My new article on Linkedin “Stay-at-Home (grownup) Children”

According to Pew Research Center, “A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression.” In the 1960s, only 29 percent of young adults lived with their parents. Over the years, and especially since the outbreak of Covid-19, the number of (involuntarily) stay-at-home grownup children has spiked to more than 52 percent, and rising.

It may seem counterintuitive for young adults to live with their parents. After all, youngsters want their independence; they want to succeed, accomplish things, and make their mark in the world. Even if they’re not great achievers, they certainly don’t want their parents prying into their personal lives. So why are they moving home again, or refraining from leaving home altogether?

Only if we can tap into the all-inclusive mechanism of reality, we will feel that our lives have meaning, that we know how to live them, and we will understand where they are going.

There are several reasons for this, and on different levels. On the more superficial level, today we aren’t as confident about how we should manage our lives or about where the world is going. Personal and national breakdowns have become more common, and our confidence in ourselves and in our future, as individuals and as a society, has plummeted. We no longer aspire to conquer the world and make our mark, “to be somebody,” as young people used to say. Instead, we hope to get by.

Clearly, not everyone is in that state, but the statistics speak for themselves; it’s happening to a lot of people. As a result, instead of taking chances and jumping head first into life’s deep water, we merely dip our foot in it to test the temperature. Only if we’re confident things will go well, we venture inside.

On the deeper level, there is a sense of meaninglessness that is inching into the consciousness of young adults. It is not that today’s young people don’t want to enjoy life, and it is not only that they are afraid of being hurt by life’s obstacles; it is also that the temptations that life offers, such as money, power, and fame, simply don’t entice them anymore. They don’t find the trophies of our generation appealing, yet they have no others prizes to pursue. This is why so many of them are depressed. When you have everything you need for life, but no reason to live, you cannot help but feel miserable. Some are conscious of it, others are not, but you can see it through their frantic search for experiences that take them to the edge, such as extreme sports, hard drugs, violence, and various addictions.

This sense of meaninglessness is the crux of the matter. In an era where everything is shared, where every product is manufactured and assembled in twenty different countries, an individualistic mindset is the opposite of the flow of reality, yet this is what we are attempting to utilize. It is no wonder that we can’t understand life; we think in the opposite direction to the course of life!

Today, in order to find satisfaction in life, we must incorporate ourselves positively in society, become contributing elements to its prosperity. The “Me! Me! Me!” culture has exhausted itself, and little by little, its opposite is emerging: the We! We! We! approach.

A person who is connected to society feels not only the society, but the flow of life that streams through the society. Society is just a means to connect to a much greater and deeper structure: the whole of reality. Reality, or nature, is all-inclusive. Everything within it is connected in countless ways to everything else. We need a society to start developing mutual connections, learn how to interact, and thereby start to feel the connections and interactions that permeate everything! Only if we can tap into the all-inclusive mechanism of reality, we will feel that our lives have meaning, that we know how to live them, and we will understand where they are going.
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My new article on Linkedin “Entanglement Will Save Us or Destroy Us, but It’s Here to Stay”

I think it’s fair to say that countries no longer dream of self-sufficiency. The idea that one country, however vast and however developed, can provide for all its needs by itself is not only unrealistic, but also very dangerous to any country that tries to implement it. The price such a country would pay is horrendous. At the same time, interdependence has also done a lot of harm, shifting jobs and industries from some countries to others, and depleting job opportunities in countries that suffered from job migration. This process, of growing entanglement and interdependence, is irreversible. However, if we play our cards right, we will benefit from its advantages and avoid its harms.

And since our egos will continue to grow, we will have to work on our relations even harder, to keep from falling back to alienation. As a result, our relations will grow stronger and closer to the extent that our egos grow more intense. If we stick to this simple formula, we will win the war against hunger, poverty, sickness, and sadness anywhere in the world.

The first, and most important point to understand is that our growing entanglement is a goal oriented process, at the end of which we will all take care of each other and no one will need to worry about anything. To understand how this is possible, think of our planet as the home, where all of humanity lives. There is plenty of food in our home. In fact, there is so much food that we trash half of it because we cannot eat it all. There are also enough clothes to dress everyone, enough energy to provide everyone with heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, and enough money to pay for everyone’s education, health care, housing, and even entertainment.

