IRC-Galleria

The Demands of Society

What are the demands of society? Tell me, please. That you go to the office from nine to five, or the factory, that you go to a nightclub for excitement after all the boredom of the day's work, take a fortnight or three weeks' holiday in sunny Spain or Italy? What are the demands of society? That you must earn a livelihood, that you must live in that particular part of the country all your life, practise as a lawyer, or a doctor, or in the factory as a union leader, and so on. Right? Therefore one must also ask the question: what is this society that demands so much, and who created the wretched thing? Who is responsible for this? The church, the temple, the mosque, and all the circus that goes on inside them? Who is responsible for all this? Is the society different from us, or have we created the society, each one of us, through our ambition, through our greed, our envy, our violence, through our corruption, through our fear, wanting our security in the community, in the nation -- you follow? We have created this society and then blame the society for what it demands. Therefore you ask: can I live in absolute freedom, or rather, can I reconcile with society and myself seek freedom? It is such an absurd question. Sorry, I am not being rude to the questioner. It is absurd because you are society. Do we really see that, not as an idea, not as a concept, or something you must accept? But we, each one of us on this earth for the last 40,000 years or more, have created the society in which we live: the stupidity of religions, the stupidity of the nations arming themselves. For God's sake, we have created it because we insist on being American or French or Russian. We insist on calling ourselves Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and this gives us a sense of security. But it is these very divisions that obstruct the search for security. It is so clear.

So there is no reconciliation between society and its demands and your demands for freedom. The demands come from your own violence, from your own ugly, limited selfishness. It is one of the most complex things to find out for oneself where selfishness is, where the ego very, very subtly hides itself. It can hide politically `doing good for the country'. It can hide in the religious world most beautifully: `I believe in God, I serve God', or in social help -- not that I am against social help, don't jump to that conclusion -- but it can hide there. It requires a very attentive, not analytical, but an observing brain to see where the subtleties of the self, of selfishness, are hidden. Then when there is no self, society doesn't exist; you don't have to reconcile with it. It is only the inattentive, the unaware who say, `How am I to respond to society when I am working for freedom?' You understand?

If I may point out, we need to be re-educated, not through school, college, university -- which also condition the brain -- nor through work in the office or the factory. We need to re-educate ourselves by being aware, seeing how we are caught in words. Can we do this? If we cannot do it we are going to have perpetual wars, perpetual weeping, always in conflict, misery and all that is entailed. The speaker is not pessimistic or optimistic; these are the facts. When you live with facts as they are, not with data produced by the computer, but observing them, watching your own activity, your own egotistic pursuits, then out of that grows marvellous freedom with all its great beauty and strength.

J. Krishnamurti
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/K4.html