In the News (from rt.com): “A triple disaster on a scale the world has never known caused damage, destruction and uncertainty, forcing tens of thousands of Japanese refugees to leave their lives behind and seek shelter anywhere they can.

”Some people do evacuate,’ says Komae Hosokawa, a nuclear sociologist. ‘But the problem is they are the minority and they have been accused by their neighbors, by their classmates and of course by official personnel that they are causing unfounded anxiety among people, which is not good.’

“Though primarily a move towards self-preservation, this idea of desertion is defined by many as characteristically un-Japanese and has earned those who have evacuated the dishonorable title of traitor….

“’We hear some organic farmers committed suicide, because you know for organic farmers soil is everything,’ says Komae Hosokawa. ‘They nurture the good soil after many years of hard work and it is just contaminated in one night or two you know. So some farmers committed suicide, and I am very sad to hear the news. And many other farmers are also very much depressed.’…

“’The rate increases not in the epicenter, disaster epicenter, but in the peripheral areas,’ said Dr. Hirohito Hirose, a disaster psychology specialist, ‘Because survivors who have to reconstruct their life, they have no time to [contemplate] suicide.’

“This disaster has certainly taken its toll on Japan’s economy and such constant reminders of an intense topic can harm the collective psyche of the people who live here as well.”

My Comment: Perhaps, it seems heroic, but is it not an escape from certain problems, which they have no strength to solve constructively? A human being is a vulnerable creature, a small desire for self-preservation, fulfillment.

That is why a lack of fulfillment, a feeling of emptiness, is felt as suffering which one wants to get rid of, possibly, by an escape from existence itself.
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Opinion: (Jerry Kennard, healthcentral.com): “We’re more anxious and depressed than ever before and the situation is worsening rather than getting better. The argument that modern technology would one day protect us from ill-health and distress and open up a world of leisure and, by implication greater happiness, is looking decidedly dated….

“Lead author, Dr. Catriona Morrison, from the University of Leeds, in the UK., found that high internet use is associated with depression. High internet use is frequently associated with gambling, interacting in social communities or viewing sexual content. According to Morrison, ‘the study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction.’”

My Comment: We mistakenly think that the Internet can replace communication. This is the very means that pulls us into loneliness and unnoticeably isolates each of us from others to such an extent that we no longer can communicate directly.

This condition will be worsening until the full realization of it as evil, and then, society will understand the need for a good open direct communication. Only it can eliminate depression!
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In the past egoism spurred us on from behind and from the sides, always leaving the path forward free. However, today the barriers are not arising along the sides, but in front of us. It’s as if a wall rises up before us, leaving us no place to run, nothing we can do.

This state is becoming more and more apparent: I don’t really want anything, I don’t feel that I can keep growing in my egoism. It is incapable of giving me answers to the questions that arise in me today. I have outgrown the previous phases and have entered the next level of questions, the level of adulthood and new necessities.

Food, sex, family—all of these are falling apart, taking on strange, “mutated” forms. Wealth, fame, and knowledge don’t seem to promise me a lot either.

Science is in a crisis and does not answer my questions, even though a mere 50-60 years ago it still seemed like it would give us answers to everything.

Power has become petty in our eyes: We see that its only objective is money. And money…. Is it really worth wasting your entire life on!? My questions have already outgrown any number of zeros that a bank account can display.

When a person loses the necessary “fuel,” emptiness emerges inside of him and he finds himself asking, “What is worth living for? For myself? But I lack fulfillment. For my children? But when they get older, they will leave the nest. And besides, why raise them at all? What bright future do they have ahead? Disintegrating families and a decomposing society?” A person does not feel attached to anything and does not have hopes for anything. That is the kind of impasse that our questions have led us to.

But there is also a completely different reason for the dead-end state: We are exhausting the natural resources. Today it is already clear that human progress won’t be infinite, both from the point of view of our demands and from the point of view of our existence as a whole. If we continue squandering the natural resources at the current rate, then very soon we won’t have any raw materials left even for the vitally necessary products.

