banks are implementing financial schemes which force the national governments to be rigidly dependent on them. This activity hangs all of the countries of the southern region of the European Union “’on the hook.’ The EU was established as an alliance based on democracy, but, in fact, it emerges as a creation that is more clearly reminiscent of an empire.”

My comment: I think that it cannot be otherwise because there was no thought given to union but only economic unity, and even then only  limited economic unity. But the conditions for an integral world cannot be limited to such one-sided connections.
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The Torah, “Leviticus” 26:36 – 26:37: And as for them that are left of you, I will send a faintness into their heart in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as one fleeth from the sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth. And they shall stumble one upon another, as it were before the sword, when none pursueth; and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.

If the Israeli nation doesn’t choose to correct itself voluntarily, there is a need for a very tough external force that will suppress the ego and force it to behave properly. This is called the path of suffering. Along this path people realize what they have been through, how far they have diverted from their goal, and that they need to fully understand this in order to return to fulfilling their duty. But in order to do so, their eyes have to be opened so that they become aware of the two forces in nature and how they operate.

You can only demand something from a person according to his level of development. When does a child begin to understand that he is in a certain framework? First he goes to kindergarten where he is taught what is allowed and what is forbidden. This continues in school. It is only at the age of 14-15 that he becomes responsible for his actions and understands that there are certain laws of behavior that if he breaks, he can be arrested by the police. After the age of 18 he is an adult, although he is not yet fully mature.

In any case, we have to bring a person to the recognition of what he is required to do and so he must fulfill that requirement. Only then will it be possible to hold him responsible. This is the reason that we undergo such a long preparation period of thousands of years. The problem today is that even the sufferings we have undergone don’t help us.

The question is if they were enough. At the end of the 19^th century for example, the first settlers arrived in Israel. They were ready to live under difficult conditions such as a hot dry climate, swamps that needed to be drained, and the suffering of malaria in order to build the Kibbutzim. In 10 to 20 years, people began to forget all that. The second Aliya (wave of immigration) began and then the third, but they were different people because the ego kept renewing itself. A person doesn’t believe that what happened to him yesterday can be repeated today. It is not even his fault that it is all erased from his memory since he is a new person each day. Therefore, the main thing is education and the teaching of the principles of national and global unity.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/10/14

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Singapore Experiment: The Right Dictatorship

Question: In March this year, Lee Kuan Yew, one of the founders of the “Singapore economic miracle,” died. On an empty spot on the edge of a swampy Malaysia, with nothing around but an English military base, within a short period of 50 years, the most prosperous nation in the world was established. But in this nation, there is not a speck of democracy in the sense that we understand it in the developed nations. How did this nation succeed in doing what large nations like America and England have done, while maintaining the strictest leadership and dictatorship of law?

Answer: I don’t perceive democracy in the same way as it exists everywhere, or that that deserves to be called a democracy. This is not the rule of the people, but its imitation: A handful of people take control over all the economic, political, social, and military resources; they say there is a democracy, and that they operate in the name of the people.

As long as we are under the influence of internal egoism without the altruistic force of nature to balance it, there cannot be a democracy. A democracy is built on contrast, a counterweight and a balance between two forces, which are positive and negative: our ego and the force of bestowal and love. There is a force of hatred and rejection and a power of attraction and connection, which must be balanced with each other. If the ego is balanced by a positive force, then it cannot be evil. And conversely, love and bestowal without the ego can lead to even worse extremism than the ego.

In other words, we were created in a system that is in a balance of plus and minus, between which what remains is only to ignite some kind of tension that gives the right orientation for all the work of the system. And if the positive force doesn’t exist or it is minimal and exists only in fear of annihilation, then we don’t have the conditions for a democracy. We “fall out” of the system in which the two forces are revealed. And therefore when we exist only in an egoistic system, what is most suitable for us is the correct dictatorship.

If a king rules a nation, then he takes care of his nation, his subjects, he doesn’t annihilate them, and they consider him to be great! He is the master! But in a democratic nation, there is no master. We let an election decide who operates the steering wheel for two, three, or four years, and then what? What do the elite care about what will be after that?! They will not be elected again, so they need to grab everything they can while they are in control.

So the dictatorship in Singapore is a wonderful system of government. Democracy in the form of a Sanhedrin.

Question: I have heard that the correct head of the state should be Kabbalists, who knowing the laws of nature,  will manage it in the interests of the entire society. What will be the basis of the moral drive of their behavior? Wouldn’t they be infected with greed; won’t they want to get rich after they attain control?

