We will all leave quarantine and enter a new world with a different economy, with different priorities and prospects, with other limitations and opportunities. The better we understand it now, the easier our acclimation will be.
Despite the drama that the media love so much when adequate experts and sober-minded people reflect on the current stage of development, they do not regret the past and face the future with hope.
Their common denominator is undeniable: scientific and technological progress as we knew it, slowed down a long time ago and placed the world before global threats, which are its integral side effects. Simply put, on the previous path, we destroyed ourselves by mercilessly wasting resources and instilling the paradigm of consumer degradation in people’s minds.
The Guardian columnist Denny Dorling believes that the coronavirus has become an emergency alarm, a pressed emergency-brake-button that will help humanity wake up and move on to other tracks. It is time to break the stupor.
We were told that we are moving toward a bright, enlightened, cultural, civilized world, but at the same time, we were led into the dark reality of international corporations, international capital, endless work, hopeless unemployment, constant environmental crises, and a total dullness.
However, trends are breaking down whether we want it or not. The future is knocking on the door, and it is not what we have seen in the past. If we reject and ignore it, the world runs the risk of falling into turbulence compared to which the coronavirus will appear as child’s play. And therefore, it is necessary to respond to this alarm call right now.
According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, each new stage includes five steps. First, it is implicitly born, then it actually appears, then we begin to pay attention to it, then we resist the changes we face, and finally we accept them for lack of another way out.
In this maturation algorithm, the coronavirus itself will not be a decisive trigger. To some extent, it wears us out of the old, but it does not allow us to get used to the new, and does not reveal or clarify itself in our minds so far.
Nevertheless, the process has started, and with time, it will occur to us that forgetting about it as a nightmare will not work. Then we will think about how to build our future lives, and we will inevitably have to float above the fog.
The essence of the current situation is that it requires changing socio-economic relations and adopting a new approach to budget allocation. Since 2008, it has become clear that in times of crisis, people will have to be provided with a decent life.
Now we are beginning to understand: life should not only be tolerable but generally procured for on the economical level, and meaningful, integral, mutually enriching on the human level
This is what the period of self-isolation brings us to, and the world cannot wait for the end of it. Now, out of hopelessness, we are depriving ourselves of our former joys because we understand that everyone is responsible for each other. But we are responsible for each other even without the virus!
This is the key lesson, and you must not miss it! The contours of a future society emerge as more uniform, caring, and interconnected; everything needs to be gradually restructured for it: schools, professions, systems, and views.
At first, all this will seem artificial, raw, and awkward. What can you do? Shoes need to be worn, fruits must be grown, children must be educated. But this will allow the world to enter an inevitable, new era without excesses caused by its total rejection.
And here, we, the people of Israel, have a decisive role to play. Why? Because we have always been open to the new. We did not just accept it, we brought it closer and shaped it. Surprisingly, two opposites live in us: a steadfast commitment to our original foundations and a fantastic readiness for change, unprecedented adaptability, eternal search, and eternal impulse.
Unfortunately, we do not want to understand ourselves, where it comes from, and what it means. But time does not wait; it clearly demonstrates to the world that these qualities of ours are now becoming critically important. We are able to understand and accept the new by showing a good example to everyone.
In the meantime, while we sleep in quarantine, other nations of the world hate us more and more. They do not recognize the true causes of this hatred, but they feel that we are harming them. Today, of course, we are accused of this pandemic, and at the same time, vaccines are expected from us.
In reality, the world indiscriminately expects from the Jews a cure for the main ailment—selfishness. And until people get it, anti-Semitism will flourish. After all, it is imbued in humanity ever since the Jews became a nation at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Therefore, only one thing will help us and the world in the end: the awakening of Israel from hibernation. This is another lesson of the coronavirus. No matter how much we shrug it off, it will not help. They still expect help from us even when we are being stigmatized and accused of completely delusional sins.
What can we give the world? What will it accept from us with sincere gratitude and recognize as “paying off debts”?
Communication. We can give the world a human connection that will solve all problems. We can form a society that meets the challenges of the times.
In our century, this is called by the pejorative term “socialism,” but I am not afraid of this word. Yes, socialism is also our offspring. And although on it stands the ignominy of the Soviet experiment, it is only because you must not pluck an unripe fruit, it is impossible to forcefully impose relationships for which neither people nor circumstances have ripened.
This was best described by Mark Golansky, Doctor of Economics, who in 1987 spoke of the impending collapse of the USSR as if he had seen it with his own eyes: “The time of capitalism,” he writes, “is the modern period of development, and the time of socialism is the future period of maturity. These two systems are actually two successive stages of the existence of mankind, and it is better for them not to intersect in time.
Capitalism will not be fit for a mature society. To maintain the achieved standard of living, society needs a system that is more resistant to environmental turmoil and less sensitive to profitability. Such a conclusion is unequivocally led by forecasts predicting at the time of the transformation of capitalism into socialism such a high level of integration of the world capitalist system that it becomes one and indivisible.”
We are approaching this milestone now. And the coronavirus is in fact a part of the environmental problems that humanity is facing.
Kabbalah adds to this another layer that links everything together: today, we are faced not with nature but with ourselves. Nature is not spontaneous, it is our mother, and it always meets our level of development. And today, the pressure on nature is caused by the fact that the time has come for us to grow and change. The world is almost ripe. And who will help it realize what is happening if not us?
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