Entries in the 'News' Category

Cognitive Simplicity: Life In Black And White

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Psychologies.ru): “Our life flows and passes losing its shades and becoming black and white, friends and foes, heroes and villains. Psychologists call this perspective cognitive simplicity.

“This phenomenon appears at infancy. We all know that we acquire the complexity of this world with time through our relationships with people.

“It is better for our leaders if people perceive the world as a simple place since it is simply easier to manage them and to control them. Many agree and are willing to accept the rules of this game.

“Simplicity as a form of psychological protection helps them cope with the complexity of the world.  A simple perception of the world allows a person not only to see the goal more clearly but also to attain it.

“Cognitive simplicity is the basis for manipulation that comes down to people’s ability to attain the goals we were given, while convincing others to also want that. These manipulations are based on ideas that have to be subordinately in common with those who resemble them. The manipulations refer to actions against cooperation trust and autonomy.

“It becomes necessary to imagine our states and those of others not only logically but also emotionally. The individual’s awareness has to include the position of those around him. A person’s fate is an attempt to unite and to care about others no less than about himself.”

My Comment: I believe that only an addition to the egoism that manages us on its own, the second force of nature, the positive force of connection and love will make our world and man living in it balanced by the two forces. We will be able to manage ourselves and the world and to build a balanced system of the world. If not, we will fall into increasingly greater egoism that leads us to terrible sufferings, and eventually after world wars and annihilations we will still acknowledge the need to complement ourselves with the positive force of life and to build humanity as a balanced system. The positive force of connection can only be discovered in the process of workshops and discussion circles that are based on the wisdom of Kabbalah and the wisdom of connection.
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Corporate Feudalism

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (OpEdNews.com): “Right now, the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill that would make Wisconsin the nation’s 25th right-to-work-for-less state. Workers in right to work-for-less-states make less money, get skimpier health benefits and are more likely to die on the job than the workers in non-right-to-work-for-less states.

“The line from Wisconsin Republicans, of course, is that the proposed right-work-for-less law will improve their state’s economy and help build the middle class. But in reality, the exact opposite will happen.

“That’s because right-to-work-for-less laws bring capitalism a lot closer to its natural, unregulated state, and capitalism in its natural, unregulated state tends toward massive levels of inequality that we usually associate with feudalism.

“It looks a lot like this:

“At the top, there is a very small class of super-rich oligarchs and financiers. They’re the monarchs of capitalist society.

“Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very, very small, class of professionals and mercantilists —doctors, lawyers, shop-owners — who help keep things running for the super-rich and supply the working poor with their needs. They’re nobles or knights of capitalist society.

“And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people who make up the working poor. They have no wealth — in fact they’re typically in debt most of their lives and can barely survive on what little money they make. They’re the peasants of capitalist society.

“So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in natural capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option, just as it was in medieval Europe under feudalism.

“The only ways a true middle class can emerge in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval (a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century) or by government intervention.

“Historically, the government is the only thing that can put a check on the growth of feudalism, and it’s what we used here in the United States, from the founding of the republic until the Reagan revolution, to fight the elite and build a middle class from the ground up.

“Tariffs, workers’ rights legislation, the Glass-Steagall Act, higher taxes on the rich, you name it — our government used all of these things to restrain the natural tendency of capitalism towards inequality and to create a middle class.

“But ever since Reagan came to town and brainwashed everyone into believing that ‘government is the problem, not the solution,’ we’ve gutted regulations, busted unions and, as a result, returned capitalism to something resembling its natural, brutish state.

“Inequality is now at a record high, and the richest three percent of the population now controls more than half of all wealth.

“And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the child poverty rate here in the US is now among the worst in the developed world.

“Things have arguably gotten even worse since the recession, as the top one percent has absorbed almost all of the gains of our so-called ‘recovery.’

“The kings and noblemen may be long gone, but here in the US, the business and financial elite reign supreme, and corporate feudalism is the name of the game.”

My Comment: Egoism, if it is not restricted, is itself unlimited, and therefore constantly strives to boundless expansion and fulfillment. The more it gets, the more it feels emptiness. “Having received 100, it desires 200, and having received 200, it desires 400,” according to the law of expansion of the desire by the Light.

And thus until its death; when it dies, there is not even half of the desired in its hands. It is impossible to restrict egoism, because it is the basis of nature, and the only force of nature, except for the Light, the quality of bestowal and love. The pull to balance egoism (the middle line) is only by the knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is the science of using egoism correctly.
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The Situation In Europe Is Reminiscent Of The Days Of Hitler

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (riafan.ru): “The Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the tolerance shown by the West regarding the appearance of anti-Semitism, Nazism and xenophobia has become the reason for the renewed departure of the Jews from the European nations today.

