The world is always close to catastrophe. But it seems to be closer now. Seeing this approaching catastrophe, most of us take shelter in idea. We think that this catastrophe, this crisis, can be solved by an ideology. Ideology is always an impediment to direct relationship, which prevents action. We want peace only as an idea, but not as an actuality. We want peace on the verbal level which is only on the thinking level, though we proudly call it the intellectual level. But the word peace is not peace. Peace can only be when the confusion which you and another make ceases. We are attached to the world of ideas and not to peace. We search for new social and political patterns and not for peace; we are concerned with the reconciliation of effects and not in putting aside the cause of war. This search will bring only answers conditioned by the past. This conditioning is what we call knowledge, experience; and the new changing facts are translated, interpreted, according to this knowledge. So, there is conflict between what is and the experience that has been. The past, which is knowledge, must ever be in conflict with the fact, which is ever in the present. So, this will not solve the problem but will perpetuate the conditions which have created the problem.
(J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life)
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