Medium published my new article “Desperate for an Economy of Sharing”

Despite the insistence to keep the economy running, it’s grinding to a halt. “The U.S. economy shrank at a dizzying 33% annual rate in the April-June quarter — by far the worst quarterly plunge ever,” wrote Time magazine.

In the near future, people will realize that only the well-being of society guarantees the well-being of the individual within it.

There are consequences to a slowdown. According to Bloomberg, “A special project by the Census Bureau has set out to map and measure all the anxieties that Covid-19 has brought in its wake.” And the findings are alarming: Almost a third of people in some states have little or no confidence they can pay August’s rent or mortgage. Almost 127 million Americans experienced a loss of income since mid-March, and millions were forced out of work dealing with the pandemic. Worse yet, people’s health was adversely affected by the virus, even if they didn’t catch it. In fact, in addition to high levels of anxiety and depression that the virus stirred, 71 million adults did not get medical care that they needed for a condition unrelated to Covid-19, between mid-June and mid-July.

We’re clearly at a crossroads. Eventually, the government, any government that is elected, will have to make the necessary changes to secure people’s well-being. Otherwise, the chaos we are already seeing in some cities will spread throughout the country.

Although a pandemic is troublesome enough, Covid-19 is much more than that. The transformations it is imposing on us are not merely measures to curb its spreading; they are revolutionizing our entire civilization. The job losses we have experienced until now will dwarf compared to the job market that we will see in the near future. In fact, we are racing toward a reality where not working is the norm and working is the exception. In such circumstances, relief packages will not do; we will need a deep change in our perception of the concepts of work and society.

Only essential jobs will remain. Production of food, clothing, housing, healthcare, education, and other basics are necessary. But even here, automation and robotics will shrink the number of workers. In such a state, it will be impossible to maintain the existing model of salaries to those who work, and a few months of benefits for the unemployed. You can’t have the majority of the nation living on food stamps and in affordable (low-income) housing.

Therefore, we need to establish a two-arm program where one arm adapts the economy to the evolving circumstances, and the other adapts the society to those same evolving circumstances. The economy-arm will reshape production so that monopolies cannot exploit their power and people can afford to buy everything they need to support a modest but reasonable standard of living. If the society-arm works correctly, there will be no need for austerity measures of any kind, everyone will have a decent life, and the country’s budget will be balanced.

People’s income will come either from jobs or from the federal or state governments, a bit like today’s public sector employees. However, these people will not work in public service jobs, but in building a completely new society, since the current structure of society is the cause of the crisis.

The economy is a reflection of the society we live in. The current society fosters excessive consumption, unbridled competition, cruelness, and apathy to the plights of others. These, in turn, create depression, violence, substance abuse, suicide, homicide, bullying, racism, eating disorders, numerous mental health issues, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and any form of conceivable misery. The task of the society-arm of the program will be to create solidarity, mutual responsibility, and care among all people. As a result, the economy will become an economy of sharing.

In such an economy, the role of production is not to further pad the already bloated bank accounts of companies’ shareholders. The redesigned economy produces only what is needed, and with an added goal to bring people closer together. Whether one works in manufacturing or provides services, the salaries will be similar and the goal the same: to increase social cohesion and solidarity.

To foster such a society, people will need to understand the shift that the world is taking and participate in it of their own volition. To facilitate this understanding, governments will provide mandatory courses that will show how we are becoming an interdependent society where our lives depend on the lives of everyone else, similar to the way we must keep social distancing in order not to infect other people.

