Man is alienated from the universe by his unwillingness to accept the unknown. He craves for security and certainty in his life, but finds himself in a world that is inherently uncertain. If he accepts the great unknown that is his nature, man experiences “being” in the world, but if he turns his back on Nature, he assumes the burdens of conflict and anxiety as he struggles to “become” something in the world.
Western civilization’s relationship with Nature is that of alienation. Western man considers himself apart from Nature, a superimposition of something grand atop something that is mundane. He believes that civilization progresses while Nature remains quaintly “very natural.” Western civilization measures its members by the distance they have traveled from the “natural state.” He measures his wisdom by how much of the unknowable that he knows.
Western civilization, more than others, is dominated by the myth of guilt and redemption, and, like a carrot on a stick, the repressed and enslaved man of western civilization seeks redemption and scorns the temptations of freedom in order to obtain a reward in heavenly eternity. Man’s goal is a paradise that is apart and alienated from the unknowable Nature and is the product of the knowing mind.
The mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.
J. Krishnamurti
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