My new article on Linkedin “What It Takes to Make a Passover for All of Humanity”

This coming weekend, Passover begins. This holiday, which seems to be such a Jewish occasion, actually holds within it a message and a prediction for all of humanity. It is no coincidence that the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the exodus from Egypt has inspired several epic films; the universal message of liberation from enslavement touches a soft spot in every person: the aspiration for freedom.

To make the most of the story, we need to understand what or who enslaves us, and how we can be freed. The name of the holiday, “Passover,” is no coincidence. It represents passing over from enslavement to freedom. And Pharaoh, the great oppressor, is none other than our ego.

Moses, whose name comes from the Hebrew word “moshech” [pulling], is the force that pulls us out of Pharaoh’s grip and delivers us, making us masters of our own fates. The story of Egypt is truly universal because the liberation from the ego pertains to each and every person. At some point, each of us will feel that the ego has become a ruthless master and will want to run away from it. This is when one exits Egypt by following Moses, and becomes a free person—liberated from one’s own tormenting Pharaoh—the ego.

These days, the days of Covid-19, are tough times for everyone. Although Covid has not made us feel enslaved, it certainly made us feel restrained. The mounting pressure on people’s psyche, the economic toll of lockdowns, the growing pain and grief are spoiling the party that we’d had until the arrival of the virus. Until its arrival, we were in love with Pharaoh. He, namely our ego, has given us civilization, progress, prosperity, and everything that we have achieved.

But Pharaoh does not remain the same. Like everything else in life, he changes over time. Our ego is growing and evolving, and in the process it becomes increasingly demanding. What was great yesterday becomes completely insufficient today. Gradually, we begin to feel increasingly dissatisfied. Shouldn’t it have been the opposite, that the more we have, the happier we are? Not if we consider who demands that we satisfy his wishes: our ego.

Our ego is insatiable; the more you feed it, the hungrier it grows. And the hungrier it grows, the more demanding it becomes. In the end, you find yourself locked in pursuit of satisfactions that seem rewarding only until you have them. Once you have what you want, your boss whispers “Bring me more‼! Bring me better‼!” Then, when you say “Enough!” you realize that you cannot get away; you are enslaved to your ego and the more you resist, the more it afflicts you. This is when you realize that Pharaoh was exploiting you, that he was good to you only as long as you served him. But the minute you want to quit, you uncover his true face. This is when the enslavement in Egypt begins.

We are not there yet, but we are nearing it. We are already feeling bad, but we have yet to realize that Pharaoh, our ego, is the cause of our bad feeling, and not a virus or any other disaster. When we grasp this, it will mark the beginning of our exodus from Egypt, from enslavement to the ego.

For now, it is enough to examine everything that we don’t like about our lives and ask ourselves who is really suffering from them. If we start creating some space between ourselves and our egos, we might be able to see who is demanding the work, who is reaping the reward, and who is paying the price.
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My new article on Linkedin “Home Sweet (Virtual) Home”

“A new form of digital currency is apparently moving into the world of real estate,” reported Fox Business on March 21. “The result,” continued the story, “is that a homebuyer just bought a piece of property that they can never actually live in.” The virtual house, created with a new form of block-chain technology called Non-Fungible Token (NFT), cost more than 500,000 very real US dollars.

Even more uncanny is the Reuters story that “A digital artwork by humanoid robot Sophia was sold at auction … for $688,888 in … the latest sign of a frenzy in the NFT art world.” Indeed, virtual reality is taking over.

But if you think about it, everything is virtual. When you look at how people lived fifty or sixty years ago, was their entertainment not largely virtual? They would come home from work and relax on the couch with a book or watch TV. The world they drifted to was virtual, invented by the author or the scriptwriter.

If they went to the theater, the movie presented a virtual world that existed only as long as the movie played on, and even then it was real only to the extent that the people in the theater “bought” the story. Yet, the money people paid to go to the movies or buy a book was real money. So in fact, nothing has changed but the means; the illusion is the same.

While our pastime has always relied on illusion, it yielded something very real: feelings. We may never know whether what we perceive is truly as we perceive it or perhaps it is some sort of an illusion, but we can always tell what we feel, and this is really all we care about (even if we don’t admit it). Feelings govern us; they decide what we do, and we spend our lives looking for ways to feel good. If we feel good, life is good; if we feel bad, so is life.

