Medium published my new article “The Unfounded Reasoning Behind Police Defunding”

Calls for the defunding of US police departments would put security in handcuffs. The demand for divestment of police budgets and diversion of funds to community initiatives that emerged in the wake of the death of George Floyd in the custody of four Minneapolis officers is a dangerous move. If societies want to improve police-community relations and reach a safe and harmonious relationship, the solution is not to weaken the police force but to strengthen collective education.

The police force, like every citizen, needs to undergo a significant learning process regarding how to curb outbursts and work together with the community.

A US movement brought to the national spotlight in the past few days, calls for the defunding of police departments and the reallocation of resources into job-creation initiatives as well as social and health programs. Under this initiative, some functions traditionally performed by the police would be turned over to others and community members would patrol the streets.

The simple notion of abolishing or debilitating the police is difficult to understand or justify. How can a nation ensure that the laws are obeyed and civil order is maintained without the police as a link between the government and the people? What other system has immediate knowledge of what’s happening at any given moment on any alley or street in America’s complex network of neighborhoods, towns, and cities?

if we want to restore trust in police-community relations, prevent crime and reduce incidents of police abuse or misconduct, we should invest even more in police training and society’s education.

Nowadays, as man’s egoistic nature grows increasingly cruel, one feels superior to the other and strives to squeeze and exploit, crush and loot, abuse and rape. Thus, we must be monitored. Confronted with social issues like drug addiction, severe mental health problems, and street violence, police corps that maintain order are a sine qua non. In an age of social disarray and instability, law and order must be guarded. As it is written, “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment” (Deuteronomy 16:18).

An Unruly Nation Has No Future

Those trespassing the law need the inhibiting influence of police, and the deterring fear of reprimand and punishment in jail to restrain them from committing crimes against individuals and communities. The ego requires boundaries; otherwise it incites anarchy, as we have recently seen in the streets of New York and other cities in America. Particularly in our generation, with its turbulence and plethora of particular political, religious, and social agendas, the scene must be calmed down and brought to a state of balance.

We cannot do without a type of father figure — tough and strong on one side, and empathetic and sensitive on the other — whose role is respected and enhanced through generous funding.

The police are, in fact, caught between a rock and a hard place of modern life: under pressure from policy makers, under public scrutiny, in the midst of sizzling political and social brawls, sometimes ill-equipped to respond appropriately lest they take the heat. Police officers often find themselves caught in the middle, not always knowing how to reconcile the conflicting differences of politics, ethnicity, and race.

Therefore, if we want to restore trust in police-community relations, prevent crime and reduce incidents of police abuse or misconduct, we should invest even more in police training and society’s education. The police force, like every citizen, needs to undergo a significant learning process regarding how to curb outbursts and work together with the community. Officers, robbers, and every citizen is in dire need of an educational undertaking where we scrutinize human nature, each person’s rights and obligations, and how to find common grounds for the common good.
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Medium published my new article “George Floyd’s Death — A Trigger to Insanity?”

The protests over the killing of African-American George Floyd by asphyxiation during a botched arrest, when a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, have developed into a full blown campaign against the police. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he would cut funding to police and divert resources to social services. In Minneapolis, where the incident occurred, the city council voted to disband the police altogether.

Only through a comprehensive and massive effort to install new values in the community, while simultaneously securing people’s livelihood, does the United States stand a chance of avoiding the approaching mayhem.

It is unclear what will become of law and order in light of the riots, looting, and violence spreading across the country, but these decisions clearly show that authorities are realizing that they have lost the public’s trust. On the one hand, it is good when authorities realize they are disconnected from the public they are meant to serve. On the other hand, regaining people’s trust takes more than a quick-fix revolutionary solution whose consequences have not been tested.

People need to know that if they want to put their lives back on track, the authorities are there to help them. And building this trust requires a new kind of thinking, and a new kind of educational process.

In these days, when every trauma — be it the collapse of a bank, the spread of a virus, or the unwarranted death of a man — becomes a global crisis, people should both be aware of their dependency on the social environment, and get some sort of protection from the authorities against unexpected cataclysms. Therefore, the authorities — the federal government, state government, or city council — should initiate a plan that combines learning with earning.