“The situation is developing on a large scale and is already close to a critical situation. Human rights activists warn specifically that anti-Semitism has become the reason for the flight of the Jews from the nations of the European Union to Israel. The West, together with neo-Nazism, is reminiscent of the 1930s in Germany during the last century.

“During the time of Hitler and the Nazi regime, the Jews had nowhere to flee, while the tolerance to the appearance of xenophobia and Nazism of the governments and many Western powers led to the deaths of millions of people. The politicians of the European Union and the United States must remember the lessons of history and not help in falsifying history for lying scientists and the rest of the extremists.”

My Comment: I think that everything is happening according to the plan of the general egoistic development of humanity, which must bring a wave of anti-Semitism and general mutual hatred. The people of Israel will be the focus of this universal hatred. This appearance of egoism as total evil is necessary for activating pressure on the Jews, forcing them to implement the method of uniting humanity and in this unity, the discovery of the Creator.
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An Uneasy Peace That Will Tear The Global Economy Asunder

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Mark Leonard, director, European Council on Foreign Relations): “In 1914, the world’s economic order collapsed because its most powerful nations went to war. A century later, the great powers are averse to shedding blood — and perversely, that could be the trigger for another unravelling of the global economy.

“Rulers once sent in the cavalry when they wanted to redraw the map. Now, the main battleground is economic. In many theatres, sanctions have taken the place of military strikes. Competing trade regimes becoming as important as military alliances. The American historian Edward Luttwak calls this a contest of geoeconomics, defined by the ‘grammar of commerce but the logic of war.’

“Trade talks, too, have become an economic weapon. With fading hopes for a global deal, a maze of bilateral and regional trade talks is taking place. But rather than linking the world in a single system, strong regional players are trying to create gated markets with preferential access for their own companies at the expense of weaker states.

“An optimistic theory once held that multinational companies would make once-hostile nations more dependent on each other, and that this would make them a force for peace. Governments, it was held, had an enlightened interest in guaranteeing open, predictable rules that would allow companies to thrive, unimpeded by political borders.

“But rising tensions between the great powers are turning these sometime knights of the corporate world into pawns. The multilateral institutions that were supposed to be the benign invigilators of a new era of win-win co-operation are becoming a battleground for geopolitical competition.”

My Comment: It cannot be otherwise since the world is developing through the development of egoism, so evil is pushing the world forward. Thus, to be optimistic means not to know the basis for the development of the world. It is written, “I created egoism and created the Torah for its correction,” and without the knowledge of correcting egoism by its opposite force, we have only one negative force in the world, which controls it and pushes it to destruction.
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Our Aggression Could Destroy Us

Laitman_727Opinion (Steven Hawking, English Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist, Author, Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge):

“’The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all,’ Hawking answered her, according to the Independent. ‘A major nuclear war would be the end of civilization, and maybe the end of the human race,’ he explained.

“Not only does human aggression no longer serve an obvious purpose, but technological advances, such as nuclear weaponry, have made it so that an incredible amount of damage could be done with very little effort by a small number of people. Hawking isn’t the only prominent scientist to have made this observation; Carl Sagan was outspoken against the development of nuclear arms during his life.

“[He was also asked] which human traits he would like to see more often. Unsurprisingly, he commented that he would like to see more kindness and understanding.

“’The quality I would most like to magnify is empathy. It brings us together in a peaceful, loving state,’ he replied.

My Comment: This opinion is obvious, but how can we reach empathy to others, like to our relatives, our children..? – This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains!
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The United States Is Losing Interest In The Middle East

Laitman_633_4In the News (from Maariv Online): “I saw a study on a television program that until recently the United States imported 25% of the global oil exports. It was dependent upon Saudi Arabia and other nations. Today everything has changed.

“It has developed a technology for attaining cheaper gas and oil from shale (a type of mineral), and presently the United States is standing at the top of the market of the principle suppliers of energy.

“Now the United States is facing the opposite problem, finding markets for the sale of its resources. The preferred direction is not the Middle East, but the nations of Europe and the Far East region. This factor explains the loss of interest of the United States regarding Israel. For the allies of the Jewish nation, the main asset is technology, but the United States doesn’t need this and can get along without the Israelis.

“Russia, China and Europe need technology, but the Chinese steal it, and the European Union replaces it with immigrants. Russia has itself defined extremist Islam as a threat to security and on a background of geopolitical changes a situation could be created whose signs are already sprouting up today; its interests will be identical to those of Israel and it will become its ally.

