Entries in the 'Society' Category

Protesting Constructively

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Social protest is being reborn today in Israel. As people find that prices are excessively inflated, people feel “used,” and this unites them.

Answer: That is right. There is an external impression that a protest is able to lead to real changes. Once well organized, it is possible to, for example, lower the prices twofold on products.

However, the Creator intentionally shows us this deceiving picture: as if in this way we were able to correct something He has ruined, and live happily. In reality, in the end we will not achieve anything this way, even if all calculations point to an enhancement of welfare.

It seems like before I barely lasted until payday and now I can even spend my money on other things. But the problem is that this will not happen.

After all, the Creator wants us to rise above our lives through these “exercises.” Just like at a certain point, a father begins to appear before his son in different images: forced formidableness, false coldness, etc. This is not just different facial expressions and changes of tone; this helps the son learn his father’s behavior. A small child is simply frightened by severity, but a bigger child thinks: “Why does he do this? What does he want?” Once he matures a bit more, the son already understands his father’s intentions, he already sees what his father wishes to teach him—and he joins the father, his love and his training program: “What does he want to show to my ruined desire with his unsatisfied expression? How do I change this desire to see a smile on his face?”

After all, the Creator wants us to associate ourselves with Him, perceive His mind and feeling and rise to a new degree, instead of dealing with the “faces” that this world is making. And this is why a social protest will not bear success and will not make our lives easier.

The question here is: Are we using the awakening of the people to bring them to the objectives they need to reach today? The time has come to explain the situation to the people: No matter how low the prices drop, we will not see any real benefit. A person lives through sensations, and even shopping with the money saved will not help him, he will be “set up” so that instead of feeling pleasure, he will become more depressed. On the background of wellbeing, we will see a wave of suicides or an increase in drug abuse.

Stop making short-term plans, nearsightedly expecting to take it out on those who rob us. Robbery is not limited to tycoons; however, we are not speaking about human egoism, but the one who is playing with us through these examples. So, we need to find a clear explanation to make people gradually understand what is happening.

One way or another, if the protest is not directed towards unity, when its purpose is to get even with someone, this will only harm people. Talk about crazy prices only blinds a person and shuts his mouth instead of bringing fulfillment to his heart and the mind.

If all of humanity is not raised to the point of the realization of the upper Force, the suffering will only keep increasing. The Creator wants to bring you closer, but you play with price tags and chant populist slogans. This will only turn into greater suffering. Even if you were to take all the money from tycoons, you will still have nothing left tomorrow. Because you will waste these billions, lose work places, and will leave people with no earnings, instead of what they have now even if it is insufficient.

We need to begin with the cause and not the consequence: The Creator creates this situation so we will come to Him. Do social protests lead to Him? They do if they push us towards unity. But if they are about breaking and bringing someone down, then no.

Rise a little and see what is driving everything. There is nothing that can be done without changing human nature, which determines the current system. Change it, raise people: This is the solution. Otherwise, for the happiness of the haters, you will bring things to the point of a revolution, like those which already have been so numerous in history.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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A Connection Type Defines A Property

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives): “One of the key ideas about human social networks is that, in the addition of ties between people and specific patterns of ties that obey particular mathematical rules, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The collection of human beings have properties that do not reside within the individuals, and this collection of human beings is now able to do things that they previously were not able to do. And one of the illustrations or examples that I most like to give about this is something that most people are familiar with from high school or college chemistry, and that is the example of carbon.

“So, you can take carbon atoms, and you can assemble the carbon atoms into graphite, and here we put a particular hexagonal pattern of ties, and you get sheets of graphite, and this graphite is soft and dark. Or, we can take the same carbon atoms and assemble them differently into a kind of a perimetral structure with the ties between them, the bonds between the carbon atoms, and we get diamond, which is hard and clear, and these properties of softness and darkness, or hardness and clearness, first of all, differ dramatically, not because the carbon is different. The carbon is the same in both, but rather because of the ties between the carbon atoms. And second, these properties are not properties of the carbon atoms. They’re properties of the group, properties of the collection of carbon atoms. Therefore, when we take constituent elements and assemble them to a larger whole, this larger whole can have properties that we could not have foreseen merely by studying the individual elements and properties which do not reside within the individual elements.”

