Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are we overreacting to the coronavirus?“

A tiny particle that our naked eye cannot see has infected and killed hundreds of thousands of people, and shaken the world’s socio-economic foundations.

Are we overreacting to this virus, or is it the dawn of a new system of human relations that was inevitable one way or another?

Before the coronavirus stormed into our lives, we lived on a principle where we each sought to profit from the other, and the better we could exploit others, the more successful we could be.

We were born into and raised in such a system, and tried to make our way as best as we could. While doing so, we became increasingly toxic to each other, and also to the world.

Then, the coronavirus emerged.

The coronavirus has shown us a clear example that when we calm down our struggle to rise above each other, our ecological environment quickly recovers.

Would we have known about that had the coronavirus not entered our lives?

I don’t think so.

Therefore, in addition to maintaining social distancing conditions and seeking a cure, we would be wise to adapt ourselves to a new system of human relations that the virus alerts us to.

What new system of human relations would that be?

It would be one where we primarily acknowledge the necessity to supply for everyone’s needs.

Moreover, reaching such awareness would be achieved through learning about our interdependence throughout today’s global human society, and via such learning, increase our concern for each other.

Instead of merely wishing for ourselves and our own families to be covered, we would increase our concern to others: seeking that all members of society would have the required quantity and quality of food, housing, healthcare and education that they need.

In addition to making sure life’s essentials are in order for human society in general, the new system of human relations would replace the old paradigm of keeping up with the materialistic Joneses with a new paradigm of keeping up with the socially contributing Joneses. In other words, instead of valuing the material possessions we can get our hands on, and wanting “bigger, better and faster” things than our neighbors and friends, our values would shift to appreciating each other’s contribution to society.

We would still compete in such a system, but our competition would be one that becomes increasingly beneficial for society, i.e., by competing to contribute to society the most value that we possibly could.

The coronavirus period presents us with a unique opportunity to make a shift in that direction, from a self-centered world to one where we place society’s benefit at the center.

I see taking that step as the optimal reaction to the coronavirus, and therefore think that it is not a matter of whether we are overreacting to the virus, but of whether we are reacting in the most optimal way to improve our society.

We have been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach more balance and harmony with each other and with nature, and I very much hope that we will make the most of it.

Above photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Has the Coronavirus impacted small business owners globally?“

Many businesses will fail to make it through the coronavirus period because of people’s changing buying habits, and the subsequent loss of demand for many nonessential goods and services.

The question then becomes, what should those business owners do in order to secure an income?

I think that governments need not pour money into saving businesses that lose demand, and that they instead make sure that all of their citizens are provided with life’s essentials.

I have written extensively in support of universal basic income on condition that it is provided in exchange for engaging in learning programs that would aim to upgrade our awareness of our present-day interdependence, and which would enrich the life of society. If basic income was given with no requirement to learn about how to improve social connections and encourage more positive contribution to society, then society would stagnate.

The coronavirus has illuminated our interdependence all around the world very sharply.

We have been shown how much we depend on each other maintaining personal hygiene and social distancing conditions in order to keep ourselves virus free.

However, we have yet to delve into the depths of what it means to be completely dependent on each other.

Therefore, business owners who will lose their businesses in this period would do well to pioneer a new model of learning how to live interdependently in exchange for a basic income. Then, as the competent, skilled and efficient people they are, they would be able to become leading educators and guides of such learning.

As the demand for all kinds of nonessential items dissipates, the need for positive human connection will increasingly rise, because if we fail to upgrade our relationships, then we can expect much greater problems lurking on the horizon.

Therefore, I hope that we will wake up to realize the importance of creating the foundation of a positively-connected society that could serve as a model for a more harmonious, happier, more secure and confident humanity.

If we see the demise of nonessential businesses as an opportunity to build a new league of educators for leading humanity to better relationships, then we could make a serious shift toward a better world.

Above photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “When will the coronavirus go away already?“

As scientists frantically search for a vaccine to cure the coronavirus, would a vaccine really heal us from this pandemic, or are we missing something here?

I have written and spoken extensively about how, at a deeper level, the coronavirus emerged in order to calm down our egostic-competitive relations that were becoming increasingly harmful both to ourselves and to our ecology.

The coronavirus surfaced in order for us to revise the way we relate to each other.

How?

Revising the way we relate to each other doesn’t mean learning how to interact virtually through conference software like Zoom, but learning how to see other people—no matter where they live in the world or what their cultural background is—as parts of a single global family that includes us all as its members.

