Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is global interdependence? What are some examples?“

We were created as interdependent beings. The more we evolve as a humanity, the more we find ourselves becoming increasingly dependent on each other. We find ourselves depending on each other more and more in several fields of human activity, whether it be in trade, commerce, industry, communications, technologies, culture, science, and the list goes on and on.

Take a look, for instance, at how popular tourism has become in our times. Where does the interest in travel come from? We had no such interest on a mass scale even a hundred years ago, but such desires gradually develop in us.

Why are we made to be dependent on each other, starting from our closest circles such as to our homes and our families, and then expanding out to our towns, cities, states, countries, and the more we develop, the more we feel our dependence become global. Today, we can see several examples of how we have become dependent on the whole world.

Whether it be oil and gas supplies, various harvests and crops from different countries and regions, through to all kinds of cultural products that span different countries and cultures, the more globally dependent we become, the more we develop a need to realize our global dependence positively.

We cannot get rid of our interdependence, but we will become forced to change our attitudes to each other from negative to positive. That is, instead of infusing our network of connections with egoistic motives, where we each seek maximum benefit for minimal effort, we would instead seek to relate altruistically to each other, aiming to benefit others over our natural drive for self-benefit. We will then perceive our growing global interdependence as a great phenomenon, one that lets us exercise the “muscle” of benefiting others over self-benefit. The more we do so, the more we will start feeling a new harmonious and peaceful reality open up to us.

As a result, we will reach a point where we will feel a sincere need for the billions of people in the world, that each person is a precious part of a perfect system, and we will feel a need to fuel our globally-dependent relations with positive, altruistic, supportive, encouraging and mutually considerate relations. We would then also start feeling the positive forces dwelling in nature; it would vitalize our entire world with abundance and perfection.

Based on a Kabbalah lesson, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends,” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman from the World Kabbalah Convention, “Rising Above Ourselves,” on August 1, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Back in school when we studied food chains we learned that when a seed falls into the soil, the soil sustains the growing grass, a hare eats the grass, a wolf eats the hare… If there is no grass, there is no hare, and so on and so forth. If all sparrows were exterminated,  crops would be eaten by parasites and millions of people would die of hunger.

Today almost the entire system of chains has been broken. For example, new computers are assembled in China, but chips come from Taiwan and Malaysia, displays arrive from South Korea, and some parts are sourced from Europe. If you need 20 parts, but have only 19, there will be nothing.

There is a warning that 2022 will be even worse. They clearly see it coming, but can do nothing about it. They feel an onset of something! Some agricultural leaders predict that they will shut down certain countries and eat only what they have nationally.

My Response: No, it won’t happen. We are so deeply interconnected with each other through fertilizers, pesticides, assembly, and processing everything. It won’t happen.

I think the majority of the world’s countries, especially the developed ones, will be unable to survive on their own. There is no such thing as a “closed cycle” today.

Question: What are we facing now?

Answer: Well, we are being forced. I am ready for anything except to share and cooperate. The worst thing is to depend on others!

Comment: I see. Our intellect is egoistic. But even an egoistic mind seeks safety. Still, we feel the need for communication and cooperation. We know the world is interconnected. I think everyone understands it today. Everyone!

My Response: Who will be cooperating? Who listens to whom? Bring heads of state together? No one will be able to agree with anyone on anything!

Question: Then, draw a picture of the future world for us please. When will we get there?

Answer: At some point we will get to the point where people realize that the Jews are at fault for everything. This is really so. We do not bring the world to the realization of evil and its correction.

I can’t keep silent since this is the most painful and urgent problem. You cannot replace it with anything.

Question: What shall we, the Jews, do for the world?

Answer: Rise above ourselves and show the world an example of unity. “Above ourselves” means above our egoism that is greater than anybody else’s.

Look at how we treat each other! It’s so hard for us to be together even when we are faced with great fear and external pressure. We cannot rise because the external pressure, the external hatred, pressures us.

We don’t stick together. Don’t you see what’s going on here in Israel? Nothing can help us. I can’t blame the government or local upbringing for that.

Comment: By and large, you can blame the Creator for that.

My Response: The Creator does His job. As to us, we must act against Him.

Comment: In other words, the Creator brings us against each other, cultivates our egoism more and more, but we have to act against Him.

My Response: That’s right! But we’re unable to.

Comment: Sooner or later, as you say, the responsibility of our people is to show the world an example of unity.

My Response: If we don’t realize this, there won’t be any “sooner or later.” It will go on and on. There is no set date. It won’t happen. It will only occur when the Jews realize their mission.

