Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

What Would It Take to Feed Everyone In the World?


A question I received: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated that “The world only needs 30 billion dollars a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger.” Yet 700 billion dollars have been allotted to solving the credit crisis. We easily found 700 billion dollars to cover the financial crisis, but we can’t find 30 billion to solve the problem of worldwide hunger. Why is that?

My Answer: Obviously, the bankers feel that their problems are more important. But may I ask: How did the UN distribute their funds in the past? Why didn’t they help fight the problem of worldwide hunger, or at least to improve it?

The fact is that you can’t feed the world this way! People shouldn’t go against the Creator (Nature). The only thing that needs correction is human nature, and if it is corrected, there will be plenty of everything for everyone!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Does a Fallow Year Have to Do with Rice? – an Article about the Food Crisis
Laitman.com Post: Food Crisis – Rising Food Prices and the Meaning of Life
Kabbalah Today Article: Mankind’s Growing Hunger

“The End of America” – Or Is It?

A New Year's Wish to the WorldA question I received (from a student in Russia): Aren’t you happy about “the end of America?”

My Answer: Unlike you, I cannot revel in hearing news about the crisis in the USA nor rejoice at this being God’s punishment for their pride, because I respect the people who have built such a powerful country with their own hands, without outsourcing it. I don’t believe in a polar world; I know that the world is round and that’s the only way it can be.

In order to be a great country, it is necessary to have influence in the world: capital, technology, developed sciences, and a perfect system of government, instead of manipulating people through fear. I look at the world objectively, from above, and I feel sad about the suffering that’s to come. I don’t feel any animalistic pleasure from this.

However, you will soon be disappointed, because America will live through the crisis. It’s more flexible than other countries and will be able to re-adapt more easily. The collapse of the Western civilization and the end of the world as we know it will force all of us to change. Those who are smart won’t be too squeamish to study Kabbalah, and they will suffer less and recover faster. This is what I wish for everyone – including the Russian people.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Why Was America Hit First?
Laitman.com Post: The US Market – A Chance for Recovery
Laitman.com Post: Obama: A Chance for Hope or Another Disappointment?

Gordon Brown, “Seize This Moment of Change to Create a Truly Global Society”


News Report (from The UK in the USA): The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, believes that the global financial crisis can become a catalyst for the creation of a new global society, one that is united through shared aspirations. He is calling upon all the world leaders to start laying the foundations for the new global order.

In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time but a defining moment: an unprecedented period of global change, a time when one chapter ended and another began – for nations; for continents; for the whole world.”

My Comment: This shows us how suffering helps people to understand the things taking place. However, it’s also possible for everything to happen without the suffering, through conscious understanding of the world’s development. Then we would strive toward a good future ourselves, with a sensation of comfort, by anticipating a bright future instead of being “pushed to happiness” by the blows of nature.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: War Is No Solution
Laitman.com Post: What Will Happen If Countries Draw National Boundaries on the Internet?

Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G-20


News Report (translated from Gazeta.ru): The interests of the G-20 countries are far too different to expect serious changes of the financial architecture from the Washington summit, as Sarkozy and Medvedev want. The G-20 summit will reinforce national regulation and intervention into the economy. However, these measures will not help to overcome the crisis.

My Comment: Each one of them is trying to “look out for number one” – and this is why the meeting is doomed to fail. Next, the crisis will develop further, and after that there’ll be another meeting and another failure – and by then war won’t be too far off. It would be better if they didn’t meet at all, as it is written: “When egoists stay apart, it is better for them and for the world.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Seventh Asia-Europe Meeting Brings No Good News
Laitman.com Post: Another Pointless Conference of the World’s Leaders

Israel on the Eve of an Economic Earthquake


News Report (translated from Kursor.co.il): Israel’s business newspaper “Globes” has published an interview with attorney Ilan Shavit, a specialist on economic and financial rights, called “Israel On the Eve of an Economic Earthquake.” He warns, “The current crisis is an earthquake and should not be considered transient. Clearly, it’s not over yet.”

