Question: There is a pyramid of human needs: food, sex, family, wealth, honor, knowledge, and spiritual revelation. If we consider the method of integral education from the perspective of the pyramid, when we talk about family, honor, and knowledge everyone understands. But when it comes to money and we say that there will be no money, and we will have to give up many things, it scares people off.

Answer: By no means do we talk about that. On the contrary, we approach everything from a selfish point of view and tell a person what he will get and not what he will loose, how much will be gained and not how much of it will go away.

On the contrary, if he is properly connected to the society in an integral manner, then there is no need for huge systems, which consume enormous resources today. These are police authorities, various safety and security systems. When we come to a comfortable state, vast resources will be freed up.

In addition, when a person starts feeling integrally connected to the society, the environment changes inevitably as well. He feels it as his own, and therefore saves, protects, and defends. The environment is no longer indifferent to him; he is no longer ready to burn everything to win it, which is, in general, just pennies.

If you calculate everything, it turns out that through the good and right attitude towards society, huge resources will be freed up that we can redirect to any other tasks.

It is not about taking away everything from the rich and giving to the poor, but about the fact that in the process of education, the society will become more equal and there will be no huge differences between the rich and the poor as it is in a magnitude of millions today. A normal difference within the society would be, say, no more than 10-15 times.

It’s enough for rich people to feel rich because they actually have money, power, and strength to realize their potential.

It’s not just that they are rich, it’s because of their inner qualities, that the average person doesn’t have, that they became rich and the others have not. So all of that should be left intact.

The imbalance in society remains, we do not destroy anything, we do not enter into a dictatorship of equality, absolute liberalism, and so on, on the one hand, and do not lead it to anarchy on the other. We slowly start smoothing out all the contradictions in society not through violence but through educating people! It will occur only in response to the changes of the people themselves, and it will be voluntary and desireable.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Opinion (Martin A. Nowak, Professor of Biology and of Mathematics at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics): “Martin Nowak, one of the world’s experts on evolution and game theory…turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. He offers a new explanation for the origin of life and a new theory for the origins of language, biology’s second greatest information revolution after the emergence of genes.”

My Comment: Recently, there is a surge of materials produced by scientists from various countries and areas of expertise about the revision of the driving force of evolution, about its original direction towards integrality. Just today, when this integrality reaches us, humanity, civilization, we began to pay attention to it because before that we had not been able to perceive the world as integral.
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Opinion (Tim Jackson, professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey): “Productivity — the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy — is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.’s and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.

“But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. If more is possible each passing year with each working hour, then either output has to increase or else there is less work to go around. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth.

“What, then, should happen when, for one reason or another, growth just isn’t to be had anymore? Maybe it’s a financial crisis. Or rising prices for resources like oil. Or the need to rein in growth for the damage it’s inflicting on the planet: climate change, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity. Maybe it’s any of the reasons growth can no longer be safely and easily assumed in any of today’s economies. The result is the same. Increasing productivity threatens full employment.

“One solution would be to accept the productivity increases, shorten the workweek and share the available work. …

“But there’s another strategy for keeping people in work when demand stagnates. Perhaps in the long run it’s an easier and a more compelling solution: to loosen our grip on the relentless pursuit of productivity. By easing up on the gas pedal of efficiency and creating jobs in what are traditionally seen as ‘low productivity’ sectors, we have within our grasp the means to maintain or increase employment, even when the economy stagnates.

“At first, this may sound crazy; we’ve become so conditioned by the language of efficiency. But there are sectors of the economy where chasing productivity growth doesn’t make sense at all. Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people’s time and attention. The caring professions are a good example: medicine, social work, education. Expanding our economies in these directions has all sorts of advantages. …

“The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar ‘commodity.’ It can’t be stockpiled. It becomes degraded through trade. It isn’t delivered by machines. Its quality rests entirely on the attention paid by one person to another. Even to speak of reducing the time involved is to misunderstand its value. …

“In short, avoiding the scourge of unemployment may have less to do with chasing after growth and more to do with building an economy of care, craft and culture. And in doing so, restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society.”

My Comment: Namely, by building mutual support, passing many functions of the state, the service sector and industry, to the mutual aid organizations, leaving only the necessary part of production within the enterprise, we will get rid of the concept of “work to live” and “live to work” and will be free to create the new integral society.
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Question: How can we become professionals of integral upbringing? What is it?

Answer: A professional of integral upbringing, firstly, is one who understands evolution, which we have undergone as the egoistic development of a person and humanity. From generation to generation, we have been developing until the point when our usual human egoism ceased to grow.

It has manifested itself almost in everything and now begins to become round; that is, more and more, we feel greater unity, integrality, and globality of all early affairs, absolute dependence of each other, and, in most cases, this is unwanted.

Corporations with global operations and markets understand what profit they have from this. And humankind, countries, governments, various organizations, and anyone in the world suddenly begin to feel constrained and interconnected with everyone.

Today, in order to provide myself with everything necessary, with what I am used to because I have developed to this level and cannot imagine a normal existence below it, as an ordinary citizen of any country, city, or region, I need to be fully connected with the whole world and feel dependent on everyone.

For example, China supplies special elements, rare metals, to all the countries. But what can we do if it no longer wants to supply them. We will have no computers, no phones, nothing. If somewhere the development of oil fields and all kinds of chemical materials is stopped, we will be left with nothing. That is, the world has been divided into sectors, which become so intertwined that it’s impossible today to imagine a normal existence without proper integral work of the entire world.