Until today, society consisted of individuals who tried to exploit others for their own needs without any accountability. However, that model has failed and exhausted itself. In the near future, people will realize that only the well-being of society guarantees the well-being of the individual within it. Therefore, people will learn to care for society so that it will care for them. The sooner we realize that this is where we’re going, the better and easier it will be for all of us.
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My new article on San Diego Jewish World “Pandemic ended our childhoods”

PETACH TIKVAH, Israel — We can get all teary-eyed over it, but it won’t help. The world we knew until the beginning of this year is over and will not return. And with it, it took our childhood. Until Covid-19, we were like kids wrecking up the house doing whatever they want while the parents are out on business. But Covid showed us that they’re not gone; they’re just invisible. And instead of showing up and yelling at us, they sent an invisible force with the odd name, SARS-CoV-2, aka, the novel coronavirus, which sent us home and told us to stay home. And every time we come out, it returns and lands another blow until we learn we must obey.

We don’t like it; we want to get rid of it, but we are gradually realizing that we can’t, and probably will never be able to, at least until we do what it tells us: “Stay apart and stop infecting one another.”

We already know that Covid-19 is affecting our brains, but what we haven’t realized is that it is affecting our hearts. It will change our hearts from alienation to connection. For now, it only increases our loneliness, but at some point, we will realize that to connect and not be lonely, we have to connect in our hearts before we connect in our bodies. Only then we will overcome seclusion, the negative influence we have projected on each other will be reversed, and this will be our healing.

The virus has come to teach us how to be grownups, responsible for our common home, and accountable to one another. It has come to turn us from unruly children into caring adults, who tend to one another and to the world around them.

Just as children do not notice as they grow until they are already adults, we will see what we have become only after the fact. And probably, only then will we be thankful to the virus, without which we wouldn’t be able to disconnect from our previous, infantile, and destructive little selves, and become mature, responsible, and caring humanity.
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Medium published my new article “America — Either Everyone Succeeds Together, or No One Will Succeed”

A few weeks ago, I warned that the spreading unruliness and violence were only going to worsen unless they were treated correctly. After some of the countrywide George Floyd protests became violent came more localized incidents, but they were just as disconcerting. The Seattle Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), the Portland unending riots, the Chicago rampage on the city’s Magnificent Mile upscale section of Michigan Avenue, and the rising tsunami of gunshot victims in New York that has already claimed nearly 1100 lives this year alone are all symptoms of the same ailment: alienation and disconnection. The next president will have his hands full and I don’t envy his position.

We don’t have to like those who are opposite from us, but we do have to acknowledge, value, and maintain all sides and facets of the nation. Without even one of them, the country will crumble.

In many respects, America is already in a state of civil war. But without borders between North and South, without clear ideologies that one can choose besides a penchant for anarchy, it is hard to determine who is fighting whom. Therefore, for now, it looks more like chaos than war, but it is very painful nonetheless.

I don’t think that there can be a quick fix to the situation in America, but there is certainly a solution. The only question is how fast and after how many needless victims the American people will opt for it.

The solution is simple: Americans must find a way to live together. In the past, the relationships between blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, or Conservatives and Progressives were not as tense and full of hate as they are today. Of course, American history is rife with bigotry and violence on a racial background. However, it seems as though this time, it is happening all over the country, at the same time, and with added tensions and frustrations accumulated over decades of neglect. So although there has always been racism in America, this time, it seems like another facet of a generally disintegrated society that is coming apart at the seams makes the situation much more perilous.

I don’t know by whom and I don’t know how this can be done, but I know that as always, so now, the solution to America’s problems is not in dealing with each problem separately. The solution can only come through mutual responsibility, when each resident is guaranteed a sufficient and dignified standard of living, above which it will be possible to develop national consciousness that is stronger than one’s personal view on the sensitive issues that are tearing the country to pieces.

It will not come in a day, and it will not come without a learning curve, but there is no choice. Either everyone succeeds together, or no one will succeed. In today’s reality, interdependence is a given. No one can survive alone, and it is only the complementary nature of civilization that enables it to continue. If we try to eliminate the diversity and go solo, we are dooming ourselves.

Everything in reality has its opposite. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to know about it since we notice anything only on the backdrop of its opposite. The idea that eliminating the people or ideas we don’t like will improve our situation is a figment of our self-centered imagination. But it is a very dangerous one, since should we succeed, we would eliminate ourselves along with the target of our hate.

