The individual is you and you are the rest of mankind

KRISHNAMURTI: What is the world? What is the individual? What have individuals done in the world which has influenced the world? Hitler has influenced the world, Mao Tse-tung has influenced the world, Stalin has influenced the world, Lenin has, and all the warmongers. That seems obvious. History is full of wars. History over the past 5,000 years records war going on in one part of the world or another year by year. That has affected millions of people. And also the good has influenced the world. You have the Buddha on one side; he has also affected the human mind, human brain, throughout the East. So when we talk about individual change and ask whether that individual change will bring about any transformation in society, I think that is a wrong question to put. Are we really actually concerned about the transformation of society—society which is corrupt, which is immoral, which is based on competition, ruthlessness? That is the society in which we are living. Are you really, deeply interested in changing that, even as a single human being? If you are, then you have to inquire into what is society. Is society a word, an abstraction or a reality? Is it reality or is it an abstraction of human relationship? It is human relationship that is society. That human relationship with all its complexities, its conditions,  with its hates, can you alter all that relationship? You can. You can stop being cruel and all that goes with it. What your relationship is, your environment is. If your relationship is possessive and self-centred, you are creating a thing around you which will be equally destructive. So the individual is you and you are the rest of mankind. I don’t know if you realize it.