Nevertheless, many people in our global home are starving, many have no clean water, many are sick and have no health care, and many more lack proper education. Why? Because we do not care about each other, and because we do not care, we also do not share. In other words, the problem is not one of production, but one of distribution, which stems from our alienation. And because we treat each other like aliens, the result is competition and destruction instead of complementation and construction.

Yet, there is a reason why we treat each other so appallingly. The more we evolve, the more egoistic we become. You would expect egoism to drive us apart from each other, but it actually does the opposite. Because we are growing increasingly selfish, we want to benefit from one another, use one another, enjoy not only what we have, but also the knowledge that we have more than others. Our desire to be superior to others has become our prime pleasure, and it impels us to live in societies where we can compete and defeat one another. It turns out that our egos are pushing us to live together, yet hate each other, and that atmosphere is toxic. This is why our house, Planet Earth, is in such disarray.

There is even worse news than the growth of our egos: They keep growing and there is no way to reverse the process. In other words, we are destined to become increasingly entangled until, eventually—unless we find a way out of the catch—we will destroy ourselves.

However, as I said in the beginning, we have more cards to play than we have used so far. If we play them right, we will be victorious.

The first card we need to play is awareness. So far, we have not been aware that we are so completely dominated by our own egos. We also didn’t know that the ego is an ever growing power. Now that we are aware, we know that the ego is our true enemy and we can start devising tactics to defeat it.

The second card to play is to use the entanglement that our egos have created to our mutual benefit, instead of for destructive competition. Just as no country can be self-sufficient, neither can people. However, if we decide to supplement for one another what we can’t provide for ourselves, we will have more than enough of everything. As said before, our house has more than we need, but it is in disarray and there are deficiencies because of our alienation from each other. Reverse alienation and you have erased deficiency.

And since our egos will continue to grow, we will have to work on our relations even harder, to keep from falling back to alienation. As a result, our relations will grow stronger and closer to the extent that our egos grow more intense. If we stick to this simple formula, we will win the war against hunger, poverty, sickness, and sadness anywhere in the world. Even better, we will discover that the goal oriented process of the growth of our entanglement has always been to bring us so close that we would not only secure everyone’s needs, but truly become as one, united all over the world. If we do not succumb to our egos, we will triumph over our egos and raise humanity to new heights. If we surrender to our selfishness, we will destroy ourselves and our children will have to do the work we haven’t, much more laboriously.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Personal Price of Social Indifference”

People today seem to care about almost nothing. We are indifferent to entire sectors of society that are suffering, unless something directly impacts us on a personal level. We watch the news, get upset and grumble, and that’s the extent of our community involvement. Why is apathy constantly on the rise? We are indifferent because we are increasingly detached from our environment. We lack a sense of belonging, even though such a feeling is as important as the oxygen we breathe. Each of us must realize that our future is inextricably bound with those of others.

As the good connections between us strengthen and deepen, we will begin to feel a special power flowing through our communications network—a force that animates us, magnifies us, and gives us understanding, feeling, thought, and desire at an unprecedented level. Our integration with one another will make us feel a new reality beyond the limitations of our current individual perception.

A person’s basic makeup can be defined as a desire for pleasure and enjoyment, a desire for satisfaction. At each developmental stage, we enjoy different things, and this is true both throughout our individual lives and as a human species in general. Our developmental stage affects our level of social involvement or social indifference. For example, once children felt a natural tendency toward social life; today they are locked inside screens right from the start.

Further, in the past people were proud of their group affiliations like professional guilds and trade unions; they found satisfaction, confidence and power in them. Today, no one has the patience to hear a word about such things and, certainly no desire to belong to any such association. In the workplace, tenure, job security, and stability are things of the past. It has become commonplace for people to have no idea whether they will even have work in a year.

As a result of these and other changes in the relationship between the individual and society, contemporary man does not feel he belongs to anything. If in ancient times people needed social connections for physical survival, today we prize our independence and try to avoid social demands and commitments. We pay the taxes we must and that is the end of the story. As human nature has continued its inner development, a person identifies less with a country or place and has become much more egoistic. As a result, society is now composed of a collection of disconnected elements that are increasingly indifferent to one another.