90% of what we produce today consists of oil, be it energy, plastic materials, and so on. When the oil reserves end, we will be left with nothing. But nevertheless, we still keep on squandering it.

Thus, on one hand nature places a barrier before us in the form of ecology, climate, and resources, and on the other hand, egoism no longer pushes us forward. It asks questions that we cannot find answers to here, in our world, in this small children’s room where we had so much fun playing until now.

Today the situation already resembles suicide: We are irrationally using up the last remaining resources.

We have to understand that because of this, we find ourselves in the zone of choice. This is where freedom of will emerges, the freedom for us to start understanding the program of our development: “Who are we? Why are we here? What for?”, and together with us, the rest of the world. Now is exactly the time for us to solve this challenge. Otherwise humanity will find itself in a truly hopeless impasse.

In reality the gist of the problem is not the financial crisis, the technology crisis, or the crisis of families. We are in a crisis with ourselves. We have to understand who we are and what we are here for, both from the point of view of nature, which obligates us to this, and from our own point of view. Only then will we be able to set things right inside of us and in the world.
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From the Talk about a New Book 7/11/2011

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Opinion: (Stephen S. Ilardi, Professor, the University of Kansas, thedepressioncurebook.com): “Most Americans work long hours, eat on the fly, and lead increasingly sedentary, isolated lives. Alongside this lifestyle, depression rates have skyrocketed: approximately 1 in 4 Americans will suffer from major depression at some point in their lives….

“Our bodies were never designed for the sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, frenzied pace of twenty-first century life.” That is, depression is the brain’s reaction to stress.

My Comment: Depression is a reaction to inner emptiness. A person can live through anything if only he can justify the misfortunes in his life. Then, difficulties enhance the effect of victories and achievements. The main cause of depression is a lack of motivation and purpose.

If the environment demonstrates special values ​​that are equally important to all members of society, a person feels that he is part of the society and acknowledges its goals as his. In this case, there is no void; public opinion gives him assurance that there is something to live for. If, however, the cause of depression is not removed, drug treatment is the only option.
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In the News: “Depression affects 121 million people worldwide. In can affect a person’s ability to work, form relationships, and destroy their quality of life. At its most severe depression can lead to suicide and is responsible for 850,000 deaths every year….

“In conjunction with the World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, researchers from 20 centers collaborated to investigate the prevalence of depression around the globe. To be classified as having had a Major Depressive Episode (MDE) a person was additionally required to fulfill five out of nine criteria including sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy and poor concentration….

“MDE were elevated in high-income countries (28% compared to 20%) and were especially high (over 30%) in France, the Netherlands, and America. The country with the lowest incidence was China at 12%….

“Women were twice as likely to suffer depression as men, and the loss of a partner was a main contributing factor…” (Source: BioMed Central)

“The new research discovered that for both British men and women the probability of depression peaked at about 44 years of age. In the US, unhappiness reached a peak at about 40 years of age for women and 50 for men.” (Source: telegraph.co.uk)

My comment: The more our egoism develops and alienates us from each other, the more the world around us manifests itself as integral, that is, opposing us, egoists-individualists, and the more our lives appear harder, worthless, and pointless. And depression in us will be developing as the biggest problem of humankind, which we will not be able to get rid of other than by turning our mutual rejection into attraction.

The chief problem of humanity is to correct human nature. It is a pity that people do not wish to hear about this and suffer. But these sufferings will nevertheless make them realize the cause of evil and accept the method of correction. It is a pity that everything happens by the path of suffering.
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For millennia, we advanced with the slow growth of egoism and developed society, technologies, and various sciences in compliance with it. Then, during the Renaissance, a steeper ascent began that peaked in our century, with a consumer society.

When this egoism reached a certain level, it suddenly stopped, “interrupted its flight,” and its graph now turns into a horizontal line. It will not grow further.

In this state, humanity begins to feel depression as it can’t see how it can satisfy itself. Earlier, being at the intermediate stages of our development, we always aspired to something greater. Every time, it seemed to us that the next state was better than the current one, and we wanted to achieve it. We raised children, hoping that it would be better for them than for us, that their world would be higher, wiser, and so on.

