Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the necessary skills for 21st century students and future leaders?“

Future leaders will need to know how to unite people above their differences and divisions. Of course, this does not mean using force against people’s will, as it has been done in the past. Instead, we will need leaders who will seek to unite absolutely everyone.

The primal importance of unifying all people is tough to understand, since we currently live in “us versus them” scenarios. However, with further development, we will need to reach new heights of understanding how nature works inside and outside us, and by doing so, realize how to rise above human nature and enter into positive connection with others.

Our positive connection with each other will harmonize us with nature’s perfectly connected and altruistic quality, and by achieving balance with nature, we will experience a whole new kind of life—happiness, health, confidence, and safety, the likes of which we currently cannot imagine.

Future leaders will have to be equipped with knowledge, wisdom and experience in rising above their egoistic nature in order to positively connect with others, as well as the ability to guide others to do the same.

They must perceive and sense nature’s altruistic and integral nature, its purpose and value, understand the process humanity is undergoing, and the moment in human development that we have reached: that the time has come for us humans to balance with nature by uniting above our differences and divisions.

Future leaders should be experienced in the paths that can guide people to unite above their divisive drives, and know how to draw the necessary strength to aide the process of connection with others above the cunning human ego.

Other than basic survival needs, human nature is egoistic, a desire to enjoy at the expense of others, while on the contrary, the surrounding nature is altruistic, operating to bind everything and everyone together. Therefore, in our connections, we will need to invert our nature from egoistic to altruistic, and by doing so, we will resemble the interconnectedness and interdependence of the surrounding nature.

Future leaders will thus need to be able to guide people to undergo the transformation from egoistic to altruistic, hateful to loving, and divisive to positively connected. Moreover, since they will rise above the human ego in positive connection with others, and project altruism, concern, consideration, and responsibility toward others, then they would also become concerned about the whole of humanity, not only their own country, region, city, or other grouping that they lead directly. By caring that humanity as a whole unites above its differences and divisions, and placing their own direct area of responsibility within the wider envelope of humanity’s perfect connection—like how cells and organs function within their host organisms—then the world will be on course to discovering the perfection that stems from our entering into balance with nature.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do you think the story of Jonah and the whale is true or a metaphor?“

The story of Jonah explains that we need to place the benefit of others ahead of our own.

It starts with God giving Jonah a mission, which is to pass a message to the people of Nineveh that they need to repent their evil ways, and change their attitudes to each other from hatred to love.

Jonah, however, dissatisfied with the mission, escapes it by boarding a ship and sailing away. His getaway sparks off a storm. The sailors eventually comprehend that Jonah is behind the storm, and as a result, they push him overboard. In the ocean, Jonah becomes swallowed by a whale, spends three days and three nights in its belly, and afterward gets discharged to land, where he then moves forth to Nineveh to complete his mission.

Jonah’s story holds immense significance to the Jewish people, and all the more so today than ever before.

The Jewish people, like Jonah, have an inescapable mission. It is the same mission today as it was in ancient Babylon, when Abraham united them as a nation upon the foundation of “love your neighbor as yourself”: to generate Jewish unity in order to become a positive example of connection for humanity, i.e., “a light unto the nations.”

The Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort of gateway by which the sparks of purity would shine upon the whole of the human race the world over. And these sparks multiply daily, like one who gives to the treasurer, until they are filled sufficiently, that is, until they develop to such an extent that they can understand the pleasantness and tranquility that are found in the kernel of love of others. – Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Item 24.

Over the course of history, the Jewish people have felt how the interaction between them and other nations functions: During times of Jewish unity, e.g., the First Temple, both Jews and humanity prospered; and on the contrary, during times when the Jewish people failed to rise in unity above their differences and divisions, anti-Semitism reared its ugly head together with various crises that struck the world.

As time passes, and the Jewish people continue failing to acknowledge their mission—to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above differences (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to become “a light unto the nations”—they head more and more toward a situation where unity appears to become a grave impossibility.

Jewish self-hatred gets out of hand as divisions between secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox, pro-Israel and anti-Israel Jews become painfully apparent. Unknowingly, the failure of the Jewish people to realize their mission heads them into a downward spiral of unfounded hatred, and prepares the conditions for an enormous storm.

During the Holocaust, the sailors in the Jonah story dressed up as Nazis; during the pogroms, they acted as Russians and Eastern Europeans; and during the Spanish Inquisition, they became Catholics.

