I think that doing so is useless. Food shortages and famines do not happen in order for us to fill our storage, barns, kitchen drawers and whatnot. We rather need to understand how we can realistically make sure that the world will be abundant with everything that everyone needs. The reality that food shortages and famines could quickly spread throughout our modern world is in order for us to reach such a conclusion.
The world is indeed at risk of a prolonged period of famine. It is written in the Torah that we will reach states where mothers will eat their babies, their own children. It could indeed become that severe, where we would be reduced to the level of animals.
We should thus use such knowledge in order to help us avoid looming food shortages and famines. We would then see that the sole cause of such terrible phenomena is our imbalance at the human level, that we are not doing what we should.
What, then, should we be doing?
We need to reach a mutual understanding among each other—to establish such connections among us that would help us reach balance. But we fail to do so. On the contrary, we regress, as if we want the boat we are on to head straight into a rock. And as a result, the world is indeed headed toward periods of shortages, famine and destruction.
The reason that today we hear about such impending doom scenarios is in order to frighten us so that we would change ourselves in order to change the world. The only reason we can reach such states and know about them in advance is to change ourselves. And the essence of the transformation we need to undergo is in our values: that we shift to prioritizing the benefit of others over self-benefit.
In terms of how this change will play out, together with the suffering, there will also be people who discuss connection and how to overcome the suffering. The change depends on listening to such people, and suffering will help people become readier to listen.
After certain periods of suffering, people will change. They will have a different attitude to life and to its values. They will understand that survival and the reason for survival is of utmost importance.
Moreover, even though humanity has undergone great suffering and famines in the past, today is different because we are ready to realize the true evil behind such suffering: the human ego that wishes to benefit itself at the expense of anything and anyone. It takes enormous suffering to sense, define, attain and draw conclusions from such evil.
However, we are coming closer to a state of recognizing that evil. Some signs that we are moving toward it is that we no longer hide behind all sorts of slogans, and we no longer believe in abstract values. Instead, we are becoming interested in what is most important: whether or not there is a meaning of life. And even if we assume that there is no meaning of life, we can still see how to live optimal lives on the animal level—by realizing the evil in our desire to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, the tremendous suffering it brings, and moving to re-prioritize the benefit of others over self-benefit.
Based on the video “Should We Stockpile Food in Case of Shortages and Famine?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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