We consider some lives to be worth more than others because we fail to see the general system of our global interdependence and interconnectedness.
We belong to a single system. In essence, we are all one organism. Each of us is like a cell in a single organism, a cell that needs to take care of the well-being of the whole organism. If we will see that humanity is ultimately one organism with different organs and parts, then we will understand that every person is immensely important.
In a live organism, it takes just one cell to become cancerous in order to set off the organism’s demise. Our egoistic nature works in the same way: by nature, we wish to “consume” others, i.e. use others for the sake of personal benefit. Likewise, today we all behave like cancerous cells. This dire situation is being increasingly shown to us in our era: the more we discover our global interdependence and interconnectedness, the more we also see how our egoistic nature does not let us enjoy our tightening connection, but on the contrary, we feel it in increasingly negative and threatening ways.
If we recognize the conflicting tendency of our current development, i.e. that the more connected we become globally, technologically and economically, then the more we suffer from our egos clashing with each other, then we will start realizing that we need to heal in our attitudes to each other—to reject our egoism, consumption and the exploitation of others, and shift to a state where we positively connect to each other above our egoism, developing new altruistic threads in our connections.
By discovering the crisis of our current development and the direction our development needs to undergo in order to progress to a better world, we will then see that life lies in enabling us all to contribute positively to society. If we encourage everyone in society to contribute to society, we will then discover our equality. Then, the life of one person could not be considered as more or less important than the life of another person.
Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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