If we take steps to upgrade our awareness of our global interdependence during this period, then we will reach a state where we will be ready to move on from the coronavirus. Then, when our attitudes become better adjusted to today’s globally interdependent reality, the coronavirus will indeed become a thing of the past.

Otherwise, even if the coronavirus goes away, if we make no improvements in human connection, nature will strike at us with other blows. Whether mutations of the same virus, or myriad other disasters, nature will not stop trying to wake us up to improve our connections to each other.

Nature is fundamentally an altruistic force that creates, gives and sustains life. We humans are built of an opposite quality to nature’s, one of wanting constantly to receive for our personal benefit.

The more we develop, the more nature tries to wake us up to realize that by merely following our instincts to selfishly benefit from each other, we end up harming one another. Also, we gain awareness of our happiness, well-being and survival depending on how much we can bring our connections closer to nature’s altruistic form.

Doing so requires regular learning of how we can be balanced parts of nature’s interdependent and interconnected system.

Nature, like a loving parent, was holding our hands while we, like a baby learning to walk, walked along, thinking we were doing fine. Now nature let go of our hands, and we fell over. We now have a chance to pick ourselves up and start making our own steps to become more mature, or we could simply stay lying on the ground, crying and waiting to be picked up again.

Picking ourselves up means that we develop more awareness of our interdependence, and upgrade our connections to be mutually beneficial. If we do so, we will also find how the virus will disappear, and we will continue with much better lives.

Letting nature pick us up means that we make no strides in improving our connections, and through whatever means, whether through vaccines or other means, we come out of the coronavirus for the time being, and we can then expect a greater blow to inflict us into yet another global shock until we wake up to our interdependence.

Above photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I overcome pessimism and inferiority complex within my mind?“

Pessimism and optimism are characteristics embedded in us, which we are born with.

While we have characteristics that we receive from birth, the way those characteristics can be influenced and directed is through the many varied social influences in our life.

The examples we see in our society—from our immediate families through friends, acquaintances, the schooling we receive, the media we consume, and the culture we participate in—all influence the expression of our characteristics.

Therefore, if we feel a problem with our inner characteristics, we need to think about everything and everyone influencing us, and what kinds of changes we should make in our surrounding social circles and in the media we consume in order to positively impact us. It is as the saying goes, “Tell me who is your friend, and I will tell you who you are.”

Also, pessimism should not be thought of as a bad quality. It is an inborn quality, and some people are naturally more pessimistic, while others are naturally more optimistic.

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash.

It is important for us to understand that we live in an globally interdependent system of nature that acts out of a balance between all positive and negative qualities, including optimism and pessimism.

Therefore, in order to reach balance with nature, we need to learn how to positively connect with other people who have different characteristics.

The resulting mutual complementarity we would develop, where we each sustain our inborn characteristics but learn how to direct them in ways beneficial to all human society, would thus “click” us all into a harmonious homeostasis with each other and nature.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is one good outcome of the Coronavirus scare that we will become a society less driven by consumerism and more driven by saving precious resources and learning to get by with what we have?“

Some people point out how consumerism harms nature, and how it led to the emergence of COVID-19 and other negative phenomena.

They encourage putting a stop to our culture of shopping and returning to a past form of sustainable living.

I see such a motion of “getting by with what we have” as unnatural and unsustainable, because our very nature demands enjoyment.

Our desires have developed since the days we lived in caves, where we only lived according to our base animal needs for food, sex and family. Since then, we have developed desires for money, respect, control and knowledge, all kinds of real social needs that make us go shopping, travel the world and entertain ourselves in myriad ways.

Is there a problem with these desires?

The problem is not with the desires to enjoy ourselves, but in the intention we apply upon the desires.

As COVID-19 has increased awareness of our interdependence and interconnectedness, then we can say that anything we do in alignment with our interdependence acts positively, and anything we do against our interdependence acts negatively.

In other words, if we buy, sell or create goods and/or services that aim at bettering our increasingly tightening connections, then such acts are beneficial.

On the contrary, if we buy, sell or create goods and/or services with the intent to place ourselves on a higher pedestal than others, building our success on their ruin, then such acts are detrimental to society, and ultimately, also to ourselves.

Therefore, the problem is not with our consumerist habits of buying and selling, but of the intention that fuels these habits.

Above Photo by Anna Dziubinska on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is it possible that the recent China coronavirus outbreak is a bio attack?“

Whether the coronavirus is a bio-attack or some other artificial lab construction aimed at serving self-interests of certain people in power, either way, I do not relate to such theories.

