Social Responsibility by Krishnamurti

Author:Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Krishnamurti Foundation of America
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

What is civilization? It is an expression of the collective will, is it not?

Question: Are individuals impotent against the atomic and hydrogen bombs?

Krishnamurti: They are going on experimenting with these bombs in America, in Russia, and elsewhere, and what can you and I do about it? So what is the point of discussing this matter? You may try to create public opinion by writing to the papers about how terrible it is, but will that stop the governments from investigating and creating the H-bomb? Are they not going to go on with it anyhow? They may use atomic energy for peaceful as well as destructive purposes, and probably within five or ten years they will have factories running on atomic energy, but they will also be preparing for war. They may limit the use of atomic weapons, but the momentum of war is there, and what can we do? Historical events are in movement, and I don’t think you and I living here in Benaras can stop that movement. Who is going to care? But what we can do is something completely different. We can step out of the present machinery of society which is constantly preparing for war, and perhaps by our own total inward revolution, we shall be able to contribute to the building of a civilization which is altogether new.

After all, what is civilization? What is the Indian or the European civilization? It is an expression of the collective will, is it not? The will of the many has created this present civilization in India, and cannot you and I break away from it and think entirely differently about these matters? Is it not the responsibility of serious people to do this? Must there not be serious people who see this process of destruction going on in the world, who investigate it, and who step out of it in the sense of not being ambitious and all the rest of it? What else can we do? But you see, we are not willing to be serious, that is the difficulty. We don’t want to tackle ourselves, we want to discuss something outside, far away.

Collected Works, vol. VIII, p. 262

Banaras, India, January 9, 1955

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