My new article on Linkedin “When I Look at Them I See My Fault”

I look at the state that our nation should be in, “as one man with one heart,” and the state we are actually in—unwilling to recognize each other—and it pains me. When I look at our politicians, I see the state of our nation. Since they represent the people, their relationships reflect the relationships among the people: No one is friendly; no one even bothers to be politically correct.

Look at the Knesset, our parliament, and see where we are: Each with a knife behind the back or in the pocket, very similar to the days preceding the ruin of the Temple. This is what unfounded hatred looks like, and we know where it is leading.

Even worse, when I look at what is happening around the world, at all the hatred that prevails the world over, I know the ruin among them points to the ruin among us. When I see what is happening in Russia, Germany, or Poland, at the yelling and corruption that we see in every government, I see that I am the cause; I am the cause. I don’t look at them and say, “It’s not so bad; we have that, too.” No, I know that I am the reason it is happening to them, and I must be the reason that they will connect “as one man with one heart” through the example that our people should give them.

I have no grievances against anyone but myself. I know that I, and the whole of the Jewish people, can tilt the world for better or for worse through our internal unity or separation. This is what our sages have always told us; this is what our history throughout the centuries has shown us; and only our obstinacy prevents us from recognizing the obvious truth.

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My new article on Linkedin “What Is Purposeful Criticism?”

Criticism is a trait that exists in all of us, to one degree or another. It is a direct result of our egotistical nature. Egoism constantly pushes us to test and measure ourselves against others in order to gain the best and most comfortable position in relation to them. But this constant comparison sits in our head as a burden, highlights the flaws and promptly locates the shortcomings in every matter.

Compulsive criticism makes us lose patience and forbearance and leads us to reject anything that seems foreign or different to us. According to the perception of the ego, we place ourselves at the center of creation; therefore, we demand to be accepted unconditionally the way we are. Is that something negative? No, it is a natural feeling. But such acceptance does not work the other way around. We judge others and if we see they are in a better position or have better qualities in our eyes, we feel disappointed and even depressed because we constantly aim at being perceived as more successful and superior compared to the rest.

The endless comparisons to other people prevent us from attaining good and healthy relationships. It causes us to be in constant friction between each other and prevents us from reaching agreement and mutual understanding. And if everyone cares only for his or her own goodness and justice, then a beautiful bond with others can never be formed.

There are no tricks for tackling this judgmental approach that our egoism compels us to assume, no panacea works on it, no psychological exercises or philosophical arguments, nor can it be repressed and suppressed. Why is this so? Because human nature pushes us forward to achieve only what is in our own benefit and to look for faults solely outside us.

“One judges others according to his own flaws,” our sages wrote. The imperfections we see in others are actually our own imperfections. They are a projection of what we need to improve in ourselves, what we need to fix by changing our whole worldview from egoistic to altruistic, and learning to see others as an integral part of ourselves.

We need to begin engaging in a new kind of criticism in which we start scrutinizing ourselves, our lives, our nature, in order to balance our overweening egoism that evokes destructive criticism of others. Self-examination will help us to rise and observe our condition from an elevated perspective, and to awaken great forces that lie in the depths of nature to help us discover a new attitude toward our surrounding environment.

Everything that happens in our lives is handed down from above, so we must look toward the future instead of agonizing over the past. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us that we cannot truly change anything by ourselves, but can only attract the positive force of nature through our efforts toward good relations with others. This force in nature will be able to counterbalance the negativity that is in us and balance our natural egoism. If we attract the positive force, we will stop being judgmental of our neighbors and there will be no need to “eat ourselves up” with guilt about the past. As it is written, “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh” (Ecclesiastes 4:5)

Therefore, the revelation of our selfish being as a result of self-scrutiny should act as a springboard by which we leap to act in an opposite loving and caring way toward others, above the ego. If this self-accounting becomes part of our new nature, what is it that we will judge? We will measure the proximity or separation between us and others, and the strength of the efforts needed to bridge that gap and draw us closer to each other. This is the only kind of useful and purposeful criticism or evaluation we should make if we want to reach balance and improve our lives.