My Comment: Through the unity between us, we create the property that brings the upper energy (Ohr Makif) to us. Due to this influence, we become changed from obvious egoists to altruists.
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A New Kind Of Stress: Boredom At Work

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Dr. Sandi Mann, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire): “According to new studies, boredom in the workplace is growing, affecting everyone from the high-fliers to the drones.

“…boredom – after anger – is the second-most commonly suppressed emotion in the workplace. …

“What’s more, Dr Mann believes fewer of us are willing to put up with boredom as we expect every aspect of our lives to be fulfilling – an attitude that would have been far less common among older generations  with a more practical outlook. …

“A study on the link between counterproductive work behavior and boredom by Montclair State University and University of South Florida identified six ways bored employees might harm their organizations: by abusing others, by ‘production deviance’ (purposely failing at tasks), sabotage, withdrawal, theft and horseplay. The most common of which is withdrawal. …

“[Mark] de Rond, [from the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School] also says there is a type of boredom where professionals get bored not because they don’t have enough work, but because they feel they have nothing worthwhile to do.”

My Comment: To the extent of the growth of egoism and, moreover, to the extent of it turning into a spiral, when it becomes globally integral, all the negative effects and emotions will be more and more manifested, and no psychological trick will help, except for the correction of egoism itself.
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A Life Transforming Team

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Let’s say that a group of integral learning specialists, including economists, arrives in a small town. What should they be like in order to properly organize the economic process?

Answer: The entire group has already completed a course of integral education; they understand it and know what they need to do. Naturally, different corrections will arise along the way because every year is a new year, the situation and people are new, and the specialists are gaining experience. But in general, everyone in the group knows the common plan of action well. They operate as a completely separate team who only do social-educational work with the population.

Question: Do the economists also need to feel the essence of the integral method or is superficial knowledge enough for them?

Answer: No. I think that the main group needs to be deeply in this method, understanding that there is no other solution to the crisis, and they need to start learning it and gaining experience. Of course, initially there will be some mistakes and discrepancies regarding the plan, the timetable, etc. Naturally, there will be problems with the local management and other yet unknown problems.

But despite this, it’s necessary to gradually create the form of a common team, which would be capable of quickly adapting to any place and would be able to take on the work regardless of the kind of management or local conditions. Therefore, an integral approach towards creating this needs to be developed. I think that this is possible.

It’s best to depend as little as possible on the local management. Never try to argue with them, but simply explain how this will benefit them, and that we have really come to help them.
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From Kab TV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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Economic And Moral Effect

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Typically economists do not delve into the essence of various methodologies because primarily they are interested in efficiency and speed of implementation. But the method of integral education is something different: unhurried, the family and home. How is this conflict resolved? Do leaders need to delve into the integral approach?

Answer: No. They want to see good results from introducing this methodology including economic. There will be fewer robberies, theft on the streets, fewer illnesses, and various other public complaints. There will be a calmer atmosphere, more rational consumption, and people settling for much less. And that will adjust the whole situation in the city to the extent that there will be less pressure on public services and everything else.

Moreover, we can calculate what economic effect the integral education will bring. Despite the fact that definitely a cost is associated with it, there will certainly be an economic impact. We can calculate and prove that even without a difficult situation, such as closing the only company giving life to an entire city; it is still worth carrying out educational activities throughout the city. As a result a total budget of the nation would suddenly gain tens of billions of dollars, and this is in addition to improvements in the general well-being of the population and a reduction in mortality, divorces, and everything else!
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #23, 3/2/12

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Education: The Main Law Of Modern Times

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what form should the structure of integral upbringing be introduced in a smaller town? Should a prepared team of specialists be invited there?

Answer: It is impossible to provide a town with a population of 50,000 with an army of visiting specialists. It is impossible to fathom the unfathomable.

At the maximum, a team of twenty should be invited, and all the rest would be through the virtual delivery of knowledge. Then, people should be gathered in big groups to lectures and to events such as festivals and public parties under the auspices of integrality.

It is necessary to simultaneously train local specialists. In the same manner as there are municipal workers everywhere, the city also should have specialists on integral upbringing who will be continuing to educate children, elders, and the entire population. It is necessary to provide them with media materials, and overall to lay a foundation for this process to continue infinitely.

Question: When such action takes place, at first, people feel enthusiastic as they join the common action. Then the guests from the capital leave and this wave of enthusiasm recedes. What is to be done next so that it does not dwindle to nothing?