Since unemployment and joblessness are already very high, and will grow even higher (perhaps with some fluctuations), unemployed and jobless people are ideal candidates for the program. They will receive sufficient benefits to provide for themselves and their families, but it will be contingent upon participation in courses ranging from handling personal finance to understanding the place of the individual in a globalized world.

The courses should be built in such a way that participants not only learn about the interconnected worldwide system that determines our lives today, they also learn how to become positively active elements in it. The courses should increase the sense of accountability of the individual to the community, city, and ultimately the country. At the same time, the country, city, and the community must tend to people’s needs and give them a financial backbone.

If there are people living on the streets, it is a sign that the entire community is ill. Likewise, if people feel that looting and incinerating other people’s property is a legitimate way of expressing anger, it indicates the level of alienation and apathy in society. This is why the courses should enhance the sense of belonging, interconnectedness, and accountability to one’s community, city, state, and country.

From the perspective of the authorities, these courses should not be regarded as a service, but as an investment. The decline in crime rate, substance abuse, domestic violence and abuse, depression and other mental disorders will more than make up for the funds invested in the learning and earning program. The funds that will be freed as a result can then be reinvested in community facilities and activities to further enhance solidarity.

In order to align the whole community with the mindset of solidarity and accountability, working people, too, should do “course duty,” similar to today’s “jury duty.” However, they will be paid for their time at the course, provided they pass the tests.

Only through a comprehensive and massive effort to install new values in the community, while simultaneously securing people’s livelihood, does the United States stand a chance of avoiding the approaching mayhem. Right now, it is on the verge of insanity, and urgent action is required.
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My new article on Linkedin “Who Needs Governments?”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-needs-governments-michael-laitman/

The Minneapolis City Council’s decision to disband the police and the decision to cut the budget of NYPD, especially after the riots, defy any common sense. There is no question that there are bad apples among the police, just as there are bad apples everywhere. After all, the rioters who burned down buildings, looted stores, and shot at police officers and civilians, are not exactly candidates for the Presidential Citizens Medal.

If we want to build a society that does not require policing, we have to introduce completely new values to society.

Since ancient times, the state has been the infrastructure that allowed for culture, technology, science, and education to develop. It provided the necessary conditions for the advancement of human civilization. Policing is an integral part of the state, keeping man’s insubordinate, self-centered nature in check, and ensuring that people can develop their skills and thereby contribute to the common good. Disband the police, and you have disintegrated civilization.

If we want to build a society that does not require policing, we have to introduce completely new values to society. We must ensconce societal responsibility in every individual so that people will do their own policing on themselves. Society is nowhere near that state. It is a process of in-depth education that enables people to experience, not learn about, but actually experience the feeling of being interconnected and interdependent. In that state, when people begin to feel as one entity, one organism, they will not need policing; they will instinctively act for the sake of all of society, which they will perceive as part of themselves.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Root of Racism”

When we try to cope with racism, we have to look at its root. There is no point trying to uproot racism against any ethnic group or skin color if we don’t pull out its seed. Regrettably, we cannot pull it out since the seed of racism, bigotry, and any kind of discrimination, is human nature. Human nature—of which it was said that it is evil from our youth—is utter, unabated egoism, self-absorption at its worst.

The solution to racism is to cherish and treasure, and embrace every person’s uniqueness as our own.

No two people are the same. Blacks, whites, yellow, and red, men and women, tall and short, heavy and light, cheerful and gloomy, shrewd and naïve, optimistic and pessimistic, these are all traits that make up who we are as people, traits that, for the most part, we cannot change. There are so many combinations of so many traits that no two people are the same.

Yet, the problem is not that we are different. The problem is that we hate what is different from us in other people, and love what is similar to us in them. And since we are becoming increasingly self-absorbed, we are seeing people as increasingly different from ourselves. This is why hatred among people will not decrease; it will keep growing until we cannot stand even a single person since that person is in some tiny, undetectable manner not like us.

But where do the differences between us come from? The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that reality consists of two basic desires: a desire to give and a desire to receive. These two desires interact, since the desire to give needs a receiver and the desire to receive needs a giver. Therefore, they communicate in four basic types of communication, or mixtures of reception and giving. These four types, or phases of giving and receiving, exist in every element in reality. In humans, they express themselves (among other expressions) through the four basic types of skin color.

