Medium published my new article “Between Pain and Forgiveness”

When we are hurt by others, it hurts terribly, and it can happen in our lives at any moment. Questions immediately arise: When is there room for forgiveness and what is it anyway?

It is human nature to enjoy, to satisfy ourselves with all kinds of things that seem good to us. We want to enjoy food, sex, family, money, honor, control, information, and a combination of these above all. We constantly work to fulfill our desires, and consider how much energy we should invest in something specific depending on the expected outcome.

To illustrate, let us say we want to buy a nice suit for a particularly festive occasion. We invest a large amount of money in it, equivalent to almost a week’s work, and purchased it with great pleasure. The long-awaited day arrives, we put on the new suit and walk around among everyone with a smile from ear to ear. People say, “What a great suit.” The chest swells with pride.

And suddenly someone utters in front of everyone, “What’s that funny suit you are wearing? What kind of costume is that?” And from that moment on, reality changes. Everyone giggles, and we are filled with shame.

Later that evening, we run into the same person again, who quietly tells us, “Sorry if I said something inappropriate earlier.” Immediately we respond with a rejection. Is such a request for forgiveness a reparation for the harm done? Certainly not. That is why we do not accept it.

Real forgiveness should have been one that compensates me for the large sum I invested in buying the suit, for all the expectations I had of receiving compliments, respect and recognition, hopes that were replaced by contempt, ridicule and shame. For all the things that have accumulated in me, I need proper compensation.

The reparation can be made through revenge, as it is usually done, or alternatively by the person in question coming to me with a sincere apology and convincing me that he or she understands the damage and terrible insult caused to me. Let’s say the person writes a check that would cover the purchase of ten more suits, for example. In that case, if I feel that the apology is indeed sincere, and the check also seems respectable enough to me, then I am willing to forgive, to erase the case as if it had not happened.

In principle, the size of the blow is the size of the compensation that can cover it. Forgiveness, revenge, slight, insult, investment, these are all things measured only in relation to my egoic desire to enjoy. If the ego still feels hurt and demands revenge, it means that the place of hurt has not been filled with proper compensation. The pit that opens up in the heart is still open, so we cannot truly forgive.

Until now, we have analyzed phenomena that we all know. At some point, a feeling may arise in a person in which the desire for revenge, of seeking honor, of fights for control and wars — become extremely exhausting to us. It destroys our health, our relationships, our whole lives. “What do I get out of all this,” we begin to ask ourselves, “What is it worth living for? Is this my mission in life, is this all I have to do?”

The awakening of these inner questions brings us to a quest for inner development, a method of overcoming the limitations of the egoistic nature. This wisdom teaches that the great purpose of our existence on earth is to discover the universal power of nature, the quality of love and giving, and it is discovered by acquiring a similar quality to it. This revelation is called spiritual because it elevates every human being to a higher, eternal and complete level of existence.

How does it happen? Broadly speaking, by developing loving relationships in a small group that serves as a laboratory, we complement each other in ways that we cannot achieve alone. We learn to connect with each other in harmony, like different organs in a body. Injury, reparation, revenge, forgiveness, all these games lose their meaning because we understand that we are not fighting against each other, but we all together raise above our narrow calculations in the face of our common egoistic nature.

When I realize that I have hurt someone, I go directly to the person and ask him or her what I can do to make amends for what I have spoiled. To get closer to him or her, to connect with the person and do everything I can to restore the power of love between us. And if someone has hurt me, I remember that it is not his or her fault, but the human ego, and try to help the person rise above it. In this way, we gradually approach a situation where our world becomes a place where it is fun to live. With the highest power of nature, in reciprocity, support and trust.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Why Advanced Nations Become Antisemitic”

What do the Babylonian Empire, ancient Rome, 13th century England, 15th century Spain, and 20th century Germany have in common? All of them were among the most, if not the most advanced nations of their time, and they all tormented the Jews or altogether eliminated them. Even more interestingly, they all turned on the Jews when they were in their prime. Why are we, the Jewish people, always blamed for all the woes? Why are we attacked, and why do the most vicious attacks come from the most advanced nations? To answer these questions, we need to know our place in the world and our obligation to humanity.

