In the News (from Oregon State University): “In ecosystems around the world, the decline of large predators such as lions, dingoes, wolves, otters, and bears is changing the face of landscapes from the tropics to the Arctic – but an analysis of 31 carnivore species to be published Friday in the journal Science shows for the first time how threats such as habitat loss, persecution by humans and loss of prey combine to create global hotspots of carnivore decline.

“More than 75 percent of the 31 large-carnivore species are declining, and 17 species now occupy less than half of their former ranges, the authors reported.

‘Globally, we are losing our large carnivores,” said William Ripple, lead author of the paper and a professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at OregonStateUniversity. …

“Ripple and his OregonState co-author Robert Beschta have documented impacts of cougars and wolves on the regeneration of forest stands and riparian vegetation in Yellowstone and other national parks in North America. Fewer predators, they have found, lead to an increase in browsing animals such as deer and elk. More browsing disrupts vegetation, shifts birds and small mammals and changes other parts of the ecosystem in a widespread cascade of impacts.

“Studies of Eurasian lynx, dingoes, lions and sea otters have found similar effects, the authors reported.

“Lynx have been closely tied to the abundance of roe deer, red fox and hare. In Australia, the construction of a 3,400-mile dingo-proof fence has enabled scientists to study ecosystems with and without the animals, which are closely related to gray wolves. In some parts of Africa, the decrease of lions and leopards has coincided with a dramatic increase in olive baboons, which threaten farm crops and livestock. In the waters off southeast Alaska, a decline in sea otters through killer whale predation has led to a rise in sea urchins and loss of kelp beds.

“The authors call for a deeper understanding of the impact of large carnivores on ecosystems, a view that they trace back to the work of landmark ecologist Aldo Leopold. The classic concept that predators are harmful and deplete fish and wildlife is outdated, they said. Scientists and wildlife managers need to recognize a growing body of evidence for the complex roles that carnivores play in ecosystems and for their social and economic benefits.

“Leopold recognized such relationships between predators and ecosystems, Ripple said, but his observations on that point were largely ignored for decades after his death in 1948. …

“’Nature is highly interconnected,’ said Ripple. ‘The work at Yellowstone and other places shows how one species affects another and another through different pathways. It’s humbling as a scientist to see the interconnectedness of nature.’”

My Comment: Only if people stop in their headlong pursuit of maximum consumption and switch to rational consumption, i.e., to the extent of necessities, and apply their efforts in everything else to spiritual development in order to achieve, even in this world, eternity and perfection, only in this way they will come out of the crisis. Otherwise, they face a terrible path of suffering to the same goal.
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In the News (from News.com.au): “A recent study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley Campus has found a clear connection between wealth and a disregard for a fellow person’s feelings. The Berkeley research team is lead by Paul Piff, a psychologist with an avid interest in the power of money over human interaction.

“In one test Piff’s research team set up games of Monopoly between more than 100 pairs of strangers. A coin was flipped and randomly determined which person out of the pair would be the ‘rich’ player in the game. The game was clearly rigged in favour of the ‘rich’ player, with fascinating results.

“The rich player was given twice as much money as their poorer competitor, and when they passed ‘GO’ they collected twice the salary they were entitled to. They also got to roll two dice on their turn instead of one, and thus moved around the board quicker.

“The videos showed that the language and comments of the richer players became more confident as the game progressed. They began to move their piece around the board much louder, at times smacking it down.

“We were more likely to see signs of dominance and non-verbal signs, displays of power and celebration among the rich players,” said Piff. …

“’The rich players actually started to become ruder toward the other person, less and less sensitive to the plight of those poor … players,’ said Piff. They became ‘more and more demonstrative of their material success, more likely to showcase how well they were doing.’

“Numerous surveys and studies made over seven years found that wealthier individuals are more likely to moralise greed as being good, and the pursuit of self-interest as being acceptable. …

“Individuals who made between $15,000 and $25,000 a year gave on average 44 per cent more of their money to the stranger than the individuals who earned between $150,000 and $200,000 a year.”

“They even tested hundreds of vehicles and found that drivers of expensive cars were more inclined to break the law, failing to stop at a pedestrian crossing when there was someone waiting to cross.

“Nearly 50 per cent of drivers of expensive range cars cut off pedestrians, while none of the drivers of the least expensive cars did. As the price of the car increased, the driver’s tendencies to break the law increased too.

“Other studies have tested whether richer individuals are more likely to lie in negotiations, to endorse unethical behavior at work like stealing cash from the cash register, taking bribes or lying to customers.

“What these studies have found is that, “the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to pursue a vision of personal success, of achievement and accomplishment, to the detriment of others around you.”