The only place where one can perhaps see high levels of social engagement is online social platforms. On the web, people are actually very active. Despite beautiful social initiatives here and there, however, what mainly fills the virtual space is cynicism, intolerance, bickering, bullying, and abuse.

What fate is this trend heading us toward? What awaits us in the coming years? The desire to enjoy will continue to develop in every individual, but at the same time, people will no longer find anything that fulfills them. The loss of good connection with society will gradually leave a person feeling like they are suffocating inside their private shell. Today’s indifference will lead to tomorrow’s despair. People will begin to feel that there is nothing to live for. Deep inside the heart will grow a feeling that there is nothing to fill ourselves with, no passion, no challenge, no hope. Nothing but dryness like death.

In a surprise twist at the end, this existential despair will lead to a breakthrough to the next level in the evolution of individual and societal relations. The online virtual world will actually serve as a springboard to a new reality. At the point when we realize we are causing harm by the way we are currently using high tech, we will begin to use it intelligently. We will start to use social media as a tool for shaping society according to an integral worldview based on and promoting reciprocity and complementation. Instead of using it to aid the current compulsion to acquire more and more stuff and to boost material development, humanity will look for ways to use it to help forge real connections between everyone’s hearts.

Smart software will promote the tenet, “love your neighbor as yourself,” as the only formula for life that fits the connected world of the 21st Century. Together we will define the next step in the development of the relationships between us, and then we will work on exercising our muscles of bestowal and support.

As the good connections between us strengthen and deepen, we will begin to feel a special power flowing through our communications network—a force that animates us, magnifies us, and gives us understanding, feeling, thought, and desire at an unprecedented level. Our integration with one another will make us feel a new reality beyond the limitations of our current individual perception. In such a world indifferent society will no longer exist because every individual will feel that he or she receives much more through the association with others—greater fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning, to the point of boundless joy.
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My new article on Linkedin “Covid – a Catalyst for Social Change”

While everyone is rushing to get vaccinated, or, alternatively, declaring that the vaccines are a government scheme against the people, we seem to be ignoring something very important: why the virus showed up in the first place. Until we answer this question, we will not be rid of it, no matter how efficient the vaccines may proclaim to be.

The virus will not let up until we revamp all of our connections, on all levels. Until we learn how to treat one another with care and consideration, how to build communities where people feel safe and welcome, how to build societies that do not exploit the weak and vulnerable, how to embrace diversity instead of shunning anyone who thinks outside the main voice on the media, until we learn all that, Covid will not let us lead a normal life.

Even though the coronavirus seems like a regular virus, it is much more than that. The virus changes our thoughts and desires, relationships among people and countries, and it does this all over the world. Covid-19 is a multilayered illness; it should not only teach us that we must wash our hands and wear masks. Rather, its main goal is to teach us how to relate to our lives.

That is, it should teach us not only how we should relate to one another, but how we should relate to life as a whole, to the essence of life and its purpose! For this reason, Covid will not go away just like that. It will mutate and modify itself until it completely exhausts us, until we consent to changing all of our social systems, until we see the intention behind its appearance: to transform human relations.

Indeed, SARS-CoV-2, aka the “coronavirus,” will wear us down until we seek the only remedy that can truly cure it. This remedy has nothing to do with biological innovations, and everything to do with emotional transformations. The remedy for SARS-CoV-2 is to learn to love one another, but truly, genuinely so. This remedy, as bizarre as it may sound, is the cure not only for Covid-19, but to all our ailments, Covid included, and until we uproot the cause, we will not extinguish the offshoot, namely the virus.

Note how Covid first set us apart, put us in closures, and forced us to eliminate our poisonous relations at schools, workplaces, competitive sports games, the industry, and every place where we compete against each other instead of helping one another. When we tried to oppose it, reopen the economy, and renew our social ties, Covid got worse and started affecting younger and younger people, with worsening consequences as it moved from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to the brain, all while becoming even more contagious than before. At the same time, Covid also separated family members, making the pain of separation even more excruciating so as to force us to rethink our connections with people on every level.

The virus will not let up until we revamp all of our connections, on all levels. Until we learn how to treat one another with care and consideration, how to build communities where people feel safe and welcome, how to build societies that do not exploit the weak and vulnerable, how to embrace diversity instead of shunning anyone who thinks outside the main voice on the media, until we learn all that, Covid will not let us lead a normal life.

