The Vietnamese translation of the book "To Eliminate Conflict". Photo: Provided.

Digital technology has made the world more familiar and closer. It allows individuals to participate in international movements. However, digital technology seems powerless against the calculations and struggles of others. Why is that?

Undeniably, digital technology has driven many other human achievements, but it still cannot create a common space where everyone can live in harmony. Ironically, social media is still overflowing with brokenness, loss, and suffering.

In his book "To End Conflict," philosopher Krishnamurti (1895-1986) made an observation decades ago that remains highly relevant today: "Wars continue to rage in the world, killing each other for ideals and ideas, to assert national status and power, to prevent territory from being invaded or besieged. Is such action wise? Humanity has evolved over a long period, has experienced two terrible world wars, and yet they are still preparing for another."

One of the core arguments of the book "To End Conflict" is the redefinition of the nature of conflict. According to philosopher Krishnamurti, conflict is not simply a consequence of circumstances (war, political disagreements, or personal conflicts) but the inevitable result of a deeply ingrained psychological structure within a person. This structure is built from memory, experience, and thought—elements that seem essential to human beings, but are nonetheless limiting.

When people act based on what they already know, they inadvertently impose the old on the new. And it is this limitation that creates conflict, as he explains: "Where there is limitation, there is conflict. I am Jewish, you are Arab; that is limitation, narrow tribalism. I cling to my limitations and you cling to yours, and from that arise endless conflicts."

Psychologically, from childhood, we are trained to compare ourselves to one another. We go to school and receive grades from our teachers. We endure comparisons throughout our school years and then into university. Even in the workplace, we continue to compare, compete, fight, and struggle. All of this is a form of violence and aggression.

The crucial and essential question that philosopher Krishnamurti wanted us all to ask ourselves is: if human thought and experience were to disappear, what would we be left with? While modern society glorifies thought as the ultimate tool of progress, Krishnamurti argued that thought cannot bring peace. It can create technology, build systems, even create great works, but at the same time, it is also the very thing that causes war, division, and suffering.

One important thing we need to understand is that without peace, we are no different from animals slaughtering one another, and without this fundamental necessity, we may not be able to comprehend the greater things in life. So, where should we find peace? And what must we do to end conflict and violence?

The only thing that can help resolve this problem is awareness without prejudice. We need to look violence straight in the face to see violence in its entirety. “When there is no longer a search for non-violence in any form, then all attention is directed toward the truth. Then the truth moves, reveals itself, shows what it is. That very awareness is its end.”

Krishnamurti asserted that no one can find peace in leaders or religion; both fail despite their extensive preaching of peace. There is no help from outside ourselves.

“It must be clearly understood that no religious or political authority, or any guru with their system and doctrines, is attempting to do good and virtuous things and succeeding; we have had those things for thousands of years. We have played with these things endlessly in various forms, pursuing all kinds of philosophies and placing great faith in something or someone, always something external—a symbol, a person, a conclusion, an idea. All have failed because it is only after millennia that we have become what we are today.”

In the digital age, everyone must understand that what we perceive is not our own thought, but the thought of all humanity. Only when we realize that each of us is part of the rest of humanity and that we are all standing on the same ground can we stop clinging to our biases, thereby avoiding division and conflict.