Question: What will make them realize it?

Answer: I don’t know. I cannot envision such a state! But it simply can’t be otherwise!

Suffering is constantly growing. Perhaps the realization of some things, but not yet no matter how much we write, no matter how much we talk about it.

Question: So one way or another, will it also come from above, but no one knows when?

Answer: Not from above. Everything, certainly, comes from above, but our reaction has to come from below. Our normal response is still missing.

Comment: So, your formula is simple: “The Jews have to show an example of unity” and then the world will be on the right path. Kabbalists knew it, you realize it, but only a few people in the world understand it.

My Response: Yes.

Question: So, how do you want to be heard? Tell me please how?! How?

Answer: We have to start screaming to the Creator! Crying to the Creator that people do not hear us. And He will help us, when we have a truly serious desire.

Even in Germany 80 years ago they stayed until the last moment and didn’t feel any danger. Nor do they feel it now or realize that so many things depend on it.

I think it will come to a point when the world will start demanding. We have to disseminate more and more the knowledge of Kabbalah, the wisdom of correction of the world, so that nations of the world demand from the Jews and the Jews will address the Creator for the sake of all of humanity.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/18/21

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Comment: Three people convicted of the same crime can receive completely different punishments. The first one might be given a suspended sentence; the second, two years in jail; and the third imprisoned for ten years. This is today’s reality.

A study was conducted that found that judges are more likely to give a suspended sentence in the morning or after a lunch break. Hungry judges are more severe. In England, when a local football [soccer in the US] team loses on Sunday, referees give tougher sentences on Monday.

In France, an analysis of six million sentences revealed that defendants were treated more leniently on judges’ birthdays. Even the weather influences a judge’s decision. As a result of a review of two hundred thousand immigration court decisions, it was found that on hot days the likelihood of obtaining political asylum is lower.

Who judges us?!

My Response: Who are the judges? Are they not humans? Of course they are. If the judge’s wife yelled at him in the morning, or his car was cut off on the highway, or something else happened, then naturally everything works differently inside him because he is human after all.

According to Kabbalah, according to the Torah, a judge is the highest category of human development. Therefore a judge can be a person who has completely risen above all his properties and feeling who can absolutely objectively understand and feel the other and judge him.

To judge means to weigh what in the things that happened to a person came to him from the Creator, and what, perhaps, from the person himself? And in fact, what is there from a person in general, then?

Otherwise how can you judge a person, take his life, throw it on the scales, and say…? You know, it is as if they throw a piece of meat on the scales in a store and say: 10 years, 15 years, and so on.

And the person goes to a place from which there may be no way out. And what happens to him there and what they do with him is totally incomprehensible.

Question: You spoke about a judge’s high standard. Do today’s judges feel responsible to some extent for passing such sentences?

Answer: They will have to face the consequences. There is also a problem in this, to what extent do they understand or not understand what they are doing and so on?

Question: That is, in any case, only the one who has risen above absolutely all calculations can become a judge, and it is impossible today, right?

Answer: Today it is completely impossible! There was a period when we lived as an ancient people in the age of Judges. But those were glorious people!

A person who appeared before the judge did not even have a thought that the judge could pass a sentence on that day that would be different from the previous day, and that I would want to go to this judge, and not that one. How could that be?! Such incomprehensible things happen in our world, and we agree to this.

It is the struggle for power among them, for jobs, and for positions.

Question: What do you think is the solution today? To replace a judge with a machine in which laws are embedded?

Answer: Yes. If we replaced it all with a machine, it would be much more objective.

Question: Will we ever reach the state of real judges?

Answer: I think that we will already get corrected along such a path that we will begin to move away from this meanness in which we exist, and therefore we will no longer need judges. We will be the ones to judge ourselves. Let us help each other. In general, let us rise up from below.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/29/21

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It looks like the coronavirus epidemic got completely out of our control thanks to the new strain omicron. The virus walks around the world without any boundaries. The number of infected people is growing exponentially day to day and as a result the testing system is collapsing. This means that now it is even impossible to know how many people are sick.

The virus is spreading like wildfire. It is believed that omicron will end the coronavirus epidemic since everyone will get sick with it.

On the other hand, there is a danger that it will finally undermine the health care system, which because of the excessive workload, will not be able to take care of any patient of any kind.

So, what will the omicron do to us ultimately? I think this calamity came to calm us down, to stop us from being occupied with useless work in which there are no necessities, to get us thinking about how to make our lives more modest, but also more reliable.

