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Concern For The Future

The document discusses how people must change themselves in order to change the world for the better. It argues that small changes by individuals can lead to large changes over time, and that people must move away from the belief that might makes right and focus more on their obligations to others and future generations.

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273 views

Concern For The Future

The document discusses how people must change themselves in order to change the world for the better. It argues that small changes by individuals can lead to large changes over time, and that people must move away from the belief that might makes right and focus more on their obligations to others and future generations.

Uploaded by

caguendena3491
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Concern for the Future

By J.G. Bennett (from a lecture in London, 1972)

THERE IS A CRISIS, and it is a crisis of people. We are not able to


live in
such a way that We can avoid the troubles that threaten us.
Therefore, if
we're going to think and talk about the future, we must first think
and talk
about people. What kind of people are we? Am I the kind of person
who is
responsible for there being wars on the earth, for there being
injustice?

I may think I am not that kind of person. I am not a belligerent


person, I
don't even wish to have any thing to do with war. I have not wish
to impose
myself on other people. But if I look at my behavior and I see that
I take
more than my share of what there is in the world, let us say that I
am able
to eat all not only that I need, but even all that I want of food,
that I am
able to provide myself with comforts that couldn't possibly be
available on
the same scale to everyone else in the world, then I am
contributing to the
whole injustice of the world.

All of us are in this position of making our contribution to the


intolerance, injustice, and imbalance of the world and essentially
there is
no difference between us. We may see exaggerated manifestations and
we may
condemn those in whom these manifestations are so violent that we
see the
consequences of them. Say this group of people is responsible for
the
killing, that group of people is responsible for intolerance,
another for
taking undue advantage of material power, but essentially we are
not
different. Not in so far as we also take advantage of our strengths
to the
extent that we are able to do so under the social constraint of
fear. We
can't make a start unless we are prepared to see ourselves and
recognize
that everyone of us –the most just, the most tolerant, the most
pacific is
making his or her contribution to the total injustice and
intolerance of the
world. Unless we see this, then we haven't really a starting point.
Because
if we think that we can solve the world problem in terms of other
people
being different while we remain the same, we shall certainly get
nowhere.

One of the principles of change is that we are not able to change


other
people, but there is a possibility that we can change ourselves,
and
therefore that is the possibility that we should explore and not
concern
ourselves with the defects of other people and the consequences of
their
defects in term of social injustice and the rest. There is another
principle
of change and that is that change can only be proportionate to the
amount of
force which is put into it; but forceful change can only be
effectual and
positive if there is an equal response to it. That is revolutionary
and
violent change can only be destructive and therefore even if an
enormous
force for change were at our disposal, we couldn't use it suddenly
or
immediately without producing destruction. This principle of change
also
means that one cannot the present but there is the possibility of
changing
the future. I am going to speak in terms of these two principle,
first of
all that we cannot change other but there is a possibility of
changing
ourselves: and that we cannot change the present but there is a
possibility
of changing the future.

Now, is change of ourselves a significant and worthwhile


undertaking?

I am one small unit in a vast society. What is the benefit if I


become more
just, more tolerant, and more self restrained, better able to
understand and
sympathize with other people?

What good can I do if I accept the principle that I can't change


what is
going on around me? Here we must at least have one little look at
history
and recognize that change has always come from small minorities;
that the
really great changes have only come gradually. Change is in the
nature of
harvest, the seeds of which have first to be sown, then go through
the whole
process of lying for a time within the ground, of germinating, of
appearing
above the earth and finally in its own season giving the harvest.
This is
how change have been.

Now we're at another period of great confusion and crisis and the
first
thing that I want to say about this is that I believe that only
ideas- only
Ideas that really penetrate into people and for which they're
prepared to
work and suffer –can change the future and also change the people
themselves.. I am going to talk about this in a more specific way.
We are
now passing into a period when the attention of the individual and
the
doctrine of right of the individual have clearly become so
exaggerated that
now it's producing its own opposite. We are through this concern
with the
individual, losing our concern for the human race, losing our
concern for
the future. We need now to develop a new kind of concern, that is a
concern
for life, a concern for the future, a concern for the human race
and be
prepared to make sacrifice for the sake of this concern but this
does mean a
very great and very difficult change that we have to see whether
we're able
to face in ourselves, that is, a change in our attitude towards the
power
and the strength that we have, not only as groups, as human race
but also as
individual.

Probably not consciously, but certainly no less strongly, we still


hold to
the doctrine that might is right, that what I can do I have the
right to
do.. If I have the power to have two, three or four cars and
produce four
times as much pollution of the atmosphere as somebody who have only
one,
then I also have the right to do it. If I have the power to provide
myself
with all the food and comfort that I wish for, then I also have the
right to
do it.

This belief that what we can do we have the right to do is so


deeply
ingrained in us that it would require a long process, perhaps just
as long
as the process by which the respect for the individual was slowly
engendered
in the human race two thousand, five hundred years ago, to come to
an
understanding that we human beings cannot live by the principle
that might
is right and that what I can do I am entitled to do. But if we're
to arrive
at this, or perhaps prepare for a future in which there will be an
acceptance of obligations rather than assertion of right, what are
we to do
about ourselves?

Anyone who can observe impartially his own behavior and the
behavior of
those around him can see that it is so deeply imbedded in us, that
we can
make whatever demands we're able to enforce, that we can't easily
shed this.
And the difficult for us is not only that this conviction that
we're
entitled to do what we can do is ingrained in us, but we're not
even aware
of it. We do not even see how we're constantly living by this
principle and
that we ourselves are creating this very state of crisis, this very
disorder
that we ourselves are constantly condemning.

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