Health And Medicine, Part 2

What does human health depend on?

Question: There are two types of impact of society on a person.

The first is an indirect, unconscious impact. For example: pollution of the atmosphere, water, genetic experiments that are carried out on animals for food, etc. All of this naturally affects us.

The second is the direct, conscious impact of society: the media, all kinds of economic levers, and social norms.

Do you think human health in most cases depends more on society or does it depend on genetics?

Answer: Health depends on both.

Mostly, no doubt, from genetics. But still, as they say, existence determines consciousness. Therefore, it is imperative to think about what kind of environment we give a person, although in the same environment there are people who tolerate it relatively well and there are those who perish.

Remark: Doctors say that human health depends 10% on health care, 20% on heredity, another 20% on the environment, i.e., from the activities of people. And 50% is determined by a person’s lifestyle. And the way of life is dictated by the media and by the historical period in which a person lives.

That is, in principle, we can say that 80% of health still depends on society.

My Comment: Of course, life expectancy and its quality depend on the relationship between people, on their communication.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

New Life 1265 – The End Of The Capitalistic Era?

New Life 1265 – The End Of The Capitalistic Era?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The younger generation is no longer interested in attaining financial wealth and engaging in the competitive, capitalistic system. Nature is fighting against it more and more as well. Capitalism was fueled by the growth of the human ego and has become like cancer, destroying the planet and its resources. We are evolving to a new, circular form of mutual connection based on spiritual capital. Spiritual capital is the sense of unlimited freedom and purpose in doing good for others. It is a level of human development above the egoistic, animal level. Each one will have what they need to sustain themselves and will want to give and share the rest. When we are there for one another in equality, the entire world will exist for the benefit of every one.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1265 – The End Of The Capitalistic Era?” 7/13/20

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Why Is The Material World So Different From The Spiritual?

Why is there such a vast distance, such a discrepancy, between material life and spiritual? The fact is that these are two different worlds, a completely different form of existence, a different goal. Two different programs operate in them: work for the sake of receiving and work for the sake of bestowal.

There is nothing more opposite to each other than these two principles. We are trying to somehow connect these worlds with our mind. But actually, it is possible to comprehend them only by faith above knowledge, that is, just above egoistic reason.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

Health And Medicine, Part 1

Society of Unnecessary Professions

Question: What should a person realize in the era of coronavirus?

Answer: A person must realize that he has survived only the first blow of nature. Many more blows are needed to correct society, and they will follow. As a result, society will not remain the same. This will mainly concern the employment of people.

The fact is that we have created a society of completely unnecessary professions. In our post-industrial world, a huge number of superfluous people have appeared, and therefore, a lot of completely unnecessary occupations, professions, and enterprises arose. We need to understand that we are in the integral sphere of nature, which strives for optimization, and it will put pressure on us so that all unnecessary professions disappear.

Looking, for example, at animal nature, we know that some number of animals must die off, the others must develop, depending on what conditions appear or disappear in nature. The same goes for us. We are part of nature, so it plays with us, sets certain new parameters for us, thereby reducing or increasing the population, occupation, and so on.

Now, under the influence of the coronavirus, there is a great acceleration in the development of human society. A lot of people don’t work and, in principle, they don’t need to return to work.

Those enterprises that are really needed have acted, are operating, and will continue to operate. And only 5% OF the service sector that we have created over the past seventy years is needed.

Therefore, there will be no need for it, and it will no longer return to its previous activity. The bulk of the population employed in the service sector will simply be left without work. And here we need to think about what to do with people with unnecessary professions.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/14/20

Managing Stress, Part 5

How to Manage Stress?

Question: There are many ways to manage stress, depending on the factor that causes it, such as breathing exercises, meditation, physical activity, cooking, breeding pets, or singing in a choir. All of this somehow distracts people and saves them from stress.

Many advise crying, keeping a diary, or spending time in the company of loved ones.

Yet, we see that even though all these tips help, it is only to a certain extent and only when stressful situations are local in nature. However, when there is a massive pandemic or some other cataclysm, other methods are needed. What can you recommend?

Answer: I do not see eliminating the source of the problem in these methods. All of them only help to somehow calm down a little. It turns out that the cause remains, but the person as if takes a sedative and now does not feel the cause, or feels it in a half or a quarter of its strength.

