We have arrived at the turning
point. This is it, here and now. A sudden, immense, immediate, complete,
radical, global change. No wealth, power, position or privilege, nor any
particular or special physical or intellectual capacity will allow an escape from
this planetary revolution. Every aware human being sees that the world is in an
unprecedented, rapidly expanding state of deterioration. This is a fact. The
human being is at the center and is the driving force of this crisis.
The population explosion plus the
explosion of technology have created problems that seem to be beyond the scope
of man’s ability to solve, problems that threaten to turn the planet into a
ball of flame, either through the use of nuclear weapons or the greenhouse
effect, if we do not first foul, waste, or otherwise destroy the planetary life
support system of land, water, and air.
Equally significant, if not more
so, is the ancient evil of man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man, which is
the dominant thread of our worldwide social fabric. Every form of violence,
whether it is subtle- such as
competition, greed, envy, apathy, prejudice, rumor, etcetera, - or gross- such
as rips and burns flesh, breaks and crushes bone, and ruptures internal organs,
- or utterly evil- such as slavery, every form of violence is the norm, a way
of life, accepted by all, but a very few.
At the present rate of progress,
less than 20 years will have brought us to the end of civilization as we now
know it. Awareness of this fact must penetrate the consciousness of mankind in
order for the population of the Earth to act as one, all one, for we alone are
responsible. There is no other to save us.
There is no authority that will
solve all our problems- not from the political, religious, or scientific
arenas, nor from outer space, nor from the past or future, nor from heaven or
hell. There is no conspiracy of do-gooders to change things from behind the
scenes. No unknown mystic poet saint will rise from the masses to save the
world. Nor is there an inner authority hidden within our brain, waiting to be
let out and take charge. We have created this society which is destroying
itself and fouling the environment. We create it, all of us together, each
moment, with our thought, which determines our behavior- minute by minute, hour
upon hour, day after day, year in and year out.
The manner in which the human
brain now functions is the wellspring of man’s sorrow. It produces our personal
problems and collectively we have produced the present state of the planet.
(Yes, the human brain has created many good and wonderful things. But it is not
the good that now dominates the world.)
The initiator of human behavior
is a genetic survival mechanism of the human brain, passed down to us by our
ancient ape-like ancestors. This mechanism, which came into being to ensure the
survival of the individual, now controls the whole of human life.
As a guarantor of personal
survival there is no equal. Human beings have increased their number in the
last one hundred years from one and a half billion to five billion. Man has
become the overwhelmingly dominant species on the planet. We have not only
explored and mapped the whole planet, we have visited the moon several times.
Our influence has altered every aspect of life on Earth. Animals, plants, and
microbes are being domesticated, produced, reproduced, and genetically altered
or manipulated. We have increased and accelerated the extinction of species
alarmingly. (Do we consider homo sapiens invulnerable?)
Our Knowledge and our tools,
which originated as vague memories combined with sticks and stones, have
developed to a degree limited only by our imagination. We have increased our
speed of travel one thousand times in the last one hundred years. We have
increased our speed and distance of communication ten million times.
Technological miracles in science, medicine, industry, agriculture,
computation, recreation, personal convenience, and entertainment are now
commonplace, every day occurrences, taken for granted and often abused by those
few who may be privileged enough to partake of them.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of
us lack a meaningful education, relevant to the actual, sorrowful experience of
the whole of human life, or even adequate food, clothing, and shelter, much
less an opportunity to appreciate the significance of life.
All too often, for far too many
of us, our daily life appears to be an unending series of problems. Our ability
to maintain our health and our sanity is taxed to the limit and beyond. Life
seems to be a struggle of sorrow ending in death. Our love and our joy is
fleeting, hollow, tainted. This aspect of life is part of the basic structure
of the human brain. It is so because of the natural evolution of life.
Suffering is not only an attitude
or point of view or a particular set of circumstances, but a natural
consequence of the over development of that part of the brain that demands we
survive.
This brain structure naturally
channels our life’s energy into a particular direction which is, ultimately and
absolutely, a dead end.
This is so simply because there
is only so much one can do to avoid death.