In the News (from Oxfam’s Report): “According to a new report from Oxfam, a broken food system and environmental crisis are now reversing decades of progress in the fight against global hunger. Oxfam projects that spiraling food prices will create millions of hungry people unless we radically transform the way we grow and share food. …

“Oxfam identifies the various symptoms of our broken food system: growing hunger, flat lining crop yields, lack of fertile soil and water, and rising food crisis. The organization says that we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people. Naturally, poor countries will be affected dramatically more than industrialized nations. Oxfam projects that the price of staple food such as maize, already at an all time high, will more than double in the next 20 years. Half of this price increase will be directly linked to climate change. The world’s poorest people, who spend 80 percent of their income on food, will be hit in the harshest way.

“By 2050, Oxfam predicts that demand for food will rise by 70 percent. Yet our capacity to increase food production is in decline. The average growth rate in agricultural yield has declined by almost 50 percent since 1990, and it is set to decline even further in the coming decade. …Four global companies control the movement of the world’s food. Three corporations- Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill- control around 90 percent of the global grain trade. Their speculative activities drive volatile food prices and they profit from it. For example, in the first quarter of 2008, at the top of a global food crisis, Cargill’s profits were up by 86 percent. In 2011, Cargill is heading for its most profitable year on record. Needless to say, this speculation on food prices will further disrupt global food supplies.

“’For too long governments have put the interests of big businesses and powerful elites above the interest of the seven billion of us who produce and consume the food.’”

My Comment: Governments are powerless against corporations or they serve them. We have created a trap for ourselves—our egoism; although it’s destroying itself, it doesn’t want, like the Pharaoh, to release us from bondage, even if this leads to the destruction of Egypt—our egoistic world.
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Opinion (Avinash Dixit, Professor of Economics at Princeton University): “The hurricane analogy seems especially apt as I write this; the winds buffeting the world economy, assisted and in some respects even caused by policy follies, have already produced a Great Recession, with fears of more to come…

“At least one prediction can be made with high confidence; think of it as the central path in the cone. On it, in the course of the next century there will be several financial and economic crises…

“What about the extremes of the cone of uncertainty? United States and Europe are on the right edge. Dysfunctional politics and continued adverse demographic trends will trap these former economic giants into relative mediocrity in the world… From time to time they may enjoy a little growth, but much of the time their economies will stagnate while new dynamic economies of Asia, and parts of South America and Africa, grow faster. Europe and America will remain burdened by debt, both private and public, and suffer periodic bouts of inflation and currency crises…

“On the left edge of the cone of uncertainty we find China and India, whose inevitable and irresistible rise to world domination is being forecast so confidently today, in the early years of the 21st century. Regional and ethnic inequalities in each of these countries will explode into repeated civil conflicts. The police and armed forces needed to cope with this situation will take up large fractions of their governments’ resources, leaving little for productive social expenditures or public investments.”

My Comment: These are some tips and no solutions…
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In the News (from BBC News): “Although a protest vote against the stringent austerity measures enforced on Greeks had been widely expected, in the event the two main parties that had agreed the bailout terms, New Democracy (ND) and socialist Pasok, attracted less than a third of the vote.”

My Comment: If the leaders are doing everything just for themselves, now and in everything, what social maturity can be expected from the citizens who are losing everything!? If the government had showed an example of patriotic instead of egoistic attitude towards the fate of the country, it would have been able to lead the masses. And if it’s not able, then it’s also to blame for not educating the population.
[77972]

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Opinion (Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist and a professor at Columbia University): “The basic idea is: A few powerhouses like China, Germany, and Japan, plus some commodity-based economies, have thrived in a system where they do all the exporting, and a few countries like the US run massive trade deficits.

“But that system is coming to an end, as countries realize that their trade deficits are unsustainable, and seek to become trade surplus countries at the same time. Of course, not everyone can run surpluses, so this becomes a game of hot potato, with everyone pushing the deficit to someone else, via currency devaluation and other aggressive trade moves.

“An alternative framework for the global financial system: a global reserve system, reform in WTO allowing developing countries to engage in industrial policies, global financial market regulations and capital account management, with a focus on limiting destabilizing short-term capital flows, globally coordinated monetary policy, with globalization, effects of monetary policy.”

