Do We Have a Future?
THERE IS EVERY possibility that there will be no future as far as life is concerned. We are coming closer to a dead-end street. It is sad to recognize the fact, but it is good to recognize it, because then there is the possibility of taking a different turn. As things are moving today, the logical conclusion is a global suicide.
And the most alarming factor is that the intelligentsia of the world, the scientists of the world, the philosophers of the world, are ignoring all these facts.
It should be a determination in every intelligent being that we are not going to allow any vested interest to destroy this planet. To save man is to save the greatest creation of the universe. It has taken four million years for this earth to create man. It is so precious. And the future is much more valuable.
If anything is to be done for the future, this is the time; otherwise the greatest evolution of consciousness in the universe will disappear. This will be not only a loss to the earth but to the whole universe.
In these millions of years we have been able to create some possibility of consciousness, but we do not have time to wait for nature to go on developing in its slow way. Nature has eternity available to it; we do not. We have only twelve years in our hands, until the end of the twentieth century.
For example, a report of the United Nations from the World Commission on Environment and Development, "Our Common Future," has called for "sustainable development" to save the planet, and has defined this as "meeting the basic needs of the present without consuming the resources of the future." The report also recognizes that, if something has to be done, it should be done now; otherwise, there is no future.
The conclusion is true, but the report is cunning. It is cunning in the sense that it does not talk about who has created the present problems.
If we are going to solve the problems of the future and dissolve them, then we have to look for their roots in the past. It is our whole past, in all its dimensions, that has given rise to this dangerous situation. But nobody talks about this, because no previous generation has ever bothered about the future. For thousands of years man has been living the way he has wanted to, and he has simply forced the next generation to live in his way. This is no longer possible.
We have to take a quantum leap and teach the new generation not to live the way we have lived. Only then can the future be changed.
