Entries in the 'Society' Category

The Fantastic Success Of Occupy Wall Street

Opinion: (Immanuel Wallerstein, sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst): “In Stage one – the first few days – the movement was a handful of audacious, mostly young, persons who were trying to demonstrate. The press ignored them totally. Then some stupid police captains thought that a bit of brutality would end the demonstrations. They were caught on film, and the film went viral on YouTube.

“That brought us to Stage two – publicity. The press could no longer ignore the demonstrators entirely. So the press tried condescension. What did these foolish, ignorant youth (and a few elderly women) know about the economy? Did they have any positive program? Were they ‘disciplined’? The demonstrations, we were told, would soon fizzle. What the press and the powers that be didn’t count on (they never seem to learn) is that the theme of the protest resonated widely and quickly caught on. In city after city, similar ‘occupations’ began. Unemployed 50-year-olds started to join in. So did celebrities. So did trade-unions, including none less than the president of the AFL-CIO. The press outside the United States now began to follow the events. Asked what they wanted, the demonstrators replied ‘justice.’ This began to seem like a meaningful answer to more and more people.

“This brought us to Stage three – legitimacy. Academics of a certain repute began to suggest that the attack on ‘Wall Street’ had some justification. All of a sudden, the main voice of centrist respectability The New York Times, ran an editorial on October 8 in which they said that the protestors did indeed have ‘a clear message and specific policy prescriptions’ and that the movement was ‘more than a youth uprising.’

“The movement had become respectable. And with respectability came danger – Stage four. A major protest movement that has caught on usually faces two major threats. One is the organization of a significant right-wing counterdemonstration in the streets. …The Occupy Wall Street movement needs to be prepared for this and think through how it intends to handle or contain it.

“But the second and bigger threat comes from the very success of the movement. As it attracts more support, it increases the diversity of views among the active protestors. The problem here is, as it always is, how to avoid the Scylla of being a tight cult that would lose because it is too narrowly based, and the Charybdis of no longer having a political coherence because it is too broad. There is no simple formula of how to manage avoiding going to either extreme. It is difficult.

“As to the future, it could be that the movement goes from strength to strength. It might be able to do two things: force short-term restructuring of what the government will actually do to minimize the pain that people are obviously feeling acutely; and bring about long-term transformation of how large segments of the American population think about the realities of the structural crisis of capitalism and the major geopolitical transformations that are occurring because we are now living in a multipolar world.”
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The Advice Of Obama’s Science Advisor

In the News (from Prison Planet): “President Obama’s top science and technology advisor John P. Holdren co-authored a 1977 book in which he advocated the formation of a ‘planetary regime’ that would use a ‘global police force’ to enforce totalitarian measures of population control, including forced abortions, mass sterilization programs conducted via the food and water supply, as well as mandatory bodily implants that would prevent couples from having children.

“The concepts outlined in Holdren’s 1977 book Ecoscience, which he co-authored with close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, were so shocking that a February 2009 Front Page Magazine story 0n the subject was largely dismissed as being outlandish because people couldn’t bring themselves to believe that it could be true.

“It was only when another Internet blog obtained the book and posted screenshots that the awful truth about what Holdren had actually committed to paper actually began to sink in.

“Ecoscience discusses a number of ways in which the global population could be reduced to combat what the authors see as mankind’s greatest threat – overpopulation. In each case, the proposals are couched in sober academic rhetoric, but the horrifying foundation of what Holdren and his co-authors are advocating is clear. These proposals include:

“- Forcibly and unknowingly sterilizing the entire population by adding infertility drugs to the nation’s water and food supply.

“- Legalizing ‘compulsory abortions,’ ie forced abortions carried out against the will of the pregnant women, as is common place in Communist China where women who have already had one child and refuse to abort the second are kidnapped off the street by the authorities before a procedure is carried out to forcibly abort the baby.

“- Babies who are born out of wedlock or to teenage mothers to be forcibly taken away from their mother by the government and put up for adoption. Another proposed measure would force single mothers to demonstrate to the government that they can care for the child, effectively introducing licensing to have children.

