▬ :luigi_uhc:'s Post

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/why-do-we-seek-method-or-technique-0/1949

#Question: What is the right relationship, if any, between the individual and the collective, the mass?

#Krishnamurti: Do you think there is any relationship between the individual and the mass? Between you and the collective? The State, the government, would like us to be merely the citizen, the collective. But we are man first, and afterwards the citizen - not the citizen first, and man afterwards. The State would like us not to be the man, the individual, but the mass. Because, the more we are the citizen, the greater our capacity, the greater our efficiency - we become the tool which the bureaucrats, the authoritarian states, the governments, want us to be.

So, we must distinguish between the private individual and the citizen, the man and the mass. The individual, the man, has his private feelings, hopes, failures, disappointments, longings, sensations, pleasures. And there is the point of view which wants to reduce all that to the collective; for it is very simple to deal with the collective. Pass an edict, and it is done. Give a sanction, and it is followed. So, the more organizations there are, and the more efficiently they are organized, the more the individual is denied, whether by the church or by the State - we are then all Christians, all Hindus, not individuals. And with that mentality, in that state, which most of us want, has the individual reality any place? We recognize there must be collective action. But does collective action come into being with the denial of the individual? Is the individual in opposition to the collective? Is the collective not fictitious, the mass not unreal? Seeing the difficulty of dealing with the individual, we create the opposite, the mass, and then try to establish a relationship between the individual and the collective. If the individual is intelligent, he will co-operate. Surely, that is our problem, isn't it? We first create the mass, and then try to find the relationship of the individual with the mass. But let us find out if the mass is real. The group of us here can be made into the collective by hypnotism, by propaganda; through various means we can be aroused to act collectively for an ideology, for a State, for a church, for an idea, and so on, and so on. That is, collective action can be externally imposed, directed, compelled, through fear, reward, and all the rest of it. Having produced that condition, we try to establish the relationship of the individual, which is the actual, with that which is produced. Whereas, is it not possible for the individual to lose his sense of separateness through definite understanding of all the implications of separateness, and therefore act co-operatively? But, as that is so difficult, States, governments, churches, organized religions, force or entice the individual to become the corporate. What place has the individual in history? What does it matter what you and I do? There is the historical movement going on. What place has reality with this movement? Probably none at all. You and I don't count at all. This movement is gigantic, it is going on; it has the momentum of centuries, and it will go on. What is your relationship, as an individual, to this movement? Whatever you do, will it affect it? Can you stop a war because you are a pacifist? You are a pacifist, not because there is a war, not because you have found a relationship with it, but because in itself war is wrong and you feel you cannot kill, and there the matter ends. But to try to find a relationship between your understanding, your intelligence, and this monstrous, logical movement of war, seems to me utterly futile. I can be an individual and yet see what creates antisocial feelings in me, and so be free of separative actions. I may have a little property; surely, that doesn't make me a separative entity. But it is the whole psychological state to be separate, to be isolated, to be something it is that which is calamitous, which is so destructive. And, in order to overcome that, we have all the external sanctions and impositions and edicts.