If enough men and women were to try to better their characters and discipline their lives, we might expect a new and better world. Otherwise we shall have the same bad old world, if not a worse one, with nothing new except perhaps its political and social clothes. It is true that clothes influence the man, but they do not make him--whatever the proverb may say. If enough men and women could be aroused from the stupor induced by materialism, if a new reverence could be kindled in their hearts, then there would be hope. For a world governed by a working team of reason and reverence could quickly be made worthwhile. If the tragedies of two world wars and the distresses of two peace periods are not to go in vain, the human race must loosen its ego's grip. The harder it clings to its old selfishness, the worse its insanity will become. The madness which drove Germany and Japan on their self-destructive course was a direct consequence of their rabid defiance of spiritual laws. If the symbols of this madness, the Swastika or the Rising Sun, did not fly in every capital, this was only because the intuition of most other nations led them to respond, in varying degrees, to the new and higher ideal fate had set before them and thus to keep saner than the other. A shift of emphasis away from excessive egoism has become indispensable if humanity is to keep its balance.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 65