It turns out that the pandemic is not a blow, but a cure. It forces us to think about what we live for and how to come to a more peaceful life, how to make a person more balanced, closer to normal life, and down to earth instead of rushing around the world and spending so much time on airplanes. Let’s get some rest.

I think that the coronavirus has taught us such useful lessons that have never been seen before in the entire history of mankind. It can be seen from the news that people are concerned about a serious problem instead of talking about nonsense. People are no longer eager to travel from country to country because they don’t know what to do with themselves.

So far, we still lack the wisdom to properly organize our lives in this difficult time of the pandemic, but let us hope that in the end it will straighten us up and make us realize what we live for, how is it worth living, and for what. We will make a lot of clarifications thanks to this virus.

These will be personal clarifications for everyone and at the level of the family, city, country, between countries, and all over the world. They should concern our relationship to inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and, most importantly, the relationships between us, people. Such viruses, which will come again and again, will do their job and lead us to the truth.

The human organism is full of viruses. I hope that due to all these virus attacks, we will get smarter, grow up, and will be able to organize ourselves properly. The virus will force us to do this.
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From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 1/6/22

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Comment: Why do altruists very often cause not gratitude, but resentment? Experts say, it is because we doubt their selflessness and see the calculation behind everything. Thus, the good deeds turn into a fat minus. Psychologists call this mass phenomenon “the syndrome of do-gooder derogation.”

It is believed that the most reliable way to avoid belittling good deeds is to do them in secret. If others accidentally find out about them, and this will eventually have a positive impact on your reputation, just consider it a bonus. Oscar Wilde said very beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out.”

My Response: Yes. Others “accidentally” find out, in quotation marks.

Question: Does it mean that our world is built in such a way that we cannot do any altruistic action?

Answer: We can’t in any way. This is our nature. We can only make a mess everywhere, we use, break, and violate. We cannot act in any other way. Therefore we must think about the way to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we violate everything around us as little as possible.

This is possible only through educating a person.

Question: Does a good deed at the level of our world exist?

Answer: A good deed at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, common to all of us, and we are like one family, and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then of course we will put this world in order. We have passed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little, i.e., limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: Nature will force him. There is such a thing as necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction by all of us, which is voluntary and accepted by each of us in order to make our planet comfortable for ourselves and future generations, is necessary.

Comment: But people say: “This is what we want.” There are many such movements.

My Response: They do not really do anything. We cannot do it by force and we cannot do it by shouting in the squares either.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: By educating people! All these environmentalists and Greenpeace only create a lot of noise and cause hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire Earth into one comfortable apartment for everyone, into our home.

Nature will force us to do this. We are in such a state. Perhaps we will go through something else. For example, there could be a world war and half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It will come to this anyway. Nature brings everything to balance.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long educational process considering who a person is?

Answer: This is a long process, but it depends on the understanding of the need for it.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life?

Answer: One who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Question: What factors can harm us in advancing in the ten?

Answer: Absolutely everything. The only factor that can benefit you is rising above everything harmful to the connection between you. That is all.

Everything that appears in you is against connection, against the ten, against the Creator. And all this is in order for you to rise above in mutual connection with each other.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Why has Russia failed to build a society based on love for others? Could have they done something in a different way for this experiment to be successful?

It is impossible to change history. History is given to us not to learn from and correct ourselves, but so that we understand that it was impossible to do what they tried to do.

They wanted to build egoistic communism. Instead of being directed to benefit the Creator, it was directed only to benefit people.

It is not enough to think only about bestowing to people. Rather, we need true, spiritual bestowal. It means that we must rise to faith above reason and acquire the property of bestowal, which will operate in us instead of the property of reception. However, this can be done only if we implement the method of Kabbalah.

Similarly, kibbutzim were created with the intention of doing better for themselves. The fact is that there is an egoistic intention behind everything. But we are talking about bestowing outside of ourselves. This is what humanity must come to—adhesion with the Creator. Therefore, it is impossible to do this without the wisdom of Kabbalah and all its conditions intended to attract the upper light and for it to influence us.

That is, it is absolutely necessary to study and implement the method of Kabbalah that can attract the upper light, which will change our nature. The light should change our perception of reality so that we would see before us the world we want to bestow to and we would live outside of ourselves.

All forms of communist societies were built on the opposite principle: the desire to isolate themselves, to group together in one camp against all the rest, and become stronger than everyone. This approach is the exact opposite of true bestowal.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/22, Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”

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Question: The results of the regularly conducted survey “What Worries the World?” have been published. Coronavirus is no longer the main problem that concerns the inhabitants of Earth, it is in third place. It was overtaken by poverty and unemployment.