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My new article on Linkedin “On Spaghetti, Faith, and Love of Others”

Today, many people tend to think that religion is a thing of the past. Many believe that science is the cure for all our troubles, and that if we only listen to scientists and follow their instructions, all will be well in our world. Others believe in ethical living and root for social justice and equality. The problem is that all believers, religious and otherwise, do so with religious zeal. Many of them regard anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy and will go to great lengths to “defeat” the enemy. The end result of all that is not that religion has ended, but that it has taken on countless new forms, some of which are markedly “unholy.”

Years ago, while I was working on my PhD, I learned that there are approximately 3,800 different religions and belief systems worldwide. Today, there are probably many more than that, as human imagination knows no boundaries. In fact, some people even take the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster seriously!

It is not a problem that people believe in different things. On the contrary, kabbalists relish diversity, since the more diverse we are, the richer our society becomes, as long as we maintain its cohesion. But when we shun social cohesion, when we maintain that our belief is the only legitimate faith, we have a problem. The current belief in science, in Western philosophy, or in other social dogmas, is as religious as the belief in this or that deity.

In the 1940s, the religious belief of the Germans in the superiority of their race led to the most horrendous consequences the world has ever seen. Their belief was purportedly based on science, not on a deity, yet led to worse consequences than any religion has caused so far.

Shortly after the end of World War II, Baal HaSulam, a great kabbalist and thinker who wrote extensively about world affairs and foresaw many of the processes that we are living through today, wrote a collection of “notes” to himself. They were thoughts he had had about the world and its future. After his passing, they were collected under the title The Writings of the Last Generation. Baal HaSulam used that term, but he did not mean that his generation would be the last generation of humanity, but that humanity has reached the final stages of its development and that it is moving toward a new level of existence. His aspiration in jotting his “notes” was to formulate his thoughts on how humanity could spare itself the recurrence of the atrocities of World War II.

Baal HaSulam realized that people are inherently religious. Therefore, he saw no point in trying to abolish religion. Instead, he wanted to add another layer to existing beliefs, which would enable all of humanity to unite above their differences. He called that layer a “religion of bestowal.” With its help, he hoped to avoid what had happened with Germany. In a note titled “Nazism Is Not a German Patent,” he jotted: “If we remember that most people are not idealists, then there is no choice but religion, from which manners and justice naturally emanate.” However, he did not refer to religions as we know them, but to a “religion of bestowal.” Elsewhere, he wrote that since human nature is inherently egoistic, it will “necessarily induce the destruction of the world unless they accept the religion of bestowal.”

As stated earlier, Baal HaSulam did not oppose diversity. On the contrary, he relished it. Moreover, he warned against limiting diversity among people since interactions between views is the engine of growth and development. According to Baal HaSulam, while nations should embrace a “religion of bestowal,” each nation should maintain “its own religion and tradition, and one must not interfere in the other.”

Moreover, in his essay “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam speaks with reverence about preserving people’s basic tendencies and ideas. In his words, “Anyone who eradicates a tendency from an individual and uproots it from him causes the loss of that sublime and wondrous concept … for that tendency will never again emerge. … From the above-said,” he continues, “we learn what a terrible wrong those nations that force their reign on minorities inflict, depriving them of freedom without allowing them to lead their lives according to the tendencies they have inherited from their ancestors.” In conclusion, he adds, anyone “can understand the necessity to preserve the freedom of the individual … for we can see how all the nations that ever fell, throughout the generations, came to it only due to their oppression of minorities and individuals, which had therefore rebelled against them and ruined them. Hence, it is clear to all that peace cannot exist in the world unless we take into consideration the freedom of the individual.” But because we all inherently believe that only we are right, and everyone else is wrong, even if our deity is spaghetti, for this sublime goal to succeed, we should place the value of love of others above all, or as Baal HaSulam calls it, establish a “religion of bestowal,” as the overarching value.
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My new article on Linkedin “Will a City of Torah Save Mexico’s Jews?”

Ciudad de la Tora (City of Torah) is the name of a new small town being built outside the town Ixtapan de la Salle, some 70 miles south of Mexico City. The founders aim to address two problems: housing prices and antisemitism. The affordable housing compound will include all the required facilities for maintaining a Jewish Orthodox way of life, and the community will consist solely of observant Jews. Another reason for establishing the new town is the situation in the capital, where Orthodox Jews say their children are afraid to leave their homes for fear of becoming targets of antisemitic attacks.