Knowing why Covid is here and complying with its injunction is our only way out of the pandemic. As long as we keep trying to twist and turn to sneak out of its grip, the virus will only tighten its chokehold. As soon as we surrender and accept that we must care for one another, it will let go at once.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Case against Cancel Culture”

One of the most injurious consequences of the effort to maintain political correctness is what’s become known as “cancel culture.” Basically, it means that if someone says or writes something that is not in line with the PC (political correctness) guidelines, that someone is canceled, ostracized, banned from social media, often fired, and always chastised by self-appointed censors of public discourse. Cancel culture is not only nefarious at its core; it goes against the nature of human society, against the nature of being human, and in fact, against nature.

Life is incorporation of different things that join to create more complicated and higher entities than their individual selves. If we want to develop, we must embrace incorporation for the sake of our collective evolution as human beings. If we want stagnation and death, let’s cancel each other out until none of us is left and evolution will continue in our absence.

A human being who is excluded from contact with other human beings cannot develop. Human contact is indispensable for human development, and the more diverse the people one meets, the more one develops. A child who grows up seeing only one kind of people, with the same line of thinking, the same beliefs, and the same manners, will evolve to be the exact replica of his or her parents. This is not necessarily bad, but it is also not the purpose of humankind, or of creation.

All elements of nature were created to evolve, to change, and rise to higher levels of existence. Humans are not excluded. Think of water, for example. Water consists of two gasses: hydrogen and oxygen. Alone, they are invisible, undetectable in any way. Even worse—they are toxic. However, if you connect them to each other, you get water—the bedrock of life, and what every creature needs for its survival.

Likewise, connect sodium, which is a type of metal, with chlorine, which is a yellow-green gas, and you’ve got table salt, which gives taste to the food we eat, and which our ancestors used as a preservative. Everything works this way: Take water and flour, and you can make bread or cakes, or pasta. All parts of reality are compounds built upon compounds that create still more complicated compounds, which eventually form the ecosystem that is Planet Earth. Planets, in turn, make up the Sun’s solar system, which form the Milky Way galaxy, and galaxies create the universe.

None of these would have happened if at any point during the making of the universe, cancel culture had been applied to any of the elements of reality. Human civilization, too, would not have evolved if at any point, only one race or one faith, or one culture had managed to take over. When cancel culture was applied, such as in Nazi Germany, it ended in disaster.

That said, opposing cancel culture does not mean that any level or manner of mingling is healthy. Just as compounds in nature do not lose the identity of their particular ingredients, each of us must retain our uniqueness as individuals. However, growth exists only when we combine our individual selves with other individual selves to create something that is new, more complicated, and indeed of a higher order than ourselves. That something will not exist without all of us, yet it is neither of us, but something new that our incorporation has created. Think of the water again: Hydrogen exists in and of itself, and so does oxygen, but only when they work together do they create water, life.

Indeed, life is incorporation of different things that join to create more complicated and higher entities than their individual selves. If we want to develop, we must embrace incorporation for the sake of our collective evolution as human beings. If we want stagnation and death, let’s cancel each other out until none of us is left and evolution will continue in our absence.

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My new article on Linkedin “How We Can Stop Substance Abuse”

Nearly fifty years ago, on June 18, 1971, then president Richard Nixon declared that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.” But half a century later, we can declare that the war on drugs is a lost cause. Drugs are legal almost everywhere, and in some places, even hard drugs are permissible by law. What was once unconscionable is now a given.

If at any point, someone would want to reduce people’s dependence on drugs, there is an easy way to do this: learning about life’s purpose. People’s intuition is correct, their frustration justified. Life has more to it than the years we spend as a protein life-form. Life is eternal, complete, and each element in it is connected to every other element, and man was destined to reveal it all and experience this eternity.

We shouldn’t be surprised that this is so. The legalization of drugs, including hard drugs, has been an ongoing process for several decades. It was the only solution authorities could think of to the growing problem of people’s frustration with the pointlessness in their lives. So, instead of cigarettes, which do not numb people’s minds, but rather help them think, authorities have determined to numb us by delegitimizing cigarettes and legalizing drugs.