If we want to grow, we can do so only by examining ourselves against those with whom we disagree or of whom we disapprove. As much as we may dislike them, we are totally dependent on them. Understanding and accepting this truth is vital for our survival in the interconnected society that we have become. We don’t have to like those who are opposite from us, but we do have to acknowledge, value, and maintain all sides and facets of the nation. Without even one of them, the country will crumble.
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Medium published my new article “Loneliness Kills”

A few days ago, a young man in Israel, a school teacher, killed himself. He had students, he had tenure, he was healthy, handsome, eloquent, and he was lonely. In a Facebook post, he wrote his final note: “It is not good for the man to be alone; loneliness kills. Another day, another week, another month, another year goes by and I’m alone. At lunch, at work, in the evening, on weekends, on holidays, and on birthdays that no one remembers. The few friends have gone, faded in time; it is time to leave.”

Suddenly, when Covid-19 came along and forced us to take a break from mutual annihilation, we began to feel the emptiness we have inside.

That man was not unique in his emotions. His words on social media capture the curse of our time: We are all connected, yet so alone. Loneliness has become so heavy these days precisely because we should have been so much more connected than we are.

We’re so late in our development. By now, we should have been a connected humanity that feels that we are one system whose parts complement each other and reciprocate with one another for the sake of humankind and all of nature. Instead, until just recently, we have been immersed up to our necks in the quagmire of mutual destruction that we proudly (and mistakenly) called “capitalistic economy” and “progress.”

Suddenly, when Covid-19 came along and forced us to take a break from mutual annihilation, we began to feel the emptiness we have inside. But what else could we have within us? When everyone hates and fears everyone else to the point that you stop talking and communicate by texting, and you build around you walls of false confidence and fake smiles to hide your insecurity, when suddenly you are alone, you realize that you have no idea who you are, how to be with yourself, or what you really want because you have been busy all your life erecting walls against the hostile outside world. And no one calls because they’re all in the same situation: Everyone is lonely and afraid of being hurt.

Being alone means you are ignored, that people don’t care about you, so some people prefer to end their lives as long as at some point, even if it’s their final moment, somebody will care.

Why We Can’t Connect

Humanity is different from all other parts of nature in that we must evolve of our own accord. Our evolution is far less physical compared to other species, and far more emotional, intellectual, and social. At the height of our evolution, we are intended to experience the wholeness of the system we call the “universe.”

Nature develops all other elements besides humanity through instincts. Humans are largely devoid of them. When an animal is born, it immediately knows where to find food, can often walk within a few hours, and generally behaves like any other animal of its kind. Humans, on the other hand, can barely move their hands and legs when they are born, and remain utterly helpless for years. Humans, unlike animals, have to gain their knowledge by themselves through hard work.

In human society, just as a human infant, we have to learn one step at a time how to become social beings and how to build a good society for ourselves. We are evolving through our own desire to improve our situation. And we are not evolving randomly, but in a clear direction: toward greater cohesion, greater care for one another, greater mutual responsibility, and eventually to love for one another.
When a child is hungry, it cries because an empty stomach feels bad. When a person is lonely, he cries because an empty heart feels very, very bad. Heartache hurts much more than an empty stomach.

But the loneliness so many feel today is not the end. It’s the beginning. It’s the darkness before the dawn. Now we are beginning to realize that we must transform everything, and first and foremost our relationships. To make a change, we have to feel that the present is unbearable. And nothing is more
unbearable than loneliness.

We can prevent such tragedies as suicide because of loneliness if we stop insisting on returning to our previous, backward state of “free” economy that is reined by egoism, and start advancing to the state of mutual concern and empathy we should have been in long ago. Along the way, we will discover that it’s not only better to care for each other than fear one another, it is also how all of reality works but us, until we, too, reach that state.

