In the News (from PsyBlog): “No matter what it is—a pair of jeans, a car or even a house—in that moment when an object becomes your property, it undergoes a transformation.

“Because you chose it and you associate it with yourself, its value is immediately increased. If someone offers to buy it from you, the chances are you want to charge much more than they are prepared to pay.

“That is a cognitive bias called ‘the endowment effect.’

“It’s the reason that some people have lofts, garages and storage spaces full of junk with which they cannot bear to be parted. Once you own something, you tend to set its financial value way higher than other people do.

“When tested experimentally the endowment effect can be surprisingly strong. One study found that owners of tickets for a basketball match overvalued them by a factor of 14. In other words people wanted 14 times more than others were prepared to pay. However, this is a particularly high one and the ratio will vary depending on what it is.

“The endowment effect is particularly strong for things that are very personal and easy to associate with the self, like a piece of jewelry from your partner. Similarly we also overvalue things we’ve had for a long time.”

My Comment: Such is the effect of our egoism. Loss is felt more painfully than a lost opportunity of an acquisition of equivalent value because egoism includes a thing in “its” possession, and “one’s own” has more value than “outside of oneself.”
[103186]

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In the News (from Lettera): “Expenses are being cut back on everything (health, school education, social assistance), but not on the military needs. The crisis prompts reducing military spending; moreover, it is possible to join forces to cut costs.

“But no country is going to reduce military spending, even when there are no drugs in hospitals or a supply of blood for transfusions. The EU pays the salary of members of the armed forces, the number of whom is three times greater than in the USA – $ 360 billion a year. The US military spending is $ 711 billion.

“The creation of a unified European army would save more than 100 billion euros, but the military industry is one of the most corrupt; each year, $ 20 billion is spent on bribes. If EU leaders showed rigidity in relation to the military industry, the voters would not have voted against a unified Europe.”

My Comment: Everything is tied to one problem—our egoism. It must be corrected at its root instead of wasting time on investigations because the Hydra’s heads always grow in new places! There is only one remedy against egoism: the force of bestowal, which can be attracted through integral workshops. You can try it and make sure!
[103023]

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Opinion (Lars Seier Christensen, CEO of the SAXO Bank): “It is difficult to describe the weekend bailout package to Cyprus in any other way. The confiscation of 6.75 percent of small depositors’ money and 9.9 percent of big depositors’ funds is without precedence that I can think of in a supposedly civilised and democratic society. But maybe the European Union (EU) is no longer a civilised democracy? …

“Depositors in other prospective bailout countries must be running scared – is it safe to keep money in an Italian, Spanish or Greek bank any more? I don’t know, must be the answer. …

“This is a major, MAJOR game changer and the fallout will be with us for a long time to come. I believe it could be the beginning of the end for the Eurozone as this is an unbelievable blow to the already challenged trust that might be left among investors. Talk about a possible own goal.

“Market reaction? it must be very good for gold – and for safe-haven countries like Switzerland, Singapore and economically more healthy non-Euro countries in, for example, Scandinavia. I would think the EURO and associated markets will be undermined by increasing lack of confidence when the full implications become clear for investors.

“This is full-blown socialism and I still cannot believe this really happened.

“Be careful out there…”

My Comment: We are being forced to change all the rules, then the game itself, and then the players, that is, it will force people to correct their nature because they will become convinced that there is no other way out.
[103181]

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In the News (from DailyMail):“Being a volunteer is good for the heart as well as the soul, claim researchers.

“A new study shows even at a young age, people who volunteer have healthier cardiovascular systems that could stave off heart disease.

“The study found improvements in several measurements of heart health among volunteers after just 10 weeks of taking part in community programmes. …

“The study involved 106 teenagers from an urban, inner-city Vancouver high school who were split into two groups – a group that volunteered regularly for 10 weeks and a group that was wait-listed for volunteer activities. …

“The researchers measured the students’ body mass index (BMI), inflammation levels – which affect heart health – and cholesterol scores before and after the study.

“They also assessed the students’ self-esteem, mental health, mood, and empathy, says a report published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics… .

