Jiddu Krishnamurti - Is science really beneficial to man?

Questioner: It is said that science has produced benefit as well as misery. Is science really beneficial to man?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Before I answer that question, I should like to know if you listened to what I have just been saying? The question came right on top of what I was saying. There was no gap, no interval. I am not criticizing you; I am not saying you are right or wrong. But is it not important to find out what the other man is saying? You really were not listening to what I was saying because your question was going on in your mind. You know, I have said this half a dozen times so far, and yet you go on doing it. Does it not show a lack of consideration? If you were really interested in what was being said, you would have listened. It requires thought because we are dealing with difficult subjects, and so if you want to listen, you cannot just jump into questions.

May I suggest that tomorrow you write out your questions? Take the trouble to put them down on a piece of paper. Then when I have spoken, wait a few minutes or seconds and then ask. This will help you to see how your own mind is working. What I am saying is not very complicated. I am putting into words the operation of your own mind. If you want to understand, if you want to see how your mind works - and that is the only way we can look at life - it is very important to understand what is being said.

You say science has brought great benefits to man and also great misery and destruction. Is it on the whole beneficial or destructive? What do you think? Communication has improved. You can send letters to America in a couple of days. You can have the latest news from all over the world tomorrow morning or this evening. Extraordinary miracles are going on in surgical operations.

At the same time, there are warships and submarines which are most destructive. The latest submarines can go round the world indefinitely under water, never coming to the top, run by atomic power. There are airplanes with bombs that can destroy thousands of human beings in a few seconds. Is it science that is wrong, or the human beings that use science? I am a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, so I have a particular idea which I think is more important than anybody else's idea, and I am very nationalistic. You know what that means? I feel I want to dominate, I want to control not only individuals but also groups of people. So, I use destructive means, I use science. It is me that is misusing science, not that science in itself is wrong. Jet planes are not wrong in themselves, but it is how America or Russia or England uses them. Is this not so?

Can human beings change? Can they cease to be Hindus, Muslims? There is a division between India and Pakistan, between Russia and America, England and Germany, France and other countries. Can we be human beings without being Frenchmen or Indians so that we can live together? Can we have a government which looks after all of us, not India or America only, but all of us together as human beings?

When human beings misuse science, we blame science. But it is you and I, the Russian and the American, the Frenchmen and the German, who are responsible for all this. That is why, in a school of this kind, there should be no feeling of nationality, no feeling of class, no feeling that you are a Brahmin and I am an Untouchable. We are all human beings, whether we live in Banaras or New York or California or Moscow. It is our world. This world is ours, yours and mine, not the Russians' or the Englishmen's, not the Indians' or the Pakistanis'; it is ours. And with that feeling, science will become an extraordinary thing, but without that feeling we are going to destroy each other.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti talks in India, 1954