The more chaotic the world becomes, the more it turns against the Jews. Jews are always blamed for things that go wrong. When adversity becomes too much to bear, the frustration erupts against the Jews.

We Jews always feel that it is unjust that we should be blamed for things we did not do, but this does not change the world’s opinion, and for a good reason. Without realizing it, the world is not really accusing us of doing harm, even though some make up various libels. In truth, the world is accusing us of not doing what we should be doing, which is what we did for ourselves when we became a nation: unite our warring hearts.

Especially today, when every problem—even as minor as monkeypox—spreads around the world and becomes a global problem, it is manifestly clear that only worldwide mutual responsibility can help us overcome the world’s problems. In the absence of mutual responsibility, humanity tries various makeshift solutions, which ultimately only aggravate the problems. Everyone knows that if we could only work together, humanity would overcome every problem, but we cannot bring ourselves to cooperate, and so we are forced to improvise and ultimately fail.

The ancient people of Israel, whose founding fathers came from a variety of (often hostile) tribes, had found a way to unite against all odds. They realized that unity was the most important asset for society and made all other values secondary. They taught this to each other, they taught this to their children, who taught their children’s children, until they had become a new nation bound not by blood relations but by the value of unity.

No other nation had been born this way before or since, and no other nation has managed to forge such a bond among its members. The people of Israel, for their part, became responsible for sharing their unique method of building nations that live in peace with one another and among themselves. The early Jews were well aware of their commitment, but since the last exile, two millennia ago, they had forgotten it. The world, however, still remembers that the Jews hold a special secret that they are denying it. This is the reason for the world’s perpetual resentment against the Jews.

Moreover, the more advanced a nation is, the more difficult it is for its people to maintain solidarity, and the more they need the ancient Hebrews’ method for achieving unity. If we examine the legacy of the ancient Jews, we will find that it is not the love of knowledge or the zest for power, but the motto “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Because solidarity is such a rarity in advanced nations, these nations become the most resentful toward Jews and blame them for their troubles.

While this is true of advanced countries, it is also true in general, that when any adversity comes upon a nation, it comes because of one core reason: lack of cohesion, lack of solidarity, or in other words, lack of unity. At that time, the nation’s people feel that it is the Jews who are behind it. They cannot articulate why they think so, but they do nonetheless. However, the fact that they blame us for their adversity necessarily implies that they believe in our ability to prevent it. Indeed, if we taught them how to unite the way our founding fathers had united, they would not fall into their sorry state. This is why they hate us.

Therefore, if we want the world to stop hating us, we must help correct the world by learning how to unite. To do this, we ourselves must unite above our divisions, just as our ancestors did when we first became a nation. Once we achieve this, we will become the example of unity that the world wants to see in us. We can walk in circles for centuries to come, but it will not change the fact that until we unite among us and set an example of unity to the world, the world will remain mired in wars, blame us for them, and beat us up as punishment.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Price for Adopting a Victim Mentality”

A person with a victim mentality tends to feel as a victim of the hurtful actions of others. While some people have in fact been victims of wrongdoing, developing a victim mentality means that they become fixated on blaming their misfortunes on the misdeeds of others. The problem with developing such a mentality is that seeing oneself as a perpetual victim prevents one from rebuilding oneself and succeeding in life. In order to maintain the victim image, people must remain eternal losers, but only they will lose as a result.

It is very difficult to determine where exactly to draw the line between blaming other people for one’s woes and beginning to exploit the wrongdoing that was done to a person for gaining unwarranted benefits. Either way, perpetuating a self-image of a victim impedes one’s efforts to rebuild one’s life and realize one’s potential.

Therefore, to help victims of all types of misconduct, we should focus on the positive rather than on the negative. Instead of reinforcing and perpetuating their image as passive and weak people whose vulnerability had been exploited, we should teach people who have been hurt by wrongdoers that they can always succeed regardless of the circumstances. We should empower people and help them believe in themselves.

The same approach should apply to populations that had been victims of exploitation and abuse. Instead of teaching them to focus on the wrongs that had been done to them, we should help them gain self-confidence and achieve what they did not believe they could. While we cannot change the past, we can choose the future, and this should be our focus.

