The full book, New World, New Thinking, by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman is available in full on this page. It is 12,000+ words, and will take about 40 minutes to read.

New World, New Thinking

Michael Laitman

DR. MICHAEL LAITMAN

PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah. MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. Founder and president of Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter One: The Age of Corona

• Systemic Thinking
• Social Intelligence
• From Disconnection to Reciprocity
• Updated Definition of Happiness

Chapter Two: Innovation in the Business World

• An Opportunity to Lead the Market
• Marketing and Sales in a Connected World
• Relationships in the Organization as a Key to Success
• Between Sensitivity and Creativity
• The World of the New Employee

Chapter Three: Relationships, Family, and Community

• Isolation and Social Distancing
• Upgrading Relationships with Partners
• The Integral Family
• Social Ties, Good Viruses
• Life’s Pleasures

Afterword

Foreword

COVID-19 is one of the greatest crises humanity has experienced. Much more than the pandemic, it is inducing a revolution in human perception. We are still at its onset; we do not realize its magnitude or essence, but it will change who we are as human beings. In this booklet, I will introduce a new way of thinking that I hope will help readers put some order in what seems like a chaotic world.

The coronavirus clearly illustrated an insight that until its arrival seemed mainly philosophical: We are all in one boat. We are dependent on one another throughout the globe and we are all parts of a single system. The coronavirus crisis exposed our level of interconnectedness, but mainly its negative sides. It illustrated how we can all infect one another and cause widespread harm at an enormous speed. However, our interconnectedness also has a vast positive potential. If we know how to tap into it, we will be able to climb together to a more advanced form of living.

The vast system of connections affects us in numerous ways. For this reason, it would be a mistake to think that soon we will be able to return to the previous way of life since the system that has been revealed will not allow us to return to our mode of thinking prior to the appearance of the virus.

Instead, we must move on to a new perception of life. At the basis of this new perception will be inclusive thinking and social sensitivity.

Nature’s system follows absolute laws, and we are a part of nature. We have discovered some of nature’s laws through science, but there are others we have yet to uncover. Nevertheless, these laws affect us just as all natural laws affect us even when we are unaware of them.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, which I have been studying for more than forty years, offers a unique perspective on the reality we live in and its laws. I had acquired the knowledge from my teacher, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (RABASH, 1907-1991), the firstborn son and successor of Rav Yehuda Ashlag (1885-1954), the greatest kabbalist of the 20th century, who was known as Baal HaSulam (Author of the Ladder) for his Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar.

It is becoming increasingly clear that we need a new method to advance the human mind and heart to the next level of development. We will not be able to cope with the complicated challenges ahead without unleashing our full potential as intelligent beings.

Despite astounding achievements in medicine, science, and technology, and despite the expansive research into Artificial Intelligence, it is the development of the human heart, mind, and spirit that we need the most, and this realm has been getting very little attention.

For this reason, I am delighted that we have come to a time when the insights contained in the wisdom of Kabbalah can help all of us. It may come as a surprise, but the wisdom of Kabbalah leads toward “the next generation,” the more advanced version of human intelligence, and provides the required adaptations for success in an interconnected world.

Chapter One: The Age of Corona

People have always been fascinated with the idea that if they leveraged innovative tools and methods they would have an edge over others, improve the quality of their lives, and become more successful in life.

When we hear about the latest model of a smartphone, we feel an urge to get it, be the first to have the latest version of the gadget. No one wants to stay behind. We feel relevant if we have the latest model and think that now we can deal with life’s challenges more successfully.

The age of COVID has brought about the need for a new kind of technology: human technology. This technology should enhance the positive connections among people, expand the boundaries of our perception, and grant us more advanced feelings and thoughts. The contagious virus has highlighted the immensely complex system we live in, where each unit is connected to, and dependent on all the others. You could safely say that until the emergence of COVID-19, the level of our interconnectedness was not so apparent. In that sense, the pandemic has put on the agenda the key factor that will impact our thought and decision making processes going forward, namely human technology.

Systemic Thinking

Even before the coronavirus crisis struck, it was evident to many people that dealing with the growing challenges and preparing for the future trends will require systemic thinking.

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes this thinking in the following way: “Each and every individual in society is like a wheel that is linked to several other wheels placed in a machine. This single wheel has no freedom of movement in and of itself but continues with the motion of the rest of the wheels in a certain direction to qualify the machine to perform its general function” (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”).

According to Peter Senge, a systems scientist and a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, systemic thinking is non-linear thinking that focuses on the whole. Those who advocate systemic thinking explain that traditional, linear thinking is irrelevant in the contemporary, interconnected world. Life in the global age presents challenges that require an expansive and multidimensional perception.

The human race is a part of nature’s system. It is a collection of units that maintain reciprocal relations among themselves and with the world around them. It is impossible to understand the processes unfolding in the system through a narrow vision that focuses on the components themselves as though they are detached from one another.

Additionally, it is impossible to isolate one component and care only for its well-being regardless of the rest of the components since its well-being depends on the well-being of the entire system directly or indirectly. This complicated situation requires a different perspective and examination of the world, and mainly, attention to the reciprocal connections in the system.

According to futurist David Passig, “Our goal in studying systems is to understand the logic in the system. When you understand the logic and the patterns, you can identify the future stages of the system. This is what enables us to understand what we are doing today” (Globes, May 5, 2018).

If so far it was mainly thinkers and academics who spoke about the need to transition to systemic thinking, the coronavirus has turned theory into reality: A virus at one end of the world quickly impacted its other end, the lifestyle in one country affected the way the disease spread to other countries, and before we knew it, the virus came knocking on our door threatening the lives of our loved ones. The mode of spreading of the virus indicates not only the properties of the virus, but also the properties of the system of connections among humans, and between humankind and nature.

The coronavirus crisis has emphasized the gap between the old and narrow perception of the world, which is still in use today, and the world itself, which has long become a vast and thoroughly interconnected network. The “software” embedded in us, which makes us think that we can exist as separate entities, has been exposed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Social Intelligence

The COVID-19 stay-at-home period got us out of the box in terms of our outdated thought patterns, where we saw only ourselves as the center of events. Instead, the coronavirus has equipped us with a new vision that focuses on the connections between us.

