QUANTUM SHIFT IN THE GLOBAL BRAIN
HOW THE NEW SCIENTIFIC REALITY CAN CHANGE US AND OUR WORLD
ERVIN LASZLO
INNER TRADITIONS 2008
PART XIV
PART THREE
GLOBALSHIFT IN ACTION: THE CLUB OF BUDAPEST AND ITS INITIATIVES
The Club of Budapest is an association of ethical and responsible leading personalities in various parts of the world dedicated to the proposition that we need urgently to change the world and for that we must also change ourselves. This part gives a brief account of the history of the Club, its fields of activity, and the objectives of its major projects.
Chapter 14: A Brief History of the Club of Budapest contributed by Iván Vitányi and Mária Sági
The origins of the Club of Budapest can be traced to two events that took place in the second half of the last century. The first was the establishment, in 1968, of the Club of Rome, a progressive think tank with a worldwide base, particularly active in Europe. In Hungary its prominent representative was Ervin Laszlo. The second factor was the particular role played by Hungary during the fall of Communism at the end of the 1980s. Of all the former Soviet bloc countries, it was in Hungary that the transformation to democracy was the most ordered and peaceful, and totally without bloodshed.
There was a vast movement of opinion in Hungary at the time – popular opinion and intellectual opinion, also shared by the progressive echelons of high-ranking politicians – that pointed toward the need for a peaceful transformation from a Soviet satellite to an independent democratic state. Agreement between the parties was negotiated with the result that free elections were held in May 1990. József Antall, a liberal democrat, was elected Prime Minister. Soviet troop withdrawal commenced immediately thereafter and was completed within a year.
It was the opening of dialogue within the Hungarian political elite that led to the opening of the border with Austria, the historic event that precipitated the dismantling of the Iron Curtain.
Iván Vitányi, the senior author of this short history, was a member of the political-intellectual leadership of the country. As Member of Parliament he took part in negotiating the transfer of power to Hungary’s first democratically elected government.
In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, Ervin Laszlo often visited Hungary. The renewal of his long-standing friendship with Vitányi was instrumental in giving birth to the Club of Budapest. There was a surge of interest in the work of the Club of Rome in Hungary following publication of its first report, The Limits to Growth (1972). This in turn raised interest in Laszlo’s work, especially in the report he headed for the Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind (1977). Vitányi in turn became Director of the Institute for Culture in 1970, where Mária Sági was a researcher and later principal collaborator. They worked together on numerous research projects in cultural sociology and social psychology.
Sági and Laszlo started collaborating in 1983. The Institute for Culture held an international conference in December 1983, at which Laszlo gave a lecture on general systems and evolution theory. He was impressed by the institute’s work and fascinated by the research of Vitányi and Sági on generative ability in music. He particularly appreciated the application of thorough deep-interview techniques in sociopsychological research, which was not usual among sociologists at that time.
Laszlo became affiliated with the Tokyo-based United Nations University (UNU), and in 1984, when Suzuki Sakura Mushakoji, Vice-Rector of the UNU, was looking for research affiliates in Central Europe, Laszlo recommended the Institute for Culture. An agreement was reached, finances were secured, and the Institute for Culture began its research on “European Identity.” Work was completed in eight countries under the direction of Mária Sági, who at the time was the Institute’s principal researcher. Sági also headed the research on Hungary, collected the international results, and compiled the final report. The report was published in Hungarian in the periodical Valóság and subsequently in English in a special edition of the journal World Futures.
In 1984, backed by the Institute for Culture, Vitányi and Laszlo founded the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON). In the years that followed the international research projects of the Institute were carried out under the auspices of EUROCIRCON.
The years between 1988 and 1992 were years of high drama in East-Central Europe. The transition that took place was so fundamental that it would be more correct to call it a transformation. During these critical times Laszlo raised the idea of founding an international “artists’ and writers’ club” to partner with the Club of Rome. It was to focus in particular on the “soft factors” of the limits to growth: values, expectations, worldviews, and states of mind and consciousness. These, he said, may be even more decisive in our time than money and technology. He suggested that Budapest would provide an ideal intellectual and cultural climate for this enterprise. The idea was taken up by Sándor Csoóri, then President of the World Federation of Hungarians, and the Club of Budapest was called into being. Laszlo was named President and was supported by a Board made up of Sándor Csoóri (poet), Sándor Sára (film director), Gedeon Dienes (dance historian), and Mária Sági and Iván Vitányi (cultural sociologists). The Club was given office space in the House of Hungarian Culture, where it remains to this day.
The Club got off to a slow start as its first General Secretary worked in tourism and did not devote sufficient time to Club activities. It was only in 1995 that real work began. By the following year preparations for the first conferences were well in hand, some two dozen world-famous personalities had joined the Club as Honorary Members, and the Club published the Manifesto on Planetary Consciousness. This document states the fundamental objectives and enduring mission of the Club of Budapest and deserves to be reproduced in full, as it is in the following chapter.
Chapter 15: Manifesto on Planetary Consciousness drafted by Ervin Laszlo in collaboration with the Dalai Lama and adopted by the Club of Budapest on October 26, 1996
The New Requirements of Thought and Action
1. In the closing years of the 20th century, we have reached a crucial juncture in our history. We are on the threshold of a new stage of social, spiritual, and cultural evolution, a stage that is as different from the stage of the earlier decades of this century as the grasslands were from the caves, and settled villages from life in nomadic tribes. We are evolving