Can we be saved from going headlong over the dangerous precipice which we are skirting so uncomfortably? Out of this world catastrophe there could have emerged an era dedicated to truer religious ideas and higher social forms. But instead the war years have brought to many people a degradation of outward circumstance and, what is much worse, a degradation of inward character. It has brought out bad instincts like hatred, violence, brutality, lust, greed, and envy. Suffering has taught them the wrong lessons. It has made them more materialistic instead of more spiritual. If civilization is destroyed, such people will be largely to blame. Our generation has been given its last chance to survive. At present utter collapse is merely possible. But if wiser principles are not adhered to or if their acceptance is too long delayed, then utter collapse will be sadly inevitable. If humanity cannot or will not respond to the call of this evolutionary voice, then its civilized life will collapse in a new Armageddon followed by devastating famine and widespread disease. Only after it has lost everything in unheard-of sufferings will the remnant that will be left alive after the inevitable interval of anarchy realize the need and have the will to make a fresh start in a nobler direction. There is sufficient reason to support the hope that a total collapse is unlikely. The human race will not wholly perish, although much in it that deserves to do so will perish. A remnant will emerge alive and pass into a new and better phase and purified form of its evolution.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 390