In our era, we have just come out of the year with the highest recorded anti-Semitic crimes and threats in the United States, and a decade of anti-Semitic normalization around the world. Just after a spate of anti-Semitic crimes in New York at the close of 2019, concerned Jewish community members, lawmakers and politicians started expressing that a “slow-rolling pogrom” was unfolding in New York, and that the next Holocaust could take place in America—concepts that had previously seemed unthinkable in relation to Jews in America.

In the last few years, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitic crimes and threats running parallel to a sharp increase in many other problems: depression, suicide, drug abuse, social division, terrorism, and natural disasters, to name a few. The more humanity experiences crises and problems, the more their fingers point at the Jews as the source of their problems.

The Jonah story describes the roots of anti-Semitism.

Jonah’s escape from the mission he was granted describes the Jewish people’s escape from their role to unite above their divisions and exemplify that unity for humanity.

The sailors’ realization of Jonah as the cause of the storm, and the throwing of Jonah overboard today describes the rise of the Jews being blamed for all kinds of problems people experience.

The time will come when the Jews will have to be thrown overboard, and enter into the whale, i.e., undergo a serious scrutiny of what it means to be Jewish: Why do so many people hate the Jews? Also, how can the Jewish people improve the situation both for themselves and the world?

The question is only in how much suffering the Jewish people will need to experience until they reach that self-scrutiny: Is the current amount of anti-Semitism enough to spur on this self-scrutiny? Or, will the Jewish people continue escaping their mission, and will that suffering need to take on proportions of world wars and holocausts?

When the Jewish people agree to accept their role—to “love your friend as yourself” and to be “a light unto the nations”—will they and the world experience a new tendency toward peace, harmony and happiness, i.e. the whale that brings them to the safe shore, to Nineveh.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Could you tell me something about collective consciousness?“

Consciousness exists in the collective.

We all exist in the collective consciousness similarly to how a holographic item, when it encounters light, seemingly divides a single light into different spectra.

However, the extent to which we realize collective consciousness relies on the extent to which we input each of our individual thoughts and desires into it.

While we each exist within collective consciousness, our comprehension depends on the extent of our engagement with such consciousness.

Therefore, the holographic picture exists both on collective and individual scales, as we each potentially hold the entire collective picture within each of us individually.

Reaching awareness of collective consciousness requires opening ourselves up to the collective desire and thought that exists outside of our own individual desires and thoughts.

We have the ability to pierce through our individualistic perceptions by connecting with others, i.e., aiming to feel and fulfill their desires at least to the same extent as we each aim to fulfill our own desires.

By conducting ourselves in such a manner—over time and through various states that make us face the boundary between our individualistic perceptions with the collective one, and also by organizing our environment to support our choice of the collective picture over our individualistic one time and again—we then gradually discover a wider world.

We discover that wider world within our own thoughts and desires, i.e., within us, but in that space, we feel and act toward the collective as if to ourselves.

When we reach such a state, we realize pure harmony, happiness and the sensation of eternity.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is this world going in a right direction?“

The world has been through enough preliminary phases, including regimes tilted to the far-left and the far-right, and it has experienced a great share of turbulence, turmoil and mistakes.

Now the impending question is: What path will we take next?

Over the course of humanity’s history, we were constantly trying to work out what way to head next: to the right or to the left.

What are we left with today?

We have reached a stalemate in every field of human engagement, personally, socially, educationally, economically, ecologically and globally.

We worked with all the systems we could devise, and ascertained that there is no single system or plan remaining that could steer us confidently into a bright future.

We have entered a deadlock with no vision of a better future motivating us, and also nothing to goad us forward from behind either.

Our era is thus characterized by the end of our egoistic trials and tribulations. The human ego gracefully stood behind every human endeavor, and every prior breakthrough and progress, giving just enough fuel for it to unfold and reveal how it fell short in providing lasting fulfillment and happiness.

While engrossed in our ego, we can either receive egoistically or give egoistically. With an egoistic intention lying behind any act of receiving or giving, destruction is the inevitable conclusion.

Nazi Germany was a harsh example of a regime based on receiving egoistically taken to an extreme, and on the other end of the spectrum, communist Russia was also a harsh example of a regime based on giving egoistically taken to an extreme. Both led to devastation.

We have squeezed out all the juices from these egoistic forms.