And while they’re at it, authorities realized that they could make a fortune off of it, using addicts as a kind of “captive audience,” if you will, to give them a secure income, and hundreds of millions of recreational users to make enormous profits. As a form of lip-service, authorities remind us that using drugs is our own, voluntary choice.

But it isn’t really our own choice. Humanity has been using drugs since time immemorial. Life has always been tough, and drugs have always been a way to make things seem easier and give us some escape from the daily hardships.

The problem is that today’s difficulties are less existential and more emotional. Most people, at least in the developed world, can support themselves on the physical level. However, they do not understand why they need to, what’s the purpose of life? Most people don’t rationalize or verbalize their frustration, but the basic question millions of people ask is something like this: “So OK, I can get by; I have enough to eat, a roof over my head, clothes to wear, and even some money to spend on entertainment. But what is it all for? At the end of the day, why do I pass the time from one day to the next? What will be the final outcome of my life? The time I spent on social media? The countless hours I spent playing games online? What is the real meaning of my life?” Unable to answer this question, many people turn to various forms of escapism such as extreme sports, frantic traveling, workaholism, violence and aggression toward themselves or others, and very often also to substance abuse, legal or illegal.

No prohibition will work when it comes to substance abuse, no penalties, and no war on drugs. After all, you cannot arrest everyone, it’s simply too expensive. Worse yet, the authorities make huge profits out of people’s addictions, so they have no interest in containing drug abuse, as that would cripple their lucrative business.

However, if at any point, someone would want to reduce people’s dependence on drugs, there is an easy way to do this: learning about life’s purpose. People’s intuition is correct, their frustration justified. Life has more to it than the years we spend as a protein life-form. Life is eternal, complete, and each element in it is connected to every other element, and man was destined to reveal it all and experience this eternity.

The cells in our body don’t operate as standalone beings, but as elements of a larger system that is our body. Each cell functions however it needs and for as long as it needs, but the consciousness of the entire body is what determines how cells operate and how long they live. We, too, are elements in the larger system of nature, or reality, and we, too, have a certain role to play, and a certain timeframe to play it out. If we are cognizant of the overall body, of which we are parts, we will not feel our own, finite existence, but the endless existence of the entire body. Our purpose in this life is to shift our awareness from the self-confined awareness of our physical existence to the expansive awareness of all of reality.

If we achieve this, we will have no such problems as frustration with life, depression because we cannot find its meaning, and every other problem related to depression will vanish by itself. In fact, if we begin to think like a complete body rather than as separate cells, all our problems will vanish, not just substance abuse, since we will feel ourselves as one entity and we will cooperate to create the best possible conditions for all of us. When we achieve this, we will stop fighting one another, stop making each other sick, stop abusing one another and all of nature, and we will stop abusing drugs.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Purim Holiday: The Emergence of a Renewed World”

Every new state is born only under the condition that the former state completely exhausts itself. The holiday of Purim symbolizes the turning point the world is immersed in now as a result of the pandemic. Thus, this year’s celebration is particularly meaningful, not only to the Jewish people, but to all of humanity.

The events described in the Purim story are hints at the corrections the world needs to go through. The global virus outbreak has marked a deep transformation in all levels of our lives; it makes evident how interdependent we are and the pressing need to change our selfish attitudes and more considerate behavior toward others, that is, a shift from our egoistic approach to a more altruistic outlook. It will help us close the gaps between us and will unleash a positive common field, a unified and integral reality. And in order to achieve this goal, the people of Israel can play a pivotal role.

Haman represents today’s divisive mindset we need to tackle, the social division caused by the desire to seek money, honor, control or power in spite of everyone and everything. This shuts us off from each other, separates and harms us. Today’s tumultuous social atmosphere is a calling for us to seek our common voice as a humanity that shares common values and purpose. If we use this calling to connect, we can create a much more peaceful and friendly society for us all.

The traditional reading of the Megilat Esther (Scroll of Esther) during this celebration describes a time in ancient Persia when Jews found themselves under existential threat. The leader who inspired these persecutions was the personal assistant of King Ahasuerus, Haman.