The activism of certain opinion leaders and other public figures “in favor” of victimized sections of society is nothing but manipulation. Reality proves that these “champions of the afflicted” do not really help them, and in the end, the victims remain empty-handed and crippled by a victim mentality that guarantees they will have nothing in the future because they chose a wrong approach.

While there are certainly people who have done wrong, seeking revenge will not help the victims. Instead, they should focus on building a just and cohesive society for all.

If we create social solidarity, we will solve the problem of exploitation and abuse altogether. If we want equality, we must fight for equal opportunities to succeed, and we will achieve this if we create a society whose members feel connected to each other, cultivate solidarity, and are proud to live in a cohesive and caring community.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Enemy Within: Antisemitism on Israeli Campus”

Once common only at US and European universities, Israeli higher education institutions have now become the site of heightened political confrontation. Images of heated demonstrations—some of them turned violent—in which Palestinian flags are raised in front of Israeli flags, are commonplace on Israeli campuses. Statements of support for terrorists and incitement chants such as, “Death to Israel” resound with increasing frequency. So, what are we waiting for? Either we begin to move toward Jewish unity, or soon there will be no more land in which to weep.

The commemoration of Nakba Day, the day the Arabs call a “catastrophe” marks the day of Israel’s independence. Its onset last week initiated widespread protests against Israel’s existence. The physical clashes between Jewish and Arab students show that the situation on Israeli territory is deteriorating. At prestigious higher education institutions such as Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, there are increasing tensions between demonstrators who support the Palestinian cause and pro-Israel activists.

Jewish students worry about their safety, they feel threatened and fear that the situation could escalate into terrorist attacks on campus. They see that both the authorities and the administrators of the universities turn a blind eye toward campus antisemitism on the grounds of freedom of expression.

Everything we do in the context of rapprochement between Jews and Arabs, we do wrong. Nothing we have done has brought any good, nor will it bring any good. Unfortunately, we do not learn from our mistakes. So, we try again and again to bring the Jews and Arabs closer together by all possible means: at universities, in the workplace, and in everything at our disposal. In the end, it becomes clearer that we just prepare live ammunition to shoot ourselves in the feet.

Radical opinions that hanker to wipe Israel off the map hide beneath the facade of “intellectual” debates. The problem is simply that Jews and Arabs fail to live together in harmony on Israeli territory, period. Judging by the current circumstances, a point may be reached where we will be forbidden as Jews to enter our own capital, Jerusalem, until eventually we will have no place in the Land of Israel to call our own.

No Arab person who feels that this land belongs to them can support the State of Israel. I understand them. They will use their seats in the Israeli Congress, their ministerial positions in the government, and all other possible means to push us into the sea. I do not think there is any real intention for coexistence, even if such is not openly stated now. We as Jews must begin to open our eyes and realize that we can only rely on ourselves, on our ability to unite to secure our place in Israel.

The problem is that we are not idealistic enough, and instead only think of how to serve ourselves at the expense of others. We do not rise above the private individual ego. The Arabs realize that this weakens us and they take advantage of it. In contrast, they understand that their success depends on how connected they are, on how strong they are together, and therefore they succeed everywhere.

Do not get me wrong. I, too, want the Arab population to do well and live a quiet, normal life, but land for peace will never be the solution. Instead, we must create the conditions to divide the population into two peoples and make it clear that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. How long will we continue our endless debates and realize that this is how it has to be? The problem is that by then, it may be too late.

But to live in the land of Israel, we must earn this right or we had better give up the land. We can triumph over any threat and prevail only when we use the help found in our special Jewish spirit.

Today, the opposite is the case; we are not carrying out our role. We have a fragmented society with all kinds of groups that come from different countries but without a common vision. This checkerboard approach may work in America which is not existentially threatened, but for Israel it could spell a death sentence. Quite simply, Israel will survive and thrive to the extent that Jews are bound together by good relations, reciprocity, and mutual care. The sooner we move in that direction, the better.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Globalization: The Good, the Bad, and the People of Israel”

Much has been said about globalization. On the one hand, it gave everyone access to amenities that until a few decades ago only the rich could have. It opened us to new cultures and places, and improved the material life of most everyone around the world. On the other hand, globalization has devastated local production in countless countries and inflicted destitution on millions of people whose jobs have moved to other countries. Yet, alongside these heavy problems, there is another process that globalization has set in motion: the fusing of humanity. Globalization has made us similar, created a common basis for cooperation and understanding, nurtured shared desires and aspirations, and opened the door for understanding among all people.