“In order to establish an alliance with Russia, a two-term Republican regime in the White House is required. This will gradually change the character of the mutual relationships and will not bring about a conflict with the United States, that in turn was expressed in the prohibition of supplying ammunition, weapons and spare parts. In a general view it is possible to say that the United States has decided to leave and go away, and what will Israel be for them? It will not have any importance. The time has come to search for new allies.”

My Comment: The strength of Israel will not be in the force of arms and technologies but only through a connection with the upper force that can be increased and expanded endlessly through unity between us according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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In The Quantum World The Future Affects The Past

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (Hi-news.ru): “A new study says that we now know everything about quantum particles, but we cannot measure them accurately. On the whole we can calculate the statistic probability of the possible outcomes. This fact isn’t a mis-measure in itself but a natural registered phenomenon.

“Not only don’t we know the state of the quantum particle, but until we measure it, it is totally undefined and unclear. The direct measuring process itself forces the particles to vaguely change their status.

“Not too long ago, physicists studied the attributes of particles only through theoretical experiments, while direct observation forced the subjects to hide their quantum attributes.

“In the 80’s scientists devised special instruments that measure these sensitive systems very carefully, and don’t lead to their sudden collapse. The instruments enabled physicists to predict the future state to an accuracy of up to 90%, which means that they managed to perform the process in nine cases out of ten.

“The quantum theory suggests that in the quantum world, time changes in two directions while according to classical physics, just like in the classical world, everything flows in only one direction. The result of the experiment determined the symmetry of time.

“The data that were received indicate that the quantum state of the system combines the information about the past and the future. The graphic illustration of time in the quantum world should be indicated by an arrow with two heads.”

My Comment: It is striking that all the attributes typical of quantum nature were described by the wisdom of Kabbalah 5,776 years ago by the first Kabbalist who discovered the next world that is beyond the egoistic corporeal world. Adam (First Man) wrote about it in his book The Angel Raziel (the concealed force), referring to the general force of connection, which is  love and bestowal.
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Europe’s Future Is In Our Hands!

laitman_426Question: What is the future of Europe as you see it and what will be the solution to the impending problem of the immigration that the local population encounters?

Answer: Europe has been tolerant to the great number of immigrants without demanding their integration into their new home. Consequently, the national identity has disappeared, and now the ethnic diversity in Europe is too great.

There are two approaches to this problem: a multi-cultural society or assimilation.

I see the problem in the complete destruction of social ties. Society becomes global, integral but at the same time increasingly more egoistically separated. The social alienation is typical of the whole society, and they will not be able to restore the old civil society.

It can only be built by keeping the diversity and establishing a general cover of love above it. This is possible only by using the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, and we can reach that either by the path of sufferings or by the path of the Light. The choice we make will determine the success of our dissemination of integral education (of the wisdom of Kabbalah).
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How Power Is Dangerous

In the News (from Psychologies.ru): “Why do people in power clearly display tyranny, obstinacy and mental instability? The answer is simple: a slight feeling of superiority over others might have a significant impact on all of us.

“We all notice how almost instantly the people appointed to high office become transformed. They are impatient and demanding. Any, even minor progress on the career ladder may radically change their behavior. The tone of their voice rises, and they become harsh and arrogant. Like all of us, they have no doubt about being right.

“In receiving power over others, we feel our superior. Our desires become higher than the rules of decency and behavior, less ethical. A sense of authority allows us to behave noisily and leave a mess.

“From this moment we stop understanding the feelings of others and ignore their efforts. All decisions are made independently and self-confidently, especially in cases when the fate of hundreds or thousands of people depend on this.”

My Comment: Therefore, Kabbalah encourages allowing only corrected people to “steer,” those who are free from personal selfish purposes. It was like that in the ancient kingdom of Israel during the First and Second Temples when the whole population and especially the sages who managed it were in the state of revelation of the Creator, which kept everyone above his egoism.
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The Conundrum Of Corporation And Nation

Laitman_408In the News (from OpEdNews.com): “The U.S. economy is picking up steam, but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well. What’s behind this? Two big facts. …

“American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations — those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

“The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility is to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages to fuel larger profits and higher share prices. …

“By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations. …

“Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.

“Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations. ….

“The U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher than in U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans.

“Finally, when at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal – American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans, but also reside all over the world.

My Comment: As a result, our egoism will divide the world into several million very rich and the rest in billions of extremely poor, and then it will proceed to destroy unwanted mouths…
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