My new article on Linkedin “Is National Identity a Thing of the Past?”

In our global village, national identities seem to be blurring. People can live almost anywhere they want, the culture is more or less the same culture everywhere, everyone admires the same mega popstars, the same multibillionaires dictate the global agenda, we feed on the same ideas and aspire for more or less the same things. In such a state, a national identity becomes almost irrelevant.

But when it comes to Israel, the picture is very different: No one wants us to lose our identity, not our neighbors, and not the entire world. Everyone is demanding Israel to be certain things and do certain things, while Israelis only want Israel to be a country among countries, an unassuming member of the family of nations. Yet, everyone is singling us out, usually for condemnation, while we have no idea what it is they want from us.

The problem is not with the world; it is with us. If we knew what the people of Israel are about, we would know why the world is always demanding toward us and what we need to do about it.

Everyone knows that the father of the Jewish nation was Abraham, whose lineage evolved into what we now recognize as Jews. However, although the Midrash wrote about it, Maimonides wrote about it, and countless other sages have mentioned it throughout the ages, we forget that Abraham formed the nation after he looked into reality, realized that the separation that has plagued humankind since its inception is contradictory to nature, and built his group according to the principles of mutual responsibility and kindness embodied in the words “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In this way, he formed a nation that operated in congruence with the rest of nature. Over the years, Abraham’s group had evolved into a nation, and this is how the Jews came to be.

The contradictory manner of connection among people continued to plague them and wreak havoc on humanity. Wars claimed millions of lives, and famine, abuse, and oppression were the norm. At the same time, the Jews, the descendants of Abraham’s group, developed a society based on mutual responsibility and love, and thrived despite countless attempts to destroy it. The world realized that the Jews had found the way to unity and wanted it, too. The Jews, too, felt that it was their onus to be “a light unto nations,” to set an example of unity for the rest of the world. As a result, whenever the Jews fell prey to division, the nations hated them, since they had no example to follow, and when Jews united, the world praised and admired them.

The onus on the Jews to exemplify unity is the reason that the nations do not let us forget who we are, blend among them, and vanish. This onus is also why we do want to blend and vanish, since we do not want to unite, and certainly not to be anyone’s model of unity.

But the world will not let us disappear. Our unique identity, which stems from our unique duty, has no expiration date. The more the world falls into enmity, the more it will blame us for it. It will not tell us that it is accusing us of not setting an example, but when we do it, we will see that we are welcome. As long as we do not set an example, nothing that we do will help us ease their anger. The more we turn away from each other and cater to the nations, attempting to appease them, the more they will hate us and despise us. The more we turn to each other and strive to unite above our hatred, the more they will praise us. This has been, is, and always will be the one rule dominating the fate of the Jewish people.
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My new article on Linkedin “A New Rabbi for the German Army – Not What the Jews Need”

Over the past week, there has been much ado over the appointment of the first rabbi in the Bundeswehr (the unified armed forces of Germany) since World War II. The appointed rabbi, Zsolt Balla, one of Germany’s most prominent rabbis, stated after his nomination: “It is our goal to make it normal again for Jewish citizens to serve in the German army.” The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, also added, “The Bundeswehr has nothing in common with the former Wehrmacht, and that is the only reason why it is possible today for us to introduce a federal military rabbi.” Currently, some 300 Jewish soldiers serve in the German military, but they are spread across the armed forces, making the need for a rabbi for the German military seem more like a political statement than a real need of the soldiers. And political statements are the last thing Jews need, in Germany or elsewhere.

Jews have already tried to blend in the German army during World War I. They fought as hard as Christian Germans to serve their fatherland, Germany, and did their best to show that they were loyal Germans. But when the Nazis came to power, it did not help them. Why do they think today will be any different? Just as no one foresaw that only fifteen years after the first war, the Jews would be blamed for all of Germany’s troubles and their participation in the war would be presented as an act of treason against the country for which they fought and died, now, too, no one will thank them when the tide turns, and it always turns.