We now need to leave our egos alone, acknowledge that they lead us to no positive outcome, and build a new level above them.

This new level should be one of giving above receiving, and connecting positively above detachment and estrangement to each other.

In order to build this new level, we need access to a new kind of fuel and motivation, which doesn’t emerge naturally in our egoistic desires and thoughts.

Such access can be granted via a new method of education—a method of connection—that shows us how we can develop positive connections above our egoistic differences and divisions.

If some person, organization or movement wishes to pull people to a certain direction, to the left or to the right, then it is bound to fail, and we have the examples of such failure in Nazi Germany and communist Russia.

Today, we have the additional advantage of such experiences—that we can see how our egos devise systems that ultimately divide one people from another, and that such systems are setup for failure.

Recognizing the failure of working according to our egos, we would thus be wise to accept a new kind of education: one that guides us on how to connect harmoniously above our egos.

Connection above the ego is the world’s only path left.

This path means that we accept the fact that humanity is a single whole, and that we are all parts of this whole, as cells and organs in a human body. If a single cell takes from other cells more than it needs to survive, then it becomes cancerous and spreads disease throughout the body.

Today, we experience such disease as myriad problems and crises spreading throughout humanity. And they all share the same root: each person locked in their narrow egoistic corner, acting in a tug-of-war battle with everyone else.

We thus need to conclude that the human ego, which has based all of our development until today, has reached its expiry date.

Using the ego unabated—with no inclination to acknowledge how it constantly operates on us, and with no motion to rise above it—delivers us all the problems we experience.

The days of moving back and forth between left and right have reached their dead-end. Today, our survival, at the very least, and moreover, our ability to draw motivation, happiness, success and confidence from a fresh new source of vitality, depends on us rising above our egoistic nature, period.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we stop the spreading of the coronavirus around the world?“

In order to stop the coronavirus’ spread, we first need to accurately diagnose the disease itself. That is, our progress to a better and healthier state depends on our correct diagnosis of our current state.

Moreover, in addition to an accurate diagnosis of the disease, we would be wise to stop expecting that the disease will simply disappear, or that a wonder medicine will appear, and then everything will be okay.

If we could peek deeper into how nature functions at its causal levels, then we would see how it acts toward us, and what it wants from us, through this pandemic.

The pain, anguish and long-term discomfort afflicted upon humanity through this virus is in order for us to wake up to the discovery of the disease’s cause at the level of human relation—that our very detachment and estrangement from each other is behind the virus.

The sooner we understand that our divisive attitudes to each other spawn every agony that we suffer, including the coronavirus, then the sooner we would be able to focus our sights on fixing such attitudes.

I still see, however, that we have learned nothing from the pandemic: we continue expecting the solution to come through a vaccine, and we also keep trying to revive our pre-coronavirus egoistic-consumerist lifestyles that we had, pitting ourselves up against each other in an ongoing competition for narrow individualistic visions of material well-being.

However, the longer we fail to revise how we relate to each other, then the more the coronavirus (or other viruses queuing up after it) will gnaw away at us. The pandemic will remain because today, nature is obliging us to upgrade our attitudes to each other.

Therefore, stopping the spread of the coronavirus first requires understanding how our hatred of each other is its ultimate cause. When we relate to it in such a way, then we have already made a significant step to treating the disease, as half of a disease’s cure is in its correct diagnosis.

This is why those with a deeper understanding of nature exert a lot of effort in explaining this message to humanity, because they understand that the more humanity hears this message, the quicker it can heal from the pandemic, and progress to a better world with more harmonious relations.

We don’t need coronavirus vaccines. Also, if we look at the intention behind the countries and experts in the race to be the first to release the coronavirus vaccine, then we find no pure intention to heal humanity, but an intention convoluted with egoistic motives for wealth, pride and power. We can thus expect no positive progress to emerge from anything made with such egoistic motives, vaccines included.

Instead of spending millions of dollars and hundreds of hours to look for a vaccine to inject into our bodies, we would be wiser to seek the vaccine that already exists inside us—that if we realize positive, kind and loving relations to each other, then we will stop the spread of the coronavirus, as well as myriad other diseases and problems that pollute our lives today.

We have such a “vaccine” in our hearts, and we are given an opportunity to inject it into each other at every moment. Either we let our divisive attitudes involuntarily act through us and inject poison into each other, or we each accept our mutual responsibility upon each other, and thus inject the antidote to the virus into each other by aiming to care and love each other above our divisive attitudes.