We have begun to pay closer attention to the relationships with kin, to guarding the elderly in our families from contagion and loneliness, to neighbors, who have suddenly become close, and even to video conferencing programs that help us communicate long-distance. In this way, we discovered that beyond providing for our basic needs, the valuable assets we have are our social and family relations.

The corona crisis highlighted the importance of our personal connections, but it turns out that the nature of these relations has a much greater significance to our lives than we knew. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the more we invest in developing a new approach to others, the more we will realize that in this connection lies the key to expanding the boundaries of our perception.

We are accustomed to perceiving our personal needs as opposed to the needs of the people around us. We feel the needs of those with whom we can relate as close to us, and those to whom we do not relate as not so close. In each situation, our perception of reality separates between “me” and “the other.”

A person feels other people and the rest of the elements of the surrounding reality, and instinctively examines how to harness them to one’s own benefit. Even though this process happens mostly unconsciously, this perception has shaped the nature of social ties in society, education, and culture, as well as the way we interact in commerce and our economics.

As said above, today the world has become so connected that the ability to satisfy the most basic needs has become dependent on others. The network of connections that is being exposed seems gripping, shaking, pressing, and impelling to take other people into account and keep other elements in mind. In such a complicated reality, we must develop intelligence on a completely different level, one that allows us to see all the parts of reality as one system that is complementary and reciprocal.

A true systemic approach, not theoretical but real and practical, requires a profound sense of the people around us. If we are naturally disposed to satisfying our own needs, in order to advance toward a systemic perception, we must develop social intelligence, namely the ability to aim outwards, to be sensitive to the needs of others, and to see how we can become instrumental to our environment. By doing so, we will contribute to others and to ourselves since we are inseparable parts of the system.

There are mechanisms in our brain that aim toward creating positive mutual connections, toward developing traits such as empathy, cooperation, and consideration of others. However, we are far from realizing that potential. Social intelligence relies on the level of awareness we have of the need to form correct connections with society. On the most basic level, it is clear to us that should one retire from society and live alone in a forest, he will barely be able to survive. The more social intelligence develops, the more we understand that the system of connections will not permit personal gains but will require that everyone acts together to create a society where everyone is happy to live.

One’s level of understanding how to connect oneself correctly to the society—in a way that is both instrumental to society, and where society provides a sense of security and belonging—will determine the level of a person’s social intelligence. In such a state, the positive feelings of the individual and the people around will be inseparable from one another.

Observing evolutionary processes proves that there is a consistent course of tightening connections among contradictory elements to the point of creation of mutual existence and complementary mutual connection among the components of the system. For example, molecules developed from atoms, and multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular organisms after going through phases of conflict and subsequent “understanding” of the benefits of collaborative existence.

Similarly, human society is evolving toward connectedness. A life of mutual complementation and mutuality is congruent with the general course of evolution in nature as a whole, and will therefore constitute the ideal form of living.

In the advanced state, people will feel other people’s needs as their own. Therefore, when they satisfy the needs of others, people will feel as though they are satisfying their own needs. When human society develops in this direction, people will feel positive mutual complementation in the relationships between them, contrary to the present state where more often than not, we feel ties as inhibiting and restraining.

Connection on such a level must be perceived as idyllic and impractical since there is an apparent contradiction between one’s personal interest and the interest of the collective. But reality proves the contrary; this is the law of the connected world.

As early as the 1940s, Baal HaSulam wrote, “In our time, the countries are all linked in the satisfaction of their needs of life, as individuals were in their families in earlier times. Therefore, we can no longer speak or deal with just conducts that guarantee the well-being of one country or one nation, but only with the well-being of the whole world, for the benefit or harm of each and every person in the world depends and is measured by the benefit of all the individuals the world over” (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”).

From Disconnection to Reciprocity

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, social intelligence that is based on sensing the other is included in a rule that was formulated thousands of years ago: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Baal HaSulam said that love of others can reveal a new reality: “When one comes to love others … one passes from one’s narrow world, filled with pain and impediments, to an eternal and broad world of bestowal upon the Creator and upon people” (The Writings of Baal HaSulam, p. 63).

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes a process by which one develops love of others. We can get some clues about the nature of this work through Ashlag’s letters to his disciples: “I am ordering you to begin to love one another as yourselves with all your might, to ache with your friends’ pains, and rejoice in your friends’ joys as much as possible” (Letter No. 49). In other words, love of others is something one must practice regularly through sympathy with others’ feelings. Developing love is a gradual process that requires constant searching for ways to remain in it and increase it: “Set your hearts on thinking thoughts and devising proper tactics to truly connect your hearts as one, so the words ‘Love your friend as yourself’ will literally come true in you” (Letter No. 47).

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes love as a mechanism based on reciprocity. If people relate to one another with care and love, each of them feels complete confidence and can rise above the natural need to fend only for oneself. This manner of connection fosters a system that functions harmoniously.

Usually, “Love your neighbor as yourself” is perceived as a figure of speech or as admonition, but today even leading researchers find that this is the future basis of connection between the individual and the society.

Prof. Ichak Adizes, a renowned professor of management, explains that all the problems in the world stem from disintegration, namely disconnect between subsystems. In the human body, disintegration might be expressed as an illness. In a large body such as a company or an organization, disintegration will manifest in miscommunication between people, which in turn might lead to a crisis and even collapse. The lack of communication manifests in insensitivity to the feelings of others and unwillingness to be considerate of them. Every relationship in our lives is affected in the same way: with a partner, social ties, national and international relations, and even ecosystems.

According to Prof. Adizes, the highest level of integration is in mutual relations of connection and love. Thanks to her love, the mother is connected to her children and feels their needs even from a distance. The ability to develop love and sensitivity for other elements of human society is the key element we will need in order to solve problems and prosper in tomorrow’s world.

From generation to generation, our desires develop. In antiquity, we mainly strove for food and shelter, and the main requirement was physical strength. The more our desires and needs developed, the more we developed our ability to think and invent ways to satisfy our desires. This is how science and industry were created. Today, knowledge is the dominant power, and in the future, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will replace the muscles and the brain. What will be man’s advantage in such a world? Adizes argues that it will be the loving attitude that people will be able to endow upon their environment.