“The volunteer group of students spent one hour per week working with elementary school children in after-school programs in their neighbourhood.

“After 10 weeks they had lower levels of inflammation and cholesterol and lower BMIs than the students who were wait-listed.”

My Comment: Since nature is interconnected, then nothing harmful can be in strengthening connections; on the contrary, it is only useful and promotes natural beauty.
[103020]

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Opinion (Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a leading scholar of globalization and economic development): “Nothing endangers globalization more than the yawning governance gap – the dangerous disparity between the national scope of political accountability and the global nature of markets for goods, capital, and many services – that has opened up in recent decades. When markets transcend national regulation, as with today’s globalization of finance, market failure, instability, and crisis is the result. But pushing rule-making onto supranational bureaucracies, such as the World Trade Organization or the European Commission, can result in a democratic deficit and a loss of legitimacy.

“How can this governance gap be closed? One option is to re-establish national democratic control over global markets. This is difficult and smacks of protectionism, but it is neither impossible nor necessarily inimical to healthy globalization. As I argue in my book The Globalization Paradox, expanding the scope for national governments to maintain regulatory diversity and rebuild frayed social bargains would enhance the functioning of the global economy. …

“But the trouble is not just that these global institutions remain weak. It is also that they are inter-governmental bodies – a collection of member states rather than agents of global citizens. Because their accountability to national electorates is indirect and uncertain, they do not generate the political allegiance – and hence legitimacy – that truly representative institutions require. Indeed, the travails of the European Union have revealed the limits of transnational political community-building, even among a comparatively limited and similar set of countries.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with national parliaments and executives. During the financial crisis, it was national governments that bailed out banks and firms, recapitalized the financial system, guaranteed debts, eased liquidity, primed the fiscal pump, and paid the unemployment and welfare checks – and took the blame for everything that went wrong. In the memorable words of outgoing Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, global banks are ‘international in life, but national in death.’

“But perhaps there is another path, one that accepts the authority of national governments, but aims to reorient national interests in a more global direction. Progress along such a path requires ‘national’ citizens to begin viewing themselves increasingly as ‘global citizens,’ with interests that extend beyond their state’s borders.”

My Comment: Since national governments depend on their citizens, integral education will lead to an understanding of global connection and responsibility, causing pressure on national governments.
[102967]

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In the News (from MIT Technology Review): “The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists.

“In 1992, the Harvard-based political scientist Samuel Hartington suggested that future conflicts would be driven largely by cultural differences. He went on to map out a new world order in which the people of the world are divided into nine culturally distinct civilizations. …

“Bogdan State at Stanford University in California and a few pals … have analyzed a global database of e-mail messages, and their locations, sent by more than 10 million people over the space of a year. State and co say that the pattern of connections between these people clearly reflects the civilizations mapped out by Huntington. In other words, the way we send e-mails is a reflection of the mesh of civilizations that is an important driver of future conflict. …
“This result provides evidence towards a division of the world into civilizational blocks following Huntington’s theory,” say State and pals.

“But there are other patterns too.  ‘The findings (unsurprisingly) support the idea that geography, transportation and administrative decisions are all important determinant of between-country communication: distance decreases density, as do visas, while direct flights increase it,’ say the researchers.

“And there are surprising results as well. For example, a common border between two countries actually reduces the communication density between them, perhaps because of increased tensions.  ‘These curious findings do raise the issue of potential problems with European integration, as well as of the higher potential for conflict between countries sharing borders, which may lead to less communication,’ say State and pals.”

My Comment: Global and personal egoism is constantly growing and becoming interdependent, which heightens contradictions further. It is impossible to isolate oneself. We can only follow the trend, indicated by nature, that is, to unite. This is possible only through the change of the human being, by our re-education. A method of correcting our egoistic nature is offered: integral education and upbringing.
[102862]

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In the News (from The Christian Science Monitor): “A stunning report by a US digital-security company accuses China’s military of conducting more than 100 cyberattacks on American corporate and government computers. If accurate, the report by the firm Mandiant only adds to the urgency to develop international norms in cyberwar and cyberespionage.

