Clean Up Earth of Our Polluted Human Nature

The United Nations recently celebrated the International Mother Earth Day as a reminder to protect the environment. Heat waves, droughts, fires and heavy rains that cause severe flooding have become more frequent in many parts of the world due to climate change, which affects the entire worldwide population.

It is of utmost importance for us to organize our thoughts, desires and qualities so that we understand that saving the environment and a shift to a better future depend solely on changing our attitudes to each other: from antagonistic egoism to positive, compassionate and cooperative relationships.

The Earth is facing a “triple planetary crisis,” warn UN officials. Climate disruption, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste are the main areas of concern regarding the current state of the environment. This year, the Earth Day’s theme is “Invest In Our Planet,” so what would humanity's best investment for the planet be??

We need to start by cleaning up the planet. There is no place on Earth where the air and water are clean, and that's a real problem. In theory, tackling this issue should be our priority when it comes to taking action to improve the dismal state of our planet. But let’s not fool ourselves. Such a plan alone will solve nothing. ?

It will only help the international organizations to justify their own existence. They tick off "done" to raise as much money as they want, and that's it. If we do not improve relations between us, we will not be able to achieve the great and ambitious improvement in nature that we want and need to attain globally. We will never achieve a good result through bureaucratic, mechanical measures.

There are a lot of people sitting in their comfortable offices profiting from the environmental crisis and demanding money and respect. They keep flying from one end of the world to the other on all kinds of missions to make a lot of noise with what they are "doing" and which everyone "needs to hear" as if that alone means something is happening, but in practice we see no real progress. The Earth must also be cleansed of them, of these people who engage in useless campaigns that only cause harm because they mislead the world, leading it away from the real solution.?

The cleaning of the planet should start inside out. If we do not clean the planet from within, and continue with our reckless behavior and the selfish nature of our hearts as before, nothing will change for the better. The immense sums invested in environmental initiatives should be directed to spreading an educational process aimed at improving the way we relate to each other.

Humans are the most developed and influential factors of all of nature's levels: still, vegetative, animate and human. Since we occupy the highest level in nature, positively affecting the environment, the climate, and nature in general can be achieved by reaching positive relations among us. On the contrary, by letting our divisive drives tear apart human relations, we also destroy our surrounding environment, the very nature that our lives depend on.??????

The more we humans are able to correct ourselves by changing our divisive attitudes toward each other into positive attitudes of mutual support, encouragement, mutual responsibility, and reciprocal concern, the more we will receive positive feedback from nature. And the more we develop without making this necessary correction, the more negative feedback we will receive from nature, as we have experienced in the form of natural disasters, pandemics.

It is of utmost importance for us to organize our thoughts, desires and qualities so that we understand that saving the environment and a shift to a better future depend solely on changing our attitudes to each other: from antagonistic egoism to positive, compassionate and cooperative relationships.

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What If Iran Has a Bomb

On April 11, the Institute for Science and International Security released what might well be considered an alarming report: “As soon as mid-to-late April,” namely these very days, “Iran is expected to reach a new dangerous, destabilizing threshold, having enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fashion a nuclear explosive, about 40-42 kilograms (kg) of 60 percent enriched uranium… With this quantity, an enrichment level of 60 percent suffices to create a relatively compact nuclear explosive; further enrichment to 80 or 90 percent is not needed.” As a result, the report continues, “the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive cannot be excluded.”

If Iran indeed has a bomb, we must make the necessary preparations for ourselves, but nothing more than that. After all, we, too, have our missiles and planes, as well as submarines, and all of them can carry nuclear bombs if needed.

“A common fallacy is Iran would require 90 percent HEU … to build nuclear explosives,” the report continues. “Although Iran’s nuclear weapons designs have focused on 90 percent HEU and likely prefer that enrichment, modifying them for 60 percent HEU would be straightforward and well within Iran’s capabilities.” In other words, according to the report, we are already dealing with a nuclear Iran.

Initially, I believed that Israel must do whatever it can to prevent Iran from getting a bomb. However, if Iran already has a bomb, I do not think that it is the end of the world, although now the rules of the game will clearly be very different.

First, they will be different for Iran. Aspiring for an A-bomb and actually having one are two very different things. Once you have got such a powerful weapon, you realize that playing time is over. You imagine the possibilities that being a nuclear power will give you, but the truth is that the constraints are countless. You are no longer treated like a reckless child but like a nuclear power, and the demands from you increase accordingly. Any step you take toward using nuclear arms might be reciprocated with equal strength, if not more, so it is not as though you can do whatever you want. Instead, you have far less room for error.

