BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Rav Michael Laitman According to the World Health Organization, someone around the globe commits suicide every 40 seconds. In the year 2000 (a long time ago, but things have only worsened since), 815,000 people lost their lives to suicide — more than double the number of people who die as a direct result of armed conflict every year (306,600). For people between the ages of 15 and 44, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death and the sixth leading cause of disability and infirmity worldwide. Also, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, "Combined 2004 and 2005 data indicate that 8.88 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 and 7.65 percent of adults aged 18 or older experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year." Millions of people the world over, and especially the younger generation, are committing suicide or suffering from suicidal tendencies, depression, drug addiction and violence because they're hopeless. They have real que...

A SPLINTER IN YOUR MIND... DRIVING YOU MAD In the Matrix, which pill would you take, the red or the blue? The question of which pill to take illustrates the personal aspect of the decision to study philosophy. Do you live on in ignorance (and potentially bliss) or do you lead what Aristotle called 'the examined life'... The Matrix is a film filled with religious and philosophical symbolism. The plot supposes that humans live in vats many years in the future, being fed false sensory information by a giant virtual reality computer ( the Matrix ). The perpetrators of this horror are machines of the future who use humans as a source of power. Humans are literally farmed. The central character of the film, Neo, is presented to us in the opening part of the film as a loner who is searching for a mysterious character called Morpheus (named after the Greek god of dreams and sleep ). He is also trying to discover the answer to the question "What is the Matrix?" Morpheus contac...