Jiddu Krishnamurti - An individual and society

What is society? Is it not the relationship of one individual with another? If individuals in themselves are ignorant, cruel, ambitious, and so on, their society will reflect all that they are in themselves. We all see the necessity, the importance of social change. Wars, starvation, ruthless pursuit of power, and so on, with these we are all familiar, and some earnestly desire to change these conditions. How are you going to change them? By destroying the many or the few who create the disharmony in the world? Who are the many or the few? You and I, aren't we? Each one is involved in it, because we are greedy, we are possessive, we crave for power. We want to bring order within society, but how are we to do it? Do you seriously think there are only a few who are responsible for this social disorganization, these wars and hatreds? How are you going to get rid of them? If you destroy them, you use the very means they have employed and so make of yourself also an instrument of hatred and brutality. Hate cannot be destroyed by hate, however much you may like to hide your hate under pleasant sounding words.
Methods determine the ends. You cannot kill in order to have peace and order; to have peace you must create peace within yourself and thereby in your relationship with others, which is society.

You say that more emphasis should be laid on changing the social organization. Superficial reforms can, perhaps, be made, but surely radical change of lasting peace can be brought about only when the individual himself changes. You may say that this will take a long time. Why are you concerned about time? In your eagerness you want immediate results, you are concerned with results and not with the ways and means; thus in your haste you become a plaything of empty promises. Do you think that the present human nature which has been the product of centuries of maltreatment, ignorance, fear, can be altered over night? A few individuals may be able to change themselves over night, but not a crystallized society. This does not mean a postponing, but the man who thinks clearly, directly, is not concerned with time.

Social organization may be an independent mechanism but it has to be run by us. We have created it and we are responsible for it, and we can be independent of it only when we, as individuals, do not contribute to the general hate, greed, ambition, and so on. In our desire to change the world we always meet with opposition, groups are formed for and against, which only further engender antagonism, suspicion, and competition in conversion. Agreement is almost impossible, except when there is common hate or fear; all actions born of fear and hate must further increase fear and hate. Lasting order and peace can be brought about only when the individual voluntarily and intelligently consents to think without hate, greed, ambition, and so on. Only in this way can there be creative peace within you and therefore in your relationship with another, which is called society.

This requires strenuous and directed attention, without emotionalism, but as most of us are lazy, we hope that through some miraculous happenings, social organization will be changed. Thus we yield to sentiment and not to clear thought. We consider self-assertion, aggressiveness as manly, for we have made of religion a thing of sentiment; we have denied critical, experimental thought in the most serious thing that matters, religion and reality, and then naturally we become brutal, destructive with regard to the things of this world.

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Individuals are the result of varied forms of influence and limitation and the relationship of one individual with another creates the world - the world of values. The world is the social, moral, spiritual structure based on values created by us, isn't it? The social world, as well as the so-called spiritual world, is created by us individuals through our fears, hopes, cravings, and so on. We see the world of hate taking its harvest at the present. This world of hate has been created by our fathers and their forefathers and by us. Thus ignorance stretches indefinitely into the past. It has not come into being by itself. It is the outcome of human ignorance, a historical process, isn't it? We as individuals have co-operated with our ancestors, who, with their forefathers, set going this process of hate, fear, greed, and so on. Now, as individuals, we partake of this world of hate so long as we, individually, indulge in it.

The world, then, is an extension of yourself. If you as an individual desire to destroy hate, then you as an individual must cease hating. To destroy hate, you must dissociate yourself from hate in all its gross and subtle forms, and so long as you are caught up in it you are part of that world of ignorance and fear. Then the world is an extension of yourself, yourself duplicated and multiplied. The world does not exist apart from the individual. It may exist as an idea, as a state, as a social organization, but to carry out that idea, to make that social or religious organization function, there must be the individual. His ignorance, his greed, his fear, maintain the structure of ignorance, greed, and hate. If the individual changes, can he affect the world, the world of hate, greed, and so on? First make sure, doubly sure, that you, the individual, do not hate. Those who hate have no time for thought; they are consumed with their own intense excitement and with its results. They won't listen to calm, deliberate thought; they are carried away by their own fear; and you cannot help these people, can you, unless you follow their method, which is to force them to listen, but such force is of no avail. Ignorance has its own sorrow. After all, you are listening to me because you are not immediately threatened, but if you were, probably you would not be; you would not be thoughtful. The world is an extension of yourself so long as you are thoughtless, caught up in ignorance, hate, greed, but when you are earnest, thoughtful and aware, there is not only a dissociation from those ugly causes which create pain and sorrow, but also in that understanding there is a completeness, a wholeness.

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