Politics does not change reality, only actions do. In the case of the Jews, the only action they are required to take is to unite among themselves. This was the action they took that had made them into a nation, this has been the only action that has ever granted them the world’s respect and favor, and their departure from it has been the precursor of every woe they had ever experienced (read more about it in my latest publication The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, linked at the bottom of the post).

In conclusion, nothing good will come out of political statements like appointing a rabbi to 300 Jews dispersed throughout the German army, and who are probably not even very observant. The only possible outcome is an intensification of the already existing Jew-hatred in the German military. Therefore, in my eyes, this move is pointless and unwise.

To read the above mentioned book, click here.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Vaccine Wars Show We Haven’t Learned”

While nations that had access to Covid-19 vaccines rushed to inoculate their citizens, others watched helpless as the virus wreaked havoc in their countries. In the meantime, as I said would happen (check my posts on the topic dating all the way back to the beginning of the outburst), new strains have developed and countries that thought they had already seen the worst are reemploying, or considering reemploying lockdowns and other restrictions on gatherings.

Even while countries could provide vaccines to other countries, they did not. Worse yet, some governments could provide their people with vaccines but chose not to do so for political reasons. These vaccine wars show we haven’t learned a thing and, as a result, we will have to learn another lesson, and probably a more painful one.

As I have written countless times since the beginning of the pandemic, the virus will not let up until we change our relationships. Our ill-will toward each other is its energy source. This is what keeps it going, mutating as it travels from country to country and becoming increasingly contagious, so that vaccines that provided herd immunity before no longer do so.

But instead of learning, we are behaving like children who were sent to their rooms (lockdowns) as punishment, to think about what we did wrong. Yet, instead of drawing the required conclusions and admitting that we misbehaved toward each other, we are waiting for the removal of the punishment so we can go out again, play, and fight with one another as before. We will not be allowed to do that anymore. We will be forced to rethink our lives, our values, our relationships, and the purpose of our lives as a whole.

Perhaps the best example of the foolishness of our behavior is the way we are handling the vaccination efforts. First, instead of launching a global coordinated effort to develop a vaccine, numerous companies in numerous countries launched independent researches and competed against each other. Clearly, the vaccine could have been developed for a fraction of the cost and could therefore cost a fraction of what it does. This would make it available worldwide and financing a worldwide vaccination program would not be an issue.

Second, now that some countries have vaccines, they either keep it to themselves, or sell it at a huge profit. It turns out that while all of humanity is fighting the same enemy, it is fighting it with armies that are fighting against each other while fighting the common foe. This gives the virus time to generate new strains that defy existing weapons and renders humanity’s efforts to fight it ineffective. In short, we are not losing the war against the Covid virus because it is so lethal or infectious; we are losing it because we are so divided.

This division will cost us heavily with more loss of life, more economic crises, and more disruption to our lives. The sooner we learn that Covid is not my problem, your problem, or their problem, but our problem, the problem of all of us, the sooner we will find a way to end the pandemic. And once we learn how to cooperate against Covid, we will, hopefully, learn that this is how we should operate from here on concerning all our matters, since today, in the global village, every problem is everyone’s problem.
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My new article on Linkedin “Why Happiness Is Elusive”

Many psychologists believe that lasting happiness is a fantasy, that even when we’re happy, it’s only for a moment. For example, Mandy Kloppers, a cognitive behavioral therapist from the UK, writes the following about happiness: “We’re all taught to believe that happiness is this attainable thing.” However, “This misconception is the reason why happiness is elusive. Happiness isn’t a consistent state, it’s more a fleeting feeling that comes over you. …For a special moment you realise you feel really at peace and everything feels right in your world. Sustaining this state isn’t possible though.”

