As long as you are acquisitive, envious, ambitious, seeking power, position, prestige, society approves of it; and on that you base your action. That action is considered respectable, moral. But it is not moral at all. Power in any form is evil: the power of the husband over the wife or the wife over the husband, the power of the politicians. The more tyrannical, the more bigoted, the more religious the power, the more evil it is. That is a fact, a provable, observable fact, but society approves of it. You all worship the man in power, and you base your action on that power. So, if you observe that your action is based on acquisitiveness of power, on the desire to succeed, on the desire to be somebody in this rotten world, then facing the fact will bring about a totally different action, and that is true action,not the action which society has imposed upon the individual. So, social morality is not morality at all; it is immoral; it is another form of defending ourselves, and therefore we are being gradually destroyed by society. A man who would understand freedom must be ruthlessly free of society psychologically, not physically. You cannot be free of society physically because, for everything, you do depend on society -the clothes that you wear, money, and so on. Outwardly, nonpsychologically, you depend on society. But to be free of society implies psychological freedom, that is, to be totally free from ambition, from envy, greed, power, position, prestige.
J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. XIII",110, Individual and Society