When something makes us feel good, we don’t care if it is physical or virtual; as long as we enjoy it, we want it. If I have half a million dollars to spend on feeling good, and a virtual home will give me that good feeling, there is no reason whatsoever not to spend it.

Therefore, we shouldn’t patronize people who spend a fortune on virtual art, or spend hours in virtual games. After all, we, too, are governed by our feelings. This is the real lesson we should learn from people’s willingness to purchase a house where they will never set foot.

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My new article on Linkedin “Malignant Relationships”

Cancer has plagued humanity for millennia. Some reports of cancer date back to the seventh century BC, and ancient scrolls in Egypt talk about cancer of the chest. Over the eons, countless cures have been concocted, yet cancer is only spreading. Some scientists believe that we should tackle cancer on a case by case basis since each case and each person is unique. In my view, there is only one cause to all forms of cancer; eliminate the cause and you have eliminated cancer.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors.

Cancer is a disruption in the intercellular relationships, where some cells begin to behave selfishly, destroy their environment, and eventually the entire organism, causing its demise. But the cells in our body aren’t inherently selfish; they are programmed to cooperate and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body if need be. They begin to behave contrary to their innate program when something mars their structure, as though a malware has been installed in them, making them abusive toward their neighbors. That malware is we, humans, whose bodies the cancer afflicts. When we turn against each other, we spread malice through all other levels of nature including our own cells. As a result, they, too, turn against each other until they die, and we die along with them. In other words, if our spirit is stricken with abusiveness, so it will be with our cells.

When we are abusive toward each other, it is not necessarily the bullies who suffer. In fact, it is usually not the bullies who suffer, though in the end, everyone suffers. No one wins from abusive conduct even if the punishment to the offenders isn’t always evident. The same goes for cancer: It is not always the selfish cells that become sick; often, another organ is struck first. However, in the end, everyone suffers equally as the entire body perishes.

If justice were poetic, cancer would afflict only the selfish. But things don’t work this way. Just as all cells are connected and a weakness somewhere may set off a sickness elsewhere, a selfish person may set off sickness in another person. That other person may not be selfish whatsoever, but because we are all connected, the entire system suffers and somewhere along the human chain, a link will break. In the end, the entire chain suffers, as with the body, but if we wait for the end, there will be no one to see that justice was done.

Therefore, the solution to cancer is not a case by case remedy, but the same remedy for all: the correction of our relations to those that naturally exist among the cells in our body. Instead of sickening our own cells through our ill-will toward each other, we should learn from them how to function like a healthy body. When we fend for each other instead of offend one another, we will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

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My new article on Linkedin “And the Children of Israel Sighed from the Elections”

Since the first lockdown, I hardly ever go outside. In the rare occasions that I do venture outside, I see the mounting hatred in people’s eyes growing from one election campaign to the next. In today’s election system, the half whose view is not represented in the government remains bitter and vindictive. And because people cannot accept the situation, their hatred becomes more spiteful and malicious with each disappointment.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

In a paper titled The Nation, the great 20th century kabbalist Baal HaSulam wrote in this regard, “The difficulty of the matter is that men cannot relinquish their ideals at all, since one can make concessions when it comes to one’s material life, to the extent that it is necessary for one’s physical existence, but it is not so with ideals. By nature, idealists will give all that they have for the triumph of their idea. And if they must relinquish their ideals even a little, it is not an honest concession. Rather, they stay alert and wait for a time when they can reclaim what [they believe] is theirs. Therefore, such compromises cannot be trusted.”

Indeed, reality proves that we keep failing on our way to the ballot booths. My real hope is that our failures remain merely ideological and not deteriorate into worse scenarios. If they remain this way, it will help us arrive more quickly at the realization that we are on a dead-end road. Since we cannot compromise and keep trying to win, we are certain to soon give up on the current election system.

The election system reflects a worldview, a perception of reality. It is an interpretation of our way of life and our thinking. The current system reflects a destructive approach that builds one side on the ruin of the other. For this reason, emerging from the current deadlock can happen only if we mutually give up on our aspiration for absolute control. Again, we need not concede our ideals, our “truth,” but only the desire to be the sole ruler.

Relinquishing our desire for autocracy will allow us to create a space between us where connection governs, to make room for collaboration and partnership. This is the ideal that forged the Jewish people—the ideal of love of others. In our remote past, we practiced this ideology, and that was our heyday in history. Even today, it is the only solution that can lift us from the gutter of hatred where we wallow.