This is not a solution. Especially if this is a global issue concerning all the inhabitants of the Earth, who after a while will no longer know where to find food or how to exist.

Question: What will help them?

Answer: Only the revelation of the source of this phenomenon: what is the reason for such pressure on all of humanity. After all, nothing happens in nature for nothing, everything has its own reason.

The search for this reason itself is already the beginning of the cure. Just as we investigate a disease and try to find a cure for it, here as well we must find out why this is happening. Only now we are investigating not bacteria, animals, or our incorrect interactions with some parts of nature, but rather the meaning of nature, what it wants to push us to.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20

“Loneliness Kills” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “Loneliness Kills”

A few days ago, a young man in Israel, a school teacher, killed himself. He had students, he had tenure, he was healthy, handsome, eloquent, and he was lonely. In a Facebook post, he wrote his final note: “It is not good for the man to be alone; loneliness kills. Another day, another week, another month, another year goes by and I’m alone. At lunch, at work, in the evening, on weekends, on holidays, and on birthdays that no one remembers. The few friends have gone, faded in time; it is time to leave.”

Suddenly, when Covid-19 came along and forced us to take a break from mutual annihilation, we began to feel the emptiness we have inside.

That man was not unique in his emotions. His words on social media capture the curse of our time: We are all connected, yet so alone. Loneliness has become so heavy these days precisely because we should have been so much more connected than we are.

We’re so late in our development. By now, we should have been a connected humanity that feels that we are one system whose parts complement each other and reciprocate with one another for the sake of humankind and all of nature. Instead, until just recently, we have been immersed up to our necks in the quagmire of mutual destruction that we proudly (and mistakenly) called “capitalistic economy” and “progress.”

Suddenly, when Covid-19 came along and forced us to take a break from mutual annihilation, we began to feel the emptiness we have inside. But what else could we have within us? When everyone hates and fears everyone else to the point that you stop talking and communicate by texting, and you build around you walls of false confidence and fake smiles to hide your insecurity, when suddenly you are alone, you realize that you have no idea who you are, how to be with yourself, or what you really want because you have been busy all your life erecting walls against the hostile outside world. And no one calls because they’re all in the same situation: Everyone is lonely and afraid of being hurt.

Being alone means you are ignored, that people don’t care about you, so some people prefer to end their lives as long as at some point, even if it’s their final moment, somebody will care.

Why We Can’t Connect

Humanity is different from all other parts of nature in that we must evolve of our own accord. Our evolution is far less physical compared to other species, and far more emotional, intellectual, and social. At the height of our evolution, we are intended to experience the wholeness of the system we call the “universe.”

Nature develops all other elements besides humanity through instincts. Humans are largely devoid of them. When an animal is born, it immediately knows where to find food, can often walk within a few hours, and generally behaves like any other animal of its kind. Humans, on the other hand, can barely move their hands and legs when they are born, and remain utterly helpless for years. Humans, unlike animals, have to gain their knowledge by themselves through hard work.

In human society, just as a human infant, we have to learn one step at a time how to become social beings and how to build a good society for ourselves. We are evolving through our own desire to improve our situation. And we are not evolving randomly, but in a clear direction: toward greater cohesion, greater care for one another, greater mutual responsibility, and eventually to love for one another.
When a child is hungry, it cries because an empty stomach feels bad. When a person is lonely, he cries because an empty heart feels very, very bad. Heartache hurts much more than an empty stomach.

But the loneliness so many feel today is not the end. It’s the beginning. It’s the darkness before the dawn. Now we are beginning to realize that we must transform everything, and first and foremost our relationships. To make a change, we have to feel that the present is unbearable. And nothing is more
unbearable than loneliness.

We can prevent such tragedies as suicide because of loneliness if we stop insisting on returning to our previous, backward state of “free” economy that is reined by egoism, and start advancing to the state of mutual concern and empathy we should have been in long ago. Along the way, we will discover that it’s not only better to care for each other than fear one another, it is also how all of reality works but us, until we, too, reach that state.

“How Long Will It Be Until We Have A Coronavirus Vaccine?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How long will it be until we have a coronavirus vaccine?“

First, if we could look at the intentions behind the global race for a coronavirus vaccine, then what would we see?

Would we see a sincere concern of experts and world leaders to improve humanity’s health?

