It is not that you must be free from fear. The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create a resistance against fear. Resistance, in any form, does not end fear. What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it, not how to resist it through courage and so on.

—J. Krishnamurti

When people are dominated by striving, individualistic, and materialistic inner parts that, by certain measures, seem to bring them success, they won’t change, regardless of any collateral damage to their other parts, relationships, or physical health. The same is true for countries that are dominated by similar forces; leaders ignore the damage to the majority of their people and the health of the climate and the earth.

Such domination, however, usually results in a crash of some kind that can be a wake-up call. For type A people, it might be the survivable heart attack, a divorce, or hitting bottom with an addiction. For countries, it’s wars, economic depressions, plagues, and climate-change crises, all of which are the product of their obsessions with unlimited growth. As the cost of the mindless striving becomes…