At the time these words are written, the world is still reeling from the longest recession since the Second World War. Tens of millions of people throughout the world have lost their jobs, their savings, their homes, but most important—their hopes for the future.
Our health, it seems, is not more wholesome than our wealth. Modern medicine, the pride and joy of Western civilization, is grappling with resurfacing diseases previously believed to be extinct. According to a report published by the Global Health Council, “Diseases once believed to be under control have re-emerged as major global threats. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, viruses and other parasites poses new challenges in controlling infectious diseases. Co-infection with multiple diseases creates obstacles to preventing and treating infections.”[1]
Earth, too, is not as hospitable as before. Books such as James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia[2], Ervin Laszlo’s The Chaos Point[3], and films such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are just three examples of a cavalcade of alarming reports on Earth’s deteriorating climate.
As global warming melts the ice caps in the poles, sea levels rise. This has already caused dramatic shifts and tragic events. A report by Stephan Faris in Scientific American[4] lists some of the places already affected by climate change. In Darfur, clashes between nomadic and sedentary tribes that broke out due to a decades-long drought escalated into a rebellion against the Sudanese government's neglect. Subsequently, the crisis spilled over into Chad and the Central African Republic.
Also in that report, the Pacific island nation of Kiribati declared its lands uninhabitable and asked for help in evacuating its population. In March, 2009, Peter Popham, a writer for The Independent, provided another angle to the climate predicament: “Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities.”[5]
A more tragic result of climate change is hunger, caused by extended droughts in some areas and constant flooding in others. According to the World Food Programme, nearly a billion (1,000,000,000) people worldwide are constantly hungry. Worse yet, in excess of nine million (9,000,000) people die every year from hunger and related causes, more than half of whom are children[6].This means that today, in the most technologically advanced era in the history of humankind, a child dies every six seconds due to lack of food and water.
In our homes, problems abound, as well. The New York Times[7] announced that according to a census released by the American Community Survey, divorce rates have risen to the point that today there are more unmarried couples in America than married ones. It is the first time in history that single-parent families are the norm, and double-parent ones are the exception.
Many scientists, politicians, NGOs, and UN related organizations warn that humanity is facing a risk of unprecedented catastrophes on a global scale. Anything from mutated avian flu through nuclear war, to a massive earthquake could wipe out millions and drive billions into destitution.
Yet, crises have been occurring throughout history. Our era is not the first in which humanity has been at risk. The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century and the two World Wars easily outweigh the peril that our current plight presents. Nevertheless, what distinguishes the current crisis from those previous is the tension characterizing the current state of humanity. Our society has gone to the extreme in two directions that seem to conflict with one another—globalization and the interdependence it entails on the one hand, and increasing alienation and personal, social, and political narcissism on the other. And that is a recipe for a disaster such as the world has never seen, whether in the financial sector or beyond.
Today, globalization concerns far more than financial interdependence. We have become globally interconnected in every realm of life:the computers and TVs we use to entertain ourselves come (primarily but not exclusively) from China, Taiwan, and Korea. The cars we drive are assembled (again, primarily) in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., but their parts are made in numerous other countries. The clothes we wear often arrive from India and China, while the food in our refrigerators comes from all over the world.
What's more, throughout the world people watch Hollywood films and learn English by the millions. In fact, of the approximately 1.4 billion English speakers worldwide, only 450 million are native English speakers, and China alone produces over twenty million new English speakers each year, reports the Asia Times in a September 15, 2006 story titled, “‘Native English’ is losing its power.”[8]
On March 8, 2009, Wachovia Corp. economist, Mark Vitner, gave a rather palpable description of the world’s globalized situation when he described the interconnectedness of the credit markets on MSNBC: “It's like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. It just can't be done that easily. I don't know if it can be done at all.”[9]
But the problem with globalization is not only that it makes us interconnected; it also makes us interdependent, and instead of using these interconnections to thrive, we become engaged in a constant tug of war. What would happen to the oil-rich countries if the world suddenly shifted to wind and solar energy? What would happen to America if China stopped buying dollars? What would happen to China, Japan, India, and Korea if Americans had no dollars with which to buy Asian-produced goods? And if Western tourists ceased to travel, what would become of the hundreds of millions of people all over the world who provide for their families, thanks to Westerners’ hedonism?
Journalist Fareed Zakaria eloquently described this entanglement in a Newsweek article titled, “Get Out the Wallets: The world needs Americans to spend”: “If I were told by the economic gods that I could have the answer to one question about the fate of the global economy… I would ask, ‘When will the American consumer start spending again?’”[10] Indeed, we have become a global village, completely reliant on one another for our sustenance.
Yet, interdependence is only a part of today’s complicated picture. While we have been growing increasingly global, we have also become increasingly self-centered, or as psychologists Jean M. Twenge and Keith Campbell describe it, “increasingly narcissistic.”[11] In their insightful book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Twenge and Campbell talk about what they refer to as “The relentless rise of narcissism in our culture,”[12] and the problems it causes. They explain that “The United States is currently suffering from an epidemic of narcissism. …narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity.” Worse yet, they continue, “The rise in narcissism is accelerating, with scores rising faster in the 2000s than in previous decades. By 2006, 1 out of 4 college students agreed with the majority of the items on a standard measure of narcissistic traits. Today, as singer Little Jackie put it, many people feel that ‘Yes siree, the whole world should revolve around me.’”[13] In Webster’s Dictionary, narcissism is defined as “egoism,” and this, blatantly speaking, means that we have become unbearably selfish.
Thus, our problem is twofold: On the one hand, we are interdependent; on the other hand, we are becoming increasingly narcissistic and alienated. We are trying to lead two ways of life that simply do not meet: interdependence and alienation. Perhaps this is why we spend countless hours chatting with “virtual friends” in online social networks, but are often cold and heartless toward our kin at home. If we were simply interdependent, we would unite, support each other, and be happy. Alternatively, if we were simply selfish, we would part and live by ourselves. But if we are both interdependent and selfish, neither way works!
And this, in essence, is the root of the crisis: our interdependence requires us to work together, but our selfishness causes us to deceive and to exploit one another. As a result, the systems of cooperation that we work so hard to build break down, leading to continuing crises.
Hence, the goal of this book is twofold: 1) to shed light on the cause of our interdependence, on one hand, and our self-centeredness, on the other hand; and 2) to briefly outline a feasible modus operandi for combining these seemingly conflicting traits to our advantage. To address the first goal, I will explain what I have learned in Kabbalah about the structure of Nature, and particularly, of human nature. To address the second goal, I will combine the ideas of the great 20th century Kabbalist, Yehuda Ashlag, as well as other great Kabbalists, with suggestions from contemporary scientists and scholars from other disciplines.
In the wisdom of Kabbalah, I discovered what I believe to be a viable solution to the current global problems, and I feel grateful that I have been given a chance to present it. It is my hope and, may I say, conviction that through the concepts that Kabbalah offers we can save ourselves, as well as the Big Blue Marble that we live in.