What Defines Our Current Times?

Michael Laitman
3 min readAug 7, 2023

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We are in a new transitional era.

Over the generations, the human ego — the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature — developed to a point where we can no longer satisfy ourselves, and we are reaching a state of helplessness in continuing to try and fulfill ourselves by the same egoistic means.

Over the generations, the human ego — the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature — developed to a point where we can no longer satisfy ourselves, and we are reaching a state of helplessness in continuing to try and fulfill ourselves by the same egoistic means.

We experience more problems and crises on all scales than ever before, with rising depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress, mental health problems, drug abuse, divorce rates and suicide rates, to name a few.

Our past egoistic modus operandi is clashing with a new globally interconnected and interdependent world, and we find that everything we have done over the millennia fails to work in satisfying us today. It has reached a saturation. Likewise, we do not know how to progress from here.

Of course, we still have people claiming that we can solve today’s problems through money, power or various other scientific or technological means. However, we will see how no such proposed solutions will not help us, because they fail to deal with the core problem: that we ourselves need to change. In other words, our egoistic connections between us — person to person, group to group and nation to nation — need an upgrade to altruistic ones, where we can experience our relations in harmony, peace and happiness.

Since the human ego meeting the globally-interconnected and interdependent world surfaces increasing problems, it is precisely that point of human connection that we have to fix.

We discover how we are tightly connected, but we continue relating to such a state egoistically, in terms of “What will I get out of this?” As such, we feel our increasing connection as an increasing burden.

As humans, we are the highest of nature’s many elements, and as such, our civilization has to find some kind of a solution in realizing our connections positively. By doing so, we will solve every problem, and without a solution that connects us all together harmoniously, we will solve nothing.

As humans, we are the highest of nature’s many elements, and as such, our civilization has to find some kind of a solution in realizing our connections positively. By doing so, we will solve every problem, and without a solution that connects us all together harmoniously, we will solve nothing.

We can liken humanity to a single organism, with each of us as its cells. When cells consider their self-benefit at the expense of the other cells, the organism collapses. We thus suddenly discover that humanity acts like disconnected and discordant parts of an organism. Now the question is: How do we positively connect? What is the method that can bring us together in harmony?

Connection-enriching learning should be our primary engagement today in order for us to optimally realize our current transitional era. The time has come for humanity’s elevation to a higher level of consciousness, for us all to feel like one big global family. We have to open our minds and hearts to such a perception.

If we reach positive connections among each other, transcending our egos, sharing the pain of others and willingly turning ourselves into a means for fulfilling them, we then discover the divine quality of love and bestowal enter our lives, and it guides us to life’s highest state.

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Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman

Written by Michael Laitman

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

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