The fact that now, after decades of accelerated globalization, we can understand each other’s words and gestures means that we can begin to understand each other’s hearts all over the world. Until now, there has never been a situation where all of humanity shared the same problems and aspirations, and could communicate freely among all nations in order to join hands, solve the problems, and realize the aspirations.

Curiously, the process that humanity is undergoing today is the same process that the Israeli nation went through when the nation first formed. The first Israelites were strangers from different, often rival tribes and lands. Yet, as they all elevated the ideal of unity above all else, they managed to unite above their different origins and form a new nation.

Now, humanity is inadvertently being driven to undergo the same process. We may not want to understand one another, but we do, since the global circumstances have become similar around the world, and the problems are similar and affect all other places. We may come from Finland or from India, from the US or China, Japan or Latin America, but our aspirations are the same, our technology is the same, and our upbringing is more or less the same. Like it or not, we are becoming one, global nation.

This is why at such a time, Israel is getting so much attention, predominantly for condemnation. We are the only group of people who has ever dealt with such a situation, and we have found a way to overcome suspicion and alienation and merge into a nation. We formed a society that, for significant periods of time, managed to become the “chosen nation,” a model society where people love their neighbor as themselves. At such times, non-Jews from around the world would come to Jerusalem to witness Jewish unity, especially during the festivals when Jews gathered in Jerusalem in a pilgrimage that brought together the entire nation.

Eventually, we succumbed to suspicion and alienation like the rest of the world, but humanity has not relieved us from our duty to set an example. It keeps stating that we are responsible for all the problems in the world, effectively saying that it is within our power to correct them. Jews relate to it as antisemitism but in fact, it is humanity’s demand that we fulfill our calling, our commitment to the world.

Now that we are scattered and dispersed throughout the world, we, Jews, are “globalized,” as well. Nevertheless, the root of our ancient union lives within us and projects itself wherever we go. It accelerates the process of unification and globalization even though we cannot feel that our ancient root is still alive within us.

When Israel become aware of who they are and what they are meant to bring to the world, the anger toward them will subside and the world will join them in establishing a global village whose diverse cultures and ethnicities are united by love. Humanity will not suppress the differences between nations and cultures; on the contrary, it will welcome them and thrive because of them, as everyone will contribute their exclusive traits to the common good.

When that happens, the world will realize Israel’s secret: Success does not come from one dominant doctrine or perception, but from opposing and conflicting views that join together under a canopy of brotherly love, where everyone uses their various qualities and perceptions for the common good.
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Medium published my new article “The Train of Evolution’s Next Stop”

Let’s imagine, for just a few minutes, that we are on a special train, the train of human evolution. The train approaches its next stop and stops at the dock. As we step off the train, we see a sign that reads “Welcome to the Connected World.”

At first, nothing seems different; everything looks like the world we know. But as we venture into the new world, we start bumping into things, and the collisions are getting more and more painful. As it turns out, the connected world may look similar to ours, but it is governed by completely different laws.

The world is changing very quickly. The forces operating on us are forcing us to move to another level of awareness. It is demanding that we begin to understand nature’s governing laws, to look at the world we live in from a higher perspective, more expansively and globally than our narrow vision.

For thousands of years, civilization has been developing with an individualistic mindset. Each of us was driven by self-centered impulses that kept on growing. But now these impulses have brought us to a standstill.

Today’s young people feel lost, disoriented, uncertain about what to do with their lives and what they want from life. They feel like misfits in the world we have built according to our own makeup, while they are different.

For thousands of years, the ego was king. We worked, did business, and made money. Now we are suddenly locked in a global network with countless elements that we cannot control and do not understand.

