Vision 2020

Ervin Laszlo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781138164444
• eBook ISBN: 9781135306960
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

This revised edition of the classic text of the period provides both the student and the specialist with an informative account of post-Roman English society.

CHAPTER 1
The Obsolescence of Modern Beliefs: Unsurprising Surprises at the Dawn of a New Age

Ours has been called the age of fear and uncertainty. It is an age in which young people refuse to think about the future; an epoch when most things one tries seem to bring unexpected side effects—or turn out to be dangerous for your health. The world is growing more chaotic and full of surprises. All this may be more than a simple temporary phase, a painful but passing lapse after which everything will become sane and reliable again. It may be that the Modern Age is over, about to pass into history.

The Modern Age is the age that gave us industrial civilization, the nation-state, the automobile, television and telecommunication, and that extended human life expectancy from the medieval forty-odd years to over seventy. Its achievements stand undisputed. Its blessings, however, can be questioned. The technologies it created produce ever more unexpected interference with the delicate balances of nature, and they alienate, polarize, and threaten those they were supposed to serve. In the heat of its rapid industrial revolutions, the Modern Age seems to have overreached itself. The revolutions it brought forth moved from the sphere of technology and industry, into that of society and politics. The present and coming revolutions may bring more than a change within this age; they may spell the end of this very age.

Culture and civilization are surprising lily ponds—they are never passive in the face of danger. The great sociocultural systems of humanity do not just wait for their demise; they fight, struggle, and come up with innovation after innovation. Some are squashed by the outgoing age, but some can break through into the fresh space of the age that dawns. Social evolution has growth and momentum, flexibility and creativity. It has known many ages in the past and, with some luck helped along by timely insight, it will know many more in the future.

That an age is ending is not an unprecedented phenomenon. In the span of the last ten millennia there were many ages, each arriving as a breakthrough in the then dominant mode of living; each flowering as a seemingly eternal blueprint of human existence—and each passing into history, unmourned and sometimes even unnoticed, as conditions, values and institutions changed beyond its reach. This is what is happening to the Modern Age. Its benefits are undisputed, but they do not reach the majority of humankind. On the other hand its drawbacks affect everyone. For the three-quarters of humanity that lives in the underdeveloped world, the dream of material affluence through rapid modernization has failed. It has also failed for the people of the socialist countries, who rose up to improve their lot. And those who enjoy the modern dream—the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and the newly industrialized countries of Asia—suffer from unexpected side effects: pollution, overcrowding, sky-rocketing urban housing costs, mercurial trade restrictions, and unstable financial markets.

The chaos of our times is to be expected. We tackle new problems with old concepts and are amazed that they do not respond. Yet, as Einstein remarked, the problems generated by one way of thinking cannot be solved by that same way of thinking. Ideas and beliefs that were reasonable and productive at one time become irrational and nonproductive at another time. Take the following beliefs, for example.

The law of the jungle. Life is a struggle for survival. Be aggressive or you perish.

A rising tide lifts all boats. If as a nation we prosper, all our citizens prosper and even other nations will do better.

The trickle down theory. Another watery metaphor, it holds that wealth is bound to “trickle down” from the rich to the poor, and the more wealth there is at the top the greater the trickle that reaches the bottom.

Men are superior to women. An enormously widespread belief which has profound social and economic repercussions.

The invisible hand. Formulated by Adam Smith, it holds that individual and social interests are automatically harmonized. If I do well myself, I also benefit my community.

The self-regulating economy. If we could ensure perfect competition in a market system, benefits would be justly allocated by the system itself without need for intervention.

Humans are entitled to dominate Nature. We human beings have the right to dominate and control Nature, and use it for our own purposes, we are above Nature, superior to it.

The cult of efficiency. We must get the maximum out of every person, every machine and every organization, regardless of what is produced, and whether or not it is needed.

Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. Human beings are isolated, separate entities, all struggling along in their own ways and worlds.

The technological imperative. Anything that can be done ought to be done. If it can be made or performed it can be sold, and if it’s sold it’s good for you and for the economy. If nobody wants it, then you must create demand for it.

The newer the better. Anything that is new is better than (almost) anything that is last year’s. If you cannot bring out a new product, call the old one “new and improved,” and progress—and profits—will be yours.

The future is none of our business. We love our children, but why should we worry about the fate of the next generation? After all, what did the next generation do for us?

Economic rationality. The value of everything, including human beings, can be calculated in money. Everybody wants to get rich, the rest is idle conversation or simple pretense.

My country, right or wrong. We are sons and daughters of our great land, while all others are foreigners, out to get our wealth, power, and skills. We must be strong, to defend our national interests, preferably stronger than any possible adversary.