“- Implementing a system of “involuntary birth control,” where both men and women would be mandated to have an infertility device implanted into their body at puberty and only have it removed temporarily if they received permission from the government to have a baby.

“- Permanently sterilizing people who the authorities deem have already had too many children or who have contributed to general social deterioration.’

“- Formally passing a law that criminalizes having more than two children, similar to the one child policy in Communist China.

“- This would all be overseen by a transnational and centralized ‘planetary regime’ that would utilize a ‘global police force’ to enforce the measures outlined above. The ‘planetary regime’ would also have the power to determine population levels for every country in the world.”
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There Is Food, But No Desire To Share It

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from business.blogs.cnn.com): “…thirty percent of all food produced in the world each year is wasted or lost. That’s about 1.3 billion tons, according to a new report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“The developed world wastes 10 times more food than the developing one.

“Basically, the waste of the rich could feed much of the African continent.”

My Comment: Until we correct our attitude towards others, nothing will force us to be frugal with food items with the purpose of feeding others. It is necessary to change our nature, namely: 1. To establish a system of integral upbringing and education; 2. To create an environment that would make us aware of our universal connection and dependence. These efforts will evoke the influence of inner forces of nature (Ohr Makif) and change our nature.
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Don’t Give Charity Where It’s Not Needed

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: An incident occurred in Tel Aviv where a woman saw a homeless man and decided not just to give him money, but to help him for real. She found him a job and took care of him, and then he killed her….

Answer: She took away a life of freedom from the vagabond. He sat on the street to his heart’s content, not worrying about what time of day it is, whether it’s morning, afternoon, or night, and not thinking about what was and what will be. He was above time and space, above all worries.

People will always throw some coins into his purse or give him something to eat…. The homeless are a special breed – they do not want to depend on anyone or anything. This is a wonderful feeling: I don’t care about anything.

“Where do you live?”
“On earth.”
“Do you have to get somewhere or get something done in time?”
“I don’t even have a watch. I don’t care what time it is.”
“But maybe you owe something to someone? Or someone owes you something?”
“Nothing of the sort.”

And now take a look at yourself: You have a million things to get done at the office and thousands of circumstances. People are calling you, expecting things from you, and your family is also demanding its share…. You simply have no idea what it’s like to be homeless. “Without a home” means without boundaries. I wish you could experience this careless sensation at least once in your life.

This is not a weekend or a vacation when you are also burdened with cares as well. A homeless person has everything tidy, he has no cares in his head and no boundaries, as if he is already floating in the clouds of the world to come.

And now someone comes and brings him down to earth, closes him up within four walls and forces him to live by schedule: wake up, wash up, shave, brush your teeth ,get dressed…. What kind of life is that?

We don’t understand these people, yet they live in a sensation that raises them above matter.

Question: How can we help these people?

Answer: To help someone does not mean to indulge yourself like the way people in Israel are who are trying to house Bedouins in apartments. The Bedouins don’t want to live within four walls and end up setting up their tents again right across the newly built neighborhood. Even if you give them a ten room apartment, they still won’t want it since they have their own ideas about what a household is.

When helping someone, you have to follow their desire rather than yours.

Question: So we should’t help people living in these conditions?

Answer: No. A person has everything he needs and he does not need anything more. If he needed housing, he would arrange it. But he does not want it. For him, setting up “his own corner” is already a restriction. It puts pressure on him. He likes sleeping any place that turns up and not worrying about the next moment.

Compared to him, we do not understand what freedom is. We are slaves while he is a master.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/27/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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The Builders Of New Society

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that the masses have to sit and study, but do you take into account that the masses are not able to learn anything at all?

Answer: In Europe, as well as in the USA, the middle class will be eliminated in the near future. They are intelligent and educated people, still young, so they will become the most active builders of a new society of mutual guarantee.

They are able to grasp the true meaning of what is happening with the development of human society, its movement towards unity (globality and integrality), and the solution to all problems: our compliance with this law of social development.
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Noam Chomsky: “10 Strategies Of Manipulation” By The Media

Opinion: (Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT): “A renowned MIT linguist Noam Chomsky has compiled a list of the ten most common and effective strategies used to manipulate the population through the media.

