Opinion(Jeremy Rifkin, American economist, writer, political advisor, activist, author of The Empathic Civilization: Rethinking Human Nature in the Biosphere Era): “‘Empathy,’ explains Rifkin, ‘conjures up active engagement – the willingness of an observer to become part of another’s experience, to share the feeling of that experience.’…

“Biologists and cognitive neuroscientists are discovering mirror-neurons–the so-called empathy neurons–that allow human beings and other species to feel and experience another’s situation as if it were one’s own. We are, it appears, the most social of animals and seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows. …

“By extending the central nervous system of each individual and the society as a whole, communication revolutions provide an evermore inclusive playing field for empathy to mature and consciousness to expand. For example, during the period of the great hydraulic agricultural civilizations characterized by script and theological consciousness, empathic sensitivity broadened from tribal blood ties to associational ties based on common religious affiliation. Jews came to empathize with Jews, Christians with Christians, Muslims with Muslims, etc. In the first industrial revolution characterized by print and ideological consciousness, empathic sensibility extended to national borders, with Americans empathizing with Americans, Germans with Germans, Japanese with Japanese and so on. In the second industrial revolution, characterized by electronic communication and psychological consciousness, individuals began to identify with like-minded others.

Today, we are on the cusp of another historic convergence of energy and communication–a third industrial revolution–that could extend empathic sensibility to the biosphere itself and all of life on Earth.”

My Comment: Undoubtedly, we will continue to develop in this direction according to the plan of Nature. The only question is whether we will overcome egoism driven by blows or repressing it consciously.
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In the News (from BBC News): “The home of the ancient Greek gods is snow-capped and steep and the road that winds its way up the slopes of Mount Olympus leads through lush, fertile forest. But the vegetation is dotted with bare patches – precious trees ripped away.

“This is now the site of some of the worst illegal logging in Greece. The practice has risen here by more than 300% in the past year since a new tax pushed up the price of heating oil by a third.

Many people are now unable to afford heating oil, instead turning to wood to heat their homes.”

My Comment: Hunger and cold will force people to do anything. Could we require them to refrain from providing themselves with the minimum necessities?!
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In the News (from Bloomberg): “The euro-area jobless rate rose to a record in November as the fiscal crisis and tougher austerity measures deepened Europe’s economic troubles.

“Unemployment in the 17-nation region rose to 11.8 percent from 11.7 percent in October, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995 and in line with the median estimate of 27 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.”

My Comment: We must agree that there is no returning to the consumer society, and the sooner we switch to a new integral thinking (reasonable consumption, equal sharing, closure of all the “excess” enterprises, the establishment of a rational economy, without anything extra), the less we will lose in transitioning to the new phase of development.
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In the News (from HealthDay): “Having pots of money doesn’t necessarily make you happy, study after study has found. But giving away money – even if you’re not rich – is likely to make you feel wealthier, and thus happier, new research contends.

“It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s not, said study author Michael Norton, an associate professor of marketing at Harvard Business School. …

“Turns out, giving away money increases what experts call feelings of ‘subjective wealth,’ or how well off you feel. The thinking, said Norton, goes something like this: ‘If I have so much money that I can give it away, I may not be so bad off.’…

“The donations also seem to increase the donor’s sense of power, according to Norton, and that may lead them to feel happier, because the donations ‘fulfill a deeper desire to signal wealth.’ …

“Giving $500, he calculated, has the same effect on feelings of subjective wealth as earning an extra $10,000 in income.

“In related research, Norton found that people who volunteer their time to help sick children or for other charitable pursuits feel they have more time than those who don’t volunteer. The thinking, he suspects, is that if they have time to give away, they must have plenty of time.”

My Comment: Psychologists do not view a desire as matter or its fulfillment as the sensation of life. That is why for them physical actions are indicators and not the sensation of fulfillment. Kabbalah does not take into account the actions themselves, but only their essence and the resulting fulfillment. Therefore, it relates to giving money, energy, and time not to bestowal, but to a hidden form of reception, of filling oneself.