Homo modernus—modern man—is a curious beast. He lives in a jungle, benefits mankind by his pursuit of material gain, trusts invisible forces to right wrongs, worships efficiency, is ready to make, sell and consume practically anything (especially if it is new), loves children but is indifferent to the fate of the next generation, dismisses things that do not have immediate payoffs or are not calculable in money, and is ready to go and fight for his country, because his country, too, must fight for survival in the international jungle.

Today, the beliefs of Homo modernus no longer pay off.

•  Belief in the law of the jungle encourages tooth-and-claw competitiveness which fails to make use of the benefits of cooperation—especially crucial in a period of reduced growth opportunities and frequent squeezes. A greater awareness is emerging, based particularly on the Japanese example, of the importance of cooperation and teamwork in industry. Research in both the social and the natural sciences in demonstrating convincingly how cooperation and symbiosis are crucial evolutionary strategies. And movements focusing on peace and partnership are stressing the need for conflict resolution in families, schools, communities, and the workplace.

•  Holding to the dogmas of the rising tide, the trickle-down effect and the invisible hand promotes selfish behavior in the comforting—but sadly no longer warranted—belief that this is bound to benefit others. In America, for instance, in 1959 the top 4% made as much money as the bottom 35%. In 1989, the top 4% made as much as the bottom 51%, more than half the American people. The tide has not allowed everyone to rise, but it has, in fact, drowned many.

•  The domination of men by women has, over the past 3,500 years, been a crucial aspect of not only the Modern Age but virtually all of what used to be called “recorded history.” The “rediscovery” and affirmation of women’s role in society is bringing changes to every aspect of our world, from public policy and issues such as maternity leave, abortion, and health care, to psychology, sociology, and history.

•  Faith in a perfectly self-regulating free-market system ignores the fact that in a laissez-faire situation those who hold the power and control the strings distort the operations of the market in their own favor, and push the less powerful and clever partners into bankruptcy. In America, the deregulation instituted to ensure a free market has led to 100 trucking companies going out of business, taking with them 150,000 workers, and more than a dozen airlines going bankrupt, with 40,000 jobs lost. The savings and loan industry saw 650 bankruptcies, and the debt to the taxpayers rose to half a trillion dollars.

•  Viewing Nature as an object to be used and dominated by humans has led to a callous, unthinking mentality which has exploited Nature as if we were not a part of the biosphere, inextricably connected in the web of life and profoundly affected by what we change. The problems of pollution, deforestation, and soil erosion affect us in ways we could never have imagined.

•  Efficiency, without regard to what is produced, by whom it is produced, and whom it will benefit leads to mounting unemployment, a catering to the demands of the rich without regard to the needs of the poor, and a polarization of society in the “modern” (“efficient”) and the “traditional” (“inefficient”) sectors. Efforts to create “total quality” movements in companies have at times led to the realization that efficiency and quality were at loggerheads. Beyond a certain point efficiency meant cost-cutting and poor quality, which then led to consumer dissatisfaction.

•  The belief that it is “every man for himself” reflects the bankrupt view the view that human beings are isolated atoms, with nothing but their selfish drives in common. This is a legacy of the now outdated “individualistic” or “reductionistic” worldview.

•  The technological imperative becomes dangerous when economic growth curves slacken, markets become saturated, the environment approaches the limits of its pollution absorption capacity, and energy and material resources become scarce and expensive. Following this imperative issues in a plethora of goods that people only think they need; some of them they use at their own peril. That the newer would always be the better is simply not true: sometimes the newer is worse—more expensive, more wasteful, more damaging to the health, more polluting, more alienating or more stressful. One day a product is “improved” because it contains fluorocarbons, antihistamines, cyclamates, or just plain sugar—the next it is “improved” precisely because it does not contain these things. In the scramble for catching the public’s fancy, health and social benefits are only pawns, to be used when they improve the marketing effort and ignored when they do not.

•  Living without conscious forward planning may have been fine in the days of rapid growth when the future could take care of itself, but it is not a responsible option at a time when delicate choices have to be made with profound and far-reaching consequences for future generations. If today we should shrug and say après moi le deluge, we would indeed bring about a flood—of overexploitation, overpopulation, inequality, and conflict. The tendency to focus exclusively on short-term results—the emphasis on the next quarter in business—has led to the creation of many seemingly successful companies which nevertheless did not develop solid roots and went belly up rapidly.

•  The naive reduction of everything and everybody to economic value seemed rational in epochs when a great economic upswing turned all heads and pushed everything else into the background, but is foolhardy at a time when people are beginning to rediscover deep-rooted social and spiritual values and to cultivate lifestyles of voluntary simplicity. The search for meaningful work is matched by a willingness to sacrifice otherwise lucrative positions in exchange for more rewarding, ethical jobs which allow people to spend adequate time with their families.