1. The strategy of distraction

The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. ‘Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).’

2. Create problems, then offer solutions

This method is also called ‘problem -reaction- solution.’ It creates a problem, a ‘situation’ referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept. For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant‟s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.

3. The gradual strategy acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years.

That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, massive unemployment, wages, and do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.

4. The strategy of deferring

Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as ‘painful and necessary,’ gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application. It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that ‘everything will be better tomorrow’ and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5. Go to the public as a little child

Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children‟s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient. The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone infantilising. Why? ‘If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger (see Silent Weapons for Quiet War).’

6. Use the emotional side more than the reflection

Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit on rational analysis , and finally to the critical sense of the individual. Furthermore, the use of emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas, desires, fears and anxieties, compulsions, or induce behaviors …

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control and enslavement. ‘The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be the poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes (See Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).’

8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity

Promote the public to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and uneducated…

9. Self-blame Strengthen

To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual autodesvalida and guilt, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action. And, without action, there is no revolution!

10. Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves

Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the ‘system’ has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that of individuals about themselves.”
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Truth From The Belly

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Baal HaSulam’s words sound like a utopia. Clearly, if every person works for the common good, then everyone will be well off. But do we have the means to create that kind of society?

Answer: Of course we do. There is a set of elementary means that make it possible to do this easily and willingly, while being imbued with enthusiasm and providing enormous reward for yourself. Even from the purely egoistic point of view, it’s worth it because you will get rid of all the troubles of this world, will set up good relationships with other people, and in them you will acquire a new world, full of goodness. So what more could you want?

“But how can this be done?” you ask. The answer is: by realizing your free choice through creating an environment around you that will constantly brainwash you and press on your feelings with the profit of bestowal.

So what’s the problem? Everything is very logical. And if we don’t want it, then several disasters in the near future will change our priorities. When you lose work, when your fridge goes empty, when your children will demand something that you can’t possibly do for them, when your wife starts putting pressure on you, then not finding any alternative, you will discover that there is correction for this world, after all.

In reality, you evoke Nature’s harsh attitude to you yourself. You put yourself in conflict with it by not corresponding to the demands it is presenting to you. And these demands are clear: a global, integral, equal unification for all. We have to take an example from nature. On this path we will reach success, and on any other—only suffering. That is how the law of equivalence of form is expressed which operates in physics, biology, and all other fields. Until today only human society posed an exception, but today the time has come to observe this law in society as well, and to do it by our own desire.

So go ahead—try it. If you can’t do it, then you will suffer due to violating the law until it forces you to observe it. This is what always happens in the process of natural development. Previously you also received blows of differing intensity, which pushed you forward without you even being aware of it most of the time. You experienced pressure from different sides and solved the problems that emerged. Sometimes you had to wage wars and revolutions, which are greater impulses toward appeasement, when things were simply unbearable anymore.

That is how you developed until now and that is how you will develop from now on. You will always have an opportunity to take the next step. After all, you are matter that feels, a desire for pleasure, and this desire can be turned into anything. Just press in the right place with the right force, and it already shouts, “I want!” It shouts because it does not wish to suffer. Through this escape from suffering, you can be taught greater wisdom and be brought to bestowal as the desired redemption.

We know from our own experience that we can easily change our opinion depending on the circumstances. It’s enough for the circumstances to change and we immediately make a different calculation, raising a new truth onto the pedestal.

“What kind of truth is that? You just have greater profit there.” But you object, “No, it’s the truth!” And you say this from the bottom of your heart, even though it’s the sincerity of the belly, which forced you to rethink things. That is how the desire for pleasure operates in every one of us.

Therefore, if we don’t want to advance consciously, with awareness, then Nature will force us to do it. By our disagreement with its program of development, we create the future unpleasant states ourselves. Previously evolution led us “on a short leash,” but now everything is different. It’s as if you have been transferred to “standby mode” and given the opportunity to advance independently: Try to do something, activate your free choice, start organizing an environment.