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Medium published my new article “No Black without White”

When society is falling apart, it’s not because one side is wrong and the other side is right; it’s because neither wants to unite. By nature, we want anything that doesn’t please us to disappear. If you think differently from me, I want you out of my life, and preferably out of existence. This is the natural thinking of every person, to various extents. But nature didn’t endow us only with this nature; it also gave us the ability to think and choose.

When we learn that our lives, their meaning, and their continuity depend on the persistence of the ones we hate, we will value the reality that created everything, and we will be able to build love for the wholeness above the hatred for the part. Only then will there be peace and happiness.

Nature endowed us with the ability to observe and to learn that nothing exists unless its opposite supports its existence. Planet Earth, for example, is kept in orbit thanks to the balance between the Sun’s gravitational pull toward it, and the centrifugal force that pushes it away from it. Likewise, our lives revolve around the hours of darkness and light, and our vision relies on the range between seeing all the colors together, creating the color white, and no colors at all, creating the color black. Heat and cold, hunger and fullness, attraction and rejection, love and hate, all those are opposites that make our lives what they are.

The opposite of our lives don’t deny or refute one another; they enable and complement one another! If we could only realize that as it is in all of reality and as it is with us, so it is with our fellow people, imagine what an inclusive, welcoming world we would have. Imagine what richness we could experience if we could embrace the diversity of people’s colors, races, beliefs, penchants, perspectives, and everything else that makes us different, yet complementary.

Imagine also what a dull and stagnant world we would have if everyone were the same. We wouldn’t develop thinking since we would have no need to articulate a point of view. We wouldn’t develop imagination since nothing would stimulate or intrigue us. We would lose our creativity, vitality, and the zest for life. In fact, we owe even our fierce hatred and the delight of indulging in self-righteousness to the fact that there are people who are different from us. What would we do if they did not exist?

The bottom line is that we need to look beyond the differences and see the wholeness that engenders them, and that the differences maintain the wholeness. When we learn that our lives, their meaning, and their continuity depend on the persistence of the ones we hate, we will value the reality that created everything, and we will be able to build love for the wholeness above the hatred for the part. Only then will there be peace and happiness.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Vaccine for Covid-19 Must Touch the Heart”

One by one, countries are scrambling to sign billion dollar contracts to buy nonexistent vaccines to Covid-19. At the moment, the development of an effective vaccine is highly questionable, at least according to WHO Secretary General António Guterres and White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who both stated that an effective vaccine is unlikely in the foreseeable future, if ever.

We need to understand that the coronavirus is not a standalone event; it is the first in a series of crises that will eventually drive us out of our self-centered mindset and compel us to become considerate, and eventually caring toward each other and toward nature.

But even if a vaccine is developed, it will not end our troubles. In fact, it will only exacerbate them, and for a good reason.

We need to understand that the coronavirus is not a standalone event; it is the first in a series of crises that will eventually drive us out of our self-centered mindset and compel us to become considerate, and eventually caring toward each other and toward nature. The more we use every crisis to advance toward that state, the easier that crisis will be, and the easier will be the crises that will follow. Put differently, the more efforts we make to change voluntarily, the less efforts nature will make to force us to change.

At the moment, humanity and the rest of reality are on opposite trajectories. While everything around us is connected, we people think more and more only of ourselves. We are oblivious or indifferent to the harms we’re causing one another and to all of nature, and we want only to satisfy our most immediate whims.

But eight billion people cannot live like that; it’s unsustainable. And because nature does not work like that, and we are subject to nature’s dictates, as much as we may not like the idea, nature will force us to change course and align ourselves with it. Therefore, the sooner we reroute, the less pain nature will have to apply to us in order to impel us to do what it wants.

It turns out that there is an effective cure to Covid-19, but it has nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with our hearts. When we change our attitudes, change our hearts from alienation to integration, care, compassion, and mutual responsibility, we will discover that we have defeated the virus without even fighting it.