To achieve this, we must engage in open discourse in order to find how we can come closer to each other despite, and above our differences. We needn’t understand each other’s views, and certainly not accept them. Nature has made us opposite, so there is nothing we can do to sway each other’s views.

Nevertheless, if we give connection preference over winning, we will find that our differing views create a stronger bond among the rivals than if we agreed, precisely because of the effort we made to establish it. Just as couples strengthen the bond between them as they overcome crises in their relationships, a nation solidifies itself as its members do not succumb to hatred and divorce from one another, but rise above it and forge bonds that are stronger than the hate. King Solomon coined the essence of this approach with his words, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12).

Today, we need this approach no less than we did in our nation’s infancy. It will keep us unique, maintain our individuality, and at the same time forge a bond among us that will be a role model that the entire world will seek to emulate.
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My new article on Linkedin “Serious about Growing? Learn to Laugh about Yourself”

If we could look at ourselves from aside and see our little faults, we wouldn’t only make life easier for ourselves, we would also learn a lot about human nature, the nature of Creation, and how we can better ourselves. Good humor is when you laugh about yourself; bad humor is when you laugh about others. The former elevates you; the latter degrades others.

Potentially, we all have a sense of humor. Regrettably, we are so buried under problems, competitions, and social calculations that we cannot allow ourselves to simply laugh about things. So, instead of laughing, we suppress our sense of humor.

Developing a sense of humor is no joking matter. Humor is the ability to look at my own faults from above, sort of rise above myself and laugh at what nature has done with me, at how it’s made me. It is the most constructive and positive form of self-criticism. Humor helps us see who we truly are, and once we recognize our negative attributes we can begin to correct them. Because humor makes it much easier to see our faults, it is a vital tool in our growth toward becoming better people.

Today, however, as with most other things about human nature, we have completely warped the meaning and purpose of humor. Instead of laughing at ourselves as a means to grow, we laugh at others in order to belittle them. We use humor precisely the opposite of how we should, and the result is that today’s humor increases people’s sadness rather than diminish it.

Mockery is forbidden; it is not humor but malice. It is fine if we laugh about human nature in general since it allows us to bring up points that we can improve so as to tighten our connections with others, but laughing at other people’s weaknesses increases alienation and contributes nothing to correcting human nature. People who do that should not get public endorsement of any kind. If we want to grow and improve ourselves and our lives, we should learn to laugh about ourselves.

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My new article on Linkedin “When It Comes to Vaccines – There Is No Union in the European Union”

It’s hard to describe the European Union Covid-19 vaccines fiasco better than James McAuley did it in his most recent column on The Washington Post: “Imagine being in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in a century,” he writes, “and finally, thanks to the ingenuity of science, you get the tools to end that crisis — but, out of nowhere, you decide you won’t use them. Welcome to the European Union, where political leaders dwell in mansions of bureaucratic incompetence and political arrogance as a third wave of covid-19 cases threatens the continent and new variants emerge.” Later in the column, McAuley asks what it will take “before the E.U. vaccinates its citizens as if their lives were on the line?”

Covid-19 is just the first and mildest blow; many more are en route. The first blow has claimed millions of lives. The looming blows will claim many more. As long as we make egoism our king, life will punish us, and the ego will not let us recover. Blow after blow, humanity will collapse under the pain until we all realize that our real enemy is not nature, which inflicts such blows as Covid, but our own egos, which do not let us overcome them easily and quickly.

McAuley offers many reasons that could result in such a fiasco, but I think the truth is plain and simple: It is a struggle led by nothing more than big egos that care for nothing but their own prestige. When has there been union in the European Union? Never! From its very beginning, there have been nothing but power struggles, exploitation, and abandonment of member states in need. (Remember Greece in the 2008 Financial Crisis or Italy in the first wave of the pandemic?) When these come alongside lofty statements that “Building a fair and well-functioning society is a political priority for the European Union,” to quote the EU Science Hub, or a page that the EU titled “European solidarity in action,” to document (the few) examples of solidarity in Europe in facing the Covid-19 crisis, one can’t help but feel deep mistrust in the sincerity of the leaders of the EU.

I’ve said it so many times before: An organization that is founded on egoism cannot last, and the longer it does last, the more the people under its influence suffer until they break it up. All that the EU bureaucrats manage to do, and in this they excel, is make the rich and powerful people on top, even richer and more powerful.