In many ways, this idea reminds me of a Shtetl. Shtetls were small Jewish towns that existed all over Central and Eastern Europe until the Holocaust wiped them out. If we are to learn from history, Jewish towns are not a permanent solution to antisemitism.

In fact, even the Jewish state did not solve the problem of antisemitism. Since its establishment, Israel has attracted increasing backlash from the world. Theodor Herzl, the Zionist visionary, had the right idea when he envisioned a Jewish national and political entity that would be a safe haven for Jews. However, establishing a separate city, or even a country for Jews, is not enough to eliminate antisemitism. For this to happen, Jews must commit to carrying out their duty to the world, and they do have a duty.

As I’ve shown in countless essays and two books (see links below), the Jewish nation was not established for its own sake, but for the sake of humanity. This is why as soon as we established our nationhood, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, we were tasked with being “a light unto nations.” We were declared a nation only after we pledged to unite “as one man with one heart,” and the unity we achieved is the light we intended to shine to the nations. Following our initial commitment, it took us another forty years to solidify our unity, but once we achieved a critical level of it, we were given our own land, the promised “Land of Israel.”

For nearly two thousand years afterwards, our annals reflected our level of unity. Every time we divided, we were exiled from the Land of Israel, and every time we reestablished our unity, we were given back the land and thrived. But at some point, during the first century CE, we fell into such mutual hatred that we were exiled for two millennia.

Reestablishing the Jewish statehood took more than two millennia, centuries of murder and abuse that our people suffered during the exile, and finally the extermination of a third of our nation, nearly the entire European Jewry. Yet, our renewed sovereignty did not renew our unity. This is something we must achieve on our own. This is, in fact, the reason that the nations gave it to us following the Holocaust, besides the obvious reason of sympathy after the atrocities we suffered at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices.

Notwithstanding, since the nations gave us the land, they also expect us to do our duty, to be a role model of unity and exemplify the Jewish motto, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we do not carry out our mission, we will lose our sovereignty once again. It may happen through another exile, through an influx of Muslims who will change the demographics of the country, or through some yet unknown way. Either way, if we don’t do what we must, and become an example of unity above all our differences and hatred, humanity will hate us and torment us as it has been doing for the past two millennia.

We, Jews, the descendants of outcasts from all over the ancient Fertile Crescent who gathered around Abraham Our Father to hear about love of others, must do now what our forefathers did then: unite above our hatred and thus become “a light unto nations.” As then, so now, if we do this, we will thrive. If we don’t, we will break apart.

For more on this topic, refer to the books Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord
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My new article on Linkedin “Where Is Uncle Sam Going”

Last Sunday, Uncle Sam celebrated his 275th birthday, aka America’s 4th of July, or Independence Day. I received many questions about the “land of unlimited opportunities” and where it is headed considering the rapid social transformations and volatile political relations both internally and internationally. Many of the questions I received dealt with the stark discrepancy between the current state of American society and the Declaration of Independence. In a reality of violence, extensive drug abuse, and pervasive depression and despair, it feels almost uncanny to read the Declaration, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Indeed, through no fault of its own, America has lost the race in the pursuit of happiness. Things can always change for the better, but it takes resolve and determination, and most of all, recognition of the problem, which, in the case of America, is social disintegration.

When the founders of the commonwealth envisioned life in the newly formed independent country, people were far more “community oriented” than they are today. Life was simpler, and people’s aspirations generally revolved around securing provision, housing, and child rearing. With these goals in mind, it was only natural to aspire that every American would have these “unalienable Rights.”

Yet, Americans in 1776 and Americans today have very, very little in common. Not only Americans, but all of humanity has changed dramatically during those years, and not for the better. These changes, which have accelerated approximately since the start of the 21st century, have made people far more egoistic, narcissistic, uncommunicative, irreverent toward social values and authorities, and irresponsible as far as considering the consequences of their actions. As a result, “the pursuit of Happiness” has become a very personal goal, which often entails the pursuit of other people’s unhappiness. Especially in America, there are many examples of people’s aspirations to achieve happiness by demeaning and disparaging other people or groups on the basis of ethnicity, religion, culture, or any other trait that can be used to vilify and demonize other people, and justify meanness toward them.