However, if we don’t do that, then some time later, negative occurrences will be expressed in society, which will force us to budge. For example, today we are discovering that people cannot begin correction yet and cannot hear us. We are also guilty of that because we haven’t yet learned to disseminate materials that are clear and that warm every person’s heart. As a result, the next state is being revealed: The world feels bad, and we feel even worse. That’s because at the end of the day, the work is our responsibility.

If we do not wish to unite in the good way and turn to the world with the force of our unity, then we will desire it from the bad way. We can’t run away from this mission, just like Jonah the prophet could not escape his predestination.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/11, “Peace in the World”

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“Occupy” Protesters Find Allies In Ranks Of The Wealthy

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Todaynews): “The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters — also known as the ’99 percent’ — have struck a chord with at least a few members of an unexpected audience: America’s rich and privileged.

“United under the banner ‘We are the 1 percent: We stand with the 99 percent,’ a band of entrepreneurs, trust fund babies, professionals and inheritors has taken to the web to share their abhorrence of corporate greed and support for tax code changes that would see them pay a higher share of their considerable wealth.

“Among other things, they’re posting their stories on a Tumblr page created by Wealth for the Common Good and Resource Generation, two groups dedicated to working for ‘fair taxation and just wealth distribution.’

“Farhad A. Ebrahimi, 33, who shares his inherited wealth through a charity that he founded, says he attends the Occupy Boston protest every day. … At the protest, he often wears a homemade T-shirt that reads: ‘I’m a member of the 1 percent and I fully support the 99 percent’ on the front, and, ‘Tax me, I’m good for it,’ on the back.”

My Comment: Thus, we are getting closer to understanding the solution to the question of shifting to a society of equal, reasonable consumption. Their funds should be used to organize a common, worldwide, integral upbringing for everyone, especially the unemployed, which will replace their working hours and have their studies be considered the same as work because there won’t be other work in the future!
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Success Is Not In The Growth Of Wealth But In Its Distribution

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Professor Tim Jackson, Author of Prosperity Without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet): “Constant shocks to the world’s financial system over the past few years prompted the BBC World Service’s Business Daily programme to ask leading figures whether they thought Western capitalism had failed.

“This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity is without historical precedent. It is totally at odds with the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival.

“Most of the time, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. Growth must go on, we insist. The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find.

“Western capitalism is structurally reliant on growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes.

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

“Yet question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.”

My Comment: More and more sensible materials about the end of growth, billions of unemployed, and the reduction of production will encourage people to think about a new attitude towards life, general prosperity, and the other, non-material, fulfillment. After all, after simple calculations we see that the planet cannot provide for us.

This means that we should take a sober view of the future economy of reasonable consumption. Food, shelter, social security, and education and upbringing are to be provided for everyone in a reasonable quantity. The fulfillment of our egoism beyond the necessities should be transferred to other areas of contentment—cultural and spiritual, which require little material and energy. Let’s think and we will find a way.
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Brzezinski Predicts Riots In US

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, political scientist): “Zbigniew Brzezinski…predict[ed] that middle class unrest caused by economic disenfranchisement would soon hit America.

“‘I don’t want to be a prophet of doom — and I don’t think we are approaching doom — but I think we’re going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society,’ Brzezinski said, adding that civil unrest would begin when the lower middle class becomes severely affected by the economic fallout and rising unemployment.

“The former National Security Advisor predicted ‘really serious international turmoil’ as a result of the United States, Europe and Japan, the three traditional pillars of global economic strength, struggling with deep financial crises.

“However, this is certainly not the first time that Brzezinski has expressed concerns that a growing rage caused by economic and social disenfranchisement could threaten the existing power structure.

“Brzezinski… warned of a ‘global political awakening,’ mainly comprising of younger people in developing states, that threatened to topple the existing international order.

“‘For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination,’ Brzezinski told fellow elitists.”

My Comment: Only the creation of the “round table” in each country, where all the pressing issues of society will be discussed openly with scientists, politicians, economists, and representatives of different sectors of society, when they all gather to solve common problems like family members, will help to reduce social pressure that threatens to grow into riots, a civil war, and beyond.
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