Love, unification and togetherness above division is the antidote to all disease. We could test this solution similarly to how we setup clinical trials for vaccines, i.e., by creating labs that focus on leading people who are alien to each other into a newfound internal closeness and heartfelt connection, with the objective of witnessing how they would become immune to the virus.

We have yet to internalize the extent to which we have entered a new era, one of much tighter interdependence and interconnectedness, and that no treatments outside of our attitudes to each other work to fix anything in this era.

From today onward, we will experience more and more blows in order to illuminate precisely this point within us—our attitudes to each other—which needs changing.

Therefore, stopping the spread of the coronavirus requires diagnosing the cause of the virus in our egoistic attitudes to each other, and that positive attitudes hold the remedy for the virus and for all other problems in our lives.

Such knowledge already acts to heal us.

Positive relations are the source of all that is positive in our lives, and the lack of such relations is the source of all that is negative in our lives. Likewise, the coronavirus is a phenomenon that has appeared in order to teach us this principle.

Whether we agree or disagree, it costs nothing to try it out, since it already exists within us. We need not spend money or efforts doing anything with our hands or legs in order to try and find the virus’ cure. I am certain that the moment we implement an upgrade of our attitudes to each other, then we will see the coronavirus’ spread come to a halt.

Above photo by Thanos Pal on Unsplash.

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Question: Why is someone else’s death so attractive to people? We see that when an accident occurs, many onlookers gather around. Why is this so interesting?

Answer: It is pure phycology. Something unknown, complicated, something that concerns everyone happens, and this is the reason it is so attractive.

Question: Can it be considered weakness if a person thinks about death or is afraid of it?

Answer: No. This is a natural state of man.

Question: What is your attitude regarding suicide?

Answer: Negative. I don’t understand people who do such things.

Question: Do you believe that medicine will be able to prevent death in the future?

Answer: No, never.

Question: What kind of death is ideal in your opinion?

Answer: When a person fully corrects himself, even in the last moment of his life.

Question: Is there life after the death of the physical body?

Answer: Of course. It is a different form of existence.

Question: Do you believe that the origin of life is from outer space?

Answer: No. I don’t think there is life in outer space.

Question: Can a person live several hundred years in the biological body?

Answer: Yes, he can, but what for?

Question: Is cremation permissible, in your opinion?

Answer: This is a personal matter. In principle, from the perspective of man’s spiritual development, what happens with the corporeal body after death is totally unimportant.
[269837]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

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Question: What is the best way to start personal growth? What will help us start improving?

Answer: It is necessary to identify what I am really drawn to and not what is a consequence of being in a certain environment that instilled its values in me. I must find out what I am personally yearning for.

Question: Are there concepts of “early” or “late” in self-development?

Answer: Of course. Preferably sooner rather than later. But in any case, I will have to realize myself.

Question: What is self-realization for you?

Answer: Knowledge of your soul and its full realization.

Question: What is the difference between self-realization and the satisfaction of needs?

Answer: Satisfaction of needs is an animalistic existence, and self-realization is attaining equivalence to the Creator.

Question: At what age did you begin to seriously engage in self-realization and self-development?

Answer: I think it was only after I found my teacher, Rabash, when I was already 33 years old.

Question: How should one decide who to be, how to earn one’s living?

Answer: It does not matter what your occupation is. We come to this world not to somehow earn our living and realize ourselves within its framework, but to realize ourselves in relation to the Creator.

Question: Where can we find motivation for change and personal growth?

Answer: The environment. It is said that envy, jealousy, and desire for honor pull a person out of all states.

Question: What is more effective for personal growth: forcing yourself to leave your comfort zone or, to the contrary, listening to yourself and doing what you want?

Answer: Neither. It is imperative to enter the environment that will take you to the next level of development.

Question: How important is positive thinking for personal development?

Answer: In general, it is important. But at the same time, one must understand that there is also a critical view of this.

Question: If your close environment has chosen the path absent of self-development, is it worth running away from them so as not to become the same as they are?

Answer: You should always look for an environment that would push you forward.

Question: Why am I not applying what I know? Why are we made this way? What is stopping us?

Answer: It is the egoistic desire to hide so that I would not be in any way humiliated or defeated. We are hindered by the fear of losing some small egoistic obstacles if we engage in a higher purpose.