Kabbalah says that relating to others with love exposes the system of connections that we live in, that we influence, and that influences us. This relation shines a new light on what man considers good and bad. Quite likely, such a perspective will show that things we previously regarded as beneficial will manifest as detrimental to us, and things we did not notice before will manifest as essential. This is why it is written in ancient writings, “I have seen an opposite world.”

In the coming years, activities that promote emotional attachment and cooperation among people will build the more advanced way of life for humanity. As in any evolutionary process, at some point we will not be able to maintain proper social life without adopting an approach of mutual complementation. Those who will adapt their thinking to existence as part of a whole will have a relative edge over those who will continue to espouse the narrow perception. At the end of the process, education, culture, and economy will be redesigned through feedback. That is, we will design the atmosphere and the social systems, and they will design us in return.

Currently, we are at a crossroads: Either we choose to develop a systemic system and social intelligence while there is still time, or we will wait passively for nature to impel us to do this, as it does with the coronavirus.

Baal HaSulam explains this idea in the following way: “The law of development, which is spread over the whole of reality, is certain to reform all evil to good and useful, and acts … without asking permission from the people” (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”). When this happens, continues Baal HaSulam, man “suffers horrendous torments and pains while under the ‘press of development’ which carves its way ruthlessly.”

Yet, nature leaves humanity with the option to take “this above-mentioned law of development under their own government” (ibid.). If people choose this, they can “free themselves entirely from the chains of time, and greatly accelerate time, namely the completion of the ripeness and correction of the object, which is the end of its development.”

Updated Definition of Happiness

Until the arrival of the coronavirus, our lives were a never-ending race to satisfy desires that constantly awakened in us. The compulsory break brought with it new thoughts concerning the essence of our basic happiness. Alongside persistent financial concerns, we had some moments of looking from aside at our present way of life: the way we ran it, our habits, excessive significance we attributed to certain things, and our neglect of what really matters.

It turns out that the familiar way of life was very costly: It put us under pressures and anxieties even if we were fortunate and affluent. As we were racing, it became almost impossible to enjoy peaceful time with the family, and social events that did not come with a price tag of hidden competition. How did we come to this race? What do we want to achieve at the end of it? What is causing us to keep at it?

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that the impetus to keep racing is the substance at the basis of our makeup. It is called “will to receive delight and pleasure.” The will to receive, as Kabbalah usually refers to it, causes us to constantly examine ourselves and our achievements compared to those of others. The aspiration is to constantly feel superior to everyone.

Like it or not, our sense of happiness is always achieved by comparing ourselves to the situation of the people around us. We assess our satisfaction with life using a relative standard: Is my salary higher than the average? Is my personal situation better? If the majority of the people around me are better off than I am, I will be dissatisfied with life.

The culture of excessive consumerism fits the mechanism of the will to receive, which is also called “egoism,” like a glove to a hand. It sells us an illusion that if we only purchase the newest model before everyone else, it will grant us satisfaction and happiness. Gradually, we learned to consume not according to our natural needs but as a way to satisfy our passion to improve our image of ourselves. Advertising expanded and grew, and began to constantly present the next item we “must” have. In this way, we began to think that our happiness depended on our material achievements and our purchasing power.

However, man’s desires are not static; they are in constant growth. For this reason, even if we obtain what we want, it gives us only a momentary satisfaction. It was said about this, “One who has one hundred wants two hundred.” This illusion of the pleasure that the next purchase will bring us, in addition to the constant drive to excel over others, wears us out and eventually leaves us very few moments of satisfaction and happiness.

Additionally, when the egoism develops, it pushes us to act toward obtaining our personal goals even if at the expense of others. However, the more the system of connections among people tightens and interdependency increases, the more we will see that egoistic success cannot yield lasting happiness since our personal happiness will depend more and more on the well-being of the entire system. Success at the expense of others will manifest as detrimental to us, and as a result, the paradigm of happiness will change.

In the new world, the level of success and happiness will not be tied to personal achievements, but to the quality of connections among people.

A person who has developed social intelligence will receive emotional satisfaction from the people around, and the good connection with them will give that person a sense of happiness. Therefore, in every interaction one is in, he or she will look for ways to benefit the people around. It will be clear to that person that this is the way to make others and oneself happy since we are all connected in a single system.
Developing the mutual connection among everyone is a process that is in line with the course of nature’s evolution, and will therefore lead us to a better and more advanced state. People’s sense that they are complementing one another will lead them to realize their personal potential and to true happiness.

It is a kind of psychological inversion that is still difficult to grasp since the operating system within us aims only toward self-concern. Therefore, advancement toward systemic thinking and its many benefits depends on learning the new approach and practicing it in all the systems of connections in our daily lives. This is what we will focus on in the coming chapters.

Chapter Two: Innovation in the Business World

The corona crisis emphasized the necessity to develop digital infrastructures and the transition of organizations and public systems for long distance functionality. The plague caught the majority of organizations unprepared for such a reality, and the one who did best in providing online services and products became the leader in its field.

In addition to the digital aspect, COVID has introduced the concept of “essential”: essential services, essential employees, and essential businesses. Very quickly, we had to restrict the operations of the economy only to businesses we could not live without. This situation can teach us a lot about future trends in the market.

The more the connections among us tighten, the more we will see that the egocentric mode of thinking on which commerce has been based, and which values only the bottom-line profit, is unsuitable for such an interconnected business world.

Social intelligence will have to be expressed in the economic system of connections, too. Businesses will not be able to continue to relate to their customers as though they are mere wallets that they are trying to open in creative ways. Business conduct that will not be aligned with the real needs of customers will not pass the test of evolution. Such businesses will be seen as non-essential and will vanish from the market.

Focusing on the bottom line will be regarded as narrow-mindedness and lack of concern for long-term planning. Various elements of maximizing profit that do not go hand in hand with the benefit of the customer, such as marketing a new model using useless parameters, or by changing technology so it cannot work with the old model, will no longer be suitable for the form of social connections to which we must advance.