Poverty and social inequality concern 33%, unemployment – 30%, and the coronavirus – 29%. Then there is corruption, crime, education, climate change, emigration and so on. At the very end,  the content of social programs (Ipsos, “Coronavirus no longer the world’s top worry as it is overtaken by economic concerns”).

What will we come to? What will humanity care about?

Answer: When there is no goal, it is impossible to talk about anything. Each, like a swan, a crayfish, and a pike, pulls in their own direction and that is it.

Comment: However, they say directly that a person wants to be happy.

My Response: That is a separate happiness for everyone.

Question: Will a person’s aspiration for his happiness not lead him to this?

Answer: In doing so, he stumbles upon the desire for the happiness of everyone else. Thus, they pull in different directions.

Question: Should the aspiration be one, common, toward one common goal?

Answer: Yes. Until we come to agreement, none of this will happen.

Question: What is the main problem that should concern people?

Answer: People should be concerned about the question of what they exist for, what the most important thing in their life is, and how to reach this state. After that, I can already talk about the things that prevent or help me to reach this goal.

Question: In your opinion, what should be the goal?

Answer: To be really happy.

Question: What do you mean by the word “happiness”?

Answer: When everyone is happy, everyone is satisfied, everyone is fulfilled, and everyone feels good.

Question: Did you just say not that I would be happy, but everyone would be happy?

Answer: How else can it be? If not everyone is happy, then in the end it threatens me too.

Comment: So, I have to care that all the people of the Earth will be happy.

My Response: Only in this case can I guarantee myself absolute happiness.

Question: In what case will the people of Earth be happy?

Answer: When all of them will think about exactly that, and worry about making everyone happy.

Happiness is to be in absolute harmony with inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/8/21

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Question: Do I understand correctly that we start working in faith above reason and then after processing our desire we see the friends within reason in our corrected properties? Then a newly revealed Aviut (layer of egoistic desire) again erases everything and we again need to go by faith above reason?

Answer: Aviut does not erase but simply raises you to a higher egoistic mountain, and you must again go by faith above reason, but already a new reason.

Question: If despite my egoism I keep convincing myself that my friends are superior to me, is that enough? Or do I need some more help?

Answer: Start with that and then you will see how to proceed. You will be guided from above. But this is the most correct attitude toward the world. You will begin to see the world correctly, not distorted by your egoism.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Kabbalah considers man and his upbringing only relative to the purpose of creation.

We exist in order to achieve a certain goal, and it is not within our life but in what we reveal in all nature, which is called the Creator. In Kabbalah, the concept of nature is equivalent to the concept of the Creator.

Upon reaching connection with all of nature, not only with what we now see and observe in our small world but with its wholeness, we begin to feel that we exist eternally and in perfection. It is this level that a person must reach during this life. This is the only purpose of our existence.

And this is not what our education gives a person. We teach him just like an animal teaches its young to survive, to create a family correctly, and to produce offspring. So, from generation to generation, we take care of our life at the animate level.

It doesn’t matter that our technologies develop because as long as our animate organism, our body, exists, we want to create seemingly the most comfortable environment for it. Therefore, this level is animate and a person does not differ from an animal.

In fact, it is the category of human that we can develop in us so that we feel an eternal, perfect state, when each of us rises above our petty egoism and reaches the general sensation of whole  nature. Nobody teaches us this.

If you want to uplift a person, you must show him a different perspective, what it is that is worth living for, what it is that is worth directing your efforts to. And if all this life is only inside the animate body, then I do not care about anything: I can jump from the roof, I can do whatever I want with myself. Nobody cares about me and I do not care about anyone because everyone feels like a little individualist.

All our relations in society are built on this: “I do not touch you, you do not touch me.” And this is completely wrong. From day to day we reveal how universal nature is, how interconnected we are in a small village, how the butterfly effect, mutual responsibility, and mutual influence on each other works.

From the side of nature, we reveal that everything is interconnected and is in such close dependence that there is no escape from it.

Question: Perhaps we are not yet aware that laws of interdependence apply directly to our lives?

Answer: Even if we are aware of them, we still cannot take over. Moreover, we do not yet have the opportunity to approach their realization.

The science of Kabbalah is being revealed in our time, it deals with this, and it can give us such an opportunity. But we are only at the beginning of the path and humanity does not yet understand what it is.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation” 8/24/09

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