Moreover, Professor of Psychology Frank McAndrew writes in the magazine Psychology Today that since the 1960s, “thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing well-being and helping people lead more satisfying lives. So why aren’t we happier? Why have self-reported measures of happiness stayed stagnant for over 40 years? Perversely, such efforts to improve happiness could be a futile attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time.”

In truth, we are programmed to be dissatisfied not only most of the time, but all the time. Our sages stated it thousands of years ago when they wrote in the Midrash: “One does not leave the world with half one’s wishes in one’s hand, for one who has one hundred wants two hundred; one who has two hundred wants four hundred.”

However, the feeling that everything is right in our world, as Kloppers put it, is possible, and even on a permanent basis. But to achieve this, we need to know what to look for. In fact, the only reason that we seem to be “programmed to be dissatisfied” is in order to impel us to keep looking until we find the harmonious state that will keep us happy.

The thing is that one person cannot be at peace or feel that everything is “right in our world” while the rest of the world is not feeling so. We, all of humanity, and in fact, all of reality, are one system. Can we feel good when a certain organ within us is ill? Can a machine work well when one of its parts is broken? The fact that we think we can be happy, and even expect it to last, testifies to the level of our ignorance of our connectedness. If we realized how connected we all are, we wouldn’t even dream of being happy, or even content, until every person in the world and every being in existence also felt that way. This may be a hard reckoning, but realizing this is the first step toward achieving happiness.

When you realize the level of connectedness of all pieces of reality, you realize that the purpose of life does not relate to one person, but to everyone and every thing together. The purpose of life is to bring all parts of reality into harmony. Happiness, therefore, is not a goal in itself, but the result of achieving harmony among all elements of reality.

The moments of happiness we feel today are fleeting but precious. They remind us of the sensations we can experience in life, while at the same time show us that we are not yet there. These moments are valuable not because they make us feel good, but because they remind us of our ultimate goal: harmony among all the pieces of reality, when each part gives and receives simultaneously, completely satisfied and completely satisfying at the same time.

In that state, we lose our sense of self as it melts into everything. Once we are there, we realize that we are not only parts of reality, we make it what it is; we are its masters, its servants, its benefactors, and its beneficiaries all at the same time.
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My new article on Linkedin “Death Begins When You Retire from Work”

I am 74 years old, and thank God I work every day. I teach the wisdom of Kabbalah from three to six in the morning to my students who connect live to the lessons from time zones across the globe. Then I go out for a light walk and exercise, rest, and start the second part of the morning: meetings, interviews, TV shootings, and studies from the original Kabbalah sources.

Israel is known to be among the countries with high life expectancy; our average has already crossed the age of 80. Here, as in other countries, there is an ongoing debate about whether the retirement age for men and women should be raised. This is so not only because people run out of money or want to engage in different projects, but also because, as studies show when a person stops working, he or she becomes depressed, sinks into loneliness and begins to feel meaningless in life.

Whoever stops working and thinks that then the good life begins is wrong. Our schedule relaxes and troubles start from the moment we wake up. One wonders how to fill the time until noon and then what to do from afternoon to evening. And even then, we begin questioning why we are doing certain things automatically. What to do tomorrow? And the day after? This state is not one of prolonging life, it is death within life. Rest becomes a part of death.

Based on my own experience, I support working for at least half a day, a few hours in the morning and no more. People who retire often go through a process of deterioration and decline because we are built to function in the world until our last day, and this is felt in my body, in my own skin.

If a person has already retired, then one piece of advice from me is this: Get involved with people your age; this connection is always good. Try to stay healthy, helpful, playful, and encourage others. Don’t just sit on a bench with friends and talk; work together, clean the building where you live, wash the stairwell, cut the grass in the garden, grow vegetables and cultivate flowers. These kinds of activities might also be profitable and provide employment, but more importantly, they maintain the health of the body and the mind.

