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The present Predicament and Jainism
Prof. K. M. Lodha
Coming back after a visit to Nagasaki soon after the end of the Second World war, the late Jacob Bronowski proposed that Nagasaki should be preserved exactly as it was after the nuclear holocaust and that all future conferences on disarmament and other issues, which concern and weigh the fate of humanity should be held in that ashy sea of rubble. He did not succeed in his mission, but his pursuance was deeply meaningful and significant. His expostulations went down unheeded. Let us take and cite another view. Our planet-the Earth is hopelessly over-crowded and one of the biggest dangers that confront us is the growth of human population. It took us a million years to reach a population of one million and today the world population is more than four billions, By 2030 AD it will be fifteen billions and at this rate, by 4000 AD, the mass of mankind will be greater than the mass of earth itself. It means an uncontrollable, disastrous and total collapse of human society. It was revealed at the Regional Conference of the United Nations Association in Asia and the pacific at New Delhi that if the world were to forgo one day's military spending, it would enable the crisis-stricken UN to survive for a year. About two million dollars are drained out on arms every minute. In dismay, one shudders to learn that 14000 children die of hunger on an average every day in Africa alone (Ruth Sivard). In view of this malady, Johan Galtung is right when he says that our planet is burning already. This is the societal view of the impending dangers that may result in total human annihilation.
Let us now consider the disrupted and disgruntled individual. There are thinkers like Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape), Robert Ardrey (The Territorial Imperative) and Konard Lorenz, who hold (on Aggression) that human being is basically aggressive and that this impelling and offensive violence is collectively uncontrollable. They say that there is no contrition for this, because the tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man. Psychologists like Eric Erikson has introduced the cliche 'identity crisis' which every adolescent is prone to, resulting in boundless internal stress, as there is a phenomenal confusion of roles, 'a sense of not knowing what one is,
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