Daily Meditation: Friday, November 16, 2012

Intellect, the - is not of itself concerned with morality

11/16/2012

The intellect is not of itself concerned with morality. It seeks, finds, invents, constructs, puts together, without any concern for how its inventions will be used. And so, by using their intellectual faculties, researchers have put highly dangerous technical resources at humanity’s disposal without questioning the ends to which they would be used. For if the intellect is the father of invention, it also governs how things are utilized. When the first chemists began to isolate gasses, did they imagine that others would think of using them to destroy millions of people? Only the heart can remedy the harmful effects of the mind. If the heart does not take its rightful place alongside the mind, it will be the ruin of humankind. In the past, cultures and civilizations surpassing our own disappeared, because they favoured the mind over the heart. For the mind always encourages humans to follow the path of selfishness, domination, injustice and the subjugation of beings and of nature. And if humankind continues on this path, if nothing comes to balance the increasingly active forces of destruction, it too will disappear.