The new thinking will necessarily impose on the market a kind of “diet.” Many products and services will not meet the criteria of maximum benefit for man, and there will be no demand for them. The tightening system of connections will gradually eject anything that is not essential. It is likely that in the future, there will be other phenomena similar to the coronavirus, which will demonstrate the growing level of connectedness and the necessity for an inclusive vision of the world as one system.

In the end, this approach will lead to taking all of nature into account. The destruction of nature that we are seeing today is a result of the egoistic approach, which condoned every means to obtain economic superiority. We have turned unbridled use of natural resources and excessive industry that is damaging the earth into a norm, just so we could get richer.

The change that social intelligence will create will offer a comprehensive treatment of ecological problems, too. The process will begin with building positive connections among people. When people’s sensitivity to their own kind will increase, they will also know how to relate to the still, vegetative, and animate. Such development will induce a profound change in man’s relation to nature, which no preventive measure can induce. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, it will be impossible to significantly improve the ecological situation without adding consideration and love of others into people’s hearts.

In the long run, the age of corona will radically change the world. The “diet” that the world is going through will change the model of employment, too. The disappearance of the non-essential industry and disappearance of excessive consumption will cause many businesses to collapse. Governments will not be able to stand by in the face of millions of unemployed, and they will have to offer creative solutions. The transformation of the business world will force them to provide people with trainings and learning about social intelligence, which will make it easier for them to become integrated in the new world. This will be done alongside a periodic sustenance package, as is done in academic institutions today.

At that time, the manner of work in occupations that will be regarded as essential will gradually shift to becoming more and more suitable to the principles of social intelligence. The workplaces, too, will invest a great deal to qualify the style of work to these principles. These trainings will include social interactions that will lead to integration of systemic thinking in people.

An Opportunity to Lead the Market

The business world is dynamic by nature; it is always looking for opportunities. The majority of companies invest in processes for finding new growth engines. They survey the area, examine how they can improve performance, the costs vs. the benefits, what investments are worthwhile, and what will be the next knockout product. This is how decisions regarding future development have been received so far. But the coronavirus installed an element of uncertainty that undermines the business models that worked in the past.

Here there is room for innovation in the perception of business toward one that is based on understanding the evolutionary process that consumers are in. The new need that will influence the market is the necessity of positive connection among people as a means for coping with life’s challenges. The growth potential of organizations in the connected world lies in meeting specifically this need.

Today, people still derive pleasure from shopping, but this will wane in the future. We can already see clear signs of this: If, previously, buying something new gave a customer a prolonged sense of satisfaction, today the customer is disappointed the minute he or she makes the purchase.

Consumers are changing; their desires and needs are developing. In the new world, the sense of positive connections with others will fill people with a sense of joy, and not purchasing this or that product. Companies that will find ways to provide customers with an experience of positive human connections will succeed.

We are shifting into new rules of the game, which will necessarily change the market conditions and its behavior. According to those rules, that which adapts to the course of development of the system of connection among people toward integrality and mutuality will succeed. Success of a product or a service will be measured by its contribution to strengthening the connections among people. The more they help foster warm connections, or enhance or bring positive connections to the fore in some other way, the more they will be in demand in the new world.

Every organization will have to detect and characterize products and services that will provide new solutions that will meet this new need of the customers. There is no doubt that it will form creative processes of development in each of the links in the organizational chain, as well as in the business environment in which the organization operates.

A business that will develop aids that will enable people to connect with one another more efficiently will be more successful. The more we integrate system thinking, the more possibilities will manifest, and new products and services will be needed in the market in order to become more connected.

Organizations that will prepare in advance to answer the new need for connection and will adopt the systemic approach will not only avoid bankruptcy when the old system collapses, but they will become market leaders in their area. They will prosper and be able to provide their services to others. If small businesses are flexible and able to adjust themselves to new definitions more quickly, larger organizations will have to change their mode of thinking starting now.

Marketing and Sales in a Connected World

The marketing approach that will be suitable for the connected world will rely on forming good connections with customers out of perceiving them as partners. In a reality of mutual dependency, no other strategy will succeed.
Today, in most cases, it is a one-track marketing approach. Organizations develop products that they believe are needed in the market and try to make them look appealing to potential buyers.

In the new approach, representatives of the potential customers will be an integral part of the work process. The organization will be in constant connection with them before the development of each and every product or service, and in fact will work for them. Those who do not develop expertise in building close contact with their customers and do not learn to care for their comfort and meet the adaptations that they require will not succeed in tomorrow’s market.

An organization with systemic thinking must see that the customer trusts it completely and enjoys the product that has been purchased for a long time. For this reason, salespeople will have to undergo extensive training to change their approach. Until today, they were taught to create closeness to the customers in order to find the customer’s needs so as to close a deal. Now they will have to learn how to connect to the person before them from the bottom of the heart in order to create a good mutual connection.

Understanding the new connection that should be built among all people will lead them to approach any interaction from the point of view of “We are all family.” The products and services that their organization offers are merely a means by which to benefit the people with whom they are in contact.

Although salespeople have an image of being cunning and aggressive, in the future they will have to be people with high levels of human relations. A good salesperson will be one whose customers come to him or her because they are given hope, warmth, care, internal fulfillment, and good advice about how to cope with life. It will be clear to that salesperson that the main point is not to sell a product but to treat every person warmly. The consultation about which product to buy or not to buy will come only as a complementation of the sense of concern that the salesperson will give to the customer.

From a marketing standpoint, when a customer buys a product or a service, it is important that the customer will first of all be happy with the positive communication. Even if the customer does not tell anyone about it, that person’s feeling will send a “positive wave” through the general network that is being revealed in the world today. We can try to see how this works: The minute an organization creates positive and genuine mutual relations with one customer, it will find that more customers are drawn to it, who will want to buy specifically from that organization and not from others. Even if they can’t explain why they chose that specific one, they will have a positive inner feeling about it.

After purchasing the product, customers will want to remain in constant contact with the company. They will see it as a system that contributes to their quality of life, a professional element they can rely on. Sometimes, the quality of connection with the business will contribute to people’s well-being even more than the product itself. Successful businesses will be those that excel in creating personal relations with customers. Even though today there are companies that maintain a constant connection with the customer, it stems from their desire to sell them more and more in the future, and not from the desire to benefit them, and the customers feel it very clearly.

