We human beings are what we have been for millions of years-colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious, and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear, and gentleness; we are both violence and peace. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships. The individual is the human who is all mankind. The whole history of man is written in ourselves.
Do observe what is actually taking place within yourself and outside yourself in the competitive culture in which you live with its desire for power, position, prestige, name, and success. Observe the achievements of which you are so proud, this whole field you call living in which there is conflict in every form of relationship, breeding hatred, antagonism, brutality and endless wars. This life is all we know, and being unable to understand the enormous battle of existence, we are naturally afraid of it and find escape from it in all sorts of subtle ways. And we are frightened also of the unknown—frightened of death, frightened of what lies beyond tomorrow. That is our daily life, and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the reality of ‘what is’.
All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves: can this society based on competition, brutality, and fear come to an end? It can happen only if each one of us recognizes the central fact that we as individuals, in whatever part of the world we happen to live, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
This is an excerpt from the book From Freedom from the Known by Jiddu Krishnamurti