To cut matters short, it’s not a problem that we are different; it’s nature, and nature is beautiful. In all of nature, we love how things complement one another. We love to see courtship between males and females, the constant rejuvenation of nature in the cycle of life and death, and how each element plays its complementary part in the ecosystem to create a harmonious whole. But when it comes to people, we fight to make everyone the same and denounce anyone who dares to celebrate the human variety as a bigot. By doing this, we are sentencing ourselves to misery.

Just like all of nature, humanity is one, complementary whole. We are meant to work harmoniously like all of reality, where all the pieces contribute to one another, support one another, embrace one another, and celebrate the differences between them. But only if we put the whole above the self, “we” above “me,” people above individual, only then will each person really be able to celebrate and fully express his or her own unique qualities. Because how can we know who we are if we are always trying to emulate others? How can we know what we can give to society if all we think about is what society says what it wants us to be? So society ends up choking us, we end up hating it, and instead of contribution, we think of retribution. This is the prevailing mindset in our current society.

The differences between people are not only indelible, they are vital for our health as a society. We would not be a complete humanity were it not for all of us, with all our differences. If we only looked beyond our self-absorbed egos and saw the beauty of humanity, we would understand what a magnificent mosaic we form, as colorful as nature itself. We would celebrate the varieties between us and embrace them, and the more differences we would see in people, the more we would love them, since the more colors and shapes of the mosaic they would reveal to us.

So, succinctly, the root of racism is not in the differences between us, it is our wrongful ambition to make everyone the same. The solution to racism is therefore to cherish and treasure, and embrace every person’s uniqueness as our own. We need to love each person because what another unique human being can give to humanity, I will never be able to give. And if that person did not give it, humanity would always be deficient.

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The Times of Israel published my new article “Anti-Semitism and Pandemics”

Be it a plague or a war, a flood or an earthquake, a revolution or a financial meltdown, in the end, there is always one culprit: the Jews. In America, too, many already blame COVID-19 on the Jews, as is the case with the riots engulfing the tormented country.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the Jews stood shoulder to shoulder with the blacks in their fight for equal rights. No one remembers and no one gives them credit. Now, too, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the protesters. No one will remember and no one will give them credit.

The Jews donate to various charities and NGOs more money than any ethnic or racial group. But what do people say? “First they stole it, now they’re giving us the crumbs to buy our gratitude.” Of course, not everyone says it, but a great many do, and an even greater many tacitly agrees with them. It’s always been like that and it’ll always be like that until we learn what fundamental flaw we Jews have in our approach.

Jews are the only nation that has ever been tasked with bringing peace and love to the entire world. We gave the world the most altruistic motto ever conceived, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” yet we display the complete opposite of it: internal enmity and odium. We may sympathize with strangers’ pains, but we loathe our own coreligionists. And even though they don’t verbalize it, deep down, this is what Jew haters hate about Jews: that Jews hate each other.

When we became a nation, we were given a task: Unite “as one man with one heart,” and thereby become “a light unto nations.” For centuries, we have been trying everything to avoid our vocation. We talk about morals, ethics, justice, but we refuse to talk about love.

Morals are a miserable surrogate for love. Just as a mother doesn’t need morals to tend to her child because her love guides her, if we cultivate love among us we won’t need morals, and we will treat each other beautifully. Then, and only then will non-Jews say, “Now we respect them.”
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 6/9/20

It’s very impressive to see the public displays of remorse as police officers, celebrities, politicians, and regular white folk kneel before African-Americans and ask for their forgiveness. But looking at the past tumultuous two weeks in the US, has there been any real rapprochement? Are the factions any closer? Are the gaps narrower? No, not really. The gestures, as genuine and impressive as they truly are, will not quell the hatred.

Violence degrades the victim; kneeling degrades the offender. Neither achieves equality. And without equality, the power struggle will continue.

Achieving equality requires something else: a new goal that the vying parties feel is higher and more worthy than their loyalty to their own faction. If the sides could, even slightly, shift their attention from themselves, and see the harm that the struggle itself causes to all of society, they would rise above their distrust and join hands in building a better society for everyone!

COVID-19 and the protests over the killing of George Floyd indicate that local solutions do not work since the society has become interconnected and interdependent throughout the country and throughout the world. Realizing this fact is the first step toward finding a sustainable solution.

