If you observe as you grow, you will begin to see how various influences are moulding you, how you are not helped to think, but are told what to think. Ultimately, if you do not revolt against this process, you become like an automatic machine, functioning without creativity, without much original thought. You are all afraid that if you do not fit into society, you will be unable to earn a livelihood. If your father is a lawyer, you think that you also must be a lawyer. If you are a girl, you submit to being married off. So what happens? You start out as a young person with lots of vitality, and enthusiasm, but all this is gradually destroyed by the conditioning influence of your parents and teachers with their prejudices, fears and superstitions. You leave school and go out into the world filled with information, but you have lost the vitality to inquire, the vitality to revolt against the traditional stupidities of society. You sit here listening to all this - and what is going to happen when you have finally passed your B.A. or M.A. examinations? you know very well what is going to happen. Unless you are in revolt, you will be just like the rest of the world because you dare not be otherwise. You will be so conditioned, so moulded, that you will be afraid to strike out on your own. Your husband will control you, or your wife will control you, and society will tell you what you must do; so, generation after generation, imitation goes on. There is no real initiative, there is no freedom, there is no happiness; there is nothing but slow death. What is the point of being educated, of learning to read and write, if you are just going to carry on like a machine? But that is what your parents want, and it is what the world wants. The world does not want you to think, it does not want you to be free to find out, because then you would be a dangerous citizen, you would not fit into the established pattern. A free human being can never feel that he belongs to any particular country, class, or type of thinking. Freedom means freedom at every level, right through, and to think only along a particular line is not freedom. So while you are young it is very important to be free, not only at the conscious level, but also deep inside. This means that you must be watchful of yourself, more and more aware of the influences which seek to control or dominate you; it means that you must never thoughtlessly accept, but always question, investigate and be in revolt. LIFE AHEAD PART ONE CHAPTER 5
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:35:46 +0000