Or would we see a cutthroat pursuit to be the first to birth a major source of new income for their country’s economy, as well as an ability to flaunt their country’s gleaming status and pride as being smarter and more adept than other countries for winning this race?

Since human nature is egoistic, prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others, then it should come as no surprise that the latter inclinations are the primal driving factors behind the pursuit for a coronavirus vaccine.

This race thus becomes a reflection of the same overblown egoistic human relations that stand behind the disease in the first place. So even if we develop a vaccine, we can expect it to fall short of providing us with a lasting remedy. On the contrary, without correction of our egoistic inclinations, we can only expect our problems to worsen.

What does it mean that our egoistic relations are behind this disease?

When we can view the coronavirus pandemic as part of a process unfolding in nature that guides our eventual exit from our egoistic nature—and entrance into a new positively connected reality, balanced with nature—then we can see how the coronavirus emerged primarily as a blow to the very ego that nature pressures us to exit.

Therefore, no matter what sophisticated vaccines we come up with, if we fail to use this pandemic in order to increase our awareness of the greater process we are in, and of what nature ultimately wants from us, then we will inevitably have to experience harsher blows in order to wake us up to the goodness that exists outside of our divisive egos.

The main discovery we thus need to make with this pandemic is not outside us, in the form of a vaccine, but inside us, in the form of upgraded attitudes to each other: from egoistic, indifferent and even hateful, to altruistic, caring and loving.

Moreover, the coronavirus has laid out before our very eyes just how connected we are, showing how a minuscule particle that surfaced in a small Chinese province became humanity’s common problem, placing people around the world into similar restrictive conditions.

In other words, through the coronavirus, nature shows us how connected and interdependent we are, while at the same time, this should illuminate how much we are disconnected and divided in our egoistic attitudes to each other.

The parallel opposite tendency of becoming increasingly interdependent while also becoming more and more egoistic is a recipe for disaster.

Therefore, the sooner we implement a change in our attitudes to each other in order to align ourselves with the connectedness surrounding us, then the sooner we will develop immunity to the coronavirus and to other even stronger diseases, without needing to stick any needles into our veins.

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“No Black Without White” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “No Black without White”

When society is falling apart, it’s not because one side is wrong and the other side is right; it’s because neither wants to unite. By nature, we want anything that doesn’t please us to disappear. If you think differently from me, I want you out of my life, and preferably out of existence. This is the natural thinking of every person, to various extents. But nature didn’t endow us only with this nature; it also gave us the ability to think and choose.

When we learn that our lives, their meaning, and their continuity depend on the persistence of the ones we hate, we will value the reality that created everything, and we will be able to build love for the wholeness above the hatred for the part. Only then will there be peace and happiness.

Nature endowed us with the ability to observe and to learn that nothing exists unless its opposite supports its existence. Planet Earth, for example, is kept in orbit thanks to the balance between the Sun’s gravitational pull toward it, and the centrifugal force that pushes it away from it. Likewise, our lives revolve around the hours of darkness and light, and our vision relies on the range between seeing all the colors together, creating the color white, and no colors at all, creating the color black. Heat and cold, hunger and fullness, attraction and rejection, love and hate, all those are opposites that make our lives what they are.

The opposite of our lives don’t deny or refute one another; they enable and complement one another! If we could only realize that as it is in all of reality and as it is with us, so it is with our fellow people, imagine what an inclusive, welcoming world we would have. Imagine what richness we could experience if we could embrace the diversity of people’s colors, races, beliefs, penchants, perspectives, and everything else that makes us different, yet complementary.

Imagine also what a dull and stagnant world we would have if everyone were the same. We wouldn’t develop thinking since we would have no need to articulate a point of view. We wouldn’t develop imagination since nothing would stimulate or intrigue us. We would lose our creativity, vitality, and the zest for life. In fact, we owe even our fierce hatred and the delight of indulging in self-righteousness to the fact that there are people who are different from us. What would we do if they did not exist?

The bottom line is that we need to look beyond the differences and see the wholeness that engenders them, and that the differences maintain the wholeness. When we learn that our lives, their meaning, and their continuity depend on the persistence of the ones we hate, we will value the reality that created everything, and we will be able to build love for the wholeness above the hatred for the part. Only then will there be peace and happiness.