Yet, if every group, sect, or faction in society cares only for itself, society will collapse and all the groups, sects, and factions suffer. As vying groups strive to assert themselves at the expense of others, they deny others the “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” that they demand for themselves. Moreover, in doing so, they guarantee that other groups will treat them likewise. Such a social meltdown denies the country its future. This, today, is the state of America at the onset of its 275th year.

I am not saying this to reprimand anyone in particular, and certainly not to patronize. I am calling out what I see so that others can see it too and improve their lives. I believe that all people should enjoy the basic rights that the Declaration of Independence articulates, and the first step to achieving them is to see where they are not implemented so that people can build together a more just, united, and happy society.

If my wishes for America were heard, I would wish for them to take a break from gun violence, substance abuse, and other forms of personal and mutual destruction, and reflect on what they need to do in order to make their society more fair, united, and happy. And not by revenge, since that would only arouse more hatred, but by looking onward to the future and reimagining an American Dream where people achieve their goals, live happily with ample provision, housing, health, education, and, most of all, a community they care for, and which cares for them.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Power of Curses and the Power of Love”

A student asked me about a new TV series in Israel that tells the story of a family in Jerusalem where the women in the family were cursed with marrying men who do not love them. Apparently, generation after generation, these women are miserable in their marriages. The student wanted to know if there is indeed such a thing as a curse, and if curses can really inflict such harm.

A curse reflects someone’s ill-will about another person. Human nature, we know from the Bible, is evil from youth. This is why our world looks more and more like a curse. Ill-will can also be directed toward specific individuals, and might inflict personal harm on them. Over the years, I’ve known several people, most of whom women, by the way, who could make a person ill by simply looking at that person. Thankfully, today fewer people have such powers. However, since our intentions toward others are generally negative, then even without intending, we are constantly spewing arrows at other people, which make all of us unwell and unhappy.

Curses aren’t incurable; we can protect ourselves from them. Since curses reflect ill-will, the protection against them is good-will. If we try to spread good will to everyone, indiscriminately, we will protect ourselves from negative thoughts.

This is true not only when it comes to curses. Since the world is in the mess it is in due to ill-will, the way to remedy the world is by spreading good-will. If we change our attitudes from seeking others’ harm to seeking others’ benefit, the whole world will benefit from our thoughts, and first and foremost we.

This is not as simplistic an idea as it may sound to some. Since human nature is inherently evil, we will need to muster the support of many people to create a social environment that endorses and rewards good-will, and condemns and reprimands ill-will. Right now, we are doing the opposite. Just look at who we idolize and think of the values they represent, and you’ll understand the kind of revolution that our society needs to undergo.

But we can do this. If we change our values, we will also change our idols. If we change our idols, people who become famous will be those who represent caring and concern for others. When we create such an environment among ourselves and in the media that surrounds us, we will change the world. Nothing more is needed, just a change of heart from bad to good.
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My new article on Linkedin “No Safe Haven for Diaspora Jews But Israel”

About the prospect of raising his Jewish family in Belgium: “I believed I could. Now I doubt I can,” wrote Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League Against Antisemitism, in an op-ed published in a local newspaper. This sentiment is increasingly common in Europe and the United States alike. Despite the rise in antisemitism in Belgium, the government there decided to remove military security from Jewish institutions. Now without state protection, the Jewish community is asking for help from Israel. This or any other security scheme would be useless until they realize where Jews can really find a safe haven and their role.

Should the State of Israel intervene in the security situations of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora? Absolutely not. Today it is Belgium, tomorrow it will be another country in Europe or elsewhere. The State of Israel must urge Jews living abroad to fend for themselves and should not become involved in trying to safeguard the Jews in other countries against antisemitism.

The Jews in Belgium are not so poor as to lack the means to maintain security around themselves, so why do they demand the State of Israel to do so? Why should Israeli money fund security services to guard them so that they can live comfortably in Belgium? I am definitely opposed to the Jews in Israel taking responsibility for the Jews of Belgium and the Jews of the Diaspora in general. We have no interest in keeping them there.

Even if the Jews decide to move from Belgium to another country where they feel safer, they will have to learn firsthand that the place for Jews is the Land of Israel. Beyond Jews realizing that they have a state and a homeland here in Israel, they must decide on their own to return to fulfill the exalted role of the Jewish nation—to create a model society of love that covers any hatred that might reveals itself within it, a society of mutual guarantee in accordance with the laws of the Supreme Power.