In fact, by doing so, we will not only protect ourselves against the coronavirus, but against all the future blows that nature plans to land on us to the extent that we refuse to align ourselves with its dictate: to become considerate, connected, and caring for our fellow people and all of creation.

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Medium published my new article “A Spark of Light When Life No Longer Makes Sense”

Stress, fear, loneliness and economic hardship are exacerbated by Covid-19. How will those feelings increase the risk for higher suicide rates is still a subject of study, but mental health organizations already see signs of a potential increase of the so-called “deaths of despair,” including drug overdose and suicide. Society cannot bury its head in the sand any longer. It needs to prepare for what lies ahead and organize the conditions to support those in need through care, warmth, and mutual responsibility.

Boundless satisfaction cannot be achieved by any one of us alone. It can be achieved only through a good connection with others, and this creates the necessary “field” where the eternal source of fulfillment can be revealed.

After six months of the pandemic, we thought the virus’ behavior and impact had already been sorted out. However, the global plague keeps surprising the scientific community with new mutations, and new symptoms and side effects. Until a cure is discovered, uncertainty will continue to reign and more difficult times can be expected.

As many as 75,000 more Americans could be added to the death toll of the pandemic, not due to natural causes but because they decided to end their own lives, according to an analysis by a national public health group. Suicide rates in the United States have risen by 35 percent overall since the year 2000, according to official data. Historically, economic distress — particularly deep recessions like the one experienced in 2008 — have almost doubled the number of people who cut their lives short out of hopelessness. We have entered a new stage in humanity, a new era in which we must be connected to each other through positive reciprocal bonds, where everyone in society acts toward others like a loving mother embracing her dear child.

Suicide is the worst decision a person can take. A desperate person reaches this most extreme resolution in order to escape the pain. In the minds of those who commit such extreme acts, life becomes a burden worth getting rid of, an ordeal without satisfaction. By doing so, they disregard the pain they inflict on their family and friends and manifest complete unwillingness to accept the conditions granted by life.

They seemingly run out of strength to demand what they consider they are entitled to have in life, whatever it is. Instead of involving others to help work on finding solutions together, the suicidal person retreats into his own self-absorbed thoughts and whirlwind of emotions.

While suicide appears to be the most personal of decisions, we carry a collective responsibility as a society for failing to create the necessary conditions for people to live healthy and happy lives. Such conditions would prevent people from reaching the ultimate state of despair, anguish and pain that takes them to the point where they feel life no longer makes sense.

We must create mechanisms of mutual responsibility to guarantee that each person’s most basic needs are met in order to be sure that each person has the essentials necessary for dignified existence.

The Light after the Darkness

One should always be aware that whatever torments arise, they are given for our personal advancement, for the purpose of correcting our egoistic nature of self-gratification above any other consideration. Such low states of depression awaken the deepest point hidden within each of us, a spark aimed at a higher level of existence where the dark void is filled.

As foremost Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes, “In every person, even in the secular, there is an unknown spark that demands unification with God. When it sometimes awakens, it awakens one to know God, or deny God, which is one and the same. If someone generates the satisfaction of this desire in that person, he will agree to everything.” (The Solution)

Boundless satisfaction cannot be achieved by any one of us alone. It can be achieved only through a good connection with others, and this creates the necessary “field” where the eternal source of fulfillment can be revealed.

What is the right approach to helping someone in despair? We should not overwhelm them with exaggerated sympathy or patronize them. We simply need to express care, listen, be next to them, show them that they are not alone and they can count on their friends and family.

We need to share with someone in despair the thought that there is light after the darkness. In the same way, every gloomy state is the preparation for a better reality, the perception of a new, positive state, since there is no filling without a lack. That new state of feeling that we are understood, protected, and embraced is waiting and will give us renewed passion for life and expand our horizons toward a meaningful life filled with meaning and purpose, joy and abundance.
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Medium published my new article “If You Want to Love, Prepare for Hatred”

Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war) said the Latin author Vegetius. Likewise, if you want love, prepare for hatred.