Answer: I think that integral upbringing should be accepted as a law without which society can no longer exist. That is, it must be the most important, principal law of the city or society, founded upon compatibility, integrality, and on mutual complements and voluntary participation.

Everything that is done today by various agencies and decided in courts, police and other authorities will be decided on a completely different level. However, a serious education department is needed for this. Thus, it is crucial to create a budget, material incentives, and the content for the entire system that will be engaged in education.

Question: Is the education department a separate agency?

Answer: I think that it should not report to anyone, only to the country’s common upbringing center.

Question: What about economists?

Answer: They cannot do anything because local ideological departments do not report to anyone but the main ideological center. I cannot imagine that it could be any other way.

Economists cannot direct education. They cannot meddle with the process of upbringing and education in schools. If any problems arise, they either should be solved together or at a higher level, but one does not loom over another.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #23, 3/2/12

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“The Best Way To Solve A Problem…”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Business News Daily): “According to a study of co-author Bryan Bonner, an associate professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, ‘for groups to be successful, they must exploit the knowledge of their (individual) members effectively.’

“The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, proved this by looking at how both individuals and groups answered difficult questions. …

“’People find they often know more than they think they do. They realize that they might not know the whole answer to the problem, but there are a couple things they do know that might help the group come to a solution.’”

“Therefore, leveraging what individuals already know is the key to solving a range of problems, according to the research.

“According to Bonner and co-author Michael Baumann, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in San Antonio, improving the ability to transfer old knowledge to new situations may be as simple as attempting to solve problems with others. This is because, when several people team up to solve problems, the group has several viewpoints to bring together in order to reach a solution.

“’Although the sheer amount of brainpower it takes to consistently and effectively transfer learning from old to new is beyond many individuals, groups of people working together can actually be very good at it,’ the researchers said.

“With that in mind, this research may not only change the way organizations go about solving problems, but also how organizations are constructed in the first place.”

My Comment: At all levels of unity, the likeness to the single organism of nature is good. Gathering separate people into a single organism immediately creates not only a simple sum, but more than the sum of them, precisely due to the force of the similarity to unity, the property of the Creator.
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A New Person For The New Epoch

Dr. Michael LaitmanA major problem at the moment is the sharp rise in unemployment caused by the economic crisis. After all, we have built a society in such a way that it is producing more and more products and stuffing each person with everything possible. In doing so, we have abused our capabilities and produce an endless stream of things that people throw away as soon as possible to buy new ones, all for the enrichment of the manufacturers.

However, the crisis has come and the demand is no longer what it should be in a large, developing consumer society. On the contrary, society is reducing its consumption and as a result everything is slowing down and crumbling. Industry is weakening, companies are going bankrupt and dragging down the financial system: banks, insurance, and investment firms. As a result, experts estimate that only 10% of the world population will be working to provide us with all the necessities for life, and the work of other people will simply not be needed.

So suddenly, we find millions of people remain free from work. However, there is a method according to which millions of industrial and office workers who are leaving the job market and becoming free from work will be able to start a new work. From now on their task will be to form our balance with the nature, to initiate social and human changes. It is necessary to create a new human being for the new era that we are entering.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” #20, 3/28/12

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The Clear Future Of City U

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Water in Russia is almost free. In other words, it is an unlimited public resource. However, recently, a water pipe burst somewhere in Russia, and mineral water prices rose tenfold immediately. Water has become a limited resource.

Why should men change and not increase the price of water by a factor of ten times its previous price if it has become a limited resource? Is it really possible to change the nature of people?

Answer: No, that is absolutely impossible. It can be achieved only through a gradual reconstruction of our consciousness, when we enter a completely different force, an environment where we completely depend on one another.

Let’s move away from the sellers and shortages and take a different look at the problem. Imagine that we exist on Earth in a limited number, and we all are interconnected. How can we build a society where all of us would have a reasonable and sufficient level of existence regarding healthcare, heat, food, clothing, shelter, safety, and so on? How can we achieve this without taking our interconnection into consideration?

Question: Theoretically, everyone understands this, but prices of water are rising in the city of Uryupinsk where the pipe has burst.

Answer: This is natural. We cannot jump over this stage. In this case, we must provide mankind or that very same Uryupinsk with integral upbringing. We must change the system of human relations within it to the point of making a person realize that his advancement toward happiness depends on his being going hand-in-hand with others. There is no other way for us to enter the integration of the world that now is being offered to us.

