|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Once, competition was developmental and constructive, but today it mostly brings destruction and ruin. Once, there was a concern to prevent disease, but today the pharmaceutical industry produces many unnecessary medications just to boost sales, and the healthcare system has its own vested interests. What kind of world are we bringing our children into? What kind of society? Such questions lead us to reflect on the nature of human egoistic development, and what might balance it.
The wheels of evolution cannot be turned back. The process we are going through cannot be stopped. All we can do is examine what has happened until today and what is happening now, and whether we are not artificially holding ourselves back from advancing to the level we are meant to reach, as individuals and as a society.
From nature’s side, the ego is a growth engine. The desire to progress, to do something, to maximize pleasure with minimal effort, is our nature, and it is also the force that drives every single cell. A flower, a cat, and a dog are all driven by a similar instinct, and even the inanimate always seeks optimal conditions for the safest possible existence.
We thus have nothing but ego, and the entire process we undergo is essentially the ego’s evolution within humans. When capitalism began, it was clear that if everyone acted according to their individual ego and there was competition between all, society would benefit, advance, and each person would feel an improvement in their quality of life. Many good things were created this way, and the general feeling was a flourishing one.
Then, at a certain point, a kind of developmental distortion began. The ego reached a level where the drive for private profit at any cost began producing mutations. For example, in the development of electric light bulbs, the possibility to manufacture a bulb with a very long lifespan was found, but it was not profitable. So they deliberately shortened it to increase sales.
As narrow egoism intensified, competition turned from free and healthy into a celebration of manipulation, one that was full of lies and schemes, favoritism and restrictions. For instance, someone might be halted under the guise of legality just to let someone else continue to control. Laws are enacted that force the public to buy something simply because someone wants to profit off their backs, and so on.
Therefore, the beautiful achievements in industry and trade, in the economy and society, in science and technology, began to fade. In their place appeared bubbles, fictions, and artificial regulations that benefited the influential but harmed the average person and society as a whole. We even destroyed the surrounding nature in the chase to increase capital, with no consideration that future generations need to eat, drink, and breathe.
Unlike us, in every natural system, life develops in balance between its parts. Nature places each element in its proper place, and integral connection creates harmony, like cells and organs in a healthily functioning body. When a certain cell starts consuming its surroundings, it becomes cancerous. It “sees” only itself, becoming inconsiderate of everything around it. Its increase eventually leads to the collapse of the body, as well as to its own death. But it cannot stop itself.
It feels as if we are headed to this dangerous state in humanity, the intensification of the ego within each person threatening to bury everyone together. Nuclear wars, hunger that will send masses to the streets, diseases, pandemics, and ecological disasters, who knows what might come first. The dead end we are approaching forces us to recalculate. We must deeply examine what is beneficial and harmful for us in our ego.
Eventually, we will come to realize that the correct use of the ego is when there is alignment between the individual’s benefit and society’s benefit. Since such an approach runs counter to the egoistic nature, we need a deep educational, cultural, and social process to awaken in us the feeling that we are integral parts of society. We need to quickly develop the understanding and feeling that we are inseparable parts of a greater body, receiving all life and vitality through mutual connections. With such a feeling, we will begin to care for others as we care for ourselves. When everyone constantly thinks about how to do good to everyone, we will rise together to the next stage in our evolution as a human species.
Where can we begin?
Right here where I live. We, the people of Israel, can create the pilot for a new human model of connection and complementarity, balance and harmony, integral connection between all and everyone. Why? It is because connection is in the very ancient roots of the nation.
It was Abraham the Babylonian who discovered that all of nature is a single force and taught anyone willing to listen that unity among different people brings alignment with it, i.e., through unity among people, we reach unity with nature, and that is the healthiest, safest, and happiest state we could possibly achieve as humans. From the thousands who gathered around his idea, a nation was later formed. Its foundational values were unifying ones, as it is written: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “All of Israel are friends,” and “As one man with one heart.”
These preparations are engraved within us. However, they have been covered over by 2,000 years of destruction. We can revive them in order to save society from collapse and to show the world a new way. This will draw sympathy toward us and also calm the growing hatred directed at us around the world. Deep down, beneath the surface and just shy of awareness, that hatred stems from a deep sense that the people of Israel are to blame for every bad occurrence, that we possess something extremely important, and that we hide it from everyone.
Tomorrow’s world can only be a more connected one. That is not in question. What remains unknown is whether we will be wise enough to grasp the direction and embark on an educational-cultural process to build an integral connection throughout society, or whether only through terrible distress will our awareness expand.
Based on “New Life” episode 51 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Posted on Facebook, LinkedIn Newsletter, Medium, Twitter X, YouTube, Quora