Where Do We Go From Here?!

Look around you, what do you see? Turmoil, strife, hate, war, poverty. Is this any way to live? It seems like every time you pick up a newspaper or watch TV, you are struck by the fact that the whole population of earth is spinning wildly out of control and on the verge of a serious crash.  So how did we get here, and more importantly, how do we move away from the precipice?

When we are bombarded by such immense symptoms it is easy to lose sight of the underlying causes of the problems. However with a cursory analysis, some causes jump out at you.

Greed – After the apparent failure of Communism and Socialism in the late 1970s, the world started looking for another economic solution. Free market economists eloquently expounded on the principle that society would be best served if people followed their self-interest even to the point of what might be called greed. The logic was that people would be good stewards of their resources because they would intuitively know that in the long run, they would hurt themselves by crass exploitation. The folly of this logic has been confirmed by history many times over, yet it is so intellectually appealing that every 25 years we seem to have to relearn the lesson.

Self-Concern – When people simple ‘look out for number 1’ it is very easy to lose sight of the fact that often the world is a zero sum game. As such, if I take more than what I really need, I am in effect taking away someone else’s needs. The effects of this logic are dramatically demonstrated by the percentage of natural resources that the industrialized nations take versus what’s left over for the second and third world nations.

Need for Instant Gratification – When a society constantly pursues instant gratification, the long run opportunities and well being of the society are put at great risk. The reason is that such behavior inevitably leads to overextending one’s credit. Since the main motivation continues to be instant gratification, there is little effort made to bring expenditures in line with income until the society is on the verge of ruin.

Belief that ‘Might is Right’- When nations believe that whoever is stronger militarily or economically gets to make the rules, the stage is set for a continuing struggle where the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker until the whole system collapses under the weight of the inequity. This logic is not intuitive since it would appear that the strong will always be able to overrule the weak,  but history shows that eventually a breaking point is arrived at due to the degenerative effect exploitation has on the fabric of the exploiting society.

Intolerance – As long as someone feels superior to others, they have no problem exploiting other people and their resources. Furthermore, people tend to follow leaders who confirm their superiority and will perform all nature of negative actions in the pursuit of what they believe are their ‘God given rights.’ Indeed it is hard to find fault with your nation or its leaders when ‘God is on your side’.

So how do we turn this around?

When one considers these underlying causes, it becomes apparent that the root cause of all our problems is the nature of humans to view every situation from the stand point of ‘will I receive pleasure from my action?’ If the answer is yes, we pursue it; if no, we don’t.  This is the basis of all human nature.

The problem is that as long as we continue to behave in this manner we will continue to have problems, and as the economists say, the problems will increase at an increasing rate. This is because as our knowledge of technology grows our ability to truly ruin the planet also grows.

It is obvious that the only way to turn this around is to understand that we are all in this together. To paraphrase many religions, we need to ‘love our neighbor as ourselves. ’ But how do we do this? There really are enough resources, jobs, wealth, food, etc to adequately take care of all humanity. The catch is we must put our ego aside to make this situation a reality. We can’t legislate this behavior, though many societies have tried… and failed. Nor can we ‘guilt’ people into behaving correctly. Realistically there is only way we can get from our current place of overwhelming egoism to a place of mutual support and satisfaction, and that is through growing spiritually. The best way to grow spiritually is to immerse oneself in a program of training that is based on scientific principles and not on appeals to emotions. Throughout history that approach has been through the science of Kabbalah.