Fatal Disequilibrium

Life cannot but appear meaningless to a man who has no conception of the Afterlife, for the significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter.

Animals do not kill members of their species. However, man kills his kind. After weighing up all sides of this question, Arthur Koestler concluded that an imbalance occurred during the evolution process in different parts of the human mind. This imbalance explained man’s killing of a man on a stupendous scale.

This research, however, did not bring him any peace. His final philosophy was that the best thing for a man in modern circumstances was to commit suicide: “Death could be a welcome and natural relief for someone whose only alternative was pain and suffering.” (The Guardian, London, March 13, 1983)

Applying this theory to his own life, Arthur Koestler separated himself from a world that was not of his own making and which he did not have the power to change. He saw that man opened his eyes in a world of brightness only to enter the dark realms of death. He saw that despite extraordinary progress in technology, the moral progress of humanity was still to be attained. The man could control satellites, but man could not control another man. Animals never killed their species, but human beings were eternally plotting the death of their fellow men. He could see that man planned to reform defective systems of living by making the optional use of human and physical resources, communism being one such attempt, but such ‘reforms’ had proved abortive, bringing more darkness than light to the human situation. Frustrated by these glaring defects in human existence, Koestler committed suicide.

Life cannot but appear meaningless to a man who has no conception of the Afterlife, for the significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter. Unless this notion is ever-present in the human consciousness, a descent into negativism is inevitable. In the face of an inexplicably hostile world, it is not surprising that the more sensitive souls feel pushed irrevocably toward suicide.