Question: Let us say that I arrive in Uryupinsk ten years after the introduction of integral upbringing there. Suddenly, a water pipe bursts, but the cost of water remains the same. What needs to happen to the city for this to happen? What will make life in this city turn upside down?

Answer: Life is overturned because people always think about themselves and providing for themselves in a way that problems will not separate people. First of all, everyone must be ruled and controlled by constant balance and integration. The bursting of a pipe is a common problem, a common disaster, and we pay for it together.

Question: How does a storeowner need to change in order not to rewrite price tags?

Answer: I do not think that this is up to the storeowners. When we speak of a society where everything is interconnected, we refer to a society of reasonable consumption.

The thing is that I am speaking of a distant future, not something that will happen in ten years. We must go from one type of society to another.

We must build it so that all the people within it are mutually balanced, which means that they would have absolutely equal rights and equal benefits, that they would reasonably consume what they need without producing absolutely unnecessary types of goods, embellishments, and things just because someone wants to profit from them.

There will be practically no advertising. We produce a necessary amount of goods, products, and everything else in the exact quantities that a person needs to exist normally on the corporeal level. Right now, we are speaking about satisfying our fundamental, basic needs.

Question: I remember that this is the way it was in the Soviet Union, but sailors would bring in suitcases of jeans and sell them at insane prices.

Answer: The thing is that, in the past, we were forced and limited in every way by the government. We were completely unprepared for the change of this paradigm.

Today, practically in all the countries in the world, we live in a society that is in a state of depression, a society that understands that this path of development leads to a dead end. A society of unlimited consumption that constantly sucks everything it can from the ground and contaminates it cannot exist.

The main thing is that nature is showing us that today we are becoming integrally connected. If we were to take any integral system, be it a mechanical, electrical, or absolutely any system, all the elements in it are completely interconnected. They mutually define one another and take care of the operation of the entire system. This is an analog system where the entrance and the exit are the same. Everything is built on the balance inside the system.

How can we see our future in this analog, integral system? Every part must feel that it is a part of a common organism. When a pipe bursts somewhere, it must be the first to plug the hole. In other words, all the parts together strive toward this. This is a common problem, and the entire system experiences it. It is not just a problem of someplace, somewhere.

Question: We are painting a desirable picture.

Answer: It is a necessary one because nature demands this of us, and it will continue pushing us toward this with a stick! What will we do with this challenge that nature is throwing us?

If we begin to penetrate the system, we will begin to see certain ins and outs, and a gradual coming together. This, of course, will take many, lengthy years, but this is evolution. Moreover, the interesting thing is that, if we only were to begin to move in this direction, we already would be in search of balance with nature. We would begin being in balance and homeostasis with it, and thus, would evoke positive forces over us.
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From KabTV’s “Global Crisis: The Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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A Look At The Family From The Height Of Global Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanToday, the happiness of man depends on his relationship with the environment, on whether he finds his proper place in society. And so we see that gradually a person leaves the little family unit.

At first all of life was connected with family, not only women, but men as well. The husband would leave to some factory in the morning to return in the evening to his wife, children, and the household, and all of life was revolved around it.

But this pastoral idyll ended. We left our homes for the wide world, began travelling and experiencing the world. On the other hand, thanks to modern means of communication, this world has begun entering our homes. As a result, we all ended up being interconnected through industrial, economic, and financial relationships. The circle closed, and all of us, both men and women who want to connect, must unite and through this connection, return to the familial connection, but on a new level.

For this to happen, everyone should examine: where we live, in what state, in what kind of world do we find ourselves, why do certain processes take place in the world, and what do we need to do? In what way does nature move us forward, giving us no opportunity to resist? Then, we will see that we need to establish tighter connections through media and specialized education.

In the end, we who once headed for the world, freed from home and family ties, will return back home free and independent. Once again, we return to a more quiet and slower-paced life, in connection with each other, but in a different form. Each of us will remain free, and based on this freedom, understanding, and vision of the future, we will establish for ourselves a connection between all people around the Earth and within each family.

Man suddenly sees that family offers meaning; there are great benefits and a better life in a family. Then, he will find a partner close to him in this new spirit that he has acquired based on integral education, and he will re-build the family. [Read more →]