“Each new tool of aggression requires its own rules of war. Cyberwarfare should be no different. Without a code of ethics for conflict in the digital universe, nations could eventually bring down each other’s water supplies, electric grids, military defenses, and vital institutions. And key values, such as privacy and a right to intellectual property, could also be lost.

“Global rules now restrict the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. They also help safeguard civilians and prisoners of war. What the Mandiant report shows is that the world may be losing the struggle to come up with rules for cyberspace behavior.”

My Comment: The problem is not in the desire to adopt new rules for new weapons of war, but that the enemy can easily disguise himself and strike without exposing himself to retaliatory attacks. So, a lack of complete control, as in the case of nuclear weapons, is the cause of the ongoing cyberwar.

The solution lies in the unity of all the systems into one, when everyone attacking the enemy will bring a blow to himself at the same time. Either we ourselves will create this system or nature will bring us to this system of mutual dependence in which there will no other choice but to establish such ties or perish.
[102792]

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In the News (from CNN): “Global warming has propelled Earth’s climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest – in just one century.

“A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

“If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record,” he said. It is a good indicator of just how fast man-made climate change has progressed.

“A century is a very short period of time for such a spike. …

“If not for man-made influences, the Earth would be in a very cold phase right now and getting even colder, according the joint study by Oregon State University and Harvard University. Marcott was the lead author of the report on its results.

“To boot, the range of temperatures from cold to hot produced since the industrial revolution began are about the same as the 11,000 years before it, said Candace Major from the National Science Foundation, ‘but this change has happened a lot more quickly.’

My Comment: The cause for all the changes is to encourage people to correct themselves. But a person arrives at this decision only when, after many misfortunes and sufferings, he finally becomes convinced that there is no other way—he has to change himself. How much and what kind of suffering we have to go through to accept this decision is unknown.

Everyone who understands the necessity of following the laws of nature, to become similar to it, and to become connected by the good ties of mutual guarantee should make every effort to disseminate the knowledge about it. By these actions we will definitely bring the correct decision closer and reduce suffering.
[102689]

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In the News (from Euronews): “It has been a day of industrial action all over Europe.

“In Belgium, hundreds of steel workers blocked border crossings to and from neighbouring countries, furious at plans by the steel giant Arcelor Mittal to slash production threatening more than a thousand jobs.

“In France, PSA Peugeot-Citroen workers occupied the offices of a steel industry managers’ organization as part of an ongoing protest against the planned closure of a car factory in Aulnay near Paris. The plant has been paralysed for eight weeks by a strike.

“Travelers using the airport serving Bonn and Cologne in Germany had delays and cancellations as security staff walked out. It’s part of a long running dispute over contract terms and pay. Dozens of flights were cancelled. Passengers using Berlin’s Tegel airport were also affected.

“There was disruption too at Madrid’s main international airport. About 2,000 workers protested against pay cuts and massive lay-offs at Spain’s national carrier Iberia.

“And tourists hoping for some ancient Greek culture found all public archaeological sites strike bound – including the Parthenon temple at the Acropolis. Workers are angry about a planned restructuring of the Culture Ministry.”

My Comment: The crisis is not in overproduction of goods and services, but in the over-production of people. We are moving into the world where everything will be done by machines, printers, and almost all the people will be unemployed. It will happen gradually, but steadily. There is a crisis of an abundance of goods and people.

Kabbalah described this state of the world a long time ago and offers the following: reduce all the production and services except those necessary for living, free all people who are not needed for the necessary production and services from working, provide mandatory education at open universities of integral education, pay stipends at the places of studies (like a salary adjusting for absenteeism), teach integral interaction, the structure of the world and its development, writing, drawing, singing, etc., and have workshops.
[102319]

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In the News (from USA Today): “Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11^th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

“‘The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly,’ said Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

“In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60% of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics. …

“Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30% of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17% were suicides….

“Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine.”

My Comment: The problem is not in treatment, but in the eradication of causes, and it is in general depression, emptiness, and lack of meaning. If a person is filled with good mood and spirit, he will almost always be healthy.
[102324]

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