My Comment: How reality changes the opinions of economists. They can see before them, at a distance, the only solution: total unity, partial or complete. However, they don’t know how to make the first step toward this future until they meet us.
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Opinion (Michelle M. Duguid, Washington University, and Jack A. Goncalo, Cornell University): “Height is an oft used metaphor for power: Powerful people ‘feel like the big man on campus’ and ‘people look up to them.’ Development psychologists have suggested that a  metaphorical association between power and height may take root very early as, for instance, children are confronted with taller parents who have power over them and during adolescence taller children use their strength to physically coerce smaller children. This association continues to be reinforced as taller people earn higher salaries are more likely to be found in higher status occupations to emerge as leaders and to win presidential elections.
“This stream of research suggests that social perceivers judge the tall as more powerful than their shorter peers. For instance, when people expand themselves to take up more space, observers assume they are dominant, whereas when they constrict themselves, they are perceived by others as submissive. …

“In sum, there is strong evidence of a well learned positive association between power and height. An obvious prediction based on this research is that observers might use a target’s height to infer its power; not an unreasonable assumption given the robust correlation between height and power in naturalistic settings.”

“Here, we consider a more counterintuitive implication of the power-height association; that the psychological experience of power may cause individuals to actually feel taller than an objective measurement would indicate they really are.”

My Comment: In our egoistic world everything is measured quantitatively, the measure of egoism being “how much you get” (height, weight, distance, time, salary, etc.), while in the spiritual altruistic world, everything is measured qualitatively—the measure of bestowal. The difference is that receiving in our world is in the desire of a person himself while in the spiritual world it’s in the desires of others. Accordingly, there are no earthly sensations in the upper world, and that’s why the feeling of the gradual “disappearance of the body” is achieved there.
[77073]

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Opinion (Ashok Gadgil, Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory): “We are a global civilization, we have global operations, global economic activity, and we are dependent on the resources of the planet. Our civilization is so big and powerful that we can mindlessly destroy a thin film of life on our planet…

“As a result, the main task, in my opinion, is to find out what should be the laws of the new economy: consumption, population, industry, the management of society.

“Studies repeatedly show that the best way to control the population is to educate women. Education stops the oppression of women and solves a lot of social problems.

In nature, every kind wants to multiply and flourish, but all kinds live in harmony with other species on which they depend. And only a human being wants to take the whole area.

“This behavior cannot be a long-term pattern of behavior. We need to evolve, rather than to increase consumption, destroying the world. Today, few people think about future generations, everyone thinks about the current moment.”

My Comment: Kabbalah says that if we had liberated women from work and sent them to the “courses of integral education and upbringing,” we would have:

– been released from the burden of unemployment,

– ceased to produce unwanted goods,

– stopped depleting resources,

– stopped polluting the planet.

and women, freed from unnecessary work, and on the basis of acquired knowledge, would have dealt with education and upbringing of their men and children, and we would have found a solution to the crisis in all areas.
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In the News (from Socioline.ru): “Psychologists and sociologists have long assumed that antisocial behavior can spread like an epidemic, but this theory has remained controversial. Experiments have shown that people often violate the accepted norms of behavior when they see that others do that. The “bad example is contagious” is interpreted broadly: seeing that someone violated one of the accepted rules, people allow themselves to violate other rules.”

According to the “the broken-window theory” of James Q. Wilson and George l. Kelling:

“At the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in run-down ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

“But vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers — the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility — are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares.’ We suggest that ‘untended’ behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.”

My Comment: The environment shapes consciousness and then a person’s behavior, and he is not able to resist his surroundings. The ability to shape oneself according to your desire and decision comes down to finding a suitable environment that would form you. So, free will is to choose those who “mold” you.
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Opinion (Evgeny Abramyan, Russian scientist and futurologist): “In order to survive and preserve civilization there is practically no options for mankind but to stop the endless chain of destructive wars and learn to resolve contradictions by way of negotiations and compromise. To begin with, radical reforms need to be implemented in the system of education and in the media as they strongly influence people’s attitudes and behavioural patterns. …

“Propaganda and education directed at promoting tolerance, peacefulness and equality, suppression of aggressiveness, ethnic and religious hatred, and imposing limits on consumption where it is excessive. Use of the rapidly developing information technologies, global information networks and distant educations, for the purpose of mindset transformation.”

My Comment: Politicians and military leaders always used scientists for their purposes, throwing them scraps from the table and getting what they needed themselves. Once, Plato and Aristotle warned scientists against disclosing science to politicians, egoists. But scientists couldn’t resist, they wanted power and money themselves. Thus, they sold themselves and serve the rulers until this day. In reality, science must be hidden, as the science of Kabbalah, and become revealed only to the extent of its correct use.
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In the News (from Rutgers): “Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology. …

“‘The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, as well as some of the marine margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,’ said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work. ‘Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world’s coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world’s population…’

“This research highlights the sensitivity of the earth’s great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. ‘The natural state of the earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present.’”

My Comment: The Flood will not happen again (as God promised in the Bible); however, nature will put pressure on egoism and in every way force it to be corrected, until people take their place in its system.
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