As 2014’s Independence Day in Israel draws in, Dr. Michael Laitman reflects on what is independence for a nation in an age of interdependent ties among all nations, in an article published in Aliyah Magazine… 

As another Israeli Day of Independence starts being celebrated, the all too familiar chants (not to say rants) about Israel’s need to be strong and self-reliant fill the media. Perhaps the chanters know something most of us do not; otherwise, how can you explain their insistence that independence is possible? This is true for all countries, not just for Israel; independence is a myth; interdependence is the reality of our lives.

Today, a country that wishes to be independent must focus its attention on the society rather than on the economy. The only way a country can be independent is if the people within it feel solidarity and mutual responsibility toward each other. Read Full Article »

The wisdom of Kabbalah views reality as a single entity, with humans representing the highest level of existence, in the sense that we possess the most intense and most narcissistic desire to receive. It is now time to outline what humanity can do to shift the negative trend, considering that we are irreversibly interdependent and interconnected as we can clearly observe through the daily events of the deepening global crisis. And while it is beyond the scope of this article to outline a detailed “bailout” plan for humanity’s present and future crises, it is worthwhile to point out some solutions that we believe could be implemented on a broad scale, and if done right, resolve most of our problems.

How Collectivism and Globality Relate to Becoming Like the Creator

Although humanity has little experience operating as a global system, since we are used to defining ourselves as individuals or members of factions of society, from family to nation-state, the current situation necessitates that we expand our view. Most of the political and financial leaders in the world already acknowledge this requirement.

Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, for example, addressed this issue in a message to the first Annual Interdependence day on September 12, 2004: “A new era is upon us. In the future…the world will be transformed…by the forces of globalization and the growing interdependence of the world’s peoples. …the more interdependent we become, the more decisions have to be taken not by one nation state alone, but by many, acting together. Unless it is properly managed, this process can entail a ‘democratic deficit,’ as decision makers are further removed from and less accountable to the people whose lives are affected. So the challenge for all of us is to manage our interdependence in ways that bring people in, rather than shutting them out. Citizens need to think and act globally, so as to influence global decisions” (The Interdependence Handbook: Looking Back, Living the Present, Choosing the Future, edited by Sondra Myers and Benjamin R. Barber).

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Getting to the Bottom of the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” Phenomenon

We can see just how much we always want what others have in Item 38 of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” stating that “Man [Stage four], who can feel others, becomes needy of everything that others have, …and is thus filled with envy to acquire everything that others have. When he has a hundred, he wants two hundred, thus his needs forever multiply until he wishes to devour all that there is in the whole world.”

But earlier in the introduction (Item 25), Ashlag writes, “Since the Thought [of Creation—the Creator’s goal] was to delight His creatures, He had to create an overwhelmingly exaggerated desire to receive all that bounty, which is in the Thought of Creation [to give us unbounded pleasure].” And he continues, “If the exaggerated will to receive perished from the world, the Thought of Creation would not be realized—meaning the reception of all the great pleasures that He thought to bestow upon His creatures—for the great will to receive and the great pleasure go hand in hand. And to the extent that the desire to receive it diminishes, so diminish the delight and pleasure from receiving.”

Hence, if we want to become Creator-like, we must not diminish our desires. But if we do not diminish our desires, then our ability to eliminate self-centeredness and become Creator- like will fail if all we have in our medicine cabinet are the old remedies of religious fanaticism, oppression, tyranny or any other of the old means of discipline. Those methods were good for “taming” the desire to receive in its earlier stages, but they will not suffice for today’s level of desire to receive.

A new method, a fresh code of action is required, something that will not try to suppress the insuppressible, but will harness the new powers that extreme egoism evokes to improve life, instead of destroying both humankind and our pathogenic egocentricity.

Competition or Cooperation? The Need to Choose Wisely

In Stage Three of the evolution of desires, our envy has created an interconnected and interdependent world where we compete against, yet depend on each other for sustenance. Again we can quote Ashlag, who wrote, “Because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and to care for the well-being of the whole world.”

We can also quote McGrew’s statement: “This [single global system] defines a far more complex condition, one in which patterns of human interaction, interconnectedness, and awareness are reconstituting the world as a single social space.” These quotes accurately reflect our situation at the start of the 21st century: we are tied together, and hateful of each other.

