Once you start acting out of fear, where are you going to stop? Mahatma Gandhi was using the same logic, and he stopped at the spinning wheel. That must have been invented at least twenty thousand years ago and he did not want to go beyond that. He wanted everything that has been invented after the spinning wheel to be destroyed. He was against railway trains, because in India railway trains have been used to make the whole country a slave. These railway trains in India were not created for people's comfort and their service. They were created to move armies, so that within hours armies can move from one part of the country to another part. This is a vast country. There are places which, even by railway train, you can only reach in six days' time. It is almost a subcontinent; and to control this country they had to spread a big network of railway trains. Its basic purpose was the army and the army's movement. But that cannot make us decide that railway trains should be destroyed. That would mean the movement of man is curtailed, he falls back into the Dark Ages. Mahatma Gandhi was not in favor even of innocent things like telegrams, telegraphs, the post office, because they were all used in India, in the beginning, to control the country. Slowly, slowly they were changed into public services. Every invention has been used first by the military, by the war-mongers, and finally they have come to be used by the people. What is needed is not to go backwards; otherwise you will destroy the whole humanity. What is needed is to go forwards and learn some lesson from the past: so that, as scientific technology develops, simultaneously human consciousness should develop. And that will be the protection against technology being used as something harmful to mankind. My basic disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi has been this: that he was dragging humanity backwards.
Osho
The New Dawn
28-6-1987

Foto: Chimpances rescatados del tráfico ilegal en Katanga, Congo

de Wildlifedirect blog Congo-Rangers