In the action of receiving, a person is limited, but in the action of bestowal, he is not limited by anything, and thus this method of fulfillment is available to everyone. The problem is only psychological, understanding that by giving you can be fulfilled indefinitely. This problem is solved by integral education.
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Opinion (Nouriel Roubini, cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics): “Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Davide Serra, founder of leading hedge fund Algebris, and Nouriel Roubini, the head of Roubini Economics known as Dr Doom for predicting the financial crisis, set out the case against those who think quantitative easing (QE) and low rates are benign policy tools.

“’When governments borrow, they are taking money from our children. QE is the same – we are lowering returns for future generations. QE creates an inter-generational dilemma,’ Mr Serra said.

“Mr Roubini warned that central bankers need to think about turning off the cheap money tap or risk creating another, possibly even worse, bubble.”

Opinion (Steen Jakobsen, Chief Economist & CIO, Saxo Bank): “In Europe, two core countries, the Netherlands and Germany, are now recession bound. The crisis has finally arrived at their doorstep. Meanwhile, European Central Bank monetary transmission remains obstructed by hodgepodge policies. … You can run from your debt burden but you can’t hide, and that will be the reality that Europe and France face in 2013. …

“So how can it be that stockmarkets are hitting multi-year highs while employment is hitting historic lows? In a real bull market, everyone partakes in the upside—but this market and the economy are driven by those who have access to central bank funding. In short, they are detached from reality. Like a David Copperfield stage act, it is a grand illusion. We have capitalism without capital or free markets.”

My Comment: At least many begin to understand that something (although not what) needs to be changed, but politicians do not hear. The realization that some understand the need for change, but others not, is already movement. But the real awareness must be in recognizing the need for full integration of all of humanity as a condition (the ultimate goal) of our development given by nature (evolution).

This can be achieved only by using the property of unity, the unifying force, which is revealed in the desire to unite according to the method of Kabbalah. Nature is integral on its three levels: still, vegetative, and animate. The human being, evolving from the animate level, must himself recognize the need to “fit” in the general picture of nature as its highest integral part.
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In the News (from BBC News): “The rise in drug resistant infections is comparable to the threat of global warming, according to the chief medical officer for England.

“Prof Dame Sally Davies said bacteria were becoming resistant to current drugs and there were few antibiotics to replace them.

“Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. However, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs.

“MRSA rapidly became one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.

“Prof Davies said: ‘It is clear that we might not ever see global warming, the apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years I’ll die from a routine infection because we’ve run out of antibiotics.’

“She said there was only one useful antibiotic left to treat gonorrhoea.

“’It is very serious, and it’s very serious because we are not using our antibiotics effectively in countries.’…

“The World Health Organization has warned the world is heading for a ‘post-antibiotic era’ unless action is taken. …

“Prof Pennington said the drugs companies had run out of options too as all the easy drugs had been made. ‘We have to be aware that we aren’t going to have new wonder drugs coming along because there just aren’t any.’”

My Comment: Nature puts “pressure” on us from all sides and will not leave us until we come in balance with it. The goal of evolution is to create all the conditions for the still, vegetative, and animal world for the realization of integral correction of the human being so that he complements nature by his conscious correction like the final, highest figure in the general “Lego” of nature. Until we begin to advance towards this goal, suffering will worsen.
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Opinion (Oxfam): “The world’s richest 100 people earned enough last year to end extreme poverty for the world’s poorest people four times over, Oxfam has said.

“The charity said an ‘explosion in extreme wealth’ was hindering efforts to tackle poverty, in a briefing released ahead of next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Releasing The Cost Of Inequality: How Wealth And Income Extremes Hurt Us All, Oxfam said the net income last year of the 100 richest people was 240 billion US dollars.

“In contrast, people in ‘extreme poverty’ live on less than 1.25 US dollars per day, and the charity called on world leaders to commit to reducing inequality to levels last seen in 1990.”

My Comment: No charities can correct the situation, and what arrives to the starving population does not contribute to its development, but rather leads to its degradation because it is not accompanied by integral education. So, even if all the rich had shared with all the poor, the world would not have become better. On the contrary, it would have become worse.