Second, despite the toxic rhetoric, I do not believe that Iran has made the destruction of the State of Israel one of its goals. Clearly, it is vociferous and strident in expressing its hatred for the Jewish state, but I think it is more a matter of politics than of real commitment to Israel’s destruction. After all, despite using Hamas and Hezbollah as Iranian proxies that bully Israel, neither poses an existential danger to the Jewish state, and its own army has never participated in any of the full-blown wars against Israel. As I see it, Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric is more a political tactic than an actual ideology.

Therefore, if Iran indeed has a bomb, we must make the necessary preparations for ourselves, but nothing more than that. After all, we, too, have our missiles and planes, as well as submarines, and all of them can carry nuclear bombs if needed.

Besides, Israel is not Iran’s only avowed enemy. As a Shiite state, it has been in conflict with Sunni states for centuries, and Sunnis are the majority in the Muslim world. Therefore, Iran’s struggle for hegemony in the Muslim world is just as bitter, and perhaps more important to it than its ambition to annihilate the Jewish state.

Also, there is a deeper layer to the conflict between Iran and Israel, which pertains directly to the role of Israel with regard to humanity. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, humanity has no choice but to learn to work together. The semiconductor crisis, shipment delays, the pandemic, the rising inflation and food shortage are all happening on a global scale. No country can survive on its own today.

Israel’s past contains a formula of unity that has never been tried by anyone except Israel, and that, too, only in antiquity. According to this formula, one does not try to oppress the other or change the other person’s, or nation’s way of life. Rather, belligerent parties leave their adversaries as they are and try to bond with them above the differences. For this to happen, the value of unity itself must be superior to all other values.

Think of a woman and her child. She loves her child whether he is a saint or a Satan.

We must achieve something of that relation throughout all of humanity. Since it is completely unnatural, we must elevate the value of unity above all other values, so that it covers all the faults we see in others.

If we value unity above all else, we will use our traits for the common good rather than for our own good. The surprising result will be that we will realize that in reality, there are no negative qualities when we use them only where and how they contribute to society.

The conflicts we see today, whether between Israel and Iran or between Russia and Ukraine, are all for the same purpose: to make us realize that in the end, we will not agree but we will have to unite nonetheless.

The world hates Israel precisely because it had set a precedent in antiquity, and now it must revive it and become an example from which the world can learn. The enemies of Israel force it to unite, and thereby do what Israel must do for the world: become an example of unity. If Israel insists on refraining from carrying out its mission, it will stop existing with or without an A-bomb.

Image credit: Life-size model of "Fat Man" in Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (Source https://www.flickr.com/photos/spilt-milk/)

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Farewell Mask Mandate

Last Saturday evening, the mask mandate has been lifted in Israel. Although enforcement of the mandate had been lax for the past several months, if not longer, now that it is official, people say they can breathe freely. But can we? We wish! We can bid farewell to the mask mandate, but other mandates will replace it because we have more lessons to learn.

Besides, there are many entities that want the mandate stopped. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and other government agencies want the masks off in order to gain popularity. The fact that a few months from now, we will pay for it with our health is irrelevant.

We learned a lot over the past two years of mask mandates and vaccines. The virus engulfed all of humanity and turned us into one mass. At work, on the street, on public transportation, on planes, in public places, we have begun to feel how interdependent we are. Nothing accomplished it prior to the corona virus.

However, its work of welding us together is not over; it has just begun. I have no doubt that in the near future, we will see the sequel.

The thing is that it is time for us to fuse ourselves together, to start becoming one. If we do not do it voluntarily, reality will impel us to do it nonetheless.

Perhaps it is indeed time to take off the masks. We used to say that we should wear masks not to avoid being infected, but to avoid infecting others, especially the elderly and the physically vulnerable. But since no one minds that argument anymore, it seems as though the social benefit of masks has run its course, and we need a new whip to force us to connect.

Besides, there are many entities that want the mandate stopped. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and other government agencies want the masks off in order to gain popularity. The fact that a few months from now, we will pay for it with our health is irrelevant.

Regrettably, we are not coming out of the pandemic as we should. I had hoped that we would emerge from it united, but we are emerging from it more divided than ever. Therefore, I have no doubt that a new, more violent plague will come and mandate our unity nonetheless.