Every movement someone makes somewhere affects all of humanity. The butterfly effect has turned from a theory into our everyday reality. In such an integrated world, where everything is interconnected and interdependent, we have no choice but to take each other’s needs into account. Gradually, through bumping into more and more obstacles, we realize that unless we think of everyone, no one will succeed.

The problem is that we are not designed to do that. We do not think in a considerate way, and we do not feel that genuine caring is even possible.‎

This will be humanity’s next great challenge: the transition to a new attitude toward all people. We will have to start by not doing to others what we would not like done to us, until we finally come to a state where we actually love one another, as fantastic as it may sound today.

This evolutionary change will happen regardless of our will. It is already underway. The only question is whether we will adjust to it without more blows that will make us painfully aware that we are all in the same boat.

Now is the time to open our eyes and learn to feel connected. Now is the time to teach ourselves a new thought paradigm — one that includes others, since everyone’s benefit is also my own.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Tlaib is winning because we are fighting the wrong war”

Last week, Rashida Tlaib, accompanied by her fellow “squad” members and several other progressive members of Congress, introduced the first-ever congressional resolution that would see the US formally recognize the Palestinian “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” which is how they refer to the establishment of the State of Israel. By all indications, the proposal will not pass. Nevertheless, it is another chunk off the thinning wall that protects Israel. It will not be long before Congress joins the growing choir of voices calling Israel an apartheid state and voting to revoke it.

But it is not for their wit that they are winning, but for our folly. We are fighting the wrong war. If we fought for our own cohesion rather than against their divisive rhetoric, we would have no problems with anyone.

Instead of fighting against the forces that seek to weaken us, we should fight for the thing that gives us strength—solidarity. Currently, we are wasting our time, resources, and energy in every direction on pointless apologetics that convince no one, not even ourselves. We are trying to explain that we have a right to live in the land of Israel, but when even we have no idea why we are here, can we complain that others don’t, as well?

Every nation takes pride in what makes it unique, in its legacy and traditions. We have abandoned our culture, abandoned our legacy, and adopted cultures and traditions of other nations. Why then are we surprised that they despise us and regard our existence as redundant and undesirable?

Instead of clinging to our own legacy and offering it to the world, just as every other nation does, we have built a patchwork culture that combines the legacies of other nations, but nothing that belongs to the unique gift we were meant to bring to the world. In such a state, we really don’t deserve our land, the land of Israel.

Our legacy is the achievement of our ancestors to form a nation out of complete strangers. Although they were often hostile toward each other, they nevertheless insisted on unity at all costs. King Solomon defined it as love that covers all crimes (Prov. 10:12), and The Book of Zohar (Aharei Mot) says that by carrying it out, we bring peace to the world.

In the previous century, Rav Kook wrote in his book Orot HaKodesh, ‎“Since we were ruined by unfounded hatred, and the world was ruined with us, we will be ‎rebuilt by unfounded love, and the world will be rebuilt with us.” When the great 20th century kabbalist and thinker Baal HaSulam talks about “national pride,” he means the pride to be the trailblazers of unity above all differences.

When acclaimed historian Paul Johnson wrote in his comprehensive ‎composition A History of the Jews, “At a very early stage in their collective existence the ‎‎Jews believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own ‎society was to be a pilot,” he meant that the Israeli society was to be a “startup nation” in achieving solidarity where it did not seem achievable.

The more divided the world becomes, the more the Jewish pilot society is needed, and the more the world resents us for not building it. It is no wonder that the most rabid antisemites also admired the Jews and sought their example. Henry Ford, in his venomous compilation The International Jew—the World’s Foremost Problem, also inserted statements that show what he expected from us: ‎“Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems … would do well to look into ‎the social system under which the early Jews were organized.”‎

In fact, even the Nazis initially supported the fledgling Jewish state. It was for their own reasons, of course, and they later retracted their support and sided with the Arabs, but when they first came to power, they fully supported the Zionists’ efforts to build a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

If the November 29, 1947 League of Nations vote to establish a Jewish state took place today, no one would vote in favor. In fact, no one would even propose it. We have no one to blame for it but ourselves. Rashida Tlaib and her cohort are only a reminder of what we are refusing to do: restore our legacy of unity above all differences and divisions, and become the pilot society that the world expects from us.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Relentless Pursuit of Honor”

Without the need for honor, a person would live quietly in a corner. So, there is a kind of inner fire that constantly fuels us and compels us to succeed in the eyes of others. They should appreciate us, respect us, talk about us.