Until we eliminate the root cause of our problems— our egoistic nature—all of our actions, being egoistic, will always bring a negative result. The only problem is that the action is far removed from the result and we do not see their connection. We need to initially combine help with integral upbringing, not just education, and then we would attain the development of humanity, which would be capable of establishing itself in a new world.
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Opinion (Daniel Gros, Director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies): “At high-level gatherings of the European Union elite, one often hears the following type of statement: ‘Europe must integrate and centralize economic governance in order to defend its social model in an age of globalization.’ …

“But the claim that only deeper EU integration can save the ‘European’ social model from the onslaught of emerging markets is not true. Yes, globalization represents a challenge to all EU member states; but it is not clear how more integration would help them to confront it. More European economic governance is not a panacea.

“In fact, it is not even clear which European social model needs to be saved. There are enormous differences among EU members in terms of the size of their public sectors, the flexibility of their labor markets, and almost any socio-economic indicator that one can think of. The common elements that are usually identified with the ‘European’ social model are a quest for equality and a strong welfare state.

“But neither of the main problems confronting Europe’s social-security systems – slow economic growth and aging populations (a function of low fertility) – can be addressed at the European level. …

“The key to ensuring the future of Europe’s social-security systems, and thus its social model, is faster growth. And, again, it is difficult to see how more Europe would improve the situation. The obstacles to growth are well known, and have existed for a long time without being removed. The reason is quite simple: if there were a politically easy way to generate growth, it would have been implemented already.

“Moreover, most national policymakers have a tendency to blame ‘Brussels’ for all of their difficult choices, thus creating the impression at home that the economy would improve if economic affairs could be managed without EU interference. More integration is preached at the European level, but implicitly portrayed at home as an obstacle to growth.

“This double-speak on the part of national political elites is perceived as such by voters, whose trust in both national and EU institutions is naturally declining. The claim that Europe needs more integration to save its social model has long lost credibility. Integration is irrelevant to that question, and, in those areas where deeper integration really would benefit Europe, it appears to be the last thing that national leaders want.”

My Comment: It is necessary to look at the pressure put on us by objective natural forces of our development. No problem can be resolved internally within a country but only through their complete integration. But this assumes a preliminary change of general thinking from egoistic to integral thinking. This can be achieved within a few months by the method of integral education, which was not done before the formation of EU. But of course, the claim that integration will not save the EU is a profound mistake.
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In the News (from DailyMail): “Hugging a loved one isn’t just a great way to bond – it has several physical benefits as well.

“Scientists found that the hormone oxytocin was released into the blood stream when you hold a friend close. This lowers blood pressure, reduces stress and anxiety and can even improve your memory.

“However, you have to be selective over who you hug. Giving a polite embrace to someone you don’t know well can have the opposite effect, according to research from the University of Vienna.

“Oxytocin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, is primarily known for increasing bonding, social behaviour and closeness between parents, children and couples.

“Increased oxytocin levels have been found, for example, in partners in functional relationships. In women, it is also produced during the childbirth process and during breastfeeding in order to increase the mother’s bond with the baby.

“Hugging can also soften your personality. The researchers said someone who hugs loved ones often become more empathetic over time.

“Neurophysiologist Jürgen Sandkühler, said: ‘The positive effect only occurs, however, if the people trust each other, if the associated feelings are present mutually and if the corresponding signals are sent out.

“’If people do not know each other, or if the hug is not desired by both parties, its effects are lost.’”

My Comment: This is only the beginning of knowledge about the need to create a friendly environment for all people, and especially for children at home and at school! This is one of the first conditions of the method of integral education.
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In the News (from Plan and the Overseas Development Institute): “Girls are bearing the brunt of the global economic recession – being more likely to experience poverty, reduced life expectancy and drop out of school, according to a new report from Plan and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). …

“It says family poverty hits girls hardest – with only a 1% fall in GDP increasing infant mortality by 7.4 deaths per 1,000 girls versus 1.5 for boys.

“The findings also indicate that food shortages and malnutrition are more common among girls than boys. Women also reduce their own food consumption to become ‘shock absorbers’ for household security.

“As women go out to work longer hours for less money, more girls are pushed out of school and into filling the gaps at home with domestic work, into hazardous child labour or even transactional sex.”

My Comment: Integral education leads us to building a society of equals, providing everyone with basic needs, and everyone’s duty to participate in their own correction (education and upbringing). If we stop producing more than is essential for existence, we will get rid of unnecessary and harmful work and will be able to raise ourselves to the next level dictated by nature, the level of integral humanity.
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