Acknowledging the interconnected nature of the world we live in requires a conscious effort to learn. We must learn that human ethnicities and races are not above or below one another; they are varieties that together form the beautiful fabric of human society. Just as all of nature would be dull and unsustainable were it not for the myriad creatures that make up the global ecosystem, humanity would be deficient and lame if even one of its elements were missing.

We need to change our approach from seeing the other as a hindrance, to seeing the other as an asset. If we consider what is best for humanity, we will realize that what the other can contribute to humanity, I will never be able to contribute. But because that other person, race, or color, gave this to humanity, I, too, can benefit from it. In the end, my happiness and sense of fulfillment depend on the happiness and sense of fulfillment of every person in the world. If only we had realized it sooner…

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My new article on Linkedin “Why Love the Opposite Specifically Now”

(Takeaway from the June 7, 2020 show, “Global Perspectives”)

At a time like this, when hatred raises its ugly head and fills the streets with malice, who wants to talk about love? But if we don’t talk about it now, when will we talk about it, when we feel love? If we don’t talk about it now and work on it, we will never feel it.

But what the other person, the one I hate, can contribute to humanity, I will never be able to contribute, precisely because I am different.
The hatred at the center of events this time is racism. This hatred is so deep that in order to resolve it, we need a whole new outlook on life.

Because we are inherently self-centered, we like only those who are similar to us. Anyone who is different from me, I instinctively want to put down because that makes me superior. With such an overt difference as skin color, the impulse to patronize, put down, and generally belittle the other, immediately comes into play, even before I am aware of it. This self-centered impulse causes us to wish bad things for others, demonize them, and idealize ourselves. As long as we remain in that perspective, we will never truly love anyone who is not our immediate family, and even within our families, love is already declining.

But what the other person, the one I hate, can contribute to humanity, I will never be able to contribute, precisely because I am different. So if I loved humanity instead of myself, I would love that other (currently hated) person, precisely because of the ability to give what I cannot. The very cause of hate would become the very cause of love. And the more different that person was from me, the more love I would feel.

So how do we change our perspective? We think about it. The ability to focus our love on humanity exists within us. Otherwise, we would not even imagine that such a thing exists. If we think about changing our focal point from “me” to “we,” and try to bring it to life, we will feel that it is possible, precisely because we thought about it. And the more we think about it, the stronger our ability to care for others will grow.

If we do that, we won’t need to worry about racism; it is exactly the differences between us that we will celebrate, embrace, and love. And now we need it more than ever.

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My new article on Linkedin “What the Protests Tells Us about Ourselves”

The death of George Floyd and the protests it excited put a mirror before us. They are showing us how we relate to one another. If we don’t acknowledge what we see in the mirror on the wall, we will suffer much worse punishments than shattered shop windows.

Both the violent protests and the more peaceful demonstrations, where there were no agitators to provoke violence, stem from the same root: the need for warm human connection. But there cannot be any warmth between us as long as we think so negatively of each other.

Bad thoughts make bad things happen. And the worst thing there is, which makes the worst things happen, is human nature, or as it is written, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth.” We will not solve the many social problems in America (or anywhere else for that matter) because we don’t really want to solve them. We enjoy looking down on other people so we want there to be people with a lower social status than ourselves. Even if we’re unaware of it, we constantly compare ourselves to others. When our ego detects someone who is in some way better than us, it invariably makes us feel uncomfortable and we cannot rest until we either find a way to feel superior to that person, or drive that person out of sight and out of mind. Malicious envy is the evil inclination, and it will not let anything good happen in our society until we overcome it in our hearts.

If there is one thing we should be thankful for in all this malice that is bubbling up to the surface these sorrowful times, it is precisely that the malice is bubbling up to the surface. Now we can look at ourselves, acknowledge our true nature, and start working together on overcoming it and forming a truly united and caring humanity. It can happen, but only if we work on it together.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Four Colors of the (Human) Rainbow”

In 1954, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimously revoked the constitutionality of segregation. But court rulings don’t change hearts. Deep inside, the hatred that created the segregation is very much alive and fuels the flames of the protests we are seeing. There is no solution to the racial tensions in America, other than to find a way, however unrealistic it may seem, for the parties to love one another: blacks, whites, yellow, and red. Just as the rainbow in the sky marked the covenant between God and Noah, the human rainbow should mark the covenant among all people.