Suppose you prefer other activities than those just mentioned? Good. The main purpose is to engage in actions that contribute to the community, that are connected with taking care of the well-being of others. This advice for the golden years is a quick and rewarding way to feel filled with goodness and to pass on that feeling to others. This is the only prescription for elderly people that will fill them with the commitment to take care of themselves because they will desire more involvement and work. Being helpful to society is the way to feel young, vital, and strong.
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My new article on Linkedin “Navigating the Maze of Communication with Our Children”

What should be our approach when we communicate with our children, especially when they are young? What kind of relationships should we build with them in order to best prepare them for life? Apparently, there is a formula called “grownup-equal-younger,” which works very well in preparing our children for life, if we use it correctly.

As parents, our main goal is to “build” our child’s personality to be ready for life, to have confidence and the ability to carry out whatever tasks our child may choose to undertake, as well as to be able to treat failures constructively and positively. To achieve this, we need to learn to relate to our children from three different perspectives: as grownups, as equals, as younger. Each perspective has its role and the right time to use it. The trick is to know when to use which of them and how to use them correctly.

Let’s begin with the “grownup” perspective. Here we place ourselves above the child, as the dominant, parent figure. We set the rules and apply pressure when needed. With the “equal” perspective, we will discover that often, the child listens to us much more attentively when we speak as equals rather than with a top-down tone. Here is when we treat children as friends, playmates, and even as confidants. When we take the “younger” perspective, we allow the child to practice being the “mature adult,” to lead and direct us.

Combining the three helps children better understand the complexities of human relationships. It helps them develop the ability to adapt and adjust themselves to changing circumstances, to know how to relate to teachers, friends, and later in life, to partners and coworkers.

Now that we’ve outlined the three perspectives, let’s add some insights about each of them. When taking the “younger” perspective, we need to know how to do it without losing our parental authority. To do this, we need to explain to the child, with words and by example, that every person has strengths and weaknesses, that we cannot all know everything and be able to do everything. For example, even if you are an Olympic champion, you cannot be an Olympic champion in all the sports. When children learn that it’s OK not to excel in everything, it takes a big load off of their young shoulders and allows them to be happy where they are, pursue the things that truly interest them, and eventually excel in them. At the same time, they will not become insecure because they don’t know everything or understand everything.

Concerning the “equal” perspective, it is important that the child will feel that we are always working in his or her best interest. Children need to know that whatever happens, even if we’re mad at them or become demanding, it is because we are working in their interest, that our pressure helps them achieve what would be harder, if not impossible to achieve were it not for our pressure. It is a good idea to tell them explicitly that it pains us that we have to reproach them and pressure them, and explain why it is for their own good.

If the child does not accept our explanation, we should show how sorry we are that we have to be this way, that we are hurting together with the child, but we must do it nonetheless because it is the best thing for the child, and as parents, we must see that our children get the best rearing that will help them the most to become successful grownups. Sometimes, we can even admit that our demand is very difficult, that we are not sure they can handle it, but that if they do, they will benefit tremendously and it will open new doors for them. In that state, we should leave the child with space to build his or herself independently.

Regarding the “grownup” perspective, here the parent(s) make(s) the decisions. They have to explain that sometimes, we just have to accept certain things. This may not be easy on the child but it is a great example because when we grow up, we have to obey the law, follow the rules of the school or university we’re in, the workplace, bosses, etc. If children aren’t accustomed to obeying rules even if they sometimes don’t understand them or agree with them, it can be a problem for them to cope with the society they live in.

Here is a real-life example and how we can use the three perspectives to turn an everyday situation from an ordeal into an experience of growth. It often takes little children a long time to get dressed, wash up, and get ready for school in the morning. This can create a lot of stress and pressure and lead to unpleasant situations. The first thing in dealing with it is to go over all the stages of the morning routine with the child, not in real time, but in your free time, when you’re all relaxed. You imagine what you do every morning one step at a time and together with the child, you learn what each stage (bathroom, breakfast, getting dressed, etc.) entails. You allocate, in collaboration with the child, a realistic time limit for each action and the child will now “practice” keeping time instead of being passive and forced to get up. In this way, the whole process becomes a bit of a game.