My Comment: How can we get back on the right track? Only by implementing re-education that will lead to the leveling of wealth in a voluntary way. Otherwise, we are faced with civil war.
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In the News (from ScienceDaily): “Neuroscientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the University of California, San Diego, have successfully demonstrated a technique to enhance a form of self-control through a novel form of brain stimulation. …

“Study participants were asked to perform a simple behavioral task that required the braking/slowing of action — inhibition — in the brain. In each participant, the researchers first identified the specific location for this brake in the prefrontal region of the brain. Next, they increased activity in this brain region using stimulation with brief and imperceptible electrical charges. This led to increased braking — a form of enhanced self-control. …

“’There is a circuit in the brain for inhibiting or braking responses,’ said Nitin Tandon, M.D., the study’s senior author and associate professor in The Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery at the UTHealth Medical School. ‘We believe we are the first to show that we can enhance this braking system with brain stimulation.’

“A computer stimulated the prefrontal cortex exactly when braking was needed. This was done using electrodes implanted directly on the brain surface.

“When the test was repeated with stimulation of a brain region outside the prefrontal cortex, there was no effect on behavior, showing the effect to be specific to the prefrontal braking system.

“The method of electrical stimulation was novel in that it apparently enhanced prefrontal function, whereas other human brain stimulation studies mostly disrupt normal brain activity. This is the first published human study to enhance prefrontal lobe function using direct electrical stimulation, the researchers report.”

My Comment: Undoubtedly, we will find a number of negative consequences of such interference in freedom of choice. Although this may work at the level of selfish preferences, choices, but with respect to love and bestowal on others, instead of selfish gain, the brain will not work because it calculates the profit of desires. If they are egoistic (the heart), then the mind calculates what it is better for egoism.Thus, until a person transforms his desires from “to receive” into “to give” with the help of Surrounding Light, the brain will not be able to calculate anti-egoistic actions. That is, without Kabbalah, to turn egoism into altruism, we will not be able to obtain freedom of will, but will remain slaves of egoism, only within it, programming ourselves in preference to enjoying a meal or being slim.
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In the News (from Wired): “Now, thanks to new observation technologies, powerful software, and statistical methods, the mechanics of collectives are being revealed. Indeed, enough physicists, biologists, and engineers have gotten involved that the science itself seems to be hitting a density-dependent shift. Without obvious leaders or an overarching plan, this collective of the collective-obsessed is finding that the rules that produce majestic cohesion out of local jostling turn up in everything from neurons to human beings. Behavior that seems impossibly complex can have disarmingly simple foundations. And the rules may explain everything from how cancer spreads to how the brain works and how armadas of robot-driven cars might someday navigate highways. The way individuals work together may actually be more important than the way they work alone. Aristotle first posited that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts.”

My Comment: The concept of the universality of any unity in which each ceases to feel himself but feels the collective whole is not new. Only it slips away from us who look at everything through our narrow egoism. Today, nature tells us the way to integrality because it is manifested so before us.

“The unification of pieces into a coherent whole creates a special power and property that does not exist in a simple sum of them because they are united above and overcoming their egoism.
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In the News (from Salon): “School is a place where children are compelled to be, and where their freedom is greatly restricted — far more restricted than most adults would tolerate in their workplaces. In recent decades, we have been compelling our children to spend ever more time in this kind of setting, and there is strong evidence (summarized in my recent book) that this is causing serious psychological damage to many of them. Moreover, the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school. …

“Most students — whether A students, C students, or failing ones — have lost their zest for learning by the time they reach middle school or high school. In a recent research study, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyl and Jeremy Hunter fitted more than 800 sixth- through 12th-graders, from 33 different schools across the country, with special wristwatches that provided a signal at random times of day. Whenever the signal appeared, they were to fill out a questionnaire indicating where they were, what they were doing, and how happy or unhappy they were at the moment. The lowest levels of happiness, by far, occurred when they were in school and the highest levels occurred when they were out of school playing or talking with friends. In school, they were often bored, anxious or both. Other researchers have shown that, with each successive grade, students develop increasingly negative attitudes toward the subjects taught, especially math and science. …

“When schools were taken over by the state and made compulsory, and directed toward secular ends, the basic structure and methods of schooling remained unchanged. Subsequent attempts at reform have failed because, though they have tinkered some with the structure, they haven’t altered the basic blueprint. The top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real, felt desire to know, is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else. …

“As a society, we tend to shrug off such findings. We’re not surprised that learning is unpleasant. We think of it as bad-tasting medicine, tough to swallow but good for children in the long run. Some people even think that the very unpleasantness of school is good for children, so they will learn to tolerate unpleasantness, because life after school is unpleasant. Perhaps this sad view of life derives from schooling. Of course, life has its ups and downs, in adulthood and in childhood. But there are plenty of opportunities to learn to tolerate unpleasantness without adding unpleasant schooling to the mix. Research has shown that people of all ages learn best when they are self-motivated, pursuing questions that are their own real questions, and goals that are their own real-life goals. In such conditions, learning is usually joyful.

“…the natural drives and abilities of young people to learn are fully sufficient to motivate their entire education. When they want or need help from others, they ask for it. We don’t have to force people to learn; all we need to do is provide them the freedom and opportunities to do so. Of course, not everyone is going to learn the same things, in the same way, or at the same time. But that’s a good thing. Our society thrives on diversity. Our culture needs people with many different kinds of skills, interests and personalities. Most of all, we need people who are pursuing life with passion and who take responsibility for themselves throughout life. These are the common denominators of people who have taken charge of their own education.”