More principally, the coronavirus is nature’s reaction to our overblown selfish attitudes to each other.

Before the coronavirus struck us, our mutually exploitative relations—where we each sought to gain at the expense of others—would have brought about much greater suffering than the pandemic. If we continued the way we were going unabated, then I would have expected us to run head-first into another world war.

So although the coronavirus has inflicted pains, inconvenience and fears around the world, I see it as saving us from much more intolerable agonies.

Therefore, rather than philosophize over whether the coronavirus was a bio-attack, we would do better to concentrate on how to improve the quality of our relationships.

The coronavirus has provided us with an example of how our negative relationships we previously held erupted in our faces, as positive or negative feedback from nature depends on whether our relationships are positive or negative.

If we develop more positive connections to each other, then we will see a world of balance and harmony open up to us, and on the contrary, if we fail to make any strides toward better human connection, nature will smack us more and more in order to awaken us to question the cause of such blows.

Negative phenomena in our lives, including the coronavirus, are due to our neglect in making moves to positively connect, to become like members of a big family.

So whether or not the coronavirus was created as a bioweapon is less important than seeing how the virus displays our smallness compared to nature. One tiny particle has shaken many of the foundations that we lived according to.

If we upgrade the quality of our relationships, then we will bear witness to the coronavirus’ disappearance.

Therefore, I advocate using our current period as an opportunity to depart from our pre-coronavirus world, where we each sought to build our successes on the ruin of others, and which brought about much depression, stress and anxiety, and enter a new world of positive relationships, where we will enter into balance and harmony with each other and with nature.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What lessons will the world learn from COVID-19?“

COVID-19 is nature’s way of teaching humanity serious lessons in mutual responsibility, equality and nature’s superiority to humans.

By forcing us into social distancing and stay-at-home conditions over a relatively long period of time, we have become freer to contemplate what is most important in life, how we relate to each other, what kind of world we have created for ourselves, and whether there is a better way to conduct our lives.

In such a situation, we can learn from COVID-19, that in the way it makes no discrimination between people of different status, equally infecting everybody from the average Joe to world leaders, we would also be wise to relate equally to each other.

 Ben Garratt on Unsplash.

We can also learn about our common smallness in the face of nature, where all it takes is a microscopic particle to bring about so much sickness, death and overturning of our socio-economic infrastructures around the world.

We are in a process toward increasing awakening to our interdependence and interconnectedness among each other and with nature.

In such a process, nature sends us various blows to spark more global awareness, so that we would develop more consideration and responsibility toward others.

Why? It is because by doing so, we resemble nature, which takes each and every detail into account.

Harmonizing our relations will balance us with nature, and we would then experience nature’s positive feedback.

Nature is connecting us more and more, and the sooner we become aware of how we’re being forced by nature to connect, and take our own active part in this connection to make it positive, then the sooner we’ll experience much better lives.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does no one tell you about coronavirus?“

The cause of the coronavirus is human imbalance with nature.

As a system of interdependent and interconnected parts, nature is made up of four levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate and human.

The first three levels of nature—inanimate, vegetative and animate—function in perfect balance with nature, instinctively following nature’s commands.

In contrast, the human level, us, disturbs nature’s balance.

How?

We have an additional egoistic quality that the other parts of nature do not have.

Where other parts of nature operate in order to preserve themselves, grow and survive, in addition to our preservation, growth and survival, we also want to enjoy at the expense of others.

Specifically the exploitation of others for the sake of self-benefit is what causes imbalance in nature.

Before the coronavirus hit humanity, such exploitation was running rampant in our modern consumerist society, and the coronavirus’ blow served to calm us down. It forced us into quarantine, isolation, social distancing and stay-at-home conditions, and while in such conditions, we would be wise to think about how we can restore balance with nature.

If we use the example that the coronavirus gave us, of how it makes no discrimination between people of different status, whether an ordinary Joe or a world leader, then we too would be wise to relate equally to each other.

If we consider nature’s interdependence and interconnectedness, then what would it mean for us humans to act in balance with such a system? Increasing our care and responsibility for each other would be our way of matching nature’s interconnectedness.

Implementing the additional ability we humans have beengranted means setting up systems that prioritize benefiting others over benefiting ourselves. Influencing each other to think and act in such a way will bring us closer to nature’s integral form, and by doing so, we would experience newfound harmony and pleasantness, the likes of which we have never before felt.