My Comment: The problem with these specialists is that their judgment is based on previous experience, and hence they think that a bad period will be followed by a good period – that this is the dynamic of life. However, this time something new has happened: the world became collective, every person’s individuality has disappeared, and the laws of the world have changed. Hence all specialists of the past have to be reeducated and learn the law of the communications between the elements of an organism. These are precisely the laws of the Upper (altruistic) World, described in Kabbalah.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What’s the Right Way to Create Contracts In the Age of Globalization?
Laitman.com Post: Instead of Seeking to Change our Economic Systems, We Should Draw the Upper Light of Correction

Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution

News Report (on Nature): In an article called “Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution,” Physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud states that we can avoid global economic crises in the future by applying the approach of physics to economic models, thereby changing the economists’ system of thinking and training. He writes: “Compared to physics, it seems fair to say that the quantitative success of the economic sciences is disappointing. What is the flagship achievement of economics, apart from its recurrent inability to predict and avert crises, including the current worldwide credit crunch? Why is this?”

My Comment: The physicist is wrong! It’s easy for him to make these claims because he investigates the part of nature that’s revealed to us, or to our senses. Economics, on the other hand, is a science about human relationships, which aren’t clearly revealed to our senses. We don’t know ourselves as people. All the sciences reveal our world and us in it only on the still, vegetative and animate levels. The “human” level is unattainable to us. We can only study it if we rise to the level above it – the Creator’s level. In other words, we can study it to the degree we are similar to the Creator, or stated simply – when we become Kabbalists.

For this reason, we cannot come out of this global crisis until we begin changing ourselves as parts of a single system, all of whose the parts exist in harmony of all their desires, thoughts and actions. How can we do this? This is what Kabbalah explains to us.

Therefore, there are many new sciences ahead of us about the global system of humanity. Today there is a science that’s very much in demand – “Kabbalistic Economics,” or to be more neutral, “the economics of the global system.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?

Obama: A Chance For Hope Or Another Disappointment?

RussiaNews Report (translated from Kursor.co.il): “Obama Will Soon Disappoint His Electorate.” People are putting great hopes on Barack Obama. He isn’t just a political leader, but the hope of the entire generation, a man who will bring prosperity to all, and first of all, redemption from the financial crisis.

My Comment:
The reasons why Obama was “elected”: In recent years, the world sees the United States as an international cop and overbearing teacher. It is fighting a war in Iraq, keeping prisoners in the jails of Guantanamo without trials or charges, and its arrogance sets it against regions such as Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Moreover, it is once again starting a cold war with Russia. In other words, the United States has earned an extremely unfavorable image. They are even accused of all the disasters happening in the world.

This unattractive picture has been augmented by the current global financial crisis, for which everyone blames the United States because it is the international center of the entire global economy and finance. The worse people all over the world will feel during this developing crisis, the more hatred and blame will be put on the United States. The world opinion is that the Anglo-Saxon white Protestant America has been ruling the whole world and arrogantly setting the standards for everyone, for too many years.

In order to relieve all of these negative attitudes and to alter their unfavorable image, Americans decided to bring the African-American Obama to the post of President. This neutralizes the hatred of the United States’ black and Hispanic population, brings about greater understanding and connection between the United States and the Latin American countries, as well as Asia, Africa, and even Europe. It also removes grounds for Russia to accuse the United States, since with a black president, there are many things you can’t blame America for anymore. The operation was accomplished professionally and just in time. However, apart from diverting accusations, anger, and the international community’s negative attitude to the United States, will it bring positive results?

The Solution: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the global crisis is just starting and will keep growing. It will last until humanity brings itself to full equivalence with Nature (the Creator). Kabbalah explains how to do this.

Disappointment: Today, however, it is very unlikely that Obama’s advisers are ready to hear what Kabbalah has to say. Apparently, the world must suffer several more blows – like the Pharaoh in Egypt – in order to hear the truth. Hence all those who hope for positive changes have failed expectations ahead of them! The Creator gave this world a new leader – Obama, but he can only become that leader by starting a global reconstruction of people’s perception of the world.

The situation in the world can only be improved by studying the essence of the global world and educating all of humanity about a new attitude to the world – the world as one whole. If we create a system of global education about the global world, then the whole world will immediately feel that it is congruent to Nature (the Creator), and everyone’s hopes will come true!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Can We Avoid a Recession?
Laitman.com Post: America – Optimistic, and Why?
Laitman.com Post: Why Was America Hit First?