“They shall sow the wind, and they shall harvest a storm,” said Prophet Hosea (8:7). Indeed, the spirit of alienation and exploitation that has pervaded the EU from its onset killed every chance of solidarity and is now costing the lives of thousands of Europeans every day while all of the developed countries are already emerging from the pandemic. When you do not nurture solidarity, you cannot expect to have it at a time of need.

Covid-19 is just the first and mildest blow; many more are en route. The first blow has claimed millions of lives. The looming blows will claim many more. As long as we make egoism our king, life will punish us, and the ego will not let us recover. Blow after blow, humanity will collapse under the pain until we all realize that our real enemy is not nature, which inflicts such blows as Covid, but our own egos, which do not let us overcome them easily and quickly.

In fact, if for each blow we would bolster our unity, we would achieve such union in human society that we would secure a good life for every person on the planet. We are already capable of it, but we have no desire for it since no one gets the credit, and without a trophy for the ego, there is no motivation to exert for it. At the same time, there is strong motivation to prevent anyone else from helping humanity so that no one else will get the credit.

Until we learn to forge true solidarity, we will not have a good life on this planet. Be it a fourth wave of Covid, extreme weather of unprecedented intensity, or some other ploy that nature might pull, we will be forced into greater and greater discomfort and pain until we surrender and dethrone our egos.

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My new article on Linkedin “World Happiness Report – Perceived Happiness Is Not Happiness”

According to the latest World Happiness Report (WHR), the Finnish are the happiest people in the world, and the people of Afghanistan are the most unhappy. Also, the top four countries on the list are from Northern Europe, with the Netherlands at number five. This is interesting because if these countries have the best life on the planet, why are they not flooded with immigrants? Is it because people from poor countries migrate to richer countries as a first step toward the countries that can offer the happiest life? Probably not, since the happiest countries are not that high up on the popularity scale. Apparently, what makes one person happy isn’t what makes another person happy. There is a big difference between what we perceive as happiness and what happiness really is.

There is no miracle here; it’s a psychological shift. Instead of focusing on our own desires, we need to focus on the desires of others, and they on ours. This is all it takes to change the world and make all of us, every person in the world, truly eternally happy. Then, we will not need reports to tell us whether or not we are happy; we would know for ourselves.

The WHR surveyed several factors in order to determine which nation is the happiest. Among them are GDP (a country’s economic output), income inequality, the freedom to make life choices, trust and the ability to count on others, confidence in public institutions, healthy life expectancy, well-being, and generosity. It seems plausible that such factors would play a big part in determining people’s happiness, but in truth, they overlook a key factor without which the whole project is meaningless: people’s expectations, namely what they perceive as happiness, as opposed to what the composers of the survey perceive it.

For example, if people aren’t bothered by income inequality, it will not make them happy if they have more than others, or unhappy if they have less. The same goes for trust: If a person settles for being able to trust his or her family members, and doesn’t expect anything more, then even if a country is ranked among the most corrupt in the world, it will not make the country’s people any more miserable. Apparently, the survey was conceived by Western minds and ranks countries’ happiness by what Western minds consider important for happiness. But Western minds aren’t the objective truth.

The truth is that there is no objective truth; you cannot compare people’s happiness—not between countries or between eras. That said, individually, people can determine if they are happy or not. We can measure our happiness, grade it, compare it to previous stages in our lives, and plan how to make ourselves happier because inside we know what makes us happy: Simply stated, we are happy when we get what we want. When our desires are satisfied, we feel happy. Or, perhaps I should rephrase it: We feel content.

Regrettably, we are never content, nor can we be. Our sages already said in the Midrash (Kohelet Rabbah): “One does not leave the world with half of one’s wishes in one’s hand, for one who has one hundred wants two hundred; one who has two hundred wants four hundred.” In other words, human nature itself denies our contentment. If we were content with what we had, we would not have had civilization because we would feel no urge to improve our lives. As a result, we wouldn’t have technology, and we wouldn’t have noble social ideals about what makes people happy. So by the WHR’s own standards, we wouldn’t be happy. But then, if we didn’t want those things that are said to make us happy in the first place, why would not having them make us unhappy?

The apparent catch is resolved if we understand not what makes us content, but what makes us truly happy. If you’ve ever observed a mother to a newborn baby, you know what it is: the pleasure of pleasing others! Even when the baby is sound asleep, tucked in her blanket and her belly full, her mother still watches her, needlessly fixes her blanket and smiles. No person is happier than a mother satisfying her baby’s needs.