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The fundamental characteristic of any creature is self-concern, which brings about competitiveness. Simultaneously, evolution locks self-serving creatures into a completely interdependent system, creating a potentially devastating paradox…

The Thing that Separates Man from the Rest of Nature

On the lower levels of desire—in Stages One through Three, or on the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels of Nature—Nature mends the ties by itself. In the process of evolution, the elements in Nature that follow the rule of yielding self-interest before the interest of their host system survive and form the basis for the next level in evolution. The ones that do not yield their self-interests perish.

Thus, gradually, Nature built the universe, galaxies, our solar system, and planet Earth. Then, layer by layer, life on Earth was formed.

As biologist Elisabet Sahtouris so eloquently explained, initially each new creature conducts itself selfishly, oblivious to the existence and needs of other creatures. But the struggle among the creatures forces them, as she put it, to “negotiate,” eventually leading to the creation of homeostasis—the stability necessary for the persistence of life.

The Strange Reason Why the Desire to Be Superior to Others Forces You to Connect

In this manner, life on Earth evolved stage by stage until at Stage four in the evolution of desires, Homo sapiens appeared. Initially, humans were just like all other creatures. Just as desires evolve in the whole of Nature, our desires, too, evolved stage by stage, from Zero through Four. In Stages Zero through Two, the desires for greed, control, and cognizance were not potent enough to separate us from nature to a point that threatens our existence. Like all other elements of Nature, we were forced to negotiate and accept the power of the elements as one of life’s necessities. However, history shows we were not quite as pliable and tolerant toward other humans.

But roughly since the 15th century, Stage Three took hold. Since then, cravings for self-expression and personal excellence have been growing in us and expanding exponentially.

There is a peculiar quality to the desires for recognition and personal distinction. Although these desires reflect a self- centered nature, since they aim to present the individual who possesses them as superior to others, they also compel those who have them to connect to others. This is so because to be superior to others, one must measure one’s qualities, achievements, efforts, and possessions compared to those of others. If I do not compare myself to others, over whom can I be superior?

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Connection: Is Humanity Aware of Its Ties or Not?

Unlike all other elements in Nature, human beings have the power to change the environment. This gives us something that no other creature has: freedom of choice. Put differently, human beings can choose to be like the Creator—giving—and acquire the power and cognizance that come with it, by adopting the law of yielding self-interest before the interest of the environment. Or they can remain as they were born—self-centered, with limited understanding of Nature, and paying the price for their errant ways throughout history. But to choose to be like the Creator, which is synonymous with Nature, people must know what the term, “Creator,” means and how they can become like it.

The whole of reality consists of a single, broken entity, called “Adam’s broken soul” or “the broken soul,” and that the term, “soul,” refers to a desire to receive with an intention to bestow. When Kabbalists say that something is broken, they are not referring to any physical shattering, but to the tearing of the links between all parts of the soul, the collective desire that constitutes our reality. This tearing occurs when the pieces in the soul begin to operate in their own interest rather than in the interest of the system. It is as if cells in an organism begin to operate for themselves, causing the organism to die and disintegrate.

Yet, unlike organisms, the soul cannot disintegrate because it is a single desire. So while the links are there, we can enjoy the benefits of the connection. Healthy cells benefit from each other in an organism, supporting each other’s existence, but cancer cells compete with each other for blood and nourishment, thus constantly harming each other. In the case of humanity, we are not even aware that we are connected, which prevents us from trying to connect in the right manner.

How Good and Bad Behavior Spread Like Viruses

But regardless of our awareness, we are very much connected. On September 10, 2009, The New York Times published a story titled, “Are Your friends Making You Fat?” by Clive Thompson. In his story, Thompson describes a fascinating experiment performed in Framingham, Massachusetts. In the experiment, certain details of the lives of some 15,000 people were documented and registered periodically over more than fifty years. This allowed researchers Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a medical doctor and sociologist at Harvard, and James Fowler, at the time a Harvard political science graduate student, to create a map of interconnections and examine the long-term impact that people had on one another.

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