The Changing Nature of Humanity

Most of us are beginning to notice that something is different about the world: It is “shrinking into a small village” before our very eyes. But what most of us don’t see as easily is that the rules of our interactions have also changed.

No one knows what will happen to the economy a second from now. Experts create the most complicated models to try to predict the future based on past experience, but even the most precise statistics are just “icing on the cake,” distracting us from the uncertainty that weighs down on us.More and more, leading economic analysts conclude their articles with a hint: as long as the global markets are uncertain, don’t bet on the future.

What’s really the problem? Can’t we predict what will happen to the systems that we have created? Experts say: “The problem is a combination of too many factors.” However, there is a clearer explanation: the system can no longer continue working as a circular firing squad. Today, in the age of turbo-globalization, you can’t sneeze without the entire system coughing right back at you.

When Fortune magazine asked Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve System for nearly twenty years, “What's going on in the capital markets?” his response was: “It's essentially part of innate human nature.” He went on to explain, “We have done this time and time again. … human nature being what it is … we get the type of markets we have been observing ...” (By the way, he said this back in September 2007.)

However, the problem has grown even bigger now because our situation has changed dramatically: for the first time in history, we have all become an integral system, one whole. This is why none of the old methods – such as regulation - are helping us. We have no choice but to bring our world to equivalence with the new reality. Instead of repeating the old mistakes, let’s use successful, time-tested models as an example. If we look, we will find many wonderful examples of integration and true reciprocity in nature.

The Wisdom of Nature

Take the human body. It is completely dependent on the altruistic behavior of its cells. Each cell works to benefit the whole organism, keeping only what it needs to continue performing its function. In fact, we are speaking about a law of nature, because every natural system depends on the correct interaction of its parts. As soon as one cell starts harming the organism instead of benefiting it, the rest of the cells unite to help the organism and bring the system back to balance.

Our relationships in the social and business realms must operate by the same laws of nature. The problem is that right now they do not, hence our present crisis. Baal HaSulam, the great Kabbalist of the previous century, wrote: “Every person who breaks the laws of nature deviates from the goal which nature has set for him, and hence nature will punish him mercilessly.”

As soon as humanity ceased being a collection of separate individuals and became a single system, it immediately started being governed by the corresponding laws – the laws of single, integral systems. We are no longer “forgiven” for the things that we could get away with before. Continuing to live the old way is like jumping off the roof of a skyscraper and hoping for the best. The rules of the game have changed: now, instead of using one another the way separate individuals do, we have to take care of everyone like the elements of an interconnected system. And until we do it, the crises will continue.

There is an effective method that can help us ease the process of changing: social opinion. Everything will become much easier when communication channels, the press, mass media, and the internet will explain to people that we are all parts of one system. In such an arrangement, one individual’s loss is everyone’s loss, and the gain of an individual is everyone’s gain.

The way billions of dollars are being poured into the economy today is like pumping a critically ill person with pain relievers. Instead, we must change our approach at the root, replacing the “I” that currently stands at the center of our worldview, with “the society.” However, this society will not be a mass of separate elements, but a family.

A Perfect World

Just imagine: everyone around you are your closest relatives, and you sincerely wish all of them to be happy. You help them all, and they feel and behave similarly towards you. In addition, we receive all the assistance necessary to maintain such a lifestyle from our financial institutions.
This is the way to attain balance with nature. The laws operating in a loving family are the very laws that we are now breaking - those of a single, integral, and perfect system. Once we learn these laws and start following them, we will cease being at odds with nature, and it, in turn, will reward us with prosperous social and economic systems.

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