If we strove to please the desires of others the way mothers strive to please their babies, and others strove to do the same for us, everyone would be happy. We would have a never ending pool of desires to please, everyone’s personal needs would always be met to the fullest, and everyone would always be happily pleasing others. There is truly no end to the happiness that such a state of mind can induce.

There is no miracle here; it’s a psychological shift. Instead of focusing on our own desires, we need to focus on the desires of others, and they on ours. This is all it takes to change the world and make all of us, every person in the world, truly eternally happy. Then, we will not need reports to tell us whether or not we are happy; we would know for ourselves.
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My new article on Linkedin “Envy – How to Rein In the Monster”

As Israel is opening up malls and commerce is returning to full speed, the ailments of Western society are reappearing as though we’ve never had Covid. High-end stores are so crammed that people are standing in long lines outside of them hoping to spend a lot of money on posh accessories. You’d think that the coronavirus would have cured us of these ills, but it has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it seems as though people are shopping with vengeance.

People value what they see that others value. They buy things that others appreciate because it makes other people jealous. If we promote other values, people will naturally shift to showing off that they excel in those other values, for the exact same purpose of arousing other people’s envy. If we showed admiration to people who contribute to unity, solidarity, and cohesion in society, many people would want to be that way.

But why are they shopping in the first place? Do they really need new accessories? Probably not. In most cases, they are shopping to show that they shopped; that is the only reason they need. People are shopping, especially when it comes to elite fashion, in order to show that they have lots of money and make other people jealous. Were it not for jealousy, they wouldn’t bother spending hours in crammed lines and crowded shops for the questionable fun of blowing their salaries of high-end status symbols they don’t need, and possibly don’t even like.

Nevertheless, I’m happy that they’re so eager to buy. The more intensely they spend, the quicker they’ll understand that there is no real satisfaction in buying stuff that they don’t need, and the impression they make on others doesn’t make them really happy, unless you consider glee at having what others don’t a real form of happiness.

There is something more that we can do to accelerate the transition to more lasting happiness: People value what they see that others value. They buy things that others appreciate because it makes other people jealous. If we promote other values, people will naturally shift to showing off that they excel in those other values, for the exact same purpose of arousing other people’s envy. If we showed admiration to people who contribute to unity, solidarity, and cohesion in society, many people would want to be that way. They would act as if they’re kind and caring even if they aren’t, simply in order to arouse envy or not to feel inferior because they are uncaring. Other people wouldn’t know who is genuinely caring and who is not, and the impression they would get would be that everyone is like that. This would make them behave similarly, and very quickly, all of society will transform itself.

We mustn’t underestimate the power of envy; it is the most powerful force in human nature. We only need to rein it in, to direct it toward a positive direction, and our way to mending the ills of society is paved. And the sooner we start working on it, the better.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Exodus from Egypt and the Exit from the Pandemic”

On Passover night, traditionally everyone sits with their loved ones at a festive table to read about freedom and the sufferings of slavery and plagues, and the desire for liberation. For a second consecutive year in the US, and most communities around the world, many will celebrate virtually since the pandemic is not behind us yet. So when we ask ourselves, “Ma nishtana?” (What has changed?), an inner reflection about what makes this night different from all others, we might need to scrutinize why we are still enduring painful situations and how we can be liberated from them once and for all.

Passover, from the Hebrew “Pesach,” means passage. It symbolizes the transition from the dominance of Pharaoh, our egoism, the exploitation of others for our own sake, into a state of love and bestowal when a new desire for positive social connection emerges. This desire is called “Moses,” from the word “moshech” (pulling), because he is the one who pulls Israel from exile, meaning from the controlling ego.

Passover, from the Hebrew “Pesach,” means passage. It symbolizes the transition from the dominance of Pharaoh, our egoism, the exploitation of others for our own sake, into a state of love and bestowal when a new desire for positive social connection emerges. This desire is called “Moses,” from the word “moshech” (pulling), because he is the one who pulls Israel from exile, meaning from the controlling ego. In fact, the holiday of Passover describes an inner process of contradicting forces interacting with each other until the period of intensifying division eventually leads to a completely different approach of consideration for others.

Such a critically reflective period has been unleashed by the COVID-19 outbreak. It surged as a mirror to look at ourselves and discover how dependent we are on each other and how opposite we have been from the desirable state of mutual care. It indicates that we have nowhere to go, so we better sit down and do nothing but improve our relationships with those close to us—even if they are not in a physical proximity—and within society.