A successful organization will be one that can create around it better and deeper relationships. The more these relations are open and positive in both directions, from the organization to others and from others to it, the more the organization will be regarded as successful.

The advertising strategy will emphasize that the company’s vision is to strengthen the positive connections among people. The company should become famous as one that has a positive influence and cares about the public, not as a company whose essence is mainly sales. The products or services it creates are its unique way to benefit the world, and it cares about the customers more than about the profit. It works and strives to bring them the thing they need the most, both in quality and in price. By this it will become an organization that is not merely a business entity, but is also social-educational and advances the environment in which it operates toward a new and better world.

Relationships in the Organization as a Key to Success

Systemic thinking has ramifications not only toward the customers, but also toward the internal structure of an organization. The influence of systemic thinking on the development of management style is already apparent and implemented in many organizations. If the predominant style of management used to include a clear hierarchy, where the authority is the main motive for work, today this form of management is quickly vanishing. Motivating employees is done in different ways, and new styles of management are being developed, such as Matrix Management or Network Management, which are based more on collaboration, discussion groups, and building a common vision.

The more advanced model of management should employ an integral approach based on developing deep emotional connection and social intelligence. The better the relationships in the organization, the more mutual inspiration will occur and new and creative ideas will form on a completely different level. The main challenge is to fashion a form of relations that is suitable for the connected world, from the least ranking employee to the CEO.

In recent years, much attention has been given to the organizational climate. There are processes to bring coworkers together and enhance their involvement in the company, but usually they only expose the gap between the declarations and the situation on the ground. In most organizations there is distrust on the part of the employees, lack of transparency, absence of cooperation, a significant gap between the level of appreciation of the employees toward their direct managers and their relation to the disconnected top executives.

The tools and methods that organizations employ in order to improve the situation do not really help because at their basis is the egoistic aspiration to exploit the employee even more for the benefit of the organization. The more we develop, the power struggles within organizations will intensify and repeated conflicts will paralyze companies to the point that they will collapse. No solution will work besides creating emotional connections of a new quality among people.

So far, organizations have been using the fact that employees have been willing to bend themselves for the wages and status they obtained. But the younger generation is completely different. In recent years, there is extensive mobility of workers who cannot maintain a position longer than a year or two since they cannot accept the egocentric organizational culture and the behavior of the managers.

The new approach will rely on the understanding that the right connection among employees is the key to the success of the organization. Managers, employees, senior executives, and simple workers, every element in the organization will feel the needs of the other elements and will learn to place their benefit before its own. People’s perspective will expand and will regard the common interest to promote themselves, as well as others.

When people learn to connect correctly, out of wanting to be kind to one another, each one will feel comfortable in his or her place in the puzzle. The sense of mutual guarantee will provide each person with stability and strength even in stormy times, and the inner strength of the organization will be people’s anchor. A stable, connected structure will be formed inside the organization, whose various parts act as a single system through the common feeling.

In order to lead such a social-educational process, a manager must study and grasp the integral approach. The manager must internalize the meaning of being part of a system and to know what is a healthy society that works in a connected way. After he or she has acquired dexterity and knowledge in creating a feeling of positive dependency and mutual connections among people, the manager will be able to nurture a mini-company within the organization, which is based on cooperation.

An organization that succeeds in building the correct relations among its people will develop much more quickly than an organization that will continue to waste resources on conflict resolutions. The relationships in the organization will be in sync with the systemic structure to which the world is moving. Therefore, in the coming years we will be able to see the benefits of this approach manifesting in various ways.

Between Sensitivity and Creativity

The ability to act from an integral approach will provide a relative advantage to organizations and companies and will open up before them a whole world of possibilities that were previously completely out of their perception. For this reason, the innovations of the future are expected to serve primarily as tools that will serve the transition from personal intelligence to social intelligence.

In the past twelve decades, more than 750 studies have been conducted regarding the relative advantages of collaborative, competitive, and individualistic efforts. As part of what is called “social interdependence theory,” a meta-research of studies revealed that the average individual who collaborates achieves far better results than an average person who works within a competitive or individualistic environment. It repeatedly proved that rewards for creativity are usually won by people who were exposed to the influences and the model of creative emulation. This indicates that the social psychology of creativity obligates the individual to be inside a network of social connections.

When people begin to connect from heart to heart, and not only during intellectual brainstorming, their qualities, thoughts, and desires create potential for endless advanced combinations. The quality of the service or product that will be developed through the group mind and heart will be far higher than any insight that will come from a single person, as gifted as he or she may be.

People are different, and each person has different strengths and weaknesses. If we learn to work in collaboration, the strengths of one person make up for the weaknesses of another. This forms a kind of common entity that is sensitive, smart, and creative. In this way, through forming the right connections among everyone, we can extract from the human capital boundless wealth.

The World of the New Employee

The development of connections between people will radically change the elements that will influence the definition of the workplace as successful. Additionally, a new set of values will determine the appreciation and level of success of an employee.
The integral approach will evaluate success of work teams as a whole. As a result, employees will be measured mainly by their contribution to the right combination of the characteristics of all the members of the team. Another factor will be added to the evaluation of the employee—social realization. That is, a substantial part of the self-realization of employees will be felt through their concern for good and connected relations in the team, in addition to succeeding in the task. The personal motivation to invest in the job will come primarily from sensing the warm connection that will be created in the team, and because the collective success will feel very much like a personal achievement.

The quality of relationships among the people in the organization will become the main factor by which the employee values the workplace. Today, bad relationships create tensions and pressures in the workplace. The more we develop, the more attention we will give to the damage bad relationships cause and the price that they cost, and the relationships among people will become the main element that determines a person’s satisfaction with the job.

The most important characteristics of successful managers will change. If, previously, the emphasis was on leadership and charisma, in the future it will be the ability to facilitate warm relations among workers and genuine concern to provide each of them with support, empathy, and confidence. Executives will have to place a strong emphasis on the personal relation they give to the employees and invest more resources in concern for their well-being and development.

