Entries in the 'News' Category

Europeans Go Overseas

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from RightWorld.net): “Young Europeans with higher education are going overseas to seek employment, most likely in Argentina. The economic crisis, whose end is nowhere in sight, forces them to leave. Only a few years ago, Spain attracted thousands of Latin Americans who were moving to the Iberian Peninsula in search of a better life.

“Today, many young Spaniards move overseas. However Argentina, where European professionals can still find a suitable job relatively easily, also attracts Italians, Frenchmen, Brits and even Germans. They arrive on student or tourist visas. The only drawback is the fact that once in three months they have to visit neighboring Uruguay to get their passports stamped and thus extend their visas. The majority of new immigrants admit that they dream of returning to their homeland; they just do not know when it will happen.”

Comment: The world increasingly looks like the labor market, where millions of people are rushing in search of work. But this happens just to mix people further, blend their mentalities, and bring them closer to each other. Then, when all the “bubbles” burst and only necessary production remains with a billion unemployed individuals, people will understand that their correction, learning a new integral life, is their new job, their work on themselves, on the mistakes of nature. And meanwhile, nature leads us to greater communication and mutual understanding by the path of suffering.
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Hard Defaults Are Inevitable

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Kyle Bass, Hedge-fund manager, Hayman Capital Management): “In his latest investor letter Kyle Bass lays out his case that a wave of hard defaults is coming.

“His basic argument: The world is just saddled with too much debt.

“Throughout history, he says, total debt-to-GDP only ever breached 200% when nations were spending on war. Today we’re at 310%.

“Says Bass: ‘There is no savior large enough with a magical pool of capital to stave off this unfortunate conclusion to the global debt super cycle. We think hard defaults are imminent.’”

Comment: If we look at the crisis of humanity in this way, then, of course, there is no salvation. If we look from the perspective that the world finally will climb out of its dead-end “development,” and head not toward financial development, but toward a civilized, unified integral society, then it turns out that we are not in a crisis, but at a turning point between the fall and a great ascent to a brighter future. It would not be in competition, mutual destruction, and victories at any cost and to our own detriment, but in an integral, confident, peaceful flow of life.
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“New Icelandic Volcano Eruption Could Have Global Impact”

In the News (from BBC News): “Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland’s largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.

“Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland’s east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. …

“There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma. …

“The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept into the ocean by the resulting floods.

“The volume of water produced in a 1755 eruption equalled that of the world’s largest rivers combined. …

“In 1783 volcanoes in the area erupted continuously for eight months, generating so much ash, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide that it killed one in five Icelanders and half of the country’s livestock.

“‘And it actually changed the Earth’s climate,’ says Mr Cochran.

“’Folks talk about a nuclear winter – this eruption generated enough sulphuric acid droplets that it made the atmosphere reflective, cooled the planet for an entire year or more and caused widespread famine in many places around the globe.’”
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“Is This Really The End?”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Economist): “Unless Germany and the ECB move quickly, the single currency’s collapse is looming …

“A Euro break-up would cause a global bust worse even than the one in 2008-09. The world’s most financially integrated region would be ripped apart by defaults, bank failures and the imposition of capital controls…The euro zone could shatter into different pieces, or a large block in the north and a fragmented south. Amid the recriminations and broken treaties after the failure of the European Union’s biggest economic project, wild currency swings between those in the core and those in the periphery would almost certainly bring the single market to a shuddering halt. The survival of the EU itself would be in doubt.”

My Comment: There is anxiety and joy. The anxiety is due to the dramatic turn of events, and the joy is due to the fact that they take place. There is a hope that the “patient” will finally listen to the “doctor” and will not accept the “band-aid,” but only the real medication.
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Collective Intelligence

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Matt Ridley, science writer and former Economist journalist): “Brilliant people, be they anthropologists, psychologists or economists, assume that brilliance is the key to human achievement. They vote for the cleverest people to run governments, they ask the cleverest experts to devise plans for the economy, they credit the cleverest scientists with discoveries, and they speculate on how human intelligence evolved in the first place.

“They are all barking up the wrong tree. The key to human achievement is not individual intelligence at all. The reason human beings dominate the planet is not because they have big brains….

“Human achievement is entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brains together through the division of labor — through trade and specialization — that human society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, carrying capacity, technological virtuosity and knowledge base of the species….

“Human achievement is based on collective intelligence — the nodes in the human neural network are people themselves. By each doing one thing and getting good at it, then sharing and combining the results through exchange, people become capable of doing things they do not even understand. As the economist Leonard Read observed in his essay ‘I, Pencil’ (which I’d like everybody to read), no single person knows how to make even a pencil — the knowledge is distributed in society among many thousands of graphite miners, lumberjacks, designers and factory workers.

“That’s why, as Friedrich Hayek observed, central planning never worked: the cleverest person is no match for the collective brain at working out how to distribute consumer goods.”