The phenomenon of antisemitism is revealed in the world as a natural response designed to remind the people of Israel why it exists in the world. Our only option and shield for defending ourselves against hatred is the implementation of our role as “light unto the nations.”

Therefore, the solidarity we feel with the Jews of Belgium should not be expressed by rushing to invest our money in safeguarding their institutions—a move that would be futile—but by explaining, both to ourselves and to them, the cause of the animosity against Jews, and what we must do to fix the problem for the world and ourselves.

If we do not start moving towards carrying out our role, we will find ourselves with no place to hide. As it is written, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees and the stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” (First extract, “The Victory of Muslims Over Jews,” Hadiths)

Our Jewish sources say that eventually all the Jews, including the Ten Tribes we lost along the way, will return to the Land of Israel to unite. Although there seems to be no place to absorb them all, there is plenty of room.

The Book of Daniel calls the Land of Israel the “land of the deer.” As the Talmud explains, “Just as the hide of the deer has the capacity to encompass its body, but shrinks when separated from its flesh, so too can the Land of Israel expand to encompass its rightful inhabitants but shrinks when we are exiled from it.” As in this allegory, in the same way that the deer is able to expand its skin, accordingly we can expand our hearts to be as one, a safety net for the Jewish people and for peace in the world.
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My new article on Linkedin “The New Race for Space”

Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and one of the world’s top contenders for the title “the richest man on Earth,” is racing against business magnate and investor Richard Branson, founder and owner of Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Their goal is to beat one another to outer space in vessels built by companies they own. The race between them has generated significant backlash, including a petition that states that if these two billionaires reach space, they should not be allowed to return.

Indeed, man’s ego knows no boundaries. It transcends all of nature’s forces. Man wants to devour everything: the planets, the stars, the galaxies, the entire universe, to have it all inside and leave nothing for others. In fact, everyone else should be inside of me, as well. Billionaires are people with a hyper developed desire for wealth, power, and status. They will go any length to beat anyone who challenges them, even if only by a few days, as is the case with the race discussed here. Such people have one thing in mind: to be on top.

Even so, I think that signing such petitions as the one being spread now, that we should not allow them to return from space, is not only impractical, but unwise. We may not like them because we envy their wealth, but they still provide work for millions of people. They drive our economies, promote technological innovations, and all of us benefit from their efforts to gain personal power. Therefore, however selfish they are, in the end, everyone benefits from their achievements.

We could argue that their achievements come at our expense, and at least partially, that would be true. However, currently, this is human nature. We are all built to work this way, and had we been in their shoes, we would have done the same. It is involuntary and therefore should not be held against them.

If we want to change them, we have to change everyone; we have to change human nature, and we can do that by changing human society. Currently, we only want to change them and not ourselves, but we don’t see that the same ill-will that makes them exploit others causes us to resent them. Our envy of them testifies not to their corruptness, but mainly to ours. If we want to eradicate their corruptness, we must eradicate corruptness in all of society, including ourselves. If we agree to change ourselves, we will be able to change others, and then all of society will be harmonious and equal. There will be no exploitation not because of some regulatory measures, but because people will not enjoy exploiting; they will enjoy contributing and sharing.

Therefore, as always, the correction begins with us. We, too, must understand that we are living in an interdependent system, where if I hurt one person, animal, or object, I am really hurting myself. Just as our body is a system where no organ wants to harm another organ, so, too, people should behave with one another. But because we don’t want to connect, we cannot see how connected we are. As a result, we harm one another and thereby ourselves. This is all the learning we need in order to lift this world from the manic depression it is in, to calm, peace, and harmony. But the work begins with us.
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My new article on Linkedin “Home Jobs – From Compulsory to Appealing”

Even though many offices have reopened and most high-tech companies have called in their employees, many people prefer, or even ask to keep working from home. Many of them are willing to cut down their wages or other benefits in return for the comfort of staying home, spending less time on the road, and alleviating some of the stress of a full-time job. In general, it seems as though people lost much of the drive they’d had to achieve. Instead, they seem content with getting by and leading a comfortable, easy going lifestyle.