The motivation of future executives will come from a genuine desire to contribute to a good connection among everyone since they will understand that this is the course of our evolution as human beings.

In the advanced state, every manager or employee will relate to the organization with an intention to contribute one’s unique addition. For this reason, people will begin to absorb from their environment in a much more expansive manner. The level of connection that people will add to the organization will enable them to understand and feel how the network of connections among everyone influences them, how they influence the network, and how they benefit specifically through thinking about the benefit of the system.

Each individual will become more conscious of the mutual dependency among people, and will understand how it is expressed not only in the organization, but also outside of it, meaning how warm relations between coworkers have positive impacts on their health, personal relationships, joy, creativity, and satisfaction with life.

Chapter Three: Relationships, Family, and Community

The coronavirus quarantine exposed the great importance of connections with partners, children, parents, friends, and relatives. The physical disconnection we had felt engendered longing to be with our loved ones. The longer we were compelled to stay at home, the more we felt the pain of those living alone, who were feeling terrible loneliness.

Staying at home for so long was a challenging experience. It forced us to be constantly present in the lives of family members, maintain close contacts, talk, listen, cooperate, and get to know them more deeply. But often, it brought with it conflicts and confrontations. Some of the couples grew closer, while others realized that they had no future together and broke up.

From a parental perspective, the prolonged stay with the children often revealed qualities and traits we did not know in them. In this way, we came out with good experiences. However, there were also moments when we just could not wait for the time when schools and kindergartens would reopen and the children would resume their routine.

Additionally, the importance of communal life increased. The need for social closeness took us out to the porches and the windows, and got many of us closer to our neighbors, whom we largely ignored until the lockdown. When every trip to the supermarket had to be calculated and the online orders collapsed, we were happy to get some mutual support.

This situation emphasized the fact that until now, we did not dedicate enough time and attention to connections with the people around us. If we examine the development of man and society, we will see that it is no coincidence.

Isolation and Social Distancing

For many generations, man has become increasingly introverted, leading to internal isolation even before the arrival of COVID-19. In fact, the social distancing merely expressed on the outside how we were on the inside.

In antiquity, societies had a tribal structure of communal life. The more we developed, the more we contracted into smaller structures of families, initially large families that lived together, and later into smaller units of relations of first degree. Over time, we built more and more partitions that separated us and arranged for ourselves a life where each person can fend for oneself without relying on others.

Today, from a young age, children grow accustomed to living in separate rooms, usually with a closed door. At the same time, the parents cannot shift their eyes from the cell phone screens. In this way, in the name of aspiring for independence and privacy, we have isolated ourselves even from our own kin.

This process of social distancing was evident outside the family unit, too. In recent years, our social ties have become extremely shallow. For the most part, today people create superficial relationships that are driven by interests, or simply prefer to stay alone. However, this does not change the fact that a good connection with others is essential for our development and well-being from the day of our birth to our last day on Earth. In the absence of such connections, difficult problems arose in our generation: loneliness, alienation, anxiety, and depression. Everyone suffers from them: children, adolescents, grownups, and elderly.

We are living in an age of intolerable conflicts between the need for connection and the need for privacy and independence. The more we develop, the more our personal desires grow and the harder it is for us to accept another person next to us. In order to get along, we must develop sensitivity toward others, see their needs, make occasional concessions, be considerate and agree to follow someone else’s desire. In the past, such concessions were simpler to do since people’s egos were smaller. Today, however, it is very big. This is why many young people give up in advance on the whole idea of marriage and family.

Albert Einstein eloquently phrased the plight of our time in his essay, “Why Socialism.” He writes, “I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society” (Einstein, Monthly Review, 1949).

With these words, Einstein pointed to the great human challenge. The attempts to escape from the connections between us as though they are the source of the problem are completely in the wrong direction. The network is not the trap that chains us within it. Our inherent egoism is the restraining force that does not let us nurture healthy and helpful connections. Into this reality came the coronavirus and added external partitions and isolations, as though reflecting the inner state of humanity.

This development should advance us toward looking at our relationships with partners and social and family relations in a completely new way.

Upgrading Relationships with Partners

Systemic thinking offers a new way to build connections with life-partners, one that opens before each partner social intelligence, and will therefore last longer. According to the systemic perception, difficulties that arise in a relationship stem from the fact that we are looking at them from the perspective of individual units maintaining a give and take relationship. Thus, in every situation, we automatically calculate how much we will receive from it and how much we will have to give in return. The minute the balance becomes negative in the eyes of one of the partners, the motivation to stay in the relationship decreases.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, author of Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, relates to the consumerist attitude that has developed in modern society toward relationships. He attributes the lack of stability in relationships to people’s perception of them as a commodity that can be replaced as soon as the couple is dissatisfied with the connection.

A more advanced approach views relationships as something new that we want to create. It is not I vs. you and you vs. me, but a common space, like a third object that we build together, like a newborn baby. The baby cannot be made by any of the partners alone; it must be created by both together, and the couple must imagine that the connection between them develops just like a child: It must be nourished with love.

In one situation, it might be better for the connection to satisfy one partner more than the other, and in another situation, the other might need more satisfaction. Nevertheless, the end goal is nurturing the connection. The examination by which the couple determines what move is good is what the connection gains, rather than what each of them gains.

In every concession, one relinquishes control in order to gain connection and partnership with the other, and thereby sets a good example and shows that the connection matters most. Such gestures turn the conflicts into opportunities for strengthening the connection and mutual complementation.

True connection is not ego-free. On the contrary, it can be built only above each person’s ego, when each partner helps the other rise above one’s ego.

If we look at ourselves and the person with whom we want to build a connection as one system, we will discover that the old outlook keeps popping up, meaning the natural inclination of the ego to raise its head again, strive to satisfy itself, and force the other partner to adapt to one’s own wants.

This is an inherent formula and we should be aware of it. There is no need to erase it, but rather balance it with the systemic perspective. We should keep trying all the time to emerge from the natural concern only for our own interest, and sort of “cloak” it with the other’s outlook.

Artificially, we will continually exercise looking at ourselves and our partners from aside and examine how we can adapt ourselves to creating a connected relationship. Every moment, we should ask, Am I aiming toward sustaining the common system, built of the other’s desires and my own together?