Table 1 Changing Beliefs at the Transition Beyond the Modern Age

And, finally, the simple chauvinistic assertion of “my country, right or wrong” can play untold havoc both domestically and internationally, calling for people to go and fight for causes which their country later repudiates, to espouse the values and worldviews of a small group of political leaders, and to ignore the growing cultural, social, and economic ties that now evolve among people in all parts of the globe. In an age of increasing decentralization and ethnic pride, chauvinism and intolerance are the harbingers of great pain and suffering, as events in the former Yugoslavia demonstrate so clearly.

The Modern Age is passing into history, but the values and beliefs of this age are still the basis of most of our economic, social and political practice. In the eighties Homo modernus, though far from well, was alive and kicking. But whether he can survive the crucial nineties is open to question.

CHAPTER 2
The Challenge of Responsibility

One day in the middle of March, 1944, the Hungarian children’s humoristic weekly Ludas Matyi (“Mattie, the Goose-boy”) came out two days early. As an eleven year old fan of the magazine, I was delighted to see it on the Budapest newsstands and bought my copy right away. As usual, I read its assortment of stories and humor eagerly, but was puzzled by the boldly printed headline which had no relevance to anything else in the issue. I remember showing it to my parents, and asking what it meant. They exchanged a worried look but did not answer. The headline, clearly visible at all the newsstands in the city, read “Hang On Matyi—Here Comes the Bend!”

At nightfall the same day, Hitler’s army entered Hungary from the Austrian border and, by midnight, rolled into the capital. By 2 AM the small cream-colored cars of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, pulled up in front of the houses and apartments of influential Hungarians who were either Jews, or were known for their anti-Nazi leftist stance. Some time later, dozens of the Gestapo teams came back to their car, puzzled and empty-handed. Despite the assurances of dependable informers, many of the people they were looking for had vanished overnight. Those who had seen the headline of Ludas Matyi knew that the great “bend” was coming—and they were prepared to hang on.

There are various ways of hanging on in a bend. If one is on the priority list of the Gestapo, the advisable way is to vanish. If one is driving in a race, the best way is to brake before moving into it, and then press the accelerator to the floor. And if one finds oneself before the bend of a major transformation in society, the only way is to perceive the situation for what it is, get up one’s courage, and prepare to make a real change.

The Nazi era arose in a critical instability in the Weimar Republic, and the transformation it wrought had almost succeeded in creating a reign of “Aryan supermen.” If it were not for timely action on the part of the Allies, and countless acts of courage and foresight by those who were overrun by the Nazi machine but never gave up the fight, the Thousand Year Reich would have been established and it may have lasted, if not for a thousand years, at least for several terror-filled decades, perhaps even to this day.

The first half of the 1940s was a crucial epoch; it posed a challenge to all who valued humanism and civilization. Fortunately, the challenge was perceived in the nick of time, and was met with determination and effective action. The enemy was clearly visible, and the means of fighting him were also evident. The 1990s are another crucial epoch, one that involves all people and all societies. But the enemy is not clearly visible, and what means we should use to fight our way to a successful conclusion is by no means evident. The matter deserves some thought.

Why do we find ourselves approaching a big bend in the road —a global transformation? Who or what is causing the overgrowth of our pond? Where is the enemy?

The Question of Blame

The first culprit that comes to mind is technology. Modern technology has become a powerful force shaping our societies as well as our lives. Traditionally identified with the hardware produced in workshops and factories, technology today is seen as a complex system made up of people, organizations, role structures, skills and knowledge bases, as well as of material components. It would be a gross oversimplification to lay the blame for the instabilities ahead of us at the doorstep of the technology system. Though frequently with unexpected twists and happy or unhappy side effects, this system did...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preamble: The Surprising Lily Pond
• 1. The Obsolescence of Modern Beliefs: Unsurprising Surprises at the Dawn of a New Age
• 2. The Challenge of Responsibility
• 3. Bifurcation and Chaos: Understanding the Dynamics of Change
• 4. Perspectives of an Evolving World: New Ways to See Our Future
• 5. The Butterflies of Chaos: Launching the Third Strategy
• 6. Vision 2020: Imaging a Post-Critical World
• 7. The Grand Alliance of Science, Art, Religion, and Education
• 8. The Big Picture: Further Reflections on Our Past and Our Future
• Basic Concepts of Evolutionary Systems Theory
• Further Reading: Basic Writings on Evolution and Society, Selected by Alexander Laszlo
• Index