The US Market – A Chance for Recovery


Two questions I received on resolving the financial crisis:

Question: What do you think of the US Market which seems to be on the rebound? Is it over? People who I meet are not very pessimistic and very hopeful that we have passed the bottom and all will return to normal soon.

My Answer: Things will improve if the government, the banks, and the people will act to create a greater connection with one another, as Baal HaSulam writes in the articles “The Peace,” “Peace in the World,” and “The Future Generation.”

Question: We think that it is necessary to exchange opinions about the systematic crisis on the international level among all social groups: government, enterprises, churches, science, culture, and social organizations. The initiative must come from the Kabbalists and go to organizations similar to them in their spirit, and the UN must assume the responsibility to organize this kind of forum.

Obviously, this will not produce immediate results, but what’s important is that the elite of the world will hear the ideas of Kabbalah. Fresh ideas and a growing need will do their job. Do you think it is possible to implement this?

My Answer: This is what we are striving to. I am waiting for your suggestions.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Why Was America Hit First?
Laitman.com Post: Can We Avoid A Recession?

What’s the Right Way to Create Contracts In the Age of Globalization?

I had a conversation about the global crisis with Amir Hen, a famous Israeli attorney of economics, business and finance.

Summary: What is the right way to create contracts between people, organizations and governments if they are to take into account the global manifestations of nature: that everything is interconnected and interdependent, everyone is conditionally or specifically equal, and the planet belongs to everyone?

The transition to the conditions of the last generation cannot be forced or artificial. It is impossible for anyone to understand how to behave under these new conditions of the global interconnection of all people unless one learns this law – the law of life and sustenance of a single system of human society.

Just as a person cannot exist in our world without knowing its laws on the still, vegetative and animate levels – knowing what’s useful and what’s harmful, and how to utilize different objects and phenomena – in exactly the same way, a person cannot exist in our times without knowing the law of the “global (unified) mankind” on the “human” level, which is being revealed today.

Moreover, this law and all of its manifestations are studied only in Kabbalah. By observing this law in a greater measure (through building a greater connection between the souls), we will ascend the 125 degrees of the ladder leading to the Creator’s Palace.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Source of Happiness
Laitman.com Post: By Changing Our Intentions, We Change the Whole of Reality
Kabbalah Today Article: The Consumer Effect
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Last Generation”

Can We Avoid a Recession?


News Report (translated from gazeta.ru): Americans chose Barack Obama as President hoping that he will solve all their economic problems. However, experts believe that it is too late to reverse the development of the crisis. There is nothing that governments can do about the collapse of the global financial model or to prevent the crisis from unfolding. No matter what measures they will take, consumption will continue decreasing, recession will last for a long time, and the world will witness a new wave of bankruptcies and other consequences of the crisis, but this time in the real sector of the economy. The International Monetary Fund makes pessimistic predictions, forecasting a recession of leading world economies.

My Comment: The world can only be helped by realizing the true meaning of humanity’s global state, which we have reached. We are a single organism, and as such, we should live in equality, with universal equal distribution, absolute bestowal of one’s entire profit for society’s benefit, and love for one’s neighbor. This is similar to the way an organism operates: all cells and organs operate in absolute harmony, as otherwise there would be illnesses (crises), even to the point of death (extermination).

All this must happen gradually, but it is necessary! Hence, our main objective is to provide humanity with a global education, in order to teach it the meaning of a “single organism” using examples from nature. People – especially the leaders – must realize that there is no way back to the old rules. For the first time in history, the world has become different. It must become similar to the Upper World, or in other words, people must acquire the quality of “bestowal” instead of the quality of “reception.” They must change to the exact opposite.

We have to speak about this and gradually become used to it. There is no other way to go. Otherwise another world war may break out in the world, but even after it’s over we will still have to face the same problem: to become similar to Nature or the Creator, because this is what we must attain according to the plan of creation.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Caused the Current Financial Crisis?
Laitman.com Post: Virtual Lesson On the Financial Crisis