Haman knew that the Jews were in a state of division and that this weakness would enable him to eradicate them, as it is written “There are certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples” (Esther 3:8). Haman said that in his view, the Jews could be destroyed because they were separated from one another.

However, Mordechai, the hero of the Purim tale, worked to bridge the Jews’ division, which is what eventually saved their lives. “The Jews gathered themselves together to stand for their life” (Esther 8:11). The moment they began to get closer to each other, a great force appeared among them. They began to feel their upper goal; they became confident, had power, and managed to destroy their enemies and rid themselves of all their troubles.

Haman represents today’s divisive mindset we need to tackle, the social division caused by the desire to seek money, honor, control or power in spite of everyone and everything. This shuts us off from each other, separates and harms us. Today’s tumultuous social atmosphere is a calling for us to seek our common voice as a humanity that shares common values and purpose. If we use this calling to connect, we can create a much more peaceful and friendly society for us all.

Whenever the Jewish people were at risk of ruin, unity proved to be the only possible means to be saved. We can use the example of the Purim story as an eternal reminder that our cohesion can extricate us from the worst situations, and that by uniting, we set a constructive and positive example for the rest of humanity.

The Jewish nation has an innate commitment to set the standard for choosing unity over separation, but this call is for humanity as a whole to make the same strides toward unification before heading into greater turmoil and crises. Our good destiny depends on us, on the choice we make.

Happy Purim to all!

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My new article on Linkedin “The Hypocrisy of Sex Scandals”

Every once in a while, and today more often than before, a sex scandal explodes in the media and everyone is shocked to hear that this or that celebrity, who used to be a role model we all grew up on and admired, is really a monster in disguise. When this happens, moralists click their tongues in disapproval, and quickly turn to social media to express their righteous indignation and disbelief that this person, the idol of our youth, was actually a sex predator, a villain of the worst kind.

When we talk about climate change, pandemics, power outages, or even a traffic jam, we don’t realize that these are manifestations of our connectedness. The only reason they are here is that we are unaware that our thoughtless and careless attitude to one another causes them.

I think they’re hypocritical. First, when such a scandal blows up, you will always find people who knew about it but kept silent, or would have known about it had they not tried so hard not to see the obvious. Second, there is nothing new about this phenomenon; sex perversions have been an inseparable part of human perversions throughout the ages. In ancient cultures, such as in Egypt, Greece, or Rome, some perversions were permitted and acceptable, and others were regarded as an abomination. In more puritan times, such as the Middle-Ages, one could find oneself tied to the stake for having done the same thing others did in antiquity, without anyone making a fuss over it. It is not that the condemning puritans did not commit the same “crimes” they had accused others of committing; it’s just that they hid it better, and were mainly better connected to the authorities in charge of exposing such “immoral” behaviors.

The truth about these scandals is not that such misdemeanors are burgeoning, but that they are used more often than before against their perpetrators. In other words, today, accusations of sexual misconduct are a weapon that politicians use in order to destroy their rivals. Exposing sex crimes will not prevent the next crime or make potential victims safer. It will, however, affect the accused, even if the accusation turns out to be false. Therefore, the next time a sex scandal breaks out, check who benefits from its exposure.

If we want to prevent sex crimes, we needn’t focus on punishment, but on educating the public. I’m not saying we should not punish sex offenders; I am merely pointing out that if we want to prevent such crimes, the way to do it is not by intimidation but by education to consideration.

We are brought up in a social environment that teaches us nothing but to focus on our own wants and needs, and ignore those of others. With such a narcissistic upbringing, people are bound to be inconsiderate and apathetic to other people’s suffering; they will not cringe at the thought of hurting other people.

But the truth is that such behaviors hurt the offender too, and not only the victim. In truth, we are connected and dependent on each other even if we aren’t aware of it. We could become aware of it; we could know how to conduct ourselves in a way that’s satisfying to us and to everyone around us, but we must first be taught to see ourselves within the bigger picture of humanity.

When we talk about climate change, pandemics, power outages, or even a traffic jam, we don’t realize that these are manifestations of our connectedness. The only reason they are here is that we are unaware that our thoughtless and careless attitude to one another causes them.