Honor is a condition that cannot be inherited, we have to work for it. Everything depends on the values that are accepted in society. It can be a society that values money and status symbols, or one that values simplicity and a modest life. A criminal society that values power and violence, or a society of artists that values sensitivity and creativity. In either case, depending on our innate characteristics, the education we received, and the society that surrounds us, each person wants to gain the attention, appreciation, and respect of those around him or her. Without it, one does not feel whole.

At any given moment, society provides us with a model against which we are measured. It makes us work, make an effort to become more and more like this model of success. Some people are willing to invest a lot to be remembered well after they die, because the feeling of dignity has no limits, neither in time, nor in place, nor in intensity.

Honor, is it good or bad? It depends on how the tendency is used. To illustrate, if I want to spur a child to invest in his studies and tell him, ‘You are better, you will be great, everyone will respect you,’ I am giving him motivation to study, which is good. On the other hand, if I keep lowering his dignity, I destroy his self-confidence and nothing comes of it.

With regard to ourselves, we must examine the direction in which respect drives us. If the desire to be above everything drives a person to act at the expense of others, to kick them on the way to the summit, to control and maneuver them, then that is destructive honor. Constructive honor, on the other hand, is that I want to be respected precisely by helping everyone, sacrificing myself for them, caring about their welfare and well-being. If society honors me for such an attitude on my part as a good and generous person, that is constructive honor. It will also be accompanied by constructive competition: which of us invests more for the benefit of society.

Because of human beings selfish nature, there is a tendency to belittle others instead of respecting them. A selfish society puts everyone under constant pressure: Is my dignity being violated? Are you giving me the respect I deserve? Is there someone more respectable than me? Overall, this pressure puts us in a cutthroat competition that destroys our relationships, our health, and our lives.

Social and personal development improves when we learn to use the wisdom of connection. On the whole, this method changes our egoistic nature to a nature of bestowal. With its help we come to a situation where we connect as one man with one heart.

Gradually you begin to feel a special power of bestowal, love and giving. A connecting and unifying force. It becomes the source of a special inspiration of mutual respect. It is a sublime, spiritual, wonderful feeling. Everyone feels whole, especially in connection with others. It is an honor for the person to be in such a relationship with everyone.

Mutual respect means that I respect the other and he or she respects me, because only together can we build a system of communication in which the same supreme power is revealed. I do not underestimate anyone because I feel dependent on others for the sake of my personal development. To be more precise, we can say that we do not respect each other, but the state of common connectedness that has been built. And that is a very special honor.

In a nutshell, those who want to be respected are recommended to learn and also teach others how to connect properly, how to rise together to the most dignified degree of existence there is.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The War in Ukraine Is Changing the World”

The war in Ukraine is unlike any war that’s been. Although it seems local, this war is changing the world. In the end, after all the pain, the parties will establish new relationships, and new relationships will be established around the world. This war is the beginning of a formation of a new world order, where all parties unite against the one common enemy of all of humanity: egoism. It will take time, but everyone involved will realize, and the whole world with them, that they are not fighting against each other, but against an enemy within them. If we let the idea sink in, even a bit, it will make it happen even sooner.

The war that began in late February will not end soon. It will take many more months until everyone realizes that war itself, the very concept of it, is evil. In that sense, the war in eastern Europe is correcting all of humanity, transforming our perception and our understanding of good and evil.

The casualties, the injured, and the lost property are a terrible price to pay. Nevertheless, global processes always come at a cost. We should not blame others for the cost, and we should not think that there is nothing each of us can do to change the world. It is in the hands of every person to change the world for the better, and to make the atrocities of war, and all atrocities that humans are inflicting on each other, disappear. All we need is to realize that the only enemy lies within us—our self-centered attitude. It incites us against each other, demonizes and vilifies anyone who disagrees with us, tells us that we are the only ones entitled in this world, and thereby sets us off against each other. We are all like that, infected with a pandemic of narcissism.