However, today we don’t want to have children because we don’t see how their life will become better. We feel that egoism cannot grow any further; it has nowhere to grow. We even begin to limit our most ambitious space programs. Everything is declining. Besides that, resources do not allow us to develop freely. We begin to deplete ourselves in terms of energy, resources and in terms of our inner potential. We have nowhere to grow, nothing to strive for. “I don’t want anything.”

Over 50 percent of the people in the world experience some form of depression. We are not talking about drugs, terrorism, divorces, mutual estrangement, or conflicts between parents and children. All these are symptoms, an indication that egoism begins to “run out.” It can’t fulfill itself at the current level, on our small Earth.

Egoistic desires consist of two groups:

1. Food, sex, and family. These desires are natural; they are present in every human and in animals.
2. Wealth, power, honor (which are essentially the same thing), and knowledge. These desires are social.

Today, both these groups of desires no longer grow any more. They seem to have reached their peak and remain at the same level.

Soon, they will begin to diminish. A human will not need all that; he will begin to give up his “conquests,” to become empty internally because he will not expect any new desires or any new fulfillment. In our world, these six desires exhaust themselves, and this is also one of the reasons, one of the components, that drives us towards the crossing of the “Machsom,” the barrier between the worlds. They push us from behind by sufferings.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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The convention in America has just ended and now we must already start preparing for the next convention which will be held in Moscow in the summer. We do not have time to get depressed and later think about how to come out of the descent. And we have no right to do this.

Suppose I caught the flu, but I have a baby at home who is also sick. What will I think about: my own illness or the baby’s? Obviously, I will do everything I can to make him get better.

And we are in the same situation! We are facing a more serious problem now, so can we really allow ourselves to get depressed? There is no time for that. Only two months are left to prepare! Afterward, time will become compressed even more and we have to prepare for this right now. Period!

But here you are, telling me that today you are experiencing some kind of depression, as if you’re in a fog. What are you talking about?! We don’t even have a moment to cool down. Right after the convention, as I was traveling from New York to Toronto, I already started thinking about the next one.

Our work is simple: to strengthen the connection between us until its inner content, our mutual bestowal to one another becomes identical to bestowal to the Creator, completely equivalent to it and equal to it in size and quality.
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From the lesson on 4/8/11, “Preface to Ptiha”

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The “Globes” newspaper has published a comprehensive article about the “happiness industry,” which is making us more and more unhappy. The rate of depression in the West is constantly on the rise, while the average age of its victims is decreasing. According to data from the World Health Organization, by 2020 depression will be the second cause of disability and death in the world, surpassed only by cardiovascular diseases.

The modern person is sinking in loneliness, but society does not throw him a life-buoy. With the exception of Islam, the role of religion as a source of support is dwindling to nothingness. Communities are falling apart and the concept of a big, happy family in the Western countries is becoming nonsensical. As people shift to the space of virtual communications, they mistakenly suppose that from now on they can manage without a real, caring environment. As a result, a person looks for the solution to all the problems one on one with himself, inside his shell, perched by a computer screen.

The life of a society that suffers from attention deficit flies by at lightning speed. People twitter short trills hoping to have the time to express something that won’t be heard by anyone a moment later. Anything requiring inner efforts, persistence, and time is rejected at the root. When a person is empty, having no true goal, then worry and depression settle in. So where can he get that goal? Where can he find meaning?

Today all serious researchers assert that happiness lies inside contact with others, in bestowal, and that real meaning can only be revealed in the interconnection between us. Viktor Frankl, the famous Austrian psychologist, says that a person sitting at home and trying to find meaning on his own is like someone trying to break into an open door, not understanding that it opens inwards instead of out.

“You won’t find happiness in a shell,” says one of the interviewed experts to the “Globes” newspaper. By focusing on himself instead of extending a hand out to others, a person only increases his narcissism and depression.

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