Why is this so important? It is essential because the root cause of every problem is our egoistic desire to enjoy only for ourselves in complete disregard of others. And if I care about others, it is only to the extent that it relates to me, that I depend on them. As a result of this approach, after such an extended period, we have not been able to create the necessary conditions to get out of the pandemic.

The Haggadah we recite during the traditional Seder table includes the phrase “we were slaves” of Pharaoh and couldn’t escape by ourselves. Today we are also enslaved to our evil inclination, which sparks disputes between us and creates lack of balance in all levels of nature, which causes illnesses, despair, and afflictions. The liberation from such a state is the true exit from Egypt, the exit from the control of our egoistic desires.

When will we be set free? When we are free of hatred and begin to feel that our health and good future hangs on the positive relationships between us. When we start thinking well of others, embrace them, and desire to benefit them. It is possible to achieve this goal if we ask the upper force, the Creator, to pull us out from Egypt with a strong but caring hand, and to pass us all over from a state of divisiveness, disregard, and coldness in modern society, to one of love, warmth, and cooperation.

I wish you all a happy Passover!
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My new article on Linkedin “People Aren’t Unemployed, They Simply Do Not Need to Work”

Although Israel is recovering from the Covid pandemic, it seems as though the job market is still in the midst of a lockdown. It is not that there are no jobs to occupy; it’s just that people aren’t keen to occupy them. In fact, so many Israelis prefer to remain jobless that the government has initiated a campaign to encourage people to return from furlough or from unemployment. So far, however, the campaign has had only marginal success.

Truthfully, I understand these people. I think that before we rush back to our pre-Covid life, which apparently wasn’t something we so terribly miss, we must reflect on what we want. People now realize that they can have a good life even if they earn less. They have more free time to spend with family and friends, and once you are among people you like, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy yourself. A day at the beach with the family hardly costs a thing, but is very enjoyable and emotionally rewarding. When you think about it, how much more do we need?

We do not need to love, or even like each other, not yet anyway. All we need is to realize that those I hate are precisely the ones on whom my life depends. If we do that, we will have a society where people truly do not need to work, where they can spend their days in peace, since we’ll be watching out for one another.

Besides, the job market needs fewer and fewer workers. We’ve gone from measuring things in kilometers and meters to measuring things in nanometers. Everything has shrunk, and everything requires fewer working hands. Even computer related jobs require fewer workers than before; the whole society is shifting toward a state where less working hours are required. It is no wonder that some countries are seriously mulling universal basic income programs instead of sending people back to work, or a shorter workweek. The days of hard work are nearing their end, and we need to figure out how we want to spend the additional time on our hands.

Food supply and other necessities will not be a problem; we are already producing more than we’re consuming and we throw away the excess products just to keep the prices up. If we improve distribution, there will be no shortage of necessities anywhere in the world.

Which leads us to the real issue before us: making sure that we get what we need so we can have a good life without worrying about subsistence. To do that, we must put behind us divisions that currently set us apart, such as racial tensions, political rivalries, power struggles of all kinds, cultural differences, and so forth. It may seem impossible to overcome these age-old differences, until we realize that it is precisely thanks to these disputes that we have developed our society, technology, and all that we have. In other words, in order to keep developing, we must preserve precisely the views that we oppose. Without them, our own views will lose their relevance.

Think of love without the existence of hate, and the word becomes meaningless. Think of freedom without captivity, and the whole concept becomes void. We wouldn’t be able to value, or evaluate anything were it not for the existence of its antonym.

Today, people are realizing that there really is no need to work so much, but unless we develop the social values to support this view, society will disintegrate and mayhem will ensue. For centuries, we have cultivated self-absorption to the point that today the vast majority of us are narcissists, plain and simple. A society of narcissists cannot build a distribution system that will see to the well-being of every person since such a system requires regard for the needs of other people, and too many of us simply don’t have it.

Therefore, the first thing to do in order to sail through the transition period toward a new society is to realize that we are dependent on each other, and especially on those who are opposite from us. We needn’t like people who think, speak, or act opposite from us, but we do need to recognize their value for us. We need to realize that they are the ones who render our own tenets valid. If we achieve this, we will realize that we can’t succeed without each other, or even be who we are. This is how interdependent we are.

We do not need to love, or even like each other, not yet anyway. All we need is to realize that those I hate are precisely the ones on whom my life depends. If we do that, we will have a society where people truly do not need to work, where they can spend their days in peace, since we’ll be watching out for one another.
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