Chapter 7, part 4

Student: Will complete destruction of society bring about a new culture, Sir?

Krishnamurti: Will complete destruction bring about a new culture? You know there have been revolutions - the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution They destroyed everything to start anew. Have they produce anything new?

Every society has three stages or hierarchies the high, the middle, the low; the high being the aristocracy the rich people, the clever people; then the middle class, who are always working, then the labourer. Now each is in battle with the other. The middle wants to get to the top and the bring about a revolution and then when they get to the top they hold on to their positions, their prestige, their welfare, their fortunes, and again the new middle class tries to come to the top. The low trying to reach the middle, and the middle trying to reach the top; this is the battle going on all the time, throughout society and in all cultures. And the middle says: "I am going to get to the top and revolutionize things", and when it gets to the top, you see what it does. It knows how to control people through thought, through torture, through killing, through destruction, through fear.

So, through destruction you can never produce anything. But if you understand the whole process of disorder and destruction, if you study it, not only outwardly but in yourself, then out of that understanding, care, affection, love, out of that comes a totally different order. But if you do not understand, if you merely revolt, it is the same pattern repeated again and again, because we human beings are always the same. You know, it is not like a house that can be pulled down and a new house built.

Human beings are not made that way, because human beings are outwardly educated, cultured, clever, but inwardly, they are violent. Unless that animal instinct is fundamentally changed, whatever the outward circumstances are, the inward always overcomes the outer. Education is the change of the inner man.