Question: How do we make sure that doubt and uncertainty do not hinder but help us grow and develop?

Answer: You must be very confident of yourself and, undoubtedly, aware of your strengths and capabilities to achieve the highest goal.

Question: How do you react to obstacles preventing you from reaching your goal?

Answer: I am sure that I can somehow get around them if I correctly check my goal and myself.

Question: What life achievements are related to self-realization?

Answer: Arrange the entire pyramid of needs correctly, and you will see how much simpler everything becomes.

Question: Is there a difference in self-realization of a man and a woman?

Answer: Yes. But it is the same with every man and every woman.

Question: A person has all his potential from the very beginning. You just need to start studying and discovering it. And this can only be done through the environment. Is this the technique of personal growth?

Answer: It all depends on the environment. Therefore, we must try with all our might to create the right society around us.

Question: Do you think that all psychological methods, when a person works on himself in order to improve his qualities, do not relate to realizing himself as human? Only in the right environment he can become human?

Answer: The psychological method is good until the level of similarity to the Creator is reached. And in our time, it will no longer work.
[269450]
From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

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Question: Why does the ego subjugate only to fear?

Answer: What else can it subjugate to? The ego wants to fill itself with everything except fear, except the feeling of emptiness. This is the only thing it fears.

Question: How can we nevertheless connect such incompatible attributes like egoism and altruism?

Answer: Egoism and altruism can connect only one above the other. This is called faith above reason, when altruism is more important than egoism. This is what you determine when you study the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: If man is the force of bestowal and woman is the force of reception, why are there so many couples of the same gender?

Answer: First of all, the question is formulated incorrectly. From a spiritual perspective, men and women differ only by their egoistic attributes. In men, they manifest themselves in their own way and in women in their own way. But they are both egoistic. Couples represent animalistic coupling of people and it has nothing to do with spirituality.

Question: What is love and friendship according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: Love and friendship relate only to people with whom I develop spiritually within my Kabbalistic group. Other than that, there is family and  children, but these are totally different mutual daily relations.

Question: How do you relate to information about chip implants and about 5G?

Answer: All this has nothing to do with spirituality, and therefore, it does not interest me.

Question: Will money disappear in the future? And if, for example, you have two apartments, will you have to give away one of them?

Answer: You owe nothing to anyone. And money will not disappear. It may change its essence; there may not be bills or coins any more but something else. But it will not disappear because it is equivalent to communication.

Question: What role will medicine play in the near future? What values should it develop on?

Answer: Only on the value of preserving and supporting people’s lives so that they can ascend in spirituality.

Question: Are you sure that you answer all the questions you are asked correctly?

Answer: I am sure!

Question: How can I force myself to restrain my emotions when they disobey and spill out of me?

Answer: Let them out, there is nothing wrong in that. Are we not human? After all, it happens to everyone, including me. It is better to let them out.

Question: Which professions are the most altruistic?

Answer: The most altruistic profession is being a teacher of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: How many people who have already corrected their ego can change the world and when will it happen?

Answer: Basically, the world is changing with all of us. Each of us constantly changes the world either by suffering or by good deeds. Don’t worry, think about your correct participation in this process and everything else will work out.

Question: How can one keep his internal religious belief and develop the desire to correct oneself and the whole world?

Answer: What does that have to do with religion? I don’t have such an environment and have nothing to do with religion. Therefore, I cannot advise you on that.

Question: Do our thoughts impact the world?

Answer: They definitely do! Nothing other than our thoughts impacts the world. The world and everything in it is a thought. We exist in a thought and there is nothing other than that around us: no matter, no motion. It is all thoughts.

Question: The more I delve into the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the more doubts I have, starting from the question whether what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches is true to the question whether I will be able to reach the end and ascend above the ego. What can you advise people like me?

Answer: Continue to doubt, and do it harder, because this is the only way you will reach the truth.
[267712]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/17/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some basic understandings you should have before reading the Zohar?“

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), who wrote the Sulam (Ladder) commentary to The Zohar, wrote four introductions to The Zohar in order to provide us with a sturdy foundation for approaching the book.

Without thoroughly understanding the concepts that Baal HaSulam describes in these introductions, it is impossible to reach an accurate understanding of The Zohar, as well as approach its reading effectively to advance toward its attainment.

The Zohar describes the spiritual world, i.e., the desires, intentions and actions of the created being when in contact with the Creator.

