Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura on western conquering spirit

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The West is proud of its civilization. It is anxious for conferring the boon

of its advanced civilization on the nations of the world. But it is not yet

altogether confident of the success of such a laudable mission. It has

always been distrustful of the capacity of the nations for assimilating the

best of the proffered civilization. But is western civilization itself a

source of unmixed satisfaction for those who are its proud original

possessors? They indeed possess superior material force. They are disposed

to think that their superiority in brute force is evidence of their superior

spiritual condition. The only answer to this terrible self-deception is

being supplied by the recent never-ending crises of the affairs of the world

that have been the outcome of their short-sighted handling by the

self-conceited dominating temperament engendered in all modern peoples by

their utter neglect of the spiritual issue.

 

>From "The Gaudiya Mission to the West," Harmonist, May 1933.

 

(BVS comment: These words are as applicable today as then.)