I’d like to begin again on my concern expressed to the wednesday zoom group. It was ‘Is K’s work valid?’ I’m hoping this formulation of the question is more trenchant. I’ll put forward a concern with dependency this time. Which is: I think that the work of K was reliant on basic human components foregrounded as one’s very texture of life. I’d argue [I don’t like that word!] that such organic qualities are increasingly superseded by advanced digital technology to the point where, as K asked in the 1980s, ‘What place is there to be for the human being?’ His genuine concern or alarm has come to pass, so how could wholeness, the religious life, and authentic meditation have agency today? K seems to have arrived at the tail end of the human-organic.
I base these considerations on observation of the current events of the societal world.
I can answer my own urgent question by asserting that there will always be the human element with its miraculous possibilities as long as there are people, but the niche for that is actually disappearing, due to extraordinary advances in AI and computer tech.
Here again is dependency. If K’s work was ensconced in the ‘human-organic’, which is endangered, computer tech is also dependent on electrical power, and the grid for that could fall, thus termination of the computer takeover on Earth.
I endeavor to answer my own questions here rather than be argumentative, but I’m not satisfied with these very contingent solutions either.
**Hello George & all - So by “valid” you seem to mean, “Is it up to the task” of “maintaining a place for humanity?” First I’d say, “I don’t know.” That’s apparently up to humanity to find out, isn’t it? You seem to portray the “challenge to humanity” as “advanced digital technology.” I suggest the actual challenge is “incoherence in human consciousness.” Who’s making the “advanced digital technology,” it’s humans isn’t it? My point is, "Humans are creating the threats, and it’s humans that “could” stop creating the threats. So what does this threat call for? What would adequately address the challenge? And is K’s work “valid” or "the right tool for the task?
That raises the question, “What is K’s work?” I’ll offer a few words to describe it: “Love, intelligence, sanity, choiceless awareness, and a responsibility to radically transform human consciousness.” Is that what’s needed to address humanity’s challenges? To coin one of K’s phases, it appears to be “The right thing to do,” regardless of whether the challenge appears to be overwhelming or not. The question seems to be, will humanity actually “take this responsibility seriously?”
Thanks for the probing reply, Howard. Again, words are tricky and can mislead. When I said ‘valid’ I was trying to suggest that K’s work, while obviously from wholeness and love, may now be invalidated quite completely by what we’ve brought our world to. Question: what does a computer care about meditation as life? This isn’t just a smart-alecky question, considering the ominously advanced nature of surveillance-culture today. You’re of course right about responsibility. Our profound irresponsibility has brought us to this pass, which in the last year or so, strikes me as potentially epochal as to a decisive autodestruction of our species. I for one will not settle for being a ‘Krishnamurti-ite’ and leave it at that, but perhaps what we’ve wrought is genuinely unfaceable. It could be. So over we go to artificial intelligence and technocracy…
**That still looks like the question, “Is it up to the challenge?” I would suggest that to discover if K’s work can prevent this ‘invalidation of humanity’ depends on more of humanity actually “living the teaching.” So far, what’s generally been occurring is a failure to live the teachings, to take transformation seriously. We don’t know if it’s up to the task, because we’ve yet to see humanity “see the necessity.” So it’s up to us to make this happen.
**Well, being a ‘Krishnamurti-ite’ and ‘K’s work’ are completely different things, aren’t they? I suspect I know what you mean by that label. But your question was, “Is K’s work valid,” not,"Is being a Krishnamurti-ite valid? Obviously, if all people do is continue to argue over the psychological beliefs and opinions, in the form of “Krishnamurti language,” that’s not transformation, or K’s work. It’s a failure to die to the “Centre” and its vast collection of psychological judgments registered in the brain as “my beliefs.” It’s just the same old patterns masquerading as transformation. So again, I’d suggest, it’s still up to us, humanity, to face what is, responsibly.
How could anyone ‘responsibly’ ‘face up to’ the emergence of computer takeover in our daily lives? This question is constantly elided. Is it actually unfaceable? Are people blissfully unaware of how far the human race has thus far been made obsolete? I suspect so.