After a day or two, when the child knows the routine by heart, you take the “younger” perspective and the child becomes the grownup. Now it’s the child’s turn to see that you’re on time, to make sure you aren’t holding him or her up.

In this way, every situation in life, especially the more challenging ones, can become a learning experience that lead to personal growth and to learning new skills that will raise our children happy, confident, and able to communicate successfully with the people around them.
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My new article on Linkedin “Can Hamas Not Hate Israel?”

In a recent video that was posted on my Facebook page in Hebrew, I said that if we connect with one another in Israel, Hamas will not only make peace with us, but will also come and help us. The video, as would be expected, got many comments. The interesting part about them was that it got comments from both Jews and Arabs. The comments from the Jews were mainly that it was unrealistic, that we have always been hated and we’ll always be hated. The comments from the Arabs, however, were mainly praises for the truthful words I said, and encouragement to continue speaking about it.

While we weren’t always hated, as some of the comments claimed, we have indeed been hated for the past two millennia, since the ruin of the Second Temple. But then, the Temple was ruined, and the Romans exiled us, precisely because of our hatred for each other. Read every Jewish text on the subject and it will tell you that the only reason that this catastrophe came upon us was our own hatred for each other.

Since the ruin of the Temple, we have not healed the hatred that splintered us, and history shows that whenever Jews became more belligerent toward each other, antisemitism intensified. While it is true that since the ruin of the Temple, there has not been a time without antisemitism, it is just as true that since that time, there has not been a day when we did not hate each other.

Prior to the ruin of the Temple, we did have brief periods of unity, and those were our most glorious days. When we united under Joseph in Egypt, we were given the land of Goshen, Egypt’s most fertile stretch of land. When Joseph died, we broke apart and the Egyptians began to hate us. When we reunited under Moses, we were liberated from Egypt and received our code of law, the Torah, of which the most fundamental tenet is “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

In Israel, we began to part once more and lost the land to the Babylonians. In the exile in Babylon, we united once again because of Haman’s intention to annihilate the Jews. A short while later, we received the Cyrus declaration, which sent us back to the land of Israel with the king’s blessings, the treasures of the First Temple, provisions for the journey, and the king’s support in building the Second Temple. While we were united in Judea, the nations came to learn from us the wisdom of unity: The Torah was translated into Greek, and people from all the nations came every pilgrimage to Jerusalem to watch the miracle of Jewish unity.

Then we lost our unity once more when many in the nation adopted Hellenism. A civil war broke out. When the united Hasmoneans won the war, the mighty Seleucid Empire reinstated our freedom. But that unity was very fragile and short-lived. The next time we fell into internal hatred, we did not recover from it. As a result, the Romans conquered the land and finally drove us out. Since then, we have not recovered from the internal hatred, and since then, there has not been a time without antisemitism.

To understand why our hatred for each other makes the world hate us, we must remember that our ancestors came from precisely those nations that hate us now, meaning from the rest of the world. Our ancestors came from all the nations and united into a nation only when those complete strangers heard Abraham’s message of unity and implemented it with one another, with those people around them, who believed in the novel idea of unity of all nations.

Abraham taught his ideas to his successors, who continued to develop it until, under our greatest teacher, Moses, we vowed to reach the ultimate level of unity and be “as one man with one heart.” The code of law that we received at that time, the Torah, was to help us realize our vow to become a virtuous people, a light unto nations. In this way, people who were originally hateful of each other became bonded at the hearts. Through our own society, we demonstrated that peace among the nations was achievable; we presented an alternative to the enmity that ruled the world until then. This is why the nations loved us while we loved each other.

These days, when the world is quickly sinking into intensifying hatred, humanity desperately needs a solution that will save it from a third world war. Instinctively, the nations look to the people who presented an alternative before, to present the alternative once more. But what do they see? They see the same hatred that has plagued our people for the past two millennia. This leaves the world without hope for a peaceful solution to its problems, since the agents of the solution are not carrying out their duty. The world wishes that we did, but we are not, so how can it not hate us?