The movies show love as a constant flow of warmth, care, and affection between people. But the movies are wrong. Before every positive emotion there is preceded a negative one, which triggers the onset of the positive. Just as night precedes the day, hate precedes love. The only exception to that is a mother’s love, but that’s because the mother perceives her baby as part of herself. But with any other person, to develop real emotions, we must constantly shift between hate and love in different manifestations and varying intensities.

It turns out that the fact that I have been made privy to my hatred toward this or that person allows me to discover who I am and what I have inside. In fact, I should be grateful to that person.

In fact, this is the principle that sets all of creation into motion. The heat waves and cold spells, the floods and the droughts, the hate and the love, all these are alternating displays of hate and love.

There is a purpose behind them: Their growing intensity, especially when it’s on the negative side, prompts us to look for their source. Why is there so much hatred? Why is nature so cruel? Why am I never satisfied with what I have? Why is there no peace? Why am I afraid? When you try to answer those questions, you find that they come from the same invisible source, and that source is nature, or simply, reality.

Every single mineral, plant, animal, or person, thought, desire, or word is created by nature. Now, if nature is the source of everything, then everything is part of nature, part of the whole. And just as there are days and nights, there are people I hate and people I love. So just as there wouldn’t be days if there were no nights, there wouldn’t be people I love if there wouldn’t be people I hate. In fact, I wouldn’t be able define what I love, what I hate, who I am, and who I am not were it not for all those things that I regard as negative. It turns out that I, with my limited vision, see them as negative, but they are not; they are opposite from me so that I will be able to learn about myself and nature. Were it not for them, I would be clueless about my whole existence.

It turns out that the fact that I have been made privy to my hatred toward this or that person allows me to discover who I am and what I have inside. In fact, I should be grateful to that person. The wisest of all men, King Solomon, called this concept, “Love covers all crimes” (Prov. 10:12), where the crime is hatred and love covers the hatred once we discover that our hated object is actually a gift we have been given. At that moment, alienation dissolves and love and gratitude emerge.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/14/20

Higher education has never been so low. From the zenith of being the sole possession of reclusive monks who dedicated their lives to delving in secret ancient texts in isolated monasteries, science has become a tool in the hands of the rich and powerful to dominate, exploit, manipulate, and intimidate rivals and the general public. Humanities and social sciences, which once debated ideologies and discussed the merits and demerits of human nature and humankind, are now used as indoctrination tools to plant dogmas in young and malleable minds.

Universities were once a place where you came to grow as a person, broaden your horizons, learn about the world we live in, the ideas that permeate society, and formulate your views about the world. But since universities have become dependent on private funding, their facade as intellectual establishments has been nothing but a front. Today, when you enter college, you can tell from day one what will be your worldview and political affiliation when you graduate.

Even history, a field of research that was supposed to be a straightforward study of the past, is subject to so many interpretations and distortions that no one can agree even on the facts. Ask a thousand historians, and you will hear a thousand views, often completely contradictory, on the same event and based on the same evidence.

To have any merit, humanities and social sciences must be disconnected from hard sciences and acknowledged for what they are: personal interpretations of reality based on personal background and personal knowledge. As things currently stand, universities are both the source of the social fragmentation that is disintegrating society, and a hub where intolerance, division, and destructive views are nurtured in the name of “academic freedom.”

An academic degree still enjoys respect, especially higher degrees. However, if matters continue to develop as they have been for several decades now, universities will lose all merit in the eyes of the public. According to the institution from which one has graduated, you will know what political view to expect, and accordingly, people will decide whether or not to listen to that person.

Worse yet, higher education institutions are failing to provide students with required knowledge for today’s job market. Already, professional trainings are far more effective for employers than a university or a college degree. Since the knowledge, training, and professional experience of applicants who have been given professional training are far more relevant for what employers need, they will often prefer them over applicants who have expansive general background but little professional required knowledge, and who require more training to become productive workers.