My Comment: Namely the creation and management of society through the collective mind is the next stage of human development to which the crisis leads us. Not only the collective mind but acquiring a general collective feeling is the key to mutual understanding and harmony in the emerging integral society. It should be introduced to people gradually, through integral education.
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Couples Spend Less Than 30 Minutes A Day Together

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from the Mirror): “The daily grind is leaving stressed-out couples with just 30 minutes of quality time together each day.

“A survey found 30% of people thought their relationships suffered as a result.

“And 89% felt they would get on better if they saw each other more, by having dinner or going out, for example.

“Eatwelshlamb.co.uk, which carried out the poll, said: ‘We encourage couples to make sure there is at least time for a meaningful conversation.’”

My Comment: Nature will force us to restore order in our lives. Through penalties, we will find out that there is no way other than balance with nature. Through suffering, we will realize that we need to comply with the law of nature, rather than invent our own. It is a pity that humanity learns by long and bitter experience.
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“BRICs No Less Vulnerable To Global Risks”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (from Reuters): “Risk consultancy Maplecroft said its Global Risk Atlas, which highlights potentially destabilising factors in the world’s key growth economies, found that Brazil, Russia, India and China were no less susceptible to potential security or economic shocks than in previous years….

“For some of them, governance and reform have not kept pace with economic growth, leaving them vulnerable to potential risks such as terrorism or climate change, the survey found.

“According to the report, India and Russia are among 41 countries classified as ‘high risk’, with poor governance, systemic corruption and terrorism identified as particular risks.

“China, meanwhile, is also exposed to security issues, but is classified as ‘medium risk’ due to the unlikelihood of social or political upheaval on a national scale, the report said.

“Brazil, also ranked ‘medium risk’, is considered the least susceptible to global risks of the four BRICs, due in part to the stability of its political structure and record of strong governance.”

My Comment: The crisis will spare no one because it is global and will eventually lead to the need for all countries to change goals and development programs, to replace the material development of society of unlimited consumption  with a society of reasonable consumption, and instead of chasing fulfillment in shopping, fulfilling oneself above our life with what a human seeks subconsciously.
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Income Inequality Is Inversely Correlated With Happiness

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Shigehiro Oishi, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia): “Using General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less national income inequality than in the years with more national income inequality. We further demonstrated that this inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust.”

My Comment: According to many studies, happiness is measured relative to others, and that is why, no doubt, it will be optimally felt in a society of equal members.
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Europe’s Rating Continues to Decline

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Forbes): “Moody’s was last to the downgrade party, announcing on Monday it was axing the sovereign credit rating of six European nations including Italy, Spain, and Portugal. At the same time, the credit rating agency put three triple-A rated nations (the U.K., France, and Austria) under negative outlook, signaling they too could lose the precious, yet arbitrary, seal of approval.”

My Comment: Now, it is only a matter of time: either the crisis will change the EU or the EU will become smarter, reject the old system, and take the course toward full integration.

They will need to do the following:

  1. Introduce a system of integral education and upbringing across the EU,
  2. Develop a new economic system of reasonable consumption and equitable distribution,
  3. Plan gradual implementation of points 1 and 2 in all EU countries.

Surely until the EU leaders and a new single EU government begins to attend to these questions, the systemic crisis will begin to weaken.
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“Economic Models And The Apologetics Of Greed”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (John Kozy, PhD, professor): “Offshoring production to underdeveloped nations gives needy people jobs, increases their incomes, reduces poverty, and expands their nations’ GNPs. It also enables people in developed nations to purchase products produced offshore at lower prices enabling them to consume a wider range of things…

“Yes, the wages were better than those that could have been earned before, but they weren’t much benefit. Why? Because when the paychecks began to arrive, the local landlords and vendors increased prices on everything, so just as before, all of their incomes went to pay for basic necessities. The landlords and vendors got the money; the workers were not better off… But, of course, the country’s GNP was better, which is all that matters to economists who still claim that economy is improving…

“Two conclusions follow from this scenario: employment alone is not a sufficient condition for prosperity; full employment can exist in an enslaved society alongside abject poverty, and an increasing GNP does not mean that an economy is getting better… Those numbers mean nothing.

“Economists build models by what they call ‘abstraction.’ But it’s really subtraction. They look at a real world situation and subtract from it the characteristics they deem unessential. The result is a bare bones description consisting of what economists deem economically essential. Everything that is discarded (not taken into consideration in the model) is called an ‘externality’… Since externalities are excluded from all economic models and can be expected to change after any model is implemented, all economic models necessarily fail.”

My Comment: We are in the process of exposing this system and due to our realization of the laws of nature and the law of business opposite to it, we will understand the system in which we want to live. Such a system can be only one: a society with equitable distribution of reasonably limited goods and services.

Fulfillment is achieved by integrating and understanding the meaning of life and raising the whole society to the next level: an integral society in which everyone feels the next level of existence in total unity.
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