What Goes Around Comes Around
Life shows us that we cannot survive without a sufficient number of people around, to serve and help provide for our needs. Humans are social beings, and society is like a machine where each individual in like a wheel, linked to other wheels. A single wheel cannot move by itself. However, it joins the motion of all the other wheels and helps the machine perform its purpose.
If the wheel breaks, the problem is not the wheel’s problem, but the problem of the whole machine because the broken wheel stops the machine from running. It turns out that we are not evaluated for who or what we are, but for the kind of service we do for society. A “bad” person is only as bad as he or she harms the public, not because he or she didn’t perform up to the level of some abstract value of good.
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In Kabbalah, the collective group and the individual are treated as one and the same. What is good for the whole is good for the individual, and vice versa. Therefore, a negative society harms the individual, and a positive society benefits the individual.
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Good and bad attributes and deeds are good or bad according to whether they benefit the public. If a part of the group does not contribute its share, those individuals not only harm the collective, but they, too, are harmed. This is why a negative society harms the individual.
Likewise, a good society benefits the individual. Individuals are part of the whole, and the whole is not worth more than the sum of its individuals. In Kabbalah, the collective and the individual are one and the same.
One of the key ideas to understand about Kabbalah is that people will come to see that their own benefit and the benefit of the collective are the same. As people realize that, the world will be much closer to its full correction.
Kabbalah explains that our experiences are personal, but they are described in general terms that apply to everyone. For example, we all agree that blood is red when we look at it, but we each experience it very differently. Some people faint at the sight of blood, some say “Cool!”, and some say “Ugh!”