There are, of course, benefits to academic learning. Being able to formulate one’s thoughts in a consistent, clear manner is very important for any person. Also, the rules of academic writing allow us to go over vast amounts of material very quickly without losing essential information. Learning how to meet deadlines, handle pressure, and collaborate with peers to produce a better outcome are all desirable results of academic learning. Yet, the price tag of warping young minds in order to acquire these skills does not seem to justify it, especially since there are other ways to get them.

And perhaps the biggest loss of all is the leakage of permission to interpret into hard sciences. You cannot call something “hard science” or “exact science” if it is based on interpretation rather than on measurements and results. If you can play with numbers the way you play with words, then the numbers are meaningless as is the science you profess to present. For this reason, hard sciences must be cut off from institutions that teach humanities and social sciences, and the two latter ones should not be regarded as sciences whatsoever, since they are not.

To merit its name, higher education needs to focus first and foremost on acquiring social skills, communication skills, ability to articulate feelings, embrace conflicting views, and making room for diverse perspectives in a vibrant society. Put differently, higher education should be about elevating the level of humanness in humans. Education must be pristine in terms of political bias (as hard as it truly is to do), and focus on creative and inclusive thinking to create broadminded individuals rather than the current opposite. Unless the academia reverses course soon, it will be too late to save it.

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My new article on Israel Hayom “The light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel”

People’s will to weather the coronavirus storm and get back to normal life has vied with the surge of record-breaking infection rates around the globe. People are tired of hearing about the pandemic but it grips and does not let go, spreading and striking. Yet, we can find the stamina to navigate the crisis when we realize that the solution is in our hands.

“For the first time in history, nearly every scientist in the world is focused on the same problem … this is starting to pay real dividends,” say academics from Harvard who highlight the new era of cooperation we have entered to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on every realm of our lives: the economy, health, education, culture. Millions of people worldwide are stressed out over the variables that predict what awaits us in the future. What will happen in the upcoming winter in terms of COVID cases? How many more people will be unemployed?

The uncertainty shapes our collective consciousness and prepares it for a sharp turn. Precisely this kind of change of perspective – from a narrow-minded, egoistic perspective to a comprehensive, broad approach to solving our common challenges – is what will help us to reach a solution to the crisis at the deepest root of the problem: our dysfunctional human relations, rather than approaching it only from a scientific, economic or political perspective.

From a world where a person sees only himself, we need to transition to a world where people consider one another. From a world where we no longer stop to consider whether or not to wear a mask or keep social distance to avoid the transmission of a harmful virus to those near us, we need to attain a reality in which we consciously do whatever it takes to protect others, in the same way as we would like others to take care of the health of our children.

The ultimate vaccine against all pathogens targets the healing of the hearts, neutralizes venomous criticism, and corrects our exploitative attitude towards others. Nature is not blind and nothing happens by chance. The engine of evolution produces what we perceive as negative events so we will react and make connections that move us in the opposite direction toward alignment with nature. This is the formula for the evolution of life, and the times require everyone to realize this. The world we have built is completely interconnected, but our hearts remain far apart. This incompatibility is exactly what we are required to fix so we will function as an integral system in mutual consideration and harmony.

If we help each other take on the mindset of the good of all, our hearts will be cleansed of egoistic and alienating attitudes and all the parts of nature will recover balance. The common concern for the well-being of others will create solutions for every possible situation, building a shield that will protect us from all predicaments. Then we will discover that there is nothing threatening in nature and that the coronavirus was just the means for curing the world of hatred and excessive consumerism.

The bottom line of this formula for security and prosperity is simple: without connection of the hearts we will all suffer, but mutual support will build a sensation of paradise. We are like a family stuck together in a tunnel. We will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel only with the power of love.
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