SOCIAL COHESION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 128, 2 June 1939, Page 9

SOCIAL COHESION.

FREE INDIVIDUALS. DANGER OF IDEOLOGIES. I ADDRESS BY KRISHN AMURTI. j "Once y<iu look to a for guidance you give your thinking over to another . . . the problem today is i to produce social co-operation, but in such a fashion that the individual is also developed creatively to avoid being anti-social."' These were the keynotes of the lecture given by Jiddu Krishnamurti, visiting Indian philosopher, in the Town Hall last night before a large audience. 11l asking that people should drop j =uch division* a> nationality, cla.-.s antagonisms and organised beliefs. Krisiinamurti said that society resolved itself into the relationship between one and one's neighbour —an ethical relationship which must be the mainspring of a t rue society. '"Throughout the world to-day humanity is being taupht, by ciiinjnii- ! -ion and propaganda, to believe; automatically in certain political lines of thought—Fascism. Communism, Imperialism or Nazi-itm." said isrishamurti. Is it not possible to have complete re-orientation of our thinking .-o that our philosophies and our \alue■;re not on power and nmbition ':'' Property and Security. The 'Social climbing. ,- ambitious outlook led inevitably to chaos, he went on. Those who acquired property were not merely seeking security—they were seeking power. There were those social reformers who, seeing the chaotic state of society, argued that a revolution as the result of which the State would own all would prove the saving of society. This was untrue, as those thwarted in their attempts to obtain power through property would seek it in other directions and produce social chaos again. "When each individual is seeking power through society, he must produce wars and racial divisions,' , he said.

"when one seeks religious power he must also produce religious divisions. The first thing to find is not what • v>tciii« or ideologies we should follow lint to free ourselves from the cau-es ii f contlict within ourselves and thus create the outlook tliat leads to social

Various Economic Schools. In answer to a question as to what he thought of the various economic M-liiiol* of thought. Krisiinamurti said that one would lie simply an automaton to believe any particular system.

'"Can any system bring about human happiness or can we. not think independently of any system and thus become intelligent?' , he asked, in urging the need to be critical of all set formulae.

As to dictatorships, they were the outcome of nationalism of which the dictators were the rew priests reared in the philosophy of the struggle for power. Nationalism was used as a means of exploitation by classes and peoples oxer other classes and other peoples. The hope of tl\e world was the freeing of the. individuals in society from the fetters that the "ism-"" laii! upon them, and this consciousness of -eparat-ness or divisions must lie replaced by the consciousness of unity in which all barriers disappeared . n<l each part wild equally valuable and important to the whole. Xo teacher, no guide, could lead one to ■truth, though it wati so easy to lean upon another in the beljef that one would be led to reality. He urged his hearers to rind out why they were unhappy, and in so doing abandon the hieratical way of thinking.