Gradually, the connection between us will deepen and make us as one. The satisfaction we will derive from this will be immense. Additionally, each of us, as individuals, will be able to ascend from the narrow perception of the self and achieve a higher and truer perception of the world around us.

Nature provides the best example of a perfect connection through the relationship of a mother and a child. When a woman delivers, all her senses and attention are given to the baby. Contrary to any other relationship in our lives, the woman adopts the baby’s needs as her own. For this reason, when she exerts to satisfy the baby’s needs, she senses a unique pleasure.

But while a woman naturally feels this way toward her baby, a relationship with a partner requires work and effort. Yet, this is the essence of our development as intelligent beings. When we can feel the other’s needs, our possibilities of deriving pleasure will expand accordingly since they will comprise our own pleasure along with the pleasure others feel from us. It turns out that systemic thinking is not only more realistic and advanced, but also much more rewarding.

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes the sublime state toward which the relationship with a partner can develop, as well as other relationships, through the expression, “Love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12). In that regard, a “crime” is a flaw that we see in the other. Covering “crimes” with love means rising above the narrow self-centered perspective through the ambition to achieve mutual complementation whose complete expression we experience as love.

In general, it can be said that the stability of every system, a couple, a family, a business, or a company, and even an entire country, depends on the extent to which the individuals who make it up can develop social intelligence that will turn them from separate units into a harmonious system.

The Integral Family

As parents, we must provide a suitable space for our children to develop social intelligence that will allow them to communicate correctly with others, and by this succeed in the new world. For this reason, it is certainly worthwhile to relate to the family as to a small laboratory, a sort of playground where a child can develop an integral worldview, practice, and improve.

An integral family is a place where each member tries to acquire the perspectives of the others, and from them examine what will contribute most to the family’s common life in every situation, what will add more warmth, concern, and mutual love. The concern should not be personal, for my own needs, but rather general, for the needs of the family. My nourishment should come from being one of the elements that make up the family, and not the other way around.

Success in building an integral family depends on each of the family members. The level of integral connection depends on the extent to which we will feel that we are included in one another and work as one body. Each one in the family, from the parents to the youngest child, should participate in keeping the house in order and in various family chores, according to one’s age. However, it should not be done coercively, but because this is how we build a “common space.” Each one should feel that this is his or her contribution to the special connection among the family members.

From the beginning of their lives, children should feel that they are treated equally. That is, on the one hand, they are treated with devotion and are given everything they need, but on the other hand, they are expected to contribute something in return. It is important to talk about how we are all equal. If we are not equal, we will not be able to unite since there can be unity only among equals.

A child who grows up in such a house will be very successful in life since he or she will be used to directing oneself toward connection and participation with others according to the course of development where the world is moving. Such children will develop internal wisdom in their treatment of others. They will learn to feel who is the other person, how to listen, express themselves in a way that brings people closer, how to connect. Over time, they will develop expertise in communicating with people, and that ability will serve them everywhere. These people will know how to feel the people around them, “read” them, and create positive relationships.

Since the child will be able to speak with every person in their own “language,” their own style and approach, others will be attracted to that child due to his or her flexible character. They will feel comfortable in the presence of such a person and will probably not want to harm him or her. Such children are open to connections with others and naturally build a friendly environment around them, even inadvertently. This friendly environment and the confidence they will feel from it will reduce pressures, which will improve their overall health.

Education at home toward connection with others out of seeing others’ needs and mutual complementation will also influence their learning abilities. Such children will be used to listening, communicating with special sensitivity with their teachers and peers, paying attention to who answers in class, what they answer, and how they express themselves. This openness to others will allow them to learn more from them. As a result, they will gain a broader perspective and their way of thinking will be more developed.

If such children face a certain problem, the fact that they have become more open at home will allow their parents to quickly learn about the problem, give the children strength and support, and help them find a solution. The feeling that they have what to fall back on—a family that always tries to understand and support—will enable them to succeed on the outside.

The more the world becomes connected, the more those experts in a specific field who do not know how to communicate, connect, complement others, and cooperate will remain outside of the ballgame. Success in the new world will depend on the ability to build a model of a warm family connection in every contact with others.

Social Ties, Good Viruses

First develops love and desire to bestow upon one’s family and kin, as in the verse,

Throughout history, man has held social ties based on personal acquaintance with one’s environment. People knew their neighbors, shopkeepers, the clerk at the post office, the teller at the bank, and their relatives lived nearby. That gave people a sense of belonging and security. Today, however, the majority of interactions are based on the function that people serve for us, without personal acquaintance. In this way, people have become service providers and recipients.

Such connections tend to be cold, devoid of personal warmth. Although companies try to provide good service based on human connection, this is usually reserved to big consumers and preferred customers. From the perspective of the service recipients, too, the attitude is mostly businesslike. They appreciate the service providers according to their skills and efficiency. When people’s contacts are mostly of this kind, they feel alienation and detachment.

We have built for ourselves a world where each person lives disconnected from others, closed within ourselves. This is why depression is overtaking the world, the demand for anti-depressants is rising, and the difficulty to cope with social situations is becoming a burden. These characteristics of modern life signal that things must change soon. Man is a social being; when we do not receive the warm social relations that we need, we lack the feeling of vitality and confidence and our functioning is affected.

An analysis of studies in happiness, done by Cambridge University for the UK government, reveals that the most impactful element on a person’s level of happiness is the quality of one’s social ties. It turns out that positive social interactions based on feelings such as belonging and mutual trust positively influence the level of happiness more than improvement in one’s financial situation, for example.

Researchers from Harvard University studied 724 people for more than 75 years and examined their social lives and their health. Their primary conclusion was that people who are more socially connected to the family, friends, and the community are happier, healthier, and live longer.

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Another phenomenon that was discovered in network science is called “contagion.” Dr. Nicholas Christakis and Prof. James Fowler studied the influence of human connections on people’s opinions, habits, and health. Their research is based on a thirty-two year long study of 12,000 people in Framingham, Massachusetts. They published their findings in a book titled Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, which presents a variety of ways in which positive and negative social behaviors spread among people as if by contagion.