The State of Israel is an opportunity for the Jewish people to do its task: to unite and be a light unto nations. This is why if we unite, everyone will love us, as they did before. If we hate one another, as we do today, everyone will continue to hate us and will seek to get rid of us.

For more on this topic, refer to the books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Task Facing Humanity”

There are countless tasks facing humanity: We have to offset our negative influence on the climate, make sure everyone has clean drinking water, minimal healthcare, and staple foods. We also have to tend to the millions, if not billions of oppressed people around the world, to the growing inequality between the haves and the have nots, to the depression of so many people who seem to have everything but can’t find satisfaction in life, and so on and so forth. How can we deal with all those problems? The short answer is “We can’t!” The (slightly) longer answer is “We can’t because we’re dealing with the problems separately instead of looking for their common root. If we dealt with this, we would solve them all, and quickly.”

So far, I have not seen anyone seriously looking for the root cause behind everything that’s going on. Can it be that all our problems, social, emotional, environmental, and political, have nothing in common? That is, the only thing that is obviously common to them is man, but what is it about man that’s causing these problems? Are different things about us causing the different problems, or are they stemming from one root flaw?

From everything I’ve learned in science and in Kabbalah, everything is connected. Cybernetics, the field of science that I studied, teaches how to deal with systems. It relates to everything as a system whose parts are interrelated and interdependent. The wisdom of Kabbalah says exactly the same. The natural conclusion should therefore be that the problem is with the system we are living in, the system that connects us all.

In other words, if we fix the connections among the parts in the system, the system will function well, achieve balance, or homeostasis, to use a more scientific language, and our lives will run smoothly. The root cause of our problems, therefore, is not with each part individually, but with the connections among them.

Currently, these connections are negative. This means that the parts are striving to disconnect from the system or take over the system. If you take our brain as an example, it would be as if neuron in our brain tried to disconnect from all the others or, alternatively, to dominate them. Would such a brain be functional?

Humanity is like the brain of the world we live in. Yet, we are as dysfunctional as the brain in the example I just gave; this is why our planet and our lives are looking so dismal.

If we want to change the world we live in, to change our society, and to change our own future from the miserable one that’s currently in store for us, to the glorious future we can have, we have to mend our connections. And since it is our connections that we need to fix, we can only do this together, through a mutual decision to change. The greater the number of people who understand the gravity of the problem of our negative connections, the more we will all want to change it. And the more we want to change our connections, the easier it will be to achieve.

Therefore, there are two stages in the healing process: 1. Awareness, 2. Healing. Currently, not enough people are aware of the singular cause of our multiple problems. This is why our main task at the moment is to spread the word that by transforming our connections from negative to positive, we will change the world and change our lives. Once enough people realize this, stage 2 will begin, and it will be much easier and quicker than stage 1.
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My new article on Linkedin “A Granddad’s Heart”

When I first became a granddad and saw my grandson for the first time, my heart filled with love. I held him in my arms; I wanted to play with him, to do something for him to make him feel good. I had never experienced such an emotion before that time.

Love is the reason we are here in this world; it is the reason why the world was created. Yet, unlike natural love, such as the instinctive love of a grandfather to a grandchild, among strangers, there is natural resistance, alienation, and enmity, rather than love.

However, life is formed precisely by overcoming these emotions. Every living being evolves by overcoming resistance and hardships. These “obstacles” create the need for growth and development. Had it not been for hardships and resistance, there would be no evolution and humans would never have come to be.

Feelings of separation from others, alienation, and enmity are therefore not negative emotions; they are levers for growth. We see them as negative when we don’t want to rise above them and grow. If, instead of rejecting them and fearing them, we would see them as opportunities to grow and develop ourselves, we would welcome them and benefit from them tremendously. Moreover, by rising above them, we would create a greater and tighter bond than the one we had before the appearance of those “hindrances.”