Since we exist in an opposite corporeal reality, we understand nothing about the spiritual world.

We are born and raised in an egoistic human nature, which aims to benefit itself alone, with no consideration of others.

Thus, when we read The Zohar with no prior preparation, it appears as if it is written in a foreign language (even if we read it in our native tongue), with strange fables and other depictions that seem to be codified.

No matter how much we try to make connections with what we read in The Zohar, if we have no perception and sensation of the spiritual world, through an opposite giving sense to our inborn receptive senses, then we have no access to understand and feel what The Zohar truly describes.

In addition, both The Zohar itself and various Kabbalists discuss the notion of The Zohar’s revelation in our times, that specifically in our era, more and more people will feel a need for what The Zohar contains.

If our egoistic nature of receiving for self-benefit alone was replaced with a spiritual one of love and bestowal, we would immediately understand what The Zohar describes. Reading The Zohar with such an inclination would then reveal more and more layers of the spiritual world to us.

However, is there anything we can get from The Zohar while we lack the spiritual nature, locked in the human ego?

What we can get is called “Segula,” a special kind of remedy. Reading the book, not understanding a single word, attracts forces from the spiritual world it describes. If we approach reading The Zohar with the intention to transform our nature—from egoistic to altruistic, corporeal to spiritual—then the book serves to illuminate upon us a special light called “Ohr Makif” (“surrounding light”), which acts on us to ignite that transformation.

The spiritual forces from the reading work on us, gradually leading us to the revelation of the spiritual world, to access the quality of love and bestowal that fills reality.

Since The Zohar was written by a group who attained the highest degrees of attainment of the spiritual world, and who shared a nature of love and bestowal, then only by attaining a similar nature can we understand and feel what The Zohar depicts.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the reason for so much violent crime in the USA?“

There has indeed been an upsurge of violence recently in America. For instance, murders in Chicago and New York are currently 50 percent higher now than what they were at this time last year, and then there are also the protests-turned-riots in Portland, which show no end in sight.

The deeper reason behind the violence is the alienation and estrangement at the core of today’s American society—the feeling of not sharing the same views, nationhood and ideologies with others—clashing with an increased interdependence and interconnectedness that demands more unification.

And we can expect the situation to get worse if the country’s divisions are left untreated.

Instead of rummaging through the reasons for the violence, I’d like to shift the emphasis to the solution…

The solution is that Americans need to work out how to live together.

On one hand, violence, racism and politically-fueled division extends far back into America’s history, but on the other hand, it has never been as extreme and widespread as it is today.

It is as if problems that were lurking in the shadows for many years have exploded into the limelight, with much more resentment and hatred added in the mix.

Therefore, in addition to inevitably dealing with the problems on a case-by-case basis, there should be a more enveloping shift to develop mutual responsibility and consideration in American society above the divisions and differences.

What this means in practice is that every citizen should be cared for by having a respectable living standard secured in exchange for their participation in activities that aim to increase unity above the divisions.

Such a formula would allow American society to move in a new positive direction, as it would be aligned with the interdependent nature of our times.

As the past paradigm of materialistic individualism that America thrived on transitions to a new era where success depends on more unity and cooperation, the times are calling on Americans to emphasize what unites them above their differences. If Americans fail to meet this new challenge, then we can expect a historic decline of the superpower into a third world country status.

For the time being, many people are focused on pointing out the perceived shortcomings of the views that oppose their own, and would seemingly be happy to destroy those who hold contrary views. But there is no effective long-term solution in such an approach.

Like any live organism that is composed of many systems that have pluses and minuses, conductors and resistors, we have to learn how to rise above the level of our individual “cells” and “organs” that we exist in, and see the whole organism to which we all belong. We would then see the need for opposing opinions and their role in balancing society. However, more importantly, we would see how the focus on unity above division is of utmost importance in discovering a newfound social harmony.

Therefore, America’s positive thrust forward from its current divisiveness is in each member of society internalizing the mutual dependence that all Americans share. The more that everyone feels the dependence that they have on others, and likewise, the importance of their own influence on others, then the more everyone will have to recognize both sides of the coin as belonging to the same coin.

It is thus my hope that Americans will rise to the current test of the time and start feeling the need to shift the emphasis to unite above the divisions. Their positive future depends solely on this.

Above photo by Harrison Moore on Unsplash

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