“They [the masses] must have their illusions at all costs, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want. No truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations…. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them.” (Gustave Le Bon, 1995: 132).
The advent of ‘modernity’ saw the eradication of the ancien regime with the king being the manifestation of society and the direct link to God, the undermining and overthrow of the clergy followed by the Industrial Revolution caused a reconfiguration of values. The glitter of capitalism, propounded by the material success of the West, has indeed caused social, political and psychological upheavals. Dichotomies that once created order and structure, like the public/private divide, or even gender for that matter have been challenged and mutated.
For centuries man has been growing deluded by wealth and the material, but the disintegration and degeneration of society caused by this materiality is reaching a turning point. The plague of natural disasters, the growing numbers of civil wars, the increase in refugees, the global recession, inabilities of governments to provide basic amenities to the poor and security to nations are signs of the effects of how through the propagation and promulgation of greed and aspiration for material greatness, society greatly suffers. But what goes down must come up at some point. Life is such, the changing of the seasons, the rise and fall of the tide, the rising and setting of the sun, the escalation and contraction of the heart are but mere examples of nature’s course.
From the perpetual rise of social movements people are becoming more aware of the fallacy of nationalisms as a unifying entity and the world is torn asunder by attempts at unity. This reveals that people are hankering for ‘an homogenous’. Religion has been suppressed, and it is now time for it to fight to come up for air, like the proletariat against the repressive order of the bourgeois during the French Revolution. The proletariat for years was a silent, underground movement. Immense planning and preparation ultimately culminated in the overthrow of the King, aristocrats and nobles, and formalized equality became the new unifying mean.
Srila Prabhupada’s ISKCON is taking such a form. It is a wave that is silently creating tremors the world over. The cumulative effects of simultaneous activities that are attracting growing numbers of people across the world will soon have the effect the French Revolution had. As in France, inequality was abolished, there was the introduction and implementation of democracy and creation of a constitution that all religiously abide by. Likewise, the Krishna Consciousness Movement will strike with such a force that illusory mechanisms will dissipate, the following of the four regulative principles, chanting of the maha-mantra and obedience to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita will be the attractive cohesive force. Society will once again exist with Krishna being the locus of all activities. This can be achieved by three processes, instructions of the guru, the importance of chanting and the power of vaishnava association. Or as Gustave Le Bon states in his mass psychology of crowds; affirmation, repetition and contagion.
Part 2 to follow next week