America is at a crossroads: Either love will cover everyone, or hate will cover everyone. The future of the country depends on the choice between them.

Why is it that we love diversity in nature, but hate it in ourselves? What would happen if zebras wanted to be lions, and lions wanted to be elephants? It is precisely the diversity of nature that gives it its beauty and power. How long would we last if the heart suddenly insisted on being the liver? Existence is based on different elements forming a harmonious, beautiful, and vital ecosystem that needs all of its parts in order to survive.

There is no hatred among any of nature’s parts. On the contrary, there are mutuality and harmony. Unless America emulates this approach within society, the factions will destroy each other. And today, it is clearer than ever.

Harmony seems impossible under the current circumstances. People are too absorbed in their own anger to respect one another. Therefore, respect, consideration, ethics, and so forth, are not viable solutions since the entrenched hatred will throw them out the window. Instead, the parties must uproot the hatred itself, realize that they cannot exist without each other, and therefore try to learn to love one another, nothing less than that. All people are parts of the same system, the same organism of human society. If you hurt one part, you’ve hurt all of humanity. If people loved each other, there would not be discrimination, humiliation, suspicion, or violence. But in order to come to it, people realize it’s necessary, and choose to work for it. America is at a crossroads: Either love will cover everyone, or hate will cover everyone. The future of the country depends on the choice between them.

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Medium published my new article “What Happens When We Get Diversity and Inclusion All Wrong”

Can you mix water and oil? No, you can’t. But can you do without either of them? No, you can’t. Can a wolf become a moose? No, it can’t. Would we want it to? God forbid! So why are we excluding diversity and inclusion when it comes to people? Why are we fighting to make everyone the same when it’s exactly the differences between us that make humanity so beautiful, if we work harmoniously with one another?

By trying to make everyone the same, we are misinterpreting inclusion and increasing the hatred that already exists within us.

Just as men and women are different from each other, so are the four different types of color: white, black, yellow, and red. And just as men and women are complementary, so are the four types of people. Neither is better; neither is worse. They are simply that — four types of people, whose differences manifest, among other things, in skin color.

You might ask, “But if one is not superior to another, why is there bigotry?” Bigotry has nothing to do
with skin color, and everything to do with human nature: We are self-centered and alienated from each other. In simple terms, we are hate-filled creatures. This is not news, of course; it’s been known since Genesis (8:21), when God stated, “The inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”

This inclination is the reason that more than half a century after the retraction of segregation in the United States, there is no inclusion. By trying to make everyone the same, we are misinterpreting inclusion and increasing the hatred that already exists within us.

Inclusion does not mean that everyone becomes the same. It means that everyone is included in the making of a common society, each according to his or her unique characteristics, and the diversity of unique qualities that are included under one common whole creates a healthy and robust nation.

But to do that, people must overcome the evil inclination that rules their hearts. And to overcome that innate nature, we need to know several things: 1) All parts of American society are indispensable. Extract any part of it, and you have handicapped the entire nation. 2) The various factions are indispensable precisely because they are different. What one can do, none other can. 3) The uniqueness of each group must function as a positive contributor to all of society. In this way, the diversity will strengthen the society and increase solidarity, as opposed to being a cause for tension and disintegration in the current situation, when hatred separates the factions. 4) The ultimate goal of all the factions must be the strengthening and solidifying of the entire American society. If even one of the four groups pulls its own way, the entire society will fall to pieces.

As an example, think of a basketball team. Each player on the team has a specific role (or roles) to play, and every player helps the other teammates do their part, as well. If the team wins, it is not one player’s personal victory; it is the team effort that pulled the feat.

In much the same way, today’s American society needs its players to play their parts, then help each other, and together accomplish the task of uniting the American nation. The diversity of the American population can create the most beautiful and thriving society on Earth, but first people must decide that they prefer to love one another rather than to hate.

Choosing to love is not easy, but there is no other way. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. Today, it is necessary that American society reinvents itself, because it is on the brink of collapse. The coming weeks and months will determine whether America defeats the hatred that has spread throughout the nation and becomes a beacon of hope for a fractured world, or gives in to the odium and relapses into civil war.
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