It is interesting to see how the culture of excessive workaholism that the West had so struggled to cultivate for nearly a century, and which began toward the end of the Great Depression, can evaporate so quickly. We used to think of young people as ambitious and motivated, but it turns out that that mindset is gone, “cleared out” by the virus.

Today, people seem content with simply living. And indeed, why not? Until the beginning of consumerism, people weren’t so troubled with achievements; they wanted to support themselves and their families, and if they succeeded, they were happy. What was wrong with it? Are people with successful careers happier than others? I’m not at all certain that they are.

What does make people happy is inner development, when they realize their personal potential and feel that their lives have a meaning and a purpose. If we can secure our physical existence, then our happiness depends on realizing our inner potential. And especially today, realizing that potential is related to our social ties.

When people develop positive social connections, when they support each other and help each other grow, they feel happy, content, and safe. They are happy to contribute their skills and abilities to society, and the rest of the members of society happily do likewise. Together, they maximize their personal potential, lift society to new heights, enable others to benefit from their achievements, and make it easier on others to realize their own potential, too.

And what is most important, they achieve this without the strain of a demanding, competitive job that exhausts them to the point where they have no energy to socialize. The time when jobs and careers forced people to become lonely and sad is coming to an end. Now that we’ve been impelled to work less, travel less, and think more, we are ready to realize what a gift it is to care about others rather than be concerned only with ourselves.
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My new article on Linkedin “Human Relations in the Age of Lockdowns”

A response to one of my recent posts said that on the one hand, I say that Covid-19 has come in order to make us stay at home and disconnect from one another. On the other hand, I say that it came to teach us how to be close to nature. But since human nature is to connect with others, as we are social beings, there is an apparent contradiction here since you cannot connect if you are locked down at home.

A line in a piece of Jewish poetry called “Go My Beloved,” reads, “The end of the work is in the preliminary thought.” It means that when you do something, you must think of the final outcome that you want to achieve before you begin to work on achieving it. Otherwise, you are certain to go the wrong way.

The same goes for Covid and how humanity should deal with it. It is very true that humans are social beings. Moreover, the whole purpose of humanity is to connect in a way that benefits both individuals and human society. But to achieve this goal, we need to know how to connect in a way that yields these benefits. If we connect incorrectly, we are harming ourselves, human society, and our entire planet.

Currently, there is no question that we are connecting incorrectly. A quick scan of human relations around the world reveals a frightening picture of enmity, abuse, rampant killing and murders between countries and within countries, financial exploitation, a military arms race, ambitions to obtain nuclear weapons, race related social tensions, depression, oppression, aggression, and every imaginable form of malice. Human society is rife with inhumanity.

Until now, nature has let us “sort things out for ourselves,” so to speak. But over the past several decades, it has become clear that we are either unwilling or unable to change, and in our efforts to destroy one another, we will destroy our home planet.

So, what do parents do when their children don’t stop fighting and can’t work things out by themselves? They send them to their separate rooms. Clearly, the parents would like nothing more than to see their beloved children get along and become best friends. But if all their efforts to make peace between their children fail, they have to stop the fighting by separating the children altogether. Afterwards, when the fighting has stopped, the parents and the children can calmly examine their relations and start connecting more positively. Yet, even when they are permitted to connect, the children must always remember that they can be sent back to their rooms if they misbehave once more.

Nature is dealing with us much like those parents. It no longer settles for “punishing” us locally, through natural disasters or other local crises. It has sent us a global blow that has shut down humanity’s hostile operations toward others and toward nature. Just like those loving parents from the example, the idea is not to disconnect us from each other altogether. On the contrary, the idea is to allow us to learn how to connect to one another positively, one step at a time.

As soon as we begin to want to connect positively, nature will respond positively. It does not operate like a person, but more like a machine that responds to certain stimuli. Anything that operates similar to it arouses nature’s positive response, and anything that operates contrary to it arouses a negative response.

Since nature functions as a harmonious and balanced system, as I wrote in my previous post, if we build a balanced and harmonious human society, nature will not impose any restrictions or limitations on us. But if we insist on bullying each other, well, nature is a bigger bully than any of us. I hope for all of us that we will learn nature’s lessons sooner rather than after it demonstrates its strength.
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