If we were educated about our interconnections, we would know how to conduct ourselves so as not to inflict pandemics on ourselves. Moreover, there would be countless benefits to such awareness: We wouldn’t hurt each other since we would feel, not just intellectually, but truly feel it in our hearts that we are all connected. And just as I wouldn’t hurt myself, I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

Can you imagine how living in such a society would feel? We wouldn’t have to worry about sex crimes, or any crime, for that matter, since people wouldn’t dream of hurting other people; they would feel connected!

It turns out that the true knowledge we all need is not the next tech gadget, but the awareness that we are all connected and affect each other in myriad ways. If we knew this and lived by this awareness, we would treat each other humanely, the way human beings should treat other human beings, and there would be no scandals of any kind.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Way the Pandemic Has Strengthened Religious Beliefs”

When one cannot come to terms with a somber reality, looking towards heaven is an instinctive reaction. In the US, half a million lives have been lost in the COVID-19 pandemic in a year since the outbreak of the virus. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that people from economically developed countries claim that the eruption of COVID-19 has boosted their religious beliefs, particularly in the US where nearly three out of ten American adults say the coronavirus plague has strengthened their faith.

The coronavirus is a reaction to humanity on the part of the harmonious nature, a sort of catalyst for re-bridging the gap that has been created between humanity and nature. Therefore, what we urgently need are positive connections between us—in other words, the religion of love.

The development of civilization has distanced us from nature; therefore, we are unaware of its conduct and feel more vulnerable to it. Thus, despite our tremendous technological capability, we stand helpless in the face of global epidemics, climate change, and other crises. We do not know where to flee, how to cope, and certainly do not see a bright future on the horizon.

The uncertainty of these times, the lack of clear answers, and the fading of hope sends people searching, as they have since time immemorial, for a higher power they hope might be guiding their fate. They begin to grope in the dark and ask: Where is this power that is creating this evil in the world that we see around us now, how can we survive the next blow, and in general, what is the meaning of this world? As we hear of more and more people dying from this plague, our sense of security is undermined, fear for our loved ones grows, and life takes on an unfamiliar, ambiguous gray tone. On the other hand, living conditions have drastically changed in the past year. Work has moved into home, children have become immersed in distance learning, and the framework of life has been reduced to within family boundaries. Our world has shrunk.

With reduced choices in the search for some ray of light that provides security now when people really do not know what to count on or where to pin their hopes, religion becomes an anchor, a source of stability. One may not necessarily find in it an answer to every question, but at least it gives some sense of relief from the frightening reality people face.

It is not a sign of a backward trend or a tendency to a more religious and conservative world. Instead, it is a sign of humanity seeking, in a time of turmoil and crumbling foundations, for the meaning of life, and a growing desire for a confident connection to the future in closeness with the Supreme Force that governs life. But in this quest, those who find religion insufficient for providing lasting calm and fulfillment will keep searching for answers.

Even before the main religions expanded to the whole world, numerous beliefs, rituals, and idolatry practices existed. The human being has always needed a sense of security and answers for the inexplicable. This notion prompted the controversial Karl Marx to claim that “religion is the opium of the people,” while Voltaire said “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” As a matter of fact, it is good for a person to seek a connection to a higher power. It manifests throughout our historical axis of development: tribes danced around bonfires to honor their goddesses, bowed to statues, and worshiped the power of nature in different ways until such practices evolved into structured religions and systems of belief.

The strengthening of religious belief in the recent days of the pandemic, as the latest survey shows, actually indicates a broader developmental process that humanity is going through. The global COVID-19 plague is teaching us that we are one small worldwide village, and we are all interdependent under a supreme force that controls every detail in reality.

We are all in a single harmonious natural system, connected in all its parts, and a person, as a result of one’s opposite egoistic nature, time and time again severs the threads of connection between himself and others, thus violating the laws of nature and tearing human society from the feeling of the supreme power surrounding us. The coronavirus is a reaction to humanity on the part of the harmonious nature, a sort of catalyst for re-bridging the gap that has been created between humanity and nature. Therefore, what we urgently need are positive connections between us—in other words, the religion of love.

There is nothing wrong with the temporary tendency to return to the embrace of traditional religion, it contributes to our progress. Firstly, it connects people and hints to them about the good found in unity. Although in the meantime it is an egoistic connection, later it will be corrected to become altruistic. Secondly, religion reveals to believers their weakness in relation to integral nature and brings about dependence on the Supreme Force.