My Comment: School still looks like an institution established for the production of human performers that were needed in times of Charlie Chaplin. It was necessary to change schooling a long time ago, but even those who advocate a new education system have no consensus. The problem is that no one understands the structure of the new world: integrated, unified, interconnected, to which people should be adapted to integrally enter the structure of the world. A person can be changed only through the method of integral education.
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In the News (from The Telegraph): “Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers. …

“Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11^th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

“The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

“When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

“’There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,’ said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. ‘The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.’

“Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a “nude model,” and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.”

My Comment: The prophets describe even more immoral scenes of the future if we do not stop ourselves in time by implementing integral education. After all, if not by the path of reforming human nature by the Upper Light, then the only way is descending into egoism, until it is revealed in the form that does not allow existence.
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In the News (from The Voice of Russia): “The scandal that erupted in Britain around Muslim cashiers who refuse to serve the native British who buy pork and alcohol is just another harbinger of irreversible demographic and cultural shifts, approaching Europe.

“In general, European society has already reached the realization that the situation formed by the policy of multiculturalism transcends common sense. On the other hand, the process is already running. The irreversible demographic changes are taking place.

“If in general, the proportion of Muslims in Europe is not large yet, then in the next twenty years, the demographic situation will begin to change.

“Meanwhile, the real facts show that the radical Islamists of the number of Muslim immigrants are already attacking Western values and the very way of life of native Europeans: they cannot drink beer, mini-skirts or shorts are forbidden. Muslim radicals carry out raids in the tourist area of London Brick Lane and threaten owners of local bars and shops with punishment for selling alcohol. Muslim extremists in Belgium promise to eventually throw Belgians out of the kingdom of Belgium.

“All these incidents that we are witnessing now are only harbingers of ideological, demographic and cultural shifts, caused by the policy of multiculturalism. Over time, immigrants in Europe will undoubtedly assimilate Europeans.”

My Comment: Similar processes accelerate the recognition of egoism as evil and are positive. Thanks to them, humanity will quickly realize the limit of its egoistic civilized development and the need to find another way. And it can only be in rising above our nature through the method of integral re-education.
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In the News (from Expert): “The main development trends of the major economies of the world indicate that a new phase of the global economic crisis is inevitable. No matter how bad the situation is, it is possible to hold it for a relatively long time if sufficient political power is manifested; Japan has been heading towards the abyss for a quarter of century, and if the Japanese began to panic, Japan might have been long at the bottom of this abyss.

“Or the United States that have been inflating bubble after bubble for 20 years.

“Since everyone has learned this lesson of the importance of political will, but the world economy is not doing well, any prolonging of stagnation and escalation of problems increase the risk that the conflict will turn from economic into political.

“The old developed countries are experiencing one of the most serious crises in their history; the world economic order that was formed after WWII is collapsing. It is unclear yet today when a new order fiercely begins to shape, but it is obvious that everything is coming to that.”

My Comment: Waiting for a new order to form forcefully is unwise! It is inevitable. But there is a method for its soft absorption: the integral education of humanity, i.e. adapting people to new, gradually strengthening norms of a new integral world order. Otherwise, there will be a crisis!
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Opinion (Nikolay P. Shmelyov, Russian economist, director of The Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences): “On the one hand, it is not a crisis, but the completion of the next economic cycle. On the other – everything in the world has changed. And you have to think differently.

“In fact, 90% of the economic exchange in the world is air and paper. Everything real is 10%. I don’t know how to deal with it. It cannot be called even a bubble, rather a monster. Playing on high margin is a favorite Russian occupation, and a Western style is to sell with little margin, but with high turnover.”

My Comment: That’s right, we need to get rid of this 90% or more of empty economic turnover to come in balance with nature. The 90% of unnecessary workers should be sent to the system of integral education and upbringing. Then, after some time, it will be possible to ensure that all members of the global community are equally provided with everything necessary and sufficient for rational existence. People will receive fulfillment by revealing higher existence in their unity.
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Opinion (Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister and Leader of the Labor Party from 2007 to 2010): “In the patterns of borrowing today, we can already detect parallels with the pre-crisis credit boom. We’re seeing the same over-reliance on short-term capital markets that ultimately brought down Northern Rock, Iceland’s banks and Lehman Brothers. …

“International rules are needed for international banks. Without them, as the International Monetary Fund has warned, global banks will evade regulation ‘by moving operations, changing corporate structures, and redesigning products.’ …

“Political expediency, a failure to think and act globally, and a lack of courage to take on vested interests are pushing us inexorably toward the next crash. We will have another crash soon … because absolutely nothing has been fixed. Indeed, things have only gotten worse since the last crash.

My Comment: As long as we have not defined our own restructuring as a necessary and sufficient condition for the solution to all our problems, we will inexorably approach new problems.
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