Answer: There is a concept such as the Sanhedrin (great assembly), where 120 Kabbalist sages gather, connect in a circle, and discuss all the issues on the agenda. The discussion is not based on differences of opinion, which is typical of our world, where it is believed that truth is born through debate. There is no truth in debate, because from the start it keeps us on a beastly level and we cannot rise above that. And we must rise above ourselves, because our stage can only lead to a higher level. We seem to rise to our next level, from which it is possible to see how to reach it.

This happens when people unite into a single, complete unit in spite of all the differences of opinion, and by annihilating their ego, they reach a common heart and mind together. This is a unique inner tension and practical work. From a state of unity, and only with this, they complement each other; they begin to come to a common opinion. But it is not connected to personal opinions; rather, is felt through a common unity. It is in this form that the system of governance for the nation and the people should be manifested.

How can strife and discord be avoided?

Question: Today many nations are trying to recreate this model to one degree or another. Take for example Turkey, in which the government has gradually become concentrated in the hands of one person, or Russia, that doesn’t even hide that it lives and thrives thanks to one person. There are also a multitude of other examples in less developed nations. Does it follow that the formation of governmental pyramids like this is the only way it is possible for humanity to go? So, where is it possible to take people like these who are satisfied with such a method of management?  And eventually in Singapore, which was not originally corrupt, all the key places became occupied by relatives of Lee Kuan Yew. Ultimately, some kind of caste was created.

Answer: Certainly this model cannot exist forever in an ideal state once bribery, power struggles, and the like begin. For some time it can hold its position on some ideal, but after that, everything deteriorates along the usual egoistic tracks.

Question: How would the Kabbalists avoid reaching this situation in the management of the nation?

Answer: The fact that they are united among themselves, the 120 greatest sages of the people would avoiding conflict and differences of opinion. Specifically in this situation, they would begin to discuss some issue and from their unity, they would receive an answer. After all, the unity between them is their next goal, which they must reach and include all people with them.

Question: Do discussions in circles, which your students organize, constitute a small version of this form of unity?

Answer: Yes. Discussions in the form of roundtables are organized all over the world, not just in Israel. We actively create a gathering, a discussion circle of men and women, who implement the unity by detaching and rising above themselves. Each one invests himself in the others and everyone yearns to be absolutely equal, with none greater or smaller in any way. We aspire to find a precise system of inner balance between us and pursue it so that all will be equal and integrated with each other, will lose himself in our unity, and from “I” will come to a state of “we.” Then, from the state of “we,” come to a state of “one,” as one person with one heart.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 4/1/15

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Opinion (Lawrence Summer, American economist, President Emeritus, Charles W. Eliot University Professor – Harvard University, former Treasury Secretary): “This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. This failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. With China’s economic size rivalling America’s and emerging markets accounting for at least half of world output, the global economic architecture needs substantial adjustment. Political pressures from all sides in the US have rendered it increasingly dysfunctional.

“With US commitments unhonored and US-backed policies blocking the kinds of finance other countries want to provide or receive through the existing institutions, the way was clear for China to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. There is room for argument about the tactical approach that should have been taken once the initiative was put forward. But the larger question now is one of strategy. Here are three precepts that US leaders should keep in mind.

“First, American leadership must have a bipartisan foundation at home, be free from gross hypocrisy and be restrained in the pursuit of self-interest. As long as one of our major parties is opposed to essentially all trade agreements, and the other is resistant to funding international organisations, the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system.

“Other countries are legitimately frustrated when US officials ask them to adjust their policies — then insist that American state regulators, independent agencies and far-reaching judicial actions are beyond their control. This is especially true when many foreign businesses assert that US actions raise real rule of law problems.

“The legitimacy of US leadership depends on our resisting the temptation to abuse it in pursuit of parochial interest, even when that interest appears compelling. We cannot expect to maintain the dollar’s primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives.

“Second, in global as well as domestic politics, the middle class counts the most. It sometimes seems that the prevailing global agenda combines elite concerns about matters such as intellectual property, investment protection and regulatory harmonization with moral concerns about global poverty and posterity, while offering little to those in the middle. Approaches that do not serve the working class in industrial countries (and rising urban populations in developing ones) are unlikely to work out well in the long run.”

My Comment: I don’t want to be like an armchair political observer, reflecting on whether it is good for the Jews, but the truth is that the good in the long run will only be what is consistent with the program of creation, which is to bring all humanity to one body.

In the last 20 years, the United States has performed a different function: divide and conquer. Therefore, not only is the US losing the role of economic leader but also its role as being an example to the world.
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