A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis.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 23). This blog is a continuation of the review of The Inner Limits of Mankind by Ervin Laszlo, written in 1989.
Modern man is unfinished
In this sense, modern man is ‘unfinished’, his transition to a greater maturity retarded. The current global crises, in which old and new problems of population, food, education, resources, energy, crowding, inflation, poverty, alienation, militarization, disorder, ecodegradation, injustice, etc., are growing and intertwined beyond recognition, is a consequence of the difficulty people have in achieving the level of understanding and sense of responsibility demanded by their mutated universe.
Confined within obsolete cultural boundaries
They have – all of them, in all classes and nations throughout the planet – remained confined within obsolete cultural boundaries which in the past could serve them well enough, but which nowadays are dangerously crippling, preventing them from living on a par with the reality of their time and from controlling the mechanism of change.
There is food for all
There is food for all if we grow the right crops and distribute produce with equity and humanism, instead of growing cash crops, feeding nutritive grains to cattle, and attempting to force the land to yield ever more produce by excessive reliance on chemical fertilizers and mechanized agriculture.
Indifference to economic and social injustice
Yet the wealthy and the privileged few, indifferent to or unconcerned with economic and social injustice, remain intent on protecting their privileges, consolidating their power, and isolating themselves from the suffering and deprivation that rises like a tide around them. Enormous capacities on the one hand, intolerable inequality and suffering on the other; these are the features that characterize the human condition in the closing decade of the 20th century.
We lack positive and feasible visions of the future
As long as our values and world views remain obsolete, as long as we lack positive and feasible visions of the future, and as long as our national and international postures and policies remain short-sighted, we shall not evolve towards a just and humane world, but devolve to an impoverished planet sundered by violence.
Mankind must shift its values and goals
Mankind must shift its values and goals now that it has propelled itself into a globally interdependent, crowded and technology-dependent world. History testifies to the adaptability of human cultures but also tells of those extinct societies that failed to adapt. Today it is the modernism that we are so enamored of that poses the greatest challenge to social and cultural adaptability. The issue is not whether mankind could transcend modernism but whether it will, given the short time at its disposal.
Diminishing returns
This age is a global one marked by new conditions and the corresponding need for new values. But most of mankind fails to see that it is upon us. The one-fourth which lives in the developed world is proud to be modern, and the three-fourths that inhabit the developing countries wish to become modern. Yet to the perceptive observer it is becoming each day more obvious that, for the values of modernism, the epoch of diminishing returns has arrived.
Building a world worthy of the finest attainments of civilization
“Where there is no vision the people perish.”
Proverbs 29:18
It is hard to think of a theme more inspiring than the exploration of the possibilities open to mankind for building a world worthy of the finest attainments of civilization. If the creative genius still available in our cultures would focus on positive visions of the future of humanity, and explore the myriad aspects of personal, social and technical entailments and possibilities connected with them, they would leave tales of Persian princes as far behind as a supersonic jet leaves behind the horse and buggy.