I thus hope that we make the most of this coronavirus period in order to bring ourselves closer to each other and with nature.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some of the most mind-blowing facts about Israel?“

1. The word “Israel” stems from two words, “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to God.”

2. The people of Israel first received their name as a group of people who gathered around Abraham around 3,800 years ago. Abraham taught them the method of how to love one another above the fierce social division running rampant in ancient Babylon, and by using the method of attaining the ability to love, they acquired the name “Israel” (“Yashar Kel” or “straight to the force of love, bestowal and connection,” which is synonymous to God).

3. The people of Israel had no biological connection to each other. They were originally a gathering of people from around ancient Babylon who felt that society was becoming increasingly divided. They wanted to understand why people were suffering so much, what is the meaning of life, and how people could unite above the social conflicts. After applying Abraham’s method, they received the name “the people of Israel.”

4. During the periods of the First and Second Temples, the people of Israel rose, fell, and then rose again in the attainment of love and unity above division. They prospered most when they experienced this spiritual form of unity. However, since the ruin of the Second Temple, they lost their attainment of the love and unity that glued them together above their divisiveness, and entered a period of exile and dispersion.

5. While in exile, the people of Israel have experienced many different forms of anti-Semitism. They have been blamed for murdering Jesus Christ, killing children and drinking their blood in the Middle Ages, causing the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century, killing Tsar Alexander II that ignited the pogroms of the Russian Empire against them, acting as internal traitors that led to Germany’s First World War defeat, and have been considered as money-and-power hungry conspirators who aim to rule the world.

6. As a Jewish state, despite the many contributions Israel brings to the world, including the Microsoft Windows operating system, the Pentium microprocessor, voice mail, biological pacemakers, cancer treatments using DNA nana-computation, stem-cell technology to regenerate heart tissue, pill-sized cameras for examining the small intestine, the first computerized diagnostic instrument for breast cancer detection, a heart pump synchronization device, as well as treatments for Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease, aircraft security systems, and ecologically, it was the only country in the world at the turn of the century that had more trees than in the previous century…

Israel endures heavy constant criticism.

Israel is treated as the world’s Jew.

In a modern context of globalized anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, Israel finds itself in a losing battle for a positive identity against multiple efforts aimed at its delegitimization and isolation: the application of international pressure in order to restrict its range of diplomatic and military response in the short term, and ultimately, to cripple it by delegitimizing its right to exist in the long term, stunting its ability to conduct diplomatic negotiations and act militarily.

The next three facts, however, are even more mindblowing…

7. The people of Israel experience increasing anti-Semitism, and many people feel the people of Israel as the root of their problems, due to their having once attained love and unity above division, and then having lost that sensation. Since the people of Israel were established not on biological connections, like other nations, but on an idea of love and unity above all differences, then their own division rippled throughout the world, and the many problems people feel stemming from their division, they instinctively blame on the people of Israel.

8. Since the people of Israel’s disunity and division are felt as a cause for myriad problems in the world, they also hold a method to attain unity. If they implement the method of connection, like how they once did in the days of ancient Babylon, where Abraham guided them to unite above division, then anti-Semitism will not only become eliminated—it would invert to a positive form of support and encouragement for a people who spread a positive sensation of love and unity throughout the world.

9. The people of Israel’s role in the world is thus to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above division (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to spread love and unity to the world (to be “a light unto the nations”).

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some ugly truths of life?“

While we innately feel that we want to change the world and change other people in order to improve the world, the ugly truth is that the only one who needs to change is myself.

Our desire to change the world and to change others stems from our intuitive egoistic perception of reality, where we want to self-benefit at the expense of others.

By wanting to change people and things around me, I essentially demand, “Give me something different to what I now have!”

However, true change is when I demand nothing of others and of the world, but that I demand to give to others from myself.

This is ugly to our very human egoistic nature, which we cannot escape, and which wants to invert anything it can in the world so that it can reap maximal benefit with minimal effort.

Each one of us feels ourselves to be the sole exceptional creation in existence. Our egoistic nature gives us all a feeling of uniqueness, an exclusive experience where it feels as if I alone exist, and everyone and everything else is secondary in importance to me.

Accordingly, we feel that if anyone should change, it should be others, not me.

However, the only way for the world around us to change is if we each change ourselves.

It’s great if I want to change the world. I just need to change myself so that changes in me influence the world.

This kind of change is doable. I can change myself at every moment, and by doing so, the world will change.

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