Such a deep relationship does not conflict with any religious practice, custom, or tradition, but goes with them in one turn. Foremost kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, Baal HaSulam, wrote in The Writings of the Last Generation, “Apart from ‘loving your neighbor as yourself,’ each nation may pursue its own religion and traditions, and one must not interfere with the other.” Because when you love, there is a place for everyone, for each and every one. That is the biggest strength of every society.
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My new article on Linkedin “ Is Nature Sentient?”

People who believe in God the way religions relate to Him attribute to Him feelings and thoughts, and communicate with Him the way we communicate with any powerful individual who determines our fate: We aim to please Him, and in return seek His favor. But what about nature? Is nature sentient? Should we please nature? And if we should, how can we do it?

The wisdom of Kabbalah does not distinguish between nature and God. In the essay “The Peace,” the great 20th century kabbalist Baal HaSulam explained that nature and God are synonymous, so when we speak of nature, we are actually speaking of God, and when we speak of God, we are actually referring to nature.

This mechanism is evidently intelligent. Everything within it is intricately and wisely tied to everything else, and all parts of creation are moving in synchrony toward increasing merger. Just as ants or schools of fish think and act as one, guided by their synchronized intelligence, everything around us operates in congruence; everything but man.

However, in the wisdom of Kabbalah, nature is not a “bookkeeper” who checks our balance of good deeds or bad deeds and rewards or punishes us accordingly. Nature is a super intelligent mechanism that creates everything, conducts everything, and guides everything to its purpose of complete unity and harmony with all of reality. Nature continually develops creation toward greater complexity, from the atomic level through the mineral, vegetative, animate, and human levels.

On the human level, we evolve the way all of nature is evolving. We first huddled in clans, which grew into villages, villages into towns, towns became countries, and today, when the entire world is one global village, people, animals, plants, and minerals are all part of one, interdependent system. We have become a single mechanism threaded and laced throughout the world.

Moreover, this mechanism is evidently intelligent. Everything within it is intricately and wisely tied to everything else, and all parts of creation are moving in synchrony toward increasing merger. Just as ants or schools of fish think and act as one, guided by their synchronized intelligence, everything around us operates in congruence; everything but man.

Humans are the only element in nature that has been denied the instinctive knowledge of right from wrong, and when to do what. But this, too, was done for a purpose. The only element missing in the perfect creation around us is the awareness of our life’s purpose. Awareness cannot be pre-installed; it has to be acquired. This is why we are born devoid of any knowledge about our world. In fact, we are born so helpless that at first, we cannot even reach our mother’s nipple for food, or defecate without making a mess of ourselves. No animal young is as helpless as a newborn baby. However, it is done on purpose, so we will learn everything from scratch, and at the end of the process reach the zenith of creation and become as intelligent as the system that has created us—nature (or God).

Since the “nature” of nature is harmony and merger, and since we must acquire the awareness of the goal, when we are born, we are completely opposite from it, so we will learn every aspect of harmony and merger. The problem is that while we are opposite from nature, we are nothing but a menace, destroying everything around us like senseless children. But as we learn to work in unison, as we become aware of the vitality of unity and solidarity to our understanding of creation, we also learn how to conduct ourselves more wisely, in line with nature’s disposition, and the conflicts we feel among ourselves and with nature become tailwinds that push us forward.

As long as we are obstinate, we suffer. We pollute the sky, the water, and the soil. We deplete the abundance that nature has given us in order to achieve power and control; we use and abuse each other, kill, rape, and denigrate each other as though only we are entitled to enjoy life, and we leave nothing for the future. We behave like grownup children, with bodies of grownups but the mind of a child.

If we focus on connection, we will find the right track and clean up the mess we have created. If we keep demanding for ourselves and shun nature’s disposition toward harmony and merger, our escalating conflict with nature will inflict on us worsening adversities. We may be smart, but we are very unwise. If we truly want to do good for us, we must first learn what we know, what we don’t know, and how we can learn what we must do to help ourselves. If we listen to nature’s intelligent mechanism, go along with its trajectory toward increasing cohesion, life will be much easier and simpler than the havoc we have wreaked upon ourselves.
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