Technology

An optimistic concept which means a change following performance.

The ability to produce change originates in several sources. The best source is being lucky and born into a culture that develops abilities and nurtures freedom of choice. Other possible sources are adapting friendly thinking and using it in order to make a change in a certain area. But, there is another way that does not include friendly thinking: to precede thinking and feeling with doing. That is what I call technology.

Throughout the years, I have seen many people who have made enormous changes even without a broad scenery sight and developing friendly thinking. These people were willing to learn and simply agreed to do their homework in the spirit of the famous saying in Judaism: “We shall do and we shall listen” but in the midst of doing, they find, to their surprise, that their mental system has undergone change. That means that many things they learnt in Friendship School were internalized and became important components of their identity. Technology bore fruit and understating came, if at all, at a later stage. It often happens in reality without an overt prior intention. For example, a young husband who feels he is not mature enough to be a father, but somehow becomes a parent. And so, after a while he becomes an enthusiastic father who is attached to his baby boy and loves him profoundly…

Unfortunately, it does not necessarily develop this way. Some people agree to experience for a while but eventually rejects the opportunity for change. Their original programming wins and they remain as disabled as they used to be. They keep on saying: “O.k., I’ll keep dating her but I don’t feel I love her…” Thus, the agreement to function and perform certain activities in a behaviouristic manner, does not always lead to a complete, profound change. The organ responsible for changes and feelings is, after all, the brain. If the person does not concentrate well enough on the relevant stimulus, he will not be able to produce pleasure and excitement.

Try to scan the activities that bring you joy. You shall find out that many of them crept in your life not because you wanted to deal with them, but because you were dragged into them. Somehow you learn how to like these activities which become part of your identity, namely, yours. In Friendship School we prefer to initiate the worthy elements and not to leave it to mere chance.

Many singles who started dating arbitrarily as part of their homework became loving spouses. It is hard to define when a person moves from a technical performance to real joy. People differ in this sense. When a person tramples in his inability, he perpetuates the existing situation. But when a person discovers the ability to make a profound, emotional change, it usually leads to a chain of additional changes.

When the first change takes place the person himself is surprised by the change in his feelings and emotions. Then he started looking for other places where change is needed and makes additional changes. Now he is already equipped with a reliable tool. He knows that whenever he decides to add an ability, he shall make the effort and the result will probably be positive. He has joined the scholastic culture. Thus, technology, sometimes, is highly productive.

See: “Production”, “Homework”, “Day’s Contents”.

Trampled Culture (Culture of Diagnosis & Judgment)

The manner of observing which accompanies almost any human reference. The way we keep examining things according to the criteria we have known all our lives.

The phenomenon of tramping is so common that most people cannot make a distinction between a fact and a judgment. When they repeat the same judgment over and over again, they perceive it as a solid fact. From then on, there is not much of a chance that additional information sinks in and changes the things they already “know”. I see it as “brain damage”. It derives from the way we were educated by our parents, and teachers who stuffed judgments into our brain, instead of giving us thinking tools that shall prepare our brain to contain colorful, diversified scenery and not to lock every piece of information in a slot of preconception. It is difficult to describe the  extent of the brain damage caused by the judgmental culture. Many doctors do not see the person in front of them; they see a case characterized by a certain disease. Many mistakes are made because of that approach. Obviously, diagnosis is an important phase of healing, but it should be done only after an observation of the patient himself, and not only through the written words.

Psychology, which attempted to become science, has copied this approach from medicine, and burdened itself with endless diagnosis. There are monstrous books which deal with infinite collections of symptoms and diagnosis.  A catalogue of metal types or sorting out potatoes might help us sometime to organize things; and organization can be a friendly thing. But an attempt to categorize people is similar to locking them in a thinking dungeon, or trying to get an elephant into a mini-minor. Moreover, the diagnosis and the dealing with the problems, usually become a cause of fixation and of frustrating tramping – dwelling on the past, the emotions, the dreams – which eventually does not lead us anywhere. Only if we become members of the scholastic culture, and refer mainly to the present and the future, and less to the past, we shall be able to change.

Other products of the trampled culture are, amongst other things, religious (any religious), blind admiration of a leader or a superstar, and the thing I refer to as “automatic programming” – performing activities which require thought without such thought; for instance, people who vote for a certain political party only because they are used to voting for it.