A person with social intelligence will fully understand the influence other people have on him or her and will therefore attribute great importance to one’s social ties. Such people grasp very clearly that their personal advancement depends on the environment and the quality of their connections with the people around them. For this reason, to improve their lives, they will invest in improving the lives of the people around them.

These people become highly skilled in making people collaborate under any circumstance and find how they can help each other. The more people become experts in connection, the more they feel exactly how they should fit into the social system in order to nurture better social ties within it.

Social intelligence can be of great assistance in daily situations even beyond relationships, family, and work. It can be helpful in relations with neighbors, parents’ organizations, and even coincidental gatherings such as people at the supermarket. Until now, we have not attributed much importance to random contacts with people we encountered, but COVID has taught us that any person can have a crucial influence on our lives.

Dr. Haim Shapira, a well-known mathematician and thinker, explains in his book Conversations on Game Theory, how obliviousness to the mutual dependency among us negatively influences our behavior. He uses various levels of road rage as an example. How come drivers do not let each other integrate in traffic smoothly? According to Dr. Shapira, it is because they do not expect to meet those drivers anywhere besides that momentary encounter. In other words, they have no motivation to make concessions since they will probably never see that person again, so that person will not reciprocate the favor.

A person with high social intelligence will understand that this is a narrow view, and will feel very clearly that the more he or she contributes to the positive connection among people, even on such ephemeral occasions, it will transfer “positive viruses” that will necessarily affect other people. That is, through projecting positive behavior, they fashion the new social norms.

In the new world, those who succeed in creating good relationships and supportive systems wherever they go are regarded as having a high standard of living. These people’s social status will be determined by the extent to which people will feel them as a cause of creating positive connections. Even the self-esteem of these people will be determined by the level of positive connections that they have created around them.

Initially, fostering positive connections outside the family circle will seem like a tool to improve our lives in various areas. Later, it will become clear that good connections are far more than a means to succeed in these areas, since within the deep ties we will create with others we will begin to feel power, satisfaction, delight, and pleasure on a completely different level.

We will discover that what really fills our world are the warm connections that we have with others. The love we will feel for those around us through our investment in them will become the most sublime thing for us regardless of what we will receive from them in return. Our unique contribution to building connections among everyone will give our lives a special meaning, and precisely in it we will find the highest fulfillment of the human spirit within us.

Life’s Pleasures

The coronavirus crisis has disconnected us from routine pastimes that we used to have, such as restaurants, shopping, trips, vacations, and traveling. Some of them we miss a lot, and to some of them we found substitutes that are just as satisfying. We rediscovered creativity in cooking and baking, and other leisure activities that we had long forgotten such as listening to music, watching movies, and playing with the kids. After all, we are in an endless pursuit of pleasures.

The range of the joys of life is infinite. In that respect, it is important to say that the desire to enjoy itself will not change as we develop the new thinking and social intelligence, but it is likely that the things that will please us will become more subtle and sophisticated. We may lose the pleasure in things we enjoyed in the past, but these will be replaced with new and different pleasures and pastimes.

In the new world, the special feeling that stems from fostering positive connections among people will be an inseparable part of the experience that people will expect to have. For example, restaurants that will serve great food but neglect the experience and atmosphere will not be popular even if they serve the best food. In fact, people will be able to order home any delicacy they want, so people will trouble themselves to restaurants only if there is an added value there of a special human experience. This atmosphere will be created if the owner, chefs, hostesses, and waiters all express a desire to please the guests, to create an uplifting atmosphere of connection that will create flavors that do not come only from the food, but from the very positive connection that fills the soul.

Another example is live performances. In the new world, a performing artist will be considered brilliant and popular if he or she will succeed in feeling the audience and building the show especially for them, if they adapt themselves to the mood of the people in real time, through deep connection to them and to what they need at that moment, what makes them sad or happy and what gives them hope. Their influence will grow if, on top of that, they will bring about a warm connection among the people in the audience so they would feel they are sharing an experience.

In the new routine, no one will have to wait for a few rare moments of fun with friends on weekends. The delight and pleasure in good social connections will be part of the balanced daily life.

The connected awareness will give people a broad perspective and deeper understanding of the processes and events around us, and the circumstances that create them. They will experience the social strength as a basis on which to lean every moment, and as a result, the concern for connection among people will become the most valuable asset in their lives.

In the past, the height of man’s creation was reserved to a chosen super talented few. But in the new world, every single person will be able to enjoy active participation in creating the masterpiece of all time: building the connected humanity. “When humankind achieves its goal,” says Baal HaSulam, “by bringing them to the degree of complete love of others, all the bodies in the world will unite into a single body and a single heart. Only then will all the happiness intended for humanity become revealed in all its glory” (“The Freedom”).

Love is the overall law of nature, the supreme law by which all parts of nature connect to one another in perfect harmony. For this reason, the ties of love that we will weave among us will show human-spiritual intelligence in all its glory, and thanks to it, we will connect to the perfection and eternity in nature.

Afterword

The expansion of viral processes, as seen with the coronavirus pandemic, is not the sole domain of the biological level. Life proves that we infect one another with virtual viruses such as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

There is no doubt that living in one network has ramifications the majority of which we still do not know. However, it is already clear that the process of contagion and infection can also be positive. Just as the coronavirus spread and rapidly paralyzed the old world, the new thinking can spread even faster and build a correct world in our hearts.

If we rise to the challenge that the coronavirus has set before us, we will be able to see it as an opportunity to develop, a historic opportunity for the birth of the connected man. This would be an intelligent step toward complementary communication, and our lives would become much more pleasant. Everyone will know to whom they can turn when they need help, and whom they themselves should help.

That beauty will rely on social intelligence that is about the ability to feel and to know how I can be the most contributory part of society. Each of us has a unique role in the system. As long as someone’s place is missing, the ideal system will not be complete.

We do not need another cold or hot war; we do not need riots and unemployment. We do not need more hatred and division, and corruption and competition that ravage anything that is good. We should learn to live differently, in a new way, together, with love. If we do not grasp this in a good way, then we will have to grasp this in a bad way, for nature does not play around and evolution continues.