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Lord Mahavira
Through his new and radical approach he changed the direction of that unrest from the possibility of a violent revolution to the epoch-making revolution of ahimsa, non-violence, and aparigraha, freedom from greed. Thus he brought about a revolution in human thought.
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Today the world is again in the midst of a crisis. Love of wealth and power has reached unprecedented proportions. Things control life, and we have come to believe that economic welfare is the end of all existence. We are so engrossed in our efforts to attain a materially prosperous life that we have become oblivious to ultimate questions. Deep moral earnestness is not there, and moral life is shaken to its foundations. We dismiss ultimate questions as absurd and unanswerable. Our modern technological civilization and mass society, has turned us into so many depersonalized units. The qualities of human values are given little importance in this age of statistical averages.
An Utter Absence of Thought
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan has pointed out how the spectre of mass hovers over public affairs, industry, business, social life and manners. The great danger with the mass is not right thought or wrong thought, but the utter absence of thought. The immence impact of mass media on our lives encourages passivity, acquiescence, and conformity.
Moreover, the undreamt of power gained by science and technology, bereft of humanism, has today brought mankind to a point of unprecedented crisis-a point of no return. In this thermonuclear age man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and suffering, but also all forms of human life. President Kennedy once pointed out that every man, woman, and child lived under a nuclear sword of Democles, hanging by the slenderest of threads and capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by the madness of a single person.
Today, in spite of the Test-ban Treaty, the stock-pile of nuclear bombs, coupled with the research for inconceivably deadlier weapons, threaten the future of mankind. Therefore the question before each one of us is, Shall we abolish the weapons of war or be abolished ourselves?
