I participated in two conversations for the TV Series “The Butterfly Effect.” One was on the social economy, and the second – on the global solution to the economic crisis.
Speaking with me was Shlomo Maoz, the chief economist at Excellence Nessuah Investment House.
Shlomo Maoz is a famous international economist, who predicted a number of trends in the global economy, and whose forecasts and advice are valued in the financial market. In this case he again expressed the most correct solution from the perspective of common (egoistic) sense! However, Kabbalah’s point of view is different.
His advice on how to overcome the financial crisis is the following:
1. We have to return to “life at home,” work less, restrict the high-tech industry and the Internet, spend more time with our families and maintain a small community. The Internet is the source of the crisis because it has connected the whole civilization on earth into a “small village” (see my comment #1 below).
2. More women should be appointed to management positions because women make business less egoistic, more sensible and flexible, and less arrogant.
This advice clearly echoes the history of Ancient Babylon:
4500 years ago, the ancient Babylonian civilization – which included all of humanity within a closed area – began to experience a global crisis of a “small village”:
- People discovered that everyone depends on everyone.
- Every person’s egoism was exposed to the maximum (allegorically speaking, they wanted to rise up to the heavens).
- Everyone’s hatred for everyone was revealed; people stopped understanding each other (allegorically speaking, their languages became confused).
Then two propositions emerged:
Abraham proposed for everyone to unite “as one family,” which is what Nature compelled them to do. This union could be achieved by using the science of Kabbalah that he revealed.
Others, led by Nimrod, were against this, and since the other path was egoistically clear to everyone, the majority of the people accepted it. Hence they scattered all over the earth, destroying the connections of a “small village” among each other and annulling the globalization.
This is what Shlomo Maoz proposes we do today. The proposition is correct and addresses the problem. However, in our time it cannot be the solution. It is similar to other “solutions,” such as how to break our relationships by means of another world war, or to discontinue our communication artificially. However, there is no going back because today our egoism embraces the entire civilization on earth.
The science of Kabbalah says that we cannot go our separate ways peacefully a second time. Instead, mankind will all but destroy itself by engaging in the Third and Fourth nuclear World Wars. Then only a few people will remain on the Earth, and they will nevertheless correct themselves (our souls) and will attain the goal of creation – similarity to Nature (the Creator).
In the past, only a few people heeded Abraham’s advice. They later became known as Israel, which means “straight to the Creator.” Today, just like Kabbalah had predicted for thousand years, we find ourselves in the same situation. However, the solution isn’t to disconnect, as this will bring about Nazism and cause us to annihilate each other. The solution lies in creating an even greater connection with each other!
Therefore:
- Mankind must resolutely restrain all extremists and people who aim to disconnect us, even if it will have to resort to physical coercion.
- For the sake of survival, every person has to be satisfied with the necessities (see my comment #2 below) and contribute all the excess of his labor to the well-being of the entire society.
- All mass media and educational systems must provide a global education for mankind.
My Comment #1: Today humanity is experiencing a period that’s similar to the mid-life crisis of an individual. The inertia to move forward that started at birth is running out. Now we have to progress consciously, by our own efforts. We have to understand where we are moving and why: what is the goal? When a person doesn’t understand his goal at mid-life, he starts resorting to extremes: earning a bundle of money, remarrying someone younger, and so on. His greatest fear is to remain alone with his own thoughts and the ultimate question: “What is this all for?”
This is why now, as strange as it may seem, society is somewhat happy to encounter the financial crisis, because it can hold it accountable for all the incomprehensible negative phenomena it has been facing over the recent years, such as the lack of a clear direction for further development, a dead end in international relations, and geopolitical changes. Now there is an understandable common problem that has to be combated. All the rest can be put aside for the time being.
My Comment #2: Let’s recall an example of the right attitude to the world as told by the Biblical story about the heavenly manna. The people were instructed to gather exactly as much as they needed to eat in one day. All the excess would spoil overnight, because it didn’t belong to them! So, the current crisis is teaching us to get rid of the excess. When the crisis deepens and spreads even more, people will start thinking that it’s useless to make such great efforts to gather something that will spoil anyway.
For more on this, see the newspaper “The Nation“, the book From Chaos to Harmony, and my lecture in Arosa.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Talks on Globalization and the Financial Crisis
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A question I received: As one who struggles with being an egoistic altruist, I’d like to know what advice you can give us when we wear ourselves down to the point where we are no good to anyone? My mother used to say, “If you don’t look after yourself; you can’t look after anyone else.” I haven’t yet been able to discern some kind of “magical line” that tells me to stop looking after others and look after myself.
