The experience of shopping brings us pleasure, excitement, success, and status. In addition, Internet purchases create the anticipation of delivery, and the excitement of opening the box. The nature of the will to receive is to always desire to acquire something new. The more we receive, the more we enjoy. It’s not that we swallow the object itself, but rather we swallow the pleasure we receive from acquiring it. We need to ask ourselves what is needed for life, and plan ahead to buy only that, not what the advertisers persuade us will bring pleasure. Otherwise we find ourselves surrounded by objects that just gather dust, while the emptiness of our will to receive remains. We should educate children by example and teach them to seek inner fulfillments that don’t cost money—books, music, games, sports, relationships, and conversation. Healthy consumerism is buying only what we truly need and raising our importance for attaining inner assets.

Margaret Loughrey, 56, from Strabane in Northern Ireland, was found dead in her home. In 2013, she won 27 million pounds in the lottery, acquired real estate, bought a house, a pub and opened a recreation center for residents of the city. She planned to build affordable housing for residents on her property. She spent half of her winnings on charity. The recreation center was set on fire more than once. She also received a suspended sentence for drunk or disorderly conduct. She later claimed that people stole millions from her. Shortly before her death, she said: “I regret winning the lottery […]. I was a happy person before. I am a human being and all it has done is destroy my life.” We mostly think of winning the lottery as a blessing, that if we had won the lottery, we would have used the money well. But there are no such examples. Winning the lottery is a curse. Our seemingly good deeds within the framework of our limited understanding of the world, i.e. giving millions of dollars to one or more causes, will always fall short and boomerang back to us in negative ways. I see no solution to such a problem other than an extensive worldwide educational program that teaches us to develop a sense of mutual responsibility and consideration toward each other in society, and to prioritize positively connecting to each other above our divisive drives. Humanity will come to realize that after all the unsolvable global challenges, the only cure left will be to implement unity among each other. We need different conditions and not people or organizations trying to manage these massive amounts of money. My conclusion is to not award such sums of money. Do not incite a person in such a way. I personally would also ask to not have such sums of money offered to me.

Robert L Johnson, the first African-American billionaire in the United States, is calling on the federal government to pay out $14 trillion in reparations to African Americans to compensate for slavery. He was quoted saying “Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism” – and he wants a check too. There is already a bill in support of this initiative that states, “This will be a step toward a more honest and direct discussion of what happened.” In the view of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman: “I am in favor of rethinking the whole of history in practice, how we were under the influence of our egoistic inclination, realize its insignificance, misuse and inferiority, and instead, move onto the next degree of coexistence where we will not live in the past, but look forward toward greater connection with the aim of helping one another. The past cannot be bought with money, but the future can be built with it. We need to understand human nature and gain the awareness of the insignificance of our nature—the need to change it and not try to correct anything by this approach of; “Pay me, and I will be nice." This is not the way.

Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have recently engaged in a new kind of space travel. It has given an impression that very wealthy people have no limits. They can never be satisfied with what they have, and even space has become a place for them to compete in. The human ego is unlimited. It is beyond nature’s forces. The ego wants to swallow the universe with its stars, its space, and everything, so that everything will shift to become inside me, and there will be nothing outside of me. A petition that was signed by hundreds of thousands of people relating to the billionaire's space flight stated the following, “We don't need billionaires, not on earth and not in space. But if they already decided to go to space, we should leave them there.” In other words, hundreds of thousands of people think that we should shut the doors so they cannot come back. This entire approach, even this thought, is incorrect in my opinion. Billionaires are those who keep factories, society and several other systems operating in the world. If I’m not a billionaire and I'm not great, it's because I don't have these qualities and I don't know how to get ahead at my expense and at your expense. They have just found more sophisticated ways to put their hands into our pockets and drain from there. But they are using human nature in order to get rich. And without using human nature in this way, we won't be able to progress humanity. We need not change anything in our relations, between billionaires and masses. We need change only through education. All of us, including billionaires, have to receive the proper education, so that it will bring us all to understand this system that we are living in. We are all interdependent and only through such understanding will we be able to balance out society as there is room for everyone and no one will feel threatened by another.

Billionaires increased their fortune by 50% between March 2020 and March 2021. We have just been through one of the most difficult years in history and we see that, as usual, money runs the world, and the gaps are widening between the rich and the poor. Some, like US President Joe Biden, have contemplated that by taxing the rich and distributing it to the poor, it will be the solution, but will it really be so? According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the human ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others—is behind the developments we see in the world. The ego is a foreign force and we need help to redirect this egoistic force in a positive manner so that we can build a flourishing society for all. Kabbalah asserts that the solution to redirecting the ego lies in education. Through education, people will start realizing that life has to be organized differently. Things will get worse until we start changing the method of our existence, that is, to one that leads us to increasingly connect us to love for one another. There are only two forms in nature. We are governed either by the egoistic force or the force of love and connection. Love is an immensely powerful force, the force of life itself. We just need to see how we can implement it in society in the correct manner before it is too late.