Project 10 to the 100th and Kabbalah

Posted by Mark Zimmerman Oct 8, 2008

Google, in their new "Project 10 to the 100th," are giving away $10 million to help materialize ideas of helping other people.

Reading through the introductory paragraph of Google's "Why this project" page was much like reading through the first part of an introduction to Kabbalah - that, in Google's words, "beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people." Kabbalah would put it like this: We cannot find true fulfillment by only trying to fulfill ourselves, we can only find true fulfillment by fulfilling others.

99% of the world's population would agree with this statement, but in terms of "How do we do it? (i.e. How do we help other people?)" - that is the point where the problem lies. Google claims that they don't know the answer to "How do we do it?" - and that's why they're asking the public, to give ideas on how we do it, and Google is providing the cash to put these ideas into action.

In terms of an idea for this project, I was immediately inspired by Kabbalist Michael Laitman's statement from his 2-minute "The Needed Shift in Human Consciousness" speech at the 2005 World Wisdom Council meeting: that we create a non-stop global-scale marketing campaign, which focuses on promoting altruism as the "in-thing" - that we can be respected in society only by our altruistic actions toward others (and that we treat all actions where people put importance upon themselves with indifference).

Moreover, this question of "How do we help other people?" should continually be raised to the public through this promotion, so that this question constantly resonates in people's thoughts, and so that people will start thinking more about how to fulfill other people and less about how to fulfill themselves - that true fulfillment is only through the fulfillment of others.

I am very happy to see the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute taking the initiative to put efforts into this project, with their own Project 10 to the 100th page. They have put a callout for ideas on their blog, and it will be very interesting to see what people interested in authentic Kabbalah will come up with for this project.