Billions of people live in cities, in an artificial society, which they have created and which would be very easy to destroy; it’s enough to break a few links and people will no longer be able to exist in the stone jungles they have built.

Our current state, in general, is clear to many, even to the simplest people, because it’s easy to explain from where we get everything and to whom in turn we deliver it. And from this mutual dependence, which emerged in the era of subsistence farming, first in the family, then in the cities, in factories, and then within the nation, now, no one can isolate himself, and this forces us to think differently.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Question: What percentage of a city’s population needs to be involved in the integral process in order to tip the situation? After all, there should be some critical mass? It is impossible to include 100% of the population, isn’t it?

Answer: It is not necessary to include 100% of a city’s population in the integral process. It is sufficient for about 40% of the society to embrace this idea in order for it to become prevalent in the general mass.

Since the integral method is favorable, it will start penetrating the masses through all the other layers of society like kids or senior citizens. Besides, there will be serious supporting public structures. I hope that even the first few weeks of building a healthier society will show its effect on all municipal and other services that support the city: Life itself will be promoting this.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Upbringing” 3/3/12

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Question: How should the situation change, qualitatively and quantitatively after the introduction of integral education and upbringing?

Answer: For example, we can compare the statistics of a city where an integral experiment is being conducted, a city like Detroit, where violence, murder, and suicide are prevalent and the most active part of population is leaving the city. If things are left to take a natural course of development, like in Detroit, the city will become a ghost town.

But a town with integral learning is beginning to prosper, because residents together build parks and attractions, and find ways to attract tourists, etc. All of this is possible.

If we were to compare the data from the two cities, it is like heaven and earth. If once Detroit was a prospering city, now it is impossible to step outside. The homes, that once cost a million dollars to build, now go for no more than five to ten thousand dollars! But no one wants to buy them; it is impossible to live in these houses because you do not feel safe at home. No one goes there. It is impossible to convey what a city turns into in a case like this.

But a city where an integral process is taking place will attract everyone, since its population is becoming richer by creating a completely new atmosphere. For this reason, apartments in a city, a place where this is happening, will rise in value.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Upbringing” 3/3/12

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Opinion (Barry Schwartz, Psychologist): “Barry Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance — where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before — are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today’s Western world is actually making us miserable.

“Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. … Too much choice undermines happiness. …

“‘Clinical depression has exploded in the industrial world in the last generation. I believe a significant — not the only, but a significant — contributor to this explosion of depression, and also suicide, is that people have experiences that are disappointing because their standards are so high, and then when they have to explain these experiences to themselves, they think they’re at fault. And so the net result is that we do better in general, objectively, and we feel worse. …’

“‘If some of what enables people in our societies to make all of the choices we make were shifted to societies in which people have too few options, not only would those people’s lives be improved, but ours would be improved also. This is what economists call a ‘Pareto-improving move.’ Income redistribution will make everyone better off — not just poor people — because of how all this excess choice plagues us.’”

My Comment: In any case, rational integration and redistribution (equilibration) always brings benefits to everyone—even according to the laws of economics.
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Question: Is the method of integral upbringing something essentially new?

Answer: This is the method for overcoming the crisis. This is a law of nature that modern studies confirm. They show us the picture of the transformation of society to a certain state. For this reason, let’s be ahead of this development and prepare for the changes that it’s assumed that we will overcome through the path of suffering, meaning being pushed towards happiness with a stick. And we do this through conscious advancement and thus, on the contrary, see a good and wonderful ascent in this.

Question: When can we move on from the educational stage towards the upbringing stage?

Answer: It is only possible to transition towards the upbringing process when people who take the integral education courses understand that the crisis is unavoidable and constant. It will bring us towards a common collapse and bankruptcy. This means that the only solution to the crisis is reorganizing the individual and society. When people complete studying this topic and, in general, understand, agree, and are inspired by it, then we can move on to upbringing.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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Opinion (Bhaskar Patel, USA, General Director of Cybersoft Technologies, Inc., from the international research paper Models of Post-Crisis Development): “If we learn to cooperate and co-exist, all other progress is possible and becomes easier; it will also be easier to deal with natural calamities; otherwise we will consume unnecessary energy and resources for internal fights.”

Mustafa Badawy, Columbia, entrepreneur and founder of the company Colacom: “I believe the 21st century will be the spiritual century – to consume less, to live more happily. This earth can no longer take our consumption rhythm, I mean the consumption rhythm of the USA, China and the EU.”

Adriano Benayon, Brazil, professor of economics at the University of Brasilia, author of “Globalization versus Development”: “Spiritual values, if they correspond with the common good and are independent from established religions, seem most important to me, since technology is neither good nor bad in itself: it all depends on what technology is developed and employed for.”
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Question: How can we make integral learning, introduced by businesses, a creative and constructive process?

Answer: First of all, it’s simply necessary to occupy all the employees of the firm with integral upbringing and education. With time, they can gradually be prepared to participate in an event such as a voluntary “work day” to clean up, to make nature ecologically clean, to fix and tidy up the entire town where we live.

In other words, integral upbringing and education must bring us to common constructive work, to ensure we are receiving inner fulfillment from it, and the realization of the ideas. The city must breathe it, and it will be contagious.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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