A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 22). This blog is a review of The Inner Limits of Mankind by Ervin Laszlo, written in 1989
THE INNER LIMITS OF MANKIND
The author
Ervin Laszlo is the recipient of four Honorary Ph.D.s. He received the Japan Peace Prize in 2001 and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 1993 he founded The Club of Budapest, an association of globally active opinion leaders in various fields of art, science, religion, and culture, dedicated to the evolution of our values, ethics, and consciousness in the interest of averting global crisis and creating a peaceful and sustainable civilization. He is the co-founder of the World Wisdom Council, and Chairman of the online university, the World Wisdom Academy.
The Club of Rome
When he was engaged on an international goals research project for the Club of Rome, studying the contributions of over 100 collaborators for the Goals for Mankind, A Report to the Club of Rome on the New Horizons of Global Community, he realized that we have the capacity to sustain the delicate balances of our habitat, and to nourish, house, and provide work, education, and a life of meaning and well-being for 10 billion humans but if we overcrowd cities, overcrop lands, overgraze pastures, overfish lakes and seas, and pollute air, land and water, it is not because the Earth is not rich enough to support us all, but because we use her riches unwisely.
The problems of contemporary society
The Inner Limits of Mankind: Heretical Reflections on Today’s Values, Culture and Politics, written in 1989, is an exposé of the problems of contemporary society and of the urgent need for a fundamental reappraisal of man’s treatment of his planet, in order to effect a radical modification of attitude and behavior if we are to survive. The present obsession of societies for material gain and consumerism, for uncontrolled technology, with little thought of the consequences, simply cannot go on.
The post-industrial society
The post-industrial society offers every possibility for a life of quality and dignity, of leisure and modest affluence to all individuals. The transition to this new society will, however, be difficult and could be disastrous. If we drift into it with our present structures and attitudes, the future could be dark indeed. The time has come to discuss humanity’s innermost limits – those of the motivation and private ambitions of all individuals which, when projected to the national scale, may explain the apparently irrational and at times self-destructive behavior of our society.
The most important limits are inner and human
Much has been said in recent times about the outer limits of the planet, but it now appears that the most important limits are inner and human rather than outer and environmental. World population is doubling every few decades and its appetites are increasing even faster, while its wisdom and prudence have not appreciably improved. The result is that the human habitat is being impoverished and degraded at an alarming rate, and we must now take stock very carefully of the physical assets and life-supporting capacity of our terrestrial domain.
Narrow-mindedness and poor self-governance
If mankind is in trouble because environments have been degraded to the danger point, this is certainly not due to external causes, but to narrow-mindedness and poor self-governance. From now on, mankind can either choose to go ahead foolishly, challenging nature, or else seek to live in harmony with it.
Society has not yet been able to reach a higher level of organization
If society has not yet been able to reach the higher level of organization and performance so indispensable nowadays, this is because the evolution of its members, individually and collectively, in no way matches that which they have brought about in everything else, literally revolutionizing life over the entire planet.