For example, think of the complexity of a unicellular creature compared to the complexity of the human body. They are incomparable. The reason for the creation of such a complex system as the human body is precisely the obstacles that all the levels of complexity encountered before they came to make a human organism. In a sense, therefore, we “owe” our lives, our existence, to the hatred and separation that appeared on the levels preceding ours.

This should teach us that we cannot eschew our duty to face the hatred that is being revealed among us today. Hatred appears for no other reason other than to promote evolution and greater union. If we avoid facing our resistance and uniting above the new and tougher level of hatred, we will hamper the evolution of our own species and pay heavily for it.

Our attitude toward the social crises plaguing our planet should therefore not be as natural as among family, but rather conscious and intentional. We should acknowledge that we do not feel like family, use family relations as an example to strive for, and try, together, to establish such relationships among us.

The key word here is “together.” Overcoming mutual alienation must be a mutual effort in which all parts of the population participate. Otherwise, one part will exploit the other and the whole feat will tumble like a deck of cards. We must install the awareness of how paramount it is that we form union above our separation until we truly feel as one family. Today, our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, depend on it.

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My new article on Linkedin “No Desire for Children – China as an Example”

Recently, China lifted the cap on births from 2 to 3 in what it now defines as a “three-child policy.” According to a story by David Stanway and Tony Munroe published on Reuters, the reason for the policy shift is that “recent data showed a dramatic decline in births.” Although China canceled its one-child policy back in 2016 and raised the cap to two children, it “failed to result in a sustained surge in births,” state the writers. Now, Beijing has not only raised the cap once more, but added various incentives for married couples to have more children.

I don’t think the birthrate is a matter of policy. The Chinese, like most people all over the world, want fewer and fewer children. Humanity is growing increasingly selfish and people find no pleasure in raising children that they know will ignore them as soon as they can sustain themselves. Zhang Xinyu, a 30-year-old mother of one from Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, clearly articulated her characteristic attitude: “Thinking of the big picture, realistically, I don’t want to have a second child. And a third is even more impossible.”

In light of our growing self-absorption, we are going to see a decline in the world population. Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. Technology will make up for any shortage in working hands, and there will be fewer mouths to feed and fewer people populating the already overpopulated planet. A hundred years ago, humanity was about 2 billion people; now it is close to 8 billion. I see no harm in returning to more sustainable numbers.

However, the more important question is not how many people there are in the world, but what they do here. If people are as hateful of each other as they are today, the fewer of us the better for everyone. But if there is love and unity among people and nations, we can sustain as many people as we want, and we won’t feel any crowdedness or shortage. Therefore, what is important is that we begin to invest not in birthrates but in shifting the attitudes of those who are already here from animosity to amity.

Everything that is happening now—the tensions and pandemics, the crises and upheavals—should lead us to one conclusion: We must deal with the root cause of our problem—our relationships. Nature’s laws dictate that we will operate in an integral and integrated manner, as does nature itself. Our relentless efforts to destroy one another economically, socially, and even physically, put us at odds with nature. We are opposite from the environment we live in, so how can we expect to feel good? Would you expect a fish out of water to feel good? Would you expect it to survive? This is what we are doing to ourselves: We’re living in an interconnected and interdependent environment, yet we are behaving as though we are independent and self-sustaining beings. In such a state, we cannot feel good here, and in the long run, we won’t be able to survive.

We have come to a point, not only in China but the world over, that we must build our connections as an interdependent and interconnected network, just like the world around us. We are too big and too influential for nature to tolerate us at our current level of disruption of its structure. Since we are inside of nature, and since nature created us and sustains us, if we insist on fighting it, it will eradicate us just as it eradicates any being that is incongruent with its laws. Therefore, instead of worrying about the quantity of people, we should worry about their quality, the level of our connectedness and mutual concern.

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