In the News (from ScienceDaily): “A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.

“‘[The] experiment found that the realm of the sacred — whether it’s a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics — is a distinct cognitive process’…The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

“Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits. …

“Research participants who reported more active affiliations with organizations, such as churches, sports teams, musical groups and environmental clubs, had stronger brain activity in the same brain regions that correlated to sacred values.”

Comment: Decisions regarding what is correct and incorrect are established by the environment and have a greater weight than individual decisions regarding pleasure and reward. That is why the only way to change oneself is to choose an appropriate environment.
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In the News (from The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer): “The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer sees an unprecedented nine-point global decline in trust in government. In twelve countries, it trails business, media, and non-governmental organizations as the least trusted institution. …

“Throughout the world, people blamed their governments – more than any other institution – for the financial and political crises they endured in 2011. In seventeen of the 25 countries surveyed, government is now trusted by less than half to do what is right. In Europe, trust in government dropped by more than ten points in France, Spain, and Italy.

“Driven by steep drops in countries in the heart of the eurozone economic crisis, trust in business fell three points globally to 53 percent. …

“The 2012 Trust Barometer’s deep dive into the 16 attributes of trust finds that the factors responsible for shaping current business trust levels (47 percent) are largely tied to business competence – and that those that will build future trust are more societally focused. Listening to customer needs, treating employees well, placing customers ahead of profits, and having ethical business practices are all considered more important than delivering consistent financial returns – and indicate that the path forward entails continuing to do the basics well while also adopting shared values.”

My Comment: People are becoming increasingly aware that the ongoing crisis is a “crisis from above,” a crisis of the entire world of the past. This is indicated by the absence of clear plans about how to resolve it. This is primarily a crisis of development, the death of a consumer society, the race after the percentage of annual growth, deliberate accelerated depreciation of goods, production of unnecessary things and pressure to consume more.

While people are concerned about the economic crisis, there are crises of education and upbringing, and government and family. That is why this is a crisis of the entire system of our civilization.
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In 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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Opinion (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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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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In 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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Opinion (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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In 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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Opinion (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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Opinion (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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