Nevertheless, there is a lot we can do to change the world. First, we must accept that there is a good reason we are so different from each other. Each of us makes a unique contribution to the world that no one else can. If we were all the same, the contributions we receive from others, and on which our lives depend, would be absent, and we would not survive, in the most physical sense of the word.

We will realize that our ego is the enemy only when we realize that singularity is the wrong key word for happiness. Today, the key word for happiness is complementarity—mutual satisfaction of each other’s material, social, emotional, and spiritual needs.

We are living in a world where we are all dependent on each other. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the appliances and gadgets that we use are all made by people we do not know, in places we do not know, and reach us in ways we do not know. But were it not for this chain of myriad unknown individuals, we would not survive, since we cannot provide for our needs by ourselves.

The same goes for social ties. All our connections, communications, and interactions with other people are made possible with the help of countless people who serve us without our awareness. But were it not for them, we would not be able to work or socialize.

Despite this obvious fact, we behave toward others with as little consideration as possible, and when we are nice or considerate, it is because we have an ulterior, selfish motive. We do not have the prerogative to keep up this behavior. We are destroying the world and destroying ourselves.

Back in the 1930s, Baal HaSulam, a great thinker and a great kabbalist, wrote an epic essay titled “Peace in the World.” In it, he writes, “Man is inherently born to lead a social life. Each and every individual in society is like a wheel that is linked to several other wheels placed in a machine.” How odd it is that ninety years ago, before World War II, people already realized that we are all dependent on each other and must behave toward each other with consideration. Just think what we could have avoided had we been more attentive and open-minded.

Now, too, we are headed for a catastrophe unless we pay attention and begin to act like one entity, one global society that works like a single, united family. The war will change the world, but I hope we can change ourselves before the war changes us.
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My new article on Linkedin “Don’t Laugh about Humor”

How does humor affect our mood? Why do people laugh at other people? How can humor improve relationships?

When someone talks about something with humor, we can empathize with the situation. They can talk about very serious situations, but when told with humor, we can look at them from a lighter or surprising perspective. This takes a lot of the gravity out of the situations, and not only makes us feel better, but helps us cope with them, which might have been very difficult, if not impossible without humor.

Good humor is based on wit, on making surprising links between elements and looking at them from a new and curious point of view.

It is well known that laughter has many physical benefits. Here are some of them, courtesy of Mayo Clinic: Laughter stimulates the heart, lungs, and muscles, and increases the release of endorphins (natural painkillers). It creates a good, relaxed feeling and reduces some of the physical symptoms of stress. Laughter even strengthens the immune system.

Laughter also has many emotional benefits: It increases our overall satisfaction with life, makes it easier to cope with difficult situations, and, most importantly, improves our connections with other people. When you have a good, hearty laugh with a person, you cannot fight with him (or her).

There is another benefit of humor: If used correctly, it can prepare us to learn new things easily. This is especially true for things that are emotionally difficult to accept or deal with.

There are other kinds of humor, too. Some people laugh at the faults they find in others. In this case, it has no benefits. It demeans others and makes the mockers feel superior to their victims. Such humor does nothing but bloat the bully’s ego.

It is very painful when other people make fun of our faults. It is not the joke that hurts, nor the flaw itself, but the ridicule of others. Conversely, when someone shows us that they like us just as we are, then laughing at ourselves together with them can bring us closer and deepen our connection.

At the top of the list is self-humor. Confident people can joke about themselves, talk about their weaknesses, urges they cannot control, and so on. This makes them more approachable and brings them closer to other people. It also allows other people to share their own feelings with them.

At a time when the world is becoming increasingly connected and we are more dependent on each other than ever, good humor is a must. We need to be confident enough to laugh not only at our weaknesses, but also at our very nature – our selfishness.

If we can make fun of everything that prevents us from working with others, building trust, and understanding others, it will help us recognize our true nature. If we can laugh about it with other people, it will bring us closer and foster a shared desire for change so that we can connect.

Indeed, we should take humor very seriously; it can be a vital tool in moving us out of narcissism and isolation into connection and friendship.
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